Ecstasy

When Hotlanta rapper-turned-movie star T.I. was arrested on drug possession charges earlier this month, there was a feeling of "haven't we all been here before?" But also genuine surprise. From ODB to DMX, Kanye to 'Pac, hip-hop performers have a chronic habit of getting busted for stupid stuff. Identity theft. Cruelty to animals. Wearing a bulletproof vest after being convicted of a felony. Rappers behaving badly have become one of popular culture's most numbing constants. After all, T.I. was already on probation when L.A. County sheriff's deputies stopped his $600,000 Mercedes Maybach on the Sunset Strip for what they said was an illegal U-turn and then detected what they said was "a strong odor of marijuana emitting from the vehicle"; earlier this year, he served a seven-month prison sentence for attempting to buy a cache of automatic weapons and silencers.

The hours before Selection Sunday are what Lakers announcer Chick Hearn used to call "nervous time. " Defending national champion Kentucky might want to chew on some of Jerry Tarkanian's old towels after probably blowing its bubble bid with an early SEC tournament ouster against Vanderbilt. Kentucky Coach John Calipari needs to move Sunday morning's team breakfast into the beggars banquet room. Those eight NCAA titles are of little use now. "The good news is everyone seems to be losing," Calipari said after his team "laid an egg" against Vandy.

'The Agony and the Ecstasy of Phil Spector' Rating: No MPAA rating Running time: 1 hour, 42 minutes Playing: American Cinematheque Egyptian Theatre, Hollywood

'The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs' Where: Theatre Asylum, 6320 Santa Monica Blvd., L.A. When: 8 p.m. Wednesdays, through April 10 Price: $20 Information: (323) 962-1632

The suspected drug overdose death of a 15-year old girl who attended a massive rave in Los Angeles last weekend has drawn attention to the drug her family was told was found in her body: Ecstasy. Officials said use of the hallucinogen and stimulant was widespread among the scores of partygoers taken by ambulance to emergency rooms from the Electric Daisy Carnival, which was held at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and surrounding Exposition Park, attracting 185,000 people over two days.

Los Angeles is earning a reputation as a hotbed of raves — those dance parties that sometimes last all night and feature pulsing electronic music, light shows and recreational drugs. In addition to drawing tens of thousands of young people to events, the city's raves have attracted the notice of local and federal public health officials because of the number of emergency room visits that result. During a two-day event last month at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum with an estimated 185,000 participants, some 120 people were taken to local hospitals, many with symptoms of drug intoxication.

Hospital emergency rooms don't have the same ambience as raves, but both locations are becoming associated with Ecstasy use. Raves because ... you know. But ERs because using Ecstasy has sent people there. The number of ER visits involving Ecstasy, or MDMA, increased 75%, from 10,220 in 2004 to 17,865 in 2008, according to a new report released Thursday by the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration. Further, almost 70% of the ER visits involved patients 18- to 29-year-olds and 17.9% involved 12- to 17-year-olds.

As a physician who has researched and written extensively about MDMA, I took a keen interest in the Ecstasy fact card controversy developing in Los Angeles. The Los Angeles Department of Public Health is taking quite a bit of heat right now for the card it created to be distributed at large-scale rave dance parties in the city, as reported in a Feb. 8 L.A. Now blog post. The fact card explains the physical effects of Ecstasy, the risks involved in its use and how to reduce these risks, including by choosing not to take the substance at all. These cards were developed and approved by a panel of experts, including physicians, public health experts and harm reductionists.

Every time I write about a high-performance sports car, I'm guaranteed to get letters from readers to this effect: "How can you possibly glorify the Badminton Dual-Cowl 87B? No one needs a car that goes 200 mph, costs $300,000 and gets five miles per gallon. With all that's going on in the world [climate change, war in the Middle East, balance of trade etc.]. For shame. For shame!" All right, then. I present to you perhaps the most fun available on four wheels: The 2010 Lotus Evora.

