ENTERTAINMENT
April 27, 2012 | By Jessica Gelt, Los Angeles Times
Long ago before the Venice boardwalk was a messy hive of sunglass huts, homeless hipsters begging for weed and a prime example of what happens when T-shirt slogans go terribly wrong, it housed an elaborate promenade of stunning luxury hotels and was known as the Coney Island of the Pacific. Developer Abbot Kinney had also master planned opera houses, ballrooms, bathhouses and a grand pier. Every roaring '20s playground needed a boozy respite, and Venice had a bar established in 1915 called Menotti's Buffet.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
April 25, 2012 | By Mark Allen, as told to Jori Finkel
I've always been interested in ways that paintings function as anthropological evidence of moments in time, and I'm a fan of the Charles Mackay book from 1840 "Extraordinary Public Delusions and the Madness of Crowds," which traces the history of the Dutch tulip bubble. This painting precedes the collapse of the bubble; it's not a direct comment on tulip mania. But it's a moment when people get really excited about collecting tulips and they start seeking variations in the plant caused by the mosaic virus, which produced the variegated or striped tulips you can see in the painting.
ENTERTAINMENT
April 25, 2012 | By Philip Brandes
A charismatic L.A. mayor appears to be riding an unstoppable populist wave to the governor's mansion -- but his victory celebration may be premature. Amid the campaign's down-to-the-wire twists and turns, nothing can be taken for granted except human fallibility in Chuck Rose's new drama, "Bedfellows" (as in "politics makes strange…"). The fine line between personal ambition and the public good -- and the resulting ethical dilemmas -- are hardly uncharted thematic territories, but they speak with particular relevance to a polarized electoral climate in Jack Stehlin's impassioned staging for his New American Theatre company.
OPINION
April 22, 2012 | By Susan Straight
In this age of Kindle and iPad and e-books, I write by hand, on little notepads, in my car. I have written in my car since I was 22 and working on my first novel. Then, the car was a broken-down pale green Fiat. I sat in the driver's seat while my then-husband worked on it in our gravel driveway, yelling at me to pump the brakes or start the engine. Now I write in my 2009 Honda CRV while waiting in the high school parking lot for my youngest, or even at the curb in front of my house - the way Raymond Carver used to - before I go inside.
NATIONAL
April 19, 2012 | By Dalina Castellanos, Los Angeles Times
A group that represents the majority of Roman Catholic nuns in the United States has been chastised by the Vatican for deviating from church doctrine and promoting what the Holy See called "radical feminist themes. " The Leadership Conference of Women Religious said Thursday it would consult with its members to decide on a course of action after the church's three-year investigation resulted in the harsh assessment of its activities and a call for reform. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith - the enforcer of orthodoxy - criticized the group for "protesting the Holy See's actions regarding the question of women's ordination and of a correct pastoral approach to ministry to homosexual persons.
ENTERTAINMENT
April 8, 2012 | By Joy Press, Los Angeles Times
Lena Dunham is sitting at a Larchmont Boulevard cafe in a pale yellow dress and a blazer, rummaging around her bag for a bottle of green juice. She's drinking it to stave off illness caused by frequent plane travel - one of the hazards of being an in-demand wunderkind. Her upcoming HBO series, "Girls," was filmed in New York, where she sleeps in her parents' basement while she waits for her new place to be ready. But Dunham just spent half a year in L.A. so she could edit and consult with the show's producers, Judd Apatow and Jenni Konner.