It feels like I’m spending my life at the library nowadays. There are surely many far worse fates. The LA Central Library’s ALOUD series of free lectures continues to attract me back, with an ever fascinating array of guests.  Last week, I had seen Walter Kirn speak on his book Lost in the Meritocracy: The Undereducation of an Overachiever.  That was an enjoyable program, and Kirn is extremely personable; but for this post, I will comment on last night’s talk with Tamim Ansary, who was presented and interviewed by Amir Hussain (a co-presentation of ALOUD and The Center for Global Understanding).  The title of Ansary’s book matches his talk: Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes.

Of all the talks I have heard at ALOUD, I found Ansary to be the most engaged and fascinating speaker to date. (more…)

The central library of John Carter's Mars?

Update: It appears that Mrs. Lulu has snuck into the blog again.  The following contains her observations of a delightful lecture at L.A.’s magnificent Central Library.

Last night, Lulu and I attended one of the LA Central Library’s free lectures in their wonderful ALOUD series:  George Lakoff, “The Public Mind:  A Cognitive Scientist’s Guide to Your Brain and Its Politics, In Conversation with Ian Masters”

We were both particularly excited about this talk since we had studied Lakoff in graduate school.  For those of you who don’t know him, he’s a cognitive scientist and linguist  at UC Berkely, whose interdisciplinary work focuses on investigating the ways in which linguistic and cognitive structures (e.g., metaphors, prototypes, frames) shape perception and social life.

A central theme of last night’s discussion was the way in which the framing mechanisms of public discourse have been controlled by the Republicans [...] (more…)

When Howard Stern took his show to Sirius XM over three years ago, he left behind some mighty big shoes to fill.

And so far, nobody has been able to cram their feet into those delicate glass slippers.

Big shoes. Delicate glass slippers. Just pretend that works, okay?

Case in point? Last week’s demise of not only Stern replacement Adam Carolla’s radio program, but KLSX’s entire 97.1 FM Talk format. Without the “King of All Media” at its helm, the CBS station just couldn’t stay afloat.

Well, that, and the economy tanked.

In my opinion, the North Hollywood born-and-bred Carolla was always slumming it on that station anyway. As much as my half-Mexican skin crawls when he starts ranting about Los Angeles’ ethnic makeup, I find the guy incredibly sharp, immensely entertaining and far too talented to be waving the same flag as Tom “Dump that Bitch” Leykis.

So it’s with great interest that I downloaded Carolla’s first ever podcast this morning.

(more…)

I’ve been hipped to a special Ninja-prov performance that is part of the final night of the LA Improv Festival tomorrow, Saturday 6/7/08.

The Ninja from askaninja.com will be telling stories from his life and then the talented cast of improvisers will use that as inspiration in an improv format known as the Armando.

Show is at 8pm at IOWest on Hollywood.

Click here for more info and tickets.

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updated to reflect that the show is tomorrow 6/7/08.

When you think of L.A,’s great noir writers, Shane Black’s name may not come to mind. But it should.

As Edgar Wright said before introducing him at the New Beverly Cinema last week, Black is “underappreciated, but certainly not underpaid,” referring in part to his million dollar pay day for the screenplay of “The Last Boy Scout,” which began a double feature celebrating his work. Both “Boy Scout” and the film that followed “Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang,” are modern day noir films making extensive use of Los Angeles locations, with deeply flawed private investigators as its protagonists. “Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang,” not only written by Black but also his directorial debut, goes one step further using titles of Raymond Chandler stories as chapter breaks throughout the movie.

(The screenplay that put Black on the map, “Lethal Weapon,” arguably also fits within the noir genre, with a suicidal LAPD detective as one of its heroes. And on a side note, both “Weapon” and “Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang” are set during Christmas time in Los Angeles.)

In this podcast from the Shane Black double feature, part of “The Wright Stuff Film Festival” at the New Beverly Cinema, Black talks candidly with Edgar Wright about no longer being the screenwriter flavor of month, getting botox in his mid-forties, casting a temporarily subdued Val Kilmer and an eternally humbled Robert Downey, Jr., and how a disgruntled studio exec is responsible for “Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang’s” commercial failure.

[or download here]

…photo of Shane Black (c) 2005 WireImage.com, via iMDB…