National Collegiate Athletic Association

The Taco Madness Tournament Returns to L.A. Taco

Don't believe all of that NCAA basketball hype; there's only one single-elimination bracket to worry about this month, and L.A. Taco has it covered. The alternative arts/food/culture site has just released the 5th annual version of their extremely popular Taco Madness tournament, which pits the city ... More >>

Why Do So Many Good L.A. Novels Have Bad Movie Adaptations?

Best L.A. Novel Ever: The Tournament

The Santa Ana winds came last winter not long after I'd moved here. I grew up on the edge of a Great Lake (Erie is arguably, yes, the least great of the Great Lakes, but who's judging?). And so I knew about wind: The terrible icy blasts that cut right into your bones, the autumnal gusts that make th ... More >>

Two Winners in LA Taco's Taco Madness 2012: This Way Madness Lies

LA Taco's Taco Madness 2012, an annual NCAA-style tournament to determine who reigns taco supreme in Los Angeles, concluded last night, and madness it was. The exciting finale between Mariscos Jalisco and Guisados was so close that it required multiple recounts and caused a temporary bit of confusi ... More >>

Voting Begins in LA Taco's Taco Madness 2012: Help Crown the Next Taco King or Queen

If your March Madness brackets are already looking pretty dismal, look, as you always should, to tacos for your saving grace. LA Taco kicked off Taco Madness 2012 last week, its annual NCAA-style tournament that pits our favorite taquerias against one another to determine the king or queen of the t ... More >>

Jerry West Doesn't Regret Baring His Soul in Biography West by West: My Charmed, Tormented Life

Reading West by West: My Charmed, Tormented Life is like overhearing a celebrity patient talking to his therapist: It's unsettling and uncomfortable -- yet you can't stop listening.Jerry West was a college All-American at West Virginia and an instant All-Star after he joined the L.A. Lakers in 1 ... More >>

The Piglet: Food 52's Cookbook Madness Starts Now

If you follow food sites and current cookbooks, you'll doubtless be aware of Food 52, the website run by Amanda Hesser and Merrill Stubbs. You will perhaps also know about their annual cookbook tournament, The Piglet, in which a number of this year's best cookbooks are pitted against each other in a ... More >>

Evan Dooley, College Football Star, Killed While Walking Naked on 10 Freeway

northcarolinastate.scout.comEvan Dooley​The North Carolina State football community was shocked to learn yesterday that a former Pack player, 25-year-old Evan Andrew Dooley, had been run over by a pickup truck on the 10 freeway early Monday morning. The California Highway Patrol received repo ... More >>

Michael Pollan's 3 New Food Rules

​If you follow Michael Pollan (The Omnivore's Dilemma, etc.), you probably know that the food guru is in the process of updating his popular book Food Rules: An Eater's Manual. He's adding more rules, and he asked Slow Food members to help him. Recently he picked three of them. And since this ... More >>

Mexicali Crowned Taco Madness 2011 King: Probably Scored More Than Butler

T. Nguyen​ This was far, far more exciting than UConn v. Butler: this past Friday, the Baja-style meat tacos of Mexicali Taco Company bested the seafood tacos of Mariscos Jalisco in LA Taco's NCAA-March Madness style Taco Madness 2011 and was crowned king of LA taco-dom. At times, the spread ... More >>

Top 10 March Madness Food And Drink Picks

J. GarbeeYour Barely Buzzed Breakfast​Despite the buzz over Obama's NCAA picks (Duke, Kansas, Ohio State, Pitt), which are either perfectly practical or ridiculously boring depending on how you call your political shots, we focus our March Madness betting headaches elsewhere. For us, game days ... More >>

More Food Rules: Michael Pollan Wants Your Food Rules

​Depending on who you talk to, Michael Pollan is either Jesus Christ or the Pied Piper of Hamelin, or perhaps the chair of the NCAA rules committee. In any event, Pollan (The Omnivore's Dilemma, etc.) is currently in the process of updating his popular Food Rules: An Eater's Manual. And he's a ... More >>

USC: No Party for Young Men, Especially if it Involves Vegas, the Super Bowl, and Everson Griffen

Everson Griffen wants you to party in Vegas with him for Super Bowl weekend.​The party pooper administrators at USC's athletics department are telling USC footballer players they better not be attending a Super Bowl weekend party in Las Vegas organized by NFL pro and Trojan alum Everson Griffe ... More >>

