Packed with variety and energy, ‘Insights’ makes art look simple

MATTHEW OHM’S ‘UNTITLED’
Pity the folks tasked with installing “Insights 2008,” the Cal State Long Beach Art Department’s annual juried exhibition at University Art Museum (UAM). This show seems to grow every year.
When I visited, the installers were still hard at work atop fiberglass ladders, and everywhere [...]

Gabriela Martinez puts her life on display

EL CALDO DE PATO by GABRIELA MARTINEZ
On average, Gabriela Martinez’s linocuts each take 30 hours of work, but “The World Never Let Us Down,” her MFA thesis exhibition that incorporates them, was a life in the making.
“I always wrote stories when I was young, in journals,” Martinez says. “I [...]

‘Women of Troy’ is a painful lesson on casualties of war

PHOTO by KEITH IAN POLAKOFF
Women of Troy opens on a meeting between gods, Poseidon (Juan Carlos Parada) and Athena (Ivana Karapandzic) considering a just-wrapped 10-year war (victorious Greeks on one side, Trojans on the other) and, here comes the sort of interesting twist for Team [...]

Officials say no-tipping policy protects students
A state judge Thursday hit Seattle-based Starbucks with a $100 million fine after she found the coffee giant illegally forced California baristas to share tips with their managers. There’ll be no such squabble at the Starbucks on the Long Beach State campus—where tipping is banned. School officials who run the [...]

Beer baron Bryan “Whitey” Littlefield used his pipes for giving–and swearing

PHOTO by DANIEL DE BOOM
Memorial services for Bryan “Whitey” Littlefield were yesterday at First Congregational Church downtown, and the beer baron/philanthropist–who died March 7 at 75 of prostate cancer–received a bravura send-off.
The church has two levels and the upstairs stayed relatively empty, but downstairs was [...]

Whitey Littlefield–Long Beach beer baron philanthropist, who rose from delivering brew to owning a Budweiser distributorship with Frank Sinatra–is dead at 75.
We’ll tell you more about Mr. Littlefield in coming days–but it’s already becoming clear that, in the words of his close friend, restaurateur John Morris, “The guy’s had a life.”

The estate of Bob Cole donates $16.4 million to Cal State Long Beach’s music department. Cole, who made his money in real estate, was an amateur piano player and his money will be used to provide scholarships to student musicians. Also, the music department gets gold toilets and premium toilet paper (known in Europe as [...]

(Because the lady gets the chair!)
Machinal is the story of a murderess.
It is not a sexy, song-and-dance-filled story of a murderess. Renee Zellweger will not appear to surprise us with good acting and a terrific little cha cha cha. (Ladies and gentlemen, Miss Roxie Hart!) Nor is our murderess a vamp, a la Hedda Gabler, [...]

Last night’s Long Beach City Council meeting probably had more reporters per square inch than any council meeting since the Queen Mary came to town in ‘67 (but feel free to substitute your own significant local event here).
As near as I can tell, Cal State Long Beach’s Daily 49er was actually the first paper to [...]

Fifteen months after the ouster of Hal Nelson, its director of 17 years, the Long Beach Museum of Art finally has a new executive director.