As the Kings started their just completed road trip with a Sutter Brothers showdown, they started their four-game home stand with a rematch. While the first matchup was a 4-1 victory for the Kings up in the wasteland of Calgary last week, the rematch was less than inspiring as the Kings lost 2-1 in a shootout. more ›

We will face another weekend with precious little new TV, particularly on Saturday. --- NBC has hired former NPR chief, thankfully not to create new TV shows. --- "Men of a Certain Age" premiere was inspired and awesome but more people need to watch it. --- All this and the TV Junkie Must-Watch Plan. more ›

Just a day after NPR CEO Vivian Schiller was forced to resign following the release of a hidden camera video, James O'Keefe released a second video targeting Betsy Liley, NPR's Senior Director of Institutional Giving. In the 44-minute video below, Liley discusses the details of a potential $5 million gift with O'Keefe operative Simon Templar, who claims to represent a fake Muslim charity. more ›

NPR announced this morning that CEO Vivian Schiller has resigned effective immediately, in the aftermath of recently departed NPR executive Ron Schiller's (no relation) delivery of a big boner to the right blogosphere and Tea Party bandwagoneers via hidden camera. more ›

NPR's "All Things Considered" profiled the East L.A. community of Ramon Gardens yesterday, shining a spotlight on the city's oldest housing project's lack of food options. Unlike in South L.A., where civic leaders are trying to tame the omnipresent fast food beast and lure in grocers, this community doesn't even have a bunch of lousy liquor stores or burger stands. more ›

Heather Havrilesky, former Salon.com TV critic, has written a memoir Disaster Preparedness. The LA resident chronicles growing up in Durham, North Carolina in the 70s with a pensive and independent mother and an adventurer father with touches of both humor and bitterness. Havrilesky is doing a reading and signing of the book tonight at 7 pm at Vroman’s Bookstore in Pasadena. more ›

This weekend will again be a tussle between sports programming and other TV, particularly the baseball division championship games which have been in the top 5 in terms o ratings. Saturday is again a wasteland with merely Sundance's "Iconoclasts" and NBC's "SNL" (Emma Stone (who?), Kings of Leon) making it onto our radar. more ›

They call themselves the "Oldest in Hollywood"--restaurant, that is. The Musso & Frank Grill has been celebrating their 90-plus years now of serving folks martinis and steaks in their iconic dim, clubby interior located right in the heart of mean-ol' Hollywood Boulevard. more ›

"Sesame Street" is about to enter its 40th season and it's making us feel, well, all of our own 40 years. As a little TV Junkie we were plunked down in front of that show as soon as we could sit up and the power of this incredible show has stayed with us all these years. Characters from the show will be popping up all over the place this week, including co-hosting "Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader?" on Monday, November 9th. more ›

Chatsworth is Los Angeles. San Fernando is not. Hollywood is Los Angeles. West Hollywood is Not. Venice is Los Angeles. Marina del Rey is not. Studio City is Los Angeles. Culver City is not. Yesterday, NPR's All Things Considered decided to inform listeners about their NPR West studio's location, interviewing the very proud Andrew Weissman, mayor of Culver City more ›

NPR's Ben Bergman did a ride along with one of the fifteen Department of Water and Power's Water Cops, who patrol and respond to complaints about water wasting. It's not like riding along with a police officer, he rode with a city employee in a Toyota Prius, whose job is about trying to educate before writing citations as high as $600. more ›

Last night, NPR's Hidden Kitchens mavens, the Kitchen Sisters, brought in a full house at the California Endowment for a talk exploring the way a desire to better our lives can bring people together and inspire tremendous change, as part of an evening called "Who Glues Your Community Together through Food?" more ›

On Monday, NPR began a three-day series covering Skid Row. In Part 1, they discussed the history of Skid Row, the missions and how for some, "Skid Row is for beginnings". more ›

"People have imagined that if we stopped emitting carbon dioxide that the climate would go back to normal in 100 years or 200 years. What we're showing here is that's not right. It's essentially an irreversible change that will last for more than a thousand years," said Susan Solomon, one of the world's top climate scientists, to NPR this week. Today, KCRW's To The Point looked into the issue further, even bringing up population problems as a contributor to causing the global climate change. more ›

The Los Angeles Fire Department keeps on garnering national attention for their use of web 2.0 and social media technologies to communicate information to the public. Last month, it was Wired. This week it was a five-minute spot on National Public Radio's Day to Day: more ›

Now that the Tribune company has filed for bankruptcy, and the L.A. Times has cut its staff to the bone, it's no wonder that they don't have enough staff to keep up with the fast-paced dynamics of news on the Web. So yesterday, when NPR West had its own bloodletting, the city's paper of record unfortunately had some trouble keeping up. Check out the above photo and read the caption. We're pretty sure that isn't Renee Montagne. (Note to LATimes.com: You can edit photos at picnik.com -- for free.) more ›

