Sean J. O'Connell

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A Day at the Races

Sean J. O'Connell
Horse racing embodies what a lot of Americans really want from sports: outdoor yelling, large beers, readily accessible gambling and participants who can be shot if they underperform. There is no venue in California that has been offering those perks for as long as Santa Anita Park. The oldest still-functioning......
Albert "Tootie" Heath

Best Jazz Albums of 2013

Sean J. O'Connell
Assessing the jazz world every year is a challenge, and the following albums can at times sound like George Duke, Wendy Carlos Williams, Bill Evans and Radiohead. That's a hell of a wide net. This was supposed to be a list of five, but there were so many good ones......
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Wilson's Writer

Sean J. O'Connell
It takes a certain kind of personality to write biographies for a living, delving into the nitty-gritty of strangers' lives, unraveling mysteries and angering relatives. A. Scott Berg has been quite successful in that line of work, winning a National Book Award for his biography of literary editor Max Perkins......
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Spoken Word

Sean J. O'Connell
It's always fun to sit next to a great storyteller at a party. The best tales stick with you, whether they're about stumbling upon Bruce Springsteen on the Jersey Shore or two years spent learning irrigation in the Peace Corps. The Moth has hosted events devoted to the art since......
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Running With Turkeys

Sean J. O'Connell
For some college freshmen returning home for the first time, thrusting their newfound vegetarianism onto the family just isn't enough. They also want to get up early and run more than three miles in a costume around a stadium in Pasadena. The Rose Bowl Tofurky Trot fulfills all of these......
Credit: SJ O'Connell

Here's Where L.A. Rap Legends Are Buried

Sean J. O'Connell
Los Angeles cemeteries tend to be sprawling; their populations can rival small towns and are difficult to navigate. It's especially hard to find famous rappers' graves -- just ask our reporter who tried to find Eazy-E. Also, there aren't a lot of them here. Both Biggie Smalls and Tupac Shakur......
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Vegan Shoes Not Required

Sean J. O'Connell
A brief walk through the five-block Nishiki Market in Kyoto, Japan, is a life-changing experience. Amid the knives and noodle shops is a seemingly endless array of vibrant vegetables, ones that have blessed very few American palettes. You could eat a different mushroom every day for a decade without repetition......
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The Man Behind the Taco Truck

Sean J. O'Connell
Celebrity chefs are easy to come by. Every city has a roster of weathered hands that could be nominated for cooking challenges and culinary tours -- but few possess the revolutionary ideas and willingness to act on them of Roy Choi. Choi made his mark elevating the classic roach coach......
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The Lange Road to Recovery

Sean J. O'Connell
Heroin. Cocaine. Booze. Pizza. The human wrecking ball known as Artie Lange was pretty unapologetic about his vices in his best-selling 2008 memoir Too Fat to Fish. The New York-based comedian's terrifying stories of drug addiction and self-destruction during his days on MadTV, with The Howard Stern Show and in......
The corner of First Street and Grand Avenue.; Credit: Amy Theilig

Disney Hall, Frank Gehry's Gift to Wedding Photographers

Sean J. O'Connell
When the late L.A. Weekly classical music critic Alan Rich gave his grumpy assessment of the Walt Disney Concert Hall in December of 2003, aside from calling out the scalding reflections of the building and positing that the parking garage has better acoustics than the Hall itself, he noted, semi-sarcastically,......