Innovative

Franz West, the Austrian artist known for his innovative sculptures and installations, has died at 65. West died in Vienna on Wednesday following a long illness, according to reports. West's sculptural creations were both playful and serious, accessible and yet intellectually challenging. During his career, West mounted shows at major museums around the world. A retrospective exhibition of his work organized by the Baltimore Museum of Art came to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 2009.

The best thing you can say about the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is that it's impossible to imagine it ever being investigated for campaign finance violations. While our two political parties are expected to each spend nearly a billion dollars in negative advertising to elect a president this November, the academy's upcoming presidential election proceeds with polite, almost quaint, rules. Next Tuesday, someone will be named as the academy's new president, succeeding Tom Sherak, who is termed out after three productive years as chief.

BALTIMORE — Inside a converted warehouse in the Pigtown neighborhood here, designers and engineers dream up and test equipment for one of the nation's fastest-growing sports. They follow in the footsteps of company founder Richard B.C. Tucker, a lacrosse player and 1951 graduate of Baltimore's Johns Hopkins University who revolutionized the lacrosse stick 42 years ago and forever changed the sport. Today STX claims the biggest share of the U.S. lacrosse equipment market.

Rocio Camacho was catapulted into mole fame when she started cooking at Moles La Tia in East Los Angeles, where her moles ran the gamut from traditional Pueblan and Oaxacan varieties to unconventional riffs on the genre — say, passion fruit, beets with hibiscus flower, or coffee. Now she has opened Mole de los Dioses ("mole from the gods") in two locations, dashing between the pair of restaurants daily to turn out her devotional cuisine. It's no surprise that Camacho facilely commands the most baroque of the mole genre: a 27-ingredient mole poblano with dark chiles, nuts, seeds and a little sweetness from raisins.

BOSTON - A new generation of consumers who have little regard for historical distribution systems will be what drives media companies to rethink their role as gatekeepers to content. "It always seems to be about the kids," said filmmaker Ed Burns who has taken to releasing his movies on non-theatrical platforms, including Apple's iTunes, and on video-on-demand. Speaking at the National Cable Telecommunications Assn. here, Burns said that young people today "are not nostalgic for the way we consumed entertainment.

Fashion jewelry design is in the midst of a renaissance the likes of which we haven't seen since the 1980s. And Alexis Bittar blazed the trail. In the last two decades, the New York-based jewelry designer has gone from selling his signature colorful, hand-carved Lucite pieces on the streets of SoHo to bejeweling leading ladies in Hollywood and beyond, including Lady Gaga, First Lady Michelle Obama, Madonna, Cameron Diaz, Meryl Streep and Rihanna....

The Times' Mike Bresnahan reports that Lakers center Andrew Bynum won't play in the 2012 Olympics so he can get rest and receive an innovative procedure on his surgically repaired right knee in Germany. Bresnahan says it's similar to the procedure Kobe Bryant had on his right knee and left ankle last summer. Game stories -- The Times' Bresnahan observes the Lakers didn't do much to complement Kobe Bryant in his return to the lineup in the Lakers' 121-97 loss Friday to the San Antonio Spurs.

SAN ANTONIO -- Lakers center Andrew Bynum is not interested in playing in the Olympics because he wants extra rest and also plans to undergo the same innovative knee procedure that Kobe Bryant had in Germany last summer. "I've got to take care of my legs in the off-season," Bynum said Friday. "I've got some things planned for my knees.... I've got to do some therapy that I'm going overseas to do. " Bynum has undergone surgical procedures on each of his knees in recent years.

On a seemingly typical shooting day recently at a stage in El Segundo, a director in a baseball cap was hunched over video monitors, burly grips were moving lights, and the producers were arguing about just what it was they were making. "I swear we need a tip jar for every time somebody calls this 'television' or 'marketing,'" said an exasperated Elan Lee, chief creative officer of Fourth Wall Studios. "I want a jar for every time we say 'transmedia' too, but I don't know what else to say sometimes," added Jim Stewartson, Fourth Wall's chief executive.

Larry Stevenson, a Venice Beach lifeguard who helped popularize skateboarding in the early 1960s by marketing his Makaha boards to riders eager to essentially surf on land, has died. He was 81. Stevenson, who had Parkinson's disease, died Sunday at Santa Monica UCLA Medical Center, said his son, Curt. "He was the guy who said, 'I can merge surfing with the skateboard culture,'" said Michael Brooke, author of the 1999 skateboarding history "The Concrete Wave. " "At one point in time, there was nobody bigger making skateboards.