Andy Sternberg

Rodney King, whose videotaped beating by LAPD officers (and their subsequent acquittal) sparked the Los Angeles riots in 1992, was shot late last night, according to San Bernardino police. King was shot in the face and arm with a pellet gun (LA Times) or perhaps a shotgun (KNX, USA Today) while riding his bike home to Rialto. King, the 42-year-old man who gained national fame when his 1991 beating by Los Angeles police was caught...

One of heavy metal's signature vocalists has died at the too-young age of 52. Kevin DuBrow grew up in Hollywood and Van Nuys and in the late 1970s became the lead singer for Quiet Riot, the glam-metal brainchild of guitarist Randy Rhoads. Though Quiet Riot's brand of hard rock -- or whatever you wish to call it -- was never the same after the 1980s, Quiet Riot carried on, true to form, was featured on...

The Onion has published a companion Google map to promote their new laugher of a world atlas, Our Dumb World. Click on the markers in the map below for gems like Brazil ("Boasting some of the sexiest people ever to be stabbed repeatedly at night..."), France ("Heated conversation that will ultimately end in sex..."), and Mexico ("Now Hiring 2.4 Million Busboys"). View Larger Map In other Google Maps news, a new "terrain" layer has been...

"It's so nice and quiet and beautiful in here... from here the lighting kinda looks like a Cylon from Battlestar Galactica." -- Neko Case, melting the heart of every geek in the house while taking in the mysterious angles and lighting inside the Frank Gehry-designed concert hall. Neko Case closed out the first half of Walt Disney Concert Hall's 2007-08 Songbook Series last Friday to a rapt, grateful, near-sellout audience of about 2,000. The...

I've written e-mails, made phone calls, and pledged. I even wrote a two-page essay at their 3-hour (paid) market research session at the Hyatt. And still, every morning I'm summoned from my slumber by a soft voice announcing in code-like rhyme that my public radio station is having an orgy on the Web. Sixty-three degrees at seven-thirty-three, on eighty-nine-Point-three, KP-CC, I'm Steve Julian.... Online at K-P....C-C dot O-R-G. "Dot O-R-G?" You mean "dot org," I...

10 Freeway westbound Normandie on-ramp, 8:45 a.m. Imagine a post-apocalyptic Los Angeles with no schools and no government. But the rest of us still had to go to work. Enjoy your Veterans Day Monday commute!...

This week five fresh&easy grocery stores er, "neighborhood markets," opened in metro Los Angeles. We visited the Glassell Park store located in a gutted Albertson's on Eagle Rock Blvd (map) for our first impression of UK-based Tesco's (the world's third-largest grocer) attempt to hook finicky West Coast consumers. The array of fresh&easy branded products is impressive. The packaging is minimalist, reminiscent of a Safeway or Walgreen's branded generic. But as you'll see in the slideshow...

An area of Mexico larger than metro LA is almost completely underwater after two days of severe flooding. Granted, we're busy fighting a Global War on Terror and it's inconvenient to help our neighbors, not to mention our own domestic needs, but... it's probably worth knowing that 80 percent of Tabasco is underwater. More rain is on its way. Our fires were on front pages around the world. So how come when Mexico experiences...

Do you Lucha? The madness returns in February. A couple more short clips after the jump....

Thanks to incessant media overproduction and round-the-clock rambling, the rest of the world could enjoy last week's wildfires as if it were watching another fiery, explosive drama out of Hollywood. Quick, cue the aliens and giant, silicone implant-eating insects. The president even played himself in this one and came with hugs; everyone drank lattes and did yoga; and somehow Britney still made it to court. It was really all just part of a much bigger...