This query made its way into the LAist inbox, and we tracked down the answer: Just wondering, is the Coliseum cauldron lit for the Olympics right now? First stop on the investigation (besides some people mentioning they've seen it lit during other Olympics before) was good old Wikipedia; the entry for the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum explains that the cauldron is lit on special occasions, such as "during the fourth quarter of USC football games,......

Update: More witnesses see the fireball, read the update here | From the LAist Inbox: Legit or For Real? A reader writes in... "I work in Beverly Hills on the 8th floor of our building, and I was talking to a co-worker when I saw a massive orange light fly West to Northeast over the Hollywood hills. It was like a shooting star but ridiculously close. Am I the only one who saw this? Am......

Where are the best pickup soccer venues in the greater Los Angeles area? -- Bankole O Los Angeles is an enormous city, and soccer is a popular sport. You can find games being played just about everywhere! If you're looking to avoid organized leagues, there's soccer played on a regular basis at Rancho Park, Pan Pacific Park, the Westwood Rec Center, and Mar Vista Park (they have a new-ish turf field which is frequently booked,......

Every week we round up all the bookish events happening in LA and we present them in the Get Your Lit On series Monday mornings. This Monday, an astute LAist reader asked us a very good question: What does it mean when a writer "presents" their book? We answered as fairly as we could, pointing out that most authors briefly introduce their book, read from it, answer questions about it and then sign it.......

First, I absolutely love the neighborhood project. I'm thinking about moving to many of the areas listed, so the profiles really help. I would love to see an article about how to find a roommate in LA. I'm looking for a roommate for the first time out here, and I bet that kind of article would be useful for a lot of people. Keep up the great work. Beata Brandt Beata, the timing of your......

The US Postal Service this week implemented their newly inflated rates, again. And to distract us from the fact that the government agency is sticking it to us despite continuing making hundreds of millions of dollars in profit, they rolled out the new Forever Stamp. The Forever Stamp allows you to buy a 41-cent stamp today and use it for a regular letter, like, say, a nice card to your favorite city-based blog with......

Dear LAist, Any idea whether or not modest mouse will still be playing the greek this Sunday? Love, Andrea of Burbank Dear Andrea, One of the great things about being LAist is we have the email addresses of everyone important. And we took your email and forwarded it to one person and that person replied in seconds and said that due to the fire, the Modest Mouse show on Sunday, as well as the......

Dear LAist, One of my friends is dating a football player. The season is over and after he gets back from Hawaii he will probably spend a lot of time at our condo. The big problem is he's a BIG guy. Like, huge. There's no way he can be comfortable using our toilet. Is there a seat or a toilet accessory that we can get for him so he might invite some more of......

Bandini, author of the sweet (yet not-recently updated, cough cough) LA blog The Great Taco Hunt, asks, "I wonder how much furniture Lane Kiffin bought from HD Buttercup?" To fully understand this joke/question/accusation, one must know who Lane Kiffin is, and what H. D. Buttercup is. H. D. Buttercup is an upscale, interior designer's wet dream in Culver City, housed in the beautiful 100,000 square-foot Helms Bakery building. Built during the depression to celebrate......

Welcome to the latest edition of “Ask the MACist", the column where I answer your Mac and Mac-related questions with hopefully more clarity and insight than you could ever need. As always, I want to thank those of you who sent in questions this week. They are much appreciated. Keep it up! And remember, if you have a question about anything Mac, Mac-related, or even something about another technology like TiVo or anything, send......

Dear LAist, Recently I ruined, uh, retired from my career. I am looking to go into a new line of work, namely the production and distribution of cocaine. Can you help? Kramer. Dear Mr. Kramer, Producing cocaine is a tricky feat involving lots of chemicals and hard-to-get ingredients. Not only is it illegal but it's sorta immoral. If you want to destroy lives while turning a huge profit, have you considered being a tobacco......

