Carolyn Kellogg

Yesterday we spotted Crispin Glover and Courtney Peldon in Chinatown. Are we sure it was Crispin? Well, he was wearing an immaculate black velvet jacket — in the middle of the afternoon. We started feeling all nostalgic for his mad-as-a-hatter days, the days of rat books and Nancy Sinatra covers, and YouTube comes through. From July 1987, it's Crispin Glover making a permanent enemy of David Letterman....

First and foremost, the Final Four battle is on today beginning at 3pm on CBS (pregame starts at 1:00). Keep an eye out for a little team called UCLA. Irvine plans to establish permanent low-cost housing with a land trust for affordable housing. With this model, public and foundation funds are used to buy the land and build homes; homebuyers own only the buildings and not the property. Home prices can be lower and...

LA photoblogger Wojtek Gil had an idea: what if one camera went around the world with just one roll of film. It would land in the hands of 36 people in 36 very different places; each would get one shot. Then they'd send the camera off to the next exotic locale. Today, Wojtek's little camera departs for its first destination: Veracruz, Mexico. It's not a particularly fancy camera: it's a Lomo, which shoots 4...

A suit was filed yesterday against major sunscreen makers for harmful advertising. Waterproof? UVA blockers? "Snake oil," says a lawyer filing the suit. Insert "somebody's getting burned" joke here. The birdflu is coming! The birflu is coming! Officials met in LA yesterday and announced that they expect to see Avian Flu arrive in LA in two months. And then if it jumps to people, well, sunburn will be the least of our concerns. Farther...

Every week in Living in Sin, Jen Sincero provides advice for LA's sexually curious. Now you can see her column in print in the LA Alternative Press. Ask Jen your questions: all are posted anonymously. Dear Jen, My girlfriend and I have been together for nearly three years. We have broken up over and over in that amount of time, and we recently had a big fight that I think has broken us up...

Today KPCC featured the man behind the website Los Angeles Time Machines. Despite its archaic design, it's a great resource for restaurants and bars across the southland that are still operating in, basically, their vintage state. Canter's. Clifton's. Casa Bianca. Cicada. If you're familiar with these restaurants — a deli, a cafeteria, a pizza joint, fancy French — you'll notice the cuisine is all over the place. But for this site, whose proprietor is...

We think he's trying to figure out Hollywood math. The Randy Quaid lawsuit against the producers of Brokeback Mountain — they had him work cheap, but then spent big on marketing — has people looking at the mini-majors. How do they get to make those cool edgy films? By asking the actors to work for peanuts. And then, there's the wacky math. As explained to the NY Times: Good Night, and Good Luck, from...

As has been noted elsewhere, the LA Business Journal is reporting that Trader Vic's may soon be history. The bar and restaurant at the Beverly Hilton, which are rumored to be where the Mai Tai was invented, will be replaced by luxury condos and more hotel rooms, if the developer gets approval. The original hotel structure, by noted mid-century architect Welton Beckett, will remain, kind of. Somehow the hotel will lose 96 hotel rooms...

LACMA throws open its doors for 4 days, starting by staying open until 3am tonight — the museum is throwing itself a 40th birthday party. Entry to the museum's galleries will be absolutely free; shows include prints of Ed Ruscha and a Miro to Warhol collection. Tonight there will be music until 3am, with DJs set up in the plaza until 10am and then moving indoors. Or if you don't want to dance, we...

The LA Weekly begins a series on water and LA's lust for H20 as the DWP contemplates a rate hike in July. And in fluffier news, for fashion week the paper's Steffie Nelson looks at age-appropriate fashion — including some very nice photos, thanks to the website's redesign — and concludes that even 40-year-olds can shop at Forever 21. A mystery in Long Beach: a deputy who was found dead on her way to...