Agnes Magyari

Cloe Kromwell (as Terra), John Colella (as Miles, the Paul Giamatti role in the film), Jonathan Bray (as Jack, the Thomas Haden Church role), and Julia McIlvaine (as Maya, the Virginia Madsen role)

Rex Pickett's excitement has superseded his exhaustion during the final weeks of rehearsal for his new play Sideways, opening this weekend at Ruskin Group Theatre in Santa Monica. Having adapted the play from his own novel, Pickett is busy making final tweaks to the script and participating in post-show talkbacks, not to mention developing a pilot for HBO. "It's exhilarating, and it's maddening at the same time," Pickett says.

Sideways originated as a semi-autobiographical novel chronicling two friends -- Miles and Jack -- on an existential adventure across the Santa Ynez wine country just before Jack ties the knot. Adapted into an acclaimed film by Alexander Payne in 2004, Sideways gave the valley's tourist industry a palpable boost and increased the profile of Pinot noir across the world. "The Sideways phenomenon, or brand, or whatever you'd want to call it, is huge," Pickett explains. "With the play, it gives fans of Sideways another way to experience it."

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Photo by Hunter Gorinson

Jason Kothari (Left) and Dinesh Shamdasani are now the heads of Valiant Comics

In 2005, Dinesh Shamdasani and Jason Kothari, two slight, sleep-deprived undergrads from USC and the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business, respectively, sat in Kothari's dorm room surrounded by the towering boxes of legal documents that had consumed their lives for the past six months. The childhood friends had just failed in their quest to purchase Valiant, their favorite comic book company.

It had been a long shot. In the 1990s, Valiant was the third largest comic book company in the world, rivaling DC Comics for market share and boasting more than 1,500 characters. With no prior experience in the industry, and only Shamdasani's vast knowledge of Valiant's library and Kothari's nearly completed business degree to guide them, the two fans had gotten in the ring with millionaire Marvel execs and wealthy industry insiders to fight for the rights to Valiant.

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Photo by Lenika Cruz

Arcana Books settling into its new space at Helms Bakery

If you're one of those shoppers who struts into bookstores, clutching a latte in one hand and wrangling a book off the shelf with the other, Lee Kaplan thinks you should be a little ashamed of yourself. Lee and his wife, Whitney, own Arcana Books on the Arts, one of the best bookstores around for new and used books on contemporary visual arts. Not only is that latte a threat to the merchandise in a commercial sense, but it's also a nasty slur against the bound and printed page.

"We're not big fans of liquid in our store," says Lee. Embarrassed, I recall that I walked in for our interview with a big, dumb, styrofoam cup of coffee. "A majority of people would walk in with their bag from Barnes & Noble and their cup of coffee. We'd say" -- his voice becomes light and decorous -- "'Can we please check those at the counter for you?' And they'd assume we were accusing them of stealing, turn on their heels and walk out." Lee swivels his eyes as if to say, I don't get it. "But most people would peek their head in and think we were too weird."

Thanks to a series of fortuitous events, Arcana has happily ditched the Barnes & Noble foot traffic runoff and its longtime home on Third Street Promenade -- where it had been since 1989 -- for newer, much nicer digs at the Helms Bakery building in Culver City. A soft opening is set for Tuesday, and customers will be able to look around and make purchases, but there is still much work left to be done for Lee, Whitney and their seven employees.

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Warner Bros. via IMDB

It could have been called "Night of Bests," but NBC execs, including former president of NBC Entertainment Warren Littlefield, knew that wasn't quite right. It was the early '90s and juggernauts Cheers and The Cosby Show had recently ended their runs. The network was nervous. "I was getting killed by The Simpsons," Littlefield said.

NBC needed something to fill those gaping holes, so they made a risky move in order to "keep the lights on" on Thursdays. "No one had ever programmed for adults in the 8 o'clock hour with adult comedy," Littlefield said during a panel last night at the Paley Center. Historically, family comedy ruled that slot. But NBC decided to swap in Mad About You -- a program that was managing to garner the coveted 18-49 viewership on Saturday nights. In the fall of 1993, NBC's new Thursday lineup led with that show, followed by Wings, Seinfeld and L.A. Law. The ratings enjoyed a boost from putting what NBC considered their best shows all on one night.

Now all it needed was a catchy slogan.

