A new documentary by the always innovative, if lowercase, dublab, entitled Secondhand Sureshots: an experiment in creative sound recycling, will be pre-screened at the USC Annenberg Auditorium on November 14th, at 6pm. Presented by The Norman Lear Center's Popular Music Project, the documentary centers around four L.A. djs (Daedelus, J.Rocc, Nobody and Ras G) who are given a mission: to use their expertise at finding obscure album treasures in four different Out of the......

Guest Day Editor Carolyn Kellogg joins LAist with a few posts throughout the day. Read the introductory interview and check out the her litblog. Happy 35th birthday to the guy who directed the scary as fuck original Grudge movies, Takashi Shimizu, and the funny as all get-out Maya Rudolph of Saturday Night Live. Country musician Bobbie Gentry celebrates her birthday today, as do musicians Juliana Hatfield and Pete Yorn. It's Yahoo Serious' birthday, too. Don't......

Los Angeles' own multicultural alternative rock collective Ozomatli recently held a video contest inviting fans to create their own video for "City of Angels." The band offered live video footage and an MP3 of the song on their Web site, then basically told their fan base to go wild. The band selected their top three videos -- congrats to Matthew Johnston, Micaela Torrez and Richard Lopez -- and now it's up to fans to vote......

The New York Times seems to think so. We can confirm that among the 800 or so who paid $2,300 a head to rub elbows with Barack Obama for a minute or two at the Beverly Hilton were: Jennifer Aniston, Burt Bacharach, Mario van Peebles, Stephen Spielberg, Arianna Huffington, Ben Stiller, Morgan Freeman, Zach Braff, Eddie Murphy, Ron Howard, Taye Diggs, Norman Lear, JJ Abrams, Paul Reiser, Christine Lahti, Jackson Browne, and Natalie Maines.......

Another step has been taken in transforming downtown with the Grand Avenue project. Now we're not sure we're going to get the technicalities of municipal development right, but as we read in the Daily News, an agreement to begin design on the park (see illustration) that will stretch from the Music Center to City Hall has been approved. A gallery of park proposals from the people has been put together by good-intentioned rabble-rousers at......

This is part two of our three part LAist Interview with the founders of the Fallen Fruit Project. Dave, Mathias and Austin fight for the betterment of Los Angeles on a number of fronts. In addition to their work with the Fallen Fruit Project, the collaborators submitted a proposal for an Endless Orchard to the Grand Intervention Grand Avenue park design competition organized by the Norman Lear Project and the Los Angeles Times. Dave......

Although networks of institutions help comprise cities, they cannot survive on conventional institutional arrangements alone. In a vast place like Los Angeles it takes all sorts of institutions within institutions and folks within them to generate new ideas, alternatives, and potential solutions for the innumerable challenges we face. The existence of the Norman Lear Center is a result of “the industry,” (thank you, "All in the Family"!), yet it deals with the very real......

Here's some upcoming events happening around town: Tonight: If you haven't been able to get your hands on James Stewart's "Disney War," you should be able to buy one at the Central Library tonight when the author converses with Marty Kaplan, Director, Norman Lear Center and Associate Dean, USC Annenberg School for Communication, about dramatic, inside story of what drove America’s best-known entertainment company to civil war. During the Q&A ask the prize-winning journalist if......

We're changing things up a bit here at LAist. Because we live in such a vibrant, socially active city, there are things going on all the time. We have long wanted to be able to list events in advance (for the benefit of our wonderful readers), so starting today we have implemented a new strategy: a week's events in advance. We will still post featured events each day, but we've added a permanent sidebar......

After much whining and pleading, LAist's inner child persuaded us to call USC and obtain a pass to the "Ready to Share: Ownership of Creativity in Fashion" conference on 1/30 sponsored by USC Annenberg Norman Lear Center's Creativity, Commerce & Culture project, Center for the Public Domain and The Fashion Institute of Desgin & Merchandise/FIDM. (Norman Lear and Michael Patrick King) We're happy to report that the conference was a smooth blend of style......

Yesterday's Womens's Wear Daily reports that former Gucci fashion designer Tom Ford will join legendary television director-producer Norman Lear as a speaker Saturday, January 29th, at the first annual “Ready to Share: Fashion and the Ownership of Creativity” conference, a daylong event at the University of Southern California. Inspiration, creativity, piracy, counterfeiting and other issues involving the creative process in fashion, as well as film and music, will be explored. The by-invitation-only guests will......