Yeah, this is how I feel. / Photo "Supervisor Zirves" by db via LAist's flickr pool. This morning was a rough start for everyone and we still got a little sleepies in us, but we'll definitely be awake for these events tonight. After another latte. CLASSICAL* The LA premiere of "The Axe Manual" happens tonight at Zipper Concert Hall as part of the Monday Evening Concert series. The program includes important recent works by......

How apropos; today on LAist it's Sex Saturday, but today also happens to be World AIDS Day. Several events took place yesterday and will happen today in order to remind the world community that HIV/AIDS remains a global threat. The LA Times reports today on President Bush's public appearance yesterday at a church in northern Maryland, and that his speeches did not propose new plans or funding, but rather focused on humanitarianism. According to the......

Dr. Sharon Mitchell of Adult Industry Medical (AIM) Healthcare Foundation talks to audience members at Zócalo's Cocktail Hour With all the talk of the economy and morality (see Part 1) at last night's panel, Dirty Business: Should the Porn Industry Be Saved?, one subject prevailed during cocktail hour among the audience that as comprised of the curious, the perverts, health officials, and industry folks: sexually transmitted diseases. And that tone of that was set......

It is estimated that 200 firms, 6000 workers and 1200 actors produce 4000-7000 adult films a year in Los Angeles. Yes, there are more porn-related, adult industry jobs than software jobs in this town. With $4.3 billion in sales and rentals (which is still nothing compared to the $12 Billion made from toys and books), the Adult Entertainment Industry puts $4 billion in revenue back into the local economy. “It’s in an industry producing......

Doomed to repeat - if not exceed - the failures of their previous generations, the youth of today are spreading sexually transmitted diseases at an alarming rate, the LA Times reported yesterday. In fact the next time a college girl giggles when, in the heat of the moment, you pull her hair and call her a dirty dirty girl - the joke might be on you, holmes. About 1 million Californians between the ages......

Up for a little do gooding and want to meet some good people along the way? Check out Philanthro Productions event at the Cabana Club tonight. Called "STRUT: A PARTY AND FASHION SHOW BENEFIT FOR CAMP HEARTLAND," it's $15 donation at the door. Philanthro Productions is a new company that is working on engaging people to find out how to give back while still having fun. So they throw events around town, you have......

- Stubborn week old fire in Northern Santa Barbara County still not contained. - Fire in Banning took 19 acres before it was under control after 45-minutes. - Orange County bus strike could be now over. - "The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of L.A. will reportedly fork over the largest payout to date in the church's sexual abuse scandal." - "At least 33 infants were infected in the 1980s by HIV-tainted transfusions at Cedars-Sinai." -......

LOGO, the nation's first (and only) openly gay television network, is set to host the next Democratic presidential debate in Los Angeles on August 9. The moderators will include Joe Solmonese, the president of Human Rights Campaign, and Melissa Etheridge, the Academy Award (for her rendition of An Inconvenient Truth's "I Need to Wake Up") and two-time Grammy Award-winning rock musician and prominent gay rights activist. So what specific topics will be on the......

Photo by sassylittlepunkin via Flickr. Looking for an excuse to try the lobster roll and pug burger at Hungry Cat? Now you have a certifiably altruisitc motive for your gluttony. Tomorrow is the 13th Annual Dine Out Los Angeles, a one-day event where participating Los Angeles area restaurants will donate 20% or more of their day's proceeds to Aid For AIDS, a charity that works to improve the quality of life for people who......

In the wake of yesterday's LA raids by the DEA, about 100 protesters marched in front of the West Hollywood City Hall this morning. Clearly the state of medical marijuana in America has become the line in the sand between state's rights and the power of federal law. Yesterday the feds flexed their muscle: They confiscated several thousand pounds of processed marijuana, along with weapons and money. A spokeswoman for the Drug Enforcement Administration......

Five Santa Monica Blvd. medical marijuana dispensaries were raided by the feds today, pretty much harshing the mellow of the WeHo city council. "The state of California voted to allow marijuana for medical purposes," says West Hollywood City Councilmember Abbe Land. "The City of West Hollywood along with other cities across the state have established regulations to govern the dispensing of medical marijuana, so that people whose lives depend on this drug can be......

For most of us, 15 minutes, several putty knives, and a giant canvas would not be the ideal way to go about turning the art scene upside down. But then again, Nigerian born Austino Okafor is not most people. Like if it were me, i might need a few days, or a few weeks, and at least a paint brush for chrissakesAside from creating the Di-Fusion art movement, Okafor plans on contributing more to humanity......

Did you know that you don't need health insurance to get tested for AIDS and STDs in LA County? The County of Los Angeles Department of Public Health Sexually Transmitted Disease Program is complimentary to its residents. So don't wait. Go and use it. We are not AIDS experts here, but we believe in a simple idea. If everyone would get tested at least once a year, the spread of AIDS and STDs would......

Students from North Campus (Arts & Humanities) walked across campus today singing songs of hope for AIDS awareness. They warmly greeted students walking to and from class by handing out t-shirts and asking them to join in and walk. “The ‘Kiss and Tell’ theme is about re-affirming safe sexual practices and is also about everyone knowing how this is affecting others all around the world.” – Dana Helwick, coordinator for Students for International Change.......

