TALK Michael Alexander, author of Jazz Age and the Jews, will discuss Jewish life in the roaring 20s, including performer Al Jolson, Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter and mobster Arnold Rothstein in the lecture “‘Mammy, Don’t You Know Me?’: Al Jolson and the Jews.” He’ll discuss the 1920s as a heyday of Jewish culture, but why many identified with groups that remained marginalized. Book signing and dessert reception will follow. 7 pm // Davidson Conference......

Grab a beer friends, we survived the week. I still got hours of junk Tivo'd that I'm supposed to watch but on the calendar it says it's Friday and that's a great thing. Late night TV is super busy tonight, check it out: a free Paris Hilton, Michael Douglas, Seth Myers, Jenny McCarthy. Also, LeBron James is on SNL tomorrow - have a great weekend. 5:00pm-11:00pm Body Switcharoo Marathon TCM - A rock block of......

Petals are flying, the enormous USC Football is losing its brown seeds in streams, and the Little Einsteins' eyes are running like Tammy Faye's mascara: yes indeedy, it's pouring on the Rose Parade. We're watching on Channel 5, whose "Rose Parade experts" Bob Eubanks, Michaela Pereira and Stephanie Edwards just proved themselves dopes of local pop (music) culture. "Did you know the USC marching band was on a Fleetwood Mac album?" they ask, incredulously.......

- Jill Elizabeth Davis has some great pictures of the hail falling in Pasadena today. We told you to stay home. - We are trying to keep all this discussion of Steve Lopez's Skid Row work straight but we just can't. - Disney Hall of the Valley (to go with our very valley-centric day of posting). - New Zealanders think we're lawless in Los Angeles. - Who needs Harriet Miers? Our local Japanese American......

One of the best and funniest bits of social commentary on television is the recurrent bit, "This Week in Unneccessary Censorship" on Hollywood-based Jimmy Kimmel Live. Each week, in order to "help" the FCC, Kimmel explains, "We bleep and we blur things whether they need them or not." The show bleeps and blurs fragments of politicians' speeches and children's programs in ways that turn former US Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart's famous dictum on......

We want to be really excited going into our long weekend that celebrates our nation's independence. We have a new Mayor in Antonio Villaraigosa who, immediately and willingly, becomes a national political figure and may, if his rhetoric at the progressive conference is to be believed, help push American government to look forward instead of backwards in its urban planning, renewal and management and keep LA in the national conversation. We want to be......