[contextly_auto_sidebar id="Pln6fxEk2TX0tQNMAlUpd0JSCmyG43Dh"] WHEN I was in Puebla, Mexico, a few weeks back, the story of the 43 missing students -- thought to have been murdered by a collusion between a drug gang and government officials in Guerrero -- was heating up and protests were beginning. To some, they are the latest victims of the War on Drugs launched, and largely maintained, by the … [Read more...]
Is Free Will For Real?
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="Ik2UBDsLb9qxlWm7jqiO4d9Utt1cqk1Y"] SO who decides what we do -- our biology or us? Is there anyone home, or do we just run through our decisions the way nature programmed us? I didn't think there was a lot more to say about free will, which often provokes dull, abstract debates, but a presentation in Puebla, Mexico last week by David Eagleman, a neuroscientist at … [Read more...]
La Ciudad de las Ideas festival
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="9AhxX8pf5CvtID3wavJN9goOU6FcNHYU"] YOUR humble blogger is just back from a few days in Puebla, Mexico, which hosted an annual ideas conference that included writer Piper Kerman, filmmaker Werner Herzog, tiger mom Amy Chua, and a host of musicians, neuroscientists, and magicians. There was also an appearance by the Orquestra Esperanza Azteca, one of the many groups … [Read more...]
Culinary Adventure with Jonathan Gold
THE food writing of Jonathan Gold is so vivid, colorful and at times almost embarrassingly sensual that as a reader, it's not hard to feel you are actually along for the ride with him as he seeks out restaurants dedicated to, say, regional Mexican cuisine, a groovy wine bar or the street food of urban southeast Asia.But it's even more delectable to be able to follow the celebrated scribe to a meal … [Read more...]
"LA Confidential" in Mexico
THE Misread City just landed in Guadalajara, where an enormous book festival will pack in 500,000 or so by week's end.Tonight I took in a panel on one of the best movies ever made about Los Angeles -- "LA Confidential." Actually, it was just die-hard Angeleno David Kipen interviewing the film's director, Curtis Hanson, but the conversation was quite revealing.Hanson talked about his fight with … [Read more...]
The Misread City Goes to Mexico
NEXT week I will visit Mexico for the Guadalajara International Book Fair -- the biggest event of its kind in the Americas, second in size only to Frankfurt, and this year dedicated to the writing of Los Angeles. I was invited to moderate two panels partly because I co-edited a book on literary LA, and am in the process of renaming this blog for the book: The Misread City. (You can now get to the … [Read more...]
Postwar German Art, Mexican Printmaking and LACMA
The other day i made my first concentrated trip to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in a very long time. in the last year or two i'd walked along the campus with architect renzo piano as he talked about upcoming renovations, and i attended the blowout opening of the Broad Contemporary Art Museum, but this was my first visit as as civilian in quite a while. it also may be that only time i've … [Read more...]