Today, Friday, Festival of Books weekend begins with the LA Times Book Awards tonight, followed by two full days of fest-ing on the USC campus, featuring author interviews, panels, readings, cooking demonstrations, kids activities, and all manner of other events centered around the celebration of writers and readers.

I’m moderating a panel on Saturday at 3:30 pm called Crime Fiction: Out of the Box

It features a stupendously cool line up of gifted authors, each with an ardent following. (If you like very smart, very literary, very original and culturally savvy noir-ish crime fiction, that also has something interesting to say, these are your guys.)

Nelson George
Gary Phillips
P.G. Sturges
Paul Tremblay

I pre-interviewed them all Thursday, and trust me, the audience is in for a treat.

As for what else you should see? Oh, there’s an embarrassment of riches. Susan Orlean, John Green (author of the new, hot book, “The Fault in our Stars), Joseph Wambaugh….. Just page through the list.

As always, you should go to any panel that involves my pal Tod Goldberg in any way-–either as a panelist or a moderator. (Really, just trust me. Every year there’s a legendarily funny Tod-related panel that everyone talks about in the Festival’s Green Room, causing those who have missed it to look….you know….sad. But even his non-legendary panels will be good. Just go.)

And my brilliant friend, Tom Bissell, has recently moved into town and is on a panel both Saturday and Sunday. If you know his work, you already understand why one would be wise to do whatever it takes manage to catch one of his panels. If you don’t know who he is….well, take a look. (To intellectual gamers, he’s a god, but he’s also beloved by literary types.)

My pal David Ulin has a terrific panel on Sunday at 1 pm with Steve Erickson, Hari Kunzru, and Dana Spiotta—any one of whom alone would be a hot ticket.

Just go to USC and walk in a panel at random. Honestly, you can’t go wrong.

I asked WLA’s new news aggregator Taylor Walker, who is, like me, a mad reader, for her picks to click. Here are Taylor’s LATFOB suggestions:

TAYLOR’S PICKS

I LOVE the Festival of Books. I’ve attended almost every year with my dad as a quasi-father/daughter tradition.

Here are some of the Saturday panels we will be sitting in on:

1. Robert Kirkman‘s Q&A with Geoff Boucher at 10:30AM

We’re both [not so] secret comic book fans, so this Q&A session is a MUST. Robert is most famous for writing The Walking Dead, a graphic novel series (and TV show) about a zombie-infested dystopian earth and its human inhabitants’ struggle for survival. What’s not to like?

2. Cheryl Strayed‘s on the Memoir: Over the Edge panel moderated by Amy Wallen at 1:30.

Cheryl’s new memoir Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail follows her on her 1,100 mile trek from Mohave to Washington along the Pac. Crest Trail as she hazards physical extremes to find herself. Her hyper-realistic style and literary flourish make her novels that much more delightful for the lit. nerd in me. She’s the witty, slightly vulgar best friend I wish I had.

3. Celeste Fremon’s Crime Fiction: Out of the Box panel at 3:30. (A whim, of course, but I may have heard a thing or two about the fabulous panelists.)
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I won’t be able to go on Sunday this year, but here are a few of the events I would have caught:

Rodney King’s Q&A with Patt Morrison at 12:30,

Betty White at 1:20

T.C. Boyle at 4:30.

I’m also entirely content spending a few hours meandering through the crowd, looking at the booths, inevitably getting lost, and enjoying the ambiance created by hundreds of book lovers.

To paraphrase what was once written about Raymond Chandler, Levon Helm sang as if pain hurt and life mattered—but also with an irrepressible resilience. When Levon sang, it was as if the song had always existed.

The son of a cotton farmer and front porch musician out of Turkey Scratch, Arkansas, Helms’ high lonesome tenor was the heart of a cluster of multi-instrument playing, highly gifted musicians known simply as The Band. Guitarist and front man Robbie Robertson wrote most of The Band’s music, but it was Levon, the drummer for godsake, whose county roots-bluesy voice—weathered and indelible, even at a young age—that gave the group legendary status the moment they began to play.

