City park provides range of eateries


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From a popular picnic hot spot for upper-crusters, to a gang-infiltrated slum, to a revitalized music festival venue, MacArthur Park, straddling Wilshire Boulevard in Westlake, has experienced many transformations throughout the years. The park’s image has suffered from a bad reputation over the decades but has since sobered up. Take a walk by the lake […]

Horror flicks terrify using reality


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From Saw to The Sixth Sense to Piranha 3D, America has slaked its thirst for horror films. Among cranky zombies and evil little ghost girls, another kind of film still carries legitimate creepy factor. It isn’t about supernatural forces, but something far more terrifying: real life.  The film Contagion comes out this week, wherein Kate […]

Salon crosses ethical boundaries


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The power of photography should never be underestimated. With one shot you can move virtually anyone to tears, anger or happiness. In one photograph, you can even incite the rage of hundreds of people. This fact should’ve been taken into consideration by the Canadian beauty salon Fluid. In a series of photographs, the salon took […]

Wii U promises appealing features


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It’s no secret that Nintendo has had some problems these past few years. Lately, the company has been garnering more ridicule than it has praise. We constantly hear about the Wii’s pitfalls — how its graphics lack detail, how its games are generic and lackluster and how its target audience is the casual, noncommittal gamer. […]

Vampires maintain cinematic spotlight


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When Fright Night premiered a few weeks ago, Colin Farrell turned heads as a creature not seen in vampire canon for years — a genuine, unrepentant bad guy. Vampires have crept through cinema since 1913 as our flashier, crueler and sexier cousins. But in their century of celluloid glory, there has been a shift. Once, […]

Abramovic inspires with innovative performance art feats


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As part of a performance piece in the early ’70s, Yugoslavian-born Marina Abramovic lied in the outline of a burning star until she lost consciousness. Abramovic’s Museum of Modern Art 2010 exhibition “The Artist is Present” had her spending three months in the museum. She sat in a chair with an empty one across from […]

Retailers introduce console streaming


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There will soon be no need for trips to the local GameStop. All of the big-name retailers’ video games are going to be coming straight to your living room with the advent of game streaming. GameStop recently announced plans to begin streaming console and PC games nationwide to PlayStation 3s, Xbox 360s and PCs sometime […]

Build muscle mass for convenience


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Have you ever visited a gym and seen the people benching pounds and pounds of weights, straining with each step until their muscles were so pumped up they looked like balloons? Have you ever seen someone finish a workout and gulp down ounces of a muscle-building supplement drink? Has it ever made you want to […]

American food culture affects Chinese cuisine


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When I lived in Singapore, I was pampered by the cheap Chinese dishes with varying tastes and textures at food courts, the dim sum dishes from hawker stalls and the occasional multi-course Chinese banquet during special events. But in the United States, all I found was dishes that serve the same goopy, sweet and greasy […]