A Downey family aboard the Costa Concordia cruise ship survived and has returned home, and its members are now recounting their horrific brush, or brushes, with death. And they are angry. more ›

Buongiorno, Kobe -- will you be playing for Italy this basketball season? It looks like the question is still up in the air. CBS News reports that after being offered $6.7 million for the season -- or nearly $740,000 per game -- to play for Italy's Virtus Bologna, Bryant and his agent came back with a counter offer. more ›

June 11th, 7:00 AM. That is the date and time that all soccer fans have been eagerly awaiting for the past 4 years. more ›

In 1979, Celestino Drago arrived in Los Angeles for a visit. Thirty years later he owns several restaurants that serve some of the most authentic Italian food in the United States. With Chef Drago's love for fresh ingredients, the dishes he creates have both traditional and innovative elements. more ›

It's a reasonable assumption that a film chronicling the inner workings of an actual mob syndicate would be interesting, engaging even. You would assume, as you saunter in with your too-large Coke and your caution-orange butter popcorn that, "hey, some of this is probably going to end up on the floor, because I'm going to get startled or have to turn myself away quickly from the bloodshed and gunplay". more ›

The L.A. Times ran a story this morning discussing the recently announced loaning of David Beckham to Italian soccer powerhouse AC Milan. This action has once again re-ignited discussion that Beckham may be going back to Europe, as some speculated might happen earlier this year when he trained with Arsenal in England. Unlike the Arsenal situation, this story has a bit more substance to it. more ›

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This past week, an international exchange called LA Goldrush brought graffiti artists from Italy to Los Angeles. Now in it's second year, organizers Raptuz (Milan) and Man One/Crewest Gallery (Los Angeles) created a series of events throughout the city, one that many witnessed on Winston St. at the Downtown Art Walk on Thursday. more ›

LA Goldrush is an international exchange of Graffiti artists from Italy visiting Los Angeles this week. Now in it's second year, organizers Raptuz (Milan) and Man One/Crewest Gallery (Los Angeles) have created a series of events throughout the city, one that many witnessed on Winston St. at the Downtown Art Walk on Thursday. more ›

Two of my friends have been raving about this supposed "real Italian/napolitana" pizza in Monterey Park, and after months of accumulated hype I decided to give in and drive 20 miles just for fucking pizza. I even took five other friends in tow for the expedition to Monterey Park, the hotbed for all great cheap eats -- some of my favorites include Shakas and The Boiling Crab. more ›

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The AMGEN Tour of California has returned and it started a couple days ago with a time trial in Palo Alto. The tour makes its way to Sacramento today and then starts heading south towards Los Angeles. The race concludes on Sunday, February 24th with Stage 7 which starts in Santa Clarita and finishes in Pasadena. more ›

I like to think of myself as a person who does what they say they’re going to do when they say they’re going to do it. So it was that, two days after spending the afternoon in the bathroom with the stomach flu, I found myself walking into Ugo: An Italian Café to partake of their DineLA menu. I’ve been there before, and generally Ugo is a solid though not particularly creative Italian option in the Culver City area (though in the interest of full disclosure, I’ve not yet tried the gelato place they opened next door.) more ›

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Roger Avary, the Academy Award-winning writer of the 1994 cult classic Pulp Fiction, was arrested this weekend on charges of manslaughter. more ›

It was a great year of new books, re-discovered books, and books we meant to get to last year but didn't. The end of the year is nearly here and before we look forward, we'll take a look back. LAist Editors share their favorite book they read this year: more ›

In the decadent tradition of hand-massaged, beer-fed Kobe beef, a new taste sensation is coming to California: La Quercia artisanal pork. These happy little piggies are raised on an organic farm in Iowa and fed a diet of acorns, just like the famed pigs of Spain's jamon iberico. EaterLA had the scoop yesterday:

These acorn-fed pigs are supposed to produce amazing meat, as they do in Italy and Spain. The company that's responsible for said pigs makes some of the best prosciutto in the country, found on only a few top menus in LA. But more importantly: There were only 45 pigs available, and only 10 SoCal chefs got to participate in the program, which means we'll start seeing this much ballyhooed pork on select local menus.

