Renegades

"Renegades" (citywide), a shamelessly contrived, ultraviolent macho fantasy, stars Kiefer Sutherland and Lou Diamond Phillips, who are too talented and too successful to be wasting themselves on such trash. Sutherland plays a maverick undercover Philadelphia cop who has infiltrated a ring of jewel thieves. For absolutely no discernible reason except to further the plot, its icily lethal ringleader (Rob Knepper), while making his escape, steals a lance sacred to the Lakota Sioux on display as part of a gallery exhibition of Lakota arts and crafts.

TEHRAN - The reform movement that took to the streets to protest alleged vote-rigging in Iran's last presidential election has been crushed. The supreme leader has made it clear that such behavior will not be tolerated this time. But that doesn't mean the maneuvering to replace Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in an election set for June 14 has been without intrigue. Ahmadinejad, who was reelected in the disputed 2009 balloting, is barred by law from seeking a third term and is publicly promoting a trusted aide to replace him. It is far from clear, however, whether the president's preferred successor will even be allowed to run. For much of the outside world, the incumbent remains the defiant face of the Iranian theocracy.

The run and shoot was reduced to a squirt. Bakersfield College, avenging two consecutive losses to Valley, held the Monarchs' rapid-paced offense to only 61 total yards en route to a 25-7 victory in a Western State Conference interdivision game Saturday night at Valley.

Christina Winkelmann's booth at the Renegade Craft Fair in L.A. this weekend showcased her holiday wreaths made of vintage Christmas ornaments, but it was her recycled bingo-card gift wrap that had shoppers lined up. The Los Feliz crafter seemed downright embarrassed that so many fairgoers were charmed by something that was more marketing genius than personal artistic expression. Winkelmann said the bingo cards truly were recycled -- picked up during visits to Grandma out in the desert.

President Reagan greeted more than 100 renegades from the Democratic Party with a "Welcome aboard--welcome home," and said their switch to the GOP represents "a national movement that is sweeping the electorate."

Don't expect to see Jim Debiase shaken up over a measly leadoff double. After being greeted with a two-bagger by Bakersfield College's Gibar Bradshaw to start the game, Debiase worked eight outstanding innings as Pierce pounded the Renegades, 10-2, in a Western State Conference South Division baseball game Tuesday. The freshman right-hander from Chatsworth High allowed three hits and struck out seven.

The Southwest College football team trailed 12th-ranked Bakersfield, 14-8, at halftime Saturday afternoon, but three consecutive second-half fumbles by the Cougars helped the Renegades to a 33-14 Western State Conference victory. Bakersfield (7-1-1) converted each of the fumbles into scores. Two plays after Southwest's Nathan Preston fumbled a punt, Bakersfield's Angus Sumlin scored on a one-yard run.

With a rake at the end of his pitching arm and a dejected look on his face, Clint Marcus dragged the dirt as he tidied up the pitching mound Saturday at Valley College. Perhaps he was just trying to cover his tracks. Or just digging for answers. Either way, it was lonely labor for Marcus, who had just been worked over by Bakersfield, which won its seventh consecutive game by beating Valley, 11-6, in a Western State Conference South Division baseball game.

EVENTS Stock up on stretchy, felty or shiny purses, scarves, sweaters and other crafts made with needles and thread at the Renegade Craft Fair. About 250 indie-craft talents from across the country will sell their creations. Workshops will be lead by Etsy, Threadless, ReForm School, Urban Craft Center, SewLA and others. And you'll get to stitch to the beat with DJs from KXLU-FM (88.9). Los Angeles State Historic Park, 1245 N. Spring St. 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Sat.-Sun. Free. http://www.

As the Beatles and the Backstreet Boys jockey at the top of the album sales chart, another band strikes a chord in the Southland--favorite sons Rage Against the Machine, whose "Renegades" figures to be their last studio album with departed singer Zack de la Rocha, entered the Southern California chart at No. 3, and No. 14 nationally.

It was an unlikely setting for a bike race. But as night fell Saturday, more than 2,000 spectators filed into the 2nd Street tunnel in downtown Los Angeles to cheer on riders. With their heads down and legs pumping as fast as they would go, the cyclists blazed through the tunnel in pairs at a pace that reached well over 30 miles per hour. The best of the riders didn't even have brakes - slowing down was not their concern. "You just give it all you can, just pedal as fast as you can," said 29-year-old Mike "The Cheetah" Chitjian of Monterey Park, who was one of about 200 participants.

