toledano/lastory/13″/mark2nd
Party Animal
Strolling into a recent Hollywood party wearing one glove and with an exotic animal in tow was… no, not Michael Jackson.
It was “Wild Kingdom” host Jim Fowler, who showed up with a live redtail hawk at the Eighth Annual Environmental Media Awards Festival at Will Rogers State Park in Pacific Palisades.
The glove was for protection, not show. The bird was for attention. “You can’t reach people with a stuffed bird,” said Fowler, who was there to promote environmentalism.
Fowler added that plenty of stuffed humans are trying reach people during this election season. “We’ve got plenty of those,” he said. “You call them politicians.”
Feuding Mikes
The latest newsletter put out by New Coliseum Partners features a front-page article praising the group’s proposal for a rebuilt Coliseum to lure an NFL team to L.A.
The author of that article is Walt Disney Co. Chairman Michael Eisner, who first publicly supported the project earlier this year. Eisner likens the rebuilding of the Coliseum to Disney’s restoration and refurbishing of the New Amsterdam Theater in New York and Edison Field in Anaheim.
The newsletter, which is mailed to prominent business leaders and media outlets around town, attempts to drum up support for the New Coliseum proposal in advance of a crucial Oct. 27 presentation to NFL owners.
What the newsletter doesn’t mention is that Eisner’s estranged former partner at Disney, Michael Ovitz, is preparing to present a competing proposal for a football stadium in Carson at that same Oct. 27 meeting.
Foreign Language
Interpreters are hardly a curiosity in multilingual Los Angeles. But Venice-based WorkTalk has an unusual spin on the practice, interpreting English into English.
The company takes letters and reports from the financial sector and turns them into “plain English.”
“They are so used to their own jargon that they begin to think and write in jargon,” says Elizabeth Danziger, president of WorkTalk. “They don’t realize that no one understands what they are talking about.”
Accountants are especially guilty of jargon-speak. Trying to write a regular letter that doesn’t include crunched numbers puts them at a complete loss, Danziger says.
New Lunch Plans
The Miracle Mile’s lunch choices will get a little slimmer later this year, when the Al Amir Lebanese Restaurant and other ground-floor food purveyors in the Wilshire Courtyard move out.
Al Amir’s departure means at least one local business person will have to find a new lunch haunt when it closes at the end of November.
Developer Jerry Snyder, who built Wilshire Coutyard and whose office is across the street, eats there at least a couple of times a week.
“We go there a lot because it’s a great place to bring guests you walk across the street. Getting in the car’s a pain in the neck,” he said.
So what will he do?
“We’ll get in the car and go to Spago,” he says, pointing out that he’s building parking for Spago as part of his Beverly Hills office-grocery development project.