I have said it before and I'll say it again, the best designers on Project Runway this season are from Los Angeles. In my holiday wish, I see Rami Kashou, Sweet P, and Kit Pistol in the final three and visions of their collections on the runway in the finale. more ›

I have an interesting story involving Battles, New York's new experimental tech-rock sensations. It was March of this year, and I had traveled to Europe to film a project that I had been working on. My travel cohort and I made a stop in Amsterdam, where I decided that it would be a great idea to combine various hallucinogens that the city had to legally offer. I'm a relatively tranquil individual, so I naturally... more ›

Orlando Bloom will not be prosecuted after an October 12th incident in which he injured his two passengers in a car crash involving parked cars. He said he was avoiding a photographer who suddenly changed lanes. Seeing these paparazzi in action, we suspect it was them who caused the crash, most likely on purpose for some higher dollar photo sales. Starting from last week today, the San Jose Mercury News has a great timeline... more ›

On Thursday (10/11) at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood, LAist checked out a screening/cineconcert of the documentary The Orchestra - A True Story from Piazza Vittorio, which is scheduled for release on Oct. 23 through Netflix’s Red Envelope Entertainment division for Academy Award consideration. Directed by Agostino Ferrente, the film chronicles the formation of an Italian orchestra to help save the old Apollo Cinema in Rome from its fate as a future bingo parlor.... more ›

Concert review of Beirut at The Avalon. more ›

Daniel Boulud is one star-studded chef: he's got a small pile of Michelin stars and James Beard awards, and his New York restaurants are consistently ranked as the country's best. His TV show "After Hours" is equally star-studded: celebs and famous chefs show up to join Boulud on an intimate tour of kitchens and homes. The new season, which premieres tonight at 9:30 tonight on the HD channel MOJO (if you don't have HD, you can watch the first episode online here), finds Boulud exploring one of the world's capitals of adventurous, robust, modern cuisine: Los Angeles. more ›

One of the world's most famous singers, Luciano Pavarotti, the most interesting of The Three Tenors, has just died. He was 71. more ›

43 people suspected of being members of the Eastside Pain Bloods gang were arrested by more than 400 police officers in predawn raids yesterday. More staff cuts coming at the Daily News: zone coverage of Santa Clarita and the Antelope Valley to be eliminated. Yikes! How much did Tony spend to help get his three candidates onto the school board? The L.A. City Council has just approved a ban on smoking in city parks.... more ›

Monday Mike Carey presents The Devil You Know 7pm @ Book Soup Tuesday Doug Stumpf presents Confessions of a Wall Street Shoeshine Boy 7pm @ Book Soup Joy Horowitz presents Parts per Million: The Poisoning of Beverly Hills High School 7pm @ Central Library Michael Tucker signs Living a Foreign Language: A Memoir of Food, Wine and Love in Italy 7pm @ Dutton's Jerry Stahl presents Love Without 7pm @ Borders, Long Beach Thomas... more ›

Grindhouse The Girl from Starship Venus (AKA The Sexplorer) is a space nudie starring Monika Ringwald as an astronaut from Venus who lands in London's swinging Soho district circa 1975. Her mission? To research sex customs on the planet Earth. This is paired with The Legend of the Wolf Woman, a 1976 horror film from Italy whose title pretty much says it all. A beautiful woman seeks men out, has sex with them then turns... more ›

Despite the fact that only about 8 of the 50 competitors at Saturday’s 2007 US Sumo Open will be women, LAist is simply giddy about the prospect of watching two girls charge each other like a couple of rhinos. We already feel blessed that our city is the home of some of the country’s best girl on girl roller derby action, so it’s hard not to get excited by the mawashi-clad ladies of sumo taking it up a notch. more ›

Christina Aguilera, The Pussycat Dolls, Danity Kane @ Staples Center Albert Hammond Jr., The Mooney Suzuki @ El Rey Shapes of Race Cars @ Key Club Lo Fink Fi, The Young Knives @ Safari Sam's Sam Phillips, Dave Palmer @ Spaceland Capitol Steps @ USC Zoe, Los Abandoned @ Knitting Factory Divisible, Family Tree Analog, Clark 8, Red Italy @ the Scene David Ryan Harris, Chris Pierce, Chris Joyner, Zach Brooke, Swanti @ The... more ›

Tanzania -- A bat demon called Popo Bawa is blamed for a series of sex attacks. - BBC more ›