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Courtesy Francisco Castro/HOY Newspaper

Dr. Hayes-Bautista in the new exhibition for his book on Cinco de Mayo's origins

When Dr. David E. Hayes-Bautista says the phrase "Drinko de Mayo," he is far from bitter. He doesn't rant about how Cinco de Mayo has been subjected to brutal commercialization and stripped of its authenticity. It is, after all, difficult to really critique the Mexican beer companies for divesting the holiday of its "true meaning" when most Chicanos themselves, let alone Californians (or the rest of the U.S.), aren't sure why they celebrate it in the first place.

Before he wrote his new book El Cinco de Mayo: An American Tradition to, in his words, "straighten out the history," Hayes-Bautista, a professor of medicine at UCLA and director of the Center for the Study of Latino Health and Culture, went most of his life not fully understanding the holiday.

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Photos by Wendy Cheng; Cover design by Nicole Hayward

Let the tour buses take the throngs to visit Marilyn Monroe's handprints at Grauman's Chinese Theater or to press their noses up to the windows on Rodeo Drive and wander Beverly Hills like they're Julia Roberts. Despite what the entertainment industry would have you believe, the city of Los Angeles and its surrounding neighborhoods have a much richer, often conflicted history than just those landmarks -- and A People's Guide to Los Angeles, just released by UC Press, would like to make sure you don't forget it.

Researched for more than 15 years by Laura Pulido, Laura Barraclough and Wendy Cheng -- three Southern California natives and academics with backgrounds in ethnic studies or sociology -- and cultivated from published and personal accounts of Los Angeles' long-standing political, social and racial power struggles, the travel guide was released this month and includes 115 sites of interest for the progressive-minded explorer.

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Illustrations by Paul Rogers

A series of drawings depicting The Darjeeling Limited

Paul Rogers is a Pasadena-based illustrator and graphic designer who has worked on everything from USPS stamp lines to posters for the Los Angeles Dodgers. He also has illustrated children's books such as Bob Dylan's Forever Young.

His new book, Name That Movie, features 100 sets of six drawings apiece. Each set depicts a different movie but isn't obvious about it -- depending on how big a fan you are, it might take some keen powers of observation to figure out what movie it is.

We have three different sets of drawings, each showing a different movie for you to guess. Answers are on the last page.

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Dictionary of American Regional English, Volume 5

The Southern California vocabulary, as endearing or maddening as it can be, doesn't exactly have a reputation for erudition. And we're totally chill about that.

The Dictionary of American Regional English, which you may have heard of recently, is an ambitious lexicographical project that recently reached the end of the alphabet and released its fifth and final volume: a diligently researched, 1,200-page compendium of American words -- from slab to zydeco -- traced through history and from region to region.

As I navigated the book's heft, I noticed that most of the words with California origins referred to either flora (like "tule," or a kind of cattail plant) or fauna (like "splatter-ass," a kind of duck). After much thumbing I managed to find six (legit) phrases that Californians can call their own.

Who knows? Maybe we can get them circulating again.

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Fifteen Digits

"Good-bye crowbar and ski mask.
Hello computer and offshore account."
--Nick Santora, Fifteen Digits.

Fifteen Digits, Nick Santora's second novel, is one of those stories where you're rooting for the main character, Rich Mauro, to stop falling into a spiral of crime and self-destruction. And you'll think from the first chapter, it's not going to end well for Rich, but you read on anyway, hoping the narrator will change his mind.

"They were good people," Nick Santora writes. "And good people sometimes did bad things -- but they also knew when to stop doing them."

According to this logic, are good people those who can stop in the midst of heinous crimes and simply take responsibility for their actions? It's hard to know how deeply Santora wants us to question morality, but it's obvious he loves stories with flawed characters who make big mistakes.

Born in Queens and raised in Long Island, Santora came from a hard-working, blue-collar family. Eventually climbing the social ladder, he graduated from Columbia Law School and later started working at a corporate law firm. Since he escaped practicing law, he's been working on so many different projects in L.A. and New York that it's hard to imagine he has time to sleep. He's written for The Sopranos, Law & Order and Prison Break, co-created Beauty and the Geek and Breakout Kings and previously wrote the best-selling novel Slip and Fall.

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PHOTO BY FELICITY MURPHY

Lauren Berger held 15 internships while in college.

Lauren Berger has gotten coffee at MTV. She's gotten coffee at Fox. And yes, she's done it at several other agencies that may not have as much brand recognition. She even broke the darned coffee pot once.

These days, the 28-year-old entrepreneur gets others to fetch the java for her. Her web-based business, InternQueen.com, connects top-level companies with the cream of the college-student crop.

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