I'd deliberately stopped watching the news late Thursday evening after being overwhelmed by the horror out of Ft. Hood and the daylong tsunami of news in general. Sometimes, you've got to switch brain hemispheres.

I thought comedy and fashion would do that for me. So I skipped over to ''Project Runway,'' now with extra added fun in the sighting of L.A. landmarks, inasmuch as this season was shot here.

Lo and behold, there on the Lifetime channel was one landmark I didn't expect to see. Beaming bright in the sunshine, on a hillside above the 405 freeway -- yes, that was indeed the Getty Center, But it was also Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, immaculately suited, with a smile measurable in lumens, welcoming the designers to Los Angeles. Then, boom, faster than you could say ''auf wiedersehen,'' he was gone. As cameos go, though, it was probably more air time than he's used to getting on the six o'clock news..

And then, on Comedy Central, a little more than 90 minutes later, William Bratton, who just left the job of L.A. police chief on Saturday, was in the ejector seat on the "Colbert Report." He was a bit more subdued than we're used to seeing him here, maybe because Colbert only really asked about policing New York, a city Bratton characterized as ''a hellhole'' of broken-window offenders like squeegee pests and turnstile jumpers before he was able to work his police chiefly way on the Big Apple. I'm sorry Colbert didn't ask him anything about L.A.; I already miss Bratton's pungent observations about the sundry scofflaw ''knuckleheads'' and ''loony tunes'' of California.

And then I turned off the television and went to bed. I don't think I could have handled the surprise of seeing Sheriff Lee Baca in a guest spot on the SyFy channel.

-- Patt Morrison

The Times editorial board and columnist Tim Rutten both throw their support behind Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's choice of Charlie Beck to lead the Los Angeles Police Department. The board likes Beck's credentials as a reformer, but notes the work still to be done on that front. Rutten echoes that sentiment, and throws in a few more issues that matter to the City Council.

On a less sanguine note, Edward H. Crane, founder and president of the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, argues that neoconservatives transformed the Republican Party into an interventionist, big-government operation with no conservative policy agenda. Them's fighting words! Good thing they came out of Crane's word processor and not, say, Rutten's.

And Jeff Bleich, chairman of the Cal State University Board of Trustees, laments the slow death of the California dream. No, not the one about having a house on the beach. That died a long time ago. He's referring to "the promise of low-cost education that brought so many here, and kept so many here":

Speaking of schools, the editorial board criticizes a bill by Sen. Gloria Romero (D-Los Angeles) that combines some common-sense reforms to the public system with ill-considered ones. And, although it agrees that colleges and universities could do a better job controlling costs, it defends the decision by some to pay top dollar for top-drawer presidents.

-- Jon Healey

Illustration: Ted Rall / For The Times

Comedian Craig Ferguson pretty much got it right Friday night at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, when he told the folks at the Jane Goodall Institute’s global leadership awards:

"It’s nice to be here with people who actually do things rather than just tell jokes on television."

Or who just throw dinners congratulating one another for being so darned swell.

I’ve been to a few dinners at the BW that fit the latter description; the Goodall event fell  into the "do things" category, certainly when it came to two particular honorees. They were sitting at my table, and they’re so young that they drank juice while everyone else drank wine.

Shadrach Meshach lives in Tanzania, where Goodall began her seminal work with chimpanzees. In grade school, he joined up with Goodall’s Roots and Shoots program, grassroots work for animals and the environment. Eventually he began bicycling to Tanzania’s refugee camps for Congolese, persuading hunters to stop killing endangered chimpanzees for meat and showing them how to raise chickens and vegetables instead. He has been breaking other cultural norms, too – he’s an African young man, a teenager, trying to improve women’s lot in life in the belief that that that will improve the world.

He sat quietly on my right, taking in the plush ballroom and the lavish table settings. He has been out of Tanzania twice, once to Orlando, Fla.,last year, for a Jane Goodall young people’s summit, and now here, to Beverly Hills -- not the average visitor’s experience of the United States.

Erica Fernandez came here from Michoacan with her farmworker family when she was a child. Now she’s a full-scholarship sophomore at Stanford; her family still works the fields in Oxnard, she told me, where, as a high school student, she campaigned to keep an LNG facility from being built there. She’s studying matters related to her commitment, environmental justice, and hopes to go to Harvard Law.

Among the grownups honored by Goodall was John Zavalney, already an award-winning LAUSD teacher and science advisor who became a kind of "stand and deliver" hands-on instructor, teaching biology, ecology and environmental science at Foshay Learning Center.

Working with wild creatures rescued by animal welfare workers or confiscated as they were being smuggled into the U.S., Zavalney introduced inner-city students who had never even visited the beach to the wider world of forests and jungles and tidelands and savannas, using these living classroom lessons.

