University of Southern California

Dr. Dre on His USC Academy: "This Is the Biggest Thing I've Ever Been a Part Of"

As our sister blog The Informer reported yesterday, Interscope Records boss Jimmy Iovine and boss of all bosses Dr. Dre pooled together $70 million they had lying around to establish the USC Jimmy Iovine and Andre Young Academy for Arts, Technology and the Business of Innovation. It will offer stude ... More >>

Q & A With USC Professor Sarah Portnoy: On Latino Food in L.A

We all eat for pleasure. Some of us also eat in pursuit of academic knowledge. "Food studies" is a burgeoning field where scholars consider food a potent tool for illuminating a vast range of topics and issues. Among L.A. colleges and universities, you'll find classes on "Animal Ethics," "Restaurant ... More >>

USC Locks Down its Campus Fortress, Adjacent to South Central and High Crime, to Keep Out Non-Students. Does This Make Sense?

Security became far tighter, and way more paranoid, this week at the University of Southern California located a few blocks west of gang-riddled South Central Los Angeles, and some people might find the new lock-down rules a bit hard to take. A new rule instituted on Monday, Jan. 14 forces student ... More >>

Gentlemen, Start Your Soapbox

Top 5 Weekend Food Events: FIG Sausage Fest, Feria de los Moles, Wine & Jazz Festival, BAM Fest Planet Taco Talk

FIG Inaugural Sausage Fest Chefs Vartan Abgaryan (Public Kitchen), Greg Daniels (Haven Gastropub), Daniel Mattern (Cooks County), Bernhard Mairinger (BierBeisl) and Kris Morningstar (Ray's and Stark Bar) join FIG chef Ray Garcia to grill up their best homemade brats. Sides, snacks and beers from Smo ... More >>

Bryshon Nellum, USC Runner Shot in Leg by Gangsters, Now Going to London Olympics

The University of Southern California (USC) is one of the nation's most prestigious private universities -- its reputation for academic excellence bested only by its reputation for churning out sports stars. In fact, USC's PR team announced today that the school has produced more Olympians than any ... More >>

USC Study Finds Rage Can Be Blocked in Mice -- And Possibly Humans, Too

Do you constantly fly off the handle to the point of getting violent or yelling at people? There may soon be a new pill to stop that. University of Southern California researchers have found that pathological rage in mice can be blocked, and they believe this discovery can lead to treatment for hum ... More >>

The Isolated Fortress of USC

Can redevelopment address divide?

Latino Journalists Losing USC Office Space

America's first journalism group for Latinos will celebrate its 40th year in existence during its annual banquet June 1 at downtown's Biltmore Millennium Hotel. Unfortunately, this might also be its last year. The director of CCNMA: Latino Journalists of California (where this writer is a board me ... More >>

USC Hosts Weekend Seminar to Educate Current Politicians on Ethics, Transparency; L.A. Mayor Attends Kentucky Derby Instead

The University of Southern California isn't just for strapping young scholars anymore. Today and tomorrow, the USC Price School of Public Policy begins an ongoing series of classes that will school current politicians in "public transparency and ethics, leadership, governance and environmental polic ... More >>

Academy Award Winners Haven't Included Latino Actors, Nonwhite Actresses in 10 Years

Updated at the bottom: The Oscars broke the 10-year spell. Only days after the voters behind the Academy Awards were revealed as extremely white (94 percent), male (77 percent) and old (median age, 62), the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center issued a report indicating that Oscar winners seem to r ... More >>

Video Games as Physical Therapy? USC Uses Motion-Capture Technology to Heal the Injured

Startups is a new column about new companies, big ideas and bold discoveries happening in the L.A. area. Belinda Lange knows how to have some serious fun. A physiotherapist by training, Lange leads a group at the University of Southern California's Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT), which d ... More >>

Naan Stop Food Truck to Open Restaurant... in Atlanta

The latest Los Angeles food truck to open a brick-and-mortar location is Naan Stop (@naanstop), but they're doing it in Atlanta. Why? Because Georgia needs samosas and masala fries. In fact, it's sort of a return to their roots for Neal and Samir Idnani, who own and run the truck. The brothers " ... More >>

Antoine Denell Jordan, 1980s Sex Monster Who Raped USC Women at Knifepoint, Moves Near Fullerton Colleges

HomefactsAntoine Denell Jordan, serial rapist, now lives near Fullerton college students.​Watch out, women of CSU Fullerton and Fullerton College (and anyone else who lives in the area, really). Antoine Denell Jordan, the 50-year-old sex offender convicted in 1983 of multiple counts of violen ... More >>

Director John Waters Talks Amanda Knox, Striped Socks, and Underpants Bomber

Patrick Range McDonaldJohn Waters, left, and James Egan​Last Friday night, legendary film director John Waters sat down with L.A. Weekly for a friendly, often times hilarious, chat, promoting a new book that features his media interviews over the past 46 years: John Waters: Interviews. Univer ... More >>

L.A. Riots 19 Years Later: An Oral History

Time​What was it like in L.A. on this day in 1992. Scary. Very scary. And sad. You felt like the social contract had fallen apart. The Korean term for the L.A. riots is actually April 29 (Sa-i-Gu). USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism's Intersections South LA community news s ... More >>

Three USC Students Robbed at Gunpoint Near Campus

USC: a bubble in South L.A.​Update: Police are holding two suspects. They were arrested on unrelated charges, but some of the USC students' loot was in their possession, KTLA reports. The suspects were detained on unrelated charges, but police found items on their being related to the robberi ... More >>

USC VIDEO: Techies Pwn Google, Turn 'Gmail Motion' April Fool's Prank Into Reality

YouTube​Updated after the jump: One of the USC techies shows us how to work real-life Gmail Motion. And it's ever radder than we thought. Google unleashed many a poke in the rib on April Fool's Day 2011. There was the Helvetica-turned-Comic Sans search -- a budding typophile's wet dream -- an ... More >>

East Coast Colleges to Ship More Film Students to L.A. -- But Are They Welcome?

