Gendy Alimurung

Donna Mee

Donna Mee, the Makeup Guru of Southern California

Gendy Alimurung
Once a year, in late summer, Donna Mee takes her vintage makeup collection out of storage. Mee, who is known alternately as the makeup guru, the pageant guru and the queen of corrective makeup, teaches a class on the history of beauty at her Costa Mesa school, Empire Academy. The......
Amanda Cardinal

The Tournament of Robots

Gendy Alimurung
The Botball girls love their robots. They love the robots' code, which they programmed themselves. They love their crazy hardware and diminutive size — like rogue kitchen appliances. The annual Botball Educational Robotics Program tournament is taking place on a balmy summer day at the cavernous USC Galen Center. And......
Sonja Rasula; Credit: Photo by Danny Liao

At the Art Deco Festival, Talking About the Joy of Shoes

Gendy Alimurung
On a blazing hot summer afternoon, designer Kimberly Manning Aker and ex-architect Alice Jurow are standing at a podium in one of the plush ballrooms on board the Queen Mary in Long Beach, presenting a winding, charming and not-at-all exhaustive discourse on shoes. This weekend being the annual Art Deco......
L.A.'s Thien Hau Temple; Credit: Photo courtesy of Flickr/Keenan Pepper

At the Hungry Ghost Festival, Rituals to Appease the Dead

Gendy Alimurung
On the 15th day of the seventh lunar month, according to Chinese belief, the gates of hell open and ghosts pour out of the lower realm. On that day, Southern California's Chinese diaspora celebrates the Hungry Ghost Festival. They perform rituals to appease the dead. It is a time of......
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A Rabbi Remembers His Relationship With Michael Jackson

Gendy Alimurung
Five years to the day that his friend Michael Jackson died, Shmuley Boteach, 47-year-old Orthodox rabbi and relentless self-promoter, is sitting at a cafe in Malibu contemplating the nature of fame. It is an overcast, gloomy summer afternoon — unusual but appropriate, he says. What he feels today is "sad,......