Magazine

"Oh, you mean the guy with the 70-year-old head and the 20-year-old body-builder body? That picture has got to be Photoshopped." Dr. Jeffry Life smiles when I tell him about the general reaction I get about the famous picture of him with his shirt off, the shot that turned a mild-mannered doctor in his mid-60s into a poster boy for super-fit aging and controversial hormone replacement Appearing in medical-clinic ads in airline magazines and...

The Los Angeles Times said its Sunday magazine, facing tough challenges, will cease publication. LA, Los Angeles Times Magazine will print its final issue June 3, Kathy K. Thomson, president and chief operating officer, said in an email Tuesday to employees. The magazine came out weekly until 2008, when the paper's editorial department stopped publishing it. The Los Angeles Times Media Group then put out the magazine in a monthly format. "The entire magazine industry has been faced with a very challenging environment," Thomson wrote.

The Grammy Award-winning singer Glen Campbell announced this week that he is suffering from Alzheimer's disease. And then he said he'd be going on the road for a farewell tour. It's not unusual for a public figure to reveal a diagnosis of the insidious disease. Former President Reagan told the world of his battle with Alzheimer's in a poignant letter in 1994. Actor Charlton Heston disclosed, via a taped statement, that he was suffering from symptoms similar to those of Alzheimer's.

Ernest "Chick" Callenbach, a film scholar and environmentalist who created a cult favorite in "Ecotopia," a 1975 novel that predicted with uncanny accuracy a world where recycling is commonplace, food is locally grown and energy comes from the sun, died April 16 in Berkeley. He was 83. The cause was cancer, said his wife, Christine Leefeldt. "Ecotopia" described a utopian world created by the secession of Oregon, Washington and Northern California from the United States. It takes place in 1999 when a New York newspaper reporter becomes the first American visitor since Ecotopia's founding 19 years earlier.

In the remote northeastern corner of Guatemala, archaeologists have found what appears to be the 9th century workplace of a city scribe, an unusual dwelling adorned with magnificent pictures of the king and other royals and the oldest known Maya calendar. This year has been particularly controversial among some cultists because of the belief that the Maya calendar predicts a major cataclysm - perhaps the end of the world - on Dec. 21, 2012. Archaeologists know that is not true, but the new find, written on the plaster equivalent of a modern scientist's whiteboard, strongly reinforces the idea that the Maya calendar projects thousands of years into the future.

BEIJING - "Beijing power struggle heralds end of China Communist Party," screams one headline. More sensational headlines purport to reveal how the wife of recently sacked Politburo member Bo Xilai poisoned an Englishman, who may have been her lover. And if that weren't enough, other stories claim that "Bo planned airline crash" and "slept with more than 100 women. " It's payback time for Chinese exiles, especially those with a printing press, television station or just a computer at their disposal.

Watching Alzheimer's disease steal away the memory, talents and very selves of its victims is hard enough for the people who love them. Now, a new pill formulated by a respected pharmaceutical company and approved by the Food and Drug Administration will do little to help most patients and will bring misery to some, say two medical investigators. The drug, Aricept 23 mg, is no more effective on the whole than the disappointing ones already on the market - but is more likely to cause gastrointestinal problems, wrote Drs. Steven Woloshin and Lisa Schwartz of Dartmouth Medical College in an article published Thursday in the medical journal BMJ. The new formulation was devised to serve commercial objectives, they say, and was approved despite a poor showing in company-sponsored tests.

Los Angeles will gay anybody up. In the two months since I moved here, I've bought a yellow convertible Mini Cooper, a pair of Guess jeans and started using one of those fitness balls as my desk chair. This is a town so gay that Republicans don't even run for mayor. So when ABC Entertainment President Steve McPherson told Time magazine, in a story about the preponderance of gay TV show creators, that "if being gay makes you that talented, I'm going gay," I had to give it some serious thought.

IF it's been a year or two since you've shopped for a mattress, you're in for some surprises. That memory foam bed that once seemed so novel? It's now decidedly mainstream. Latex is the hot material of choice. And that's not all that's changed. Choices are multiplying -- especially on the luxury end -- and prices are too.

Ernest "Chick" Callenbach, a film scholar and environmentalist who created a cult favorite in "Ecotopia," a 1975 novel that predicted with uncanny accuracy a world where recycling is commonplace, food is locally grown and energy comes from the sun, died April 16 in Berkeley. He was 83. The cause was cancer, said his wife, Christine Leefeldt. "Ecotopia" described a utopian world created by the secession of Oregon, Washington and Northern California from the United States. It takes place in 1999 when a New York newspaper reporter becomes the first American visitor since Ecotopia's founding 19 years earlier.

