Debris clutters the New York Street facade at the Universal Studios Hollywood back lot, Monday June 2, 2008, in the Universal City section of Los Angeles, a day after a fire destroyed the sets of iconic films. (AP Photo/Ric Francis) The fire at Universal Studios on Sunday that ripped through two "city blocks" was deemed an accident yesterday, but was not clarified until later. Now officials are saying a welders' blowtorch started the fire:......

Fire fighters examine the scene on the fire damaged lot of Universal Studios today (AP Photo/Nick Ut) The gates of Universal Studios opened back up today after yesterday's fire, which burned a two-block area of film sets for more than 12 hours. The incident forced them to close the doors for the day at the theme park and CityWalk. Areas destroyed or damaged included New York Street, a part of Back to the Future's......

The charred remains of structures on the Universal backlot are not too far from the Gibson Ampitheatre | AP Photo/Kevork Djansezian Universal Studios opened to the public early this afternoon, is expected to open tomorrow despite the blaze that destroyed portions of the local landmark and darkened the skies with thick smoke. With concern for the well-being of many iconic and well-known parts of the decades-old theme park on the forefront of many minds,......

July was a bittersweet month for LAist. We had a record-breaking month with nearly a million visitors coming to our humble site. Little did we know that some of the guests were big wigs from the venerable Los Angeles Times who left with two of our editors. Indeed, several weeks ago our Film Editor Elina Shatkin was snapped up from our midsts to become Content Producer for CalendarLive at LATimes.com, and yesterday our Sports......

Happy Father's Day! For those of you who have dads, are dads, or know dads, this one's for you, from all of us at the Gothamist network. It was a week of bizarre, embarassing headlines at DCist. The trial of the local administrative law judge who sued his cleaners for $54 million over a pair of missing pants left everyone shaking their heads. Then the capital city was nearly brought to its knees, twice, by......

Some people say that blogging on Sundays is worthless. Most of our favorite Gawker sites take the weekends off, for example, as do many of our favorite gossip blogs, as did the Lord. And even fewer people have any love for the old fashioned liveblogging, in all its nerdy glory. Two Sundays ago we were invited to liveblog the MTV Movie Awards. LAist Movie Editor Elina Shatkin did the majority of the liveblogging, and......

Holy smokes! Giant fish on the MTA, Paris Hilton in jail, then out, then in again, Al Gore, goatses, blumpkins, Matt Damon, and baby art critics! It's been a busy week across the Ist-A-Verse, and here's a smattering of what's been going on. In Gothamist's neck of the woods, they found out that many things are possible: A man caught a 40+ pound fish off the Rockaways and took it home on the subway. Graffiti......

While Paris might be getting her first full night of sleep in her West Hollywood digs, she won't be sleeping in tomorrow morning after gorging on cupcakes, as she has been ordered to go back to court tomorrow at 9 a.m. and face the judge who put her in the clink in the first place. Apparently, even though the Sheriffs department, can alter the terms of a prison sentence (as they did when they......

Last Sunday night, whilst many Angelenos were trying to make complete sentences out of what was left between all the bleeps heard during the MTV Movie Awards, I was down by the beach at the Loews Hotel in Santa Monica, checking out an event called "Dessert Decadence." Billed as a sunset poolside minglefest, the event featured neither a sunset (too overcast and ran from 5-8, just a bit too early) nor a poolside (we......

- Barack Obama says that blacks are pissed and there's a "quiet riot" brewing in LA and the rest of the country. Does that mean that the real trouble won't come for another 20 years when folks begin to finally "rage against the machine"? - AP - Although the adult video world generates about $12 billion nationally, Vivid Video co-partner David James says, "Very few people make over $150,000 in this industry" - Daily......

MTV to Bloggers: We sort of like you but not enough to give a shit about your coverage. LAist to MTV: We sort of like you but not enough to give a shit about your programming. When LAist was invited by MTV to live-blog the 2007 Movie Awards from an on-site "blogging tent," we asked ourselves one crucial question: is this going to be a cool opportunity to offer readers a unique perspective on the......

Jessica Alba and a whole lot of other people were at the MTV Movie Awards, but we can't remember them right now because Jessica Alba was there. Oh yeah Paris Hilton, Rhianna, Cam, Posh, and Jay-Z were there among others... and LAist photographer Joey Maloney got it all down for us. So join us after the jump for a sweet photo essay!......

