In 2000, California voters passed Proposition 22, which denied the freedom to marry for gay, lesbian and transgender couples. Today, the California Supreme Court heard oral arguments challenging that law. Maybe you remember back when Gavin Newsom, former Mayor of San Francisco, provided marriage licenses to same-sex couples and then those licenses were revoked. His actions were a challenge -- albeit one that didn't pan out -- to the law. Now, if the Court votes......

Photo credit: sniderscion Torontoist spent its week uncovering who was behind mysterious ads for a drug called "Obay" that popped up across the country (Scientology? Frank Shepard Fairey?), first tracing them to an advocacy group called Colleges Ontario and then confirming their suspicions a few days later.Phillyist learned how to put on a puppet show – it's not as easy as you might think!Shanghaiist discovers that the average starting monthly pay for fresh graduates......

Ben Lyons and Jane Lynch at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival LAist caught up with Ben Lyons from E! to tell us what Park City is really like during the Sundance Film Festival. From Charlize Theron to Diddy, Ben's time at the festival is jam packed with screenings, interviews, and parties. We asked him to fill us in on his favorite films, his obsession with "Beverly Hills 90210", and going bobsledding with Ivan Radcliff.......

Projected Nevada Democratic caucus winner Hillary Clinton campaigned here in California this week, visiting supporters gathered at CSUN As the results of today's caucuses--including one being held at Caesar's Palace--in Nevada continue to stream in, most are projecting Senator Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney the winners of the Democratic and Republican races, respectively. The LA Times is reporting that "with 78% of the precincts reporting, Clinton had about 51% of the vote and Obama 45%.......

I wasn’t much of a Tom Petty fan in my pre-L.A. years, but like most people, I knew him from the basics…I had caterwauled the lyrics to "Free Fallin’" alongside other angsty Massachusetts teens at a dance or two, and I had been baffled by, but pretended I knew what the hell was going on in, the "Mary Jane's Last Dance" video. But beginning with my drive cross country, I began to develop a taste......

Mitt Romney is the consummate, cookie-cutter, robot-like Republican. Forget about eliciting animation or human emotion from this wanna-be prez. Even his campaign henchmen lack the ability to opine on, well, just about anything, as evidenced below. Romney is lucky to have 30 delegates on his side after Iowa and New Hampshire. Problem is, it takes 1,191 to win the Republican nomination. The 60-year-old former Massachusetts governor does have one or two things going for him,......

Today, our great state filed a lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency over the Bush administration's opinion that states cannot set emission standards. The EPA denied California a waiver that it needs under the federal Clean Air Act to move forward with regulating greenhouse gas emissions from new cars and light trucks. At least 16 other states had been expected to follow California's lead and adopt the state's tougher emission limits. [CBS2/AP]And to that, fifteen......

Torontoist discovered their city's most ridiculous holiday lights setup, with 80,000 lights and two––two!––synchronized music routines. Naturally, they snagged a video. Chicago tragically loses one of its most recognizable neighborhood icons, the pigeon man of Lincoln Square. LAPD leaves body in car at crash scene, then tows it. Massachusetts plus mullet equals PR mayhem. Londonist sleeps in a Haunted plague pit. UC Berkeley students strip naked and race through campus, NSFW floppiness ensues. Phillyist......

The Holiday season is in full swing in NYC, with holiday lights in Brooklyn, a giant snow globe in Bryan Park and Chanukah specials for ham. One citizen decided to go vigilante on annoying car alarms, a murder suspect used a fake Asian accent on the stand and a video of a man being beaten up by teenage girls on a subway shocked the city. And we interviewed soon-to-be-leaving-Gawker editor Choire Sicha, who said,......

Due to "human error" in tallying the votes, the crown that was placed on the head of Koreatown's Christina Silva, aka Miss Los Angeles, was placed on the head of Miss Barstow Raquel Beezley yesterday in Beverly Hills, and Breezley is now the winner in the all-important Miss California pageant. - AP Guess who's getting naked for Peta now? Film star Eva Mendez. And if her poster is any indication, she's really behind this......

While the Great UCLA Versus USC Debate may never reach a resolution (those damn Trojans are too hard-headed and engorged with pride to recognize true superiority when they see it), all Californians can hold their heads up with pride thanks to our excellent universities. I don't know if you noticed the recent Washington Monthly ratings of the nation's top schools, but they're giving the U.S. News and World Report a run for their money.......

8:00pm So You Think You Can Dance FOX - Two dancers get the boot 9:00pm Fat March ABC - The fat marchers have made it all the way from southeast Massachusetts to Connecticut. The men face a strength challenge. but wait! there's more! 9:00pm Hell's Kitchen FOX - Finalist hell! The final challenge!!! The winner becomes the new head chef at one of Gordon Ramsay's Las Vegas restaurants! 10:00pm Weeds SHOWTIME - Season premiere!......

Londonist are starting to think their city is getting just a little bit too expensive, when even Christian Slater can't afford to go out there. And there's no escaping, as local singer Lily Allen discovered when she was barred entry to the US. The British mapping agency caused further bad karma, by blocking a 3-D representation of London in Google Earth. But the smiles returned to Londonist's faces as they interviewed Baroness von Reichardt,......

We at the Gothamist network would like to express our heartfelt wishes to the people of Minnesota in the days after their tragic bridge collapse. We're not trying to discount the severity of the accident by making note of it in opposition to our usual -Ist lightheartedness - we just wanted to take a moment and recognize those affected last week. After the Minneapolis bridge collapse, Bostonist did a little research and found that Massachusetts......

