There were nearly as many people on stage as in the crowd at the Echo last night to witness the phenomenon that was a 35-minute set from Dark Meat, the 17-piece psychedelic rock collective from Athens, Georgia. Dark Meat has been tearing up small venues in the South for a few years. Now signed to Vice Records, this orgiastic cacophony of punk vocals, horns, gospel, double drums, and manic prancing on the dance floor made......

Some of our favorite independent bookstores in LA (Skylight Books, Vroman's, Diesel, Book Soup) have been targeted by scammers claiming to be some of our favorite writers. Here's how it works: a would-be writer calls a bookstore (impersonating a writer who has a scheduled store appearance in the next few hours or days), complains of car trouble, and asks to have cash wired to them immediately to avert their made-up crisis. These pranksters have impersonated......

The United States Postal Service furthered its efforts to embrace new, green technologies this week, even as these technologies eat away at the USPS' age-old business model of letter delivery. Over the past couple years, the postal service has been employing cleaner energy at some of their plants and experimenting with hybrid diesel-electric alternatives for some of their 200,000 + vehicles. This week, USPS launched a program that allows patrons to pick up postpaid envelopes......