7:13 - Saddest Realization of the Night: Although this was theoretically an awards show, it was in actuality a two-hour commercial for Transformers. I don't know how much of what happens on stage makes it to air, but the live feed in the Blogghetto was all Transformers, all the time. It's enough to make me hate the movie and hope it flops. Not that there's a chance of that happening. 7:10 - Best Moment......

6:51 - Some chick and some dude from The Hills grace us with their presence. Why are they here? Oh right, they're on a show that's on MTV. Notice the cross-promotion. Together, I will count them as 1 celebrity, and even that's stretching it. Total Number of Celebrities Who Have Visited the Blogghetto: 2. 6:49 - Johnny Depp wins Best Performance. Wearing a black blazer and jeans, he ascends the stage to a chorus......

6:36 - Total Number of Celebs Who Have Visited the Blogghetto: 1. 6:34 - Dane Cook visits us in the Blogghetto. Despite my lack of interest in his comedy, he seems like a laid back, personable dude. Even though I like capping on him, I really don't dislike him. He gamely answers questions, revealing why he won't be in the upcoming Transformers movie. "I know this is going to sound like complete balderdash," he......

LAist: hey take a picture of the Live Blogging Tent! Elina the LAist Live Blogger: OK, in this photo you'll see a blonde spiky haired dude, that is mk from popbytes. the girl in the blue t-shirt on his left is lisa from socialite life so there are no tables for you kids? and you're all watching it on tv from a tent? yes, there are both tables and chairs as well as couches.......

6:22 - It's your last chance to text in your vote for Best Movie. I know it hasn't even opened yet, but I bet that somehow Transformers will win. 6:21 - Mike Myers gets a well-deserved laugh after he thanks his parents for teaching him to "never sell out" and immediately follows it with a deliberately over-the-top promo for a Pontiac sedan. Plug away. 6:19 - "Shall I shag him now or shall I......

5:46 - Total number of celebs who have visited the Blogghetto: 0. 5:44 - It's time for the next movie spoof, something about the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. 5:41 - Sacha Baron Cohen (looking handsome as ever) berates Will Ferrelll for not calling him after their tender on-set moment in Talladega Nights. He pulls Will Ferrell in for a long, shameless lip-lock that leaves them both rolling on the floor like fictional teenagers in a......

5:30 - I can hear the press people and the MTV handlers trying to corral Jack Nicholson in the next tent over, which apparently isn't easy to do. We here in the Blogghetto have been promised by MTV that they will try to get as many celebs as possible in here. You know you're low on the totem pole when even Shia LaBeouf is too big to talk to you. 5:26 - Dane Cook......

5:09 - Cue Vegas-style dancers and an old people's choir singing songs that are deliberately bleeped out. 5:06 - Sarah on Paris Hilton: "To make Paris Hilton more comfortable in jail, I hear they're going to make the bars of her cell out of penises." Big laughs. "I just worry she'll snap her teeth." Even bigger laughs. Cut to a very unamused Paris Hilton. 5:05 - Sarah announces that Paris Hilton will soon be......

MTV, the network whose prescient forays into reality programming placed it in the vanguard of youth-oriented television, has decided that since this little ole thing called the Internet is catching on big with the kids, the way to capitalize on the immediacy of Web 2.0 is to brodacast the annual Movie Awards* live and (more importantly) allow schlubs like me high-stakes online journalists to live blog the event. This means that you'll get to see......

We've suckered another organization to take us seriously and now MTV has not only credentialed LAist on the red carpet during Sunday's Movie Awards up in Universal City, but they have set up a one-of-a-kind Live Blogging Tent for a hand-selected group of folk like us. The key word is live. This is the first year MTV is broadcasting this awards show live, which is one reason there will be just two musical acts.......

LAist is starting to get sick and tired of lambasting the variety of award ceremonies (People's Choice, Golden Globes, SAG, Producer's Guild, Writer's Guild, DGA Awards, Academy Awards, MTV Movie Awards, Kids Choice Awards, etc) for being too numerous and of possessing so little entertainment value. Seriously, we are. We're tired of the humbuggery. And just about the point in time we were getting tired of that, a brand new category of award ceremonies......