Carolyn Kellogg

Jerry Stahl, the author of the imagined Fatty Arbuckle autobiography I, Fatty, will be in conversation on Wednesday night with Erica Jong. Since it's for her book tour, they'll probably spend more time talking about blow jobs than silent movies, but you never know. That Fatty had some pretty wild parties (he was acquitted, eventually, in his notorious murder trial). It's part of the excellent Writers Bloc reading series, taking place this time at...

What happens if a breaker pops but nobody stops to applaud? At least a video camera caught his action....

This week Apple Computer will be in court in the UK, facing two of Britain's favorite sons: Sir Paul McCartney and not-sir Ringo Starr. Seems that Jobs & Co. had an agreement with the Beatles and their heirs to keep Apple Computer out of the music business, where the Beatles had a firmly established their fruit identity as Apple Corps in 1968. The agreement has been revised a couple of times; in its most...

If you've spent time near the front desk of The Standard on Sunset in West Hollywood, you may have noticed there's a woman there in a glass case. She's on display wearing very little, a tank top and boxer shorts or boy shorts, all white. What's it like to the be the girl in the box? Hotel Chatter tracked down a former box girl asks about her chicquarium experience. She says, in part: HotelChatter:...

Yesterday, 500,000 people flooded downtown LA for the rally for immigrants' rights. That figure, a half million, comes from police, who typically provide conservative crowd estimates; others suggest there were even more. Speakers included DJ Eddie "Piolín" Sotelo, who helped spread the word over the airwaves, Archibishop Mahoney and Mayor Villaraigosa, who said: "We are workers, not criminals. We work hard. We play by the rules. We pay our taxes. And we want America...

Phillyist notes a fistfight between local pols that leaves one man down for the count. Jehovah's Witnesses get a Philly contributor out of bed, things get a little geeky with a film festival and geeky gets taken to a whole new galaxy when they talk with the Dragon Queen of the Dark Kingdom. Shanghaist gets all excited this week over a new nightclub in the city unfortunately named "Snatch" and Mike Tyson is scheduled to...

Enjoy the slideshow....

Sales of new homes dropped nationwide more than 10% last month, the biggest drop in nine years. And in the West, the numbers were even bigger: a drop of 29.4%. Yea, maybe the market is finally softening in LA! But not so fast, lusty real estate kittens. Southern California new home sales were up 9.5% from the month before; it's the biggest gain in 18 years. CaBoom! That's not the sound of the real...

LAUSD high school students walked out of classes today to protest immigration policies, and proposals in Washington which include building a wall between the US and Mexico. It's just a preamble to tomorrow's rally which starts at 10am in downtown LA. People are unhappy about the Sensenbrenner Bill, which passed the House in December and is now coming before the Senate. That wall is some crazy shit. The photo above of students walking out...

If you like music and books, you may have noticed the 33 1/3 series. They're pocket-sized paperbacks that celebrate "much-loved" albums of the last 40 years. Each book is about one record, and they look at the people who make the music as much as musing on the music itself. On Saturday, local popculturenista Kim Cooper (Scram, the 1947 Project) will be joined by NYer Ben Sisario to read from their new 33 1/3...