Of course, such awards have to feature some celeb names among the winners – in this case, actress and animal lover Betty White and super-green guy and actor Ed Begley Jr., both of whom delivered the kind of funny remarks that everyone counts on to provide a bit of leavening to other speakers'  serious stuff. 

The public policy award went to mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, "the greenest mayor" L.A. has ever had, announced Begley, who is a big public transit user. Villaraigosa’s was to have been the evening’s first award, but the mayor evidently arrived late, and it was pushed down to later in the program. [Small-world department: The terrific waiter at my table had been a Cathedral High School classmate of Villaraigosa’s.]

The mayor, as I reported in July, met Goodall on his trip to Africa, accompanied by Lu Parker, his girlfriend, KTLA-TV anchor and former teacher and Miss USA pageant winner. On Friday evening, he arrived solo to accept his award. Parker, he said, wasn’t there because she was working.

If you’ve never been to one of these dinners, the silent auction is a regular pre-dinner fundraiser and curtain-raiser. This time, along with the usual wine and hit-DVD and spa packages being offered, guests bid for artwork by chimpanzees.

Later, once people had been softened up by the wine and the vegetarian meal – Goodall told me a few months ago that cutting back on meat eating is one of the most significant things humans can do to improve the globe’s health and survivability -- bidding opened on a one-off item.

For a bid of $25,000, Goodall Institute board member Addison Fischer won the right to name the next primate refugee to arrive at Goodall’s chimpanzee rehab center in Congo. He wasn’t spilling the beans on his choice, but the buzz in the ballroom was weighted heavily in favor of "Jane."

-- Patt Morrison

Let the speculation over recently reelected L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's gubernatorial ambitions resume, beginning with this blogpost. He already said he wasn't interested in the job (at least this time around), but that was before San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom dropped out of the race today, leaving former governor and California Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown as the last man standing in the Democratic Party field. Villaraigosa has a few natural advantages; namely, he would be the only nonwhite candidate and the only hopeful from Southern California in the field (Republicans Meg Whitman, Steve Poizner and Tom Campbell are all from the Silicon Valley, and Brown emerged from political exile as mayor of Oakland before becoming attorney general).

Back before Villaraigosa announced his non-candidacy in June, former state Sen. Tom Hayden predicted in a Times Blowback piece that Villaraigosa would run but that his chances in a two-man race against Brown weren't good:

Hayden was responding to a Feb. 27 Op-Ed article in The Times by Marc Cooper, who made the case against a run by the mayor:

What do you think? With Newsom out, should Mayor Villaraigosa take a shot at becoming Gov. Villaraigosa? Take our unscientific poll, leave a comment or do both.

-- Paul Thornton

Photo: San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom on Oct.11. Credit: David Cannon / Getty Images.

The police commission picked three finalists in its search for Los Angeles' new police chief, and the editorial board says each possesses many of the qualities needed to succeed atop the LAPD. Just so there won't be any confusion on that point, the board also describes what those qualities might be. The board also notes that two proposed ballot measures are due to be submitted today to enable and call a state constitutional convention, and it all but endorses them in a near-desperate plea for functional governance in California.

On the Op-Ed page, Raphael J. Sonenshein, former executive director of the city's charter reform commission, accuses rookie City Atty. Carmen Trutanich of not understanding what a city attorney is supposed to do in this town. Columnist Tim Rutten gives a highly nuanced defense of the push to reveal who is contributing to efforts in other states to put Prop. 8-style bans on gay marriage on the ballot. Musing about the Northwest Airlines flight that overshot its destination by 150 miles, Peter Garrison, a pilot and contributing editor to Flying magazine, reveals just how boring it is to fly a modern airline jet. And columnist Doyle McManus dissects the Obama administration's decision-making process on whether to send more troops to Afghanistan:

Credit: Ted Rall / For The Times

-- Jon Healey

Should California teachers be evaluated based on their students' performance on test scores? That's the subject of dueling pro vs. con commentaries on today's Op-Ed page. On the pro side is state Board of Education President Ted Mitchell, who says California must change a law forbidding such evaluations if it is to qualify for millions of dollars in federal funds, and that the system would help school districts reward exceptional teaching and weed out instructors who can't make the grade. On the con side is former LAUSD teacher Walt Gardner, who points out that teachers in low-performing schools are often dealing with kids from very poor families who are dealing with pressures that make learning a serious challenge, and expecting teachers to overcome such obstacles on their own is unrealistic.

Meanwhile, physicist Frank von Hippel aims to debunk claims from the nuclear-power industry that reprocessing nuclear waste is a solution to our problems with storing the highly radioactive materials. Not only is it extremely expensive, it fails to reduce the stream of long-lived nuclear waste and provides access to weapons material that could fall into dangerous hands.