UCLA Football Players Arrested, Sacked From Team; Hopefully Neuheisel Has Learned His Lesson From U. Washington Days

​ Paul Richardson, Shaquille Richardson and Josh Shirley were arrested last week for allegedly stealing a student's purse near a UCLA dining hall. They're all tossed from the summer classes they were taking and kicked off the team. The status of the student-athletes for winter quarter is up ... More >>

USC Football Slapped With Two-Year Bowl-Game Ban

​USC's football team will be handed a two-year ban from bowl games and a loss of 20 scholarships as a result of NCAA rules violations likely stemming form special treatment for former player Reggie Bush, now a pro, and his family, according to the Los Angeles Times. The sanctions are apparentl ... More >>

USC To Challenge NCAA Sanctions On Football Program

Reggie Bush.​A USC senior vice president on Thursday said the school would challenge the severity of the NCAA's sanctions against its football program, admitting the school did violate the rules but arguing that the punishment, including a two-year ban on bowl game appearances, was too severe. ... More >>

Pete Carroll Decries NCAA Sanctions Against His Former USC Football Team

​Former USC Coach Pete Carroll on Thursday decried the recently announced NCAA sanctions against his former football program, saying via YouTube that he's "shocked and disappointed" by the body's findings in regards to the team he ran, findings that included possible special treatment -- inclu ... More >>

UCLA Says John Wooden 'Resting Comfortably'

​UCLA on Friday released an "update" on campus basketball legend John Wooden, but it didn't contain much information. It states: "Coach John Wooden is resting comfortably at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center and spent a peaceful night. He was admitted to the hospital on Wednesday, May 26, due ... More >>

UCLA Legend John Wooden Hospitalized In 'Grave' Condition

​Former UCLA basketball coach John Wooden was hospitalized Thursday in "grave" condition according to KCAL 9 News. The 99-year-old "Wizard of Westwood" was taken to Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, according to the station. Wooden helped the UCLA squad win 10 NCAA championships in the 1960s ... More >>

Duke Wins NCAA Title: We Need A Margarita A Mint Margarita Recipe

IU Student News BureauSomeone Really Should Make These Butler Students A Drink​Ya, Duke won the NCAA title. Barely. That Butler half court heave at the buzzer was about as close as you can get to popping the Champagne without a bottle opener. Thus, Squid Ink offers you a Barely Blue Devils/Alm ... More >>

Merlot March Madness: What To Drink On the Road To The Final Four

H&K SculpturesWine Dunk​Welcome to Merlot March Madness. Squid Ink has been training for weeks, swirling and sipping -- definitely not spitting -- to come up with just the right wines to drink during the Road to the Final Four. Why Merlot? It's just so college basketball friendly -- a wine wit ... More >>

Pete Carroll Leaves USC For Seahawks

petecarroll.comPete Carroll.​If it wasn't official, it sure sounded like it Sunday as several news outlets reported that USC football Coach Pete Carroll was leaving town to take over the top coaching job for the NFL's Seattle Seahawks. It wasn't the reported $32.5 million that likely sent Car ... More >>

USC Basketball Team Declares 'My Bad,' Slaps Own Wrist

nba.comO.J. Mayo now plays for the NBA's Memphis Grizzlies.​In one of the more bizarre attempts at putting a lid on bad news, USC announced over a sleepy holiday weekend that a booster gave under-the-table gifts to a basketball player and, as a result, the school would be issuing sanctions aga ... More >>

USC Football Player Spotted Driving Businessman's SUV

USCJoe McKnight.​Joe McKnight, a star tailback at USC, has been driving an SUV owned by a Santa Monica businessman, an arrangement that would be against NCAA rules, the Los Angeles Times reports. The paper states that a reporter has seen the player behind the wheel at least once, and that the ... More >>

Commenter Denies USC Player Was Provided SUV

USCJoe McKnight.​A commenter who says he's the Santa Monica businessman who registered an SUV that the Los Angeles Times reports has been driven by USC star tailback Joe McKnight denied providing the vehicle the player in a post responding to to LA Weekly's own item on the matter Saturday. T ... More >>

The Blind Side's Blind Spot

What would black people do without bighearted white people?