Whatever our flaws, how can one not love an America that has given us the weave of musical influences capable of birthing an artist like Levon Helm?

Impossible, I tell you.

Early in the morning
When the church bells toll
The choir’s gonna sing
And the hearse will roll
On down to the graveyard
Where it’s cold and gray
And then the sun’s gonna shine
Through the shadows
When I go away

Don’t want no sorrow
For this old orphan boy
I don’t want no crying
Only tears of joy
I’m gonna see my mother
Gonna see my father
And I’ll be bound for glory
In the morning
When I go away

I’ll be lifted up to the clouds
On the wings of angels
There’s only flesh and bones
In the ground
Where my troubles will stay

See that storm over yonder
It’s gonna rain all day
But then the sun’s gonna shine
Through the shadows
When I go away

With Taylor Walker

NEW UMBRELLA PHONE TECHNOLOGY WILL BLOCK CELL PHONE CALLS FROM PRISON SAYS CDCR

On Monday, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation announced that it was implementing a new inmate telephone system that will both curb unauthorized cellphone use in lock-ups, and also reduce call rates for prisoners’ families. Global Tel*Link was awarded the contract to put in the the new technology, with the plan set to start taking effect by the end of the year.

Here’s a clip from the CDCR’s press announcement that explains some of the details.

Managed Access technology uses a secure cellular umbrella over a specified area blocking unauthorized cellular communication transmissions, such as e-mails, texts, phone calls, or Internet access.

In 2011, CDCR tested the Managed Access technology at two institutions. The test was conducted over an 11-day period for approximately eight hours a day. During the test, the equipment detected a total of 2,593 unique wireless devices. The equipment blocked more than 25,000 unauthorized communication attempts, such as calls, texts, emails, and efforts to log on to the Internet from a smart phone.

In 2007, CDCR staff discovered nearly 1,400 contraband cell phones. In 2008, it was 2,800; in 2009, 6,995; in 2010, approximately 10,760; in 2011, more than 15,000; and to date this year, 2,181 contraband cell phones have been discovered in prisons and Conservation Camps.

DEATH ROW INMATE IS HIS OWN BEST LAWYER

The NY Times Adam Liptak has the interesting tale of a mentally ill death row inmate who seems to be better at representing himself than either of his previous lawyers. Here’s a clip:

Albert Holland Jr., a death row inmate in Florida, has no legal training and seems to be suffering from a mental illness — “perhaps a disorder involving paranoia or delusional thoughts,” a federal judge wrote recently.

But he turns out to be a pretty good lawyer. Two years ago, in allowing Mr. Holland a fresh chance to make his case after his court-appointed lawyer blew a crucial deadline, the Supreme Court praised Mr. Holland’s legal acumen. Indeed, Justice Stephen G. Breyer wrote, Mr. Holland had had a better understanding of the complicated time limits for challenging death sentences in federal court than his lawyer had.

Mr. Holland made good use of the opportunity the Supreme Court gave him. A couple of weeks ago, he won a decision granting him a new trial. In the process, he opened a window on the astoundingly spotty quality of court-appointed counsel in capital cases.

The lawyer whose work the justices had considered was the least of it; he had merely been unresponsive and incompetent. Mr. Holland’s earlier lawyers had failed him in much more colorful ways.

Consider Kenneth Delegal, who was assigned to defend Mr. Holland at a 1996 retrial on charges that he killed a Pompano Beach police officer in 1990. Mr. Delegal was removed from the case after being sent to a mental health facility. Later, the two men would see each other at the Broward County jail, where Mr. Delegal was held on drug and domestic violence charges….

There’s more to this story, so read the rest.

NO PULITZER IN FICTION THIS YEAR, JUDGING PANEL IS NOT ONE BIT HAPPY

So the Pulitzer Prizes were announced Monday….and no fiction prize was given, a decision by the Pulitzer board that made the fiction judging panel more that a little cranky.

The way it works is that the judges pick three finalists and then the Pulitzer board picks a winner.

Here’s a clip from the Daily Beast’s story on the No-Winner situation.

