The Belmont Decision

Debra Dipaolo For critics of the scandal-plagued Belmont Learning Complex — the nation’s most expensive high school project — the school board’s upcoming vote has been a long time coming. For the first time, a majority of board members are on the verge of killing the project, which sits half-finished......

The Wizard of Simi

Just by looking at its jacket, Cynthia Kersey was disturbed by the book her son Andy brought home from his fourth-grade class at Simi Elementary School. She read it cover to cover: “I was even more horrified by what I found inside.” It wasn‘t the Story of O or The......

Righting Wrongs

Photo by Slobodan Dimitrov They fought in the bloody battles of Bataan and Corregidor under General MacArthur. They survived a 70-mile death march to Camp O’Donnell prison while some 7,000 of their fellow Filipino and American soldiers died of starvation, dehydration, and bayonet blows promptly meted out to stragglers. Despite......

Ruben Could Be Right

Carrots, Jessica Boone; Ruben & Ramon, APWide World; Hayden, Debra Dipaolo For exactly one day, the school-reform plan of L.A. schools Superintendent Ruben Zacarias was the hottest story in town, drawing a horde of TV cameras and an above-the-fold headline in the L.A. Times. This was the reform vision of......
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Baby Bummers

type o, joseph cultice; bell, karen mason; custer, anne hamersky TYPE O NEGATIVEWorld Coming Down (Roadrunner) A new facet of goth culture on display at the Bauhaus reunion show at the Palladium was office goths: folks who had long ago traded in their black lipstick and powdery faces for an......
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Noodle-Noodle Soup

Between the movie screen and the concert stage, traffic moves in both directions. During the month of October you could have watched two great bygone film classics, Carl Dreyer‘s 1928 silent The Passion of Joan of Arc and Tod Browning’s 1931 Dracula, being weighed down with latter-day musical concoctions by......
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Bun There, Done That

photo by Kathleen ClarkEVEN IN LOS ANGELES . . . WHERE IT IS possible to eat not only wood-fired goat-cheese pizza with duck sausage and sun-dried fennel, but also reasonably authentic Merida-style cochinita pibil and properly made Cambodian catfish amok, hand-ground of course, steamed to a fine fluffiness and garnished......

Delicious Huge Love

Long ago on radio, and not so long ago on television, a voice-over would here and there blurt forth, ”And now this“ -- a prophecy that the alleged entertainment would be making a transition into something more overtly commercial. ”And now this“ seemed polite enough on the radio, but on......

Letters

HAGGARD DEAR EDITOR: The article on Merle Haggard by Jonny Whiteside ["Love and Hell," October 15­21] was awesome. He put Merle in a light that many people don't see. I've been a fan for over 30 years, and I have seen the ups and downs. Merle has never looked for......

Frankenfoods

Are U.S. consumers ready to demand labeling of genetically modified foods on their grocery shelves? The September issue of Consumer Reports magazine found DNA-altered ingredients in taco chips, infant formula, veggie burgers and corn-muffin mix. DNA-modified food has long been an international controversy, but a hidden issue for many Americans,......