CineKink--the kinky film festival-- brings its national tour to LA this weekend with curated screenings at the Downtown Independent and the Echo Park Film Center. The festival offers films and videos-- from documentary to drama, comedy to experimental--that explore and celebrate sexual diversity. Screening of several films tonight, including Waxie Moon at 8 pm EPFC. $9. more ›

There’s a work-in-progress preview tonight of Overtone Industries production of Songs and Dances of Imaginary Lands at the Actors' Gang in Culver City tonight at 8 pm. This stripped-down performance will feature songs and selections from the production by Musical Director David O and pianist Brent Crayon. (It doesn’t include the costumes, sets, choreography, and full orchestra for the site-specific contemporary opera). There will also be a feedback session with Director O-Lan Jones and Costume and Scenic Designer Snezana Petrovic. Tickets: $10. more ›

Ok, let's talk about the elephant in the room. There are a number of pot-related events to celebrate 4/20. Yesterday, we told you about a screening of Reefer Madness at the Vine, but there are so many other ways to celebrate.The ArcLight Sherman Oaks is showing both a Cheech & Chong movie (Hey, Watch This) and Fast Times at Ridgemont High. The production Pot! The Musical takes the stage at The Electric Lodge tonight at 8 pm. The Art Theatre of Long Beach hosts a fundraiser screening of Cheech & Chong's Up in Smoke to benefit The District Weekly freelance writers. more ›

Here's a little of what we saw this afternoon at E3, otherwise known as the Electronic Entertainment Expo, where new video games and technologies are being shown off. Yesterday, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr helped introduce 45 Beatles songs to Rock Band. more ›

It seems these days you can't swing a dead cat without hitting someone whose glassy eyes are fixated on the tantalizing business card-sized screen of their beloved iPhone. Techies, Apple enthusiasts, and gadget junkies alike, take heed: There are rumors swirling around that hint that a new iPhone could hit stores come summertime, based on some clever 'decoding' by techies of iPhone software update numbering. more ›

A while back, Iast summer, I was in San Francisco and covered the Facebook Developers Conference where I discovered the ginormous amount of attractive nerds there. more ›

Before I go on record with my picks for today’s games, let me just get this off my chest. more ›

It's a weekend packed with festivals and sporting events that are sure to take a toll on traffic. The LA Times reminds us that things could get pretty snarled up on the roads around town: "USC plays Oregon at the Coliseum at 5 p.m.; the Cubs are at the Dodgers at 7 p.m.; Washington State plays UCLA at the Rose Bowl at 7:15 p.m.; and singer Neil Diamond performs at Staples Center at 8 p.m." more ›

The new 7,300-square-foot Hollywood & Highland location of uWink (its first location is in Woodland Hills) opens to the general public tonight at 5pm. But last night we were able to take a sneak peek of the high-tech interactive restaurant at the media party where we had free reign over the food menu and extensive cocktail list and could order directly through a touchscreen at our tables instead of going through a waiter. Dangerous for the wallet and the liver, considering how easy they make it to ask for another drink. more ›

Being Scottish means you are part of a great and noble heritage. Here in America, it is also a little like being a Trekkie. We gather in large masses wearing strange clothes while participating in strange rituals. I grew up in the center of it all. My family went to every Highland Games. I took Highland dance classes. My brothers played bagpipes and drums and competed in caber tossing competitions. more ›

Got a bit more of a schedule tonight: the Winter X Games are starting up, and there's a bunch of stuff at 8:00pm. I was sick on Sunday so I'm looking forward to catching the rebroadcast of Breaking Bad on AMC. more ›

Sometimes you see rock tonight and sometimes you want to be rock tonight. If the latter, every Wednesday night at the Hyperion Tavern in the Los Feliz/Franklin Hills area, groups of friends gather to unite as one, to test their skills, woo the crowd and find their glory in Rock Band. Wednesday nights at the shack filled with chandeliers used to be reserved for Guitar Hero zealots, now groups of four can hit the stage and cheer the crowd or get booed off stage. more ›

Kim Sunee presents Trail of Crumbs 7pm @ Vroman's more ›

As you might have guessed, we're pretty big into gaming over at my house -- our console set-up includes the both generations of the Xbox, not one but TWO PS2's (one for the living room, one for the bedroom), a Dell XPS with a wide-screen monitor (for PC gaming), a Nintendo Gamecube, a Nintendo 64, an SNES, and a Gameboy -- oh, and possibly a Sony PSP floating around somewhere. Our 50" big-screen is optimized for the best gaming experience, with surround-sound Bose speakers and wireless networking. more ›

While hundreds of volunteers are stealthily working into the wee hours to affix flora to framework and as people begin to plan for finding space along the parade route, an unexpected battle has been waging between human rights groups and the City of Pasadena. more ›

After reviewing a few dozen releases this year this is my top ten of reviewed albums plus a few select tracks of items that I went out and hunted down myself. These weren't easy to select out of the great stuff I received so it was a challenge. I'd like to thank the labels and their PR agencies for hunting me down and sending CDs to me. I reviewed everything that I received this year with just a couple of exceptions of items I felt I wasn't qualified to review. [Hint to labels and their agencies: LAist likes getting stuff to review, look for our contact info on the staff page]. In my Top Ten is a band (Tall Pony) that wasn't even signed when I posted the review and I had a few others like that this year but there should haver been more. Also, please note that there are 3 LA bands/groups in my Top Ten (Bitter:Sweet, No Age, The Deadly Syndrome). more ›

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The Romans are often bagged on as being the Borg of the ancient world: assimilating barbarian cultures left and right, stealing the style and grace of the Greeks, tossing the odd Christian to lions. Yet, you must admit they did know how to PARTY, especially during those barren winter months. more ›

