Los Angeles Neighborhoods' Waze Problem

Given my frustrating hour-long commute from Glendale to Century City, I rely on the Waze app to at least attempt to cut my drive time.

Like many of you, I have a love/hate relationship with Waze. I'm frustrated by the left turns on to busy intersections without a light (when Waze is clearly trying to kill me), and often I'll throw in my own shortcut and see that helps cut Waze's estimated arrival time–which makes me wonder, why didn't Waze suggest that?

Most of the time, Waze throws me on the 10 freeway, which also feels like it defeats the purpose–I never, never used the freeway to commute before Waze came along.

But Waze also sometimes takes me over the hill through residential streets. That's the subject of Joe Flint's recent piece in the Wall Street Journal: how L.A. residents, fed up with Waze-induced traffic jams down their streets, are fighting back:

The music can start blaring at the crack of dawn. That is often followed by loud cellphone conversation, and before too long Melissa Menard, clad in a bathrobe and holding a cup of coffee, confronts the offenders: the caravan of morning commuters driving by her house.

“Everybody loves Beyoncé, but not at 7 a.m.,” she said.

Ms. Menard’s suburban Los Angeles street of ranch houses, Cody Road, has turned into a thoroughfare with enough gridlock to make Times Square at rush hour feel tranquil. On early mornings when headlights are still needed, it resembles one long funeral procession.

The culprit: Waze, the popular app owned by Alphabet Inc. ’s Google that provides alternate routes to busy boulevards and packed freeways. Launched in 2007, Waze has 50 million users world-wide and about two million in Los Angeles, its biggest U.S. market.

Waze sometimes sends drivers through little-used side streets such as Cody Road. The mile-long hilly street in the Sherman Oaks neighborhood runs parallel to the 405 freeway and leads to Mulholland Drive, through which commuters can make their way from the San Fernando Valley to Beverly Hills, Hollywood and West Los Angeles.

It isn’t the only short cut. In L.A.’s ritzy Hancock Park neighborhood, resident Marnie Owens blames Waze for traffic’s doubling on her street.

Waze said it isn’t the problem.

I'm pretty sure I've driven through Cody Road thanks to Waze. I've also seen neighborhoods and parts of town thanks to Waze that I might have otherwise never seen. I'm not sure what the answer is, but let's face it, I'm not sure you could suddenly ban motorists from driving down public streets.

Honey, the LAT Shrunk the Comics -- I Mean, REALLY Shrunk the Comics

Turns out "Cathy" is even more annoying when shrunk down another 15%.

The Los Angeles Times is trying the patience of comics readers, some of whom are still smarting over the paper's last strip switcheroo (which led to the loss of the popular "Sally Forth"). Now, the paper's new size has made it even tougher to read the comics -- which have been dramatically shrunk down -- all together.

The Los Angeles Times' comments blog noted that the shrunken comics have elicited more complaints than just about anything else (although the paper has yet to address the issue). A few samplings:

Maureen wrote: Regarding your shrunken comics: Presumably you want to retain your subscribers, and I would guess that a lot of them are getting a little older and having a little more trouble focusing on the small print. Perhaps you should provide us with magnifying glasses?

C.J. wrote: I applaud your reducing the physical dimensions of the paper: the smaller page makes it easier to read at the breakfast table. But the commensurate reduction in the dimensions of the comic-strip panels -- already reduced more than they are meant to be in reproduction -- is verging on the absurd. Any smaller and I'll be forced to use the magnifying glass that came with my 2-volume OED.

People are particularly peeved that with the shrunken comics, the paper has plenty of room to run that huge house ad smack in the middle of the strips.

What's up with that house ad? It never changes -- promoting the "Hero Complex" blog every day last week. Plus, it's strangely just dropped right in the middle of the comics, as opposed to the bottom. AND, most puzzling, it's a missed opportunity to either enlarge some comics, or even add a few that were dropped during the last comics downsize.

