WINE TASTING Rock 'n Roll Wine brings exactly those two things at the Santa Monica Bar & Grille tonight. Vegas-based The Bends play live music while guests taste more than a dozen wines throughout the evening. No one will judge if you swallow it all and don’t spit – between wines. 7 pm // Santa Monica Bar and Grille // 3321 Pico Blvd., Los Angeles // $40 at the door. OPERA USC’s Thornton Opera......

We would like to take a moment to thank this week's advertisers on LAist. AMEX Urban Adventures, because big cities are full of little adventures. Park, the Movie, which is playing at Music Hall 3 starting today. Coasting.com by Shimano, where you can wander around aimlessly. Wristcutters, which is in theaters now. Busted Tees, where you can get free shipping with the purchase of three shirts! If you're interested in advertising on LAist or any......

Padres 3, Dodgers 2 - Jeff Kent drove home a run in the first and the third, helping Los Angeles jump out to a 2-0 lead against San Diego's Greg Maddux. Then Maddux started to pitch more like, well, Maddux. He retired the final 14 batters he faced and went home with the W against his old team (you may remember he wore blue, albeit briefly). Angels 3, White Sox 0 - Gary Matthews Jr.'s......

Not that we care what they think in Frisco but the SF Weekly (wait, we thought you weren't supposed to call it SF? hmmmm) named Honeycut the Best Soul/Funk Band in town. Well, this isn't your father's soul music. There's Garbage in there, some electronica... modern might be a good way to put it. Sorta sounds like Beck's forays into nu whiteboy funk which is dangerous because even Beck has failed in that world......

LAist and Goodbye Cruel Releasing want to send you to the movies this weekend. We've got tickets to Andrew Bujalski's "Mutual Appreciation" which is screening at Laemmle's Music Hall this weekend in Beverly Hills. All you have to do is fire off an email to info@mutualappreciation.com. 10 LAist readers will be contacted to let you know that you're on the list for any of the Friday - Sunday showings. For the exception of the......

Still no word on the future of Bart DeLorenzo's Evidence Room company, but an email on the sadly quiet company mailing list this week recommends two "ER-related offerings": actress Pamela Gordon's poignant last film, The Dogwalker, premiering tonight at the Laemmle Music Hall, and a new novel, The Glass Books Of The Dream Eaters, by ER playwright Gordon Dahlquist (Delirium Palace (2001), Messalina (2003)). DeLorenzo describes The Glass Books as "kind of a Victorian......

While The Other Venice Film Festival finishes up this weekend, three local film fests hit Los Angeles. Tonight through Sunday, Perspectives International Film Festival, at Laemmle's Music Hall 3, features films that challenge stereotypes of the lives of people with developmental disabilities. The Silver Lake Film Festival, in its 6th year, begins next Thursday. Joining them at the ArcLight, will be the Fringe Fest '06 & mp-4 Fest. But tonight at the ArcLight there......

It seems California has been in a constant state of administrative turmoil ever since Enron and their ilk conned and cajoled our legislature during Pete Wilson's term to reform and deregulate the energy laws that for over a century had protected California and guaranteed her thirst for power would be met. We have always suspected a dastardly engineered conspiracy conceived in the still-classified FERC meetings where both Rove and Enron exec Ken Lay plotted......