Columbia University

Margot Ocanas: A Voice for Pedestrians

One of the fascinating Angelenos featured in L.A. Weekly's People 2013 issue. Check out our entire People 2013 issue here. When she arrived in Los Angeles as a new mom 11 years ago, Margot Ocañas joked that she got bedsores from driving so much. "I just hated being so reliant on my Thomas Gu ... More >>

Top 10 L.A. Architecture Stories of 2012

We spend most of the year criticizing Los Angeles' ugly buildings and other unfortunate aspects of the local built environment. Here's our chance to rundown some of the thoughtful, inspiring and downright stellar projects that make us L.A. proud, and that make our burg a better place in general.

Rap Genius Got $15 Million in Investor Financing. So Why Does Everyone Hate Them?

In Malibu last weekend, an ebullient crowd including rappers Mike G and Shawn Chrystopher have gathered for the birthday party of Mahbod Moghadam. Champagne is poured into red solo cups, while a volvano vaporizer circulates. Moghadam is an eccentric character who is the face of the extremely succes ... More >>

Eat More Chocolate, Win a Nobel Prize

What is the secret to winning a Nobel prize? A genius IQ? Long, lonely hours in the lab or library? An unfaltering commitment to establishing peace in the Middle East (good luck with that)? Actually, it turns out that Nobel prizes are within reach for all of us, because the secret may be eating a ... More >>

Salemi Stories: Readers Respond to Our Kim's Video Cover Story

Marcus Samuelsson Coming to Hammer Museum

Hmm, this could be interesting. Chef Marcus Samuelsson, former champion of Top Chef Masters and owner of New York's Red Rooster, will be hosting a discussion alongside New York-based visual artist Sanford Biggers on July 8 at 3 p.m. at the Hammer Museum in Westwood. You have to imagine that the el ... More >>

Study: Losing Sleep Results in Unhealthy Food Choices

If you've ever stayed up too late, got up too early, and grabbed, say, a pint of ice-cream rather than a cup of yoghurt for breakfast, there may be very good reason for your morning sweet tooth: In a study exploring the relationship between obesity and sleep deprivation, researchers from St. Luke's ... More >>

L.A. Traffic Makes Us More Creative and Other Revelations From Jonah Lehrer's New Book Imagine

With his third book, Imagine, neuroscience researcher Jonah Lehrer (Proust Was a Neuroscientist, How We Decide) answers the question "Where does creativity come from?" with some questions of his own: Why do long jogs inspire jolts of insight? How did anybody dream up Scotch tape before Scotch tape e ... More >>

Oceans Becoming Acidic, Bubbling Vats of Soda at Alarming Rate, USC Researchers Say: Sushi Imperiled (Really)

Surfers are going to need some thicker wetsuits. Scientists at USC today are warning that global warming could result in ... acidic seas. That's right: Increasing levels of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere could taint our beloved Pacific ocean with "acidification" and turn it into a giant can of so ... More >>

Drive Stoned? New Research Says You're Twice as Likely to Crash

​We've received mixed signals from the academic world when it comes to the effects of toking and driving. One study even argued that those under the influence of cannabis were better drivers because, perhaps, they go slower and make more deliberate decisions. This is important stuff right he ... More >>

Mofones: Dress Your iPhone in Art, Made in Los Angeles

Courtesy of MofonesHow cool would it be to talk into this Fossilfishfone?​ Like it or not, the Christmas shopping season is upon us. For those who prefer not to get pepper-sprayed by kamikaze shoppers at big box stores, however, there are thankfully other options. Even better -- there are opti ... More >>

Joseph Gordon-Levitt's The Tiny Book of Tiny Stories: Inception Star's Crowdsourced hitRECord Website Becomes a Book

It takes six seconds to read a short tragedy about an upbeat orange and a suicidal egg in The Tiny Book of Tiny Stories: Volume I. One of 33 bite-sized narratives culled from nearly 8,600 submissions to actor-slash-crowd-sourcing impresario Joseph Gordon-Levitt's hitRECord website, the tale is told ... More >>

Howard Braham's 11th 11-11 Party on 11-11-11 at 11:11:11, at 1111 Olive Ave. in Burbank, Featuring 1,111 11s and Food Expiring on 11-11

Photos by Zachary Pincus-RothThe moment of truth​ On November 11, 1998, when Howard Braham was a student at Columbia University, he realized around 10:30 p.m. that it was about to turn 11:11 on 11-11. He knocked on the door of his friend Steve Schwartz and they decided to gather 11 people, hea ... More >>

Night Gallery, Museum of Public Fiction and Other Eastside Experiments

Project Nim Review

Donald Trump Calls Out Obama For His Stoner, Underachieving Days at Occidental College in L.A.

