Early in “Annie Hall,” Alvy Singer (Woody Allen) gets into an argument with a stranger while standing in line at a movie theater. The argument is about film, and when Singer decides his opponent knows nothing about the work of media scholar Marshall McLuhan, he simply walks McLuhan, playing himself, into the frame to tell off the uninformed moviegoer. Read more...

The fuss about “United 93,” which details the by now well-known story of said flight’s passengers and how they fought back against their hijackers on Sept. Read more...

It is hard to define what sex addiction is, especially since many people think it’s just a joke, a euphemism for a big sex drive. But for people actually suffering from sex addiction, it is an obsessive compulsion, something powerful and destructive that can necessitate the frequenting of prostitutes and ruin marriages. Read more...

When Christina Amini and Rachel Hutton left their first 9-to-5 jobs in New York to head home and live with their folks, each realized they had a long way to go before becoming what the average post-college, pre-picket fence American would call “adult.” That transition from college to the “real world” was somehow not all cash and glory. Read more...

The Los Angeles Times Festival of Books is not the first place most UCLA professors go to find material for their research or the classes they teach. Read more...

The other day, a 15-year-old girl tried to add me as a Facebook friend. While this is probably some people’s idea of a good time (or a first-draft premise for the film “Hard Candy”), I already feel awkward enough in real life running into former campers from my summer at Camp Hess Kramer. Read more...

Once a guitarist, singer/songwriter and occasional drummer for indie-pop bands The Softies and Tiger Trap, Rose Melberg uses her second solo album to branch off in a different direction with a lush and humble sound that is all her own. Read more...