From a weekend heatwave to a rainy and snowy day in Southern California. A reader wrote in an e-mail to us "It's hailing! But it only lasted a second here in Northridge." The bigger news is that heavy rains in Orange County have caused officials to order evacuations in three canyons where mudslides occurred earlier today. After last year's wildfires, those hillsides were charred, making for easy sliding action. However, some residents have not left......

Thankfully I had Tivo'd Sunday's Kenny vs. Spenny and Robot Chicken to watch last night because after the first 15 minutes of Saving Grace I couldn't take any more. Unfortunately I tuned back into SG in time to catch Lem giving Holly Hunter a hand job which was so not worth it. In case you missed him last week, you have a couple more chances to go to a Q&A with writer/creator David Milch at......

Whew! We're a little more than half-way through this music marathon in New York and I'm starting to realize how similar this experience is to an actual marathon. It requires a lot of endurance, patience, and you'll wish you were an amputee afterwards. With two more days left, I'm still yearning for more and I'm certain that CMJ's final days will sate me. Yesterday started off a bit slow. I began my trek in......

This could be the end (maybe temporary end) of your local street festival, maybe even make your block party a bit more costly. It also could mean changes for major festivals like Sunset Junction. Yesterday, Karen Sisson, the Los Angeles City Administrative Officer (she's in charge of the money), told City Council that due to an increasing amount of financial concerns, they should "freeze all new spending and end the politically popular practice of......

A few weeks ago, while perusing the offerings behind the glass at the Surfas café, I noticed a bowl of green grains labeled “Freekah salad”. “What’s that taste like?” I asked. “It’s easier if you just try it,” said the friendly lad behind the counter, handing me a spoonful. I ate it. I frowned. Then I smiled. “Did you add that smoke in a bottle stuff to it? It’s so smoky!” “Nope,” he said.......

I couldn't wait to rush home and watch my TiVo of the Creative Arts Emmy awards! I would never even have watched those awards if not for the fabulous Kathy Griffin. Above is the entire, unedited version. (Thanks, Youtube! Finally!!). This Youtube video starts after they bleeped her clearly saying, "Can you believe this shit(BLEEEP) ? The only sentence they edited out was, "Suck it Jesus!" I was surprised. As someone who was raised......

The Darkness Starbreeze Studios X-Box 360, PS3 As you play The Darkness, you will probably notice a special ability that your character has. It is activated when you walk up to the corpse of a recently killed mobster, and the option of eating this enemy heart with the press of the button is given. That basically sums up the entire game. You get to eat HEARTS. The Darkness is a first person shooter, in......

Carl Bernstein - the ultimate investigative journalist (think Watergate coverage for The Washington Post, think All the Presiden'ts Men) - will be at Book Soup today @ 4pm to sign his latest book A Woman in Charge: The Life of Hillary Rodham Clinton. Bernstein's book provides an inside peek at all things Clinton and answers some of the bigger questions about the Lewinsky affair, her early political ambition, her path to the Senate and her......

Elmore Leonard is 81. He has written 41 novels (yes, that's right, 41) including The Bounty Hunters, Forty Lashes Less One, Gold Coast, Rum Punch, Cuba Libre, Mr. Paradise & The Hot Kid. His novels and short stories have been made into dozens of films including Get Shorty, Out of Sight, Be Cool, Jackie Brown and the forthcoming Killshot, 3:10 to Yuma and Freaky Deaky. The man, it is safe to say, has been busy.......

LAist is recently single and we find ourself on the weirdest "dates". The other day we were picked up by a woman who we know is interested in us. She was all, "hey let's go see Obama speak and later we can go get a bite." We were all, hmmm, that sounds like a lunch date. So the young lady picks us up and asks if we know the way to where the Senator......

We've always enjoyed timelapse photography, and this footage feels downright therapeutic for people who hail from Los Angeles and/or San Francisco.......

Their crowns glitter even brighter than their teeth, but are America's beauty queens hiding a deep, dark secret? Coiffed and coutured, they are the picture of fresh-faced, feminine perfection, but LAist is blowing the lid off the seemingly wholesome beauty pageant industry to expose the tarnish on the tiara!!! A disgusted beauty pageant insider revealed exclusively to this shocked and horrified reporter that comely Miss Kansas, Michelle Walthers, may be a card-carrying Satanist. Walthers,......

As the month of February rolls around, I can’t help but think of all the crazy things that have happened during the overly optimistic January. Late nights and early mornings, cheap concerts, and drinking all New Year’s Resolutions away with a bottle of Jack, ah, everything 2007 is meant be. So I welcome February, the month of love and Black history, to devote oh-so-much fun and laughs to a few more amusing hip hop......

If your trek home involves a jaunt through the mountains you may want to consider camping out at the office. Winter Weather Advisory after the jump. photo by Shay Thomason today in Santa Clarita via flickr. More photos of today's wintry weather here and at cbs2.com.......

Because drinking and driving is beyond passé: This week, local bartenders strutted their best Tom Cruise-in-Cocktail skills, but without any "proof" in their puddings. It was the annual Mocktail contest held at Universal CityWalk, where ten expert mixologists threw their best non-alcoholic mixes into...well, the mix at the annual "Battle of the Bartenders". The event was designed to promote awareness of the dangers of DUIs. Your turn to be the designated driver? Try one......

