Most major record labels could learn a thing or two from British singer Jem about how to make a great album and save quite a bit of money in the process. Read more...

Even a sore back won’t keep this woman down. Ruth Price, UCLA jazz vocal instructor and owner of Los Angeles’s only seven-night-a-week non-profit jazz club, The Jazz Bakery, mentioned offhandedly that she is going in for back surgery soon. Read more...

A mountain of a songwriter came to UCLA last Thursday. Phil Elvrum, playing under the new moniker Mt. Eerie, strummed and sang his way through a warm, intimate performance at Kerckhoff Grand Salon in the early afternoon. Read more...

“21 Grams” Directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu Focus Features Following his critically acclaimed 2000 release “Amores Perros,” Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu has seamlessly translated his unique, multilinear narrative technique into an astonishing English-language film starring Sean Penn, Benicio Del Toro and Naomi Watts. Read more...

Anytime anyone invites me over to a new apartment for a little housewarming soiree, I pray to the ancient Chinese door gods to spare me of the following exchange: Guest: Hey, did you get that at IKEA? Read more...

“Shyness is Nice” Alliance Theatre Now through Dec. 21 Playwright Marc Spitz tells the story of two shy 30-year-old virgins on a mission to get laid. Read more...

In “N*gger Wetb*ck Ch*nk,” the rapid-fire, genre-defying tour de force that played in front of a fully-packed Freud Playhouse this past weekend, UCLA theater, the homegrown variety that is, might have finally found a voice truly to call its own. Read more...