La Luz Photo Gallery | All photos by Elise Thompson for LAist Saturday night La Luz de Jesus hosted the the book signing for The Velvet Hammer Burlesque Book, in conjunction with opening reception for the group exhibition of photographs from the book. The beautifully bound and printed coffee table book was worth every penny of the 60 dollar price tag, as you will see in some of the featured artwork after the jump.......

LA readings and book signings around town for January 28th - Februar 3rd including Judith Freeman, Ron Jeremy, Tamara Jenkins, Mary McNamara, Sam Jones and Tom Dolby....

Tonight’s the next installment of the LA Phil’s Concrete Frequency series, but here are other options we've dug up for your going-out pleasure: DANCE Hollywood Ballet is LA's own modern ballet ensemble. Tonight's show includes premieres of "RQ 21," set to sections of Mozart’s Requiem; "Ghost Frog," set to music by Parisian jazz guitar virtuoso Pascal Vaucel; lyrical/Middle Eastern fusion dance set to the ballet music from Verdi‘s Aid. Dancers from the troupe’s pre-professional group,......

(c) Andy Summers and courtesy of TASCHEN" src="http://laist.com/attachments/la_andy/andy_summers_crowd.jpg" width="640" height="403" /> Amoeba was not quite as crowded last night for Andy Summers' "I'll Be Watching You: Inside The Police 1980-83" book signing as was the Austin record store that the photographer, author, and erst-while guitarist for The Police captured in B/W from the set of a 1980 in-store appearance. But Summers was kept busy for over two hours signing copies of the impressive, nearly......

This Saturday night, high art meets sex with the release of Grafuck, a book featuring some of the best artists out there creating 208 pages of erotic imagery to titillate your creative urges. To celebrate the release, Gallery Nucleus is having a book signing and art show, featuring the artists and the work they've created for the book. The book is filled with all sorts of art ranging from photography to painting, illustration to......

Naked Ambition, book of photos of the adult industry by photographer Michael Grecco "Like everything else in this business, this is chaos." This is what Lonn Friend, Naked Ambition writer, told me when I showed up at the Naked Ambition signing at Book Soup in reference to the way the event was going. For an event full of porn stars, it was actually quite tame, and not so much chaotic as lackadaisical. But, I......

With lines wrapping around the Borders bookstore in Torrance, yesterday Slash signed autographs and stoked fans of all ages excited and holding a copy of his new aptly titled book, "Slash". Arriving at 7:45, I saw that if i wanted to get a signed copy of Slash's book, i was going to have to wait in a line to get into the line that zig-zagged through the bookstore. I am not that patient, and......

Leave it to JK Rowling to figure out a new way to invoke excitement. When the best-selling author came to LA yesterday to hold a press conference before a book signing for Los Angeles Unified School District school children she was greeted with flash bulbs and applause. However as she walked to the stage and then sat down she exposed a healthy dose of cleavage and bra-action for all the little wizards in the......

Ever since I went on vacation in March and found myself flying through four books in four days, I've realized how much I miss actually sitting down and reading real books. Not magazines, not updates on my RSS feed, but a real book. In that regard, I've been fairly indiscriminating in making every effort to cross the gamut from classic to bestseller to inspirational. But even better, I've found the first great beach read......

Richie Hass Benefit featuring: Potion Box, Present Tense, The Freda Rente Band, The Adz, Backbiter, The Amadans, The Richie Hass Band, Vinnie Golia, The BellRays, Mike Watt & the Missingmen, The Marc Mylar Mob, Joe Baiza's Congress, Saccharine Trust, Carey Fosse, The Atomic Sherpas, Fatso Jetson @ Safari Sams 4pm-midnight TV on the Radio @ Henry Fonda Theater Sweet Honey in the Rock @ Royce Hall Fishbone @ Malibu Inn Goo Goo Dolls @......

Sting @ Disney Hall Chris Daughtry @ Viper Room NOFX @ House of Blues The Colour @ Spaceland Fairmona, The Softlightes, BRAM @ Silverlake Lounge The New Hotness, Yes Me to Death @ The Scene Wylde Bunch, The Hear Gallery @ Safari Sam's Thee Gentlemen Callers, Tsk Tsk, Nantucket Suicide @ The Echo Plethora Yearned, Thruster, David Scott Stone @ The Smell The New Motherfuckers, United by Sound, Una @ The Mint Saints of......

With the year winding down, LAist is asking famous celebs, local politicians, and other movers & shakers of LA to tell us what they thought were tops of 2006. Before founding PostSecret, Frank Warren grew up in the Valley and attended Colfax Elementary School with Adam Carolla. If you missed his book signing last month, you can catch him on January 15th at Borders Books in Torrance as he signs the next PS book, "The......

