Poor Ike Turner spent a night in jail after he was arrested on a 1989 narcotics warrant that turned out to be invalid.

The 75-year-old musician and ex-husband of Tina Turner was spotted on Interstate 405 in the San Fernando Valley about 11:45 p.m. Tuesday night. Police officers saw his 2002 silver Mercedes-Benz S-50 doing more than 80 mph and straddling lanes, Officer April Harding said Thursday. The car was stopped after it left the freeway and officers ran a check for warrants, which is routine, Harding said.

They found he had an old felony narcotics warrant and Turner was arrested and booked into a downtown jail, Harding said.

“He had court yesterday and I guess that they deemed it was an old warrant that was never removed from the system,” Harding said. [full story]

That may be the “news” story, and it sucks that this happened, but why do I find this story from TMZ so amusing? Maybe because the headline is I Froze My Ass Off with a Banana & a Cookie.

I also like the choice closing line: Ike left in his jail issue, but plans to return soon to retrieve his $5000 suit.

This ain’t quite Rashomon, but it is a bit of a mystery:

So I set out for my usual Thursday ride up Commonwealth Canyon, and I run into a few roadblocks. What’s interesting is not that Griffith Park is closed until further notice due to last week’s fires, but that city workers are giving out three separate stories as to how long we’ll have to wait to get in again:

Dude 1: Commonwealth Cyn, entrance, pickup truck at the top behind an “Area Closed” sign:

“Sorry, sir, it’s closed for at least the rest of the week.” “How come?” “I dunno, there’s still a lotta smoke up in there.” “Hunh. I was up there last week and it was cool.” He shrugs. I move on and try another entrance …
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On Wednesday, sightings of a man weilding a crossbow shut down part of Westwood Village, while a suspected arsonist armed with a samurai sword was shot by police in Lake View Terrace.

The Westwood incident began shortly before 2pm after UCLA police were alerted about a person “holding an object resembling a rifle,” according to the Daily Bruin:

Police helicopters circled the area for several hours, and officers patrolled the streets with rifles and handguns drawn. Several officers were also seen entering an apartment at 547 Landfair Ave. wearing protective gear.

The surround area was blocked off until about 3:20pm, after officers concluded that the sighted weapon was actually a crossbow. According to the report, nobody was taken into custody.

On Tuesday in Lake View Terrace, police responded to a call about a man in army fatigues who had entered the All Nations Church and struck a man playing drums. The drummer shielded himself with his arm, slicing it, and was later treated and release from a local hospital. The swordsman was able to evade police by fleeing into a storm drain, until he was spotted on Wednesday near the 210 Freeway, where the police shot him.

The suspect also apparently set fire to two one-story bungalows on the church’s property, Roy Myers of the Los Angeles Fire Department said. Firefighters had the flames under control within 30 minutes, he said.

More at KNX 1070.com.

I’ve been sitting on a story for a couple of days about how the news site Pasadena Now was planning on outsourcing two local reporting positions to India:

James Macpherson, editor and publisher of the Pasadena Now website, hired two reporters last weekend to cover the Pasadena City Council. One lives in Mumbai and will be paid $12,000 a year. The other will work in Bangalore for $7,200.
…
So, on the Indian version of Craigslist, he posted an ad that said in part, “We do not believe that geographic distance between California and India will present unsurmountable problems, and that working together with you will result in your development of a keen working knowledge of this city’s affairs.”

However, when I Googled it just now so I could finally write about, I discovered that KCAL reported this morning that the plan is on hold. They’ve been so busy dealing with media response to the story that they haven’t been able to train the correspondents. Sounds like they’re still planning on moving ahead once the storm settles, though.

Chris Reed from Bigelow Aerospace sends in this pic (click the above for much larger full version) of the fire on Catalina island, taken from space. He writes:

“We’ve put on our Web site a new image beamed down from Genesis I that shows a smoke plume emanating from the island of Santa Catalina off of the Southern California coast on May 11. More than 4,000 acres burned in the fire that forced the island’s evacuation and threatened the famed tourist town of Avalon.”

Here’s the bigger version. [Thanks Xeni!]

Houses there on the left, charred & ashy burnt hillside there on the right.

I just got this email:

The city of Los Angeles Department of Animal Services warned this morning that the blaze would have a “a major impact on wildlife in the area.”

“It is important for L.A. City residents to understand that many wild animals will be displaced by the fire and may turn up in areas … where wildlife has never been seen before,” a department statement said. “These animals will be looking for water and may be seen drinking from garden ponds, pools and other water reservoirs.”

Displaced animals that are uninjured and do not appear to have been orphaned should be left alone, but all injured, sick and orphaned animals should be reported to L.A. Animal Services at (888) 452-7381, the statement said.

I’ve got a full week going here, so I’m asking for your help.

I’ve seen the petition on Paris Hilton’s MySpace page to get Governor Schwarzenneger to pardon her, but clearly this is not what the Governor’s office is about, nor is a pardon indicated in this particular instance.

Here’s my idea for a much more appropriate plea to Sacramento: a petition to get Arnold to EXECUTE Paris.

What do you say, Eggheads? Can we get a website happening with a petition?