EVENTS If you want to see just where those jokes on IFC's "Portlandia" about "putting a bird on it" came from, take a look at the Renegade Craft Fair this weekend. And while you'll surely see all sorts of screened and embroidered images of owls and sparrows on useful and decorative items being sold by individual artisans in against a backdrop of food trucks, what you'll also see is genuine, DIY artistry in jewelry, clothing and crafts that won't only inspire you to buy a few things, it might send you on a path of putting a bird on some creations of your own as well.

A computer programmed to design a promising young Republican politician would probably spit out Nathan Fletcher. Marine; Iraq combat veteran in Iraq; smart; athletic; married to a well-situated Republican; two little boys, adopted; two dogs, ditto. Perfect - except now there's no "R" after his name. Fletcher was elected to the state Assembly from San Diego County in 2008, and he is running for San Diego mayor in a nonpartisan race that is nonetheless drawing partisan lightning. Since Fletcher changed his party registration to "decline to state," which got national coverage, polls have him second in the June 5 primary, just behind openly gay Republican council member Carl DeMaio, who won the GOP endorsement over Fletcher.

A crackdown on Venice Beach homeless encampments and renegade vendors is pitting longtime residents and merchants against homeless advocates and younger transients. The Los Angeles Police Department enforcement efforts, begun almost two months ago, were spurred by mounting complaints from waterfront residents and business owners who said aggressive, intoxicated transients and violent disputes over vendors' spaces had made the boardwalk an increasingly lawless, frightening place.

An hour before the clock struck midnight, two young women got off the Metro Red Line subway at Hollywood and Vine and melted into a crowd dressed in the bondage gear that passes for ball gowns in L.A.: tight black skirts that barely covered their bottoms, high-heeled booties, strapless tops, all worn in resolute defiance of the 50-degree air. They were Brianna Tomaselli and Gianna Vona, two fashion students lately transplanted from "Jersey" to...

The deadly artillery barrages and sprawling street battles that have engulfed Yemen in recent days are rooted in a strategic power struggle among a renegade general, a billionaire tribal leader and the family of longtime President Ali Abdullah Saleh. The animosities among these three factions are eclipsing a largely peaceful protest movement that for the last eight months has been unable to force Saleh from office. The intense fighting in the capital, Sana, is rumbling closer to civil war as the president's main rivals attempt to exploit the chaos and maneuver for control of the nation.

Renegades, indeed. The Westlake-based girls' club team known as the Renegades went to the recent Volleyball Festival in Davis, Calif., with one objective. "To play at center court and, obviously, try to win it," Coach Bill O'Neill said. They did and, well, they did. The Renegades topped Laguna Beach in the final of the 16-and-under division, played before more than 8,000 fans. "There wasn't a dry eye in the place for the parents," O'Neill said. "And the kids were ecstatic."

The event depicted in the photograph belongs to a familiar genre: the triumphal luncheon. At the head of a long table draped in white linen and covered with drained wine bottles and half-empty coffee cups sits Bill Shockley, square-jawed and grinning widely in a Hawaiian shirt, flanked by 11 of the smartest engineers and physicists in America. They are all on his payroll. It is Nov.

Shepard Fairey enjoys reaching out to people whose work he admires. When he also forms a personal bond with the person he has approached, he says it feels like "things in the universe are in their correct place. " Which is why the rebellious street artist who skyrocketed to international fame in 2008 with his ubiquitous Obama "Hope" poster is particularly tickled about his budding friendship with actor/comedian/provocateur Russell Brand. Fairey traffics in the iconography of fame, and Brand, in his just-released memoir "Booky Wook 2," is obsessed with fame's machinations and implications.

Criminal gangs have been family affairs since long before the James Brothers saddled up to spread mayhem across the American West. But in today's pop culture, more and more, it appears that the "family" that slays together stays together. In the new Australian suspense-drama "Animal Kingdom," set in the bland burbs of Melbourne, a modern-day Ma Barker manipulates her brood of bank-robber sons with sweet talk and icky, smoldering kisses. In Debra Granik's American indie drama "Winter's Bone," an uncle, his niece and various drug-dealing Ozarks in-laws are sealed in a murderous pact of silence.