Mark Twain

I Am Not Mark Twain

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Downton Abbey Has Made Upstairs-Downstairs Tours a Trend -- Including at Pasadena's Gamble House

Pasadena's wooden wonder, the Gamble House, is a clever abode. Instead of closing its doors this summer for a necessary flooring restoration, the National Historic Landmark has found a way to keep its tours running, while simultaneously staying hip to a growing trend. Though many of the house's most ... More >>

Four Seasons Locavore Cocktails: Your Drinks, Sourced Within 100 Miles

Last year, the Four Seasons Hotel chain jumped on the locavore bandwagon with its 100-Mile cocktail program, challenging its properties worldwide to create cocktails with ingredients sourced from within 100 miles of each hotel's location. This year, CUT and Sidebar at the Beverly Wilshire, Culina a ... More >>

Val Kilmer Tells Us Why the World Needs Another Mark Twain Solo Show

What Your Favorite Restaurant Says About You

We all have our favorite things that, implicitly or otherwise, reveal a little bit of ourselves. Thus it makes sense that Fraulein Maria would love whiskers on kittens and bright copper kettles, and that Oprah would have many, many favorite things. Which brings us to restaurants that you may consid ... More >>

Oguri's Body Weather

Mar Vista Time Travel Mart Opens: A New L.A. Outpost of Dave Eggers' 826 Organization

Dino eggs are nestled inside the incubator, with the extra large cans of Mastodon Chunks arranged in a neat pyramid formation beside a display of Barbarian repellent and caveman candy (looking suspiciously similar to beef jerky). "It's been a really long last month getting everything ready," May Pe ... More >>

Mark Dery's I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts : Is It a Book in the Form of the Internet?

If you're familiar with the writing of cultural theorist and freelance critic Mark Dery, you already know he writes in loop-de-loops and mazes, often embedding the meanings of his sentences in elaborate spirals of prose. His new essay collection, I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts, follows that pattern, ... More >>

Cooking Drinking: Three New High Alcohol Cookbooks

Booze-themed cookbooks have never been terribly high on our everyday shopping lists, but there are those weekend moments when The Food of Morocco isn't quite what we're craving. Okay, that's not really true. We'd be content with Paula Wolfert's harissa any day of the week. But we're all for occasion ... More >>

6 Phrases That California Started Using Before Everyone Else

The Southern California vocabulary, as endearing or maddening as it can be, doesn't exactly have a reputation for erudition. And we're totally chill about that. The Dictionary of American Regional English, which you may have heard of recently, is an ambitious lexicographical project that recently r ... More >>

Val Kilmer's Citizen Twain and Matthew McCray's Eternal Thou

Val Kilmer as Mark Twain: "Anybody Trying to Find a Point in This Will Be Shot"

See also: *Our review of Ryan Adams, for whom Kilmer as Twain opened *Renaissance Man Val Kilmer May Have Met his Match A bomb threat has sealed off the streets surrounding us, but Val Kilmer is calm. His long blond hair tied back into a loose ponytail, the actor is wearing a blue blazer, blue and ... More >>

Why Ryan Adams Isn't Allowing Photos

Illustration by Sam Washburn​By Kiernan Maletsky Friday night, Ryan Adams performed at Walt Disney Concert Hall. Check out our review of the show -- the opening act was Val Kilmer as Mark Twain -- you'll see that we have no photos from it. That's because on this tour Adams' isn't allowing t ... More >>

The Mark of Excellence

Gil Cates dies at 77

Craig SchwartzA Noise Within cuts open a new path in Pasadena​GIL CATES DIES: The Geffen Playhouse's artistic director, and Academy Awards producer, was found in a UCLA parking lot Monday night, having died of natural causes. More on this story to come. A Noise Within opened it's new Pasadena digs ... More >>

Lissa Levin's Sex and Education: High School Daze

Stud Llamas, Delivery Chickens Mark Twain's Favorite Fruit: Top 5 Craigslist Farm and Garden Classifieds of the Week