The Others shall walk among us​Yeah, yeah, we know. There's really no better place in the world to study filmmaking than the glamorous studio sprawl of Los Angeles -- or, as that golden-oldies station puts it, the Entertainment Capital of the World. Better still, all that studying has the po ... More >>

Christina Salazar, 17-Year-Old L.A. Girl, Shot Dead Near USC; Shooter Leads Police on High-Speed Chase

Courtesy of Cynthia SecrestChristina Salazar​Updated after the jump: Salazar's friends and family held a fundraiser to raise her burial costs on Saturday, where they told the Weekly that two neighborhood siblings had been arrested for the crime. Update: A cousin describes Salazar's last momen ... More >>

Bill Nye Passes Out During Climate-Change Lecture At USC; Students Keep Tweeting

Where's your head at?​Update from Nye's publicist: "Bill Nye is feeling much better after a good night's rest. He says he pushed himself too hard after a long day of an early satellite media tour combined with a late night speech." Originally posted at 7:15 a.m. Nineties science icon Bill Nye ... More >>

The Alhambra Source Offers News In Three Languages -- English, Mandarin and Spanish

The Alhambra Source​A new website has recently entered the online news arena, providing critical information to the residents of Alhambra, a small city located a few miles east of downtown Los Angeles. And it's doing so in multiple languages. The Alhambra Source is a collective endeavor bet ... More >>

Robert Naranjo, L.A. Homicide No. 112: Man Fatally Shot After he left Birthday Party in Boyle Heights

Los Angeles Police Department detectives are looking for the gunman who shot and killed a 28-year-old man man early Saturday morning after he left a party in Boyle Heights May 22. View Larger Map Robert Naranjo of South Los Angeles was at a birthday party with a group of family members and friends ... More >>

SHABBAT BOP A LULA

Breaking News: L.A.'s Local TV News Not So Local

​A USC study of local television news released Tuesday found that half-hour newscasts only covered local government issues for an average of 22 seconds, with nearly half of the shows' time left over after ads, sports, weather and teasers were accounted for being devoted to news from outside th ... More >>

Swine Flu Deaths Covered Up In California

Neon Tommy, the USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism publication, has been rebuffed by several counties in California in its attempt to obtain records of swine flu deaths.Neon Tommy​ Only after some persistence did Los Angeles County allow the USC journalists to take a peek ... More >>

A Beautiful Mind: Anne Friedberg, 1952-2009

Ron Jeremy v. The Pastor

Craig Gross​Luke Ford/Wiki​Porn has been very very good to Ron Jeremy, the cherubic hardcore star who, paradoxically, could serve as an inspiration either for the main character in Hung or a figure in a Disney film. (One of his nicknames is, after all, "Hedgehog.") After appearing in nearly 2,00 ... More >>

BEST PROOF THAT ANGELENOS CAN READ

Envirowimps: L.A.'s Big Green Groups Get Comfy

Activists leave the street-fighting to the little guys

A Tale of Two Deaths: University Park v. Highland Park

This morning Claudia Cabrera is due to appear at the Criminal Courts Building to set the date for a preliminary hearing regarding the hit and run accident that killed USC student Adrianna Bachan and seriously injured fellow student Marcus Garfinkle. Today's L.A. Times reports on the inevitable discr ... More >>

Animal House: USC Frat Suspended in Rape Cases

University of Southern California vice president for student affairs, Michael L. Jackson, has announced the suspension of Lamda Chi Alpha. The fraternity is suspected as the location of  sexual assaults against three women Wednesday morning. According to the Associated Press, one 19-year-old wo ... More >>

'MATLI CREW

And Worth Every Trust-Fund Dollar: Pete Carroll's Salary

Today's Daily Trojan publishes a story, unconfirmed by the University of Southern California, that superstar football coach Pete Carroll "is not only the highest paid employee at USC but at any private university in the country." The DT bases its piece on a report issued by the Chronicle of Higher E ... More >>

Love and Marriage

Riding the Cultural Divide with Proposition 8

What's at stake in California's gay-marriage ban

Tonight at USC's Annenberg School: Music Writers Ponder the Life and Death of Criticsim

So tonight at 7:30 at USC's Annenberg School, I'll be participating in a forum on the future of music criticism. Organized by the L.A. Times' chief pop critic Ann Powers, the panel discussion features fellow L.A. Weekly contributors Ernest Hardy and Oliver Wang; Pulitzer Prize-winning music criti ... More >>

The Deja Vu of Bernard Parks vs. Mark Ridley-Thomas

Stubborn black leaders stage a replay of '92, as the black community fades

"Justice" Unbecoming

Fourth Estate as watchdog; Alan Rich, one of a kind; Gettys our royals?

Prop. S: The Revolution May Be Taxed

L.A. City Hall wants to tax your air. After all, it's an emergency

Silent Wraith: Chester Turner

By slaying troubled black women, LA's worst serial killer operated invisibly for years

Cruise in Control

The Syracuse kid saves the world in style

The Big Test

Big-money candidate limps to the finish line

The Smog Doctor

John Peters and the science of children and dirty air

University of Fear

How the Department of Homeland Security is becoming a big man on campus

Selling War

How the military’s ad campaign gets inside the heads of recruits

Those Little-Town Blues Are Melting Away

The Dark Ages

Sculpture garden honors the Hollywood 10

B.S. on Campus

USC food workers fast for new contract

Sacked and Sued

First he was fired, now ex-USC coach Robinson faces suit by former aide