The scoreboard is empty this morning because the gods put everything on ice heading into a Saturday featuring three marque showdowns for local bragging rights. Baseball and soccer are months away. The NFL? We don't even have a team. All the marbles are at stake when six squads (four of which hail directly from Downtown of Los Angeles) lace 'em up in battles for city supremacy. Each game also features a team sitting atop......

by Lisa Brenner I have a theory about Atlantis. Somewhere below the ocean, a 24 hour mega-convenience store, (think, Mall of America meets 7-11) exists in all its undulating, aquatic majesty. Shrimp slurpees and jellied fish line the aisles. Muzak’d Donovan plays on a loop. Sea cucumbers shoplift dirty magazines, and Hammerheads loiter out in front, smoking the coral reefer. Clearly, Atlantis is a rough place. But mayhaps my theory of the deep is......

The Visionaries always give us reasons to love them more and more - great music, a sense of unity, a will to love, and plenty of good tunes to jam to anywhere you get the urge. One member of the crew gives all of us vegetarian and vegan fans another reason to hail in their glory. “Leave My Name Out,” aka LMNO, lays down rhymes for both his crew and his own solo endeavors,......

It's going to be a long time before any of this happens. If it happens. LA Mayor Villaraigosa and San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom might go head to head for Governor. Both deny it though. A little closer to home, two bloggers debate over annexation and other issues in the Santa Clarita Valley. Should Stevenson Ranch, which has the highest sales-tax-revenue-generating strip mall in all of the county's jurisdiction, annex into the city of......

LAist got several tips yesterday about a planned flyover of the M:i:III premiere. An enterprising young man had raised funds online to fly two planes into Hollywood with banners that read "Hail Xenu As you probably know, Xenu is the evil alien that is an important figure in some of Scientology's most closely guarded myths. And as you no doubt are aware, Tom Cruise is a Scientologist. And we're guessing you also know that......

You've heard that the South Park Scientology episode was pulled. Trey Parker and Matt Stone wrote, in a statement to Variety, "So, Scientology, you may have won this battle, but the million-year war for Earth has just begun! Temporarily anozinizing our episode will not stop us from keeping Thetans forever trapped in your pitiful man-bodies. Curses and drat! You have obstructed us for now, but your feeble bid to save humanity will fail! Hail Xenu!!!"......

Tomorrow is the 21st Los Angeles Marathon — but you don't have to be a runner to participate. In fact, you can be a total non-athlete. For the 7th time, members of the LA Cacophony Society will "support" the marathoners with a rest stop on Fairfax. No Gatorade and oranges for these guys: they're known for offering beer, bacon, donuts and even lapdances to the tired, sweaty runners. They're happily putting the idea of......

DCist helps us make more sense of the world this week. Posts like this concert review are the reason for Scott Stapp. DCist also enumerates the reasons for playing ultimate frisbee, Condi's tight buns, their love of a local convenience store, and their jealousy of a person in Seattle calling the city. We documented graf artist Banksy's most recent visit to LA in one two three posts. We also found the best possible use......

If you live in Long Beach, Huntington Beach, Laguna Beach, Artesia, Downey, Bellflower and Westminster anyway. Verizon has a glitch that is preventing all kinds of telephonic conversation in those parts of town and we're thinking that a rainy SoCal day is really not the day you want the phone lines to go down. First the power goes out, then the fires, now the mudslides, hail and the phones go down? LAist guesses we......

- Jill Elizabeth Davis has some great pictures of the hail falling in Pasadena today. We told you to stay home. - We are trying to keep all this discussion of Steve Lopez's Skid Row work straight but we just can't. - Disney Hall of the Valley (to go with our very valley-centric day of posting). - New Zealanders think we're lawless in Los Angeles. - Who needs Harriet Miers? Our local Japanese American......

There's nothing more quintessentially Hollywood than a legend of dubious origin. Such is the myth of Mashti Malone's, the curiously exotic ice cream maker that has set up shop right in the heart of Hollywood for 25 years. The truth is that when Iranian brothers Mashti and Mehdi Shirvani took over what was once the Mugsy Malone ice cream parlor, they couldn't afford to change the entire sign. So the tale is as sweet......

Well, it's another month in magazine publishing, so it's another month's list from the folks at Los Angeles Magazine. This time, like they do every year, they're apprising their readership of their picks for the "Best" in LA. We've noticed over the years that there's no particular method to their madness, just for them to make mention of 101 things that have struck their fancy this year in this city. In looking at their......

LAist has recently discovered the website Experience LA, and we want to pass on the word. They hail themselves as the "definitive Cultural Information Portal for the greater LA area," merging cultural events and happenings around the city with information on using public transportation to get you there. Today, for example, we could win tickets to MOCA's Visual Music Installation or the Museum of the American West's production of Kino and Theresa. We could also......

Nothing like a rainy 3-day weekend to get you cozy with the DVD rentals. So cozy, in fact, that you may have depleted your Netflix supply like we did. (We love Netflix. Free delivery, no late fees. Much love). The rain, hail and flooding is expected to continue up until Thursday. What to do? Maybe tap the video/DVD rental spot near you. This is Hollywood, after all, with some of the best movie rental joints......

Nearly a year after police shot and killed a driver who was backing his car into a patrol vehicle, a similar incident took place over the weekend. This time, the driver was a 13 year old boy. The Los Angeles Times gives a detailed account from the police about what happened but the most interesting part of the piece is the fact that Chief Bratton had called for changes to policy regarding use of......