GIGA GRANADA HILLS

The things I miss by not having cable. To wit, Animal Planet's Pit Boss: "Shorty, aptly named, and his three cohorts happen to be little people with the biggest hearts for these adorable dogs, who often are bigger than they are... Pit Boss follows the everyday drama and joy of these buddies and business partners as they hit the streets of Los Angeles in their fight to overcome stereotypes — for themselves and the pit bulls they save." The interesting thing about this program — aside from the obvious question of how many screenwriter suicides can be directly attributed to the green-lighting of unscripted shows just like this one — is that it features Granada Hills' own Eileen Smulson of Operation Blankets of Love, doing what she does best -- providing comfort to shelter animals. American entertainment has come a long way since the days of circus sideshows. It's thoroughly tickling that we can now turn the channel to watch little people performing generous...

"Are you a spicy woman?" I am, but sometimes, a girl's just not in the mood for sausage. So Bill swaps out the hot link on my combo for the BBQ meatball sandwich, flanked by a spicy chicken taco, a pulled pork taco, and a little cup of baked beans, which Bill Kelley, a/k/a Smokin' Willie, has strongly advised me to try. "It's my mom's recipe for barbeque baked beans, and so is the classic barbeque sauce," he says. "It's the recipe she's been making since 1969." When I take a bite of the pulled pork, I'm instantly envious; my mom never made anything that tasted like this. Kelley, owner of Smokin' Willie's BBQ Truck, used to work for Warner Brothers Records for 26 years until AOL bought Time Warner and he lost his job "the American way," to outsourcing. After a stint in another doomed gig — the mortgage business, Kelley says, "I saw this crisis coming and said I was never going to work for a big corpora...

Hows Market is still open and will remain so for the foreseeable future, but the chain, which includes a Granada Hills location, has been put up for sale. "We're getting by with less help," said Eric Oerum, manager of the Granada Hills Hows, which has had to let some employees go. Otherwise, it will be business as usual at the store. "Hopefully, we'll be able to keep the stores open," said an employee at the corporate office, who declined to give his name, and said he could not provide any information about any prospective buyer at this time. Photo lifted from runchadrun on flickr

Enjoy this scene from Jurassic Park 2, filmed in a Granada Hills backyard. If anyone knows the address, Mitchell would like to know. Thanks for the tip, Mitchell!

On Saturday, October 2, drop by Fire Station 87 for the North Valley Disaster Preparedness Fair from 11-3pm. City, county and state agencies will be there distributing safety information available, free safety items, child fingerprinting, and a drawing for an emergency response kit. Also, take a ride on the earthquake truck! Fire Station 87 is located on Balboa just south of Devonshire.

Here's another reason why I don't cover crime : our paper of record is doing a better job than I ever possibly could. The L.A. Times this morning unveiled a new database that maps and analyzes crime data from all over L.A. In neighborhood crime rankings, of 206 Los Angeles neighborhoods, Granada Hills comes in at 151. That's not too shabby. Disturbingly, the database reports a recent uptick in violent crime in our neighboring Northridge . However, Greg Ridgeway, director of Rand Corp.'s Center on Quality Policing, is quoted in the Times' story cautioning that "a spike in the number of reported crimes might be the result of an increased police presence in an area, or it could be a sign of improved cooperation between police and residents who were once distrustful or reluctant to share information with officers." See the L.A. Times crime database here .