Your Daily '80s: Earthquake!

When the Not-Quite Big One hit Los Angeles in October 1987, the eye that never blinks was there.

Here's the late news coverage from KNBC, Channel 4. And you can let go of your chair . . . it's not like this is in Sensurround or anything.

The sun rises in the east? Every day?

Who knew?

Really, who'd have thought that a 15-year-old girl would ever overdose and die at a humongous rave at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum? I think what we need is a blue-ribbon panel to study what may have gone wrong here, and why an underage girl would even want to go to such a thing, much less take illicit narcotics.

One is grateful the stadium's operator has declared a moratorium on raves of 185,000 people until we figure out what happens at such events, particularly how additional scores of youth ended up injured.

READ THE SHOCKING story of this totally unforeseen tragedy in this Associated Press dispatch:

Barry Sanders, president of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum Commission, said he is ordering the venue's managers not to book any raves until the full commission takes up the issue at its July 16 meeting. At that time, he said he'll recommend that the full commission continue the moratorium.

The uproar over last weekend's 14th annual Electric Daisy Carnival has grown by the day as new details emerge about the mayhem and drug abuse that filled the Coliseum during the event, which featured carnival rides, light shows and appearances by techno star Moby and Will.I.Am of the Black Eyed Peas.

Videos of the event show a generally peaceful crowd dancing to the music, but as evening falls the Coliseum's football field becomes tightly packed with revelers. At one point, as people leap over a fence to move from the seating area to the field, one of the performers launches into an expletive-filled tirade from the stage, demanding that the crowd violently push them back.

NOW, I THINK a prime focus of any investigative panel should be on whether any particular expletives were the triggers for the crowd violently setting upon fence-jumpers.

Also, it might be worth exploring whether everyone might have better gotten along (and avoided "hard" drugs, too) if they had all just been issued medical marijuana to mellow them out. Another question: "magic" brownies, reefers or free disposable pipes?

Truly, unforeseen tragedies like this are the worst.

Jesus is straight outta Compton

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I turned on the network news tonight and found Jesus.

All my churchy friends will think this odd, but it's true nevertheless. It seems Christ hit a rough patch for a while and got messed up with blow, but he's clean now and still hanging in there in Compton, that hardest scrabble of Los Angeles suburbs.

HE'S COACHING Little League baseball in the 'hood, Jesus is. Resurrected an abandoned ball field, too, so the kids would have a place to play.

And, by extension, Christ is the father a bunch of these Little Leaguers never had. He knows the value of a good stepfather.

What up? Jesus is. Jesus is straight outta Compton . . . living in his car -- never was much on real estate, don't cha know? -- and watching the Dodgers on a little bitty TV. Watch more here.

Quo vadis, Domine?

This is a joke. Then again, this is Wednesday.

The spoof below comes from the best thing since The Onion -- a website called Not the Los Angeles Times. And it is just that, a joke.

Actually, there still are a few employees at the Los Angeles Times, and at many other American newspapers.

BUT IT'S STILL only halfway through the week. Monday, this might not be funny anymore . . . so, for those reading this next Tuesday, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to offend.

With that said, however. . . .

For the 23rd time in 18 months, the Los Angeles Times is losing its top editor. Raul Jones, a former newsroom janitor who rose through the ranks as layoffs shrank the number of real journalists, was fired yesterday after refusing to lay off the paper's last employee – himself.

In a blistering farewell e-mail sent to himself, Jones defended his stance against further cuts. "I had to draw the line," he wrote. "It's one thing to sack everybody else, but I can't countenance my own dismissal. Who's going to cover city and state government, the war in Iraq and Britney Spears? The quality of the paper will suffer."

But Tribune Co. spokesman Randy Michaels said the paper would do just fine, thanks to sophisticated new software that rewrites wire-service stories in the style of former Times reporters.

"We analyzed past articles and found that 38% of all stories began with the writer mentioning the time of day," Michaels said. [Click here for recent examples.] "Our new software will duplicate that formula."

As Michaels spoke, cleaning crews swept through the Times' newsroom, removing cobwebs and tearing down Xeroxed portraits of former publisher Mark Willes, whose smiling face had been plastered all over the building by reporters nostalgic for the "good old days."

Removing editor Jones wasn't easy. Because he was the paper's last employee and wouldn't dismiss himself, Tribune executives had to find a replacement editor from Chicago who was willing to can Jones and then promptly resign.

COME TO THINK OF IT, none of this is very funny at all. That's because, truly, what we see as a knee slapper today is what corporate media bean counters see as reality . . . tomorrow.