Fatalizer

Illustration by Bob AulNot nearly as famous as Miracle-Gro or Bandini, Ironite is a natural fertilizer for home garden use. Manufactured in Arizona since 1987, it's available at local Lowe's stores and Home Depots and is fairly popular nationwide. The Orange County Register garden writer Cindy McNatt even recommended it on March 1 for yellowing …

Palo Fields

Photo by Jessica CalkinsThe two marble sphinxes guarding the entrance of Caspian Restaurant are probably the least opulent features of this Persian prandial palace. Consider the Pieta-esque sculpture in the center of the ornate lobby—a lobby with a floor-tile pattern so extravagant the interior-design journal In the Moodrewarded it with a five-page spread. Or the …

Terrible Realism

Current American cinema opiates its audiences with trifling releases that aspire to no other reality than the bottom line. Latin American moviemakers, meanwhile, continue to produce films that hauntingly show how fucked-up their respective countries are. At least that's the general theme running through the selections in this year's UC Irvine Latin American film festival—but …

One More Goddamn It

Photo by James Bunoan THE LORDS OF ALTAMONT/THE PAYBACKS ALEX'S BAR, LONG BEACH SATURDAY, APRIL 5 They didn't set anything on fire (at least not by the time we showed up), but biker-camp punkers the Lords of Altamont did have a prudently monochromatic, hippie, lava-lamp light show cascading across the back wall—maybe that's why they …

Give the Satyr a Brew

Photo by Jessica CalkinsRickety lunch trucks begin traversing the county around midmorning, hopping from worksite to worksite, seeking famished lunch-time crowds. But in Santa Ana, many of these culinary coaches park themselves in residential areas in the morning and remain well into the night. They know their customers well: see, lunch trucks—known to the Mexican …

Blood and Ceviche

Photo by James BunoanSinaloa is home to drug families that make the Calí and Medellín cartels seem like Quakers. It's the birthplace of narcocorrido messiah Chalino Sánchez, a land where violence isn't just a way of life; it was the miracle of choice for unofficial patron saint San Jesús Malverde, who'd rob and kill the …

Morelenbaum/Sakamoto

MORELENBAUM/SAKAMOTO CASA SONY CLASSICAL Unlike infants, DJs and classical composers, Antonio Carlos Jobim can be taken everywhere. His classic songs such as “Aguas de Marco” and, yes, “The Girl From Ipanema” fit perfectly in both steamy nightclubs and cultured salons. Those Kennedy-era tunes were a postmodern trip before mixing pop with classical music became hip, …

Spicy Protest Jambalaya

Image by Michael WeschlerThe pundit class has been whining and kvetching all over its blogs lately: Why isn't there any good antiwar music coming out of this generation? It's not a fair question, really. Vietnam had been dragging on for six years before Buffalo Springfield and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, et al. started harmonizing …

War College

Illustration by Bob AulABRAHAM. “AL.” AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL. ANTHRAX. AREA, COMPARATIVE. BAGHDAD. BLOOD. BUSH, GEORGE W. CASUALTIES. CHENEY, DICK. CHICKENHAWK. CLAREMONT. COLLATERAL DAMAGE. DOMESTIC POLICY. ESCHATOLOGY. EUROPE, OLD. FRANKS, TOMMY. FREE VERSE. FREEDOM FRIES. FRIENDLY FIRE. FUNDING, TERRORIST. GAS. HALABJA. HUMAN SHIELDS. IRAQ.ISRAEL.JIHAD.JUST WAR THEORY.KISSINGER, HENRY.KURDS.LANGLEY.McCAFFREY, BARRY.McVEIGH, TIMOTHY.MONEY.NATION BUILDING.NOBODY HOME.NOT IN OUR NAME (NION).NUCLEAR WEAPONS.NUMBERS. …

Comic Timing

Illustration by Justin Ridge/www.justinridge.comFor those who believe art is energized when limitations—financial, technological, the Medicis—are imposed on it, I offer 12 rather haggard, thoroughly pleasant comic artists sitting early Sunday morning in a visual-arts classroom at Cal State Fullerton. They have been sitting here all morning as well as the night that proceeded it and …

Electric Horsemen

Seven years ago, at a rodeo in the Anaheim Pond, a sorrel mare named Classic Velvet ran at full gallop—an estimated 35 mph—toward a chute she must have assumed was open. The horse was wrong. The chute's heavy metal rear gate was closed, and the horse smashed her head on it, crumpling to the ground …