Andy Sternberg

There are a million reasons LA is better than Gainesville, but both are home to major state universities with their own Taser-happy police forces. Earlier today, 21-year-old Florida student Andrew Meyer was apprehended by police and stunned with a Taser gun at a town hall meeting with Senator John Kerry on the UF campus. It seems he was tailed by the police as he came to ask the question -- challenging Kerry for not...

The 80th Academy Awards (host: Jon Stewart) aren't until February 24 but starting today you can register for a chance at a bleacher seat overlooking the red carpet. Thousands applied for 300 spots last year along the 500-foot-long red carpet, but you're feeling lucky, right? The chosen voyeurs will be randomly selected next Monday at noon, and notified in March. Submit for up to four tickets per person. http://www.oscars.org/bleachers/ Dangerous Liaisons devotees look for...

Nearly 12 years after his infamous acquittal in the criminal trial in which he was charged with murdering his ex-wife and her beau, OJ Simpson is locked up on multiple felony charges. View Simpson's in-custody status / charges (.pdf). This time there was no Brentwood stakeout, no Ford Bronco, and somewhere in heaven Johnnie Cochran isn't the least bit surprised. Friday he was questioned, earlier today he was booked, and tonight, ordered "held without...

LAist scours dozens of LA metro weeklies and highlights the best content you may have missed. We read the weeklies so you don't have to. CityBeat gives well-deserved props to 26-year-old Bel-Air native, Alexander Antebi. Earlier this month, Antebi became the youngest, first American, and first Jewish moustache champion in the history of the World Beard and Moustache Championships. Antebi is also the, uh, face man, of LA glam-funkers Conquistador. Still gotta problem with facial...

The LA Weekly has been struggling to placate its staff ever since the alt-weekly's publisher, Village Voice Media was swallowed up by not-so-alternative New Times Newspapers nearly two years ago (New Times adopted the VVM name, but not necessarily the flavor). If you haven't witnessed the shift in ideology and coverage in the pages of the Weekly yet, a drastic dip in content quantity -- if not quality -- seems imminent, as the New...

Steve Jobs is a very smart and powerful businessman. So did he purposely bite his tongue last week when he announced a $200 iPhone price cut -- just two months after launching the product? Was it a plot to steer additional hype toward the iPhone so the new iPods wouldn't steal all the thunder? Did he plan all along to offer store credit to those who shelled out $600 for an iPhone? Was Master...

April 2007 -- Gonzales says, "I don't recall" 72 times at Senate hearing It's Friday! And it's also the final day on the job for Bush-tushy-wipin', habeas corpus trashin', eavesdroppin', worst-AG-ever Alberto Gonzales. Nicknamed "Fredo" by the Commander in Disbelief either because his name is kinda like Alfredo, or perhaps after the weakest Corleone in The Godfather, Gonzales became a Bush Yes-man in the mid-'90s. Gonzales' crimes accomplishments are many. He assisted in obfuscating...

This excellent mashup inspires essential questions that remain unanswered years later, including: -- What exactly are we fighting for? -- Will these talking heads ever shut up? -- Can you acknowledge Rosh Hashanah on-air without knowing when Ramadan is? -- What song is that killer sample from? -- Where is Osama bin Laden? -- What would Jean-Luc Picard do? and more.... Courtesy Guerrilla News Network....

Joe Zawinul was perhaps the most innovative of the creative leaders of "jazz fusion." With Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, John McLaughlin, and Tony Williams, Zawinul helped shape the very electric sound of Miles Davis' touring band of the late 60's and contributed key compositions to the cornerstone recordings of jazz fusion, 1969's In a Silent Way and 1970's Bitches Brew. Zawinul may be best remembered as a founding member of Weather Report, the fusion...

Were you dismayed and confounded by the iPhone madness of June 2007? Did it disgust and disturb you to see your friends and colleagues giddily wait in line to drop $600 for the most-hyped mobile phone in history? Well that sniveling trickster, Steve Jobs is back, and he may be the only one laughing this time. Jobs' announcement of a new iPod came as a surprise to nobody. It looks and functions exactly like an...