National Public Radio is cutting two daily shows and the majority of its Culver City-based NPR West staff as part of companywide layoffs and program cuts announced today. more ›

LAist catches up with Michael J. Nelson, a former host of Mystery Science Theater 3000, as he talks about his latest project, RiffTrax. In the interview, he also gives us the scoop about political ads, bloopers and a possible live event in Los Angeles. more ›

Last Friday when A-Trak and Kid Sister played at New York City's Natural History Museum, Kanye West made a surprise visit. Neither Flavorpill or the Natural History Museum list Kanye for tonight's version of the NYC event, First Friday, but rumors are afloat, as they're bound to happen. Nevertheless, the evening looks to be killer anyway. more ›

In my scouring for good things to read online, I've stumbled across (not actually Upon) a new favorite. Carrie Brownstein, former guitarist of one of my favorite bands, Sleater-Kinney, now writes for NPR's much commented-on new music blog, in a section called "Monitor Mix". She gets about 50 comments per post, no doubt partly due to her fame, but her writing is also really good in its own right. I've already discovered a couple new bands I like through Carrie, and identified with her on many occasions, in her musings on the new year, the use of theme songs by politicians - "It is noteworthy that U2's ubiquity has transformed their songs into ones that are both non-partisan and non-threatening, which at least in the aforementioned contexts skirts a little close to non-music" - musical pet peeves, and comments on where the music industry stands today versus earlier days. If you're not already a reader, check it out. more ›

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. more ›

• Update on why Ventura Blvd. in Studio City was shut down this afternoon by the LAPD: according to the North Hollywood Police Division, the shooting took place at De Soto Ave and Gresham St. in Chatsworth. Later, the suspect's car was found at the Studio City 7-11, prompting the LAPD shut down the area to search (hence all the helicopters). The suspect was later found in the city of Fontana and was arrested without incident. That is what we call a BUSY DAY.
• And this is what happens when you build a bunch of new condos and raise all the rents: North Hollywood is making an effort to preserve its Arts District by making sure all the artists don't move out.
• Man, Dov Charney's all up in my ass crack! Er, I should say, these American Apparel brand thong underpants are really giving me a wedgie-ache -- maybe Charney should put his ass-cheeks in another man's underpants before he gets his skinny butt sued from here to Downtown.
• Speaking of underpants, there's a Panty Thief on the loose in Palm Springs!! "'He cleaned me out of my Hustler line, all my crotchless panties, g-strings, corsets and bustiers and costumes,' said Bonnie Reiss, owner of Sensuality, A Store for Her."
• What issues are important to the African-American LGBT community this election season? NPR goes to Los Angeles to talk with local bloggers and find out.
• John Edwards hit up Los Angeles today on his campaign tour, where he spoke to a local union, while Hillary Clinton went to church in Compton.
• Apple users are full of themselves: file this in Tell Me Something I Don't Know. They also tend to throw around words like "intuitive" and "aesthetics" when referring to their computers; I throw around words like "douchebag" and "I hate you, you stupid elitist posers!"*
• The AP has written Britney's obituary already.
• Spiderman and Mary Jane broke up! Is Wonder Woman single?

Photo by Tom Andrews via the LAist Featured Photos pool on Flickr
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So The Colber(t) Repor(t) and The Daily Show are back and while Colbert, Stewart, Kimmel, and Conan are all nimble on their feet, and very funny and engaging, it's amazing how the success of all these shows really comes down to the writing. It's great to have them all back on the air and it does provide us all with some late night alternatives, but I hope NBC, ABC, and Viacom come to their senses and end this. The ball is in their court. more ›

It's been 130 years since the Supreme Court has heard direct arguments about the method of execution -- back then, it was the firing squad. Today, it'll be on a Kentucky case; Kentucky, like California and 35 other states, uses lethal injection. more ›

There are two media stories in January's Los Angeles Magazine that everyone should read. One is about the Santa Barbara News-Press debacle. The other is a little closer to home -- a profile on Jill Leovy of the LA Times' The Homicide Report (subsequently, NPR interviewed Leovy on The Bryant Park Project). more ›

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This morning on NPR's Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me!, outed CIA Agent Valerie Plame Wilson played a game called "You're a Blond Bombshell Who'll Do Anything For Attention." The focus of the three questions was LA's own billboard celebrity, Angelyne. Wilson failed miserably, as a CIA agent probably should, but how will you do? Answers after the jump... more ›

Yvonne Braithwaite-Burke doesn't trust you to pay your Metro fare; NPR reports on moves to make Metro's honor system history. more ›

Jack White discussed this bonus re-working of the Patti Page classic on NPR's Morning Edition:

For the new B-sides, The White Stripes teamed up with Beck and recorded in his Los Angeles home studio. more ›