Marvelous Night for Superheroes of L.A. Business

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When Spider-Man and a spaceman make the scene, you know you’re at a high-flying soiree.


Sure enough, there was plenty of whiz-bang last week at the California Science Center’s eighth annual Discovery Ball. Spider-Man creator Stan Lee and former astronaut Buzz Aldrin were the stars of the black-tie gala, which drew a virtual who’s who of the Los Angeles business community and opened the museum’s “Marvel Super Heroes Science Exhibition.”


Aldrin donated a moon rock collected during the Apollo 11 mission to the center. Officials from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration had presented it to him a day earlier.


Avi Arad, chairman and chief executive of Marvel Studios, rubbed elbows with the chairman of the center’s board of trustees, former California governor George Deukmejian. Tony Buzzelli, regional manager partner at Deloitte, and Paula Madison, president and general manager of KNBC Channel 4), chaired the event with help from Bill Barrett, of Fiduciary Trust International of California, and philanthropist Margo Leonetti O’Connell. Partygoers included Jeff Johnson, publisher of the L.A. Times, Bill Chadwick, president of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum Commission, Dennis Tito, founder of Wilshire Associates, and Andrew Barth, president of Capital Guardian Trust Co.




Forget the black ties. Flak jackets were in order last week at the Universal Amphitheatre as liberal pundit Al Franken and conservative commentator Ann Coulter took the stage. At home in front of a mostly liberal audience attending the University of Judaism’s lecture series, Franken let rip several barbs against Coulter and her characterization of the progress being made in Iraq. Coulter said Franken was singing the constant refrain of Democrats, whom she characterized as cowards and “the Neville Chamberlains of their day.”


Franken, when asked by moderator and University of Judaism president Robert Wexler, said he was thinking about running for Senate in his home state of Minnesota.


Coulter retorted: “The only campaign theme that you have is that “Ann Coulter is a lying w,,!”




Several investment bankers at Houlihan Lokey Howard & Zukin have bought a vineyard in Oregon’s Willamette Valley and are growing grapes and making wine.


Scott Adelson and John Mavredakis, senior managing directors at Houlihan, have teamed up with Michael Kramer, a former Houlihan colleague, to buy Antica Terra, a 28-acre vineyard with a limited production of Pinot Noirs. Maggie Harrison, Antica Terra’s head winemaker, said the bankers are “trying very hard not to drink all of the profits themselves.”



*Staff reporter Kate Berry can be reached at (323) 549-5225, ext. 228, or at

[email protected]

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