Good Luck Bar celebrates its 15th anniversary tonight with a special event that features Chinese burlesque (10 pm, 11 pm and midnight), DJ Travis Keller and the Kogi Truck in attendance. Drink specials include: $5 Stolis, Sailor Jerry, Cazadores or Jack Daniel's cocktails; selected beers for $2. The party’s on from 7 pm to close. more ›

• Sacramento to California's teachers: I love you, but I just can't pay you. Thousands of teachers across the state this week could receive pink slips in the wake of the $14.5 billion budget gap. Teachers to Sacramento: I'd like to see you try and force us out.
• The Air Quality Management District loves clean air so much they decided to impose fines on those who burn wood in fire places when the pollution is especially evident outside. "It's a fair trade off," they say. "Hands off my chimney," some homeowners responded.
• In political news, Wyoming professed their love for Obama by handing him a caucus win and Bush continues to be enamored of torture.
• On Tuesday, a Veterans Thrift Store owner returned a box with $30,000 that was left inside some clothes she was sifting through. She received a cash reward because the family loved that there are still some honest people out there. The thrift worker said she will send some of the reward to Mexico so her mother can have an eye operation and will use the rest to buy a digital camera.
• No love lost: A whistle blower claims that the state's Planned Parenthood overcharged the government close to $180 million for birth control pills. Planned Parenthood hasn't issued an opinion because they haven't seen the lawsuit yet.
• Birds and water lovers said, Where's the love as they looked on to the dry vestiges of the empty Silverlake reservoir. Now that the reservoir is free of the carcinogenic bromate-tainted water that was discovered a few months back, the LADWP can commence patching and other necessary repairs, Metroblogging said.
• How much do you love sunlight? At 2 a.m., it's officially time to set your clocks ahead one hour.

I hope you haven't had enough of the Great Coffee Debate that has been ROCKING the Southland ever since hip joints like LA Mill and Intelligentsia have hit the scene. (Although you all know that we prefer a cup of the working man's brew, Dunkin' Donuts coffee, over here.) A new coffeehouse, Lot 44, is set to hit downtown sometime this spring. more ›

Not sure what to buy your environmentally conscious friend or family member for the holidays? Opting to make this holiday season's giving more earth-friendly? more ›

If you saw last night's Dallas - Philly game during "Football Night in America" you saw NBC dim the studio lights of the Costas set because it would allegedly save enough electricity to power the homes of 1,000 American households for a year or some nonsense. more ›

Just a week before the biggest candy-shopping holiday of the year, yesterday the Sixth District Court downtown held the first hearing in the case brought against Nestle, Cargill and Archer Daniels-Midland by the International Labour Organization (ILO). The ILO is charging that these three corporations knowingly supported the trafficking, torture and forced labor of child slaves in Cote d'Ivoire, one of the major cocoa-producers in West Africa. The three companies have been targeted because they collectively control the largest portion of the chocolate importing market. more ›

LAist could have once been accused of being obsessive about coffee but lately we've kicked the habit. The same can't be said for green LA girl, who has made local fair trade coffee a delicious cause worth fighting for. Her recent discussion of why some local bean brewers don't go for fair trade certification is illuminating of how the entire industry works. more ›