On the Down Loh - Back in the salad days of the now-defunct Buzz magazine, I was a big fan of Sandra Tsing Loh's monthly column on The Valley. Her riffs on Trader Joe's and the "lesser" Los Angeles were guaranteed to amuse. More recently, half-German, half-Chinese CalTech grad has been writing books like A Year in Provence Van Nuys and offering commentary on Marketplace and the Santa Monica NPR station, KCRW.

Last week, KCRW fired Loh for a "Janet Jackson performance piece" incident: she used the word "fuck" in her prerecorded commentary and the engineer forgot to bleep it before running it on the air. Now, she's being lumped in with Howard Stern and Bubba the Love Sponge. Not such a bad place to be in terms of getting nationwide exposure for your art. Sandra was on HBO, interviewed by Salon and now tells the LA Times that she won't return to KCRW even though they've offered to reinstate her job. As Loh once said, "Public radio saved my career . . . it doesn't pay great, but the exposure is important." Seems like that statement is more true now than ever.