We all look alike anyway ...

Had a nice sit-down the latest LA Weekly. It's graced with a wonderful and enriching package of stories by Mehammed Mack about progressive American Muslim thinkers, and an amazing photo essay from Iran by Teun Voeten, who notes that tourists are welcome there. Azadeh Moaveni, who worked briefly at the L.A. Times around the same time I did, has a book out on her homeland's youthful cosmopolitan underground. Tehran looks almost familiar, big and electric, like Mexico City. Geopolitics and fearmongering are boring. What really matters is people, the streets, our common pop world. For cutting-edge cultural coverage of the Middle East, definitely get familiar with Bidoun magazine. * The Weekly dispatch from Iran by Nayer Khazeni is also very well done.