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......

Bobby Fischer died this week. He was totally insane and totally brilliant, a prodigy and a pariah. In the world he inhabited, the only thing you could possibly do was throw up your hands and move to Iceland. Chess players, you know? Twelve California research institutions (including UCLA and USC) are in the running for $263 million dollars worth of valuable stem-cell research funding from the the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine. The body......

Florencia Pita is one busy lady. A current faculty member at the Sci-arc (Southern Institute of Architecture), she is also a gifted designer and architect in her own right. Her Alice exhibit at LAXART (which just ended on August 30th) was a creative 7x20 foot installation inspired by Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Working with cast urethane, & covered in orange vinyl the exhibit explored bringing life to the found images in the......

Our pals at Londonist are the first to jump on the orgy of Best Of lists, so heres what they have to say... A list for LA? Got to be film related, but because we don't have a film industry anymore I've had to alternate between a great flick of 2006 (with a British connection) and an associated great Brit. Don't worry you'll see what I mean. So in reverse order: 10 - Steve......

Not known for his on-the-spot news coverage, the Howard Stern Show broadcast of the tragedy five years ago remains one of the most compelling accounts of that infamous day. For years the shock jock was the most popular morning radio show in Los Angeles, and on the morning of 9/11 Stern got the news while talking about Pamela Anderson. The show broadcast about four miles away from the World Trade Center and as soon......

Even though we are way way past school age, we still get a little melancholy at the close of summer. Fortunately, our friends across the -ist network know that the shenanigans don't need to end just because the big yellow buses are back on the roads. So, grab your sunscreen and your favorite hangover cure, as we take a tour of end of summer fun from -ist cities all over the damn place. SFist Tourist......

- Man killed when two trucks collide in a firey crash on the 5 - CBS2 - Pomona man shot in the chest as he was attacking a security guard with a chair - SB Sun - Days after LAist asks if Bush is an Idiot, the Washington Post asks the same question. - Washington Post - Americans more opposed to Iraq War than ever before: poll - CNN Think Progress has video and......

When one of the most controversial directors turns one of the most controversial tragedies into a love story, don't be surprised if you start seeing headlines like "WTF WTC?" Stone takes the easy way out in this film, which focuses around the obvious and predictable feelings of the families of two policemen who were in the World Trade Center when the towers collapsed. The renegade director chooses to use the attacks as a backdrop,......

Co-founder of In-N-Out Burger, Esther Snyder, has passed. We salute you with 4x4s and Grilled Cheeses. Steve Lopez visits Hillary Hauser, former Santa Barbara News-Press reporter and Ocean Environmentalist/Activist. Lopez's column comes after last week's five part series - Altered Oceans. The Warner Center in Woodland Hills might become more of mini-downtown for the Valley. Former music industry producer, Mark Steele, wants to build a $100 million dollar event center to produce events from......

Yesterday, 500,000 people flooded downtown LA for the rally for immigrants' rights. That figure, a half million, comes from police, who typically provide conservative crowd estimates; others suggest there were even more. Speakers included DJ Eddie "Piolín" Sotelo, who helped spread the word over the airwaves, Archibishop Mahoney and Mayor Villaraigosa, who said: "We are workers, not criminals. We work hard. We play by the rules. We pay our taxes. And we want America......

George W. Bush started off tonight's State of the Union address combative, then turned suddenly toward a whole list of fairly compelling bipartisan ideas. Bush really believes what he says, and believes that what he wants is best for the world, and he believes the purity of his intentions translates to the purity of his actions. Unfortunately, he makes enormous logical leaps, and he basically said tonight that he won't listen to anyone who......