Students were given a chance to taste and hear the foods and music of Iran on Tuesday when Santa Monica College's Persian Club held a special, one day event called The Persian Culture Festival. The event was held on the main quad and was sponsored by the Associated Students. Persian food, such as rice and chicken kabab, was handed out...

Nansi Cisneros is still searching for her brother. On the afternoon of Oct. 19, in the small city of Tala, Mexico, 30 miles from Guadalajara, someone came for Javier Cisneros. A white Toyota Tacoma pulled up to Javier's home where he was with his friends. Men in bulletproof vests exited the car, brandishing shotguns. His mother, who lives six houses...

Elegant footwork on the studio floor was on display as the Santa Monica College dance department prepared its fleet of dancers for the upcoming Global Motion and Synapse dance shows that have won wide acclaim during previous semesters. The first of these spectacles will be Global Motion, which will be held at The Broad Stage at the Performing Arts Campus...

There's a humming in the restless summer air. The searing horror of war, both ancient and modern, is felt all too closely in the play "Ajax In Iraq," a production now being staged at Santa Monica's Miles Playhouse by the No Man Apart Physical Theatre Ensemble. Written by Ellen McLaughlin and directed with modernist force by John Farmanesh-Bocca, the play...

The trend in Hollywood college flicks has traditionally been to glorify the partying and debauchery of fraternities, highlighting raunchy sex scenes and vulgar language. Screen time is rarely given to the concerns of life after school, what the future holds for frat “brothers,” or if any part of the fraternal traditions are actually meaningful. Universal Picture’s Neighbors manages to break...

There is still one group of people for whom community goes beyond reddit discussions and blog comments and other forms of social media. A group of people who, in a world that pushes further towards the digitization of everything, value the physical copy of their medium that connects them to their past. Last Saturday was free comic book day across...

The savage philosopher, the middle finger of the gods. That is Santa Monica College history professor Danielle Bolelli as introduced in one of the podcasts of his hugely popular series "The Drunken Taoist." Like Nietzsche hitting the airwaves, Bolelli's podcast is a Renaissance ride that tackles with philosophical tones, every conceivable topic including politics, sex, Thomas Pain, the Pope, and...

The atmosphere was buzzing around the Broad Stage at Santa Monica College's Performing Arts Campus last Thursday evening. The audience members, many of whom dressed up for the occasion, slowly gazed upon the books featuring some of the work that the night’s guest speaker has done. Jodi Cobb is an icon. She has been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, she...

Olivia Puckett is getting ready to hit the stage and bring "American Idiot," the rock opera spectacle based on the classic Green Day album of the same name, to life at Los Angeles's Hollywood Pantages Theater on May 13. Puckett plays the role of Whatsername, the love interest of lead character Johnny. They form part of a group of young...

It’s hard to believe that seven years have passed since Tobey Maguire portrayed web-slinging superhero Spider-Man. It’s almost harder to believe that in those seven years Hollywood has learned nothing from the backlash fans had to Spider-Man 3’s decision to have three villains in a single film. To quote Rust Cohle from HBO’s phenomenal series True Detective, “Time is a...