The new faces of the city

Like the universe after the big bang, the initial chaos of the blogs has begun to consolidate into identifiable masses. Some, such as Gawker.com and FishbowlLA, are part of ambitious Web-based firms trying to grab large shares of the new blog universe by combining pre-Web interests, such as celebrity culture, with the Internet. Defamer.com recently snarked, "Dear God! Some horrible monster in a fuchsia sweatshirt swallowed Janet Jackson!" beneath an unflattering snapshot of the singer, and it offers a page for people to post details of celebrity sightings.

POLITICS runs heavy too, with intense, phlegm-flecked rants from the left, the right and those who consider themselves nonpartisan, equal-opportunity bashers of governmental and societal inanities. Media-watching is big on sites such as www.LAObserved.com, run by Kevin Roderick (a former Times staffer), and Patrick Frey's Patterico's Pontifications, Patterico.com, which mixes a conservative take on local media (particularly The Times, which has recently begun beefing up its blog presence) and politics at all levels.

But most of the blogs are still flecks of cosmic dust, taking us inside neighborhoods, homes and minds for intimate views of individual worlds.

Susan Campbell, who began blogging on her CinnamonThoughts.BlogSpot.com website in September, details the everydayness of her life, posting photos recently of a trip to "Not a Cornfield," the "living sculpture" project between Chinatown and Lincoln Heights, and of the Cosmopolitan she had with her dinner afterward. She followed it up with snapshots of silver serving pieces she has collected.

On FranklinAvenue.BlogSpot.com, Michael Schneider and Maria Villar recently reported they had left town to spend their wedding anniversary in Las Vegas and posted pictures of their dinner on the one night Maria's sister agreed to watch "Blog Baby," their young son, Evan, so they could celebrate in style at a Thai restaurant. A few days later, they posted photos of a trip to a favorite grocery store, a local Vallarta Supermarket.

Not all blogs succeed in plumbing the routine of life, though. Especially when it cuts close to the bone. A search of Los Angeles-oriented blogs on www.GlobeofBlogs.com turned up the intriguing JayLovesKitti.blogspot.com site, self-described by Jay and Kitti as: "Our love/sex life. A running blog on the struggle for intimacy between a married couple with kids."