After that phone call, giant waves of relief come for days, for weeks. Nancy is jazzed and sends me on those errands that started this story. I keep doing my pushups, stay off the sauce, return to the hood, my step returns and I revitalize Jimmy Dolan, my alias who writes the fictional Mozza Tribune. Alas, tragedy comes to The Mozza Corner as Osteria chef Kirby Shaw goes into a coma for two months…
(EDITOR’S NOTE – At the end of the previous article, “Errand Day”, I had just heard from “my neurologist” I might have ALS, aka Lou Gehrig’s Disease.) So, like I said, I walk upstairs and just tell Nancy the doctor is not sure what’s ailing me and to “enjoy Italy”. No way am I gonna talk about the Iron Horse. I don’t even Google ALS. That would be a death sentence. We all know that. I had a…
“Wide awake, I can make my most fantastic dream come true, my romance doesn’t need a thing….but you” - Maxine Weldon singing “My Romance” written by Lorenz Hart and Richard Rodgers in 1935. A Wednesday in April, 2026, more than 90 years after that song was written, nearly 40 years after my cousin Greg saw Maxine sing “My Romance” at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel’s Cinegrill and raved about it to…
Something happened one week ago, Friday, May 1, 2026, that was the single most gratifying moment of my up and down career as a journalist. If this had occurred anywhere it would have been a treasure, but it just so happened at the very place where I became a journalist and started working for the L.A. Times 34 years ago; the Los Angeles City Council chambers at City Hall. On that Friday, the city…
NOT PRETTI GOOD It would be pretty good and actually pretty damn easy to lower the tensions, the cuss word outrage emanating from Minnesota after the shooting death of Alex Pretti. If that person in the White House simply called out the scaredy cat gutless coward Border Patrol agents who shot Pretti on a Minneapolis street last Saturday morning, that alone would help the country. In fact, if the…
“It was never about the destination. It was always about the journey.” - Bogard, aka George Thomas talking about Gregory “Batman” Davis On the streets of Greater Los Angeles – and most of the United States now - “OG” means Original Gangster. But those initials - and those words - are thrown about without the proper respect the term really implies and deserves. There are 19-year-olds who are…
This Wednesday night I was at Chi Spacca restaurant on the Mozza Korner when a diner, going from the bathroom back to his table, bumped into me and quickly apologized with a “I’m so sorry. I am really sorry.” My first thought was it wasn’t that much of a bump to warrant being that sorry . A few seconds later, the wine guy Daniel Kfoury asked me “Do you know who bumped into you?” No, I told him.…
Recently, at the bar of famed The French Laundry in Yountville, California, three solo diners were all reading a book while relishing the three Michelin star cuisine of Thomas Keller. It is not unusual to see solo diners reading at this nearly mythical restaurant. What was striking that early Spring evening was that the three were all reading the same book, Jesse Katz’s “The Rent Collector.”…
EDITOR’S NOTE - The first 65, 70% of this story was written one year ago when Michael Singer was down and out and the referee had counted “eight……. nine…” and was just about to reach a knockout. A year later, we are, what’s the word, grateful, I guess, that Paul Newman jumped the gun. Read on and maybe that will make some sense . ************************* For over 1,900 years, Simon Peter, aka St.…
An American woman utterly demolished the long-standing world record for going from a hospital bed for surgery to a clothing store for shopping when she left Cedars Sinai Medical Center in West Hollywood on Friday at 10:00 am and was at Noodle Stories on 3rd Street trying on their new line from Italian clothing designer Daniela Gregis at 11:39 am.., Just in 99 minutes from surgery to shopping. The…
The original newspaper The Fictional Tribune, based on the the mythical “Mozza Tribune”, is going public, Find it here at https://www.thefictionaltribune.com and check it out. To let you know a front page article about someone you care about is $75. and the name of each paper can change to where your loved one lives. It could the Hollywood Tribune or the Encino Times or the Bakersfield Examiner.…
A little more than a week ago, on the day after the Golden Globe Awards, I was having coffee at Go Get Em Tiger on Larchmont Boulevard when I heard a story that made the word “surreal” come alive for me and exemplified the worst and best of L.A. I was at a four-top surrounded by 10 other people on the sidewalk patio, most of us semi-regulars who frequent the coffeeshop for our morning world news…
Up until about two weeks ago, the mere mention of “brain cancer” was enough to send a bone chill through anyone’s body. Around the world, brain cancer was thought to be the bad ass of diseases, a condition so numbing that the most complex of all things - the actual human brain - could not deal with it. Not anymore. A Los Angeles woman, Susan Brink O’Flaherty, known as “Sista Suzie” has so…
A few weeks ago I cell phoned Big Cat, a legendary member of the Rollin’ 60s Crips, who the LAPD described in a 2003 injunction against his Crenshaw/Hyde Park-based street gang as “a shot caller…… who instills fear in the neighborhood.” I could see that, back in the day. Big Cat, who legally goes by Kevin Doucette, happens to be an old friend of mine who I met about 28 years ago while covering…
BY JIMMY DOLAN 8/12/2023 For those of you planning a trip to Italy - if it’s your first time or 20th - you might want to give Martina Bartolozzi a heads up. She can make your trip not only fascinating but make it taste better. Simple as that. Today, the Florence native was named the best “Culinary Travel Advisor” in all of Italy by the Michelin Guide. Bartolozzi, whose Instagram account, “Momento…
A former gang leader once described by an FBI agent and several LAPD homicide detectives as one of the deadliest men in Los Angeles could be paroled in a few months after he pled “no contest” to a murder and was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison. Thing is Cleamon Johnson, much better - and fearfully - known on the streets as “Big Evil” has already done more than 28 years behind bars for this…
(This was published in the Los Angeles Times’ Opinion page on April, 29, 2023) Can a man really change? Or more precisely, can an absolute badass change? A violent, brutal, reckless, drunk, defend-the-’hood-at-all-costs gang member? A Folsom Prison “graduate”? A 6-foot-4, 240-pound defender of Nickerson Gardens, menace to Imperial Courts and Jordan Downs? Can that guy become just about the kindest…
On a fine Spring day in 1969, a hard-to-believe 54 years ago, a gym coach at Peary Junior High School in Gardena had a sudden idea; find out who is the fastest runner at school. And a 50-yard-dash would decide who that was. There was a lull of activity in the gym area - the track, the handball courts, the baseball fields - so Coach Hines, who once held the American record for indoor pole vault,…
BY JIMMY DOLAN With late night talk show hosts from countless galaxies making Earth the butt of their evening jokes, four renowned human chefs held a news conference Monday to announce they will team up to make a special pizza with the proceeds going toward helping this planet get its act together. The four chefs - Nancy Silverton, Chris Bianco, Dan Richer and Franco Pepe - will each have their…
A joint U.S. Senate and House of Representative three-year investigation concluded Monday with the extraordinary findings that Black Americans and White Americans lose single socks after a washing/drying session at nearly identical rates. The joint committee, chaired by Joe Manchin (D-South Virgina,) found out that for every 100 washing and drying episodes, White Americans lost a single sock…