Ominous Eye in the Arts District Downwtown | Photo by unobtanium via Flickr Monday Sloane Crosley presents I Was Told There'd Be Cake 7pm @ Book Soup Christopher Rauschenberg presents Paris Changing: Revisiting Eugène Atget's Paris 7pm @ Central Library Valerie Mendenhall Cohen presents Woman on the Rocks 7pm @ Vroman's Tuesday Mary Roach presents BONK: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex 7pm @ Central Library David Samuels presents Only Love Can Break......

Shadow & Light in Little Tokyo | Photo by pink_fish13 via LAist's Featured Photos pool on Flickr. Monday Jeremy D. Popkin presents Facing Racial Revolution 7pm @ Dutton's Tuesday Alan Corey presents A Million Bucks by 30 7pm @ Book Soup Christopher Rice presents Blind Fall 7pm @ Borders, West Hollywood Wednesday Milo Martin presents Poems for a Utopian Nihilist 7pm @ Book Soup Leslie Lehr presents Wife Goes On 7pm @ Dutton's Josh......

A Zen Day at LACMA, Flipped | Photo by pink_fish13 from LAist Featured Photos Pool on Flickr Monday Markus Flanagan presents One Less Bitter Actor 7pm @ Book Soup Dee Dee Myers presents Why Women Should Rule the World 7pm @ Vroman's John Richardson signs A Life of Picasso: The Triumphant Years 7pm @ LACMA Tuesday Tony D'Souza presents The Konkans 7pm @ Book Soup Tom Cathcart & Daniel Klein present Aristotle & an......

Don't try this at home -- or at the Civic Center Metro Station. / Photo by puck90 via LAist's flickr pool. TRANSIT TALK Metro is studying alternatives for connecting the Gold, Blue and Expo lines through downtown Los Angeles. This study will examine linking the future Metro Gold Line Eastside Extension (near the Little Tokyo/Arts District Station) and the 7th Street/Metro Center Station. Tonight Metro will update the public on the project and allow......

Chris Burden's Urban Light | Photo by pink_fish13 from the LAist Featured Photos pool on Flickr Monday Steve Tolz presents A Fraction of the Whole 7pm @ Book Soup Lisa McKay presents My Hands Came Away Red 7pm @ Vroman's Dario Castagno presents A Day in Tuscany 7pm @ Dutton's Terry Cheney signs Manic 7pm @ Borders, Westwood Ray Bradbury, Forrest J. Ackerman and Ray Harryhausen discuss their work 7:30pm @ Mystery & Imagination......

Killing on the big screen at the New Beverly tonight, courtesy of Eli Roth. / Photo by hemmob via flickr. TALK Author Katha Pollitt discusses her new book On Learning to Drive: And Other Life Stories with UC Irvine Professor Jon Wiener as part of the ALOUD at the Central Library series. Pollitt is a poet and columnist for The Nation who’ll discuss her latest essays that deal with sex, death, ex-lovers, politics, motherhood,......

Get Your Lit On: The Week in Bookish LA includes some outstanding readings this week from some fine, fine writers including Maggie Nelson, Anne Enright, Colm Toibin, Toby Barlow, Amy Hempel, Peter Carey, John Rechy, Martha Grimes and Russell Banks....

Arts and Crafts class at the Craft and Folk Art Museum tonight. / Photo by CarbonNYC via flickr. GET CRAFTY Make your Valentine’s Day gift tonight instead of picking through the lame leftover cards in the Ralph’s card aisle tomorrow. The Craft and Folk Art Museum hosts “A Creative Valentine” and provides materials for you to let your inner artist loose. Couples are encouraged to attend to get a jump start on the Valentine’s......

And you thought the Burger King Chicken was crazy? Check out the Crazy Chickens this week at the Mayan / Photo by upslases via flickr. TALK Could you not get into Michael Pollan last night at the Central Library? No worries because American eating habits and food policy are a hot topic this week. Tonight, the Center for Healthy Communities presents “Hungry for Change: The Politics of Food with Marion Nestle.” The nutritionist, author......

