If you see folks walking around with some dirt on their foreheads today, they proabably did it on purpose. It is Ash Wednesday, where Christians are supposed to fast, pray, repent after the debauchery of Mardi Gras and (Super Tuesday). So here' are a few debauch-free events for tonight: WORDS The ALOUD series continues with John Burnham Schwartz, author of Reservation Road, who talks about his new novel set in 1959 Japan where a non-aristocratic......

From my dear friend, musician and LAist reader, Jaime Pina: Vampira (real name Maila Nurmi) has haunted me since i can remember. Her elegant pictures from PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE in FAMOUS MONSTERS and other horror mags burned themselves into my brain. As a teenager, me and my associates in the kiddie horror punk band LOS CREMATORS de Santa Maria would drop LSD timed to peak at whatever late-night hour one of the......

Thomas Suriya of Taos, New Mexico had never painted a mural before, or even a portrait. and yet in 1983 he busted with an iconic Hollywood mural on his first try. Now 24 years later he has returned to LA to give "You are the Star" a touch up. Thanks to a grant by the Hollywood Arts Council, 59-year-old Suriya is back in town to put some life back into a mural that has been......

Yesterday the Parks Department revealed a draft master plan for Griffith Park, and we say it looks like one fun makeover. Included in the 25-year, wish-list-y proposal are a landscaped pier along the LA River and many improved natural wildlife corridors. The wow element is not one but two arial trams, one of which is designed to sweep over the LA Zoo (although the LA Times indicates that the zoo folks aren't keen on......

To begin the strange story of one of Pasadena's most beloved sons we must go back a bit, and begin in England on October 12, 1875. That was the birthday of Aleister Crowley, magician and occult thinker who is at the beginning of this tale. Crowley began his life's work upon his introduction into the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn; following the dissolution of the Golden Dawn, Crowley studied magick, Kabbalah, alchemy, tarot,......