…On Monday, the prize committee announced that it had not chosen a winner for the fiction award for the first time since 1977. “BREAKING: Fox News Wins Pulitzer for Fiction,” the comedian Andy Borowitz quipped, as readers and pundits around the world took to Twitter to vent their outrage.

Maureen Corrigan, one of three jurors for the fiction prize, says she was just as shocked as everyone else when she learned Monday that there would be no fiction winner. “Honestly, I feel angry on behalf of three great American novels,” said Corrigan, a critic in residence at Georgetown University and a book critic for NPR’s Fresh Air.

Corrigan, along with Susan Larson, former books editor of The Times-Picayune and host of The Reading Life on WWNO-FM, and Michael Cunningham, author of the 1999 Pulitzer winner The Hours, read about 300 novels each over the course of six months. They then met and corresponded to pick three finalists: the late David Foster Wallace’s posthumous and unfinished The Pale King, which was pieced together from manuscripts by Wallace’s editor, Michael Pietsch; the young Karen Russell’s quaintly surreal debut Swamplandia!; and Denis Johnson’s stark and spare novella Train Dreams. The three were submitted to the Pulitzer Prize board, made up of 20 journalists and academics, 18 of them voting members, who must come to a majority vote on the winner. Or not, as was the case this year.

I read all three of the books that Corrigan lists as her panel’s finalists and, I can assure you that any one of the three would have made a genuinely swell winner. Had it been left up to me, I’d have likely picked the Denis Johnson book, Train Dreams, which features sentences so gorgeous they could nearly stop your heart. Still it would have been easy to make a case for either of the other two.

However, none-of-the-above is not a workable choice. Really, it’s not.

Yet the fact that both the Huffington Post and Politico, and that smart 24-year old from PA won their first awards nearly makes up for it.

From Rachel Levy at Slate:

Among the more notable winners were the Huffington Post’s David Wood, who grabbed the award for national reporting for his reporting on the physical and emotional challenges facing American soldiers who were severely wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan. The award was HuffPo’s first-ever Pulitzer.

Politico also earned the right to call itself a Pulitzer-winning publication for the first time, thanks to Matt Wuerker’s political cartoons.

Meanwhile, 24-year-old Sara Ganim and the staff at Pennsylvania’s Patriot-News nabbed the award for local reporting for uncovering the Jerry Sandusky sex scandal at Penn State.

it slipped my mind that today was Cesar Chavez Day. So since many are taking the day off (and, yes, many of us aren’t), the promised Part 2 of Aero Bureau will appear Monday, not today.

In the meantime, watch the hour-long PBS video on the Farm Worker’s Movement at the end of the post ( It reminded me about, among other things, all those years that no one I knew would have dreamed of eating table grapes. Even after the strike was over, it took a long time to learn to like them again. I imagine I was far from alone in that somewhat irrational post-strike reaction.)

POLICE UNION VERY UNHAPPY THAT SOME DEPARTMENT INSIDER LEAKED TO THE LA TIMES THE NAME OF THE OFFICER INVESTIGATED FOR RACIAL PROFILING

New LAPPL prez Tyler Izen wrote LAPD Inspector General Alexander Bustamante a strongly worded letter asking for an investigation into the matter.

“…the unlawful disclosure of the confidential information regarding any officer by unscrupulous self-serving individuals has reached a level of indecency so great that we will not stand by and remain silent,” he wrote.

(The full text is here.)

And, to remind you what we’re talking about, here’s an opening clip from Joel Rubin’s LA Times article.

A white police officer has been targeting Latino drivers for traffic stops because of their ethnicity, a Los Angeles Police Department investigation concluded — marking the first time the department has found that one of its officers had engaged in racial or ethnic profiling.

For decades, the question of profiling — “biased policing,” in LAPD vernacular — has bedeviled the department. Accusations that the practice was commonplace throughout the 1970s and ’80s alienated the LAPD from the city’s minority neighborhoods. And, despite dramatic reforms that have boosted the department’s image in recent years, complaints of profiling have persisted, with hundreds of officers being accused of bias each year. Until now, none of those complaints has been substantiated.

.

