Skylaire Alfvegren

Through the 1930s, Los Angeles celebrated its Name Day with a flurry of folklorico and a candlelit procession through Olvera Street. Although the Name Day appears long gone, Olvera Street celebrated its 82nd anniversary a week ago and today hosts the L.A. Heritage Alliance and its Fourth Annual L.A. Heritage......

One might not immediately equate L.A. Live — the sprawling entertainment complex that houses Staples Center (home to the L.A. Lakers, Kings and Clippers), the Grammy Museum, a protruding, boner-shaped Ritz-Carlton hotel and various and sundry tourist entertainments — with Earth Day. (Although mogul Phil Anschutz and company did just......

Three months shy of what would be his 100th birthday, Woody Guthrie, the prolific, influential and politically charged folk musician, is being celebrated with a day-long conference arranged by "four distinguished universities," the Woody Guthrie Archives and the GRAMMY Museum. "The Dust Bowl Troubadour" traveled alongside migrant workers from Oklahoma......

One could consider this a night of music. After all, it features a rare performance by Glen Meadmore, everyone's favorite, seven-foot-tall gay Christian cow punk, and an even rarer appearance by incomprehensibly notorious aural abusers Beyond Joy and Evil. Wrangled by Jon Aes Nihil — a cryptic, demented fellow as......

In Los Angeles, we have many flavors of improv comedy to choose from: shows based on the audience's Facebook posts, worst dates, worst jobs or goofiest shoutouts (once, at Chicago's Second City, this writer had to explain long pig to future members of SNL). Here's a new twist, based on......

How people can coddle their labradoodles, pookimos and schneagles and still gorge on bacon, burgers and chicken is beyond me. It's believed that a mother hen's vocalizations are more complicated than those of a dog, an animal whose intelligence is bested by the pig. Yes, the pig! Babe wasn't just......

Spiffy East Coast web magazine Slate.com has a podcast called Culture Gabfest, wherein its cadre of highly educated critics wittily discuss timely cultural and pop-cultural topics, their shelf lives and whatnot. (Seriously, peep their virtual masthead — even the assistant went to Yale.) Said critics Dana Stevens, Stephen Metcalf and......

Many grumbled when Jim Henson's beloved Muppets were recently made over, Disney having chucked a Frank Oz script for ... Jason Segel's. A character created by another beloved children's icon, Dr. Seuss, was just given the big-screen treatment to boffo box office but mixed reviews. Many cried foul as The......

Jonathan Lethem is an interesting cat: The New York Times best-selling author of eight novels (including Chronic City, The Fortress of Solitude and Motherless Brooklyn), he also penned a delicious look at John Carpenter's anticapitalist ghoulfest, They Live, and acted as co-editor of Philip K. Dick's astounding Exegesis. (At a......

If you believe the AMA, the FDA and the USDA care about your health and welfare, you are D-U-M-B. We live in age where more deaths are caused by prescription medications than street drugs, where we enjoy the seventh-highest cancer rate of any nation, where the above-named agencies are bought......