Last Friday, I made a plan to go out to Club Underground at The Echo for my birthday, and I had all my friends meet me there. On a total stroke of luck, I realized a band I had discovered a month or so before was also playing that night before Club Underground started. So I told everyone to get there at 9 if they wanted to see a good band first. more ›

• Need for food donations is increasing, while food available for those in need is on a downturn. The good folks over at SOVA in the Valley are scrambling to provide for hungry families this holiday season; rising energy and food costs are partly to blame.
• So why do I still see people checking the coin slots for loose change? AT&T is selling off their pay phones to "independent" operators; will the machines be kept in working order or will they devolve into so many graffiti magnets?
• Downtown L.A. is welcoming its first new movie theater in twenty years this week, the ImaginAsian Center -- but will its location, right next to punk club The Smell, prove problematic?
• Maybe it fell over because it had too many jello shots last night: an overturned crane blocked off the southbound lanes of the 5 freeway near Mission Hills this morning -- traffic is being diverted but the freeway has yet to be reopened.
• Gridskipper rounds up some of the worst parking lots in Los Angeles: thumbs up on recognizing the horrors of The Grove and the Hollywood Bowl but nothing deserves to be on this list more than that god damned Trader Joe's Santa Monica lot. Worst. Ever.
• I'm sorry, but men can be such useless, vile idiots sometimes: "Two males were arrested in connection with last month's stabbing death of a 19-year-old man in a case police said started when one person disrespected another." [Emphasis mine.]
• Tickets for Garth Brooks's series of concerts benefiting victims of the recent California fires sold out in less than an hour -- 85,000 tickets at $50-75 a pop, with all proceeds going to charity? Not bad, Garth, not bad!
• IWantMedia's media person of the year? Striking Writers!!!
• How's our man Rex over at Fimoculous.com doing with his 2007 predictions? "6) Jim chooses Pam on The Office. Yes! Score: 10 7) Studio 60 catches on. No! Score: 0"

Loose Change, 2nd Edition So here it is. The sixth anniversary of September 11th. I don't know how you feel about that. I was raised in lower Manhattan, so I am, as I am sure you can imagine, very sentimental and sad today to say the least. But saying that I am "sad and sentimental" is an understatement. I am also angry and frustrated. Even after six years and one cross-country move to get... more ›

This administration has seen its highs and lows. It was wrong about Saddam having WMDs, it can't seem to find Bin Laden, billions of dollars are unaccounted for in Iraq, some of our military have been accused of torturing prisoners, the CIA was found to have secret prisons, the President continues to want to spy on US phone calls without a warrant, the Vice President's office was caught revealing the name of a covert... more ›

The week began on 9/11 and we remembered Howard Stern's 2001 broadcast of that day. There were many choices of visual stimuli. Among those were Loose Change, Dateline in Long Beach, Path to 9/11 or Football. While we watched Castaic burn, we felt the need to be a little more green and looked into Griffith Park planning, e-waste, coastal cleaning and Eastside reservoirs. Speaking of e-waste, one of our writers got his computer stolen... more ›

Five years after 9/11 there are still plenty of unanswered questions. The White House has been defensive about any sort of investigations into the attacks, even doing their best to stop the formation of the 9/11 Committee. They refuse to allow captured suspected terrorists to have civilian trials which would be part of the public record, and are pressing for military tribunals which would be kept private, and even Saturday on Meet The Press,... more ›