As we reported earlier, the two-month Writers Guild of America strike is nearly over. WGA-East members voted heard about the proposal earlier and West members weighed in at 7 p.m. Some are already questioning the deal, but most expressed relief that the work stoppage is about to come to an end. Stay tuned to LAist for excellent coverage. A man was shot this morning in North Hollywood by an alleged gang member who approached......

Taste-Buzz will fill you with ramen cravings in this post on Asa Ramen in Gardena. Rameniac (noodle porn!) is also on the scene. More and more, it seems like the real culinary finds in this region are in the cities surrounding central L.A. Is Whole Foods (Whole Paycheck) a necessary evil for those seeking high-quality, low-impact organic food? Or is the company less interested in ethical consumption and more involved in "creating a retail......

While it is hard for most to understand or imagine, once you have become entrenched in the archipelagic enclave of skyscrapers and bona fide mass transit that is Manhattan Island, it is difficult to leave. For a New Yorker, geographic displacement can fester into a self-induced internalized affront (even if just for a few short days). But the compelling lure of a free trip to Los Angeles to accompany my aunt on a business trip......

Nick Hogan has been criminally charged with reckless driving because he was drinking before his August car crash. Another faux- celeb headed to the clink? - TMZ Bitch Fight! George Clooney and Fabio get into a physical fight after Fabio's ladies were taking pics of Clooney and his gf at El Coyote restaurant - Defamer Britney Spears's nearest and dearest, the few that are left, claim its not drug use thats causing her irrational......

A review of Adrian Tomine's new graphic novel, Shortcomings....

Gothamist learned about the craziest urban nightmare come true: A huge python found in the bathroom pipes. It was also a nightmare for some Yankees fans, as manger Joe Torre declined to come back and manage the Bronx Bombers. At least the city's attempt to give some direction to subway riders was interesting, pranksters went shirtless at the Fifth Avenue Abercrombie & Fitch and the I Heart Brooklyn Girls calendars came out. And just......

Come out to the L.A. Music Center Plaza Wednesday night and see beauty under the stars! It’s a school night? You have to work early the next day? Phooey! TRUST ME ON THIS…you’ll want to make an exception for this special evening. David Michalek’s Slow Dancing is an outdoor exhibit of video portraits featuring the worlds leading dancers. Slowed down in “hyper slow motion”, the films projected on large 16-foot screens celebrate the grace......

The best plays and musicals are the ones that challenge, trasnport and entertain. If our senses, our norms our challenged when watching a show, or we are transported to another place and time where we can completely escape our current reality, or, at the very least, if we come away with a few well-earned laughs then the creators and actors have done their job. Following this line of logic, Q utterly failed. ...

Indiana Pacers star power forward Jermaine O'Neal wants to be traded to the Lakers. Bad. Even Southern California is starting to feel the pinch of congestion and overcrowding. Frustration with a lack of action at the federal level has prompted states to enact a raft of new immigration laws in the first 6 months of 2007 - more than twice the number that was passed during the same period last year. A North Hollywood......

It's been a busy summer for 'wild and crazy guy' Steve Martin. From writing a children's book with cartoonist Roz Chast, to finishing his memoir Born Standing Up, and getting ready for an August start date for filming the Pink Panther II, he found time to squeeze in a life changing event. After inviting Tom Hanks, Diane Keaton, Eugene Levy, Carl Reiner, Ricky Jay, and about seventy other friends for a party at his Los......

If you’ve missed all the bright orange book ads and have ducked all the media coverage (New York, The New Yorker, Vogue), you’re one of the few readers who hasn’t heard of The Manny, alleged to be this summer’s Devil Wears Prada: chick-lit for the beach, right-coast division. It’s a simple story: Glam Park Avenue working wife juggles her high-powered network news job, her sullen, money-obsessed lawyer husband, and three adorable children. She hires......

Cory Kennedy got bounced from Teddy's at the Roosevelt Hotel, thanks to Lindsay Lohan. Your fake ID didn't work because the bouncer looked a little closer this time because of Lindsay Lohan. According to the New York Times, “the door people everywhere in Hollywood are being really strict with IDs now... It’s changed since the Lindsay incident:” The incident, in which the actress Lindsay Lohan, 20, crashed her car in Hollywood and was arrested at......

The LA Times has nominated five books in each of nine different categories for the 2007 Los Angeles Times Book Prizes. In the weeks leading up to the Festival of Books where the winners will be announced, LAist will take a quick look at each category and will wax poetic on a few favorites (or least favorites) along the way. The Beautiful Fall is a nominee in Current Interest. In 1954, two fledgling fashion......

The LA Times has nominated five books in each of nine different categories for the 2007 Los Angeles Times Book Prizes. In the weeks leading up to the Festival of Books where the winners will be announced, LAist will take a quick look at each category and will wax poetic on a few favorites (or least favorites) along the way. The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast by Douglas Brinkley......

A Word or 47: Full disclosure - tonight I might watch the cultural trainwreck that is Idol and then it's on to Lost and then an evening culminating with LCD Soundsystem on Letterman, they will kick ass! And then, if I can find some Cialis, a bit of Tina Fey on Conan. Tonight - Wednesday - April 11th, 2007 Jericho/Criminal Minds/CSI: NY (CBS, 8-11:00 p.m.) From post-apocalypse to a dead New Yorker in medieval......

A Word Or 45 (or so): Fox has got it down, the top 5 most viewed programs on TV were on Fox, 3 were episodes of American Idol and the other 2 were Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader? Someone at Fox is smart enough to know that most American adult's aren't. Tonight - Wednesday - March 7th, 2007 Lakers @ Bucks (KCAL, 5:00 p.m.) Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon (TCM, 5:00......

