The New York Times Company

'Illegal Immigrant' Is So Over, AP Declares

Immigrants' advocates have long argued that entering the United States without permission makes you about as much an illegal immigrant as blowing through a stop sign makes you an illegal driver. In other words, they have said, nobody can be the embodiment of illicit activity for crossing a boundary ... More >>

Wonder Bread Is Saved, Twinkies Likely to Follow

We all knew, deep down, that Twinkies were indestructible and Wonder Bread was immortal. Following Hostess Brands' recent bankruptcy, a Georgia-based company has stepped in and purchased several of Hostess' best-known brands, along with 28 bakeries and other locations, NBC News reports. Flowers F ... More >>

Trillion Dollar Currency Already Subject Of Simpsons Episode (Sorry, Paul Krugman)

We all know that The Simpsons is genius. But who knew that the show that gestated on the comic-strip pages of L.A. alternative media could one day help save America? If New York Times columnist Paul Krugman's suggestion that the Obama administration actually mint a $1 trillion platinum coin comes ... More >>

Ben Gibbard: Folks' Obsession With My Personal Life Is Disappointing

Amidst a divorce with Zooey Deschanel, Death Cab For Cutie frontman Ben Gibbard soldiers on, focusing on a solo project, following baseball blogs, and jogging. Though the first single from his recently-released solo album "Teardrop Windows" has folks assuming that he's jumped back on the emo train, ... More >>

Short Attention Span Dinner Theater: Your Week in Food, 10/22 - 10/26

In which we highlight the past week in food, either at home or abroad. "We're kind of worried that the folks at the big box store know something we don't, as the new seasonal catalogue has some sobering emergency food options." 6 Things on Sale at Costco.com: Your Holiday Dinner Party, My Apocal ... More >>

Top 5 Reasons Not to Eat Meat on Mondays

5. You work at the USDA (or maybe don't anymore): And thus got an internal memo last week, which helpfully pointed out that "one simple way to reduce your environmental impact while dining at our cafeterias is to participate in the 'Meatless Monday' initiative." (Meatless Mondays is a 2003 non-profi ... More >>

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa Awkwardly Defends Push For Westside Subway in New York Times

This past Monday, the New York Times ran a story about the brewing controversy in Beverly Hills over the Westside subway. Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who's pushing hard for the underground rail line, awkwardly defended his position to the paper. A little background: Beverly Hills commun ... More >>

Medical Marijuana is 'Sham' Just to Get High, Obama Official Says

If you thought that the Obama Administration's crackdown on medical marijuana in California was just a political play to please the center in American politics, this might give you pause. One justice official says the Golden State's whole medical cannabis game is a giant "sham." Even if you, the Ca ... More >>

The New York Times Announces Meat-Ethics Essay Contest Winners

Last month, The New York Times' Ariel Kaminer announced an essay contest in the paper's op-ed section: Carnivorous readers must defend, in 600 words or less, why it is ethical to eat meat. Entries were judged by some of the foremost authorities of modern food practices including Peter Singer, Michae ... More >>

Food News Roundup: America as Food Truck Nation, Ruhlman's Toys, Sushi Nozawa Song About Waiters

Michael Ruhlman: Great Kitchen Tools a very fun short film. Smithsonian Magazine: How America Became a Food Truck Nation (by Jonathan Gold). Daily Dish: The LA Times Food section debuted nearly 50 years ago. (It will fold into a new Saturday section beginning Mar. 10.) New York Times: On the cl ... More >>

Los Angeles Times to Charge You For Online Content: Bad News, if You Ask Us

​I said maybe / You're gonna be the one that saves me / And after all / You're my ... paywall. Yes, your beloved Los Angeles Times is jumping into the paywall game -- charging readers for online access to its content beginning March 5. You'll be able to read 15 stories on a device, but, af ... More >>

Five Artsy Things to Do This Week, Including 'Anti-Rock' Band Destroy All Monsters and Charles Garabedian's Pseudo-Biblical Painting

