You Ignorant Sluts California's election results brought out the fury and glee in L.A. Weekly readers — in particular, the defeat of Proposition 46, a plan to raise the medical malpractice cap ("Consumer Watchdog Gets Blown Out on Health Care Propositions 45 and 46," Nov. 5) and the Weekly's "California...
The last in a series of HoliDIY workshops hosted by The Women’s Center for Creative Work and Otherwild, the Meditation of Candle Making teaches the calming effect of hand-dipping your own beeswax candles. Led by the Lower Lodge’s Hannah Vainstein, this isn’t your typical Crafternoon — the focus here is on the magic and art of this ancient process (humans have been turning beeswax into candles since 40 B.C.E). You’ll leave with as many tapers as you manage to dip, and the skills to make more at home. With its mild honeyed scent, beeswax won’t overwhelm the aromas of turkey and gravy at your Thanksgiving table, which makes it the perfect dinnertime candle. Any extras will make great gifts — how awesome would it be to light a menorah filled with your own hand-dipped candles? This is one DIY workshop that will have you glowing, literally. Otherwild, 1932 Echo Park Ave., Echo Park; Thurs., Nov. 13, 7-9 p.m.; $75 (incl. materials). (323) 546-8437, otherwild.com. More
Known for his indie-infused electronic remixes, RAC (an acronym for the original name, Remix Artist Collective) focuses on making his music interesting and eclectic rather than danceable. Still, we can’t help but have a good time listening and swaying along to this guy’s silky beats. Very little of what RAC does is predictable, and his performance at the Fonda promises to be consistently surprising and full of feel-good vibes. With support from The Knocks and other guests, it will be a night of chill indie-pop with an electronic flair.More
The late Larry Sultan, whose LACMA retrospective just opened, photographed his father and mother with the same curious distance he employed when photographing porn stars in the valley, which says a lot about his work. It’s all about style, posture and personality, but it’s best when those personalities have some moral ambiguity to them, so that the humanity of a subject doesn’t distract you from Sultan’s fantastic eye for detail. Hours vary, closed Christmas and Thanksgiving.More
Respect Drum and Bass has been going on since 1999, and prides itself as L.A.’s longest running weekly drum 'n’ bass event. The pop-up club typically comes to Dragonfly in Hollywood on Thursday nights, but it has also showed up at Avalon and, soon, at Exchange LA. The crowd at Respect’s events is famously considerate; you don’t need to know anything about the genre itself in order to feel accepted by the scene. If you do need some liquid courage to dance, Dragonfly has the added bonus of offering $4 drink specials before 11 p.m.More
When it comes to the life of Bruce Haack, separating truth from fiction is not easy. The groundbreaking electronic music composer and inventor is said to have taught himself to play piano by age 3. By 8, he apparently was escaping his abusive mother's wrath by sneaking off to Indian...
Visual allure often isn't a virtue we value when chasing obscure flavors in L.A.'s international neighborhoods. In fact, adventurous diners tend to appreciate the opposite: The grungier the location, the more accomplished we feel for having sought it out. Looks be damned — let the fireworks happen on the flavor...
The Los Angeles art world has been saying a collective "hallelujah" since the arrival in January of Philippe Vergne as MOCA's new director. Although some East Coast commentators condemned the appointment — citing in particular a budget crisis scandal in which Vergne resorted to selling off a number of works...
The late Larry Sultan, whose LACMA retrospective just opened, photographed his father and mother with the same curious distance he employed when photographing porn stars in the valley, which says a lot about his work. It’s all about style, posture and personality, but it’s best when those personalities have some moral ambiguity to them, so that the humanity of a subject doesn’t distract you from Sultan’s fantastic eye for detail. Hours vary, closed Christmas and Thanksgiving.More
Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays-Sundays. Continues through March 22
Thirty years ago, manga artist Akira Toriyama embarked upon a hero’s journey with his warrior-in-training Goku. The result, Dragon Ball, became a global phenomenon that launched multiple TV series and films. Decades later, the franchise remains one of the staples of anime conventions. Even the critically reviled, live-action flick Dragonball: Evolution couldn’t quell the fan’s love for Goku and company. Saturday night, QPop and friends presents a Dragon Ball 30th anniversary tribute in their new Q2 space. More than 80 artists are already scheduled to take part in the exhibition, which will cover Toriyama’s full body of work, with emphasis on Dragon Ball. Q2, 319 E. 2nd St., Suite 121, Little Tokyo; Nov. 15; 7-10 p.m.More
Tales of the Old West continue to make up a significant portion of our cultural narrative, mostly because we still like to comfort ourselves with stories showing that ours is a land of opportunity. Making the trek to the American frontier promised a new life or, at the very least,...
