Olive

Novelist Lauren Oliver has only been a published author for two years, but in that short time, she's racked up three New York Times bestsellers for her young-adult novels, a movie deal, and two books for middle-grade readers, the most recent of which has received five-star reviews. We caught up with the Brooklyn-based author as she was packing her bags to go on tour for "The Spindlers," a middle-grade title about a girl who ventures into a secret underground to save her brother from soul-sucking spiders.

LONDON - It's a problematic afternoon, and I'm late to meet the British composer and conductor Oliver Knussen at Royal Albert Hall. Torrential downpours have flooded parts of the Underground, and everywhere wild things are gearing up for the annual Notting Hill Carnival, which typically ends with a drunken riot and a couple of stabbings. Sane people stay away from all the ruckus. When I finally arrive, Albert Hall is, on the other hand, relatively sedate. Knussen's rehearsal with the BBC Symphony for the evening Proms program he will conduct has finished.

Chris Dodd, Hollywood's chief lobbyist, extended an olive branch to Silicon Valley. Eager to put to rest a bruising battle with Google and other tech companies over ill-fated anti-piracy bills this year, Dodd stressed common ground between California's two signature  industries in a speech Tuesday at the Commonwealth Club of California in San Francisco. "What I don't want to do is relive the SOPA debate -- and I hope you don't either," Dodd said, alluding to the Stop Online Piracy Act that sparked an unprecedented online protest led by Google, Wikipedia and other tech giants.

Carmelized onion, goat cheese and olive frittata Total time: 10 minutes Servings: 1 to 2 Note: The toppings should be warmed before being added to the frittata. The caramelized onion and garlic confit are difficult to cook in small amounts, but keep well in the refrigerator. Caramelized onions 1 onion, thinly sliced 1 tablespoon olive oil Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste 1/2 tablespoon butter Cook the onion and olive oil in a small skillet over medium-high heat.

The hard-edged urban drama "Arrow," coming to the CW this fall, is based on a DC Comics character with more than six decades of pop culture history. In the new TV series, he'll be surrounded by familiar DC figures like Deadshot, China White and possibly Black Canary and uber-villain Deathstroke. But don't worry if you're not steeped in all that mythology. It's not really a superhero show anyway, the producers said. Well, it's not just a superhero show. "It's a crime thriller," said Marc Guggenheim, executive producer.

Jed Berk and Oliver McIrwin's collaborative installation “Aquaculture,” at Aran Cravey Gallery, plays on the line between the organic and the synthetic, transforming the modest Abbot Kinney storefront into a lush, acrylic-based greenhouse of pointedly indeterminate phylum. They clearly had some fun with it, and the fun is more or less contagious. A floating tangle of leaf-green helium balloons mysteriously rigged with PVC  irrigation tubing; rubber fish, gorged with spray foam, that dangle in unholy anatomical harmony from the mouths of similarly gorged tennis shoes and galoshes; water troughs filled with mop heads, pile rugs and swaths of “cuddle shag fabric” that waft and wave in the ripping water like anemones in a tide pool - the best of the works are large, cheerfully bizarre concoctions that blithely set their own formal terms, overshadowing a handful of one-liners.

Matthew Kennedy spent his 39th birthday at the hospital learning to walk again. Three months ago, the Venice Beach resident started having trouble moving his legs. When a chest X-ray at a Santa Monica health center revealed a shadow in his lungs, he was quickly transferred to a highly specialized tuberculosis ward 25 miles across the county at Olive View-UCLA Medical Center in Sylmar. Doctors think the bacterial disease attacked his nerves - unusual for TB, which typically infects the lungs.

Click here to download TV listings for the week of Aug.12 - 18 in PDF format This week's TV Movies   SERIES Boss: Things take a precarious turn for Chicago's Mayor Tom Kane (Kelsey Grammer) in the second season of this drama. As his neurological disease progresses, Kane fights it off with increased doses of medication that at the same time heighten the psychological manifestations of the disease. Sanaa Lathan, Jonathan Groff and Tip Harris (a.k.a.

Sarah Palin was miffed to hear Dick Cheney say that when John McCain picked her as his running mate, she did not meet the test of being ready to assume the presidency. So the former vice president tried to tone down his remarks Monday. Sort of. “It wasn't aimed so much at Gov. Palin as it was against the basic process that McCain used,” Cheney said on Fox News Channel's “Hannity” show. What he was trying to say when he told ABC News recently that it was a mistake to put Palin on the 2008 Republican ticket, Cheney explained, was that “the process didn't meet the standards I would like to see our candidate pursue when they pick a running mate.” “I like Gov. Palin,” Cheney said.

Without foley artist Gary Hecker,"Savages"would be a much quieter film. In the new thriller from director Oliver Stone based on the 2010 novel by Don Winslow, the decibels get pretty high when a Mexican drug cartel kidnaps the woman loved by two Laguna Beach pot growers. Whether the actors were loading rifles, typing on computer keyboards or simply walking across a floor, Hecker carefully re-created each sound using a room full of props on the foley stage at Todd-AO in Santa Monica.