With the exception of a panel of artists talking economics, this week's recommendations are all old-school, exhibitions and performances of artists working before Watergate. 5. Highbrow Comedy Guy de Cointet is one of those stuff-of-myth artists: He grew up in Paris, was friendly with Yves St. Laur ... More >>

LACMA Goes Hollywood With Elvis Mitchell

Museum scrapped its film program for a star-studded partnership aimed at courting showbiz bucks — helmed by the nation's most controversial critic

Village Voice Media Responds to Clergy

​Today 36 clergy affixed their names to a paid ad and open letter to Village Voice and the classified ad site Backpage.com. The full page ad was published in the New York Times. The religious coalition demanded that we close down our legal, adult classifieds. Neither government officials n ... More >>

Your Weekly Movie To-Do List

Bad boys Sean Penn and Nicholas Ray

California Prisoners Released Under Supreme Court Ruling Could Include Many Nonviolent Drug Offenders, Argues Pro-Marijuana Group

Don't do the crime if you can't do the time, Zack.​That U.S. Supreme Court-ordered release of 33,000 California prisoners? Not so bad, says the Drug Policy Forum of California, which argues state lockups have been overcrowded with people who have done nothing more than hold onto natural substa ... More >>

Short Attention Span Dinner Theater: Your Week in Food, 4/11-4/15

Flickr/Lauren Manning​ In which we highlight the past week in food, either at home or abroad. "You will leave slightly drunk, slightly sore and covered with stinking juice. It's what love is all about." Ask Mr. Gold: Big Plate Dating. "This working shoulder-launched munition made with 15 p ... More >>

USDA Releases Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2010: Drink Water, Eat Less. Go Figure.

USDA​Yesterday the USDA released the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans. Got a pen? A keyboard? Your Twitter app? And it's not a lot of governmentalese this time (well, okay it is), but some very sensible recommendations. Eat less, drink more water rather than sugary drinks, seriously lower ... More >>

Congress Approves Child Nutrition Bill, Finally

Flickr/Sea Frostwhat Congress has been eating lately​ Despite some last-minute histrionics (of course), today Congress approved the child nutrition bill. The House passed the bill by a vote of 264 to 157; the Senate passed the bill unanimously in August. The legislation will expand the school ... More >>

Proposition 20 and 27: How Gerrymandering Robs California Voters Of Nearly All Real Choices For U.S. Congress In November

By Hillel Aron If you're not pissed at the incumbent politician, you're rare as a Goth.​A recent Public Policy Institute of California poll puts the approval rating of the California State Legislature at 10 percent. Veteran politicos haven't seen the disgust toward Sacramento dip so low. Ca ... More >>

Los Angeles Commuters: Make Better Use Of Those Four Rubbery Things You're Driving On

New York TimesSay good-bye to your old tires.​ Want to do something good for the environment and clean out your garage-full of old tires at the same time? Now you can. Los Angeles County residents can turn in their discarded tires at the Free Tire Amnesty event happening this Saturday from ... More >>

Daily News Reports "Midnight Run" to Spend Food Stamps; Bloomberg Shakes His Finger at Poor Soda-Drinkers

Karen Apricot New Orleans/FlickrFood stamps accepted.​ We've told you before. Food stamps are hotter than the flames that hissed around that truck of yams on I-5 Thursday morning (where was a marshmallow avalanche and a dusting of brown sugar when you needed them, right?). If you require fu ... More >>

Students At Loyola Law School Get Better Grades Without Having To Earn Them

Loyola Law School.​There's been a stereotype about the millennial generation that it has gone through its scholastic career with "grade inflation" on its side -- the coddling, praising and teacher-torturing ways of its baby boomer parents causing schools to give in and just give praise. If so ... More >>

