We partook this year of the fireworks event at the Rose Bowl, and got a little more of a blaze than we bargained for when some trees behind the stadium caught on fire. The Star-News reports that the blaze was caused by illegal fireworks, rather than the official ones. In any case, the fireworks display was lavish, with lots of big blooming lights like bouquets of chrysanthemums. One of our friends thought to bring... [continue]

The Hammer Museum has free admission all summer. And it's air conditioned. Of course, the galleries are organized around a central courtyard, but last weekend, when the rest of the city was as scorching as it was today, that little courtyard felt like an oasis of shade and calm. Parking in the building costs $3 with the Hammer's validation, or there's a Metro Rapid stop right outside. They've also got some cool nighttime events... [continue]

LAist favorites Jenny Lewis and the Watson Twins returned to LA and Spaceland on Thursday night. The show consisted basically of the songs from their album Rabbit Fur Coat. We decided to go after having the album on rotation for weeks, and liking each more each time. The songs are steeped in enough traditonal styles that they feel somewhat timeless. "Rabbit Fur Coat" is in a way a sad inversion of Dolly Parton's classic... [continue]

We caught the June 8 performance of Grendel at the Los Angeles Opera, which, due to some previous technical setbacks, turned out to be the world premiere. The opera tells the story of Beowulf, a human epic of a battle against a monster, from the point of view of the monster. The production uses puppets with a variety of influences in addition to the human actor/singers -- this production is from many of the... [continue]

Tuesday, 6/6/06 is Election Day again in California. You can download a voter guide and find your polling place here. You wouldn't know it from the recent run of attack ads, but the two frontrunning Democratic candidates Phil Angelides and Steve Westly have in the past seemed like fairly rational, decent guys. (Disclosure: this LAist contributor volunteered a bit on Angelides's campaign.) They're both state-level finance guys, which seems useful given that California's current... [continue]

US Senate votes to make English the official language of the United States. Isn't this supposed this a free country? Come on, fellow Americans, you know you don't like to be told what to do. What's next, a literacy test before you can vote? What Voting Rights Act of 1965?... [continue]

"We put them both on because they both deserved to be on. If they weren't on our air, they'd be on somewhere else." -- Kevin Reilly, president of NBC Entertainment, on the two vaguely-fictional-behind-the-scenes-at-Saturday-Night-Live shows by Tina Fey and Aaron Sorkin in NBC's fall lineup, as quoted in the New Orleans Times-Picayune "Better to have him inside the tent pissing out, than outside pissing in." -- Lyndon Baines Johnson, 37th President of the United... [continue]

Everyone who's ever sat fuming at a big gas-guzzling SUV now has the company of California Attorney General Bill Lockyer. California and nine other states are suing the Bush administration over mileage rules for sport utility vehicles and light trucks. The decision is actually made in the Department of Transportation, run by Norman Mineta, but that's in the Executive Branch, so he was appointed by and reports to Bush. In fact, the Transportation people... [continue]

With divisive leigislation pending in the House of Representatives and the immigrant rights march coming up Monday to protest it, the United States again gets to address the question of who gets to come here and whether they help or unintentionally harm their new country. According to their site, the goals of the coalition organizing the march are "to keep immigrant families together, protect our civil rights, pass comprehensive immigration reform with a path... [continue]

Relaxing last night after the Festival of Books, we caught the Dotch Cooking Show, which Lindsay discovered last summer. It was every bit as weird and delighful as she promised. "Beef bowl is in your dreams. You want to eat it now." We don't really care whether a contestant chooses "Deal" or "No Deal," whether or not they become a millionaire, or what's behind door #3, but somehow the question "Beef bowl or pork... [continue]

The Festival of Books is a lot of fun and a set of curious paradoxes. The first is that it's an enormous social festival about books, an art form usually enjoyed, unlike, say, theater, film, or music, by oneself in silence. Another is that much of the point of the festival is to see writers in the flesh, even though the point of a writer, really, is that their thoughts and feelings reach their... [continue]

As he promised, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa released his proposed budget today. In true blog fashion, we offer you an early but sketchy summary based on a quick scan of what seem to be the highlights of the 399 page budget and its supporting documentation. In many ways, the budget is designed to offer new services that benefit everyone while gleaning revenues from those most able to afford it. The new items in the budget... [continue]

Dear Hollywood Actors and Actresses: After we work all day and fend off LA's many arrogant and entitled drivers on our commute home, we sometimes find watching your television performances a pleasant way to unwind -- unless you make our blood boil by revealing in what you seem to think is a "charming" way that in fact you are one of those awful drivers. Last night on The Late Show with David Letterman, Alexis... [continue]

Today at 5:30 pm, Mayor Villaraigosa made a "State of the City" address -- sort of like the State of the Union address, but just for LA. In fact, the speech in many ways served as the inverse of this year's State of the Union address. "Angelenos, it's time for all of us to make the tough choices," said Mayor Villaraigosa. According to the Mayor, we're trying to stop violence and inequity, and we're... [continue]

There's a literary "voice" and a spoken voice, and if you were listening to the National Public Radio show "Marketplace Money" today around 2:30 on KPCC, you might have recognized both "voices" in one piece as belonging to LAist's own Carolyn Kellogg. She didn't mention it here herself, but Carolyn wrote, produced, and narrated a piece on whether people actually use algebra once they are grown up. If you missed it, or want to... [continue]

The Believer's April 2006 issue and web site have several articles about LA and/or by LA writers. As we've mentioned, in Thirteen Ways of Seeing Nature in L.A." , Jenny Price takes the facetious response she gets when she tells people at cocktail parties that she is a Los Angeles-based nature writer, --"Is there nature in LA?" --as the starting point for her meditation on the natural world in the city, or the city... [continue]

June Pointer, youngest of the singing Pointer Sisters, died Tuesday of cancer at UCLA Medical Center. In addition to singing on the group's major albums, including lead vocal on the song "Jump (For my Love)," she co-wrote songs such as "I'm So Excited," which exemplified the group's capacity for joyous naughtiness. The Pointer Sisters' music spanned genres: they could sing rock, R&B, old-fashioned jazz, and country all on the same album and still have a... [continue]

My brother was in town today, and since he's been here before, I wanted to think of something to do that was specific to LA, but not the Walk of Fame, the Getty, or the beach. He already appreciates LA: as a helicopter pilot, he takes a certain professional delight/amusement in this city's obsession with that mode of transportation, and having spent time in Naples, also enjoys LA's quasi-Mediterranean landscape. He'd already gone with... [continue]

L.A. based writer Caitlin Flanagan gets profiled, and demonstrates some of the more hypocritical aspects of her personality, in this month's Elle. Ms. Flanagan has been criticized before, in places like Beverly-Hills based Ms., but the Elle article is particularly well-written, and Elle is not generally known for having a set political agenda, unless you count the trumpeting of one shoe designer over another. (Thanks to Salon.com's Broadsheet for pointing it out.) Both articles... [continue]

Los Angeles's Catholic Archbishop Roger Mahony has an Op-Ed in the New York Times (registration required) about his statement that he would tell his priests to defy a proposed law about illegal immigration. He writes, "Providing humanitarian assistance to those in need should not be made a crime, as the House bill decrees. As written, the proposed law is so broad that it would criminalize even minor acts of mercy like offering a meal... [continue]