L.J. Williamson

Chris Brown's Art: The L.A. Weekly Review

Street art is a commentary on the nature of ownership, and the push-pull between public and private property. Using the city as a stolen canvas is in and of itself an artistic statement that art hemmed into the confines of a gallery or museum could never make. The questions that street art raises ... More >>

10 Awesome L.A. Trucks That Sell Things Besides Food

See also: *10 Best Vintage and Second-Hand Boutiques in L.A. *10 Best L.A. Art Galleries For Partying *Top 10 Weirdest Stores in L.A. First the food truck revolution brought us restaurants on wheels, mixing up your own neighborhood's restaurant offerings. Now, the next wave is shopping on wheels. ... More >>

Girl Scout Cookies: Sugar, God Questionable Math Skills

It's Girl Scout Cookie season again, and in offices across America, helpful parents will be hawking cookies to their co-workers. Come March, you'll see the girls themselves embedded in front of local shopping centers pitching their wares. Those Thin Mints are as tasty as the girls are adorable. Bu ... More >>

Bahooka Closing in March: One Last Meal At Bahooka Family Restaurant

Another surviving remnant of Tiki culture in L.A. will soon sleep with the fishes when Bahooka Ribs & Grog closes in March. That means no more drunken treasure hunting for maraschino cherries and stray shreds of pineapple at the bottom of giant icy bowls of coconutty cocktails. No more eating ribs ... More >>

The Top 10 Dumbest Kitchen Gadgets

Christmas is known as the season of excess -- and excess counter space, and judging by the proliferation of silly, useless and just plain dumb kitchen appliances that seem, like egg nog, only to appear on store shelves during the spendiest time of the year. Aunt Ethel might be a tough case on your h ... More >>

Bad Teachers, Bad Weapons and Bad Smells: Readers Weigh In

10 Awesome Cars Of Wasteland Weekend

See also: *Wasteland Weekend: It's My Apocalypse, And I'll Party If I Want To *9 Alternatives For Burning Man Lottery Losers At most car shows, guys hover over their beloved vehicles, circling and swabbing them lovingly with a ShamWow. But at Wasteland Weekend, dust is an asset -- in fact, the dirt ... More >>

A 17-Year-Old's Artwork About Late-1800s Hysteria Diagnoses, and Other Delights of the 'Teen Creeps' Show

For every 30-year-old who still hasn't figured out what they're going to be when they grow up, there's a 15-year-old who already knows exactly who they are and what they want to be doing, drumming their fingers as they wait for the adults in charge to just get out of the way, already. Clara Polito ... More >>

MOCA Crisis: What Do Younger Artists and Curators Think?

See also: *Marina Abramovic Speaks Out About the MOCA Gala *Dennis Hopper at MOCA: Double Trouble *Mike D of the Beastie Boys on Curating His New Show at MOCA *Street Art at MOCA The crisis at Los Angeles' Museum of Contemporary Art, which exploded with the ouster of longtime chief curator Paul Sch ... More >>

Ukulele Players: An Anthropological Study

Size matters, and although a ukulele is basically just a downsized guitar, playing "lead ukulele" just doesn't have the same authoritative ring. And that can be a good thing. Ukulele players rarely have the self-seriousness of guitarists, and if you get a bunch of them in a room together, you'll n ... More >>

Why L.A. Schools Should End Their Ban on Hugging

By Dr. Paul Abramson and L.J. Williamson Riot Act is a semi-regular column that challenges conventional wisdom in controversial issues Last month, Tennessee, the state where Jerry Lee Lewis married his 13-year-old first cousin and John Thomas Scopes was convicted for teaching evolution, made waves ... More >>

James Murphy - Geffen Contemporary at MOCA - May 3, 2012

James Murphy The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA May 3, 2012 Better Than: Dancing Yrself Clean. There are two James Murphys: the one who likes to make you think and the one who likes to make you dance. During Murphy's DJ set at MOCA Geffen, part of the Mike-D curated "Transmission: AV Club" series, th ... More >>

A Cancer on the Office

Blackjack With Pedophiles: Why Gambling on Our Ability to Stop Sex Offenders Isn't the Way to Go

By Dr. Paul Abramson and L.J. Williamson Riot Act is a semi-regular column that challenges conventional wisdom in controversial issues In 2008, a 35-year-old LAUSD teacher got one of his fifth-grade students alone in the classroom at lunchtime, and convinced the 10-year-old boy to masturbate him t ... More >>

'April Fools,' Says L.A. Weekly

If you visited L.A. Weekly's home page yesterday, you might have noticed a few stories that seemed a little off -- our contribution to April Fool's Day. For those of you who want to relive the moment, click on the image above to see it bigger, and links to all the stories are here:

Condoms Still Suck, No Matter What Joycelyn Elders Thinks (She's on Trojan's Payroll)

By Dr. Paul R. Abramson & L.J. WilliamsonThe good news: Joycelyn Elders, former surgeon general of the United States, reads L.A. Weekly!The bad news: She's pissed at us. We made Dr. Elders mad because we said that condoms suck.Maybe if we hadn't said anything, no one would have noticed. Maybe inste ... More >>

Safety in Rubbers

Condoms Suck

We're spending billions to develop an HIV vaccine. Why not also focus on building a better condom?

