Results tagged “language”

The Ladies Professional Golf Association last year began suspending players if they could not speak English proficiently. "The policy was based on the premise that language fluency in speeches and media interviews was critical to the sport's promotion," the LA Times explained. Well, that pissed off one politician who proposed a new law that was passed by the State Senate yesterday and next moves on to the Assembly floor. Opponents said this was a dangerous move citing that civil rights lawsuits could pile up if customers felt they did not receive good service. However, the law lets businesses can turn away customers if English is required for "business necessities" such as safety communications.

Today is the day no participle shall dangle and no modifier be misplaced! March 4th is National Grammar Day, brought to us by the fine people of the Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar.

It's been more than 10 days since California Attorney General Jerry Brown ruled on the official ballot language for Proposition 8. It simply states that, if a majority of voters say yes, it "Changes California Constitution to eliminate right of same-sex couples to marry. Provides that only a marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California."

“This lawsuit was more about politics than the law. The court properly dismissed it,” California Attorney General Brown said today about a lawsuit challenge about the language that will appear on November's ballot over gay marriage. A judge today dismissed the challenge and said the language is fine. Proponents of Prop 8 wanted the prop to be described as a limit on marriage, but after gay marriage was legalized in June, the Brown changed it to reflect just that: "Changes California Constitution to eliminate right of same-sex couples to marry. Provides that only a marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California."

If you were a kid growing up in Southern California, learning about the Chumash Indians was no doubt a part of your third-grade curriculum (probably right around the same time you were building a mission out of sugar cubes). The Chumash were the original inhabitants of much of SoCal's coastal areas, and did cool stuff like leech the acid out of acorns so they could make food out of it without being poisoned. Of course, it wasn't until high school that we learned about things like imperialism and colonialism, and how the Europeans did crazy stuff like pass out syphilis blankets. (Many of you might also know of the Chumash tribe from the "Pangs" episode of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" where Xander got infected with all sorts of spirit-Indian diseases; it was also a really sad episode where Angel comes back to visit and Buffy doesn't know it, but anyway, that's neither here nor there.)

Mediocre political thriller ($5.1M/$21.7M).

As part of their Golden Globe Foreign Language Nominee series, American Cinematheque is screening tonight at the Aero Theater. Director and noted artist Julian Schnabel will be on-hand to introduce the film. It tells the wrenching story of Jean-Dominique Bauby, the former editor of ELLE magazine who suffered a stroke at the age of 43 and spent the rest of his life able to move only one eyelid.

Sure, you could always stay in and watch reruns of [insert name of your favorite show here], but why bother when you have these things happening tonight to get you through hump day.

Power-pop is above all feel-good music, designed to hit all your pleasure centers at once, which makes it a natural fit for Christmas time. Click below for five super-charged riffs to restore your faith in humanity.

Monday Mike Carey presents The Devil You Know 7pm @ Book Soup Tuesday Doug Stumpf presents Confessions of a Wall Street Shoeshine Boy 7pm @ Book Soup Joy Horowitz presents Parts per Million: The Poisoning of Beverly Hills High School 7pm @ Central Library Michael Tucker signs Living a Foreign Language: A Memoir of Food, Wine and Love in Italy 7pm @ Dutton's Jerry Stahl presents Love Without 7pm @ Borders, Long Beach Thomas...

Juliette Lewis and her band of handsome young bearded men stormed into Spaceland for a secret show that started at 9pm to accommodate the crowd of industry insiders and professionals. She promptly reminded them what rock and roll was all about. Coming off an almost endless European tour, mostly in arenas or at festivals, the Licks' fury and power were overwhelming and wonderful in the small Silver Lake club. Juliette is a star and...

Although this art form has been developing in churches for many years, Praise Dancing is just starting to filter out into the secular community. Churches from a variety of denominations, but primarily African-American Baptist churches, have been starting dance ministries all across the country. Mixing a variety of dance forms with mime and occasionally with American Sign Language (ASL), Praise Dancing is sometimes called Worship Dance or Praise Mime. The use of mime make-up is not standard, and is somewhat controversial because of its similarity to minstral makeup. However, the use of white gloves is a consistent element of the troupes that are more strongly mime-oriented. I even found one instance of the white gloves being used in a form of worship dance in Malaysia.

Dennis Cooper in discussion with the writers of Userlands 7:30pm @ Skylight Books

Dälek has again brought us to a cold, dark, somber, and sparse place with their fourth release, Abandoned Language, on the Ipecac Recordings label. Dälek is MC/producer Will “dälek” Brooks and teammate producer Alap “Oktopus” Momin who have been collaborating on new visions for hip hop since 1998. This time the theme is language, it's failure and abuse. The theme is carried down to the extrmeley cool CD booklet which requires you to hold it at an angle in order to read the text which is no more than a layer of gloss printed onto the flat finish of the paper.

Wanna' know what's hot and fresh on our playlists? Look no further. Here's the 411 on what your favorite LA-centric blog is listening to. Whether it's sick and twisted or straight up embarrassing to mention -- it's all here:

Born in LA 33 years-and-a-day ago, June 21, 1973, it seems like Juliette has done it all.

We're not quite sure what conspiracy Judi McLeod at Canada Free Press is trying to make by noting that Telemundo is owned by NBC which is owned by GE whose largest institutional investor is Barclay's Global Investors whose largest institutional investor Lazard Freres Asset Management and CSX-AXA who are, apparently, a bunch of Jews. Is the point that she thinks Spanish speaking people couldn't have organized such a well-orchestrated show of civil disobedience or that Jewish people love undocumented immigrants or maybe that Jews and Mexicans are conspiring together to take over America...and then, what, Canada might be next?

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"Chinatown" screenwriter Robert Towne shares stories about screenwriting at the Writers Guild Foundation Spring Storytellers Series tonight at 7:30 PM. The Writers Guild Theater is located at 135 S. Doheny Drive in Beverly Hills. For reservations, call (323) 782-4692. Tickets are $25 for WGA members and academic faculty. Students get in for $15 with ID.

We're changing things up a bit here at LAist. Because we live in such a vibrant, socially active city, there are things going on all the time. We have long wanted to be able to list events in advance (for the benefit of our wonderful readers), so starting today we have implemented a new strategy: a week's events in advance. We will still post featured events each day, but we've added a permanent sidebar (to the left) that will always link to a post containing this week's events.

Moderated by Mark Johnson, producer of "Diner," "Rain Man," the symposium features representatives of the 2004 Best Foreign Language Film Nominees.

While we're happy that the Clippers are doing much better than expected this year and haven't already given up on the season (and if they can just string a few more wins together might even compete for the 8th playoff spot in the West), we're heading to the Staples Center tonight to get our last chance to see Shaquille O'Neal play in Los Angeles this season. Your Los Angeles Clippers host the Miami Heat tonight at 7:30 PM.

It's going to be a bloody good time tonight at the ArcLight when AFI presents a preview screening of Saw, starring Carey Elwes and Danny Glover. Q&A with director James Wan and writer Leigh Whannell will follow. The film starts at 9:00 PM. Stick around after Saw for a special midnight showing of The Grudge starring Sarah Michelle Gellar.