South Park

"South Park," a cartoon that is and isn't about four little boys in a Rocky Mountain hamlet, begins its 16th season Wednesday on Comedy Central. Sixteen years of "South Park - it began so long ago that Patrick Duffy was the subject of a joke in its second episode - sounds even more amazing than 23 years of "The Simpsons," given the younger show's habitual profanity, vulgarity and violence. But that is also obviously part of its appeal and, indeed, often its very point. What's kept both these small-town allegorical comedies valuable and viable over their long runs are qualities they share: a disregard for empty authority, skepticism regarding beliefs not based in fact, an impatience with hypocrisy and cant, and the happy realization that the worst aspects of humans both as individuals and (especially)

'South Park' Where: Comedy Central When: 10 p.m. Wednesday Rating: TV-MA-L (may be unsuitable for children younger than 17, with an advisory for coarse language)

The plot of the new "South Park" movie seems torn from today's headlines: Young kids sneak into an R-rated movie and become so entranced by the four-letter words they hear on screen that they can't stop using them. Their parents and eventually the government are so outraged that they take drastic action--everything from implanting a V-chip in a child to declaring war.

"South Park," a cartoon that is and isn't about four little boys in a Rocky Mountain hamlet, begins its 16th season Wednesday on Comedy Central. Sixteen years of "South Park - it began so long ago that Patrick Duffy was the subject of a joke in its second episode - sounds even more amazing than 23 years of "The Simpsons," given the younger show's habitual profanity, vulgarity and violence. But that is also obviously part of its appeal and, indeed, often its very point. What's kept both these small-town allegorical comedies valuable and viable over their long runs are qualities they share: a disregard for empty authority, skepticism regarding beliefs not based in fact, an impatience with hypocrisy and cant, and the happy realization that the worst aspects of humans both as individuals and (especially)

'South Park' Where: Comedy Central When: 10 p.m. Wednesday Rating: TV-MA-L (may be unsuitable for children younger than 17, with an advisory for coarse language)

Not so long ago, South Park looked like Club Med for gang members. The neighbors had given up on the little park -- ceding it, almost entirely, to the 5-Trey Avalon Gangster Crips. Gangsters smoked pot in the gym and bounced their gambling dice against the concrete steps outside the rec center. There was no grass, and, in the mornings, junkies littered the dirt with syringes and tiny, colorful balloons that had been emptied of heroin. There were no youth sports teams. There was one child -- one -- enrolled in the preschool program.

In its 200 shows, the irreverent animated program "South Park" has mercilessly satirized Christianity, Buddhism, Scientology, the blind and disabled, gay people, Hollywood celebrities and politicians of all persuasions, weathering the resulting protests and threats of boycotts. But this week, after an ominous threat from a radical Muslim website, the network that airs the program bleeped out all references to the prophet Muhammad in the second of two episodes set to feature the holy figure dressed in a bear costume.

He lost the Oscar for best actor last week, and now Russell Crowe must endure the barbs of "South Park." The animated series spoofs him at 10 p.m. Wednesday on Comedy Central with references to a TV series called "Russell Crowe: Fighting Around the World."

Remember the gnashing of teeth prompted years ago when the Beatles' song catalog was sold to corporate interests? Foaming-at-the-mouth critics were outraged. "The holy mop-top quartet used to peddle everything from cars to deodorant? Never!" How times have changed. Today, another gang of four who have also defined a generation are popping up on snack packages--and nobody seems to care.

Developers interested in submitting proposals for 325 to 375 units of rental housing on two sites in the southwestern area of downtown Los Angeles, known as South Park, may contact Michael Cracraft at the Community Redevelopment Agency, 354 S. Spring St., Suite 800, Los Angeles 90013. "This request for proposals constitutes a major public and private sector partnership that will result in the total expenditure of $50 million in private funds," CRA board chairman James M. Wood said.

