So if you don't feel like driving that hour+ to some party in the Valley, or to some party anywhere in Los Angeles, you can always turn on the TV. There's nothing like watching the 3-hour tape-delayed disco ball drop to reaffirm your existence. Tomorrow - Sunday - New Years Eve "Twilight Zone Marathon" (SciFi, ALL DAY) "Seinfeld Marathon" (TBS, ALL DAY) "Marx Brothers Marathon" (TCM, starting at 5:15 p.m.) (other marathons include "Ace......

Way back in 1936 the Feds took lemons and made lemonade. Or in this case, they took the snowfall and subsequent runoff that often flooded the Colorado River, and made a dam that regulated the river and harnessed the energy of all of that water, and turned it into electricity for LA. Originally named Boulder Dam and then renamed for the President who okayed the project, Hoover Dam not only produced power for our......

We had no idea that Simi Valley was the site of America's first nuclear accident (obviously we should watch more History Channel). At the Santa Susana Field Laboratory, a liquid sodium reactor had a partial meltdown in 1959; the facts weren't made public until UCLA investigated 20 years later. Researchers speculate that the radiation released was as much as 240 times that of the Three Mile Island accident. Exactly what was contaminated in the......

Los Angeles a big city with big cultural institutions like Disney Hall and LACMA. And we also have tons of smaller cultural institutions, including several little museums in unexpected neighborhoods. That's where LAist headed on our first field trip, to the Los Angeles Police Historical Society Museum. It's in a decommissioned police station that went operational in 1925 in Highland Park. Parts of it still looks a lot like a police station: the imposing......