And then there were two. Tonight in Los Angeles, Democratic presidential contenders Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton will pontificate, bicker, wax poetic, and throw things at each other. The debate is sponsored by the LA Times, Politico.com, and CNN, and moderated by Wolf "Hack" Blitzer. The "show" begins at 5pm PST. Edwards will be strongly missed, as he suspended his campaign for presidency yesterday. Since he won't be present at the debate, here's the video......

Mayor Tony calls the federal government's failure to address issues such as poverty, housing, and infrastructure "absolutely criminal" in this short video interview produced by The Nation and The Drum Major Institute.......

The first time I was in Compton, I didn't even know it until later when I was at a restaurant looking at the menu and noticed the address. It appeared the world's stereotype was wrong, maybe gone or I just happened to be in the "right" part of town. "Compton is beautiful, there are horse ranches there," a co-worker who grew up there told me at a previous job a few years before my......

The LA Times is reporting today that the city has a near $77.5 million unspent in Quimby fees that it has been collected from developers for park space and improvements. The fees, from the California 1975 Quimby Act (not that quimby folks), require developers to help mitigate the impacts of property improvements and new development by paying a fee that goes into a city parks department fund or set aside land on the development.The......

"Constance" by Mr. J. Medeiros of Echo Park Being stuck on the Hollywood Freeway during rush hour, trapped in a metallic expanse of automobiles, counting the minutes of your life that you will never get back on the dashboard clock is a nasty predicament to be in...But that isn't the kind of traffic I'm talking about here. I'm talking about the human traffic -- the trafficking of people. Human cargo. Coerced labor. The exploited......

The Idiot Box portrays the structural demise of a group of Friends-esque roommates living in an alternate realm of televised situational comedy (complete with predictable jokes, stereotypes, accepted sexism, and laugh tracks) that slowly collapses under the weight of the crude reality of the modern human condition. This Open Fist Theatre production has all of the traditional markers of a really good drama: Michael Elyanow's new play is a carefully crafted quagmire of complex, yet......

If there's one thing I hate more than the MSM's obsessive coverage of the presidential campaigns, it's the gross fickleness and inanity inherent in the coverage itself. Given that the next president will need to tackle a whole host of weighty issues immediately upon taking office — global warming, the Iraq war, healthcare and the deficit, just to name a few — you might think the press would be busy providing in-depth and insightful......

Writer Ray Bradbury may be 87, but his mind and sense of humor are as agile as ever. LAist joined his diehard fans and other audience members for an evening with Bradbury live at the Fremont Centre Theatre in South Pasadena on Friday night. The author of American classics – Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles etc. – took the stage and talked for nearly an hour and a half on his love life. Using......

Here are the five productions opening this weekend that are currently piquing LAist’s interest: 7 Glimpses of Utopia Tonight only, the Skid Row-based theater group LAPD (Los Angeles Poverty Department) presents a picture of utopian possibilities in downtown L.A. LAPD'ers and others were asked to identify and invite someone they knew who was doing something "laudable, and important, something that represents the best of the current and future downtown." National Center for the Preservation......

At the height of the strange filmic subgenre affectionately known as the "Rupert Pupkin documentary," a genre popularized by American Movie and bowdlerized by Windy City Heat, sits the drunk, demented, one-legged granddaddy of them all: Dancing Outlaw. If you've never seen Dancing Outlaw, then stop right here. I don’t mean stop reading this review, I mean stop everything else you are doing in your life and get a hold of this movie immediately.......

But it was for a good cause, right? LAist watched the entire two hours of American Idol's telethon tonight, which was broadcast at both the regular Idol studios and the Walt Disney Concert Hall. And while we admire Ryan Seacrest and company for trying to do something good for kids living in poverty in both America and Africa (checkout myspace.com/idolgivesback or the Idol Gives Back page for ways to donate), we felt cheated and......

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. Whiteman by Tony D'Souza - D’Souza delivers a memorable journey of ideals, disillusionment and partial......

Recommended 13 Tzameti - French movie with an Eastern European sensibility about a young handyman who decides to follow instructions intended for the owner of the house he's repairing. He ends up in a remote house, where he is forced to take part in a brutal game of Russian Roulette in which only one of the 13 participants will survive. Bicycle Thieves - Criterion has released a DVD of Vittorio De Sica's 1947 classic......

#8 Woman pissed off that she got the wrong change sets an Orange County Walgreens on fire with her cigarette. Quoth store employee Harry Ambriose: "You see flames all over the store, smoke all over the store, it was crazy...I smelled smoke in the cooler and I was like, 'What's going on? What’s going on?' Ran out and I see big black smoke all over the store, black on the ceiling, black everywhere...She just......