I know I’m about as consistent as the Lakers in doing these things. So here are my quick takes of all of the Sunday games. more ›

Lakers 113, Clippers 92 - Kobe Bryant, again playing through pain (this time it was a pulled groin), sunk 32 points to lead the Lakers to victory. The Clippers also had players dinged up, and a host of them (including Elton Brand) never made it onto the court. Chris Kaman won the battle of the big men statisticly with 18 points and 16 rebounds, but young Andew Bynum (14 points, 9 rebounds, 6 blocks) performed well in the victory. more ›

Holidays have you indulging a little more than usual? Just in time for those New Year resolutions and post-holiday diets, the Wii Fit is expected to be released in North America in January. Released earlier this month in Japan, Wii Fit sold over a quarter million units in the first week. The game was designed for families to exercise with activities like stretching, yoga, step aerobics, push ups, jogging and much more. The additional system to the Wii console uses a pressure-sensitive platform called the Balance Board which players stand on, hop or press against. The platform can measure an individual's weight, body mass index and tracks the information to show your results over time. The Nintendo site states that activities focus more towards working out the "core," emphasizing slower, controlled motions.
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After a five-week hiatus, LAist is back to taking you on its weekly trip down to Orange County to uncover the unique dining experiences that await adventurous eaters willing to explore beyond the county line. more ›

• There's still time to win Tori Amos tickets -- the concert ends tonight at midnight! To enter the contest, leave a comment telling us what your favorite Tori song is. Get over there and put the damage on!
• An update on the Sherman Oaks apartment fire that left one person dead: authorities have ID'd the victim as a 63-year-old man who died at the hospital after receiving second- and third-degree burns.
• There was another house fire in Norco late Friday night, and another fatality: this time a 38-year-old man was pronounced dead of fire-related injuries at the Corona Regional Medical Center.
• Are you wondering what to buy for the mustachioed man in your life? Maybe you'd like to surprise dad or brother with a Keg-A-Que Grill? Chicagoist has some great ideas for fun and unique holiday gifts.
• The LA Times launches "Primary Tracker": it looks pretty cool, but since there's no data to play with yet, we're not really sure how it works.
• OMG YOU GUYS VAN HALEN IS DROWNING!!!! Actually, no, but the pool at Eddie Van Halen's Studio City estate has been filled with mud and debris from a broken water main. School at Harvard-Westlake operated as usual today, although some classes were rescheduled.
• A new Department of Justice gun-ownership database might help to prevent more shooting deaths by tracking criminal records against who owns firearms: "LAPD have identified 110 fugitives, ex-convicts and other offenders who legally purchased guns then later were convicted of violent crimes."
• The Los Angeles Film Critics pick their yearly winners: on the list are "There Will Be Blood" for Best Picture, Marion Cotillard for Best Actress in "La Vie En Rose," and Daniel Day-Lewis for "There Will Be Blood."
• "Single greatest night in sports history"??? Last night's Derby Dolls 2007 Championship Match gets lots of love and a thorough recap from LACityzine.
• If those aren't crazy eyes, I don't know from crazy: Britney Spears stole a lighter from a Sherman Oaks gas station, TMZ has video.

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Lakers 111, Nuggets 107 - Allen Iverson lit up the scoreboard with 51 points but three Lakers responded with big nights of their own. Kobe Bryant scored 25, Vladimir Radmanovic added 21, and Derek Fisher had 20. Despite his big night, the Lakers only allowed Iverson one layup in the fourth quarter. Sonics 95, Clippers 88 - Seven is unlucky for the Clipper -- it's how many games they've lost in a row. Seattle led... more ›

Passage represents life's challenges with a maze. The screen geometry only allows you to view a narrow slice of this maze at any given moment. You can see quite a distance out in front of you (and, later in life, behind you), but you can't see anything to the north or south. You may see a reward up ahead but not be able to see a clear path to it. In fact, after a bit of exploration, you may discover that a seemingly-nearby reward is in fact unreachable. As you go deeper into the maze to the south, the path becomes more convoluted, though an obstacle-free route is always available to the north. However, treasure chests are more and more common as you go deeper into the maze. You can spend your time in pursuit of these hard-to-reach rewards, or you can explore and enjoy the scenery that unfolds before you to the east. As you grow older, your view of the territory in front of you shrinks, and navigating new areas in life's maze becomes more difficult.

a writer's perspective The strike is now in week 5. I had to use a calculator to figure out that today was Day 29. The question I get constantly is “How long will the strike last?” In a post last week, I wrote that I was hopeful that the strike would end before Christmas. My answer today is very different than my answer was last week. While walking the picket line has settled into... more ›

Before the questions are asked, please let me state for the record that I graduated from UC Santa Barbara, a college sports powerhouse that hasn't lost a football game since 1990, so I don't have a dog in this fight. Having said that, I was a little surprised at how sensitive it appeared Bruin fans are about the firing of their head coach this afternoon. Again, I am out of the loop, but when... more ›

It all started with Anthony Bourdain's Mexican border episode of his show No Reservations. At one point he picks up a riding crop in a leather shop. He slaps it confidently against the palm of his hand, and says, "Yeah, this is coming home with me." I've always been attracted to his superior punk New York attitude. But the "whack" of that riding crop took it somewhere new. I confessed to my boyfriend, "I'm sorry... more ›

In the spirit of Rivalry Week, it would be only appropriate to compare any and all aspects of LA's two premier universities, no matter how mundane. Academics? Endowment? Bah, lets talk about what's really important: Attractiveness. There is no question that any normal strapping, virile, young 18 year old (guy or girl) considers the quality of the opposite sex when mulling through their prospective colleges. more ›