A view from the 126 Highway, which connects Santa Clarita to Ventura | Photo by Zach Behrens/LAist In a crash site outside Ventura on the 126 Highway (described as looking like a bomb went off by one KNX reporter), one person is dead and four others are injured. Around 10:40 a.m. this morning near Edwards Ranch Road a crash occurred involving a big rig, a car, and three people working on the center median,......

Photo by puck90 via the LAist Featured Photos pool on Flickr An update to this week's tragic Oxnard junior high school shooting: The 15-year-old victim was taken off life support after his organs were donated today. 49-year-old transient Steven Emory Butcher was found guilty of starting one of the largest wildfires in state history. The Day Fire began on Labor Day in 2006, burned over 162,000 acres and took a month to put out.......

Barney's Beanery gets rocks the vote. Kind of. RED, WHITE AND BEER If you didn't get enough beer yesterday, Barney's Beanery in Santa Monica is hosting a "Super Tuesday Countdown Beer Vote" today and tomorrow. Alcoholics Drinkers vote for their favorite candidates by choosing which tap to draw their $3 beer from. They'll be serving up plenty of Hillarys and Obamas for sure. A running total will be announced as the votes are tallied.......

The 3-month-old WGA strike could end as early as Friday if the new contract is completed and approved It's still in the outline phase, but a new contract has been drawn for striking writers, and may meet with approval as early as Friday. The new deal is said to including resolutions to fundamental concerns, like compensation for work done for and distributed on the Internet, all of which led to the walkout and picket......

Live blogging the Democratic Debate 7:43 The spin is winding down and the media room is beginning to empty. Reporters are putting the finishing touches on their debate articles and the crew is beginning to clean up the bottles and box dinners provided. But the next six days until Super Tuesday will be anything but quiet. Commercials will continue to fill the airwaves, candidates will have events around Southern California and LAist will party......

Be careful who you root for. L.A. County Federation of Labor's leader Maria Elena Durazo is taking some heat for her recent endorsement of Barack Obama, and her subsequent decision to take a leave from her post to work on his campaign. Speaking of labor...today was the launch of the Los Angeles County Business Federation, a coalition of local businesses hoping to emulate--and perhaps defend against--the organizational power of unions. The group "so far......

Oh L.A. and your crazy kooky vagrants! Please meet Crazy Doll Lady (as we are calling her), pictured in the photo above. She and her scary puppet friends hang out around Sunset and Vine every day, and wait outside the Hollywood Public Library every morning for food handouts. Say hi to her if you see her...or drive by real real fast like I do! Even if the Globes are cancelled, Academy Awards organizers are......

Even though I've eaten at Studio City's Caioti Pizza Cafe a bunch of times in the past, I never knew there was a bizarre urban legend associated with the casual eatery. Apparently, one salad on their menu is purported to induce labor in expectant women. Today's "Only in LA" column in the Times checks in with the restaurant to see if the myth still holds. Steve Harvey explains, "The trend supposedly began after some very......

Tis the season - for cookies!!! Cookies are one of the most versatile treats you can make. They are perfect for gift-giving, office parties, dessert, or a quick snack. They please children and grown-ups alike. Most cookie batters freeze well so you can make cookies anytime you feel like it. Cookie recipes are easy to make and hard to screw up. You just need to keep an eye on them so they don't burn.......

Don't know what to get for the gun toting rifleman who has everything? In San Francisco, turning that rifle in to authorities will net you a cool $100 gift card. Eh, you say? OK, how about $200 for AK-47s? I wonder how that conversation might go at home: Honey, where is my gun? Oh, I turned it in sweety, for $100 worth of movie rentals. You did what? Guns don't kill people, gift cards......

Right around Labor Day we interviewed KCRW dj Jason Bentley about the 30th anniversary of Morning Becomes Eclectic. Today he provides us with his top ten albums of 2007, and you Radiohead fans will be glad to see that he adds them to his list just like most of his cohorts did. Interestingly when Mathieu Schreyner left Radiohead off his list, not only was he not criticized, but he received many more positive comments......

You might recall that right around Labor Day we celebrated KCRW's 30th anniversary of Morning Becomes Eclectic with a series of interviews with a handful of their on-air personalities. Today we are lucky enough to get the Top 10 list of Nic Harcourt's top albums of 2007. We are very happy to see that he's just as down with local kids Sea Wolf and Great Northern as we are. Not only that, but atop......

President Bush may have passed a $460 billion defense bill, but he has vetoed a $150 billion bill that would have funded the Labor and Health and Human Services departments according to a report by the Daily News. It is also rumored that he will veto an upcoming $105.6 billion transportation bill. Congress is gearing up for a battle, with House Republicans upholding presidential vetoes and Democrats accusing their GOP counterparts of ignoring the......

The picket lines are going to get a little more crowded as the Writers Guild of America today announced that the news writers and graphic artists, who have been working for more than two years without a contract, last week authorized a strike against CBS. Sadly the nation has been striking CBS News for a while, but we digress.Of the 300 employees who cast ballots in last week's special election, 81% backed a labor stoppage......

a writer's perpective The first day of the strike is in the books. I marched at the Warner Brothers lot in Burbank. I was one of the only people who didn’t have a red shirt, but someone gave me a solidarity rubber wristband that says “No Justice. No Scripts.” I actually ended up walking for about five straight hours, and, even though I didn’t have tape to protect my hands from splinters (like some......