The New Yorker's Jane Mayer looks inside the mind of Joel Surnow, co-creator and producer of "24," and at the goings on behind-the-scenes of his San Fernando Valley production shop and LApocalypse (relax... it's only TV) incubator. Whatever it takes, yo. Happy Friday!......

Thank God for the New York Times and its latest scintillating trend piece, which bravely goes out on a limb to inform readers that as crazy as it may sound, Koi and Republic aren’t the only two restaurants in Los Angeles. What? A New York publication writing arrogantly and stupidly about some aspect of Los Angeles culture? Stop the presses! In her New York Times regional trend essay Los Angeles: Where Stars Are in the......

Wednesday - Tonight Lakers @ Mavericks (ESPN, 6:30 p.m.) Jazz @ Clippers (PRIME, 7:30 p.m.) "King of Queens" (CBS, 8:00 p.m.) Double whammy - 2 new episodes. "The Next Top Model: British Invasion" (the CW, 8:00 p.m.) 2 Hour debut(!) "The Biggest Loser" (NBC, 8:00 p.m.) Season finale in mondo 2 hr. episode. "The Lost Room" (SciFi, 9:00 p.m.) Final episode of the miniseries. "One Punk Under God" (Sundance, 9:00 p.m.) If you pay......

Last night I had a dream I was walking on an empty freeway with a martini in one hand and a beedog in the other. Bathrobe clad with a cigarette dangling from my mouth like Valley of the Dolls meets The Color of Money, I flag down Mr. T, who is speeding by on a tractor while singing “Private Eyes,” by Hall and Oates. We exchange knock-knock jokes and arrive at an oceanfront condo......

When LAist thinks of John Lithgow and food, some kind of a shiny extra-terrestrial pear pops into our head. We suggest you put that image out of your mind, however, if you're so inclined to see the former "3rd Rock from the Sun" star read aloud short-stories — about food — at this weekend's Food Fictions! at the Getty Center (Friday- Sunday, May 19-21). He's one of several actors who will be orating culinary-inspired......

A newly-transplanted New Yorker is looking for LA's best sushi. Considering there are dozens, if not hundreds, of sushi places in LA, we wonder if maybe we should break it down. Where's the best place to get sushi that goes around on a conveyor belt? The best place for sashimi? The sushi place with the best lighting? The best sushi-to-go? The home of the biggest sushi abomination, like a Philly roll? What's your favorite......

LAist Editor-at-Large Jason Toney was among the fantastic Blogging While Black (Revisited) panelists at SXSW Interactive. In a conference that pays a lot of attention to tools, this was a rare, welcome session devoted to content. Hooray! LA bloggers Jason and Tony Pierce were engaging, funny, thoughtful and smart, and the rest of the panel (Lynne, Tiffany and George) were, too. Just don't say they were well-spoken, which is not the way to compliment a......

That forecast of "wacky weather" we mentioned in Thursday's Lunch News post was right on. Our blood has thinned and we are frigid sitting here in our sandals. Too bad for vacationers in Palm Springs. Last month, a New Yorker wrote in snow "It doesn't do this in LA," but Martini Republic compared 5 days of L.A. weather to NYC. Guess who won the cold war? One New York City transplant told LAist his......

Dane Davis won the Oscar for “Best Effects, Sound Effects Editing” for The Matrix. He’s also a photographer. Catch is his piece and other artists at LACDA on Gallery Row at the opening reception this Thursday from 7:00 to 9:00. The show will run until April 1. Also, Thursday on Gallery Row will be the monthly Downtown Art Walk that includes 20 art galleries. Take the self-guided tour, guided tour, or ride your bike......

David Brown, the former host of the public radio show Marketplace, was an avid Tab drinker. When he left the LA-based show for Texas, empty Tab cans were left with sad staff as personal momentos. Turns out his Tab habit wasn't an eccentricity: it was a journalistic tradition. The New Yorker wrote last month of an elite group of talented, powerful journalists who all cherished their low-cal pink '70s beverage. All of them were......

DCist helps us make more sense of the world this week. Posts like this concert review are the reason for Scott Stapp. DCist also enumerates the reasons for playing ultimate frisbee, Condi's tight buns, their love of a local convenience store, and their jealousy of a person in Seattle calling the city. We documented graf artist Banksy's most recent visit to LA in one two three posts. We also found the best possible use......

That there black goo bluging streets and seeping through manhole covers in downtown seems to be oil, indeed. Workers at a nearby oil well were flushing old lines with high-pressure water to get any last drops of oil out — and started wrecking havoc on Olive Street. And havoc continued online. It's craziness in LA blog world this week! Blogging.la redesigns, embracing gray! LA Voice re-appends, from .org to .com! What could be next?......

John Stewart recently called John Hodgman "very funny." That would be enough to keep us home playing the Daily Show video over and over, but it's not enough for Hodgman. He was center stage at the McSweeney's thing at REDCAT on Saturday and will be at Book Soup tonight. Because it's all about his book, The Areas of My Expertise, which includes the heretofore unknown Hobo Rebellion. Stewart says the book should not be......

Ever buy the New York Times in New York City? If you have, you know that the best section in the whole paper is actually the locals-only City Section. Its where the masters of 43rd Street put their youngest, hippest and usually most-talented writers. The City Section is the pitch perfect read for a New Yorker, because it practically defines the city. So what about for us in Los Angeles? Well, for one, we......