Amanda Lewis

This house in Hancock Park was the closest thing I could find in LA to a proper Christmas Yardgasm.; Credit: Amanda Lewis

Christmas in Los Angeles: Why Do Our Xmas Lights Suck so Bad?

It's not always easy being a New York transplant in Los Angeles. I defend you a lot, LA, to everyone back home who hasn't eaten at your taco trucks, felt your gleaming afternoon sunshine or appreciated the sweeping vistas mid-hike through your urban mountains. But this holiday season I chose......
Buster Ringling isn't his real name -- but this really is his silhouette

Market Research Mambo: Secrets of a Focus Group Aficionado

"If you're really strapped for cash, you can sell your blood plasma," Buster Ringling says. "You can become an extra, but $60 for eight hours' worth of work? You get treated literally like cattle. It wasn't for me." When Ringling, a 26-year-old comedian/actor/juggler from Queens, New York, came out West......
Keith: "Don't be a place in Echo Park

Kris Keith of Spacecraft: 'I Will Crush You'

"You've got the celebrities, you've got the nightclub scene, you've got the bars, you've got it all." Kristofer Keith doesn't want to be a reality-TV star, but he is quick with a one-liner, like the one above about his firm's projects, and says 15 producers have pitched him pilots about......
Art Spiegelman talks life

Art Spiegelman on MetaMaus and How He Needs a Cigarette

Art Spiegelman needs a cigarette. He needs about 30 Camel Blue cigarettes a day, to be precise, but at the moment he needs just one, so we are sitting in the Roof Garden at the Soho House while he exhales onto our already-quite-smoggy city. Whether he will be able to......