Tales of fame and its trappings — and the way they're never enough to build a life — are as old as show business itself. Maybe for that reason, almost any story about discovering the hollowness of fame is written off as a cliché. But what's the difference, really, between...
Erik Peter Carlson's The Toy Soldiers is a pitch-black spin on American Graffiti, set in a brightly colored place during what's remembered as a brightly colored decade.
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2014 has been a good year for redemption-through-music stories, with high points such as God Help the Girl and My Little Pony: Equestria Girls — Rainbow Rocks and lesser efforts such as Rudderless.
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The Occupy movement persists in fits and stutters around the globe, and though its inability (stateside at least) to resolve internal issues around race, class, and gender shouldn't be ignored, neither should its successes.
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It's one thing to watch sturdy, dexterously charming Jean Gabin as a working-class joe who doesn't mind dangerous manual labor, figuring that's his lot in life.
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Beneath the rom-com pacing and peppy underscoring of a Lifetime movie, Delusions of Guinevere is a surprisingly dark satire of modern celebrity.
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From the opening robbery in a hard-land gas station, Simon Hawkins and Zeke Hawkins' Bad Turn Worse floors it straight into the past -- it plays like one of the best of those chatty, reflexive, standoffs-and-monologues crime indies every young dude in L.A. whipped up after Tarantino hit.
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Last week, Los Angeles rapper Kosha Dillz had his website hacked by ISIS. No, this is not some weird promotional stunt. This actually happened.
The affable Jewish rapper, signed to Murs’ 3:16 imprint, found his place in cyberspace vandalized, raising flags among his friends and the Department of Homeland Security. We spoke to Dillz about this most unlikely of hip-hop beefs.
How did you discover your website had been hacked by ISIS sympathizers?
A kid had messaged me on SoundCloud saying, “Hey, I checked out your website and someone hacked your stuff.” I checked it and that’s exactly what happened.
Had your website ever been hacked before?
No, never. We have to drop it, it’s directed to my Facebook page right now. I have to get on the phone with all these security companies and had to speak with people from the government. They had already knew that it happened, and that was the trippy part.
The government knew your site was hacked?
Yeah. My friend’s fiance works for homeland security and people who were on my page were freaking out. A lot of people were telling me to contact [homeland security], and when I called them they said, “Oh, the Jewish rapper? We heard about that already.” I think those people more-so are not trying to contact me, but figure out the people behind it and where they’re operating out of.
Do you think this has anything to do with the “No More War” song you released earlier this year, or were you targeted for being Jewish?
I think it’s a combination of both because of what they do. Obviously, that’s the most recent thing that they’ve did. I’m sure they didn’t know who I was before, but if you’re looking up “kosher” or other Jewish-oriented stuff. They’ve attacked other Hillel sites, like a Florida rugby team. What ISIS believes in, Sharia Law and raising the black flag, covers all kinds of spectrums besides killing off Americans and Israelis.
It was a crazy thing to happen to me, and it’s happening to more people, but a lot of people are reaching out to me saying, “This is really good for you!” It’s not really good for me, it’s messing up my business. People are afraid to interact.
Have you faced similar anti-semitism over the years?
Yeah, for sure. It’s an interesting thing because I’m white, with an Eastern European background, but I face anti-semitism from white people and then you can also get it from within, just being different and taking the kind of name that I took. There’s a lot of controversy in that world, especially in hip-hop which was created out of oppression and created by African-Americans to come out of that. Hip-hop was a way for me to come out of my own oppression against myself and speak for other people. That’s why I make the kind of music I make.
It’s interesting, a lot of Jewish people are behind the scenes in music, and there’s not many people that have taken the stance that I have as a rapper. By being who I am, I’ve blocked myself from certain things, but it’s opened a lot of doors too.
How did you pick the name Kosha Dillz?
I literally got it off the jar at the super market. When I was 17, I was learning how to rap from Yak Ballz, a great rapper who was Persian-Iranian and our parents knew each other. I knew I was a Jewish rapper and that’s what I wanted to represent at the time, and it was completely ridiculous. I entered [famed New York rap battle] Bragging Rites as “Kosher Dill.”
When I went into battles [after] I became “KD Flow,” because I was really embarrassed by the whole Jewish thing. I was really embarrassed and hated it, but when I got out of lock-up in ’04 and released a record in ’05, I thought it was time to really rock with [Kosha Dillz]. I also got off drugs and it was a way to get out of a lot of self-hatred.
How has the response been to “No More War?”
It’s been mostly good. The story behind it is we got this video of someone playing a tank like a drum that had “No More War” on it. We sampled the guy playing the tank, made a beat and rapped over it.
