Access to its archives is one thing LAT is offering as part of the deal, and they are also touting that it’s available at 5:30 AM everyday, unlike the online edition, which is available the preceding midnight, contains much more news and, um, it’s free– for now.

I guess this is a first step (and trial balloon) for the online paid subscription model we’ve been hearing about from other newpapers in dire straits– which means the vast majority of them.

As a side note, PBS.org is streaming Inventing LA, the recent doc about the Chandlers and the LA Times. Worth a look.

While the exhibit will take note of the movement to define certain social behaviors as taboo, whether it’s smoking, drinking alcohol or easygoing attitudes about sex, its aim will be to examine the hidden motives and powerful interests behind the politics of social legislation.

Sam Saghatelian, curator of the exhibition and a participating artist, says in the press release, “The point is that government and corporate interests often single out targets for the legislation of social behavior because it’s politically and financially expedient to do so, and not necessarily for the wellbeing of the public as they claim.”

Featured artists include Paul Chatem, The Pizz, Shark Toof, Anthony Ausgang, Sarah Stephens, Stacy Lande, Christine Karas-Gough, Shannon Keller, Brett Manning and Harry Sudman

When Smoking Was Cool opens Saturday, Oct. 17th, artists reception from 7 to 10 PM; exhibit runs through Nov. 14th. Black Maria Gallery, 3137 Glendale Blvd., Los Angeles CA 90039.

In June 1973 in New York, his wife, Yoko Ono, pushed for a separation and said he should take May Pang, their personal assistant, as his boy-toy while they reassessed their marriage.

Lennon and Pang in LA, 1974

In quick order, Lennon moved to LA with Pang and flung himself into what has become known as his “Lost Weekend,” an eighteen-month period during which he caroused, recorded some middling material, caroused, reconnected with Paul and Ringo, caroused– you get the picture.

From a rented home in the Hollywood Hills, Lennon lived out loud and large in public places in Los Angeles, making a drunken, coke-fueled spectacle of himself with stars and players of the day. When confronted by the press with criticism, he said, “So it was a mistake, but Hell, I’m human.”

Shortly thereafter, Lennon cleaned up his act.  He and Yoko reunited (in NYC, backstage after Lennon’s cameo during an Elton John concert) into renewed matrimonial bliss, had a son together, Sean, and lived a happy family life in relative seclusion at the Dakota until that fateful, sad night in December 1980 when Lennon’s fame tragically caught up with him.

From where we are with sexual politics in the early 21st century, maybe some wisdom can be gleaned from the way the Lennons openly navigated their relationship in the 1970s and the way it was received. Little public pillorying of John, no tearful media statements from Yoko, no desperate extortion attempts from lurking opportunists due to needlessly keeping secrets about the bumps in a relationship’s road, no knee-jerk accusations about employer/employee dalliances from self-appointed know-it-all scolds.

Just honesty about how a particular marriage of interest was going; forthrightness about monogamy and the lack thereof occasionally as a reality check; and not a speck of shame, contrived or otherwise, from anyone involved.

Imagine.

Tonight, violinist Lesa Terry, music director of the Women’s Jazz Orchestra and Women’s Jazz Quartet, leads an ensemble drawn from the LA jazz scene.

Lesa Terry & Friends, 6 PM tonight at LACMA, 5905 Wilshire (at Fairfax) Los Angeles 90036. Free admission.

Yesterday he laid out east vs. west complaints at Los Angeles Magazine’s regular Breakfast Conversation confab at the Foundry restaurant on Melrose.

East Coast, it’s much more in your face, bloody the nose and then go and have a drink. Here it’s basically, don’t have it out and hold a grudge and try to undermine each other at every turn. I don’t know whether that’s the ethos of the movie industry that’s now basically going into the rest of the society out here.

My style is basically, fight it out, get it done and move on… Life is too short, get it over with, instead of this lingering payback.

This city is almost a city that doesn’t work in so many respects and it’s frustrating. The New York minute – the reason that phrase is so appropriate for New York, things get done.

Audio excerpts were aired this morning on KPCC by Frank Stoltze on Morning Edition. A video of the entire event is on LA Mag’s site.

"I think I'll..." by Ed Ruscha, on loan to the White House.

Los Angeles artist Ed Ruscha is one of several artists whose work is hanging in the Obama White House, according to today’s NY Times. Museums in Washington DC have loaned the works.

A luminary in the early years of the LA art scene in the 1960s (and a towering international figure ever since,) Ruscha’s work draws on imagery from the urban landscape of  southern California, although in a recent interview, for London’s Daily Telegraph, he’s of two minds about the city where he’s made his home since 1956.

‘It puzzles me that people can come to Los Angeles and actually get excited about it.’ But he also admits, a little grudgingly, that there is a ‘certain neurotic anxiety’ about the city that nourishes him. ‘It’s oily about the edges,’ he explains. ‘It’s gritty, but at the same time it promises something. I don’t know what, the fountain of youth, maybe.’

