Photo by hinducow via the LAist Featured Photos pool on Flickr Looks like the Hollywood sex tape predates YouTube and Betamax by a landslide. A sex tape featuring late film icon Marilyn Monroe--on 16mm film--sold for $1.5 million to a NY businessman. Did you check out the Songkran fest yesterday in Thai Town? Did you ride the Red Line? Did you wonder why the hell the MTA only put in two ticket vending machines......

Remember when Chewbacca allegedly attacked Marilyn Monroe? If you have ever driven past Mann's Chinese theater, you have seen the assortment of costumed characters posing with tourists. The Reinactors, Dave Markey's documentary that follows the strange bunch who haunt Mann's, has just been chosen for the 2008 Rotterdam Film Festival. The 37th edition of the International Film Festival Rotterdam (23 January to 3 February 2008) is being realised under the leadership of director Rutger......

Photo by Ryan Jesena......

We've been combing the internet and other mediums for weird haunted LA things. And quite frankly, we've come up a bit short. Maybe it's the enormous amount of sun we get here. Maybe it's that celebrity is a sort of a cheesey fame that doesn't lend itself to the goose flesh and various other willies that come with a good ghost stories. Seeing Marilyn Monroe in a mirror, the notion of club kids encountering......

These days, the Roosevelt Hotel is all about partying. After the painstaking restoration of its Spanish-Moorish lobby, with its hand painted beams, tiled floors and leaded glass windows, the hotel is home to the Tropicana Bar, where guests get in free till 9pm (How generous!) and long lines develop of the young and the beautiful. They don't hold a candle to the older residents of the hotel though. The Roosevelt is rumored to be......

Let's start over, shall we? Disney is investing $1.1 billion into California (Mis)adventure, the ghost town of an amusement park next to Disneyland. The Rose Queen for the Pasadena Rose Parade was announced this morning and her name is Dusty. We just love that name for a girl. Staring now, there is no excuse for anyone of any age to ever go "I don't get blogging." The world's oldest blogger celebrated her birthday this......

Following in the controversial footsteps of the Golden Gals Gone Wild, comes a new collection of art into the World of Wonder's Storefront Gallery. Today brings us the opening of Austin Young's Celebritism. As you pass by the W.O.W. gallery on Hollywood Blvd. near Skooby's, you will see large photographs of what appear to be larger-than-life Marilyn Monroe's trying to get out from inside. But one photo that will be inside the show can......

It's hard to find a good Wookiee these days, so LAPD is looking for a naughty one. A Chewbacca impersonator allegedly sexually assaulted a Marilyn Monroe look-alike near Hollywood and Highland last month, though the crime was just reported yesterday. When authorities showed up to investigate, the suspect fled. Police are presumably looking for a man who is tall, dark, and hairy. There has been no comment from LA County Sheriff Lee Baca, who may......

Imagine the opening scene of Midnight Cowboy. Now imagine that John Voight is in a Superman costume. And Ratso Rizzo is Marilyn Monroe. Surround them with a cast straight out of Pink Flamingos, and set it all to the soundtrack of a sweet 10-year-old German girl singing “Hotel California” This might give you some idea of what Dave Markey’s long-anticipated film, The Reinactors, is like. In this documentary, Markey delves into the lives of......

Monday Cristina Garcia discusses A Handbook to Luck 7pm @ Vroman's Criss Angel presents Mindfreak: Secret Revelations 7pm @ Book Soup Tuesday Criss Angel presents Mindfreak: Secret Revelations 6pm @ Borders, Westwood Steven Bach presents Leni: The Life and Leni Riefenstahl 7pm @ Book Soup Wednesday Steven Bach presents Leni: The Life and Leni Riefenstahl 7pm @ Central Library Rue McClanahan presents My First Five Husbands and the Ones Who Got Away 7pm @......

Monday Robert Fagan discusses The Notebooks of Robert Frost 7pm @ Vroman’s Rebecca Liebermann signs We Are Still Here 7pm @ Dutton’s Brentwood Josh Peter discusses Fried Twinkies, Buckle Bunnies & Bull Riders 7pm @ Studio City Branch Library Tuesday David Lynch presents Catching the Big Fish 7pm @ Borders in Westwood Martin Amis discusses House of Meetings 7pm @ Central Library Robert Stone & John Densmore in conversation about Remembering the Sixties 7:30pm......

. 1. Kurt Cobain ($50M) 2. Elvis Presley ($42M) 3. Charles M. Schulz ($35M) 4. John Lennon ($24M) 5. Albert Einstein ($20M) 6. Andy Warhol ($19M) 7. Dr. Seuss ($10M) 8. Ray Charles ($10M) 9. Marilyn Monroe ($8M) 10. Johnny Cash ($8M) 11. J.R.R Tolkien ($7M) 12. George Harrison ($7M) 13. Bob Marley ($7M) Top Earning Dead Celebrities, Forbes, 2006 -- h/t stereogum......

Thanks to the times that we live in everyone can be a reporter AND everyone can be a star. Tonight's Midnight Movie is by Lisa Nova who braved the freaks on Hollywood Blvd who dress up and hang out next to Hollywood & Highland. No, not the tourists, the superheroes. We wonder if she had to tip them each a buck once she was finished interviewing them? Who she didn't interview: the aw-shucks Superman......

Much like the New England Patriots, Taft High School seems like a team of destiny. The two time national Academic Decathlon champions have won the district tournament and move one step closer to another national championship. Their win comes on the same day that Governor Schwarzenegger called for the breaking up of LAUSD while throwing his support in the Mayoral race to Bob Hertzberg. In other Mayoral news, former police chief and current councilman......

One of the harsh realizations we all faced after the opening of Hollywood & Highland was that the complex wasn't designed for us locals, but rather for the throngs of wide-eyed tourists who were tired of trekking all the way from Hokkaido to Hollywood Boulevard just to realize that what they thought was a glistening, celebrity-drenched wonderland was actually a filthy, festering slum no true celebrity would go anywhere near except to quickly drop......

Tonight at the Knitting Factory, see Morrissey's new chum Nancy Sinatra performing with special guest Tina Dico at 8:00 PM. Tickets are $25.00. At Vroman's Bookstore in Pasadena, you can see former Presidential hopeful Howard Dean signing his new book, You Have the Power: How to Take Back Our Country and Restore Democracy in America at 1:00 PM. Check the website for further details. At LACMA, this evening brings your chance to see two......

Lots to do today and this weekend, so LAist has split it up into two easy-to-manage posts for your reading convenience. Expect the weekend update later in the day. The critically acclaimed Mexican film Amores Perros is screening at the UCLA Hammer Museum. Part of the exhibit Made in Mexico, the film is part of an on-going series of cultural events featuring art and film that is about (or made in) Mexico. The film......

Congratulations, LAists. Another week successfully past and a new weekend just beginning! Because of the sheer volume of events over the next two-and-a-half days, this post will only cover Friday's events. Look for another post later today with all the juicy details for entertainment on Saturday and Sunday. Get some air at an outdoor screening of the 1953 classic How to Marry a Millionaire, starring Marilyn Monroe. The movie, which will be digitally projected......