Today's editorial page notes the one-year anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Bros. by pointing out that the $700-billion federal bailout that followed helped prop up the nation's financial system, and without it the economy would undoubtedly be in worse shape than it is. Nonetheless, now that the economy is on the rebound, "it's time for the administration and the Federal Reserve to lay out a strategy for pulling the government out of the financial industry."

The Times also weighs in on prospective furloughs or layoffs for city employees, who in tough financial times may be sacrificed in order to keep alive Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's ambition to keep hiring more police officers. Though that seems unfair, it's the right thing to do for Los Angeles.

And we give a boost to a package of state bills aimed at fighting animal cruelty, including a ban on puppy mills, a crackdown on dogfighting (thanks Michael Vick!), and a measure mocked by the governor to forbid docking (cutting off) the tails of cattle.

Photo by Seth Perlman / AP

The opinion pages offer two reactions today to LAPD chief Willam J. Bratton's announcement that he will be leaving the department in October, three years ahead of the end of his term.

From the editorial board:

Bratton was the right person in the right place at the right time, and it wasn't because of some East Coast brand of toughness and bluster. It turned out, in fact, that in addition to being a talented leader and police administrator, Bratton had an unusual knack for understanding the histories and sensitivities, the needs and demands of Los Angeles communities.

Photo credit: David McNew / Getty Images

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa got his newsweek cover, his Los Angeles Magazine cover and a few others in between -- so now it's the City Council's turn. The full council is featured on the August cover of LAJEMM, the Los Angeles Journal for Education on Medical Marijuana.

I heard several reports yesterday of this very impressive-looking, full-color, glossy-covered 14 x 10 magazine being distributed in stacks around town. As of this posting, the July issue is still highlighted at the Web site, and it has an inset of the council. But holy smokes -- the August cover makes the council members look like poster children for medical marijuana.

Or maybe that should be "medical marijuana" (with quotes), because while some of the full-page ads in the 208-page book emphasize health and healing, many don't bother with the medical niceties and instead discuss their "quality strains," "clones," "friendly staff," etc.

It's an interesting addition to the discussion over whether and how cities should regulate medical marijuana dispensaries. Here's the Times' recent editorial encouraging the council to move forward with regulations, but there is obviously a lot more to be considered: Can or should the city regulate advertising? Can or should the city take any role in verifying the medical use of marijuana? Did Californians, in adopting Proposition 215 in 1996, really intend to roll back all restrictions against recreational marijuana use? Or did they mean, as the ballot measure said, to protect people from prosecution only for medical use of the plant?

And, did the City Council members know they were posing for a magazine cover?

Today's pages are packed with heavy-headed examinations of perennial hot-button items that won't be solved any time soon (think race, education, healthcare and so on), so I'll ease you into the week with Monday's most cuddly topic: wild horses.

The editorial board analyzes a bill that would ban the culling of wild horses despite the fact that there are too many mustangs on the range and it's getting too expensive to keep the 31,000 horses that are corralled (in an attempt to control the growing herd) fed and happy. The editorial board's solution? Birth control:

The board also notes that the July 22 deadline for laying out a plan for Guantanamo Bay came and went with no recommendations by the White House-appointed task forces. The editorial board asks President Obama to keep his word and set a date for closing Gitmo.

On the Op-Ed page, columnist Gregory Rodriguez writes that it's silly for allies of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. to use his arrest as proof that Americans haven't made much progress on race:

Also on the Op-Ed page, John Stobo and Tom Rosenthal weigh in on the healthcare debate, writing that a plan to cut Medicare costs by extrapolating research data from one region of the country to arrive at conclusions regarding another could leave the urban poor and those who live near pockets of urban poverty without adequate care. Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa endorses L.A. Board of Education member Yoli Flores Aguilar's proposal to allow a variety of school operators to bid on running new L.A. schools. The mayor says the plan encourages new ideas and puts students first.

Finally, pilot Peter Garrison looks back at millionaire adventurer Steve Fossett's plane crash. Garrison writes that although we'll never know what happened on the day Fossett died in 2007, we do know this:

Photo credit: David Grubs / AP photo/The Billings Gazette

I've met Dame Jane Goodall a few times, but it's still hard to match up this quiet slip of a woman with her monumental identity and nearly half-century body of work. So it was a treat to be able to enjoy again in that persona of "Jane Goodall" as I talked to her for last weekend's Q and A.

A sidelight: She met with Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and his companion, Lu Parker, in South Africa, and said of the meeting that they both "expressed a desire" to work with her Jane Goodall Institute back here in Los Angeles.

But did they perform the chimp pant-hoot with Dame Jane?