Carolyn Kellogg

Rioting continued yesterday in the LA County jails in Castaic. The LA Times reports more than 500 inmates were involved, nearly 100 were injured and 28 had to be hospitalized. In law enforcement news, 13-year-old Devin Brown had slowed the car he was driving to no more than 2mph when he was killed by the LAPD officer who claimed to fear for his life. The Police Commission seems to have used good judgement in...

What a relief to watch the E! red carpet coverage. It feels so clean...so professional. Oh, for a little while, at least. Ryan Seacrest to Randy Jackson's wife, "There's something I've always wanted to ask you," [about her husband]: "He's so smooth...is he a great lover?" Um, creepy. Giuliana DePandi spends a long time asking the men of Jars of Clay about being chased by groupies. Even after they tell her they're married. Married...

Wait, this is too fun to log off. Start below to see the webcast tragedy part 1. KCBS's web team is a disaster and it's getting worse. Lavender Lady Lisa Joyner says things like this: "They guy before? Oh that was Mario." pause. "Chris Rock lookalike." Nice. She isn't able to pick up on who Chris Cornell might be, or that his fellow Audioslaver Tom Morello might be a tad sarcastic when he says...

Shane Nickerson vlogs HAWESOME. What is excellent: vlogging while driving. Vlogging while driving with a cow-print carseat in the back. So uncool it's cool, which is perhaps the very definition of HAWSOME. Ever wanted to know what it's like to see X play "Los Angeles" live? This video captures what it's like when you've forgotten to bring ear plugs and you don't pay attention to the whole song. As real as real can be....

We hate to do this, we really do, because it is letting el gato right out of the bag. Curbed LA has the skinny on lofts in development that may be the coolest in the city, in the East LA community of Boyle Heights. The Buena Vista Lofts will have views of Hollenbeck Park and downtown LA. The building, a former hospital, is a recently-designated historic landmark. There will be actual greenspace. Sigh. We're...

At a speech today George Bush dropped a bomb: that the US foiled a terrorist plot to attack the Library Tower in 2002. Except he called it the "Liberty Tower." A slip of the tongue that makes his point all the more pointed, eh? The Library Tower, aka the US Bank Building, is the tallest in Los Angeles and is pretty much in the middle of downtown LA. If it had been smacked into...

Sly Stone gets on stage for the first time in 19 years. That made the Grammy Awards worth watching. Was there anything else that did? U2 and Mary J. Blige singing "One" together — that woman can put it all on the line. Matt Dillon saying that they were a tough act to follow. Kanye winning. Dave Chapelle. Jay-Z's John Lennon t-shirt. Bruce Springsteen. Sam Cooke. What could we have skipped? The cheesy black-and-white-ification of...

LAUSD Superinendent Roy Romer has announced a series of reforms desgined to keep students from dropping out of school, and to help the 44% percent of freshmen who fail algebra on their first try. The LA Times writes "Romer's initiatives come on the heels of a Times series about the dropout problem in Los Angeles schools." Did the paper really cause the reforms? The Daily News thinks not, citing Mayor Villaraigosa's move to take...

The microphones are on in the CBS-2 webcast booth on the edge of the red carpet, and they're complaining about the lack of celebrity juice that's come by. "It's only 4," the hostess Lisa Joyner says. She must have watched the SAG Awards because she's in lavender just like all the Desperate Housewives. She's just spent a few minutes talking to Miss California, who can be picked out by the not-so-subtle "Miss California" banner...

Ever wonder what it's like to be renaissance woman Sarah Vowell? It probably looks a little like this. At least, that's what it looked like last night as people crammed into Skylight Books to hear her read from her latest book, Assassination Vacation, now out in paperback. In case you don't know Ms. Vowell, she's an editor at This American Life, the award-winning storytelling show on NPR (some of her older stories can be...