SXSW: From @ Platform to Ad Platform? Twitter Announces @anywhere

​Perplexing the business-model hungry pundits with a difference of just one letter, Twitter CEO Ev Williams surprised the crowd today at his SXSWi keynote by announcing not an Ad platform but an @ platform, a way to further integrate Twitter's data into third party platforms without implementing a ... More >>

Love Me Tender, Love Me Harsh

The dating game, L.A.-Style

Burger Records and the Lo-Fi Cassette Revival

We at West Coast Sound get a ton of mail, most of it consisting of CDs, press kits, and the occasional piece of vinyl. It arrives by the mound in those postal service bins, and though we love free stuff as much as the next music geek, all those plastic squares containing plastic circles pile high on ... More >>

Steal A Hollywood Scene -- For A Price

​This has got to be the ultimate film-lover's souvenir, and you can't buy one on Hollywood Boulevard. Rather, Paramount Pictures is rolling out a website where everyday movie fans will be able to edit and then buy and download a self-selected clip from their favorite Paramount flicks. The God ... More >>

The Wednesday Edition: A Roundup of Today's 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 on Wednesday. And remember, even if you don't actually buy papers these days (or not; this paper is ... More >>

Food 52: The New Project From Amanda Hesser and Merrill Stubbs

Food52Merrill Stubbs Testing Your Best​Food 52, a website created by former New York Times food section staff writer Amanda Hesser and Merrill Stubbs, a freelance food writer, will be an interactive recipe forum and contest for home cooks when it launches on September 15. The winners will be p ... More >>

Funny People, Funny Business

What's no laughing matter in movies and media this week

Report: Manny Ramirez Used Steroids in 2003

Wikipedia Say It Ain't So, Manny -- Again ​​The New York Times reports that L.A. Dodger slugger Manny Ramirez was identified as asteroid user in 2003, when he played with the Boston Red Sox. Earlier this year Major League Baseball exiled Ramirez from the sport for 50 games following disclosure t ... More >>

JOURNEY BACK TO 40 YEARS C.D.

Morning Sixpack: A News Roundup

Arrest in Homeless Slay Case Benjamin Mathew Martin, 30, was apprehended in Rancho Mirage for the gruesome death of John Robert McGraham, a homeless man who was set on fire last fall in an alley off of Third Street near Berendo Street. Meet the Bark Beetles The news about climate change's effects on ... More >>

Did the High Life Turn Avocado Men's Minds Into Guacamole?

The new bling?A charming tongue-in-cheeker by the New York Times' Jesse McKinley looks at what happened when enough money got spread among avocado industry lobbyists. "Luxury suites. Shopping sprees. Four-star hotels. Such was life in the high-flying world of the California Avocado Commission . . . ... More >>

Asphalt Beats Artists in Venice

Rosendahl touts "state of the art" parking lot as Ed Ruscha gets the squeeze

It's not the technology stupid!: Romantic & pragmatic thoughts on what consumers want from recorded music

CDs are kind of fucked, but so are radical new models of music consumption. The key to selling music is still not about convenience, price, or practicality. It is about obsession and possession and most of all object fetish.

Robert Greenwald's Modest Proposal

How online activists’ fear of Fox News helped drag Democrats into hyperpartisan censorship

Goodbye Baquet, Hello O'Shea

The Chicagoan comes out fighting

A Theater Lover's Lament

Confessions of a critic trying to keep the bottle at bay

Child Care

The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things exploits; Duck Season extols

Human Hand

Margaret Kilgallen’s passion

Web Exclusive: NYT Names New TV Beat Reporter

The Back Story

Southern Gothic Posturing

Donna Tartt comes home

Barnstorming

Michael Moore touches down

Meanwhile Back at the Ranch

The Man Who Got Away

Robinson Devor gets his 15 minutes

And the Winner Is -- HUAC

Elia Kazan will have the statue, but the victory belongs to the blacklist

Rostock or Bust

Achtung!

Of Lice and Men

Naomi Wallace's play about London's Great Plague