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. Over the weekend, the artists hit two spots. On Friday and Saturday, they created permanent murals at The Hollywood condo development near......

Saturday morning in the parking garage of The Hollywood | Photo by Tom Andrews/LAist 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. Yesterday and today, in an event closed......

Baby spinach adorns the NY White pizza above, Porco pizza shown underneath. 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......

Don't be angsty like this lady...go out tonight! / Photo by Plankton 4:20 via LAist's flickr pool. FILM “Animation Nite: From Halifax with Love” is a program at the Echo Park Film Center that features short animated and semi-animated films by women who’ve all lived in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, eh. The screening includes work by host Siloën Daley and six others. Music by local band Foot Foot follows. 7:30 // Echo Park Film......

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. You can watch the Tour nightly on VERSUS at their 8:00pm slot. The professional commentators that bring you the......

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......

Arts and Crafts class at the Craft and Folk Art Museum tonight. / Photo by CarbonNYC via flickr. GET CRAFTY Make your Valentine’s Day gift tonight instead of picking through the lame leftover cards in the Ralph’s card aisle tomorrow. The Craft and Folk Art Museum hosts “A Creative Valentine” and provides materials for you to let your inner artist loose. Couples are encouraged to attend to get a jump start on the Valentine’s......

Roger Avary, the Academy Award-winning writer of the 1994 cult classic Pulp Fiction, was arrested this weekend on charges of manslaughter. The arrest stems from his involvement in a car accident Sunday night in Ojai that left his wife injured, and one other person dead. Avary, who was at the wheel, was booked on suspicion of DUI, and his passenger, 34-year-old Andreas Zini, a guest of the Avary's from Italy, was taken to the hospital,......

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: Who: Zach Behrens, Editor What: The Four-Hour Work Week by Tim Ferris Why: Inspiring words on how to improve workflow, automate tasks, and get 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......

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. Christina Scarbo A.K.A. Kit Pistol created her alias during her time studying and working in Italy. You can find her designs at Jack Henry Couture......

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......

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......

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.......

Concert review of Beirut at The Avalon....

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,......

One of the world's most famous singers, Luciano Pavarotti, the most interesting of The Three Tenors, has just died. He was 71. Pavarotti had been treated for pancreatic cancer since last year, which is probably what did him in today. His weight problems led to heath issues, but it didn't stop him from being loved by the ladies. A few years back he divorced his wife of 37 years for a woman 35 years......

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.......

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......

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......

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......

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......

[In '40s Narrator voice] This Week in Peculiar News -- Sex Demons! Clowns Murdered! Colossal Squid! Mummies! Tanzania -- A bat demon called Popo Bawa is blamed for a series of sex attacks. - BBC Columbia -- Two clowns are shot dead while performing in front of a live audience (no it wasn't Joe Rogan and Carlos Mencia). - Yahoo New Zealand -- Fishermen catch a 33 foot, 990 pound Colossal Squid. - BBC......

Every week in Living in Sin, Jen Sincero provides advice to LA's sexually confounded. Sign up for her newsletter and have it sent to you every week. Ask Jen your questions: all are posted anonymously. Dear Jen, I recently started dating my first woman and I am so into her! The problem is she's a real player, has been with a ton of women and doesn't intend to stop anytime soon. She's into me......

So we don't have an official Little Italy? Psahw! Screw it! Stop visiting Canter's in Fairfax Village so much and head a little more South to Little Ethiopia once in awhile. Many have been, but most have passed through. At the very least, watch the video on TurnHere. Food enough of a reason? Hey, even vegan food! Or shopping? It's the holiday season after all. Skip the last minute Christmas Eve World Market/Cost Plus......

Now that Katie Holmes has probably reached a higher Operating Thetan level, she's probably free and clear to marry Tom Cruise. Now LAist learns that the not-publicity-shy couple has set the date: Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes will marry in Italy on Nov. 18, Cruise's representative, Arnold Robinson, confirmed to The Associated Press on Tuesday. We are a little surpised that Suri's parents aren't opting for a little more subdued affair: like a pay-per-view......

Mmmmm. Fried food! Here's 2 recipes for fall. Fried stuffed Zucchini Blossoms and fried baby Artichokes. Fried Stuffed Zucchini Blossoms: Late summer/early fall is the only time to get Zucchini blossoms, a versatile little treat you can find at the farmer's market. The Hollywood Farmer's Market has them right now. The stand is on Ivar, just north of Selma on the west side of the block. Last Sunday the blossoms caught my eye and......

How LA Observed gets these LA Times internal memos is beyond us, but we love it. Today Kevin Roderick printed an email whose subject line was: "The Times' Innovative Pre-Awareness Promotional Campaign for 'The Black Dahlia'." Now we realize the times they are a-changing but we feel a little creeped out with our local paper getting all giddy about being in bed with a movie studio over a summer movie. Isn't the job of......

USA vs Italy - 7pm (ESPN2) Red Sox at Angels - 7pm (FSN) Dodgers at Padres - 7pm (FSPT) Rock Star: Supernova - 8pm (CBS) Prison Break - 9pm (FOX) Inked - 9pm (A&E) 30 Days - 10pm (FX) Laguna Beach - 10pm (MTV) Project Runway - 10pm (Bravo) Joan & Melissa: Celebrating 1000 Interviews - 10pm (TVGC) John McEnroe, Artie Lang, Busta Rhymes - Late Show, 11:30p (CBS) Tommy Chong - Jimmy Kimmel,......

If the theatrics of this summer's Copa Mundial have you hooked, three movies playing this week serve up enough passion, pique and soccer-inspired drama to put the fake-foul antics of today's players to shame. On Tuesday July 4th, the enthusiasts at the Hollywood Football Association put on a special InterFootball Day at the Egyptian Theatre. They'll screen Goal! World Cup 1966, which tells of the glorious — if you're a English football fan —......