Welcome to the latest edition of “Ask the MACist", the column where I answer your Mac and Mac-related questions with hopefully more clarity and insight than you could ever need. As always, I want to thank those of you who sent in questions this week. They are much appreciated. Keep it up! And remember, if you have a question about anything Mac, Mac-related, or even something about another technology like TiVo or anything, send......

this year LAist introduced "Ask the MACist" and now we give you... Ask the PCist! by Andrew Solmssen - send your questions to pcist at bitboy dot com I have a wireless laptop, and I'm tired of having to plug in my printer every time I want to print the sides for my commercial auditions. Is there anyway to print over the wireless connection? You bet. What you need is called a wireless print......

Welcome to the latest edition of “Ask the MACist." The column where I answer your Mac and Mac-related questions with hopefully more clarity and insight than you could ever need. As always, I want to thank those of you who sent in questions this week. They are much appreciated. Keep it up! And remember, if you have a question about anything Mac, Mac-related, or even something about another technolgy like Tivo or anything, send......

Welcome to the latest edition of “Ask the MACist”. The column where I answer your Mac and Mac-related questions with hopefully more clarity and insight than you could ever need. You may have noticed that today is Monday and not Saturday. Well, as of this week "Ask the MACist" will now be appearing every Monday here at LAist instead of Saturday. So, mark your calendars! Plus, my apologies for not having a column last......

Welcome to the latest edition of “Ask the MACist”. The weekly column where I answer your Mac and Mac-related questions with hopefully more clarity and insight than you could ever need. As always, I want to thank those of you who sent in questions this week. They are much appreciated. Keep it up! And remember, if you have a question about anything Mac or Mac-related, send it to me, The MACist, at: themacist at......

Hello again and welcome to this week’s “Ask the MACist”. The weekly column where I answer your Mac and Mac-related questions with hopefully more detail and clarity than you could ever want. Thanks again to all of you who wrote in with your Mac questions this past week. I really appreciate your interest and support for this column. Keep those emails coming in. Send them to: themacist at gmail dot com. Now, let’s get......

Dear Tony, Why does LAist use the royal "we"? I think it's obnoxious. Why don't you? And why doesn't all of your writers use it. I see only some of them do. LAist uses "we" instead of "I" because we are published by Gothamist and they say "we". Jake and Jen said I can run LAist any way I want and out of respect to that freedom I don't think that I've not used......

Thanks to all of you who submitted questions. Your enthusiasm for this column is much appreciated. Obviously, there are a few Mac users out there. If you don't see your question answered this time, don’t worry. Just keep sending in questions. You never know, you might get your question answered next week. So, keep trying. Ok, here we go: The first question is from Ying Lee in Hollywood. He asks, "What is a good......

Hi LAist, I was wondering if you might be able to post a question to fellow Angelinos about what is considered the best fireworks display in the city. As a new resident, I'm having a hard time deciding between the Loggins fest, the America fest, and all the other fests around town. More gunpower and less $$ is always nice, but all is fair in this quest for the best display of patriotism in......

Concerned commenter valleyist asks: Why are you guys showing so many clips from YouTube? Do they pay you for these plugs? If I wanted to see clips from youtube, I'd go to there [sic] website. Is that what you want? Let's start by saying yes, that's what we want. We want you to enjoy surfing around on the internet (particularly while you're at work), we want you to watch funny videos, read your favorite......

A reader writes in and asks: Wouldn't it be better to call the website the Angelist instead of the LAist? Hmm, would that be better? It might work, we guess, except we've never called ourselves the anything. We're LAist because we sprang fully-formed from the thigh of Gothamist, which has no "the" at all. Other -ists exist in this same "the"-less universe: Austinist, Chicagoist, Londonist, Bostonist, Houstonist, Phillyist, Seattlest, Miamist, Torontist and Shanghaiist. The......

We don't pretend to know everything there is to know about Los Angeles. In fact, we'd venture to bet that there are some of you reading right now that think we don't know squat about squat. You'd claim we just got off the greyhound bus from Tupelo and should just shut up already. First, you're so rude. Second, don't harsh our vibe. We think we know a little bit. Or at least know where......

Ask LAist is our occasional feature in which we answer the perplexing questions of our dear readers. Need help figuring out something about the city...or life in general? Ask us. LAist isn't just here to tell you where the best egg cream in city is, or when Boogie Knights will be playing the Lava Lounge again. No, we are here for much, much more. And a big part of that is your, and our......