This week ended with the launch of the seventh and final Harry Potter installation. But while the world was consumed with Pottermania, it's important to remember that there were more serious things going on in the world, too - two of them in -Ist cities. Sampaist was shocked when a passenger jet crashed into the center of Sao Paulo, killing at least 200 people. The airplane, an Airbus A320, skidded off the runway at the......

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Halberstam died yesterday in a car crash in Menlo Park, CA. He was 73. Halberstam’s work as a journalist ranges wide and delves deep. He covered the Korean War, the Vietnam War and civil rights but he was also fascinated with the humanity and spectacle of sports. He did not simply document the history he lived through – he explained complex societal constructs and cultural shifts in a way that anyone......

Spring appears to have, er, sprung, at least temporarily, in most of the Ist-i-verse, so naturally, we're all feeling pretty good. (Yes, we know that spring doesn't officially start till later this month. Just let us enjoy our weather!) And that makes us that much more eager to share all of the nifty things we're up to... Over at Sampaist, spring has more than sprung: it's sweltering! But, as everyone knows, museums are an......

George Takei 1, Tim Hardaway 0 - See video. Suns 115, Clippers 90 - Both teams entered the game with some injury concerns and a three game loosing streak. Both teams saw an injured star return. Only Phoenix ended their loosing streak. Two-time league MVP Steve Nash returned from shoulder trouble to record a double-double, including 8 points and 7 assists in just the first quarter. The game was never in doubt, with Phoenix......

#63 Two-time NASCAR champ pulled out his dipstick and peed on a car in a Daytona Beach parking garage - Local 6 #64 Four men are using submachine guns to hold up check cashing locales in Orlando - Local 6 #65 Family on a plane trying to leave Florida to get back home to Massachusetts is kicked off the plane because their 3 yr old is crying too much - ABC #66 Cocoa Beach......

If you have followed the Brookers phenomenon, then you know LonelyGrl15 was truly a fifteen minutes of fame moment. Brooke Allison Brodack, who takes on the YouTube sobriquet of Brookers, is the maniacal 20 year-old girl from Massachusetts who is known as the first person to be discovered through YouTube. Carson Daly gave her an 18-month development contract in June for Its Your Show. The above video shows Brookers coming to LA, but really doesn't......

LAist is on a road trip around the country. So far we've made it across the country. We write you tonight from the most eastern part of the USA, Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Today we woke up in Pittsfield, then we drove to Emily Dickinson's house, then we took in baseball game at Fenway Park, and then we got lost out on the Cape. The big difference that we've noticed about Mass and LA, today,......

Rare that the 4:20 Video Time finds itself being political, but thats what we get for reading Metafilter after a late lunch. Today they found a story about a Massachusetts teenager who sold the equivalent of a joint's amount of weed to an undercover cop. His punishment: two years in jail. He never had a criminal record, and never even thrown a beer at at basketball player who was laying on a scorer's table.......

by Jen Collins, aka Kitty Bukkake Lately all I really want to do is watch DVDs, and right now I'm living on "The Shield." Maybe you've watched it too--it's a cop show set here in Los Angeles, somewhat based on the Rampart scandal, and stars Michael Chiklis, whom I immediately took a shine to because despite playing an LA cop, he retains the lingering brogue of a former Masshole like myself--he's from Lowell, Massachusetts.......

natural/national - The Daily News reports on another Exposition Park tenant speaking out against an NFL team (possibly) moving in next door at the Coliseum. The funny thing: they say the protestor is the National History Museum. But they mean the museum with all the taxidermied animals and dinosaur skeletons. Oops. Natural History. another body? - Investigators believe there may be another death tied to the two little old ladies who made a habit......

Three years ago, Jim Brown and his wife Michelle Gringeri-Brown decided their love of mid-century ranch homes was too much to keep to themselves. With years of experience in publishing, they founded Atomic Ranch, a glossy, independent magazine that's as gorgeously photographed as the high-end home and design magazines from New York. But Atomic Ranch is from South Pasadena, and instead of focusing on "starchitect" homes features houses that are just as striking without......

Houstonist reports on cross-dressing thieves and undressing educators this week. A Peeping Tom defends himself with a papaya and an outraged onlooker asks Ken Lay, "TATER TOTS OR FRIES?" Also, FEMA wants it's money back. LAist are a big bunch of geeks. We're Star Trek geeks, David Duchovny geeks and Frank Gehry geeks. During their Coachella preview our readers reveal themselves to be Depeche Mode geeks. Seattlest saw their basketball team preparing to leave for......

Southern California is so big that it's easy to lose sight of all its treasures, especially living ones. In our myopia, we tend to think that most writers identified with our region all live west of I-15 and south of I-405. Novelist Susan Straight challenges that presumption just as her work challenges so many other notions about race, class and Californian culture. A lifelong resident of Riverside, Susan has authored five novels, including "Highwire......

George Bush held a press conference this morning to explain why he's cool with the NSA reading e-mails and tapping phones of Americans. Without warrants. If you guessed terrorism, you're right. If you guessed he'd say "Saddam" when he meant "Osama bin Laden," you'd also be right. Avowedly left-contrarian Martini Republic has pulled some choice quotes. The "Patriot" Act, which among other things made it really easy for the government to spy on you......

The following Southern California scientists and policymakers, including Former First Lady Nancy Reagan, are among those listed in the third annual Scientific American 50 Awards. The magazine's Board of Editors has compiled a diverse list of those who during 2003-2004 exhibited outstanding technology leadership in the realms of research, business and policymaking. A complete list of winners is located here. AEROSPACE Jet Propulsion Laboratory Pasadena, Calif. Demonstrated the power of robots to explore the......