Japanese porn embodies a wild and rigid dichotomy: On one hand, there’s the softcore mainstream, legally prohibited from showing genitalia and, until recently, pubic hair and intended to be consistent with the country’s image of modesty, tact and low crime rate; and on the other, there’s an underground notorious for......

"They was helicopters," claimed a Midwestern farmer repeatedly on an audiotape I heard back in 1986. Who knows what he thought about being hypnotized to reconstruct his alien abduction, much less what he went through that day in his field — but if we do believe him (not that he......

This story, originally published in the September 18, 1997, issue of L.A. Weekly, was reposted when R.B. Kitaj passed away October 21, 2007. Photo by Slobodan DimitrovThere are certain phrases that, once you've spent a few afternoons in the company of the painter R.B. Kitaj, rapidly become familiar. "I overstayed......