Being still somewhat youngish, there are few people that I open up to on the Obit page that have impacted my life greatly (except maybe musicians and TV actors from the 70's). Seriously, all of the great movers and shakers out there, industrialists, world leaders, inventors, Nobel Prize winners, I feel little connection to. Yesterday, when a friend told me that Gary Gygax had passed, the high school, geeky girl in me felt the end......

Drinks with Digital LA tonight at Bodega Bar in Santa Monica (and yes, this is not the Bodega bar) / Photo by C-Monster via LAist's photo pool. FILM I am so scaaared. Writer/director Eli Roth (Hostel) continues his reign at the New Beverly in “The Greats of Roth” series. Tonight, he’s screening the double-feature of The Blair Witch Project (1999) and Cannibal Holocaust (1980), an earlier film that deals with a missing documentary film......

Shepard Fairey (left) with Dericc Swinfard of Monster Media Inc. Swinfard printed and delivered the super-sized image pro bono. After discovering a massive Shepard Fairey-designed Obama print off Sunset yesterday, we went hunting for the background story, which led straight to the artist himself. The giant billboard (at 1331 W. Sunset) in question marks the location of Fairey's new HQ: Studio Number One with the soon-to-open Subliminal Projects gallery on the first floor. Shepard......

Los Angeles may have the largest populus, but within its history lurks several anomalies which defy the hustle and bustle of city life. Elizabeth Lake, located close to Palmdale in "north county" was once inhabited by one of these anomalies. It is said that the old lake, one of ten named Elizabeth in California, was created by the Devil who bestowed upon the waters one of his demonic pets, that being a diabolical beast. Sightings......

Reports of Bigfoot were sweeping across America by the late '50s, but what Charles Wetzel encountered on Saturday, November 1st, 1958 was unlike anything reported in the press. He was cruising in his 1952 Buick Super near Riverside, lending an ear to KFI Radio of Los Angeles, when he had to slow his car further to avoid water that had spilled across the road from the Santa Ana River. Suddenly, the radio began to crackle......

During 1985 in Riverside, huge and unusual footprints were found. The Press-Enterprise newspaper at the time ran an article on the findings claiming that the prints were made by Bigfoot. Five years later near Palm Springs campers were alarmed by a series of terriyfing screams, heavy breathing and the movement of something large outside their tent. In the morning large footprints were discovered leading away from the camp area and into the thicket. Legend......

Welcome to the bizarre world of 'Weird Los Angeles', where shaggy-haired man-beasts roam the back roads, eerie phantoms drift through the night and peculiar objects move silently across the zenith. We'll be taking you on a weekly tour of the cities anomalies, beginning with sightings of Bigfoot, where it seems reports date back to the 1970s. Two witnesses out hunting in the San Gabriel mountains observed an eight-feet tall hairy humanoid through their rifle......

As Cloverfield set a box office record for a January opening this holiday weekend, we Angelenos should be glad at the local economic boost, but we should also question if it could have been even more successful had the film been set in Los Angeles. Yes, the New York setting drew memories of 9/11 and classic monster movies, but Los Angeles is the city in which this monster would have done so much better......

Cisco Adler protégé and collaborator, Shwayze (seen to the left), is hitting up Redondo Beach tonight with his happier sounding indie hip-hop. He grew up in a trailer park... a trailer park in Malibu that is. “To me, it was the nicest trailer of all time," the 22-year-old musician says. He and Adler play at the Venezia Italian Grill and you can start your night in Malibu, riding the bus down with the gang (RSVPs......

Now that the rain has gone away, Spaceland on Ice can continue this week with The Chapin Sisters and their folk/pop. Meanwhile, at Spaceland itself, The Airborne Toxic Event continues their residency tonight with The Morning Benders, The Weather Underground. ALSO TONIGHT Mike Watt and the Missing Men, Monster Cock Rally @ The Prospector Birds & Batteries, The Karabal Nightlife, The Lonelyhearts @ The Fold/Silverlake Lounge Ollin, Omar Torres, La Verdad @ Temple Bar Six......

Rain, rain, don't go away, don't come again another day! Wet weather is on its way. And not a moment too soon for some portions of the city. A lack of water in the Valley might slow growth: "West San Fernando Valley Councilman Dennis Zine said he called for the mandatory water conservation in new development after Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's plea for voluntary water saving was largely ignored by Angelenos." You know all that......

ART PARTY Gallery W13's Rebirth of Green/Pre-New Year’s Eve Art Party "will be a celebration of healthy living with nature and a tribute to the resurgence of all things organic. The focus of the evening will be all things creative -- art, film, furniture, music and food -- presented with organic and green flair." The night includes a film screening of Black Gold, a live Latin Jazz/World Beat DJ, and featured artists include Nurha De......

It's sexy, it's sacrilegious, it's scandalous, and it's just in time for Christmas. LA's hottest art curator Lenora Claire has done it again with a new collection of saucy art pieces guaranteed to get folks hot and bothered. Mixing Christmas themes with ample female breasts and featuring the work of Austin Young, Kitten Natividad, Buff Monster, and our fave the Gay Bigfoot, among others, Claire chose not to rest on her laurels of the......

And in case you haven’t heard, Roky walks among us this weekend. Tonight at 7:30 he's signing books and introducing a showing of his “all time favorite horror movie”, The Creature With The Atom Brain, at the Silent Movie Theater, and playing with his latest crew Evilhook Wildlife ET on Sunday night at the El Rey. Your Pre-Halloween weekend just got creepier, in person. We haven’t had a visit from this fellow since 1980, and the one before that was around 1966, so avoid him at your extreme peril....