9 Best High-Tech Vibrators to Buy for Your Valentine, Reviewed by our Experts

See more from L.A. Weekly's Sex Issue: "Condoms Suck," "The Swingers' Story: How Two Married People Found True Love While Swapping Partners," "10 Condom Reviews for the Well-Endowed Man," "Twelve Tales of Sexual Mortification," and "UCLA vs. USC Sex Survey 2012: Who's Sluttier?" As told to L.J. Wil ... More >>

Aimee Mann Christmas Show - The Wiltern - 12/11/11

L.J. Williamson​See also our preview: Aimee Mann's Christmas Show For People Who Don't Really Like Christmas Aimee Mann opened her sixth annual Christmas show with dialogue from A Charlie Brown Christmas, quoting Chuck himself: "I think there must be something wrong with me -- Christmas is co ... More >>

7 Ridiculously Tacky Commercialized Christmas Tree Ornaments

You know that complaints about the commercialization of Christmas are as unfashionable as figgy pudding when "Your Ad Here"-equivalent Christmas ornaments are popular store items. Companies like Coca-Cola pay big bucks to buy advertising space on billboards and bus stops, but they've cleverly figu ... More >>

Paul Stanley, Lita Ford, Kip Winger -- Playboy Mansion -- 11/12/11

Eric Charbonneau, Le StudioPaul Stanley and friends​See also: Paul Stanley Analyzes KISS's Success: "I don't want to buy a t-shirt with a guy on it who looks like my neighbor." If you're like most folks, your rock star fantasies require nothing more than a pair of tight jeans, an air guitar, ... More >>

The Three Best Karaoke Bars in L.A.

Tiffany Rose We can't promise James Franco doing karaoke in drag, but you never know​Did you catch our Best Of issue and snag our free Best Of app? Even if you did, we're betting you didn't make it through all of our write-ups; there are about a billion. So in the coming weeks we'll walk you t ... More >>

CicLAvia Fashion: Eight Different Street Styles at L.A.'s Popular Bike Event

CicLAvia, like most L.A. events, is a fab chance for people-watching, and though the expected bike jerseys, shorts, and plain T-shirts were in abundance, a few people are beginning to write the style guide for what will hopefully become not only a regular event, but a smashing spectacle. Here are ei ... More >>

Art With Dude Appeal: Rock Carvings On Grimes Canyon Road

L.J. Williamson​ "Best Art I Saw All Week" is a new feature of the blog in which one of our contributors writes about one particular L.A. artwork he or she saw in a museum, in a gallery, on the streets or anywhere else. If you see a work that you like, feel free to submit your own a post by up ... More >>

Missoni At Target: Shoppers Go Apeshit For Zigzags

L.J. Williamson$380 Worth Of Joy​Is Missoni in line to become the next Ed Hardy? The well-established Italian fashion house's special Target line of clothing and housewares debuted this morning, on the same day I needed to hit the store for an early-morning toilet paper run, and zigzags were flyi ... More >>

Spotify: The Honeymoon's Over

L.J. WilliamsonI cain't quit yew.​Last month I posed the question: Which Is Better: Spotify or Grooveshark? Though my comparison of the two music subscription services wasn't entirely conclusive, I reckoned that, in the end, "Grooveshark just has too many glitches, whereas if a track shows up ... More >>

Five Creepiest Exhibits at L.A.'s Natural History Museum

L.J. WilliamsonChicken Kong​The Museum of Natural History has a bright, shiny, happy new dinosaur hall with sunshine streaming in through floor-to-ceiling windows and colorful signs explaining educational facts about those crowd-pleasing dino bones that all of the schoolkiddies came here to see. ... More >>

Richard Simmons' $12 Dance Class in Beverly Hills: From the Print Edition

Richard Simmons, surrounded by L.J. Williamson (left) and Joanna Stein​ In this week's print edition, L.J. Williamson attends Richard Simmons' dance class at the Beverly Hills dance studio where he's been working for 37 years, which anyone can attend for only $12.

Reality Rocks Expo Brings Out Black Leather, Bedazzler Studs, Marc Marcuse, American Idol Losers and More

L.J. Williamson​ In the Considerable Town column in LA Weekly's print edition this week, L.J. Williamson covers the Reality Rocks Expo that took place in downtown L.A. at the Westin Bonaventure Hotel April 9 and 10.

Constitutional Right to Sex

Give Sodomy a Chance

Sexual rights are protected by the Constitution, if only the U.S. Supreme Court would open its eyes

Sex and This City

What are Angelenos looking for when out on the town? Sex, a hug, a relationship, more sex