Want to be a singer, a model, or maybe a comedian or TV Host? Then Big Shot Live is your chance to do just that. Simply go to the site, submit your video, and see if you're one of the lucky winners to get flown to LA (given that you're not already here) to pursue your goal and have it documented on the web. But unlike most talent contests, you get flown out right away,......

Attention comics, those who think they are comics, or those whose friends said they were "comedians" - here's your chance: this TUESDAY, January 29th, NBC's Last Comic Standing is having an all-day open casting call at the Hollywood Improv on Melrose starting at 9:00AM to show off their best 2 minutes of comedy. "Comics" who qualify and are 18+ (are they gonna strip?) are asked to come back Tuesday night to perform in front of......

The always dapper Greg Proops is at the Hollywood Improv 8:00pm on Friday; Saturday at 8:00 & 10:00pm. Whose Line Is It Anyway? was the mass media vehicle to inform all of us that Greg Proops is a gentleman and a scholar but that show and his innumerable appearances on shows like Ugly Betty, Last Comic Standing, Just Shoot Me, and all the late night talk shows require that Proops corral his wit and personality......

California is still a hue of royal blue in the bloody bruise that exemplifies partisan U.S. politics. But with the ludicrous and often homogeneous plans suggested by members of the so-called "right" and "left," California voters have only grown to embrace their right-to-choose in a people's democracy. Californians who choose not to register as a red, blue, or third-party voter -- "Decline to State" voters -- comprise nearly one-fifth of the state's registered voters according......

Bigmouth couldn't sell out 10 nights? There's no official word if Moz had ticket selling issues or if he's exhausted or has anxiety, or if he just wanted to road trip to Zona to check out the Cubs vs the D-Backs. Either way we have this photo and this explanation via the LA Scumbag: There was a line of people all day long waiting to get into the paladium , I just saw them......

Mayor Tony V. signed an ordinance Monday allowing the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery to have free admission. The Department of Cultural Affairs hopes the freebie will encourage more Angelenos to visit the gallery, which has been serving the community since 1951. Located at Barnsdall Park in Hollywood, the museum has been a venue for Southern California artists for decades. “The arts should not be a luxury available only to those who can afford......

Hump day ain't over, at least for TV - Wednesday is probably one of the worst-programmed days of the week this summer. Throw me a frickin bone here. Your choices for prime time are mostly reality/game shows: 'Power of 10' (CBS), 'So You Think You Can Dance' (Fox), 'Last Comic Standing' (NBC), 'Don't Forget the Lyrics' (Fox), etc. Or just commit yourself to 2 retro hours of 'My Music: The 70's Experience' (KOCE-PBS, 8:00pm)......

We at the Gothamist network would like to express our heartfelt wishes to the people of Minnesota in the days after their tragic bridge collapse. We're not trying to discount the severity of the accident by making note of it in opposition to our usual -Ist lightheartedness - we just wanted to take a moment and recognize those affected last week. After the Minneapolis bridge collapse, Bostonist did a little research and found that Massachusetts......

Had Las Vegas been imagined by a bunch of nerds instead of alcoholics and real estate speculators, it'd probably look a lot like Comic-Con. Far more than the name suggests, Comic-Con is not simply a comic book convention anymore. Over the course of two decades, it's become a four-day PG-13 style orgy of audiovisual overstimulation combined with an obscene amount of stuff - comics, movies, games, costumes, posters, gadgets, paintings, and tens of thousands......

The TV Junkie's picks for the night: 8:00-9:00pm Big Brother 8 CBS - LAist's editor-in-chief's fave (only on Sundays perhaps), but here it is, a new episode - is the Tommy Lee-wannabe gonna dis the hottie some more? 9:00-10:00pm American Chopper TLC -David Letterman's fave. The boys were just on his show and they were pretty darn entertaining. Lemme guess, the younger brother does something stupid. 10:00-11:00pm Mad Men AMC - A collection of......

Could changes finally be coming to Sepulveda Boulevard after more than eight long years of debate? Who knew comic book fans could be so violent? Times reporter Geoff Boucher was attacked covering Comic-Con this past weekend. Sounds like a good idea: Hollywood residents are turning to birth control pills to control the pigeon population. Al Gore's son pleaded guilty to possessing marijuana and other drugs this morning. Seriously, you guys deserve it: members of......

There's a box that generally lives on a shelf in my closet that holds pretty much every single journal, diary, and notebook I've kept since my mom brought me back my first diary (a lavender lock-front Minnie Mouse book with "Journal Intime" embossed in gold block letters) from a trip to France when I was nine years old. I will confess readily that I love to pull that box down and rifle through the......

Monday Lisa See discusses and signs Peony In Love 7pm @ Vroman's Tuesday Get ready for the big Holiday. Or, you know, read a book. Wednesday Celebrate the big Holiday. Read a book in the shade. Thursday Chris Nichols presents The Leisure Architecture of Wayne McAllister 7pm @ Vroman's Zenon Neumark presents Hiding in the Open 7:30pm @ Village Books Friday Recovery from the big Holiday if yesterday wasn't enough. Lay around. Relax. Read......

DirecTV called LAist on the phone and left us a message. The recorded voice said that DirecTV had worked out a deal with WNBC in NY that allowed certain zipcodes in LA the ability to get the east coast channel for just $6 a month. The benefit would be that we in LA would be able to get late night shows like Saturday Night Live and Conan O'Brien at 9:30pm instead of at 12:30am.......

A Word or 39: It feels like Wednesdays are going to be the night with new programming this time of year. It feels like it, but it doesn't look like it since not much of this stuff is watchable. Hidden Palms?? For effsake. Tonight - Wednesday - June 13th, 2007 Mets @ Dodgers (PRIME, 7:00 p.m.) Hidden Palms (the CW, 8:00 p.m.) Country club party time The Next Best Thing: Who Is the Greatest......

