the Rabbit of Seville, with a "cameo" by Leopold Stokowski This week we revisit some classic cartoons at the Hollywood Bowl. It pairs the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Looney Tunes characters as it incorporates the music and the cartoons live on stage. This is the final performance of the show before 2010 when they present a new 20th anniversary edition. It includes the Rabbit of Seville and What's Opera Doc? This is a fun......

If Wagner was still alive today, he would have just celebrated his 195th (!) birthday yesterday. His influence was felt by many including Baudelaire, Freud, Joyce, Nietzsche, and any/every important contemporary of his. Some recent adaptations in mainstream media that come to mind include a terrible Tristan + Isolde movie and Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy (based off of Wagner's Ring cycle). For me most memorable tribute to Wagner comes from a not-too-recent......

There's no doubt about it, Pasadena is an arts town. Local "old money" patronize the cultural arts in these parts and it shows. Talk about the season opener for the Pasadena Symphony, you can't go wrong with these three composers. Known as Mexico's most distinctive musical voice of the 1930's, Silvestre Revueltas is a madman of a composer -- colorful, energetic and all over the place. "The Homage to Lorca conflates two seemingly incompatible......

Besides exposure for new and upcoming music, SXSW also serves as a launching pad for products, companies and shows like MTV's upcoming Human Giant. Starring funny men Aziz Ansari, Rob Huebel and Paul Scheer, the show kicked off a sneak preview party last night at Friends on 6th St. We ran into Sam Grossman, development exec at MTV. He talked about the new sketch comedy show with us over beers. “There’s a Bugs Bunny......

This weekend, LAist went to Hell and back. Yes, we finally made it to Hollywood Hell House, and our wicked little souls thank them. If you're still not familiar with the concept, basically, Hell Houses have become something of a fundamentalist Christian Halloween tradition. They’ve sprung up all over the Bible Belt as an alternative to haunted houses, but instead of skeletons and ghosts, they're full of homosexuals and abortion patients, and the "scary"......