PEN USA hosts literary panels tonight. WINE Silver Lake Wine is hosting winemaker Maynard Keenan of Tool (yes, you read that right!), who’ll be pouring his Caduceus wines at the shop. Call for reservations: 323.662.9024. 7 pm // Silver Lake Wine // 2395 Glendale Blvd., Los Angeles // $20. FILM The Pan African Film Festival started yesterday and runs until Feb. 18. Not only does the festival screen films, but it also holds workshops,......

"LA Colors" by Adamina via the LAist Featured Photos pool on Flickr . Good news [for democracy] Voter registration for Tuesday's election is about 700,000 higher than during the last California presidential primary four years ago. Bad news [for politicos] Some county elections officials project that roughly 20 percent of the ballots might not be tallied until Wednesday or later. Good news [for Obama] The Ill Sen. received the nod of approval from the largest......

Increasingly free of gang violence, it may be getting safer to walk the streets of Watts, the Daily News reports. Homicides in the area have dropped from 24 in 2006 to just 11 last year and many residents are pinning hopes for further neighborhood revitalization on economic opportunities. Hey Magic Johnson, that's your cue! A man died last night after sliding down an escalator at the Hollywood Highland shopping pit of hell today. Apparently......

There's only one place hardcore enough to host a night bands tonight and that's The Smell in downtown. After all, it is their 10-Year Anniversary Series. Tonight is all variations of punk. If you go, make sure you hear the easy listening punk sounds of Portland's Magic Johnson and quite good experimental punk of NASA Space Universe. Others on the set list include the powerpop punked Ima Gymnist, the female led punk thrash band --......

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......

A dead blue whale washed up on the shores of a beach near Ventura today; scientists from all over the state are at the scene to examine the body and determine why it beached. Lucille Ball and Larry King had streets renamed in their honor this week: the block surrounding the CNN building in Hollywood will now be known as Larry King Square, while the intersection of Melrose and Plymouth Boulevards has been rechristened......

On a mid-summer night every year for two decades, some of the biggest names in basketball and Hollywood were summoned to the hardwood by Magic Johnson and a good cause. Last year, Magic stepped down and handed over the torch to Baron Davis and Paul Pierce, two NBA All-Stars and native Angelenos. Sunday night at USC's Galen Center, the Davis/Pierce administration carried on the tradition of sloppy yet utterly entertaining basketball for charity for the......

Galaxy 2, Pachua 1 - The Galaxy was without its biggest star (Beckham wasn't on the bench, much less the field), but 19,317 people still showed up to watch the struggling squad knock off one of Mexico's best club teams. Landon Donovan scored go-ahead goal in the 81st minute. Next up, the Galaxy will host Chivas -- the real Chivas of Guadalajara -- in more SuperLiga action on Saturday. Astros 7, Dodgers 4 - When......

For the first 10 or 15 seconds you think this video will be a waste of time, and then he drops the beat, and gets all jiggy with it. It's like he's the son of Weird Al and Magic Johnson. Without any further ramblings, we present Paul Brogan!......

Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, Jack Nicholson, Leonardo DiCaprio and over 16,000 others watched Floyd Mayweather land 207 punches on East LA's own Oscar De La Hoya, earning a controversial split decision from the judges at the MGM in Las Vegas. De La Hoya and a lot of the crowd thought he wuz robbed, "I felt I won the fight," De La Hoya was quoted in the Times. "I landed the harder, crisper punches. I......

Suns 113, Lakers 100 - The Laker's season could be down to one game. The Suns outshone Los Angeles and took a 3-1 series lead thanks to huge performances from Steve Nash (23 assists, 17 points) and Amare Stoudemire (27 points, 21 rebounds). Nash's assist total was one shy off the all time playoff record, held by Magic Johnson (who was in the stands) and John Stockton. Not bad company. On the other side of......

Monday, February 5 Creative Screenwriting Magazine is sponsoring a free screening of Children of Men followed by a Q&A with writer/director Alfonso Cuaron and co-writer Tim Sexton. WHEN: Mon., Feb. 5 at 7:30 PM. WHERE: DGA Theater, 7920 Sunset Blvd. (betw. Crescent Heights & Fairfax) RSVP: Go to the Creative Screenwriting website and sign up to receive information about future events. You should then receive an email with further instructions about how to sign up......

In early December, the Indiana Pacers were in town to face the Los Angeles Lakers. As NBA teams do, they stayed in a posh hotel -- this one in the Bel Air area. But as we Angelenos could have told them, that’s a lot of time in the car (or bus, in this case) if you want to drive out to Staples Center for a morning shoot-around, go back to the hotel for the......

- That loveable racist Kramer, aka Michael Richards, is not a Jew, not that there's anything wrong with that - Jewish Journal - Mayor Tony doesnt care about black firemen who are fed dogfood and awarded millions - Firefighting News - Did Fox offer the Browns "hush money" to be cool about the OJ book & interview? - TV Squad - The California Supreme Court has made it safer to be a blogger -......

Rarely do we present a 4:20 Video at 4:20am, but tonight we were just re-watching Lost and while searching for "los angeles" on YouTube, we stumbled across this nicely shot, perfectly edited video of Laker owner Dr. Jerry Buss produced, apparently by laphoto2006. laphoto2006, we don't know who you are but we love ya. Despite living in this city for over 20 years, the last 5 in Hollywood, for some reason LAist has never......

In 1985 Prince played there and they bathed the place in purple lights. Nirvana played there with the Butthole Surfers and someone threw a shoe at Kurt that almost hit him. Eminem played there with Mix Master Mike opening as snowboarders had an indoor exhibition. Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Michael Jordan, and Kareem played there. Chick and the Laker Girls performed there. Paula Abdul got famous there. And now you can try to get......

We just started reading LA Sports Columnist and one-time LAist interview subject J.A. Adande's blog this week. Actually, just yesterday when he posted some of the mail he's been getting regarding his NBA MVP column in which he had the gall to not choose Employee #8 (and not to get sidetracked but this LAist contributor agrees. Steve Nash made every player on his team look like an MVP candidate and LeBron James played like......

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.......

The Advocate is reporting that the Carl Bean House, home to the Magic Johnson Health Care Center, will be forced to close down if they can't get alternative funding. Their one million dollar county funding dries up today. Carl Bean is the very last of LA's AIDS Hospice Care Centers.......

As noted in LAObserved.com yesterday, the Los Angeles Times published a story this weekend about Los Angeles mayoral candidates wooing various financial backers for support. Candidates are going to need full coffers in order to pay for the heavy TV advertising necessary to compete in this spring's election. Reporter Michael Finnegan wrote: The top contenders for mayor of Los Angeles have jostled for months to make a favorable impression on Eric Bauman. Four have......

The Clippers drafted arguably the best player in the NBA Draft yesterday, by selecting high school phenom Shaun Livingston. The 6-6 point guard has exceptional passing skills and could wind up being a mini-Magic Johnson. The Clippers could have gone with college point guard like Devin Harris of Wisconsin, who would have had a better 2004-05 season, but a veteran point guard could be just as effective for this year as the Clips wait......