Archive for March, 2010
Residents Artist in Residence
Pasadena City College is renowned for its lengthy tenure as one of the best community colleges in California, spawning ground for Dennis Cooper and Van Halen (as well as artists Betye Saar and Liz McGrath) and home to the mother of all swap meets. It also boasts a remarkably stro…
Tasty by Any Name
Tasty Noodle House is the prototypical Asian restaurant stuck in a corner of the prototypical San Gabriel mall, a few glass-topped tables, a couple of flat screens tuned to the soaps, a half-dozen pretty food photographs posted in the picture window outside. Golden Deli, which is…
Floating Dinosaur
Being the only woman pilot of one of only three Zeppelin airships in the world may be a rarefied job, but it certainly doesn’t get you a lot of rarefied questions.
“Any mention of the Hindenburg is going to incur a $20 fine,” says pilot Katharine Board. “Or hydrogen. Swea…
Stare Down!
If you find yourself at Son of Semele Theatre on a Tuesday through Thursday night, and I hope you do, you’ll find a pair of one-man shows presented by a company called NeedTheater. The first of these, a play called The Event, is scripted by John Clancy. A slender, silver…
Into the Abyss
Monday: The Cuban food that popped up on nearly every page of Oscar Hijuelos’ Mambo Kings Sing Songs of Love was widely considered to be fantastic when the novel came out 20 years ago, a magical-realist symbol that bopped through the book like music. I knew better. El Co…
Alice in Chains: Tim Burton in La-La Land
Between the candy-colored, kid-friendly billboards sprinkled across urban areas and the hipster music blogs hyping soundtrack contributions from the Cure’s Robert Smith, it’s been hard to peg exactly whom Tim Burton’s live-action/CGI hybrid Alice in Wonderland was actual…
Liars in the Sisterworld
For six months, Angus Andrew, front man for noise-rock group Liars, wrote and recorded music in a studio on top of a medical-marijuana dispensary on La Brea Avenue. It was the kind of apartment that had been a victim of shoddy renovations, where drywall covered what was once a wi…
Love Me Tender, Love Me Harsh
The New York Times reports a new trend for men marrying “up” — women who earn more than their grooms.
The economic realities of the past 30 years have manifested themselves quite obviously in guys being less and less able to offer, by themselves, f…
Black Lung Lofts
On a recent afternoon in the Eastside neighborhood of Lincoln Heights, Fay Green stands in the hallway of her apartment complex, which sits just feet above the bumper-to-bumper traffic of the I-5 freeway. A soft-spoken black woman, she lives with her five kids and one grandson in…