A 24-year-old man died and 18 others were transported to emergency rooms after taking Ecstasy at an all night New Year's Eve rave at the Los Angeles Sports Arena, according to a report released Thursday. The report, by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, comes after the death of two men who had attended a Cow Palace rave over the Memorial Day weekend south of San Francisco. The cases raised questions about whether publicly owned venues like the Sports Arena should host such events.

Is the ecstasy and agony of Mike Daisey finally over? It's been nearly a year since the monologuist was first feted, then pilloried, for his solo play "The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs. " This mix of tech-geek autobiography and labor exposé was running at New York's Public Theater in January 2012 when the popular public-radio show "This American Life" aired a scalding excerpt in which Daisey described brutal working conditions he said he witnessed at Foxconn, a Chinese plant that manufactures Apple products.

LONDON -- Only the Guardian can make the Olympic men's weightlifting event look more interesting -- Lego-style, brick by-brick -- than the actual competition itself.  Welcome to the contest for the strongest man in the world. As they say, slightly tongue in cheek ... "prepare to be amazed": "This is the final weight division of what has been a riveting men's competition and like so many sports of these games, it has drawn a crowd mixed with aficionados and those who never in a million years would have thought they'd be sitting here, watching this.

Talk about a bad trip. It started when Daniel Chong, a 23-year-old UC San Diego student, spent a night with friends to mark April 20, which some pot afficionados consider something of a holiday. It ended with an ordeal behind bars. The Drug Enforcement Administration apologized Wednesday to Chong, who was accidentally left in a holding cell for five days and reportedly drank his own urine to survive. San Diego attorney Gene Iredale said his client was "still recovering" from the ordeal.

The only movie ever banned in Britain for blasphemy was finally approved for distribution Tuesday, 23 years after it was outlawed. The experimental 19-minute film "Visions of Ecstasy" features scenes of Jesus being seduced on the cross and became a free-speech cause célèbre after Britain's film censors refused to give it a rating in 1989, a requirement for legal distribution. Blasphemy was abolished as an offense in 2008 and on Tuesday the film board gave Nigel Wingrove's film an "18" rating, meaning it may be viewed by adults.

Of all the books I read this year, here - alphabetically by title - are my 10 favorites, those that most stuck with me, that reframed how I think about the world. "1Q84" by Haruki Murakami (Alfred A. Knopf: 926 pp., $30.50). Murakami's magnum opus more than lives up to its billing, immersing us in a slightly altered universe to tell what is, in the end, the most traditional of stories: Boy gets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl. "Binocular Vision: New and Selected Stories" by Edith Pearlman (Lookout Books: 374 pp., $18.95 paper)

The Ecstasy of Influence Nonfictions, etc. Jonathan Lethem Doubleday: 438 pp., $27.95 Like Norman Mailer's "Advertisements for Myself," Jonathan Lethem's collection of essays and occasional pieces "The Ecstasy of Influence" resists our attempts to fence it in. I mention Mailer because Lethem does, early and often; "Influence is semiconscious," he writes, four pages in, "not something to delineate too extensively, except when we've...

The Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum Commission and the event company Insomniac were sued Thursday by the parents of a teenage girl who died of an Ecstasy overdose after attending a rave at the stadium. The suit also names former Coliseum events manager Todd DeStefano, whom Insomniac employed as a consultant while he held the stadium job, and two private companies he formed. Those companies received at least $1.8 million in payments from firms that also did business with the Coliseum.

A massive hit when it was released earlier this summer in Hong Kong, "3D Sex and Zen: Extreme Ecstasy" at least partially passes the truth in advertising test, as this soft-core erotic film designed to be projected in 3-D hurls all manner of objects, fluids and indescribable what-nots toward the screen. (Whether it provides any ecstasy, extreme or otherwise, will be up to the predilections of the individual viewer.) Now please adjust your irony-meter: "3D Sex and Zen" is not opening, at least initially, as a three-dimensionally projected film in Los Angeles; it's only playing in regular 2-D. While obviously taking something away from the experience, for better or worse this allows the viewer to focus more on the (ahem)