Monday Michael Pollan and Barry Glassner discuss In Defense of Food 7pm @ Central Library Cindy Pierce and Edie Thys Morgan presents Finding the Doorbell 7pm @ Book Soup Tuesday Traci Slatton presents Immortal 6:30pm @ Metropolis Books Joe McGinniss and special guest Bret Easton Ellis present The Delivery Man 7pm @ Book Soup Terri Cheney discusses and signs Manic: A Memoir 7pm @ Vroman's Gary Goldberg presents Sit, Ubu, Sit 7pm @ Dutton's......

Cellos take center stage at the Colburn School tonight | Photo by Lachlan via flickr. FILM Before Alan Alda brought the character Hawkeye Pierce to homes everywhere in the M*A*S*H television series, Donald Sutherland (Keifer’s dad) played the role on the big screen in the Robert Altman-directed film (MASH). In both, though, the plot remains the same: the men who lived in “The Swamp” didn’t care much for military decorum during the Korean war.......

If you see folks walking around with some dirt on their foreheads today, they proabably did it on purpose. It is Ash Wednesday, where Christians are supposed to fast, pray, repent after the debauchery of Mardi Gras and (Super Tuesday). So here' are a few debauch-free events for tonight: WORDS The ALOUD series continues with John Burnham Schwartz, author of Reservation Road, who talks about his new novel set in 1959 Japan where a non-aristocratic......

TALK Natalie Angier, New York Times reporter and author of Woman: An Intimate Geography, has written foreword to Full Body Project, the recently published book of photographs by Leonard Nimoy (yes Trekkies, Spock). The two will focus their Hammer Conversation on the concepts of beauty and sexuality. 7 pm // Hammer Museum // 10899 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles // Free. MORE TALK As we read in Get Your Lit On, yesterday, Fritjof Capra talks with......

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....

Yes, we know that rainy days and Mondays can get you down. And doubly so today. But you can turn that mood around by stepping out tonight to one of these great events. Just watch for puddles. TALK Jill Leovy probably writes the Los Angeles Times best blog (excepting LAist’s own Adam Rose, natch). She chronicles almost every murder in LA to give a human element to what would be another crime blotter. Tonight Leovy’s......

TALK What’s up with all the development in Downtown LA? What’s it going to look like in 5, 10 or 20 years? Moderated by Christopher Hawthorne, Los Angeles Times architecture critic, ALOUD at the Central Library features panelists Lauren Bon, Tom Gilmore, Martha Welborne and James Von Klemperer, AIA to discuss all things Downtown and development. 7 PM // ALOUD at the Central Library: Mark Taper Auditorium // 631 Fifth & Flower streets, LA......

Downtown Los Angeles is fast becoming one of the city's new "it" places to set up a permanent address and play house. But a new worry is plaguing residents of the high-rises and converted lofts that dot the one-way streets of LA's civic center: What happens when we have kids? The big concern is chiefly becoming options for daycare, which is part of the overall issue of whether Downtown is a good place to raise......

The fountain at the LA Central Library is rather strange and fantastical "I'll have a footlong Subway club on white, hold the mayo, and GIVE ME ALL YOUR MONEY!" Police are looking for the man who held up a Subway sandwich store at gunpoint Monday on Beverly in the Wilshire area. The owner and manager of a Burbank apartment building was found liable for their role in the murder of one of his tenants, who......

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,......

WORDS SCI-Arc’s spring lecture series on design and architecture kicks off tonight with Jeffrey Kipnis, professor of architectural design and theory at Ohio State University. Kipnis will discuss “happy,” “zany” and other important political trends in architecture. So the title of his lecture -- *@$#*!#!! -- does make sense. Kind of. 7 pm // W. M. Keck Lecture Hall SCI-Arc, 960 East 3rd Street, Los Angeles // Free. MORE WORDS David Frum is a former......

If you want to do something else tonight besides the mind-numbing seventh season opener of American Idol, here are a few options: WORDS Nobel Prizewinner Mohammad Yunus has a conversation with Rick Wartzman, director of the Drucker Institute, Claremont Graduate University (and former editor of the Los Angeles Times' West) on "Creating a World without Poverty." The evening will focus on questions like: "What if you could harness the power of the free market......

