COMEDY Los Angeles is a funny place. No joke. To celebrate the laughter and mirth of LA LA land, tonight’s the kickoff of the Los Angeles Comedy Festival – with nearly three weeks of improv, sketch and standup comedy. Tonight there’s an 8 pm show with Scott Nery and a 9:30 show with the Queers of Comedy. 8 and 9:30 pm // McCadden Place Theatre // 1157 N. McCadden Place, Los Angeles // $12. FILMS......

Photo by Rick O! via the LAist Featured Photos pool on Flickr A shark attack off the shores of San Diego killed Dr. Dave Martin, a retired veterinarian and triathlete from Solana Beach. Martin was taking part in an early morning group swim near Fletcher Cove when the incident occured; an 8-mile section of beach remains closed. The fate of Rocky, the grizzly bear who bit and killed his trainer earlier this week, will......

We can't think of a better way to celebrate a new book than to invite musicians, poets, visual artists, performance arists and writers to respond to the new book. This is exactly what Maggie Nelson has done for her new book Women, the New York School, and Other True Abstractions and tonight is the night. Nelson's book is considered one of the first extended works that examines the roles that women played in and around......

Samantha Sidley and Alex Silverman at their Silver Lake rehearsal space | Photo via their MySpace page Alex & Sam may be a duo in title, but their fairly large band, sometimes up to twelve-members on stage, is quite a force of music that just puts a smile on your face. You can't really corner them into a jazz-blues rock or straight rock category. All we can say is that on stage, they've got......

News on Heath Ledger's untimely and tragic death is still developing. Keep checking our sister site Gothamist for updates. OMG, girls, have you heard? Caroline on Crack is holding the best contest evarrrrr over at her site -- head over now for your chance to win a date with one of L.A.'s most eligible bachelors, Andy Sternberg, our very own News Editor! I can say with utmost confidence that he is totally not a......

MUSIC: CalTech isn’t just about nerdy rocket scientists. They have glee clubs, too! All kidding aside, tonight's concert will feature traditional holiday favorites as well as the Women's Club taking on Porpora’s Magnificat, written in the 1730s. 8 pm // Dabney Lounge at California Institute of Technology // 1200 East California Blvd., Pasadena // Free. DANCE: From CalTech, we’ll head over to CalArts in Valencia. The Sharon Disney Lund School of Dance is holding its......

Back in the heyday of CalArts, there are true stories of graduation ceremonies where the president of the institute would make his entrance by helicopter or where Lilian Disney (Walt's Sister) was writing a very large check to the school on stage only for a large inflated penis to be thrown from the roof of the building onto her. Once, when a students name was read, he repelled from the roof to the stage.......

Alonzo King has a dance company called LINES Ballet in San Francisco. Last night he received an honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts (DFA) in the annual graduation tradition at CalArts. His speech is short and simple, but his message is so very true for artists entering into the "real world" for the beginning of the end of the beginning.......

Walt Disney's art school, California Institute of the Arts (CalArts), in the Valencia neighborhood of Santa Clarita has always brought an interesting mix up to the traditionally Republican and white-flight valley north of The Valley. Though, as time progresses, the face of the 4th largest city in LA County grows lefter and more diverse. And CalArts is still seen as some experimental freak show to many (or to those who know nothing, "a basket......

New York City has won the honor for America’s Top Arts Destinations in AmericanStyle Magazine for the past three years. This year, let's change that. Vote Los Angeles because... 1. Musicals really aren't that great anyway. Small 20-seat theatres rock. 2. Barnsdall Art Park. 3. We don't destroy our murals. Wait, shit, that's us. 4. Festivals, festivals, festivals. 5. Green Umbrella Series. 6. Public Art everywhere. 7. Street Art. 8. Otis, Art Center, CalArts.......

late night thoughts... Today, Castaic is on fire. The one year I spent there was pretty much fireless. All I experienced were the 2005 rainstorms. I lived on a slanted street called Cascade. That rainy winter, it literally became that. DR Horton built the 10-year-old tract in the Hillcrest neighborhood. I would walk down the street and recognize my rented house in various forms: inverted, inverted retrograde, one shade brown lighter, etc. My house......

James Tenney died on Thursday, August 24th of lung cancer. The last time I spoke to Jim Tenney, it was at Target in Valencia. As always, it was a bit of an awkward situation. I think I was buying Halo 2; something that may not be too impressive to a professor who was a conceptual composer. The only music I was doing post-college was scoring a documentary, but his body language seemed stoic in......

The Philharmonic plays there. President Clinton speaks there. Now The Orb will be making ambient love in the Disney Concert Hall house all night long, starting just before midnight this Saturday and not packing up until 6am. They'll be ably helped by Dntel, Boom Bip, John Tejada, dublab and you. Because you can win, from us (or losanjealous) a pair of tickets. It's all to kick off the Minimalist Jukebox music festival, which runs......