The Marilyn papers

The L.A. Times website has a hit on its hands. Last Friday's story about revealing tapes Marilyn Monroe supposedly made for her psychiatrist in the weeks before she died in 1962 has run up some big numbers all weekend and into this week. The Column One by Calendar writer Robert W. Welkos details a transcript made available by a former L.A. County deputy DA who is the only source who can vouch for the tapes. He says the transcripts prove Monroe didn't intend to kill herself; although that's an open question, if real the tapes certainly add to the already-huge body of Monroe lore. In the transcript, Monroe free associates about Freud, the Kennedys and the pleasure she gets from enemas. She thanks her shrink for helping her discover orgasms, says that actress Joan Crawford became 'spiteful' after Monroe spurned a repeat of their one-night sexual fling, and while examining her 36-year-old figure in a mirror Monroe observes that her breasts have begun to sag but calls her ass 'the best there is.' The Times website warns readers that the transcript 'contains explicit language and frank descriptions of sexual and bodily functions.' The deputy DA, John W. Miner, argues that Monroe was killed by a lethal mix of drugs administered by enema. (Via L.A. Observed)

Los Angeles is a book

September's Vanity Fair has six images from photographer Tim Street-Porter's new entry on the list of books that are titled simply Los Angeles. I don't know about the book, but the images in VF are gorgeous—of the Bradbury Building interior, the old Pan-Pacific Auditorium (burnt down 1989), the streamline Coca-Cola bottling plant downtown and the Herman Sachs ceiling fresco over the auto entrance at Bullock's Wilshire. Rizzoli is charging $195 for the limited edition, which comes with a foreword by Diane Keaton. Vanity Fair also teases to The Tender Bar, the new memoir coming from L.A. Times staff writer J.R. Moehringer, with his picture.

Hidden gems

More about great architecture in the city of angels.

Skyscrapper boom in L.A. downtown

Get ready for another downtown skyscraper boom, the L.A. Times reports. The paper notes that 32 new towers are on the drawing boards, with 20 of them considered skyscrapers (climbing more than 240 feet, or about 20 stories). Some excerpts:
The return to tall towers will be a marked change for downtown Los Angeles, whose last new skyscraper was the 750-foot, 52-story Two California Plaza, completed in 1992. At the south end of downtown, two residential towers already under construction near Staples Center will be joined by a 55-story hotel and condominium complex scheduled to break ground later this year. To the north, near Walt Disney Concert Hall, at least five skyscrapers are slated for construction as part of the Grand Avenue project, including a 40- to 50-story building to be designed by architect Frank Gehry and scheduled for completion in 2009. The changing skyline should begin to take shape in the next three years, when the first five buildings that have already won city approval are completed. They include a 33-story loft building at 9th and Flower streets.
But there are lingering concerns that the downtown residential market could suffer the same fate as office space did in the early 1990s, when far more new buildings went up than were needed. Rents plummeted, buildings sat vacant — and it took a decade for downtown to recover.
The paper notes that even after the building boom is finished, around 2010, the 73-story US Bank Tower -- the Skyscraper Formerly Known as the Library Tower, which was the Skyscraper Formerly Known as the First Interstate World Center, which was the Skyscraper Formerly Known as the Library Tower -- will still be L.A.'s biggest. What will change: The gap between the Transamerica building and the rest of downtown will be filled in.

That area, called South Park and near Staples Center, is the hub of most of the initial construction, where cranes and crews are already turning former parking lots into high-rises.
This district has far more open space than other parts of downtown, so residents and city planners expect it to be more dramatically transformed. It is also where many amenities for downtown residents will open in coming years, including a Ralphs supermarket — set to open late next year — and movie theaters.
To the north, downtown will see the completion of Bunker Hill's decades-long transformation from a slightly seedy residential quarter into a zone full of high-rises.

(Via Franklin Avenue)

Extinct in L.A.

Great L.A. building, extinct.

Note to myself

Very interesting! Website Cinema Treasures .

Crowded in L.A.

Big story on the front page of today's Washington Post tries to make sense of the Census Bureau stat that the urban sprawl around Los Angeles is the most densely populated region in the country. Blaine Harden datelines the piece from Signal Hill, where all of the available land is being built on for homes, adding to the density calculation. The three densest regions in the country are in California (L.A.-Long Beach-Orange County, then San Francisco-Oakland and San Jose), while New York City-Newark ranks fourth measured by the number of people per square mile.

Bush indictment rumor

Many are saying it's a Technorati bombing hoax, but there's a rumor going around the blogosphere that President Bush is going to be indicted in the Valerie Plume case. Here's what's known for sure, right now “bush indictment” is the number one search on Technorati. The claim that Bush and a number of his administration officials had been indicted became #1 search term on the blog indexing service Technorati. (Via Micro Persuasion)