Of course, at least the LAPD’s probable Peace Officer Bill of Rights violator wasn’t a department captain who, in a fit of pique, blurted the existence of an IAB investigation against an LASD sergeant formerly under the captain’s command, all this in front of a very full and public board of supervisors meeting. Making matters worse, the captain failed to include in his blurt (that had a wild-eyed county attorney looking to be on the verge physically tackling him) the information that the charge had already been resolved in the sergeant’s favor—but instead inaccurately implied the exact opposite.

FBI SAYS IT DIDN’T REALLY MEAN THAT “SUSPEND THE LAW” THINGY IT HAD IN ITS COUNTER-TERRORISM BOOKLET

Wired Magazine’s Danger Room section has the not-terribly-cheering story. Here’s a clip:

The FBI once taught its agents that they can “bend or suspend the law” as they wiretap suspects. But the bureau says it didn’t really mean it, and has now removed the document from its counterterrorism training curriculum, calling it an “imprecise” instruction. Which is a good thing, national security attorneys say, because the FBI’s contention that it can twist the law in pursuit of suspected terrorists is just wrong.

“Dismissing this statement as ‘imprecise’ is a rather unsatisfying response given the very precise lines Congress and the courts have repeatedly drawn between what is and is not permissible, even in counterterrorism cases, over the past decade,” Steve Vladeck, a national-security law professor at American University, says. “It might technically be true that the FBI has certain authorities when conducting counterterrorism investigations that the Constitution otherwise forbids, but that’s good only so far as it goes.”

The reference to law-bending was noted in a letter to FBI Director Robert Mueller from Sen. Richard Durbin that Danger Room obtained. When Danger Room asked for the original document, the FBI initially declined. On Wednesday, a Bureau spokesperson relented, but refused to say who prepared the document; how long it was in circulation; and how many FBI agents, analysts and officials received its instruction….

IN NEW YORK CITY A CIVILIAN OVERSIGHT BOARD GETS THE POWER TO PROSECUTE NYPD OFFICERS FOR MISCONDUCT

“Lawyers for the independent agency that investigates allegations of police abuse in New York have been given wide new powers to prosecute officers in misconduct cases under an agreement city officials reached on Tuesday,” writes Al Baker for the NY Times.

This is something that could be very useful to consider in LA. It involves both civilians and police officers.

REMEMBERING THE FIERCE AND GIFTED ADRIENNE RICH, AND THE FABULOUS EARL SCRUGGS

The New York Daily News has an unusually good send off for the enormously influential feminist poet, Adrienne Rich, who died this week.

And in this video from the PBS Newshour Judy Woodruff and Jeffrey Brown help us say goodbye to both Rich and Earl Scruggs, who also died this week.

“He made you stop in your tracks,” said Bela Fleck of the brilliant and beloved banjo innovator Scruggs.

Yep. That he did.

And here he is doing it again— with those he inspired.

And now back to Cesar Chavez.

He was a master of absurdist comedy with a heart the size of Wyoming.

A co-founder of the Firesign Theater and one of the smartest men I have ever known or ever will know, Peter Bergman, was a magician in every important sense of that word.

Goodnight, sweet prince, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.

Not insane!

Here and here and here and here are links to some of the better early obits.

The finalists for the LA Times Book Awards were announced on Tuesday. (The full list is here.)

This year, I was one of the three judges for the Mystery Thriller category, along with Dick Lochte and Michele Slung. (for the last two years, I’ve judged Current Interest in nonfiction, so this year it was fun to leap into genre fiction.) Frankly, our main challenge was selecting between a lot of worthy books. Once we narrowed the choices down to ten—twice the number of finalists the contest permitted—it was hard to want to lose any of them off our list.

Yet, when the winnowing was completed, we were quite pleased with our final selections:

“Started Early, Took My Dog” by Kate Atkinson (Reagan Arthur Books/Hachette Book Group)

“Plugged” by Eoin Colfer (Overlook Press)

“11/22/63” by Stephen King (Scribner)

“Snowdrops: A Novel” by A.D. Miller (Doubleday)

“The End of Wasp Season” by Denise Mina (Reagan Arthur Books/Hachette Book Group)

By the way, since I’m a reading fool, I’ve read quite a number of the finalists in the other categories, thus I can assure you that there are some terrific books in there. (The Art of Fielding, The Cat’s Table, Leaving the Atocha Station, Thinking Fast and Slow, The Malcom X biography….and lots more.)