Monday Tanya Lemani presents Have Belly, Will Travel 7pm @ Book Soup Kim Sunee presents Trail of Crumbs 7pm @ Vroman's Tuesday Marc Porter Zasada presents The Urban Man: Staying Human in LA 7pm @ Book Soup Patrick Conyer presents Pasadena: A Business History 7pm @ Vroman's Elizabeth Pomeroy presents Pasadena: A Natural History 7pm @ Vroman's Muhammad Yunus discusses Creating a World Without Poverty 7pm @ Central Library Lewis Hyde discusses his books......

Starting a business in Los Angeles is what thousands of people do. In fact, in the City alone there are over 300,000 registered business, which means their is one business for every 13 residents (no matter their age). Starting a business is the realization of a dream for many, and can be lifechanging. But how do you start? Like LAist reported early this week, many people look at the new year as the time to......

Los Angeles is the Cultural Capital of the 21st Century. From visual art to cutting edge music to innovative theatre and live performances to some of the world's leading cultural institutions - we truly have it all. But all great cultural capitals have - in addition to the arts and culture as mentioned - a forum for public discourse. The Greeks had the agora for assembly, education, and interaction; and though we have our......

The week in Los Angeles bookish events from Monday, January 7th - Sunday, January 13th. Readings, signings and bookish events this week include Andy Summers, Jami Attenberg, Judith Freeman, Alice Fulton, J.A. Jance and Robert Gottlieb....

TALK: Pulizer Prize-winning food critic Jonathan Gold moderates a Zócalo discussion that focuses on “The Mexican Restaurant in Los Angeles.” Joining in on the roundtable are Gilberto Cetina of the Yucatecan restaurant Chichen Itza, Martin del Campo and Ramiro Arvizu of La Casita Mexicana, and Mary Sue Milliken and Susan Feniger of Border Grill. 7 pm // Central Library – Mark Taper Auditorium // 630 W. 5th St., Los Angeles // Free. (Reservations are recommended.)......

Monday Keith Gessen & Chad Harbach discuss the latest issue of n+1 7pm @ Book Soup Jay Inslee & Bracken Hendricks presents Apollo's Fire 7pm @ Vroman's Jenna Bush signs Ana's Story: A Journey of Hope 7pm @ Barnes & Noble, The Grove Robert Hass presents Time & Materials 7pm @ Central Library Tuesday John Leake presents Entering Hades 7pm @ Book Soup Seth Rogen & Evan Goldberg present Superbad: Seth's Drawings 7pm @......

We at LAist love Zocalo's Public Square Lecture events (especially when they're either about porn or food porn) and we know lots of you love Mexican food. So we're excited about their event coming up on Tuesday December 11th called The Mexican Restaurant in Los Angeles, which will be moderated by Jonathan Gold, L.A. Weekly Restaurant Critic and idol-worthy food writer. The scoop and the lineup, from their website:Zócalo has gathered together some of the......

Monday Eliot Tiegel presents The Latinization of America 6:30pm @ Book Soup Judith Freeman discusses and signs The Long Embrace 7pm @ Vroman's Roz Chast discusses Theories of Everything 7pm @ Central Library Robert Kuttner in conversation with Arianna Huffington about The Squandering of America 8pm @ James Bridge Theater, UCLA Tuesday Cesar Millan presents Be the Pack Leader 7pm @ Borders, Pasadena Frank McCourt presents Angela and the Baby Jesus 7pm @ Borders,......

Monday Dave Isay, from StoryCorps, presents Listening Is an Act of Love 7pm @ Vroman's Johan Lehrer presents Proust Was a Neuroscientist 7pm @ Dutton's Nigella Lawson presents The Domestic Goddess 7pm Borders, Torrance Tom Brokaw presents Boom! Voices of the Sixties 7:30pm @ Temple Emanuel Tuesday Clive Barker presents Mister B. Gone 7pm @ Vroman's Gregory Rodriguez presents Mongrels, Bastards, Orphans & Vagabonds 7pm @ Central Library Susanne Daniels presents Season Finale 7pm @......