The much-maligned, oft-hated James Frey, author of the fictional memoir A Million Little Pieces and the man most well-known for being dissed on national TV by Oprah Winfrey, is back. While many now agree that blame for the whole Frey-affair rests with both Frey and his publisher, Frey got the bad end of the deal and has been vilified ever since. This time, he's sticking with fiction instead of peddling fiction-as-truth. His new novel, Bright......

Why is this man so happy? | Photo via AP New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer, who rode into office on the high horse of morality after years of spearing Wall Street robber barrons as the attorney general, has been linked to a prostitiution ring that has operated in Los Angeles. According to the New York Times, Spitzer, who is married and has three kids, was nabbed after a federal wiretap showed he tried to......

A 33-year-old white woman from Sherman Oaks, now living in Eugene, Oregon, has made national headlines today as news comes that her memoir was largely fabricated. Last week, Margaret Seltzer who goes by the pen name Margaret B. Jones was featured in the New York Times' Home & Garden section in a fascinating story about her book, "Love and Consequences." One LAist reader explains her fascination about it in an e-mail: I read the home......

Did John McCain have a sex scandal? Is Perez Hilton going to have a deal with Warner Brothers? Both stories come from the New York Times with uncorroborated sources, the latter today in which the facts of Hilton's story were "confirmed by several other people associated with the talks who spoke on condition of anonymity because no deal has been made." Whether or not it is true or will go through, it is interesting nonetheless.......

Campaign Buttons, by JSF539 via Flickr Thomas Pynchon once said, "If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers." But if they find you in the romantic embrace of a lobbyist and you happen to be a Senator from Arizona, it doesn't matter what they're asking, just what they are reporting and late Wednesday, the New York Times broke it wide open. In a piece that had......

She's singing, he's playing a clarinet | Photo provided by production From doing Anne Frank in a parking garage to Greek mythology in a swimming pool, it's too bad that this site-specific Long Beach Opera production of Orpheus and Euridice by RIcky Ian Gordon is having such a short run (last night through tomorrow night) because this looks simply fantastic and Gordon's music has been praised by the New York Times and others (we......

Can we now add eating habits to the long list of modern relationship deal-breakers? The New York Times published a pre-Valentine's Day article this morning discussing the difficulties couples face when their diets are dramatically different: Ben Abdalla, 42, a real estate agent in Boca Raton, Fla., said he preferred to date fellow vegetarians because meat eaters smell bad and have low energy. Lisa Romano, 31, a vegan and school psychologist in Belleville, N.Y.,......

Deadspin's Will Leitch will be signing copies of his new book, God Save the Fan tonight at Book Soup Will Leitch, Deadspin editor, New York Times contributor, and author is in Los Angeles today presenting and signing copies of his new book God Save the Fan: How Preening Sportscasters, Athletes Who Speak in the Third Person, and the Occasional Convicted Quarterback Have Taken the Fun Out of Sports (And How We Can Get It......

As you prepare to watch some new Super Bowl ads (we hear there's a game, too -- but only if New England decides not to use the forward pass), can you remember the classics from 2000? Probably not. Several of the dot-coms that advertised (a/k/a blew their wad on the $2.1 million average cost of 30 seconds) were lampooned in a 2001 E*Trade commercial (above). According to SuperBowl-Ads.com, 17 coughed up "their seed money......

TALK Natalie Angier, New York Times reporter and author of Woman: An Intimate Geography, has written foreword to Full Body Project, the recently published book of photographs by Leonard Nimoy (yes Trekkies, Spock). The two will focus their Hammer Conversation on the concepts of beauty and sexuality. 7 pm // Hammer Museum // 10899 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles // Free. MORE TALK As we read in Get Your Lit On, yesterday, Fritjof Capra talks with......

UPDATE: Looks like the forces of Truth, Justice and the Irishican Way prevailed everyone - It's not hard in here for a Once after all: "The Academy’s music branch executive committee has met and endorsed the validity of 'Falling Slowly' as a nominated achievement. The committee relied on written assurances and detailed chronologies provided by songwriter of 'Falling Slowly', the writer-director of Once and Fox Searchlight." So there you go - The good guys......

Barack is on a roll. He doubled Hillary Clinton's vote count in South Carolina's primary election yesterday. And Caroline Kennedy's op-ed (titled "A President Like My Father") in this morning's New York Times is adding fuel to the fire as pundits across the ideological spectrum ponder the B.O. mo-mo like they haven't since Iowa, a long three-and-a-half weeks ago. Now it's all about February 5. Consider your feelings about the primary today and think about......

Unlike the rather tired and off-handed assessment of the LA food scene that the SF Chronicle tossed off about six months back, the New York Times has been showing how it's done: their recent piece on "36 Hours in Hollywood" and last week's survey of Sunset Junction. Okay, yes, some of their picks are probably geared to the curious tourist rather than the traveler interested in a more gritty L.A. experience -- Teddy's nightclub......

Twenty-four months, three LA Times editors gone, one reason: budget cuts. Jim O' Shea, editor of the LA Times was fired by Times Publisher David Hiller for failing to carry out $4 million in budget cuts at the paper. Apparently, Hiller wanted the money cut during the presidential campaign, a time when newspapers' budgets usually spike. This is the third editor to be fired over two years over the same budgetary issue. Do we......

