Carolyn Kellogg

Maybe you should think about buying a ticket to the Second Annual Hullaballo benefitting the Silverlake Conservatory of Music. The benefit, at the Edendale Grill on June 21, promises to be a swank eastside evening. Rob Zabrecky, who led Possum Dixon and is a magician, will be MC. There will be a dinner buffet, open bar and, of course, live music. Expect performances from the conservatory, Catherine & Jonathan Karoly from the LA Phil...

Judge nails jail Judge Dean Pregerson, who is presiding over a long-standing suit about conditions at the jail, left his chambers and visited Men's Central in downtown Wednesday. And he really didn't like what he saw. Inmates are being housed in a way "not consistent with basic human values." Jail in South Korea? Hwang Woo-suk, the respected South Korean scientist who was thought to be the first to clone human embroys and extract stem...

A sassy group of women have contributed essays to the book The May Queen: Women on Life, Love, Work & Pulling it All Together in Your 30s and a passel of them will be in one place tonight. Actually, two places. First, at 7pm, head to Dutton's Brentwood for readings from the book and a panel discussion, which is sure to be lively, since Meghan Daum (who writes for the LA Times) and Erin...

Every week in Living in Sin, Jen Sincero provides advice to LA's sexually curious. Now you can see her column in print, too, in the LA Alternative Press. Ask Jen your questions: all are posted anonymously. Dear Jen, My roommate and I have lived together for about six months, and everything was going great until recently when she hooked up with this new guy. I'm now kept awake night after night by her screams...

We were thinking about Blik the other day (because when staring vacantly at a wall, our thoughts turn to fantastic wall decorations) and when we visited their site to discover what new designs they'd have (more video game creatures? flying birds? Eames doodles?) we found something even better. The Blik Loves Threadless t-shirt and wall decor design competition. For the month of May, anyone can submit designs on the theme of "Off the Wall."...

a debate falls in the forest Steve Westly and Phil Angelides tusseled in their final debate yesterday in San Francisco; they'll face off in the June 6 Democratic Primary. They're both pro-environment, pro-choice and anti-Arnold. In case you missed it, you can listen: the whole thing is archived at KPCC. when $60K not enough A new report from the Public Policy Institute of California says our state's cost of living has soared; we've gone...

So that's what it's like to bike between two SUVs. Scary cool. A nice encapsulation of the January scavenger hunt by Urban Bike Assault; includes a performance by the Sharp Ease (myspace) at the end....

oops, she did it again That's right, Britney Spears is making another baby. Right now. We'll guess she's 3 months into the preganancy (that's when the etiquette books say it's ok to announce it on a national TV talk show); baby bro Sean is 8-months old. Uh, could somebody tell Brit and K-Fed about birth control? Please? safer kids? In an entirely unrelated item, we're glad the LA County Board of Sups voted to...

Driving around the eastside we've noticed a bunch of guerilla advertising signs tucked into soft shoulders and median strips curbside: the first was SilverLakeSingles.com. We were vaguely curious, perhaps giving a moment or two of thought to why they hadn't done somethingmore hipster, like pasteups, then reconsidered in light of Sony's backlash. Then we let it go. Until we drove by AtwaterSingles.com. And EagleRockSingles.com, HighlandParkSingles.com, SouthPasadenaSingles.com — you get the idea. They are identical...

penny for your thoughts More like a nickel. For the first time, it costs more than a penny to produce a penny. It's partly due to the rising costs of metals and partly because of hedging about the future rising costs. So far no news about penny-melting profiteers, tho. Train vs. SUV SUV loses. Luckily, no one was killed in the accident, which happened at East Ramona Boulevard and Downing Avenue in Baldwin Park...