Combing through Craigslist's Farm and Garden Classifieds gives an Internet prowler a case of the chuckles. Some people yuck at the writing, but for us, the wares themselves (see pig statue entry) and the vendors' keen marketing ploys (see llama entry) are enough. Seriously though, seeing what peopl ... More >>

ODB's "Nigga Please" with All the N-words Replaced by "Slave," in Honor of the Butchering of Mark Twain's "Huck Finn" by Some Idiotic Publisher

​Some idiotic, thoroughly moronic publisher gave in to idiotic, thoroughly moronic busybody censors and republished Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer replacing the historically appropriate (and clearly condemned by the author, if you, say, bother to read the damn books...) usage of ... More >>

GULLIVER'S TRAVELS

L.A. Animation Festival

Cartoons that make you go hmmm

The Thursday Edition: A Roundup of Newspaper Food Stories

SapphireBlue22stack of newspapers​What's the country reading today food-wise? Here's a roundup of some of the food-related stories from other newspapers, many of which print their food sections mid-week. And remember, even if you don't actually buy papers these days (or not; this paper is free ... More >>

Thurgood

The Girl Who Would Be King

Literary Pets: Kurt Vonnemutt, Joyce Feral Oates, John Pupdike & Jane Pawsten

The names alone sell these illustrations of authors-as-pets: Kurt Vonnemutt, Joyce Feral Oates, John Pupdike, Jane Pawsten and F. Scott Fetchgerald. The illustrations are by Chet Phillips. The Mark Twain...er, "Bark" Twain...in particular, bears an uncanny resemblance to the author who is said to ha ... More >>

Theater Reviews: Altar Boyz, the Apple Tree, Chariot, Sprung: A Love Story

Also, Stop Kiss, Billie and Bogie, God Box and more.

Today in Photographs: May 14, 1973

Tom Sawyer film stars Jodie Foster and Johnny Whitaker, both seen at right, present Mark Twain portrait to students of Venice's Mark Twain Junior High School.LA Times/UCLA

Is He Dead?

Nerdy in LA: The Los Angeles Chess Club and Reflections on a Jr. High Championship (the Chessmaster Gets no Ass, it Turns Out)

The year was 1984. I had won the Memphis City Jr. High Chess Championship, narrowly defeating my arch nemesis Gus Lipman. Gus was a "Mr. Boy" type of kid who wore tortoise shell glasses, a London Fog trench coat and carried a briefcase for some reason (We were ELEVEN. What was in that briefcase? Fil ... More >>

Jim Leonard's Battle Hymn

Brave new world

American Tales

Theater Reviews: American Tales, In on It

Also, My Antonia, Herpes Tonight!, and more

Howling Over "Wolf Songs" and other letters

David Sedaris at UCLA

Hal Holbrook: A Chance to Be Himself

The character actor in full bloom

Reviews of Paradise Lost, Bob & Ed's Discount Enlightenment Warehouse

Also this week's pick, Limonade Tous les Jours

Going Stag at Seven Grand

Whiskey and Wry

Cinnamon

Jackie Kashian

Newsfreak

Baby, It’s Cold Inside

Oscar at 77

A Considerable Town
Baby, It’s Cold Inside

Oscar at 77 — film . . . fashion . . . warm bodies

Baby, It’s Cold Inside

Oscar at 77

Keepers of the Magic Kingdom

Watch closely among Disneyland’s tourists and you might spot the Disneyana people, protecting Walt’s vision and living most of their waking lives in the happiest place on Earth

Minimal to the Max

Peace Casualties

A dispute over dwindling numbers at peace marches

Dueling for an Education

Some parents win, others lose English-Spanish program

Teenage Cassandra

To be young, pacifist and living in Orange County

Southern Discomfort

Barry Hannah, into the murk

Deep River

Navigating Mark Twain's great divide