As firefighters sought to contain the smoldering remains of California, officials are keying in on how the fires started. One of the largest fires, the Santiago fire that burned 22,000 acres was, reportedly set by an arsonist. President Bush toured parts of California and declared, "We're not going to forget you in Washington D.C." I guess he didn't visit any poor children. There's at least one good story to come out of this tragedy.......

Saturday night the Copro Nason gallery hosted the Talking Board exhibit (more popularly known as Ouija boards - how do I do the little TM trademark symbol on this keyboard?). The show was held in Bergamot Station, a really cool grouping of galleries in Santa Monica, known for great art spaces (and great parties). The talking boards were unbelievable, even down to the creative pointers, which ran the gamut from a crow skull to......

Transformers would have been perfect as a 20-minute demo reel for ILM. Instead, it's a long, dull live-action cartoon. And I still don't understand all the fuss about Shia LaBeouf. He's good. Not amazing. Good. No one saw A Mighty Heart at the theater, but it's worth a rental. Angelina Jolie the Actress has been replaced by Angelina the Star, but she doesn't get in the way of a gripping, horrifying story. No one......

Awesome fonts to use for your upcoming Halloween party....

Bands, Food, Carnival, Rides, Animals, Shopping, an Indoor Snow Park, Monster Trucks, Freestyle Motocross, and a Demolition Derby. Everything you would expect at a County Fair. The Carnival has the usual assortment of rides, games, and carnies. There are air conditioned shopping areas with over 2,000 vendors, a 4H style animal area with petting zoo, cows, and some bulls with 4' horns. When you get hungry you can get some over priced bottles of water......

Local photographer Hal Bergman was out taking pictures in Downtown this weekend when he and his roommate spotted a dumpster overflowing with fortune cookies. "I put them on Flickr to show friends as kind of a 'ha ha, look what we found in an alley'." Bergman told LAist. Little did he know that putting his pics online would end up with his discovery being sent around the world via the web thanks to a......

The way I see it, documentaries succeed in one of two ways. The first: deal with a terrifying, real subject matter ("One Day in September", "Jesus Camp"). Express it in a matter-of-fact way that both frightens and informs the viewer. The second: Find a genre/subject that is so outlandish ("American Movie", "Spellbound") that all you need to do is turn on the camera and capture the unintentional hilarity. The hitch is, you need to......

The double-header of Redd Kross and Sonic Youth completely blew my mind Friday night at the Greek. I had fantastic tickets (because my husband's online kung fu is the best), a photo pass (Thanks to the kind people at Nederlander Productions) and I was even on the list for the after-party (Thanks to Saccharine Trust and Dave Markey). I have seen Sonic Youth a number of times, starting with the Gila Monster Festival in 1984,......

Last week I saw Monster of Happiness, a multi-media staging of philosophy, enviable costumes, and gracefully mechanistic dances, all wrapped-up in a primitively-futuristic limbo. But seeing Tina Kronis and Richard Alger do their thing just once was not enough to sate my inner-thinker. So I’m going again in hopes that my Kino-eyed eyes will be able to absorb enough of their happiness-protocol to pull me out of my George-Bush-is-gonna-get-us-all-killed kinda blues. Monster of Happiness......

Shredding ensued at last night’s LA regional competition of the US Air Guitar Championships at the Key Club in West Hollywood. 16 air shredders competed to represent L.A. in the US Championships in NYC on August 16, and a possible chance to represent the US at the world championships in Finland. The evening was emceed by the now retired Bjorn Turoque , the author of “To Air is Human.” He opened the show with......

A CG rat, a couple documentaries, John McClane and a Swiss genius...should make for an interesting weekend in the theaters. Be sure to also check LAist's LA Film Festival coverage for some other gems playing around town this weekend. Ratatouille - As far as I'm concerned, Pixar has yet to put out a bad film. Some of my friends argue that "Cars" was a glorified NASCAR commercial and "The Incredibles" lacked originality (just like......

Smoosh was at the Troubadour with Monster Bobby last night in support of the Pipettes. Sadly, LAist was across town at the Juliette Lewis and the Licks show at Spaceland so we don't have any reports as to how the show was in WeHo. And looking at Koga's flickr photos, it doesn't look like the Pipettes let him take any pictures - which is odd because the Pipettes are extremely easy on the eyes......

The best part about national holidays that fall on a Monday is hi it's already Tuesday. Which means all the radio stations are playing two-fers, and when you kiss a pretty girl goodnight tonight you can say hey what about a twofer. Since it's now technically Tuesday we are very happy to present to you a Monster Squad two-fer. Not much is known about this new LA band other than they don't believe that......

LOST fans track down LA Times issue from Wednesday's season finale Man in ice cream truck arrested for selling pot-cicles in Texas Fire at a two story strip-mall in Chatsworth causes a quarter million in damage Murder suspect of 9/11 hero kills himself in San Bernadino Charges will not be filed against actor Ryan O'Neal for the Feb. 3rd brawl Carol Burnett's lawsuit against 20th Century Fox over Family Guy parody of Charwoman is......

Jack Valenti dies. Does this mean the end of those annoying 'downloading movies is like stealing your grandmother's purse' previews before every dvd ever made? - Bloomberg Eve crashes her gold Maserati on Hollywood Blvd. - TMZ Sexual battery charge filed in Los Angeles against ’Girls Gone Wild’ founder Joe Francis. Look out for 'Some Dude Goes Wild on Joe Francis' on dvd, real soon. - Boston Herald Dad who was released from prison......

You might recall a few weeks ago we mentioned that our fearless leader was about to have a sit down with MusicPlus TV's super sexy Jenn Sherry? Well the I's have been dotted and the T's have been crossed and we can now show you the slightly edited meeting between the two music buffs. Join us as we watch a a tape from "Strictly Live" where Sherry and Pierce discuss their picks at Coachella......