Gwynedd Stuart

Credit: Mandee Johnson

Best Podcast for People Who Like Murder

Gwynedd Stuart
Some girlfriends gossip about guys and clothes; other girlfriends gossip about the grisly ways in which people have ended other people's lives. L.A.-based comedian-friends Georgia Hardstark and Karen Kilgariff indulge their mutual desire to gab about horrifying crimes on their weekly podcast, My Favorite Murder. Over the course of 30-plus......
Credit: James Seward

Best Recurring Celebration of a Domesticated Animal

Gwynedd Stuart
It doesn't get much more zeitgeisty than an art show that consists exclusively of representations of cats. Proof perfect: the line that stretched down Maple Avenue on the opening night of "Cat Art Show L.A. 2: The Sequel" at Think Tank Gallery downtown in March. Kids wearing cat ears, adults......
The Museum of Neon Art in Glendale is a must.; Credit: Gwynedd Stuart

Best (and Brightest) Comeback

Gwynedd Stuart
There's been a lot of buzz surrounding the Museum of Neon Art's recent reopening — incidentally, there's a lot of buzz inside, too. Originally established in 1981 in a space downtown, MONA bounced around for several years before landing in its new permanent location in Glendale, right across from the......
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Best First Year

Gwynedd Stuart
In a feature we published in advance of the Broad’s grand opening last September, we gave voice to the unease surrounding the free modern art museum, a $140 million monument to a wealthy couple’s priceless collection, like a Great Pyramid minus the mummies. But something about the museum has struck......
Credit: Dream Reality Cinema

Best Newfangled Meditation

Gwynedd Stuart
Devised by a husband-and-wife team who split their time between Hungary and Beverly Hills, where their cozy storefront meditation center is located, Dream Reality Cinema is basically a 40-minute guided meditation spent in a prolonged twilight state. Seated in a zero-gravity chair — a really comfortable La-Z-Boy with an extreme......
Credit: Hollywood Pool

Best Pool

Gwynedd Stuart
Hollywood is chock-full of swanky-ass hotel pools. While people are seeing and being seen at the Roosevelt Hotel, everyone's having a much more laid-back time about a mile southeast at Hollywood Pool. The facility was completely renovated in 2015 but retains its midcentury charm — plus it has shaded bleachers,......
The Meltdown With Jonah and Kumail on Comedy Central

The Meltdown With Jonah and Kumail Is Calling it Quits

Gwynedd Stuart
It's a sad day for L.A. comedy fanatics.  The city's most popular weekly stand-up show, The Meltdown With Jonah and Kumail, is coming to a close in mid-October. Every Wednesday since 2010, Nerdist podcast co-host Jonah Ray and Silicon Valley's Kumail Nanjiani have invited fervent audiences into Nerdmelt Showroom at Meltdown......
A still from the explosion in "The Loose Nut"; Credit: Courtesy of Universal Studios Licensing LLC

Woody Woodpecker Cartoons Were More Subversive Than You Thought

Gwynedd Stuart
Loyola Marymount animation professor Tom Klein's first job out of college at UCLA was watching cartoons.  In 1994 and again in 1998, when Universal was working on a Woody Woodpecker reboot for FoxKids, Klein was brought on by the studio to act as its resident Woody Woodpecker expert. As a......
Werner Spitz

CBS' JonBenét Ramsey Documentary Made Its Point — in Ghastly Fashion

Gwynedd Stuart
In the realm of true-crime documentary, there's a fine line between attempting in earnest to uncover the truth and setting out with the agenda of advancing a preconceived belief. But, frankly, "documentary" seems like the wrong word to describe CBS's two-part televised investigation into JonBenét Ramsey's 1996 murder, called simply The Case......