View Larger Map They are on trial, facing possible felony charges if convicted, for unauthorized access to city's computer system in order to make traffic even worse at four busy intersections last year August. Who are they? Meet Gabriel Murillo and Kartik Patel, both in their 30s and both high level Department of Transportation transportation engineers with the Automated Traffic Surveillance Center.Prosecutors said the men changed computer codes preventing transportation managers from reprogramming and reactivating......

Last Labor Day weekend I desperately needed to escape the disagreeable, torturous heatwave. So I made a last minute decision to fly to Seattle and bumbershoot. As luck would have it, my spontaneity provided for a much more temperate and rainless 70 degree haven. The Bumbershoot Festival has been running 37 years strong and every year it seems to progress into a bigger and better animal. Situated within the spacious Seattle Center amidst the......

There was very little else for Londonist to be concerned with when the threat of a Tube strike became a very unpleasant reality. The inconvenience was extreme: there aren't many alternatives to the Tube in London despite the best efforts of the Londonist team to get everyone from A to B. Brighter news came in the form of the first ever female Yeoman Warder, or Beefeater as the position is more commonly known, and......

You can reproduce the amazing flavors of true Santa Maria BBQ in your backyard on a much smaller scale, using a 2-3 lb. tri-tip in place of a 20 lb topblock. Looking to watch your urbane clique revert to their primal roots, forsaking knife, fork, and plate for fingers, bulged eyes, and wide smiles? Want to see your veggie and vegan friends split into groups of people either salivating because they want a taste, or are fully repulsed at such a carnivorous feast? Want to make something awesome, with $20, and at the last minute for a group of 4-5 people? This is your answer. ...

My sister decided to be the best sibling in the world and buy tickets for me to see Justin Timberlake at the Mandalay Bay. The only bad part about it was that it was on September 1, smack dab in the middle of Labor Day weekend. If you've ever headed to Las Vegas or the river during this time, you know it can be a total pain in the ass. I believe the 15......

Recent major events for the LAFD include last night's apartment fires in North Hollywood and Westchester. Busy day on LAPD's blog: a drive-by shooting yesterday, a labor day homicide, Congressman Xavier Becerra's office burglarized, two fatal Skid Row stabbings, a Carl's Jr. robbery and a fatal shooting this morning in South LA. Sparked by the recent heat-reated power outages, Matt Littman at the Huffington Post asks if Los Angeles is in permanent decay: "It......

So I have this pretty fun tradition (aside from Three Rivers in the holidays), of going camping at Two Harbors on Catalina Island every Labor Day Weekend. The tradition originally began as a Jugglers' Festival, oddly enough, of which I was only a part due to my friend and her husband who are amateur jugglers, and because they are friends with some fairly accomplished ones. There was a juggling volleyball game on one of......

Selecting a gift for a loved one is tough, especially if the occasion is a 226th Birthday. What do you get the City of Los Angeles? After all, she already has it all! John Bwarie figured a way to give something back to the City he loves and it all starts with ice cream, buckets of ice cream. All flavors, double cream, soy cream, free range, dolphin safe, shade grown…you name it and loaded......

About the Above Photo: "Every Sunday from sunrise to sunset since February 15th 2004, a temporary memorial is erected in the sand just north of the pier at Santa Monica Beach in Los Angeles and at Sterns Wharf in Santa Barbara, California and other locations around the country by local chapters of Veterans For Peace (VFP) and volunteers. This memorial is known as Arlington West... By the end of July 2007, using the U.S.......

Labor Day Related Accounts Payable Door to Door for Greenpeace 10 Tips to Get Ahead in the Business World Creating A Hostile Work Environment With Dirty Comics Slinging Sunglasses in Inglewood Graveyard Manager at Gorky's Russian Cafe Phone Scam Artist Street Spammers and Signwalkers High School Janitor Labor Day Recipes. Yum! First Film, Last Straw My Year Running Bootlegs Sex Why Dating/Hooking Up With Friends Isn't a Good Idea Media & Advertising Misadventures in......

Just out of college, I worked at a small record store that was actually a front for a much larger music bootlegging operation. The owner was a coke-fuelled mafia wannabe, who rarely stopped by the store, except to empty the register. I would always have to give customers huge discounts, because I couldn’t make change for them. The boss was completely moody and unpredictable. You never knew if he was gonna scream at you......

After two years of college I had to drop out for financial reasons. I had stopped talking to my family, and needing loans to pay for school I had no one to cosign for them. Being wary of those bank loans I decided it better to drop out. I went to a temp job and they placed me in an accounts payable position for a non-profit. Nine years later here I am still working......

Some fresh AIR would be really great right about now. Har har har!!! I'm such a card. Now, really, how about Air at the Greek this month, courtesy of LAist: head on over to enter our Labor Day Weekend Air Contest. In the category of Thank God It Hasn't Happened to Us Yet: over twenty thousand homes and businesses have lost power this weekend. If you're on the roads tonight, please drive safely, use......

As I try to do anything but labor on this Labor Day, I reflect on my nearly 10 years working in office jobs to support my freelance habit. So while I spend my 9 to 5s at work-work, I've held myself to certain standards. I believe I act with integrity. I've tried to treat people – regardless of my personal feelings for them – with dignity. And I've worked hard because (besides being a......

Everyone's favorite secretary is set to become the new celebrity face for the self-proclaimed "most erotic lingerie in the world". The upscale, reservation-only, lingerie shop on Melrose, Agent Provocateur has taken the torch from the coke-stained claws of Kate Moss and handed them to Maggie Gyllenhaal, an honor once bestowed upon Kylie Minogue and Dita Von Teese. The UK's Daily Mail has a handful of the photos from the Alice Hawkins photoshoot of Jake's......