During the war in Israeli, it was really intense — especially if you’re Israeli, it fills your timeline. People like to comment on politics, but it’s a positive song about not having any war. It’s developed discussions people don’t like to have and have gotten very emotional over. That’s what it’s like to have family in Israel and be in hip-hop and try to explain that to people. People are like “are you Pro-Palestine or Pro-Israel?” and at the end of the day, of course I’m loyal to my family and my land, and I’m also loyal to peace and anti-Hamas.
Los Angeles is a city where the eclectic and surreal often mix freely. There are so many scenes to make: If you do it just right, you can see and experience a lot in a short time. Now and then, my schedule is such that I attend multiple events in...
Be sure to check out our constantly updated concert calendar! Friday, November 14 Slayer THE FORUM Slayer remains the heaviest of the “Big Four” of thrash metal — out-shredding Metallica, Megadeth and Anthrax — more than 30 years into their career. Their seminal 1986 release Reign in Blood is 29...
Ace steel guitar man, famed producer (U2, Bob Dylan, Peter Gabriel, Neil Young) and ambient music trailblazer Daniel Lanois’ latest solo album Flesh and Machine is just out on Anti- Records. It’s what you’d call one of those artistic rebirth sorts of things. Lanois is a bit fed up with the...
The show begins like a strange protest in an absurd country. Veiled women walk into the room carrying septagram-bedecked banners. Then comes a masked dude on an adult-sized tricycle, loaded up with speakers, followed by other masked men carrying more speakers on their backs. Each of these rigs is self-powered,...
Last week, Los Angeles rapper Kosha Dillz had his website hacked by ISIS. No, this is not some weird promotional stunt. This actually happened. The affable Jewish rapper, signed to Murs’ 3:16 imprint, found his place in cyberspace vandalized, raising flags among his friends and the Department of Homeland Security...
For independent record labels, exposure leads to expansion. An originally tight-knit community gradually comes untethered. Artists leave for the promise of bigger budgets and bigger hits elsewhere. Risk is jettisoned for the safe bet. L.A.-based electronic-music label Friends of Friends (FoF) isn't the exception to the narrative, but it's close...
Snoop Dogg is no longer an active gang member. In fact, renouncing his formerly violent life is what he's about these days, and his Snoop Lion and Snoopzilla personas have sought to showcase a more socially conscious, peace-and-love Dogg. But mainstream America still sees him as rough and tumble, and...
Be sure to check out our constantly updated concert calendar! Monday, November 10 Judas Priest, Steel Panther NOKIA THEATRE Two things you can still count on in heavy metal: One is that Judas Priest won’t waste any time on wimpy power ballads, and the other is that lead shrieker Rob...
Sometimes the juxtaposition of old and new can be utterly hilarious. Case in point? The recently popular Instagram account @elderlywhodab, which, at nearly 6,500 followers, is well on its way to becoming a cult favorite in the cannabis world. Almost every day, it features user-submitted photographs and videos of the...
Before conquering Coachella, HARD and Lollapalooza, touring with The Weeknd and supplying runway anthems for Kanye West’s preferred haute couture brands, dance music DJ/producer Anna Lunoe toiled as a frustrated boutique clerk in Sydney. Raised in a musical household, the Australian native started out making cassette mixes to impress her...
RADIO BROADCAST #29311–09–14 Fanatic! Hey, thanks for reading these notes. No matter how many times I say on the show that these notes exist, people still write and ask what song was playing at whatever time. It’s all here, Fanatic! As I write these notes, I am listening to the...
America in the 21st century is one of the most economically polarized and heavily armed societies in history. As the top rises, it becomes harder to see the ground through the clouds. Disconnected, nihilistic subcultures have developed in areas abandoned and forgotten by mainstream society. Such aberrant cultures used to...
One of Hollywood’s wildest art and event spaces is back! The corner of Cherokee and Hollywood Boulevard is a historic locale: It was the site of famous punk club The Masque, and The Go-Go’s — who played one of their first shows there — have a star on the Walk...
This week's Soundtrack guest: Weezer's Rivers Cuomo. Since forming Weezer in 1992, singer/guitarist Rivers Cuomo has churned out some of the hookiest rock hits ever, sold over 26 million albums, and arguably made thick-frame glasses and sweater vests cool. Weezer’s newest album, Everything Will Be Alright in the End, reunites...
The reunited original lineup of Culture Club have been forced to cancel all of their upcoming U.K. and North American tour dates, after doctors discovered a polyp in singer Boy George's throat. The canceled dates include a scheduled stop at the Shrine Auditorium next Wednesday, November 19. Tickets refunds will...