Kevin Scanlon

Ray Bradbury, explaining that Fahrenheit 451 was about letting onself be stupified by glowing screens -- not about book burning.

Ray Bradbury, in a 2009 interview with LA Weekly at his Cheviot Hills home, explained with gusto a fact that shocked millions of fans: Fahrenheit 451 was not a warning about government mind control. The world got that wrong. His warning was, we are doing it to ourselves -- enslaved to glowing screens.

The charming elder of sci-fi began divulging in 2007 that, read deeply, Fahrenheit 451 predicted TV's mastery of humans. Written in 1953, it foresaw "flat" panels on walls that would mesmerize, isolate and produce atrophied attention spans and minds. He was a brilliant futurist, six decades early in seeing digital isolation, smartphone addiction, gaming addiction:

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Beowulf Sheehan

Writer and comedian Dave Hill

We love Dave Hill. Funny man, musician, writer, friend of the gays, and author of the new book, Tasteful Nudes. It's a collection of his hilarious essays about everything from rock 'n' roll to stolen meat to irritable Canadians.

Hill also happens to be a longtime friend of ours, going back to our college years. He's from Cleveland, Ohio, and he's gained much notice in New York and Los Angeles for his quirky TV appearances on MTV, Comedy Central, VH1, and Adult Swim, among others.

On Sunday, June 3, at 7 p.m., he'll be appearing in Echo Park at Stories - Books and Cafe on Sunset Boulevard. We caught up with our friend the other day as he was getting ready for that appearance...

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Jerry Schneiderman

Jerry Schneiderman was not your ordinary real estate developer. For years, he was a rabble rouser who took on the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority after tunneling for the Red Line subway collapsed parts of Hollywood Boulevard.

"You can never stop a government public works project entirely," Schneiderman told me last summer for the L.A. Weekly cover story "Beverly Hills Versus the Westside Subway." But "you can starve it."

Schneiderman died in December 2011, but years earlier, in 1979, his business partner had been murdered by a hit man. Schneiderman was never the same, and was always on the lookout for his own safety. Los Angeles journalist Chip Jacobs has written a gripping book about Schneiderman's story -- The Ascension of Jerry -- which took years to research and write. Jacobs and I recently talked about Schneiderman, who struck up a friendly working relationship with me back in the late 1990s...

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Kearian Giertz / Facebook

Giertz, left, and friend.

The lesson of the day for Kearian Giertz, a Fullerton High School senior who declared his support for same-sex marriage in front of an annual "Mr. Fullerton" campus pageant, is to keep your opinions to yourself, or you'll be publicly chastised.

That's what happened after he was promptly swept away and kicked out of the event by assistant principal Joe Abell.

Now the L.A.-based ACLU of Southern California is backing the kid:

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Vice Books

Sasha Grey does hot, banging art.

Update: The folks at Vice Books tell us they weren't going to officially announce the release until tomorrow (although the book's already listed at Amazon), so here's a minor look into the future.

What is it about L.A. porn star Sasha Grey? The innocent face and va-va-voom body we get. But why is the world so fascinated with her? Why does she get work in mainstream Hollywood (The Girlfriend Experience, Entourage)?

Grey is turning into the James Franco of porn. She's impossibly omnipresent.

And now, an artsy photo book? Really?

Wow. What next, a poetry class at Columbia?

You know you're an awesome porn star when people tell you to put your clothes on and pose for a still camera. And so ...

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The City Council did its best Congress imitation today, hauling up officials and former officials from the L.A. Department of Water and Power. Council members grilled them -- and did some grandstanding -- on charges that the public utility misled council members about $73.5 million in surplus DWP refused to hand over to the city's general fund in April.

The DWP folks gave it right back, however, and the result was some decent political theater.

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History professor and author Howard Zinn, well known for his populist A People's History of the United States, died in Santa Monica Wednesday at the age of 87,

Daughter Myla Kabat-Zinn said he suffered a heart attack. His most-famous tome dissected American heroes, accused Christopher Columbus of propagating genocide and slavery, and celebrated workers, leftists and iconoclasts. Published in 1980, it became a million-seller in 2003. Matt Damon, Benn Affleck and Oliver Stone were said to be fans of the book.

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Bad news for Buddhists and others seeking enlightenment: the Bodhi Tree Bookstore is closing. Owners Phil Thompson and Stan Madson informed their staff last Wednesday that the cozy Melrose Avenue shop, a nationally renowned and much beloved spiritual center, will be shutting its doors in a year's time.

After some eight months of discussion, Thompson and Madson decided to sell the property to a local business owner who leases space to several other nearby retailers. The Bodhi Tree opened in 1970. Land values in the area have risen dramatically since then. Meanwhile, the business of selling print books has been on a steady decline. For years, real estate agents had been circling the Bodhi Tree like vultures. In the end, selling the property became a much more profitable option than continuing to sell books.

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