ENTERTAINMENT
February 23, 2013 | By John Horn, Los Angeles Times
Steven Spielberg was inspired by Abraham Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation. Ben Affleck was provoked by a Middle Eastern hostage tale. Adam Pesapane wanted to transform a hand grenade into an avocado. All three directors will walk the red carpet at Sunday's Academy Awards, but for Pesapane, 39, the shot at Oscar gold for his 1 minute, 46-second stop-motion animated film represents more than a chance to add a fancy statuette to his mantelpiece. The English major-turned-commercial director, who goes by the professional moniker Pes, is hoping the Oscar attention for his "Fresh Guacamole" movie, made for less than $100,000 by Showtime Networks, can help him climb the show business ladder and give him a chance to direct his first full-length feature film.
HEALTH
October 6, 2012
If you're interested in seeing whether eating probiotic-infused foods might improve your digestive health, look for foods (or supplements) with one of many species of lactobacillus or bifidobacterium. "There are something like 400 different probiotics, so it's hard to recommend a specific one, but these two have been widely studied," says Bethany Thayer, a registered dietitian at the Henry Ford Health System in Detroit. There isn't a recommended daily amount for probiotics, either, but supplements generally contain 10 billion to 20 billion active cultures per dose.
NEWS
September 30, 2012 | By Charles Perry
A waffle is a wafer--historically speaking, that is. So is an ice cream cone. The original wafer was the oblatum , the unleavened Communion wafer (unleavened because the bread at the Last Supper was a matzo). The idea of cooking oblata between sheets of metal to make them as thin as possible goes back at least 1,300 years; a wafer iron has been found at a 7th-century site in Carthage, Tunisia. In the 13th century, bakers in France and the Netherlands started producing secular versions of oblata with a honeycomb pattern, probably so that there would be no confusion with consecrated wafers.
SPORTS
July 18, 2012 | T.J. SIMERS
Easily offended readers take note, because this isn't going to go well for everyone. I already know I should probably apologize before applying a sense of humor while mentioning Kershaw the kid, wives and Jesus. But if he wants to be accepted for who he is, and I'm talking Clayton Kershaw here, then being me, I'm going to want to know why anyone should read a book written by a blessed 24-year-old kid who really hasn't lived yet? As it is, I'm thinking a book that begins with a foreword written by A.J. Ellis isn't going to have much of a shelf life, but then that's just me trying to crack funny.
SPORTS
October 8, 2011 | By Chris Foster
Quarterback Kevin Prince took one last snap, and took a knee. UCLA fans cheered. Prince had been on the shelf -- where many fans preferred him to be -- the previous three weeks. He had been watching since Texas intercepted three of his passes Sept. 17, two after he'd separated his left shoulder. The Bruins lurched along without him. By late Saturday evening, Prince's shoulder seemed fine and his standing with Bruins fans rehabilitated. Prince led a frantic fourth-quarter rally that may have salvaged UCLA's season.
NEWS
September 8, 2011 | By Jeannine Stein, Los Angeles Times / For the Booster Shots blog
Reality TV star Bethenny Frankel's Skinnygirl Margarita was recently yanked from the shelves of Whole Foods markets for purportedly having a non-natural preservative thought to be sodium benzoate. Though the bottle reads "all natural," the grocery chain wasn't OK with it. TMZ reports that a class action lawsuit has also been filed against the parent company alleging misleading claims about the product being natural. What is sodium benzoate, and should you be worried about ingesting it?