Adrienne Crew

Four homicides occurred on Sunday, reports the Los Angeles Times. "A surge of Easter weekend violence, including a double homicide Sunday night, left at least four Los Angeles County residents dead and two others critically injured, authorities said." This disturbing news comes on top of further efforts, some inspired by the death of Deliesh Allen-Roberts, to get the City of Los Angeles to do something about a surge of gang-related shootings. Some citizens have even...

Defamer.com, et al, have discovered the latest blog sensation; faux-blogs written in the name of a celebrity. Today's specimen is the Michael Bay Blog. Now we don't know what's real or fake in blogland. To wit, we've happened upon David Duchovny's blog, promoting his directorial debut, "The House of D." How can we tell it's really written by David and not some intern sitting in the offices of Lion's Gate Entertainment's marketing office or,...

LAist got out of the house today and attended the 75th La Benedicion de los Animales/Blessing of the Animals at Olvera Street. An annual event held on the Saturday before Easter Sunday, this year attracted a large crowd. Since unexpected (and expensive) dental surgery sidelined our feline companion, we didn't participate in this year's procession and blessing. Instead, we stood on the sidelines and took pictures. However, we found a canine correspondent, and LA...

LAist has been an avowed trial watchers for many years now. We've seen crazies wash in and out of the Los Angeles court system; Sometimes they are the the plaintiffs, sometimes they are defendants and sometimes they are officiants. But the weirdest have to be the jurors and the spectators. To wit, we've learned that a juror who helped acquit actor Robert Blake of killing his wife is promoting a six-song recording he produced during...

Daniel Hernandez publishes another rockin' story, "The Punk Rock Kids in the Hall," in the Los Angeles Times about Ramona Hall in Highland Park, which offers kids after-school music education classes and encourages them to perform in their own rock bands. Raul Martinez can't help but smile. Since 2000, when he started teaching guitar at Ramona Hall on North Figueroa Street, he has built a veritable farm for budding roqueros in northeast Los Angeles....

Beleaguered creative types stuck in the Angeleno food service industry, take note. An item in the 3/16/2005 issue of The Hollywood Reporter just confirmed the Hollywood cliche that you can work your way up the industry food chain by serving the right people. The trade reported the sale of a spec script "This Bill Smith" to Columbia Pictures after first-time writers and University of Illinois grads Ben Brandstrader and Jonathan Sadowski reconnected while working...

One thing we've noticed about little kids in LA is how well-dressed they are. We've seen babies sporting adorable customized onesies that don't look like they all came from Baby Gap and we're awfully glad to see that not all LA kids wear teeny, tiny Uggs. Curious about the variety of kid clothing choices, we've been looking around the LA kid clothing scene and discovered LA artist Doris Oswald-Burrell's line of children's clothing while...

We love Experience LA, the regional transit and activity calendar. It may be extremely mainstream (what do you expect from a communications vehicle sponsored by almost every LA County agency like the MTA )but its email newsletter, full of interesting events and factoids, makes us feel like a kid again, poring over our "Weekly Reader." Here's what we learned this week: Did You Know? The yellow brush now covering the hills north of Dodger Stadium...

Think again. Even LA sushi experts can learn something from Carolynn Cerreno's piece in the 2/9/05 issue of the Los Angeles Times on advanced sushi etiquette. Unfortunately, her limited ear for Japanese resulted in quite a large correction box..o well, we can all learn something. If you're still curious about sushi technique, may we recommend Betty Reynold's book "Squeamish About Sushi," a delightful book we picked up at the East West Book's booth at last...

The New Beverly Cinema regretfully informs its loyal audience that it's had to raise admission prices after 10 years in its latest calendar. Are you ready for the price increase...$1. We wish our landlord would resort to such tactics. Hats off to the New Beverly for fighting the good fight and only bump ticket prices up in a gentle manner to off set what is likely a growing expenditures budget. We appreciate the sentiment....