Ryan Adams sucks and Matt Costa is all the way in Long Beach, so if there's anything worth checking out tonight that you probably haven't done, then it's some salsa dancing in Studio City with Johnny Polanco (pictured right). His band has "contagious Latin Music that is truly appreciated by the dancing connoisseurs." Rock. Johnny Polanco y Su Conjunto Amistad @ Mama Juana's Bone Thugs-N-Harmony @ Crash Mansion Poison the Well, The Locust, Dance Gavin......

Monday Maggie Nelson presents The Red Parts: A Memoir 7pm @ Pomona College, Claremont Rich Eisen presents Total Access 7pm @ Book Soup Sue Grafton signs T is for Trespass 7:30pm @ Barnes & Noble, 3rd Street Promenade Tuesday Sue Grafton signs T is for Trespass 6pm @ Vroman's Steve Schapiro presents Schapiro's Heroes 7pm @ Book Soup Christine Pelosi presents Campaign Book Camp 7pm @ Book Soup Deborah Landis presents Dressed: A Century......

The Format, She Doesn't Get It First Annual Sunset Strip Music Festival - James Brown's band joined by special guests and fronted by stars like Dave Navarro, Jerry Cantrell, Mellow Man Ace, B-Real & Sen Dog, Vayden, Kings of Spain, Queen V, Kingbaby, others @ The Whiskey They pretty much had our favorite album of last year, they're great live, and they pretty much rule the galaxy, and they're playing at a beautiful theater......

We were going in to work this morning, endangering ourselves and others by trying to find something good to listen on the radio rather than watching the road (hey, at least we weren't on the phone), when it hit us as it has hit us so many times before: LA radio sucks. Not all LA radio sucks, of course. We were very pleasantly surprised to hear, "You mean Bang The Drum Slowly? Bull Durham?"......

Last night, while the rest of you were resting up for Hollywood's onanistic ode to itself (aka The Golden Globes), LAist was getting some culture in the form of David Foster Wallace, who read from his new collection of essays, Consider the Lobster at the Hammer Museum in Westwood. Amid college cuties and L.A.'s limited literati, the long-maned California transplant (he teaches at Pomona College) read an essay on his September 11th experience called......

LAist is shocked and saddened that no Southern California school made the cut for the Princeton Review's Top Ten Party School List in its annual survey of American college life. C'mon USC, we thought you were the best at everything. Luckily, Pomona College didn't let us down. It topped the list of happiest students.......