…When someone told me it says in the Vedas that we are agreeing to marry in another life everyone we have sex with in this one, I was shocked into celibacy…for a month at least. Sex is the most compelling force in human life. Living in a place like LA, it’s not always easy to micromanage a high ideal. “Where we are in this Kali Yuga…we’re so low down the food chain of being able to perform austerities…if we can just have sex in marriage, it’s considered saintly in this day and age,” Vedic scholar Nrsimhananda tells me, but I’m not looking to get married anytime soon.

The School On Wheels
This galaxy is 12.3 billion light-years from School on Wheels on the corner of downtown’s Fifth and Pedro streets, a tiny bright light in the decidedly dark universe of a childhood on Skid Row.

Catching Falling Starts
Teacher Of The Year’ Alex Stickler: “LA Weekly Best Of LA” LA WEEKLY LA PEOPLE 2009: CATCHING FALLING STARS — ALEX STICKLER Giving L.A.’s dropouts a second chance BY SAM SLOVICKPublished on April 20, 2009 at 2:09pm There are at least 63 moons of Jupiter, about the same number of…
The Scrap Man vs. Sotheby’s
Des Carpenter has Van Gogh’s “Harvest at La Crau”. The other’s are forgeries and it doesn’t take a grifter to see through Sotheby’s artless long con.

Policing the Police – Alice Callahan
Alice Callahan is a force of nature. I wrote some awful things about her… then apologized, and she let me interview here again. It was a sort of amends. She’s an incredible person… with a finely honed, enlightened agenda. “Twenty five, twenty four, twenty three, twenty two, twenty one,” the kindergarten class counts down in…