So take a look. Lots of stuff to put on your reading list.

The LA Times Book Awards will be presented on Friday night, April 20, and the LA Times Festival of Books follows on Saturday and Sunday, April 21 and 22, at USC.

Mark it on your calendar now. I’ll be on a panel, so I’ll see you there!

At 8:24 p.m. Thursday night, after hearing about the death of two-time Pulitzer winning New York times reporter, Anthony Shadid, famed journalism/digital media professor Jay Rosen tweeted the heart of the matter:

“Typically, great journalists are great stylists or great reporters. How many are great at both and at courage? Almost none. @anthonyshadid.”

Here are the basics of what happened, from the NY Times.

Anthony Shadid, a gifted foreign correspondent whose graceful dispatches for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe and The Associated Press covered nearly two decades of Middle East conflict and turmoil, died, apparently of an asthma attack, on Thursday while on a reporting assignment in Syria. Tyler Hicks, a Times photographer who was with Mr. Shadid, carried his body across the border to Turkey.

Mr. Shadid, 43, had been reporting inside Syria for a week, gathering information on the Free Syrian Army and other armed elements of the resistance to the government of President Bashar al-Assad, whose military forces have been engaged in a harsh repression of the political opposition in a conflict that is now nearly a year old.

The Syrian government, which tightly controls foreign journalists’ activities in the country, had not been informed of his assignment by The Times.

The exact circumstances of Mr. Shadid’s death and his precise location inside Syria when it happened were not immediately clear.

But Mr. Hicks said that Mr. Shadid, who had asthma and had carried medication with him, began to show symptoms as both of them were preparing to leave Syria on Thursday, and the symptoms escalated into what became a fatal attack. Mr. Hicks telephoned his editors at The Times, and a few hours later he was able to take Mr. Shadid’s body into Turkey.

Jill Abramson, the executive editor, informed the newspaper’s staff Thursday evening in an e-mail. “Anthony died as he lived — determined to bear witness to the transformation sweeping the Middle East and to testify to the suffering of people caught between government oppression and opposition forces,” she wrote.

Listen to the interview with Shadid on Fresh Air with Terry Gross. It took place around seven weeks ago, this past December.

In the world of journalism, the loss of Anthony Shadid is a very big one.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZweOE3iSNfY&feature=related

One of the best voices gracing the world of pop music, a beauty with a trillion dollar smile, Whitney Houston seemed to find little peace.

Yet her talent remains incandescent.

9TH CIRCUIT DECIDES THAT VIDEO OF PROP 8 TRIAL ARGUMENTS WILL NOT BE RELEASED

The San Jose Mercury News has the story. Here’s a clip:

A federal appeals court on Thursday refused to allow the public release of the videotapes of the historic Proposition 8 trial that led a judge to overturn California’s voter-approved gay marriage ban.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the arguments of media organizations and same-sex marriage advocates, saying the trial judge in the Proposition 8 trial had offered assurances that the videotapes would remain under seal.

The appeals court stressed that the ruling was based on the particular facts of the Proposition 8 case, not broader questions of public access to court proceedings.

Before the 2010 trial, the U.S. Supreme Court had blocked former Chief Judge Vaughn Walker from permitting the proceedings to be broadcast. But Walker videotaped the trial for use inside the courthouse by the lawyers and him.

THE CITIZENS’ COMMISSION ON JAIL VIOLENCE MEETS FRIDAY

The Citizens Commission on Jail Violence has not yet begun hearing from witnesses and the like, but is still nailing down its plan of attack.

For instance, at today’s meeting the commission plans to firm up its timeline (Hint: its final report is preliminarily set to due in August/September—meaning September, since nobody wants to read a serious report in August.)