And then later, reflecting on his decision to move to LA from where he grew up in Oklahoma, ”’It had an irresistible flavor to it that drew me out here. California had sunlight and jazz… It was all glamorous to me, the life of an artist. It had its high moments, the only thing it didn’t promise you was a living. But I was 18 years old, so that wasn’t scary. It didn’t matter.’’

Borrowing from Shakespeare for musical theater (and just about every other creative pursuit) is nothing new of course; it has spawned iconic shows like West Side Story (Romeo and Juliet,) Kiss Me Kate (The Taming of the Shrew) and The Lion King (Hamlet.) Further afield musically, in 1957 Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn composed Such Sweet Thunder, a jazz suite that draws on the Bard’s plays, characters and sonnets.

Deborah Stein, God Save Gertrude’s playwright, and David Hanbury, composer, continue the tradition, employing punk’s sensibilities to offer an updated portrayal of the Danish prince Hamlet from the point of view of his pilloried mother, Queen Gertrude– against a backdrop of some things that never change: corruption, betrayal and revenge in the halls of power.

God Save Gertrude previews through Friday Oct. 9, opens Saturday, Oct. 10th, runs through Nov. 8th. At Boston Court Performing Arts Center, 70 North Mentor (between Colorado and Union) Pasadena CA 91106. Detailed information here.

Last year, when the event was called East of Eden, it was a collaboration between galleries in Silver Lake, Atwater Village and points east, focusing attention on spaces that were outside of the  West Side “white box” circuit in sensibility and price range. Their place in the art world hierarchy is crucial as a proving ground for new, young talent as well as for new collectors not swimming in money but eager to get their feet wet in the collecting world.

Three thousand people showed up for the three-day event last fall, held in Barnsdall’s cavernous Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery. Owing to its success, this time the EOE organizers opted for an evolved name and roster of galleries, drawing on those flung across Los Angeles, including La Luz de Jesus, Subliminal Projects, Black Maria, Synchronicity Space, Billy Shire Fine Arts, LeBasse Projects, Crewest and others.

Friday evening is invitation only, but Saturday’s MOCA’s membership drive event at 7 PM and the opening gala starting at 8 PM are both free and open to the public. An “artists village” will include artists who will be “live painting;” PUMA Project will be doing on-site screen printing; and Cannibal Flower will present performance art.

Also, on Saturday afternoon at 2 PM, Scribble 08, an art documentary that interviews artists in their studios in and around Los Angeles, will be screened. Watch the trailer here.

Naming a new art movement and its sub-genres is a free-for-all for observers as well as participants, documenters and flacks. Labels tossed around in Beyond Eden’s press release include indie, DIY, Post/Avant Brow, pop surrealist and more.

Whatever. Last year’s opening night was a mobbed, glittering event by any standard but still felt like a huge family gathering, eschewing the stuffiness of what Zara Zeitountsian of Black Maria Gallery calls “blue chip galleries,” case in point being the MOCA Contemporaries’ open absinthe bar and live music on a patio adjacent to the main gallery.

Zeitountsian and her Atwater Village-based gallery have been instrumental in spearheading the loose consortium of galleries into the Eden movement– my label, not hers. Zeitountsian herself doesn’t bother with sobriquets for the work she and the other galleries will exhibit at Beyond Eden. “The art speaks for itself,” she said. “The talent and energy are undeniable.”

Gallery/artist list and additional info is on the Beyond Eden site.

The gallery will open at noon on Saturday and Sunday. There is plenty of free parking in the Barnsdall lot and in the Kaiser Permanente lot at 4715 Sunset Blvd.

Beyond Eden, October 9, 10, 11; LA Municipal Art Gallery at Barnsdall Park, 4800 Hollywood Blvd (at New Hampshire) Los Angeles 90027

Rutten speaks to the questionable humanity of the new procedure to deal with illegal immigration that will do nothing to provide the underlying necessity, an overhaul of immigration policy. In fact, as the new procedure eliminates the raids and deportations of the past, it will add to an ongoing one: unscrupulous companies that will hire, underpay, overwork and mistreat displaced workers to save a buck.

The administration seems to be choosing the lesser of two evils here, allowing undocumented workers to remain in the US, assumedly so they can act on getting  legal, rather than deportation. In the interim, they will have to deal with finding a  way to survive and support their families.

Rutten quotes one of the fired American Apparel’s workers here in Los Angeles who says he will “go back to one of those sweatshops where I’m going to have to get paid under the table.”

There will still be those of the Neanderthal “too bad–should have stayed in Mexico” mindset who will remain unmoved, but if they take the time to read Rutten’s column, at least they can’t say they never were confronted by the concept of compassion and its glaring necessity as a component of reform.

The firings are a result of the Obama administration’s efforts to crack down on illegal immigration by forcing companies to fire undocumented workers instead of staging workplace raids.

According to the article, the investigation of American Apparel began 17 months ago under President George W. Bush, but has become regarded by the the Obama administration as a “showcase” for its work to reduce illegal immigration.