Blurbotron

Marty has a heart of gold. He once told me the story of slapper joe, the ostrich who ate from the ketchup jar with cartoon like precision. He lost a finger for that. Thank you, Marty!-Gabriela, paper connoisseur, Los Angeles

Tempus Fugit

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Oyez

Nothing’s gonna change my world

Today, a month and 30 days after my fortieth birthday, I realize that, when I go, it is getting more unlikely that people will say, “He was too young.” Instead, they will say, “I guess it was about goddamn [...]

I'm only happy when it rains

Los Angeles can be so ungrateful. Just weeks after the the city nearly burned down, the rain that usually waits until, at the earliest, Halloween arrived in amounts that anywhere else would seem innocuous.

And people were angry about it.

One after 9/09

Today the surviving Beatles and the estates of John Lennon and George Harrison, as well as the financial and marketing entities that represent the interests of the former Fab Four, have reissued the Beatles catalog in remastered mono and stereo and have released a version of the videogame “Rockband” featuring the group’s music.

What Disney’s acquisition of Marvel Comics means to you

Today the Walt Disney Company announced it had agreed to purchase Marvel Comics for $4 billion in cash and stock. Marvel’s board is likely to agree, making the bold acquisition the largest media buyout since last year’s economic collapse.

But fans of both cultural institutions are concerned with the purity of iconic characters and storylines. The [...]

With a girl as fine as she was then: The Psychopathological narrative in “Raspberry Beret”

Nearly a quarter century after she “walked in through the out door (out door),” the woman wearing the title garment of Prince’s 1985 song “Raspberry Beret” continues to puzzle and intrigue scholars.

But it is the narrator who has emerged as a dangerous and unstable sociopath.

“I was working part-time in a five-and-dime ,” the [...]

To kill an antichrist

Matches come in a box, tobacco in a pouch, milk in a carton or bottle. Perhaps the scariest part of “The Omen” is that knives were transported in a towel.

“State law requires I ask you a couple of questions,” the guy said.

Recently I went to have knives sharpened. While hacking at a carcass with heavy, [...]

Don’t say this didn’t occur to you

Someone has been killing off Sweathogs – could it be L. Ron Hubbard? Only Arnold Rorschach is crazy enough to believe it.

Fabiola prays for a restraining order

Canonized in the sixth century, Fabiola, who in life divorced her abusive husband and started a hospital for indigent women in Rome, is recognized as the matron saint of nurses. In this exhibit at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 300 representations of her trademark look have been collected from flea markets and garage [...]

Carefree Highway my eye

As you are no doubt aware, the only thing that keeps sleeping giant Canada from descending on the United States like a massive, malignant pin setting machine, dismantling and removing each state like a dropped spare, is the calming influence of Gordon Lightfoot.

Like Lot, Lightfoot has spent years (1974-1976) looking for anything redeeming in [...]

Meddle v. mettle, but always metal

When did that September 11 thing happen? Afterward, the current president notably tried to inspire confidence and stimulate the economy by authorizing two rounds of tax rebates and suggesting we all go fly somewhere. (And it’s not like I refused that money, either).

But belt-tightening was never a top-down directive from the current administration, the way [...]