Pop culture from Southern California and beyond.

VIDEO: That time new Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti jammed with Moby

MAYORALDEBATE - 9

Maya Sugarman/KPCC

City Councilman Eric Garcetti meets audience members after a mayoral debate at USC Health Sciences Campus in Mayer Auditorium in April 2013.

Los Angeles Mayor race 2013

Eric Garcetti, elected to be the next mayor of Los Angeles on Tuesday night, has an eclectic background. He’s served as city councilman, worked as a college professor — and is an accomplished jazz pianist. He's even composed musicals.

Garcetti’s dad, Gil Garcetti, talked about his son’s musical accomplishments at Tuesday night’s victory party.

“When he was eight years old, he won the grand prize for music composition, and I thought that’s where he was going to go.”

Eric Garcetti still plays music. At a February fundraiser, Garcetti raised $250,000 — and took to the piano to back up Moby, as well as taking some time to solo. He came back later and even played on the congas, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

Watch Garcetti and Moby playing “This Is Goodbye”:

Back in the day, Garcetti composed musicals with Brian Yorkey, who went on to write the lyrics and book for the Tony-winning “Next To Normal.”

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There's an 'Arrested Development' banana stand in Los Angeles and a stair car on the loose (PHOTOS)


UPDATE Wednesday, May 22: Where's the "Arrested Development" banana stand on Wednesday? At the Paley Center for Media in Beverly Hills. They're streaming old episodes of the show, and they're having a very special costume invitation:

Fingers crossed for a David Cross/Tobias sighting.

UPDATE Tuesday, May 21: The "Arrested Development" banana stand is taking a place at the Grove Tuesday from 11 a.m. until 7 p.m.

The show's Mae Whitman and Judy Greer showed up at the banana stand Monday in Culver City:

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VIDEO: Miguel drops pro wrestling-style leg drop on female fans at Billboard Music Awards


It was the leg drop heard ’round the world. At Sunday night’s Billboard Music Awards in Las Vegas, R&B singer Miguel managed to drop a giant pro wrestling leg drop on two fans.

While singing the song “Adorn,” Los Angeles-native Miguel took a leap over the crowd — and landed on a couple of women. One of the women took that leg drop straight over her neck.

Here’s the jump with slow motion replay:

Miguel looked to be trying to leap from one part of the stage to another, but he came up a bit short. Still, Miguel took “the show must go on” to heart, as he kept on going and finished the song.

Billboard and Miguel took to Twitter to say that at least one of the women was OK:

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'Saturday Night Live' season finale: Bill Hader's last show and Kanye West post-SNL rant (video)

"PUNK: Chaos To Couture" Costume Institute Gala

Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images

Kanye West and Kim Kardashian attend the Costume Institute Gala for the "PUNK: Chaos to Couture" exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 6, 2013 in New York City.

This weekend, Ben Affleck is scheduled to host “Saturday Night Live” for the fifth time. Affleck’s appearance is competing with other big SNL stories though, including cast members leaving and Kanye West going off on a rant on the show before his appearance as a musical guest.

West performed Wednesday night at the Roseland Ballroom in New York City for Adult Swim’s upfront presentation, and he had some unkind words about the idea of participating in any SNL skits this weekend.

“[I had a friend ask me, ‘Are you gonna go on] SNL and you’re going to do like a skit about the paparazzi and shit and like humanize yourself?’ I ain’t here to apologize to no motherf---ers man,” West reportedly said, according to Complex.

“Hell nah I ain’t doing no motherf---ing SNL skits, this my goddamn life. This ain’t no motherf---ing joke. That’s it. Stop that s--- right there.”

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100 most popular baby names lists show California has way more Camilas and way fewer Masons

love_K_photo/Flickr Creative Commons

A baby boy named Liam.

The Social Security Administration just released a list of the most popular baby names in each state, as well as across the United States, for 2012. Jacob and Sophia are the kings and queens of babies both nationally and in California, but number 7 name Jayden moves up to number 2 for boys in California. Each of those number 1 names around 1 percent of the population nationally.

Nationally, the number 2 name for boys, Mason, doesn’t fare so well in California — here, it comes in at 17. There are some other big differences from the norm, with national number 5 William coming in at 31 and number 6 Liam at 24. Two other boys top 10 names didn’t make the cut in California.

Taking the place of those baby boys locally: Daniel, Matthew, Anthony, David and, all the way from number 29, Nathan.

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