Starting last month, the Beverly Hills City Council voted to approve a series of amendments to city ordinances and laws, including the General Plan -- the bible of city planning. The changes were set to help pave the way for the Waldorf-Astoria hotel and condos, which will replace the current Beverly Hilton with a 170-room, 12-story hotel and an additional 110 condos that are said to be each sold for an average of $5.6 million......

Flat Stanley makes a splash on the red carpet After touristing in Hollywood, hanging at the beach and partying like a rock star at Mr T's Bowl, we hit Beverly Hills. Tourists go to Hollywood to see stars, but you won't see a movie star within miles of Mann's Chinese Theater. Stars work in Burbank, glam it up in Beverly Hills, and get in trouble on the Sunset Strip (Oops, is my Chateau Marmont......

That's Chanell, from Riverside County, who graciously let us photograph her tattoo last night at the Beverly Hilton. Causing the most commotion on the red carpet was Eduardo Verastequi, the star of "Bella," who would shortly walk off with The Grace Award for Most Inspirational Movie Acting in 2007. A small group of women in front of me swooned and reached for their cameras, grabbing him before he even made it on to the carpet......

The Hollywood Foreign Press has just announced that the traditional Golden Globes awards banquet and show are being canceled and will be replaced by a news conference format that NBC will air. According to Deadline Hollywood Daily, the new format will be an "hour-long HFPA press conference at The Beverly Hilton to be covered live by NBC News beginning at 6:00 pm PST on January 13." Faced with multiple threats from the 72 nominees in......

"Atonement" leads the pack of nominees for the 2008 Golden Globe Awards with seven nods, including top actor nominations for both leads, Keira Knightly and James McAvoy. "American Gangster," "No Country for Old Men," and "Sweeney Todd" also garnered nominations; you can read a partial list of the nominees here at the Hollywood Foreign Press Association website. Hayden Panettiere, Dane Cook, Ryan Reynolds and Quentin Tarantino read the list at the Beverly Hilton at......

Talk show host, real estate mogul, crooner and all-around entertainer Merv Griffin has died. He was 82. Merv got his first big break as a singer with band leader Freddy Martin at L.A.'s Coconut Grove in 1948. He parlayed his singing career into acting in feature films in the 1950s. He jumped from the big to the small screen and found success as a game show host and sometime guest host for Jack Paar on......

We interviewed Mike Davidson, CEO of Newsvine, at the EconSM conference at the Beverly Hilton today. We discussed everything from how anyone can make a cit-journalism hit on Newsvine (and take 90% of the revenues), to the details of the 13-month-old Web site's re-launch this week to Davidson's longing for the now-shuttered Mort's Deli in Pacific Palisades, where he grew up. This interview is not rudely cut-off, despite the distraction of the pool area below.......

The inaugural EconSM conference, produced by Rafat Ali's ContentNext Media Network (parent of the excellent PaidContent site) is rockin' the Beverly Hilton with entertainment and new media heavies. EconSM addresses the present and potential economy of the social media marketplace in regards to online news, Hollywood, music, mobile media, and more. The amusing "Social Media Meets Hollywood" panel, in which Carson Daly sat alongside The L Word executive producer Ilene Chaiken, preceded lunch. Daly......

- Malingering gets accosted by the craziest things - The Real Malingering - An LAPD detective was arrested for working as a celebrity bodyguard while being on paid medical leave from the department - LAT - MTV reality curse continues: The Bonaduces are getting divorced after 17 years of bliss - TMZ - 21 UCLA students were charged hefty fines by RIAA for downloading music - Daily Bruin - Millions of embedded videos on......

The New York Times seems to think so. We can confirm that among the 800 or so who paid $2,300 a head to rub elbows with Barack Obama for a minute or two at the Beverly Hilton were: Jennifer Aniston, Burt Bacharach, Mario van Peebles, Stephen Spielberg, Arianna Huffington, Ben Stiller, Morgan Freeman, Zach Braff, Eddie Murphy, Ron Howard, Taye Diggs, Norman Lear, JJ Abrams, Paul Reiser, Christine Lahti, Jackson Browne, and Natalie Maines.......

The big honchos in the upstairs offices are being forced to be nice for one more day this week. First there is Administrative Assistant Day (keep dropping those hints) and then tomorrow is Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day. Founded by the Ms. Foundation for Women for daughters, the program has expanded to include those pesky sons too, no doubt at the bequest of teachers around the country who are hoping for......

As has been noted elsewhere, the LA Business Journal is reporting that Trader Vic's may soon be history. The bar and restaurant at the Beverly Hilton, which are rumored to be where the Mai Tai was invented, will be replaced by luxury condos and more hotel rooms, if the developer gets approval. The original hotel structure, by noted mid-century architect Welton Beckett, will remain, kind of. Somehow the hotel will lose 96 hotel rooms......