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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Set among nine acres of grass and sandy beach, Hansen Dam Aquatic Center is L.A.'s largest public pool, but it looks like a resort you'd see in Palm Springs, complete with cabana rentals and two impressive water slides.
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A man who appeared in that viral "drunk girl" video (see it below) says the whole thing was a set up.
Christine Michaels, owner of LA Epic Club Crawls, says employee Mike “Mokii” Koshak told her he was approached by the video's maker and told to act the part of a zealous suitor for what he believed was a student comedy short film. Koshak also says as much on his Facebook page.
The video, a response to the infamous and ugly New York catcall video, shows a woman pretending to be drunk and asking for help finding a bus to Culver City as she walks on Hollywood Boulevard.
Most of about a half-dozen men featured in the video are seen offering help by way of trying to get the woman to come home with them. One man says, "There's a bus line ... right in front of my house. It's right there. Waterbed, I got all of that."
Michaels said Koshak, who appears later in the video, is an independent contractor who was working for her at the time. However, she said, LA Epic did not condone the video. And, she added, Koshak later said he felt duped by the producer when he saw the final product.
Koshak said on his Facebook page today that "the video that has me in it that's going around the web was all staged and all of the people in it were acting."
A man representing himself as one of the video's makers reached out to Koshak on Facebook today. We obtained a screenshot of his message, which says, in part, "Yo dude, totally cool with you telling everyone that we came up to you and you acted the part for the video."
We were told that Koshak, who had not apparently signed a release, is now seeking legal representation in the matter.
In the meantime, Peters says Koshak, who was wearing a t-shirt with her firm's name on it, is no longer being hired by her concern. Here's LA Epic's statement on the matter:
LA Epic Club Crawls does not condone or support the actions depicted in the posted video that has gone viral. The independent contractor who participated in the video did so without the authorization of LA Epic. This individual informed us that the video was directed and filmed under the guise of a plotted comedy short-film. Although LA Epic supports the awareness of alcohol abuse and social responsibility, we have no ties with the actions of the individuals who were filmed or the creators of the video.
Some folks seemed to have doubts about the veracity of the men's behavior on the video almost as soon as it went viral.
We reached out to the video's poster, Stephen Zhang, who's listed as the CEO of a viral marketing company, multiple times since we first wrote about the clip yesterday. He had yet to get back to us.
A man lured predominantly Korean-speaking women he raped, attacked or tried to assault by promising them modeling jobs, the Los Angeles Police Department officials said last night. In at least one case he threatened to call federal immigration authorities on a victim because she wasn't complying, they said. Suspect Jung...
Getty House, the mayoral residence, uses 2,100 gallons of water every day — more than five times as much as the average L.A. home, according to figures released by the L.A. Department of Water and Power. Mayor Eric Garcetti, who moved into the mansion late last year, has called on...
Environmental attorney Robert Silverstein must be one lucky man. He has faced down the City of Los Angeles, its teams of attorneys, its deep pockets. And five times in front of five different judges, Silverstein has prevailed in his legal battle against Mayor Eric Garcetti's push to transform Hollywood into...
The Republican-led voter-ID movement has widely been seen as an attempt to discourage minorities and poor people, who are less likely to have government identification, from going to the polls. Perhaps the biggest evidence of this is, first, that the pursuers of this policy are almost always folks on the...
The battle over fracking in Los Angeles has become a war inside City Hall. In February the City Council voted unanimously to have staffers draft a law that would place a moratorium on hydraulic oil and gas extraction within L.A. Environmentalists pressing for the ban argue that fracking, which injects...
When it comes to drunk driving crackdowns, it's pretty clear the Los Angeles Police Department has its favorite neighborhoods. Whiter, wealthier areas of the city, represented by the department's West Los Angeles, Pacific and West Valley divisions, don't seem to be targeted half as much as South L.A. and the...
If you've lived here for a while then you know it's been some years since the cranes have been rocking and the construction workers have been clocking hours on the job. Blame the Great Recession of 2007, sure, but even before that L.A. development was relatively stagnant, especially as we...
You're still hungover from Halloween weekend, we know, but the Los Angeles Police Department and other agencies are like unstoppable zombies when it comes to busting drunk drivers. They've planned a long weekend of DUI enforcement that actually starts tonight in Koreatown and downtown. Lucky for you the LAPD believes...
A man who appeared in that viral "drunk girl" video (see it below) says the whole thing was a set up. Christine Peters, owner of LA Epic Club Crawls, says employee Mike “Mokii” Koshak told her he was approached by the video's maker and told to act the part of a...
A man accused by federal authorities today of operating an online drug bazaar called Silk Road 2.0 allegedly did so as he worked briefly at Elon Musk's SpaceX rocket and spacecraft concern in Hawthorne. SpaceX communications director John Taylor says 26-year-old Blake Benthall was employed at the company from Dec...
The State of California shook Mayor Eric Garcetti, the L.A. City Council and Hollywood developers today, releasing a legally binding map of the Hollywood Earthquake Fault Zone which shows that the active "surface rupture" fault runs under the lower part of property for the proposed Millennium Towers skyscrapers. State law renders...
The matter of whether or not condoms should be required equipment for porn stars on the job could be on the 2016 presidential ballot in California. After failing to get such a law through the state legislature in 2013 and 2014, the L.A.-based AIDS Healthcare Foundation says it will announce...
They come to take our jobs? Then we don't pay them? What has this country come to? The U.S. Labor Department Wage and Hour Division said this week that Los Angeles was, by far, the nation's capital of underpaying garment workers, a group largely comprised of immigrants. Garment workers were shorted $3,004,085 during...
The prospect of finding a mate through DNA testing seems a little agrarian to us. Compatible DNA? What if you end up with a long, lost cousin? Well, the fascinating thing about Singldout's use of DNA testing for its matchmaking service is that opposites attract, especially when it comes to...
Shepard Fairey, L.A.'s unofficial street-art laureate, has in recent years reaped a lot of publicity and fame from Time magazine's use of his work. There was the "Hope" cover image of then-presidential candidate Barack Obama, based on a poster that put Fairey in hot water because he lied after it was...