Obama in L.A.​We've seen the photos of President Obama during his L.A. college years. He's got some hair. And his pants had flair. And, well, he even admitted to smoking "reefer" in his 1995 memoir. Yeah, we even imagine a "bow-chica-bow-wow" soundtrack following the future president named Ba ... More >>

Pulitzer Prizes Announced: Jonathan Gold Almost Wins (Again)

No, Jonathan Gold has not won a second Pulitzer, but he's come pretty damn close. As the Weekly's editor Drex Heikes just emailed us all: Jonathan Gold was one of the three finalists this year for the Pulitzer Prize for criticism, Columbia University just announced. The prize went to Boston Globe ... More >>

Blanca Martinez-Navarro, Gang Reduction Staffer For Mayor Villaragosa, Arrested At Conga Room For Allegedly Attacking LAPD Cop

Conga Room / FacebookA performance at the Conga Room.​Did a member of the mayor's $26-million-a-year gang-reduction staff just go gangsta' on a Los Angeles police officer? That seems to be the story coming from the LAPD over the weekend after they were called to the Conga Room downtown early ... More >>

61-Year-Old L.A. Woman Dies At Hands Of Beverly Hills And Encino 'Plastic Surgeon' Ehab Mohamed

Beverly Hills Advanced LaserDr. Ehab Mohamed​Updated after the jump: Did Dr. Mohamed try to perform a hernia repair on himself? Originally posted at 10 a.m. It's a "Nip/Tuck" episode come horrifyingly to life: Los Angeles gynecologist turned plastic surgeon Dr. Ehab Mohamed operated on 61-yea ... More >>

NYC College Kids Outted As Human-Sized Bedbugs With Bad Haircuts

​In September, the Weekly began a hard-hitting investigation of all the ways New York City sucks compared to Los Angeles. Our findings were atrocious: Hordes of bedbugs, rats, possums and snakes ran rampant through NYC streets -- infesting backyards, toilet boils, Niketown and beyond. But if ... More >>

Inside Job: Greed, Interrupted

Part meltdown memoir, part essential finger-pointing, Charles Ferguson's latest will make you seethe

The Social Network: Who Needs Friends?

David Fincher commented on Mark Zuckerberg's status. His latest, on Facebook's birth and the minds behind it, invites you to join him

Live in L.A.: Mumford & Sons, Free Kutmah benefit, Fitz & the Tantrums, Death by Stereo

​Mumford & Sons don't add up. Four tidy West London boys doing achy, dusty Americana -- why, that's almost as suspect as four preppies from Columbia University embracing world beats in their pop music, isn't it? Indeed, Marcus Mumford and compatriots Ben Lovett, Country (!) Winston and Ted Dwa ... More >>

Why Theater Matters

And how our local stage can seize a national leadership role

Prop. 8 Trial: Both Sides of Gay Marriage Lawsuit Endure Rough Day at Court

On the third day of the Proposition 8 federal trial in San Francisco, it was tough going for both sides of the big stakes lawsuit over California's gay marriage ban.For the plaintiffs, who want to overturn Proposition 8, the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to indefinitely block a video feed of the tri ... More >>

Chromeo Means Serious Business: Aiming for a New Album in Summer '10

Chromeo is one of those '80s-crazed dance music acts that makes the cool kids in empty Ray-Ban frames go off the Richter like a South Pacific earthquake. It was Chromeo that was about to take the stage when dozens of fans climbed down an Inglewood Forum balcony to get a closer look, prompting cops i ... More >>

Consensual Rape: Some Precautions

Queer Town: The Life and Spirit of Genevieve Florence Range

On Monday morning, a day after her oldest daughter celebrated her seventieth birthday, Genevieve Florence Range passed away at the age of 95 in New Jersey. She was my grandmother, friend, and one of the major influences in my life. Grandma, as her eight grandkids called her, was everything you want ... More >>

Gems Finally Emerge at Toronto Film Festival

A Time to Stir, Jerichow and Birdsong: Reasons not to leave before show's end

1001

How Superintendent David Brewer Ran Aground

The admiral's sinking ship

¡Ask a Mexican! Mextremities

"I recently learned the meaning of güero, which until that point I only knew as a Beck album. I started calling some of my whitish Mexican friends güero/a, and they seemed displeased."

Theater Reviews: Hair, Girl, 20, Leap

Also I Was a Teenage Homo and more

Rock Picks

For the week of July 5 - 11

Ray Bradbury: Fahrenheit 451 Misinterpreted

L.A.’s august Pulitzer honoree says it was never about censorship

Terminal Viscosity

It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I smell poo

Posuer Nation

Does counterculture = consumer culture?

The End of Donald Kuspit?

The opening of his "California New Old Masters"

Give Us Back Our Damn Flag

The leftist case for patriotism

Said's Last Stand

And Rummy the Wrastler

Tee Time

Precious Stone

Death on the Instahlment Plan

Jerry Stahl on love and squalor and his new novel, Plainclothes Naked

Peace of Me

Divided We Stand

This is no time for unity on the left

The War at Home

Reluctant Exile

Eduardo Machado on Padua, the Taper and P.C. hell

No Public Displays

Council to protesters: Demonstrate, if you must, at home

Guy, Interrupted

Writer-director James Mangold

The Real World Organization

Why being against the WTO isn’t enough