(I can’t be the only person who wants this!)

Mayor Villaraigosa is on the phone with the folks live at KTLA right now and just said the fire is now at 300 acres, no homes have been destroyed yet, but some structures have been damaged. LAFD is on it and doing everything they can and he urged people to cooperate with the LAPD and LAPD and any requests they might have. KTLA folks are noting that it’s grown in the last hour.

1300 homes with out power, Silver Lake reservoir is the main source of water for fire fighting efforts at this point. It’s going to be a long night – everyone keeps saying that. The Mayor is at Marshal High right now, only about 30 evacuees there right now. Says about 300 people have been evacuated so far but most went to hotels or friends places rather than shelter.

I shot this from Moreno Heights about an hour ago: this clip shows massive flames flaring up on the brush-choked ridges of Griffith Park just northwest of the corner of Los Feliz Boulevard and Riverside Drive.

Flame heights looked to be 60 to 100 feet at times, and sprawled across half the ridge. Fire crews beat back the fire, which looks a lot less severe now as I post this.

L.A. County Fire Department helicopters swoop in low and hover barely 6 feet off the surface of Silver Lake. Powerful pumps siphon water into their belly tanks and they lumber back to the fire, which flared up dangerously just after nightfall.

The first shot in this clip (silent) shows the speed with which these choppers worked, while the second gives you some idea how hard the engines are working to maintain height as they take on tons of water. They’re still dumping water as I post this.

KCAL 9 News reports that the following areas are being evacuated:

• Homes from Dundee to North Commonwealth Avenue
• North Vermont Avenue to Cromwell

(more here)

Evacuees are being told to go to John Marshall High School to regroup with family and neighbors.

Address: 3939 Tracy Street, Los Angeles, CA 90027 (map)

Tom LaBonge also appeared on camera for a moment, and reported that Dante’s View, “the historic garden” in Griffith Park, has been destroyed.

UPDATE: According to KCAL 9, even if you have somewhere else to go during the evacuation, you are still encouraged to check in at John Marshall High School to be accounted for.

I’m talking to Xeni (who is expecting to lose power at any moment) and the LAPD is enforcing mandatory evacuations of the neighborhood surrounding 2600 Commonwealth (near dundee). The LA Times Breaking News blog seems to confirm this. She just told me that Los Feliz is being shut down now as well and people are all over the streets. I’m near Fletcher and Glendale and the air is so thick with smoke it smells like the fire is right next door, which I guess it kind of is. Caryn just called and at the top of the hill near Michaeltorena and Sunset the streets are full of people just staring and watching the fire. Xeni says she can hear bullhorns with LAPD telling people to get out now, sounds like about 4-5 blocks from her house. She just took some video and will be posting momentarily and has added updates and photos to this post on BoingBoing. Evacuating people to Marshal High – More shortly.

UPDATE 9:10PM: Word is the police are going door to door forcing evacuations, but also that wildlife (deer and coyotes noted) are fleeing the park and into the streets of Los Feliz. Getting hard to breath in parts of Los Feliz and Silver Lake, smoke and ash burning eyes and thoats.

UPDATE 9:17PM: LAFD spokesperson on KTLA just said only 20% contained, LA Times blog sayis no containment in sight. Jenny sends in this photo:

And Xeni sends in this cameraphone video. View of Griffith Park fire from Los Feliz Boulevard near Commonwealth, shot on camera phone at 755pm on May 8, 2007, by M.D.

KTLA seems to have best live local coverage right now on TV. Lots of pics from LA folks using the “mbgriffithparkfire0508″ tag on flickr.

After seeing Mack’s initial “there’s a brush fire” post and his follow up “ok, maybe it’s a bit bigger” post I decided to take off from downtown and see what I could see since this is less than a mile from my house. I took a few shots on the drive home of smoke coming up out of the hills, unfortunately the internet was down at my house so I wasn’t able to post them so I sent them right to my flickr account and asked Mack to point you all there. I rode my bike over just north of Griffith Park Blvd near the bike path on the LA River to what I thought was a good spot to watch it everything go down. Caryn was nice enough to mention that I was live blogging it. Here’s the entire set of camera phone photos that I took. I also made a few posts to twitter as things were happening. There’s just a little shy of 50 of them and you can see a lot of progressions, though thanks to lack of a zoom you can’t see the flames that I could see in person. My clothes seem totally like smoke and it was pretty hard to breath there for a little while. You can see from the pics that the only other folks standing around there were professional photographers with way more reason to be there than I had with my crappy 1MB phone cam. The word they were getting from who ever was on the other end of their cell phones was that the fire was started by a homeless guy who fell asleep smoking and was burned very badly. When I left it was still burning (and I can hear sirens from my Silver Lake home still) but it was getting dark and my phone was dying. More news as it comes in – also check out Xeni’s post on BoingBoing for tons of updates. Last thing I heard it was still moving, headed down towards Griffith Park Blvd and that many parts of Los Feliz are powerless right now.

Here’s the link to my own photos of this fire, taken from my front steps.

One of my friends was just on the news – reporters are camped out in front of his house and waiting for the news that they’ll have to evacuate.