Joe Lapin

Aspiring to be a writer is a lot like wanting to believe in political bipartisanship, the tooth fairy and God (wait, I mean ... ) — eventually someone will tell you to grow up, find a job and take your head out of our ass. But there are actually people......

For years now, Long Beach has been the epicenter of a bitter controversy: Should zombies be given the same rights as humans? Zombies have been beaten, denied service in restaurants and viewed as vermin worse than rats. Zombie activists cite the tension as a result of unfair biases and stereotypes......

College students all over the country are moving on campus, building furniture from Ikea and learning that dorm food ain't home cookin'. As inevitable as the freshmen 15, thousands of these students will hang up a poster of Bob Marley smoking a fat doobie. And sadly for some, Bob Marley's......

You love Michael Jackson's Jheri curl; the debate between Cindy Lauper and Madonna; and Spandex pants outlining the unmentionables of long-haired anthem rockers. You love excess, INXS, Reaganomics, Star Wars. And in your mind, the '80s will always be the most boss era of all time. Period. But of all......

Since 9/11, it's difficult to attend a baseball game without the fear of someone wandering into the crowd with a bomb or remain calm when someone reaches down to tie their shoes on an airplane. Unattended suitcases, envelopes, white powder all carry connotations of fear. Not to mention the larger......

Laurie Ochoa and Joe Donnelly, editors of Slake: Los Angeles, have been scouring the streets of Southern California for poets, writers and artists to save from the massacre of the printed word. E-readers, the Great Recession and the death of long-form journalism have left many without a home. Ochoa and......

In Long Beach, there's a movie theater that screens only one film at a time and allows you to bring in bottles of wine from the venue's adjacent Art du Vin wine bar. I know — amazing. It's like something out of the '50s and forgotten small-town America, just with......

Remember when you walked in late to freshman English, bar stamps on the back of your hand, bracelets dangling on your wrist, and Professor Bumbletooth asked if ...

First Nietzsche said God was dead, then music videos killed the radio star, and most recently Facebook annihilated real-life friendship. Now e-readers are murde...