Results tagged “theroad”

• Boy am I glad I don't live in this Torrance neighborhood, where a cache of machine guns, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, assault rifles and thousands of rounds of ammunition were found in a house Friday. The residents may be terrorists, police say, but the owner of the weapons said he is just a collector. Do you think he also collects dead bodies in the basement?
• Does the name Chuck Quackenbush ring a bell? He was the Insurance Commissioner for Califorina until he was forced to resign amid corruption allegations in 2000. Gosh, I wonder what he's doing now. Probably tanning on a beach...wait, oh, um, turns out he is now a Sherrif's deupty and just shot a suspect in Florida who was allegedly resisting arrest. OK, now he can go and tan on the beach as Chuck was placed on paid administrative leave.
• More bad news for area newspapers as positions at the Long Beach Press-Telegram were eliminated recently. Earlier in February, the LA Times reported they were going to cut up to 150 jobs and this week, the Daily News cut 22 people from their staff. Christ people, don't you read on paper anymore? I mean, when you're not checking LAist and the hundreds of other sites we link to, that is?
• Speaking of the LA Times, new owner Sam Zell stands to profit to the tune of $15 million if an eminent domain a June ballot initiative passes. Just think how many strip club ads he could buy with that.
• Owing mostly to the Writers Strike, L.A. County lost more than 75,000 jobs from December to January.
• Victoria's Secret is saying its line of revealing lingerie is too sultry and will "get back to the ultra feminine and not just sexy look." In other news, 300 million men started a letter writing campaign today with Justin Timberlake as their spokesman.
• John Wooden, Bruin legend and inventor of winning, remains in the hospital but is "in good spirits" after he fell Thursday night and broke his left wrist and collar bone. I have a feeling beating Arizona tomorrow will really help lift the spirits of the 97-year-old former UCLA coach.
• Tomorrow is the L.A .Marathon. Don't say we didn't warn you. Good luck to all those running, walking, cycling and wheelchairing!
  Continue reading "Extra, Extra: Broken Homes and Broken Bones"

You know you want to...so you may as well do it. Star Trek: The Tour has docked on the Queen Mary. Beam yourself up and get yourself to Long Beach to see exhibits from all five TV shows and each of the 10 movies, including Captain Kirk's chair. Bring your Vulcun ears and your Klingon-English dictionary and get into whatever character, or warp speed, you want.

It was a great year of new books, re-discovered books, and books we meant to get to last year but didn't. The end of the year is nearly here and before we look forward, we'll take a look back. Last week, LAist Editors shared their favorite books of 2007. This week, a few LAist Contributors share their favorite book they read this year:

Memorial Reading for Mutanabbi Street with Chris Abani, Beau Beausoleil, Laila Lalami, Suzanne Lummis, Majid Naficy, Marisela Norte, Sholeh Wolpe & Terry Wolverton 7pm @ Centraly Library

Transformers would have been perfect as a 20-minute demo reel for ILM. Instead, it's a long, dull live-action cartoon. And I still don't understand all the fuss about Shia LaBeouf. He's good. Not amazing. Good. No one saw A Mighty Heart at the theater, but it's worth a rental. Angelina Jolie the Actress has been replaced by Angelina the Star, but she doesn't get in the way of a gripping, horrifying story. No one...

Here are some of my favorite LAist stories from this week: Anti reviews a cd that was sent to him, he gives it a "Good", but someone from the band writes in to complain that it wasn't a good enough Peggy Archer showed us that Malibu is finding that whoring out their best beachfront homes to corporations isn't all they hoped it would be Charles Bukowski is my favorite writer, so I liked this...

Don't get me wrong, I love Beirut, but last Thursday I was lucky enough to be invited by a friend at Harmonia Mundi to the pre-screening of GYPSY CARAVAN...When The Road Bends. Written and directed by Jasmine Dellal of Little Dust Productions, the film is a documentary about five bands that play different kinds of Gypsy music, who united for a highly successful 6-week tour across North America. Descendents of the Roma, a group that migrated from Northwestern India around 1050, Gypsies are now spread over the Balkan peninsula, the Americas, the former Soviet Union, Western Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa.