The Pasadena Star-News is looking for you. Or if there are problems to rant about in general throughout the SGV, then the San Gabriel Valley Tribune might be where you go. Or hey, same goes for Whittier and the Whittier Daily News. "It's a new year and we are on the lookout for letters to the editor. If you have a person that wants to write one, or is expressing an opinion on an......

In the days following the launch of the WGA strike, workers from various departments on Warner Bros.' Burbank lot were issued mandatory Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notifications (WARN) notices, informing them that they could be subject to layoff after sixty days as a result of the scribes' strike. This Friday marks the end of that sixty-day period, meaning up to 1,000 non-writing employees could get their pink slips soon. In an article in today's New......

Los Angeles philanthropist, Eli Broad (rhymes with road), has decided not to give his massively large and impressive private collection of art to museums, rather, keeping the collection in house under control of a private foundation according to the New York Times. One of the assumed recipients of the art was LACMA, where the new $56 million Broad Contemporary Art Museum is scheduled to open next month. However, even with Broad's name on the......

Following up on my last post, here are five favorites I return to time and time again. All are reliable sources for good eating! Home Cooking and More Home Cooking by Laurie Colwin The novelist Laurie Colwin wrote playful, funny novels (Goodbye without Leaving is my favorite) about complicated characters, and also wrote straightforwardly about everyday cooking, the kind that sustains body and soul. Home Cooking, the first collection of her pieces from Gourmet and......

In El Salvador there are two prisons that are purely devoted to two gangs that originated in Los Angeles. How did this transnational network come about? Deportation for one. When a gang member serves a sentence in California and then deported to their home country, the gang business moves with them. Bruce Riordan, director of anti-gang operations in the LA city attorney's office told the New York Times that, "these gangs are the new......

Stage and screen choreographer Michael Kidd died this past Sunday in Los Angeles at the age of 92, according to the New York Times. From his beginnings in Brooklyn, Kidd moved over to Manhattan to dance and create dances for dance companies including Lincoln Kirstein's Ballet Caravan (1937), Eugene Loring's Dance Players (1941) and Ballet Theater, the predecessor to the American Ballet Theater (1942-47). Soon after dance critic Edwin Denby opined that Kidd’s talents “leaned......

Not sure if you remember, about two years ago, about the young fellow who had this internet phenomenon in early 2006 by the name of Myspace: The Movie. Well, his name is Dave Lehre and since then, I've been seeing him everywhere – Esquire, Myspace (obviously), YouTube, 20/20, New York Times. His YouTube channel has over 4500 subscribers and he just directed a video for Pittsburg Slim. There have been many who have chased......

For those of you who might not be familiar with the story, this is a tale of suspicion, revenge, and MySpace gone terribly wrong. In 2006, Lori Drew of Dardenne, Missouri, invented a fake profile on MySpace pretending to be a young boy named "Josh". Her intent was to use "Josh" to romance and keep tabs on her daughter's ex-best-friend, Megan Meier, who Drew believed was harassing her daughter via MySpace. "Josh" also "friended"......

Our trust and honor system on the subway, at the light rails and over at the Orange Line has been stripped away. Last Thursday, Metro voted to install the first phase of gates at stations, 275 to be exact (what's going to happen to those TAP Here machines that are everywhere?). The original intent behind the current honor system is "to buck East Coast practices and reduce operating costs," according to the New York......

James Jean signing at Gallery Nucleus....

Driving under the speed limit can cause you to fail your drivers test. From the Top 10 Reasons for Failing the Driving Test In October, the California DMV took a step out of the 1970s and into the current generation. Okay, so they have had online reservations for awhile now so you can avoid waiting in line. And now you can avoid some reading by watching the 55 videos they uploaded on YouTube. The......

We told you they were coming to speak on global warming, now here's what happened at yesterday's Presidential Forum in West LA. For the second time this month, fire officials are preparing for more wildfires as dry winds approach. Mission Viejo in Orange County is dubbed safest city in America. Sorry Detroit, you're back at the bottom of this list. However, these numbers came from a private research group and people, including the FBI,......

Somehow "The Tonight Show" scored a trifecta of controversy tonight as they were able to book the most punk rock of punk rock bands, the most conservative member of Congress, and the wackiest Scientologist all to appear on its air in the same hour. Tonight the Sex Pistols, Ron Paul, and Tom Cruise will all be in Burbank to tape the late night chat show. Strangely, whatever wire service the LA Daily News used......

Fire crews are optimistic, but not yet looking to declare victory over the multiple blazes that have burned over 500,000 acres and displaced millions. We agree, it's best to be sure before declaring victory too soon. One blaze that has partially kept officials from declaring an end to the madness, the Santiago fire in Orange County, is expected to be contained by Friday. But it could take years to rebuild charred neighborhoods. Seven people......

Welcome to the all fire, all the time edition of Extra Extra! The weather is not expected to abate until tomorrow, and fire fighters are still days away from containing major blazes. The New York Times is liveblogging the fires; they are reporting that over 500,000 people have been forced to evacuate so far (although other reports are estimating up to one million people have had to flee their homes). The Daily News is......

That's an average of 90.1 mph for the 2,794 miles between Classic Car Club in Manhattan and the Santa Monica Pier in California. Get this, and no traffic stops, no tickets (that would cost a detrimental 15-minutes). Feel bad now about getting pulled over recently? Meet Alexander Roy and his 2000 BMW M5 and welcome to the "subculture of illegal endurance racing" and the efforts to break transcontinental records, as the New York Times......