Left limping by years of declining print sales, the magazine industry is hoping a new plan for tablet users will give it legs to leap into digital profits. Five of the largest magazine publishers —Time Inc., Condé Nast, Hearst Corp., News Corp. and Meredith Corp. — jointly released a tablet computer application Wednesday that offers owners of Android-based tablets unlimited access to 32 of the nation's most popular glossy titles for $14.99 a month. Publishers compare the new plan to the all-access model that Netflix Inc. gives to movie subscribers.

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.

On the cover of the current GQ, a beaming Drake strides confidently toward the reader, fit and fearless in a $3,100 Gucci suit and $1,590 Tom Ford shoes. Inside, the 25-year-old rapper greets the magazine's reporter poolside at his "lady-fantasy" (her words) compound in the San Fernando Valley. Writer Claire Hoffman gets Drake to reveal cover-worthy morsels about his womanizing (prodigious, now purportedly regretted), his fragile paternal ties and his Internet-fueled entree into the music world.

Admit it, at 45 years old, the Advocate looks good. Over those years, the LGBT magazine has seen the same challenges as any other print publication but has forged ahead with its watchdog duties in human rights as well as being a pop culture compass. The glossy will celebrate the big 4-5 at the Beverly Hilton on Thursday, welcoming a host of celebs and activists, as well as fashion and social types. Not to mention inductees to the Heroes Hall of Fame, a list of notables that includes Ellen DeGeneres, Rosie O'Donnell, Cynthia Nixon and Jake Gyllenhaal.

Here's a hot story, especially if you're reading this on the new iPad. The popular device — 3 million were sold in its first weekend — can reach 116 degrees during intensive use, according to a test by Consumer Reports. The analysis came as more iPad owners complained that the latest version of the tablet computer got warm — very warm in some cases. The consumer magazine ran a graphics-intensive video game for 45 minutes and found that the device got hottest on its back panel, in one corner, likely near the computer processor.

The letter to the editor of a prestigious archaeology magazine came from inmate No. J81961 at Tehachapi State Prison. Prisoner Timothy Fenstermacher, a high school dropout, wrote to disagree with an article by an archaeologist at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Archaeologist Orly Goldwasser had based her story on the birth of the alphabet in part on the appearance of the rare "Sinai hieroglyph," which she said was used in the Sinai during Egypt's Middle Kingdom. Fenstermacher thought otherwise.

Left limping by years of declining print sales, the magazine industry is hoping a new plan for tablet users will give it legs to leap into digital profits. Five of the largest magazine publishers —Time Inc., Condé Nast, Hearst Corp., News Corp. and Meredith Corp. — jointly released a tablet computer application Wednesday that offers owners of Android-based tablets unlimited access to 32 of the nation's most popular glossy titles for $14.99 a month. Publishers compare the new plan to the all-access model that Netflix Inc. gives to movie subscribers.

If, perchance, you are a fan of magazines prominently displayed in grocery checkout lines, please accept my apologies for any shattering of delusions that may be about to take place. A few days ago, I was in one of these lines, my eyes wandering over the various magazines, one revealing a bikini-clad and heavily Photoshopped Kim Kardashian, something about someone videotaping something they shouldn't have, some allegedly famous guy cheating on some girl of equally dubious fame — and cupcakes.

Chris Hughes, co-founder of Facebook and coordinator of Barack Obama's online efforts during the 2008 presidential election, is entering the "old media" fray as publisher and editor-in-chief of the New Republic, the publication announced Friday. Initial response? Journalists who do not write for the New Republic are seething with envy, and wonder if perhaps another Silicon Valley millionaire/billionaire would like to come and inject an infusion of new-media money into their publication too. But it's not just the money, it's also what Hughes is saying about the state of journalism today that is drawing attention.

Saturday's game ended with UCLA Coach Ben Howland screaming at his players — not that usual tough-love-type stuff, mind you. This was sheer happiness. The Bruins had a rough week, with a Sports Illustrated story portraying a program in disarray. It was part of a rough regular season that began with leading scorer Reeves Nelson being tossed off the team. So the Bruins found particular joy in a 75-69 victory over Washington — the Pac-12 Conference's first-place team — that resulted in senior walk-on Tyler Trapani getting pushed around by teammates in the locker room as Howland hollered.