I wonder if "Doonesbury" creator Garry Trudeau has seen what his strip now looks like in the Times. Trudeau used to ask that his strip appear larger that most in newspapers -- and most, including the LAT, once upon a time obliged. But the LAT shrunk "Doonesbury" down during its last comics revamp -- and now that it has been made even smaller, the strip is nearly impossible to read.

The paper has addressed the other reader complaints about the crossword puzzle -- which was relocated to the center of a page, preventing readers from folding the paper in half in order to do the puzzle. Oh, they heard about that one! (The crossword puzzle complaint earned a post on the LAT's Readers Representative blog.)

News about the Los Angeles Times' recent production changes had been focused on the paper's early press time (thanks to its new deal to publish the Wall Street Journal on LAT presses) and the new "LATExtra" section created to cobble together late breaking stories. (So far, LATExtra has read more like the return of the California/Local section.)

But as part of the decision to also shave an inch from the paper's width (moving from 12 inches to 11 inches wide), the LAT has also trimmed down some of its features -- hence the tough-to-read comics.

Screechgate: Strange Coincidence in L.A. Times and Wall Street Journal Items

Great Screech minds think alike? Or is there something else going on here? My colleague Jon Weisman first noticed the strange similarity between these two blog posts from very different sources: The L.A. Times and the Wall Street Journal. (Jon says its a coincidence that he saw both of these -- I'll pretend he doesn't have a Google News alert for anything tagged "Dustin Diamond.")

Here's the L.A. Times' "Dish Rag" item from Elizabeth Snead:



and here's the Wall Street Journal "Speakeasy" item from Michelle Kung:



And here's what got Jon interested. Read the two posts back-to-back. They're virtually identical, save a few words here and there. The structure, the quotes, the order of names -- all the same.

First, the L.A. Times item:

Have you seen the new People magazine cover with the Saved by the Bell reunion of the show's alum, Lark Voorhies, Mario Lopez, Tiffani Thiessen, Mark-Paul Gosselaar and Elizabeth Berkley?

They got together for the first time since the final episode in 1994.

But hey, where’s Screech?

Dustin Diamond, who played resident nerd Samuel “Screech” Powers, was not invited, because he no longer speaks to the rest of the cast, thanks to his issues involving unpaid taxes, a raunchy sex tape, and fears over his new tell-all book entitled “Behind the Bell.”

Gosselaar explained to Newsweek: “What is he going to say? We were banging groupies at 14? I can’t wait to read his book, because I don’t have a memory of a lot of the shows. Maybe it was because I was doing lines off of the audience members’ asses.

"I’m sure he’s going to write something crazy like that… I’m not really afraid of what he has to say. There are not too many skeletons in my closet.”

Now, the WSJ:

Chances are, you’ve already seen this week’s issue of People magazine, which features a photo-heavy 20-year “Saved by the Bell” reunion and brought together Lark Voorhies, Mario Lopez, Tiffani Thiessen, Mark-Paul Gosselaar and Elizabeth Berkley for the first time since the final episode of the franchise wrapped in 1994.

But co-star Dustin Diamond, who played resident nerd Samuel “Screech” Powers, was reportedly not invited, because he no longer speaks to the rest of the cast, thanks to his issues involving unpaid taxes, a raunchy sex tape, various reality show appearances, and more significantly, his upcoming tell-all book entitled “Behind the Bell,” which was recently resold to Transit Publishing, following “a mutual decision not to publish” with Gotham, for publication on September 29.

As Gosselaar, who currently stars on TNT’s “Raising the Bar” recently explained to Newsweek: “What is he going to say? We were banging groupies at 14? I can’t wait to read his book, because I don’t have a memory of a lot of the shows. Maybe it was because I was doing lines off of the audience members’ asses. I’m sure he’s going to write something crazy like that… I’m not really afraid of what he has to say. There are not too many skeletons in my closet.”

Strange, no? Both items were posted on August 4. But because the LAT item doesn't have a time stamp, it's unclear who posted first.