Starting tomorrow, lots of folks are going to be rushing area theaters to check out the latest Quentin Tarantino+Robert Rodriguez splatterfest, Grindhouse. And yes, Los Angeles has definitely gone grindhouse crazy in general. But before running off to The Grove, consider a truly authentic alternative. We think the best way to see the Tarantino/Rodriguez homage to 1970s and 1980s schlock cinema is by heading to an equally entertaining relic of a bygone era; the...

Still wondering what to give your sweet transgressive for Valentine's Day? Filthy, lovable, mustachioed filmmaker John Waters is releasing A Date With John Waters, a stirring yet suitably bizarre compilation album of his favorite love songs. To celebrate the album's release Waters will be at Amoeba Records in Hollywood tomorrow, February 6 at 6 PM, signing CDs and posing with fans in a Valentines setting.

The album spans oddities such as the first record Waters ever owned, "Tonight You Belong to Me" by Patience and Prudence, to the "first trisexual song ever recorded," "Ain't Got No Home" by Clarence "Frogman" Henry, to the wailing blues of Ike & Tina Turner's "All I Can Do Is Cry" to the "perfect song for an awkward moment," "Sometimes I Wish I Had A Gun" by Mink Stole.

A Date With John Waters
1. Tonight You Belong To Me – Patience & Prudence
2. Jet Boy Jet Girl – Elton Motello
3. Ain't Got No Home – Clarence "Frogman" Henry
4. I'd Love To Take Orders From You – Mildred Bailey
5. In Spite of Ourselves – John Prine with Iris DeMent
6. All I Can Do Is Cry – Ike & Tina Turner
7. Big Girls Don't Cry – Edith Massey
8. Imitation of Life – Earl Grant
9. Sometimes I Wish I Had A Gun – Mink Stole
10. Johnny Are You Queer? – Josie Cotton
11. (Night Time Is) The Right Time – Ray Charles
12. Hit The Road To Dreamland – Dean Martin
13. If I Knew You Were Coming I'd've Baked A Cake – Eileen Barton
14. Bewildered – Shirley & Lee

Look. We know how it’s going to go down. By this time tomorrow, Oscar nominees will be announced and madness will ensue. There will be the campaigning amongst friends. The mad dash to see the films you haven’t seen. The endless questioning about who should win, who shouldn’t win and who should never be allowed to direct again. In certain circles, the mad “What will they wear? Who will they wear?”debating will also begin. You know how it goes, you do it every year. We do it too.

Bowling for Soup - The Great Burrito Extortion Case (Jive) J.J. Cale & Eric Clapton - The Road to Escondido (Reprise) The Chelsea Smiles - Thirty Six Hours Later (Acetate) El Goodo - El Goodo (Empyrean) Europe - Secret Society (Sanctuary) The Evens - Get Evens (Dischord) Foo Fighters - Skin and Bones (RCA) Josh Groban - Awake (Reprise) Jim Jones - Hustler's P.O.M.E. (Product of My Environment) (Koch) Librarians - Alright Easy Candy...

Jack Kerouac gave William Burroughs the pseudonym "Old Bull" in his novel On The Road. Fifty-five years ago yesterday, Old Bull blew his wife Joan's brains out with a pistol during a drinking party. And now we get some information that Old Bull is going to be performing at some carnival/hoedown thing downtown on Saturday. A very dangerous-sounding carnival, featuring "dirty darts, inflatable farm animals, insulting caricatures, drunk duck pond, cactus ring toss, sleazy...

Silver Lake-based author, Joy Nicholson, doesn't focus solely on the Southern California region, but her two books certainly capture many aspects of the region's anomie. Her first book, "The Tribes of Palos Verdes," chartered the journey of a young girl lost admist the SoCal surf culture after her parent's divorce. Nicholson's latest novel, "The Road to Esmeralda," travels further south to record the adventures of a couple living in Mexico.