The commission will also discuss the five different areas of investigation that its teams of investigators intend to pursue—things like “deputy culture,” “use of force,” “investigative procedures,” “management and oversight,” and various jail personnel issues.

PLUS they’ll receive a report on jail population trends, compiled for them by Jim Austin (the national expert on the topic who is doing a larger jail population assessment and proposal for Sheriff Baca and the LA County Board of Supervisors).

Anyway, you get the idea. More on all this after the meeting.

(Just to remind you, this is the commission appointed by the LA County Board of Supervisors to investigate the problems of inmate abuse by deputies in the LA County jail system and to make recommendations).

SENTENCING PROJECT RELEASES NEW REPORT SHOWING MANY STATES ARE DIALING BACK THEIR SENTENCING AND LOCK-UP POLICIES.

The new report highlights 55 reforms in 29 states and documents “a growing trend to reform sentencing policies and scale back the use of imprisonment without compromising public safety.”

Here are the kinds of reforms the report documents:

Sentence modifications – Four states — Connecticut, Ohio, Nebraska, and North Dakota — established sentence modification mechanisms that allow correctional officials to reduce the prison sentences of eligible prisoners;

• Drug offense reforms - Four states — Arkansas, Delaware, Kentucky, and Ohio — revised penalties for certain drug offenses and authorized alternatives to prison as a sentencing option in specified circumstances. In addition, Idaho and Florida expanded the eligibility criteria for drug courts in order to expand their impact.

• Death penalty - Illinois abolished the death penalty, becoming the sixteenth state to eliminate the sentencing option;

• Probation revocation reforms - North Carolina restricted the use of prison as a sentencing option for certain persons who violate the conditions of probation; and..

• Juvenile offender sentencing reforms – Georgia authorized sentence modifications for certain juvenile defendants with felony offenses by allowing judges to depart from the statutory range when considering the youth’s background.

NOTE: California is not exactly high on the list of the states who’ve done well with reform.

IN COLBERT V. THE SUPREME COURT OVER CITIZENS UNITED, THE COMEDIAN MAY BE WINNING

Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick has this essay on the topic, and you must read it. Immediately. Really.

Here’s a clip:

When President Obama criticized Citizens United two years ago in his State of the Union address, at least three justices came back at him with pitchforks and shovels. In the end, most court watchers scored it a draw. But when a comedian with a huge national platform started ridiculing the court last summer, the stakes changed completely. This is no pointy-headed deconstruction unspooling on the legal blogs. Colbert has spent the past few months making every part of Justice Anthony Kennedy’s majority opinion in Citizen United look utterly ridiculous. And the court, which has no access to cameras (by its own choosing), no press arm, and no discernible comedic powers, has had to stand by and take it on the chin.

It all started when Colbert announced that, as permitted by Citizens United, he planned to form a super PAC (“Making a better tomorrow, tomorrow”). As he explained to his viewers, his hope was that “Colbert Nation could have a voice, in the form of my voice, shouted through a megaphone made of cash … the American dream. And that dream is simple. That anyone, no matter who they are, if they are determined, if they are willing to work hard enough, someday they could grow up to create a legal entity which could then receive unlimited corporate funds, which could be used to influence our elections.”

Then last June, like a winking, eyebrow-wagging Mr. Smith, Colbert went to Washington and testified before the FEC, which granted him permission to launch his super PAC (over the objections of his parent company Viacom) and accept unlimited contributions from his fans so he might sway elections. (He tweeted before his FEC appearance that PAC stands for “Plastic And/Or Cash.”) In recent weeks, Colbert has run several truly insane attack ads (including one accusing Mitt Romney of being a serial killer). Then, with perfect comedic pitch, Colbert handed off control of his super PAC to Jon Stewart (lampooning the FEC rules about coordination between “independent PACS” and candidates with a one-page legal document and a Vulcan mind meld). Colbert then managed to throw his support to non-candidate Herman Cain in the South Carolina primary, placing higher on the ballot than Rick Perry, Jon Huntsman, and Michele Bachmann….

Read the rest.

There isn’t a song she sang, that she didn’t own.

But it was when she recorded this one in 1960, that she became immortal.