My mother has been making these Central/Eastern European influenced cookies since before I was born. Every Christmas, we have these delicious powdered sugared, jam filled treats. It turns out, the dessert is also interchangeably a cookie and/or a pastry and has quite an old and varied history:The oldest ritual leavened loaf which came into being soon after the Slavs embraced Christianity is shaped in a round, ring or like a cart and is called......

Artist: Beirut Album: The Flying Club Cup Label: Ba Da Bing Records Release Date: 10/09/07 Listen to the track "A Sunday Smile": Beirut is the brainshild of the oft-blogged travelling wunderkind 21-yr old Zach Condon. Whereas Beirut's debut release, Gulag Orkestar, was an obtuse and idealized interpretation of Balkan music, this new release is Zach's take on the music of Parisian street minstrels. With multiple vocal and string tracks, in addition to the expected accordion......

We're still kind of obsessed with the cooking videos over at imcooked, especially the oddly soothing clips of Thai street vendors cooking their wares: in the video above, check out a fried mussel dish prepared in less than four minutes. The LA Times heads north this week to seek out culinary finds in Ventura and Santa Barbara, respectively: first at new vegan restaurant, Mary's Secret Garden, and then at the Santa Barbara outpost of......

If you've passed through Hollywood enough times, you can’t have failed to notice the bizarre billboard on the West side of Highland just North of Fountain. And if you're like me, every time you pass by, you idly wonder about the man whose leonine countenance gazes benignly on weary travellers. What is that guy staring at so intently? Why have I never heard of his movie? And how the hell can he afford to......

Recommended 13 Tzameti - French movie with an Eastern European sensibility about a young handyman who decides to follow instructions intended for the owner of the house he's repairing. He ends up in a remote house, where he is forced to take part in a brutal game of Russian Roulette in which only one of the 13 participants will survive. Bicycle Thieves - Criterion has released a DVD of Vittorio De Sica's 1947 classic......

Take Klezmer. Add some hip-hop beats. Pour in some Eastern European flavor. Now what do you have? A sometimes quirky and Jewish sounding Manu Chao, a traditional wedding dance on speed, or maybe even something a little harder with Matisyahu. This is Josh Dolgin, a.k.a. Socalled. Socalled is a Montreal-based writer, photographer, musician, animator and magician. Saturday, here in Los Angeles at the Dragonfly, you can witness the musician/DJ/producer side at Jewzika – a......

Memorable Laker achievements extend from the glory days of George Mikan to their recent string of championships with Phil, Shaq and Kobe, but one of the most important contributions from Laker past came to an anticlimactic end this week. Vlade Divac’s retirement represents official closure of the first truly prominent European player in the NBA. Today, we know the Euro influence through names like Dirk Nowitzki (the good), Nikoloz Tskitishvili (the bad) and Antoine......