Artists: Various Albums: the Departure Lounge Grooves; The Sex, the City, the Music: Berlin Label: Petrol Records Release Date: Fall 2006 CM Murphy, former worldwide manager of INXS started the Petrol Records label in 2001 with the idea of creating and releasing “seriously good music from around the world.” His idea of creating good music is to put together themed compilations and selling them for about $10 a pop. I’m a self-declared fan of......

700 extra hours -- yes, you read that correctly -- from David Lynch's Inland Empire have been culled into a documentary about David Lynch that is titled Lynch and is being pimped to international buyers at Cannes by Lynch himself. -Cinematical Comic book author/graphic novelist Frank Miller will write and direct the live-action feature film adaptation of the Will Eisner comic book series "The Spirit" about a man who fakes his own death so he......

1. Santa Clarita Cowboy Festival 2. LA Times Festival of Books 3. 10 Minute Play Festival 4. Nino Ayudando Ninos 5. The Grand Ole Echo 6. Fiesta Broadway 7. LA Comic Book and SciFi Convention 8. Los Angeles Antiques Show 9. Pier Arts Festival 2007 Photo at Santa Clarita Cowoby Festival by Ira Gostin......

Welcome to the latest edition of 'Ask the MACist', the column where I answer your Macintosh and other technology questions. Our question this week comes from Jim in Santa Monica. He asks: I have a bunch of PDF files that I need to combine into one document. How do I do that? That's a good question that I get asked frequently. In fact, I had to do this just the other day with several......

A Word Or 55: I'm Tivo-ing Mary Lynn Rajskub (Chloe from 24) on Conan tonight because it's the only new TV worth watching. Did you know Mary Lynn used to be David Cross' girlfriend? Did you know she's starring in a full-length comedy show at the Steve Allen Theater? Go see her Sunday, Apr. 15 @ 8:00pm, it's like $5 or $10 or something, pocket change. Also, after losing an hour of my life......

Welcome to the latest edition of 'Ask the MACist', the column where I answer your Macintosh and other technology questions. Our question this week comes from Josh in Los Angeles. He asks: There's no problem downloading .avi files, converting to .mov, and playing on the Apple TV, is there? Or showing .mov files generated by iMovie? Also, does it run with 10.3.9? The answer to your questions are pretty simple, fortunately. Anything you can......

Welcome to the latest edition of 'Ask the MACist', the column where I answer your Macintosh and other technology questions. Our question this week comes from Sam, who lives all the way in Portland. He asks: "Even though Apple and EMI are not going to have DRM on their songs, is there any way to have songs from other companies in your iTunes without DRM to? With Apple announcing yesterday that they, along with......

Today's 4:20 film is a double whammy, beginning with the intro from a sketch on the British version of Comic Relief. The bit features Matt Lucas of Little Britain playing his trashy teenybopper character, Vicky Pollard, and supermodel Kate Moss playing Vicky's slutty sister, Katie. (Embedding of the full clip was forbidden, but you can see it by clicking here.)......

Welcome to part one of a special week of "Ask the MACist" coming to you live-ish from beautiful and rather warm San Francisco. I'm here because this week all things Macintosh converge and the faithful enjoy a full week of all-Mac goodness known as Mac World Expo. At the expo, all the newest Apple goodies will be reveled for all to see and touch and yours truly will be right in the middle of......

Many things make it into the LAist email box. But when anything is sent from Springfield we mark it Spam immediately. Somehow this slipped through the filter. We keeeed. The Simpsons have been on the air longer than most of you could pee straight and apparently this year they have decided to agree on some resolutions. Here they be... In preparation for the New Year, Homer, Marge and many of their fellow Springfieldians vow to......

Friday Night "The Odessa File" (TCM, 5:00 p.m.) TCM presents an evening of spy movies starting with "The Odessa File", followed by "The Quiller Memorandum" "NHL Hockey" (PRIME, 7:00 p.m.) Blackhawks @ Ducks "NBA Basketball" (Fox Sports, 7:30 p.m.) Raptors @ Lakers "Ice-T's Rap School" (VH1, 9 p.m.) Season finale. "Real Time with Bill Maher" (HBO, 11 p.m.) Season finale. "Charlie Rose" (PBS, 11:30 p.m.): The Dixie Chicks and others, well, not other chicks,......

Everyone's favorite Insult Comic Dog, Triumph will be giving the kids of Las Vegas the whatfor as he plays Caesar's Palace for The Comedy Festival We think Nick Cannon will also be there but Triumph has our heart. To poop on.......

At LAist, we believe in literacy and we believe in the power of the printed word. And, we love books. If you feel the same way and want to meet others who share your feelings, head on over to the West Hollywood Book Fair tomorrow. From the official site: Join more than 300 authors, 100 exhibitors, and 25,000 guests at the 5th Annual West Hollywood Book Fair. This year’s Book Fair will include an......

In what must surely be a blow to video gaming enthusiasts, scantily-clad women, fans of scantily-clad women and, of course, the City of Los Angeles, the Entertainment Software Association announced Monday that they are going to scale back the size and scope of E3 convention next year. In fact, the convention, the video gaming industry's largest, most-likely won't be at the LA Convention Center either. Instead, it will take place at various hotels around......

LAist loves it some comic books (and movies and TV shows and girls in costumes) so we, naturally, went to the San Diego Comic Con this year. Yes, as we've said before (many times), San Diego is not LA. Really, no place is LA. LA is the only LA. We know it and you know it. You just have to let that one go. Besides, that’s where the con is so that’s where we......