Has your mailbox been overflowing in recent weeks with political mailers touting candidates for tomorrow’s election? Mine has. At some point, I started to wonder: Who makes these things? How does the business work? And what do they really do? I recently spoke to two slate mail producers — one Democrat, one Republican — to get some answers.
The mailers I examined are simple advertising …

The average Angeleno wastes 60 hours stuck in traffic every year.
That depressing statistic comes from latest annual report by INRIX, a Washington-based traffic research company. INRIX not only ranks the country’s worst traffic cities each year, but also lists the worst times to drive in those cities. So what’s the worst hour of the week on LA’s traffic-choked streets and freeways?
The most congested hour …

Downtown LA’s population has more than quadrupled in the past decade. Many of the new arrivals are families with young children, and they say there aren’t enough good public schools in the area.
Last year, a group of downtown parents decided to start their own elementary school. Metro Charter was approved by the LA school board this month and is scheduled to open in the …

Al Walser is a DJ who lives in Encino and may or may not be an heir to the Rothschild banking dynasty and the grandson of Congolese music superstar Franco Luambo. He’s also up for the best dance recording Grammy at this Sunday’s awards. Before the nomination, nobody in the electronic dance music world had heard of Walser. So how did this previously unknown, …

The Texas-based Boy Scouts of America will vote next week on whether to remove the nationwide ban on gay members and scout leaders. However, it would still be up to local units to decide whether to allow gay scouts and leaders.
“The Boy Scouts would not, under any circumstances, dictate a position to units, members, or parents,” said a spokesman for the Boy Scouts of …

The five top contenders to succeed Antonio Villaraigosa as LA’s next mayor will face off in a live televised debate at UCLA’s Royce Hall tonight at 7 p.m. The forum will feature LA City Council members Eric Garcetti and Jan Perry, City Controller Wendy Greuel, entertainment lawyer Kevin James (the lone Republican in the pack) and former technology executive Emanuel Pleitez.
The debate will be …

Southern California’s first gun show since the school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut last month drew a huge crowd to the Ontario Convention Center over the weekend. On Saturday alone, about 6,000 people attended the Crossroads of the West show. Typically, the event attracts about that many in an entire weekend. I was there Saturday, and many of the attendees I spoke to said they …

USC’s Glorya Kaufman School of Dance will train aspiring dancers and choreographers, and is being funded by LA philanthropist Glorya Kaufman.  But ballerinas don’t usually go to college. While most young adults spend their college years switching majors, drinking beer and generally figuring out what to do with their lives, this is a prime professional time for dancers. So why is USC spending millions of dollars …

Do you think “The Nutcracker” ballet is a time-honored holiday tradition, or an overdone relic?
Either way, you’ve probably never seen a production of it quite like the one the LA Contemporary Dance Company is debuting this weekend at the Brewery Art Complex east of downtown.
I spoke this week with LACDC Artistic Director Kate Hutter and a few of her dancers about their very un-traditional …

When I finally reached the front of the line at my polling place this morning, the woman behind the table looked up at me and frowned. “It looks like you already voted,” she said. “By Mail. I can’t let you vote twice.”
The problem: I didn’t.
“Well,” the woman said when I told her, “I don’t know what to do. It says here that we received …

Proposition 37, which would require the labeling of all genetically modified foods in California, is one of the more emotionally charged measures on the Nov. 6 ballot. Proponents say consumers have a right to know what’s in their food, even if there’s no conclusive proof that genetic engineering poses health risks. Opponents include big biotech companies, soft drink manufacturers and food processors who could …

KCRW and To the Point hosted a live chat during last night’s debate, and guests agreed it was a far livelier match up than the first presidential debate.
The general consensus was that Obama came out strong, with varying takes on Romney’s performance.  “This is a draw so far, “Joshua Treviño  of RedState observed during the chat, “but note that the President is at his best, and the …

Tonight on Which Way, L.A?Warren speaks to actor-director-producer Robert Redford about his new Sundance Sunset Cinema, an independent movie house that opens in the old Laemmle Sunset 5 Space on Aug. 31.  While Redford admits that his other theaters around the country have relied on bigger budget films to finance their independent offerings, he doesn’t think L.A. moviegoers will require same the spoonful of …

During the run-up to the London Olympic Games, British irony was in full swing, complete with predictions of gridlocked traffic, frustrated spectators and lapses in security. Then something happened. It all worked out. The Olympics proved “we’re not just the sum total of our corrupt bankers [or] our pretty useless political class,” Peter Whittle told Warren on today’s To the Point. “We are more …

Trader Joe’s is a grocery store, yes. But I don’t think I’m stretching the truth by saying it’s also a SoCal cultural obsession, a sort of social club (as anyone who has been to the TJ’s on Hyperion in Silver Lake can attest) and a journalistic muse. In the latter category, The Atlantic’s Alessandra Ram is the latest to weigh in, praising the store for heeding …

Metro trains debuted extended hours over the weekend, with subways running every 20 minutes between midnight and 2 a.m. on the Blue, Gold, Red, Purple, Green and Expo lines.
On Saturday night, and into the wee hours of Sunday morning, I talked to some of the Red Line riders taking advantage of the new schedule to go to and from Hollywood. Hear some their voices …

Washington Post sportswriter Liz Clarke spoke to Warren on “Reporter’s Notebook” today about the flap over female athletes’ attire at the London Olympics. From a failed effort to force women boxers into skirts to newly relaxed rules giving beach volleyball players the option of NOT wearing bikinis, women’s wardrobes have been a big focus going into the 2012 games.  Clarke also discussed the history …

Nearly 20 years ago, a California tragedy — a mass shooting at a downtown San Francisco high-rise — prompted historic gun control legislation. Months after gunman Gian Luigi Ferri walked into the office of law firm Pettit & Martin at San Francisco’s 101 California building and killed eight people before committing suicide, Congress passed an assault weapons ban. But that federal measure has since …

Who should be held responsible for cleaning up abandoned, foreclosed homes that have fallen into disrepair? That’s the question at the heart of a new lawsuit filed by Los Angeles City Attorney Carmen Trutanich. In it, Trutanich essentially accuses U.S. Bank of being a slumlord for failing to maintain hundreds of properties it has foreclosed on. But the case is complicated by the tangled …

UPDATE 7/7/12: Eli Broad, billionaire philanthropist and founding chairman of the MOCA board of trustees, tries to answer the question posed in our headline. He wrote an op-ed in today’s LA Times defending museum director Jeffrey Deitch and the decision to part with longtime curator Paul Schimmel.
Broad argues that MOCA needs to be more thrifty and populist with its exhibitions:
In today’s economic environment, museums …