The last of the candy corn has been nibbled from our plastic jack-o-lanterns which means only one thing: time to lay off the weed, er, it's Christmas Gift-Buying Time. If you start early, we've found, it doesn't get so cruddy in late December. Mostly cuz you're broke. Surely there's a friend or family member who could use some tips on cleaning the house a bit, Mom. And what better than a $45 picture-riffic book......

LAist gets invited to a lot of cool events. We say no to way too many. It's not that we say no, we just never end up where we probably should be. When we were invited to the Courtney Love book signing at the Virgin on Sunset we were not only there, we were early, we had our batteries charged, we had extra batteries, we had voted, we were Ready. And secretly we hoped......

Joseph Arthur @ El Rey Ladytron @ John Anson Ford The Pogues @ The Grove of Anaheim Method Man, Saigon @ House of Blues Bongo Fury @ Harvelle's Sono Luz @ King King Go Betty Go @ The Derby Head Like a Kite @ Cinespace Sean Hayes, Dave Palmer @ Largo The Ringers, Mulhollands @ Viper Room Daedelus, Thavius Beck, DJ Nobody @ The Echo Bettie Serveert, The Minor Canon @ Spaceland The Forecast,......

Wolfgang Tillmans isn't your everyday photographer. His work isn't the type thats overly-altered, or posed, or even all that beautiful all the time. Take his photo of Tony Blair, for example: you wouldn't be surprised if Blair asked that snap to be excluded from the new collection "Truth Study Center", since it appears as if the Prime Minister is passing wind or was just accused of doing something disgraceful. His teeth look unclean, his......

LAist's very own Paul Davidson has published a second book, The Lost Blogs, which came out last Tuesday. It features fictionalized blogs of historical figures from Jesus to Jim Morrison, and is a great way to kill a plane trip from here to anywhere. We suggest picking up a copy, and then laughing as much as you can. We caught up with Paul this past Saturday at a book signing at the Barnes &......

Southern California is so big that it's easy to lose sight of all its treasures, especially living ones. In our myopia, we tend to think that most writers identified with our region all live west of I-15 and south of I-405. Novelist Susan Straight challenges that presumption just as her work challenges so many other notions about race, class and Californian culture. A lifelong resident of Riverside, Susan has authored five novels, including "Highwire......

For the past several days the Food Network's ubiquitous kitchen pixie, Rachael Ray, has been invading book and cook shops in California on a signing tour for her cookbook 365: No Repeats. Tomorrow night marks her last stop in the greater Los Angeles area, with a 7-8 PM slot at Pasadena's Sur La Table. We happened to stroll by there over the weekend and noticed that their sidewalk sandwich board urged those interested to......

LAist looks back fondly on that sleepy morning a few years back when we reluctantly rolled out of bed and sat down to a breakfast made for us by celebrated chef Emeril Lagasse. Lagasse was the perfect gentleman, making us two different dishes so we could have our choice of flavors, and he did his trademark "Bam!" spicing right before our very eyes. But, before we could eat, the press was right there in......

THURSDAY • The Fiery Furnaces and Great Northern play tonight at the Troubadour. Tickets are $20; doors open at 8 PM. • For those who didn't get tickets to their sold out show at the Troub, Supergrass will be performing at a free in-store at Amoeba Music tonight at 7 PM. • The New Pornographers are at the Henry Fonda Theater tonight. Doors open at 7:30 PM. Tickets are $16. • David Rakoff (writer......

It appears that The Echo, Echo Park's neighborhood live music/film screening/wine tasting/BBQ/book signing venue, is looking to expand. The club, which is associated with another Eastside institution—Spaceland—is planning to add enough space for 700 more people. This expansion, much like the controversy over other building projects around the city, has met it's fair share of opposition, so The Echo is looking for supporters to sign a petition in favor of the plan. And if......

Silver Lake-based author, Joy Nicholson, doesn't focus solely on the Southern California region, but her two books certainly capture many aspects of the region's anomie. Her first book, "The Tribes of Palos Verdes," chartered the journey of a young girl lost admist the SoCal surf culture after her parent's divorce. Nicholson's latest novel, "The Road to Esmeralda," travels further south to record the adventures of a couple living in Mexico. When she's not writing,......

The Food Section.com has published a report on a book signing by Thomas Keller at LACMA by their chef-correspondent Kristin Franklin, a recent Los Angeles transplant. On Friday, November 12, 2004, Los Angeles Times food writer and author Russ Parsons interviewed superchef Thomas Keller, owner of The French Laundry and Bouchon restaurants, as a supplement at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's latest art exhibit "From Renoir to Matisse: The Eye of Duncan......

LA’s version of Fashion Week had its kick-off party last night at the Argyle Hotel on Sunset Boulevard. LAist was there to witness this Bacchanalian revery of quick introductions, free booze and frequently circulated snacks by the service all in black. Good luck trying the get a glass of white wine, though. It was vodka drinks by Vox, the liquor sponsor, or a big, big hassle. The purpose of the event, beyond being “seen”......