— If there's an unsung hero to "The Book of Mormon" — the musical comedy, not the religious text — it's Casey Nicholaw. A Broadway smash hit that has also been nominated for 14 Tony Awards, "Mormon" was written by the more well-known "South Park" creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker in collaboration with Robert Lopez of the puppet musical "Avenue Q. " But Nicholaw, the director and choreographer whose credits include the hit musicals...

Take a short walk away from the bright lights of Staples Center and the giant video screens above L.A. Live, and it becomes clear that the acclaimed revitalization of downtown Los Angeles is still a work in progress. Here, along South Olive Street near West 11th Street, you'll find a smattering of merchants, including old printing shops and mannequin stores, but also a lot of abandoned storefronts guarded by locked metal gates. This area is known as South Park, and apart from Staples Center and L.A. Live, it hasn't seen the kind of office development and loft conversions that have given other parts of downtown thriving commerce and a burgeoning nightlife.

NOTE: This is a blog about two guys attempting to lose weight over a six-week period.  Jimmy Orr is trying Nutrisystem.  Tony Pierce is freelancing. They began on Jan. 10. I found myself saying ‘Hello children’ numerous times in the voice of "South Park’s" Chef; as I pulled out a Nutrisystem Salisbury steak TV dinner on Thursday night. Chef, as voiced by the late Isaac Hayes, frequently had Salisbury steak on the school lunch menu and would offer to serve it up to the South Park kids right before some disaster would inevitably strike.

A large parking lot that is considered a prime site for high-rise condominiums in downtown Los Angeles has hit the market again at a higher price than its previous owners paid before losing it in foreclosure. The property at Figueroa and 12th streets, next to the Los Angeles Convention Center, is zoned for substantial commercial development, including multifamily residential units. Its previous owner, developer South Group, announced in 2005 that it would build two 34-story luxury condo towers and shops there in a complex to be called Figueroa South.

It was a Facebook campaign meant to make a stand for free speech. But in Pakistan, a contest encouraging users of the social-networking site to submit caricatures of the prophet Muhammad has been viewed as blasphemous, prompting a court-ordered nationwide ban on the website Wednesday. A court in Lahore, Pakistan's second-largest city, ordered the government to ensure that the country's Internet service providers were blocking access to Facebook, the world's most popular social-networking website.

Los Angeles-area law enforcement officials said Monday that after the attempted bombing in New York's Times Square, police had stepped up patrols around entertainment studios. Police across Southern California say they are prepared to handle an attack. But they stressed the importance of alert residents in the security equation: It was a New York street vendor who noticed the SUV emitting smoke Saturday and reported it to authorities. "New York is another wake-up call to us in the United States," said Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca.

On last week's episode of "South Park," residents of our favorite made-up mountain hamlet woke up to a new kind of horror: a townwide Internet outage. No e-mail, no WebMD.com to check rogue symptoms and, most harrowing of all, no Internet porn. Panic-stricken and Net-starved, Stan Marsh and his family lash their belongings to the roof of their SUV and head west -- "out Californee way" -- in hopes of finding enough bandwidth to survive.

The terrorists won. It's become something of a joke, that line, overused to the point of banality, a punch line so easy a child can use it. But when Comedy Central decided to bleep mentions of the prophet Muhammad from a recent "South Park" episode because, and only because, an extremist website had made what amounted to death threats against co-creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker, the terrorists won. Because that is the point of terrorism —...

Re "Free Speech Loses in ‘South Park,' " by Mary McNamara, April 24: In the United States, the 1st Amendment restricts the government's right to interfere with free speech, not a corporation's rights to censor its own employees. The Comedy Central folks did the math and didn't want to risk losing their employees, which is a rare act of corporate responsibility, not a support of Islam or terrorism. The issue of this being a violation of the 1st Amendment is thus largely moot.

‘South Park' shuts up Re " ‘South Park' threat no joke," April 23 Apparently "South Park's" parodies of the Catholic Church, Jews, blacks, Asians and homosexuals are perfectly acceptable, but it draws the line at Muslims. The moment the "practitioner" of this "peaceful religion" makes a bully threat, everyone folds. Is the message that the media are so cowardly that they will only pick on the people or entities that do not respond with violence?