Yuca's Wins 2009 Taco Madness Tourney

Los Feliz favorite Yuca's, the taco stand with a James Beard Award, came out the winner in this weekend's online voting in the hotly contested 2009 Taco Madness tournament, with LA taco stands competing against each other in NCAA March Madness-style brackets. Yuca's made it to the finals against San ... More >>

Morning Sixpack: A News Roundup

Murder Takes a Holiday L.A. County homicides are down 15 percent from last year, according to the Coroner's office. The Sheriff's Department cites greater funding for increased patrols as one reason for the decline. San Gabriel Valley TribuneSparta Beats Troy USC lost its bid to upset the Michigan S ... More >>

Houston Press' Top 10 Reissues of 2008

By Chris Gray It's time to rank the best of what went around and came around again. BILLY JOEL The Stranger (Columbia/Legacy) As punk and disco exploded, the Piano Man's deeply unhip 1978 breakthrough proved that top-shelf Broadway/Brill Building songwriting could still sell - and, occasionall ... More >>

Top 10 Latin Music Albums of 2008

By Julienne Gage Americans who still think of Latin music as mariachi bands and gyrating Ricky Martins and Shakiras might want to lend a closer ear to the genre. This country's Hispanic population isn't just growing, it's growing more diverse. More and more unique musical styles are being gobbled ... More >>

From Cool Kids to Kanye: Top 10 Hip-Hop Albums Of 2008

By Dan Leroy A couple of weeks ago, an expert on the Harry Potter series told an audience of high school kids how lucky they were to have this Big Shared Experience--these seven books and 41,000 words in common. What does Harry Potter have to do with hip-hop in 2008? In an age when many year-end ... More >>

Top 10 Americana Albums of 2008

By Noah W. Bailey Picking the best folk and Americana records of the year isn't nearly as hard as discarding those great records that just didn't feel right stuck in the category.Releases by Calexico and DeVotchKa felt far too worldly to pigeonhole as folk or country, for instance, while Blitzen ... More >>

2008's Top Ten Pop Songs

By Annie Zaleski Pop music often gets a bad rap for being disposable or vapid, and in many cases that's true. (Katy Perry, Danity Kane and the Pussycat Dolls, step right up!) But every year, a few irresistible bits of innovative ear candy rocket up the charts and seep into our subconscious. The ... More >>

Busted Rhymes: The Top 10 Most Preposterous Rap Songs of 2008

By Ben Westhoff Hip-hop A-listers including Rick Ross, Akon and Plies were caught grossly exaggerating their gangster credentials this year. (Turns out they were painfully law-abiding. The horror!) But even if your favorite rapper wasn't caught in a lie, you can bet he or she put out a hilariously ... More >>

Top 10 Indie Rock Albums of 2008

By Michael Roberts In 2008, independent rock returned to the underground, where it belongs. Given the grand catastrophe that is today's record industry, most major-label executives don't have the time or energy to convince music fans they might like something a little out of the ordinary. They'r ... More >>

Top 10 Metal Albums of 2008

By Phil Freeman In a year worthy of your rage, metal delivered in spades. What with the economy circling the drain and Sarah Palin coming down from the tundra and then refusing to go back, 2008's been the kind of year that really makes you want to smash your head into walls or punch random stran ... More >>

L.A. Weekly's Top Ten Dance Collections of 2008, Both Mixed and Unmixed

Any knucklehead with DSL and a laptop can now make an electronic track. With a half hour of clicking and fiddling, you can sample enough cheesy beats and mashups to clog arteries from here to Berlin. Simple dropdown mouse maneuvers can transform electro tracks into progressive house tracks (from dry ... More >>

Hitsville: The Year in Music, by the Numbers

You don't need a half-wit music critic to tell you it's been a remarkable year for America, one historians will be discussing and researching for centuries to come. War, financial collapse, politics, technology: All have been dinner-table topics for many Americans. Racial barriers in 2008 were dem ... More >>

Roger Guenveur Smith

The improvised gesture

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The Imus Factor

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Film Reviews

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Anytime, Anywhere

Hardcore provocateur Eugene Robinson searches for the almost-perfect punch

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The politics of life and death

The Perfect Schwartz

57 Ways To Say Goodbye

Rockie Horoscope

The Logo-Spangled Banner

Slices of a digital war

The Short Story

New fiction from Susan Perabo, Dan Rhodes and Stephen Spotte