Regardless of their reasons, I became the woman with 25 condoms hanging around loosely in my purse. I looked like Sally Slam Pig. The second any man caught a glimpse into my hooker handbag he’d know for sure that I was a douche bag or that I already had the AIDS. PRECAUATION. PRECAUTION. PRECAUTION....

While many in the medical and gay community have argued against this message for decades, it is now the centerpiece of a new HIV awareness campaign by the L.A. Gay and Lesbian Center. This series of magazine and bus shelter ads is sure to stir up critics; gay and straight alike. In 1981, AIDS was first reported to the public as a "Rare Cancer Seen in 41 Homosexuals" by the New York Times. For......

Clowns are scary. Especially in the parking lot of a shopping center in the suburbs as your mom waits in an SUV. But to countless kids who've seen some truly frightening things, clowns like the ones who comprise Clowns Without Borders are like drunken angels... saints, even, who put a smile on the faces of those who need it most. Tomorrow night City Council President Eric Garcetti will host an art opening + reception......

After all the hubbub about a little porn in the backyard on Easter Sunday, will there be any outrage over "reality porn" in the sex shop? We won't link to Midnight Prowl (it's awfully NSFW) but Fleshbot (pretty NSFW in it's own right) points us towards it and notes that by the looks of things in the trailers and photos, this pornographic romp through some of LA's many adult video and toy shops seems......

Today is World AIDS Day, and while LAist firmly believes the world should be focused on AIDS as much as humanly possible every day, we're glad December 1st is set aside to remind us all that AIDS continues to affect us globally and locally. Here in LA there are many events taking place in honor of the day. This morning the LA County Public Health Department's Office of AIDS Programs & Policy held a......

- It's all adult entertainment around here today. First, we talked Suicide Girls, now we want you to know that city workers are getting trained to pick out human smuggling victims, many of whom end up in the adult film industry in the San Fernando Valley. An industry that isn't doing enough to protect its performers from HIV infection. - Speaking of city workers, probation officers walked out yesterday in a dispute with the......

Okay, we think we've finally got that photo cropped so that you aren't being unexpectedly poked by a pecker. Photographs from Spencer Tunick's public nude art installations are on display at the Arclight from today through next Thursday. Tunick's Poz magazine shoot, in which he brought together 85 HIV positive people for naked art in a Manhattan restaurant, was filmed and Postively+Naked is making its local premiere as part of DocuWeek 2005, also currently......

Did you go to South LA yesterday and try to get your All-Star Celebrity game tickets in exchange for an HIV test? Magic Johnson sponsored a day of free testing as part of National HIV Testing Day activities. While there's no shot of those nice prizes, it still is testing week and HIV LA has a directory of all the locations providing free testing around Los Angeles for the rest of the week.......

Larry Kramer's 1985 groundbreaking AIDS-related drama The Normal Heart is enjoying a 20th Anniversary run in Silverlake, by LA's oldest repertory theatre, Company of Angels. The play relays the personal, social, medical, and familial struggles of Ned Weeks (Steven Tynan) in the earliest days of the HIV/AIDS epidemic's outbreak in New York City's gay population. Weeks is based on playwright and activist Kramer's own experience, and his formation of the Gay Men's Health Crisis.......

A man in San Diego has what appears to be the same strain of "Super HIV" that a man in New York City was diagnosed with last week. Gothamist has the details on the New York case while Slate's Explainer goes into all the different strains of HIV there are out there. We know you're all smart enough to practice safe sex but we feel like we wouldn't be doing our job if LAist didn't......

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......

As part of LAist's commemoration of World AIDS Day, the LAist Interview this week features Shoshanna Scholar, Executive Director of Clean Needles Now. CNN is a grassroots needle exchange organization which also provides a range of crucial services related to HIV/AIDS prevention. Unlike other types of education and outreach efforts, Shoshanna’s line of work deals with one of the more controversial aspects of harm reduction programs. Shoshanna has much to report from the trenches......

Although addressing today's concerns about the AIDS virus and how all areas of society are coping with it in their attempts to find a sure-fire cure is dire, it's almost more important to identify the history of the disease. AVERT is an international HIV and AIDS charity based in the UK, whose goal is to "avert" HIV and AIDS worldwide. In addition, of course, to their charity-based work, their site offers up a comprehensive......

Tonight at 7 PM Laemmle Theater in Santa Monica will hold a free screening of "AIDS Treatment: Reaching the People?," a film documenting the lives of patients and medical teams of HIV/AIDS treatment programs administered by Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in Malawi, Thailand, and Guatemala. Six million people urgently need treatment to survive - what will it take for HIV/AIDS medicines to reach them in time? Discussion follows with MSF field volunteers......

World AIDS Day. Minorities at risk....

Today is World AIDS Day, and our community, along with other cities around the world, will mark this day of remembrance in a variety of ways: - The City of West Hollywood will be commemorating World AIDS Day with a candlelight vigil tonight, on Santa Monica Boulevard at Crescent Heights. After the vigil, the city will present the Paul Andrew Starke Warrior Award, which honors a volunteer or employee of agencies which provide AIDS......