In some TV news with local flavor, Santa Monica-based Ovation, "The Arts Network" (I thought this was Lifetime's tagline?), has announced a series of partnerships with cultural institutions across the country to produce and promote their content and collections. Local organizations include: the LA Opera, Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, and P.S. ARTS. Now if I could only get Ovation on local cable.... Also, despite our tailspin into recession and the lack of decent......

After the Joe Rogan Comedy Store confrontation and the recent accusations of stealing from Bill Cosby, there seems to be a Carlos Mencia aka Ned Holness witch hunt as of late. Now he is being accused of stealing a Jesus joke from the late Sam Kinison. They're kind of different, but for a guy being looked at so closely he really should be extra careful....check out the clip after the jump and decide for......

Looks like Carlos is joke stealing again. A few weeks ago on LAist we put up a post about comedian and host Joe Rogan calling Carlos Mencia out in the middle of a set at the Comedy Store for stealing from numerous comedians, as well as letting it be known that Mencia is not actually Mexican as most of his material claims, but is rather half Honduran, half German and is really named Ned......

A Word or 73: Was sad to learn of the death of Larry "Bud" Melman aka Calvert DeForest who spent over 20 years as a regular on David Letterman's shows - always able to suffer indignities and deal with situations that exceeded Punk'd and Jackass in terms of humor and sophistication by decades. Fox lostsome couple slots in the top 5 last week: American Idol got 1&2, followed by GRey's Anatomy, Deal or No......

We'd like to start this week's run-down by wishing a very happy birthday to parent blog Gothamist, which turned four on Friday. If it wasn't for them, the rest of us wouldn't be here. They celebrated their birthday by nabbing an interview with Entourage star Adrian Grenier, who misses NYC public transportation when he's working in LA. They also reported on NYU students protesting a band whose name is also known as a slur,......

NPR broadcast a story the other day about the new great white hope of the GOP: black evangelicals. It seems that many of the reverent and religious in the African-American community are paying attention to the morals and family values stressed by conservatives. Can you guess which issue (that dare not speak its name) is top on their list? Some black affinity for the GOP is understandable. Law and order would do wonders for......

We've been looking at billboards for BloodRayne all over the city without much enthusiasm for weeks now. (What is Ben Kingsley doing in this movie? We'd rather see him in Ghandi II: Electric Boogaloo). But when we stopped at a light on Fletcher near the LA River yesterday, we yelped with delight. The scary malevolent force behind BloodRayne is revealed! It's Bill Cosby! Whoever peeled back the BloodRayne billboard to reveal this horrifying secret,......

During the past week since we posted about culinary legend Julia Child’s passing, LAist has been angrily stewing (so to speak) over a local issue related to the woman who transformed the way Americans perceive and experience food. What a loss that the Pasadena native was never featured as Grand Marshal of the Tournament of Roses Parade. Ideally this should have happened in 2003, in commemoration of her 90th birthday year, but any point......