- Not including our infamous gangs (why weren't they included? beats us) California is home to 52 hate groups, more than any other state. Suck it, Florida! - Southern Poverty Law Center - Man shot and killed in his parked car in Carson - CBS2 - Small plane crashes this afternoon in ocean near San Pedro, one dead - AP - Hello, Harley: You're more likely to die drowning than from a motorcycle accident.......

Despite claiming that he had nothing to do with the Spanish-language mailings that threatened immigrants with prison or deportation if they voted, the Orange County Republican party today asked Congressional candidate Tan Nguyen to quit running. Nguyen explained that he did something totally out of step with the Bush administration -- he fired a rogue staff member. "Evidently, an employee took it upon herself to allow our database to be used to send out......

The past is always present for Janet Klein. A devotee of early 20th century popular culture, Janet sings old hits on her ukulele and performs with her band "Janet Klein & Her Parlor Boys." Last year, they hosted a weekly show called "Janet Klein & Her Borscht Belt Babies," directed by Amit Itelmann, at the Steve Allen Theater. The show recreated a vaudeville show, featuring a variety of performances involving animal acts, speakers, singers and......

Clowns are scary. Especially in the parking lot of a shopping center in the suburbs as your mom waits in an SUV. But to countless kids who've seen some truly frightening things, clowns like the ones who comprise Clowns Without Borders are like drunken angels... saints, even, who put a smile on the faces of those who need it most. Tomorrow night City Council President Eric Garcetti will host an art opening + reception......

a debate falls in the forest Steve Westly and Phil Angelides tusseled in their final debate yesterday in San Francisco; they'll face off in the June 6 Democratic Primary. They're both pro-environment, pro-choice and anti-Arnold. In case you missed it, you can listen: the whole thing is archived at KPCC. when $60K not enough A new report from the Public Policy Institute of California says our state's cost of living has soared; we've gone......

Now everybody wants to be homeless. Pras Michel, the Grammy-winning Fugees collaborator, just spent 8 days sleeping on LA's mean streets. He was trying to live on $1 per day for a documentary about poverty, which he plans to screen at the Toronto Film Festival. Living on the streets wasn't easy, he told the New York Daily News: "The dollar a day didn't get me much at all. You have to hustle, steal, shoplift......

First and foremost, the Final Four battle is on today beginning at 3pm on CBS (pregame starts at 1:00). Keep an eye out for a little team called UCLA. Irvine plans to establish permanent low-cost housing with a land trust for affordable housing. With this model, public and foundation funds are used to buy the land and build homes; homebuyers own only the buildings and not the property. Home prices can be lower and......

The LA Weekly begins a series on water and LA's lust for H20 as the DWP contemplates a rate hike in July. And in fluffier news, for fashion week the paper's Steffie Nelson looks at age-appropriate fashion — including some very nice photos, thanks to the website's redesign — and concludes that even 40-year-olds can shop at Forever 21. A mystery in Long Beach: a deputy who was found dead on her way to......

Buck Owens, Bakersfield's favorite son, passed on yesterday at the age of 76. The Bakersfield Californian has a lengthy obit, including: Owens, born in near-poverty just south of the Texas-Oklahoma border and raised from the age of 8 in the Phoenix area, moved to Bakersfield at age 21, hoping to make it as a club musician. He died the multimillionaire king of a regional radio and media empire, renowned as one of country music’s......

NPR listeners this evening will be treated to a nice long interview with our own mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa. Overall, he was pretty good, talking about moving people out of poverty. We love it when politicians pay attention to real problems (it's so rare!) and when NPR got all tough-question-y, it sounded halfhearted. If we were his political advisors, we'd point out that he probably lost his audience when he slid into bureaucrat-speak, and that......

We half expected to trip over clatches of camera-burdened paparazzi lying in wait outside The Ivy's chaotic patio, or outside the beckoning glass doors of Kitson, but no such luck. In fact, aside from a couple of dour-faced town car chauffeurs and a whole lot of faces that had a whole lot of work done, our shopping excursion down the blocks of Robertson Boulevard between Third and Beverly was fairly uneventful. This little strip......

Everyone is talking about what may become the most important speech in George W. Bush's presidency. We've been struggling to find a local connection, but the truth is that this is a national story that significantly effects all of us. It is a speech most people on both sides of the political coin never thought Bush would make. An outright call for big government from a Republican President that, while short on specifics, is......

Was anyone else watching ABC7 News 11 PM broadcast last night? We're still pondering why --in a day involving 2 high speed police car chases, Anne Bancroft's death and the arrest of two California men with possible links to al-Qaida -- ABC producers decided the top story should be a report about local documentarians now missing in the Namibian desert. Perhaps ABC network told local affiliates to tailor their top news story to tie-in......

While the television press corps stormed town for the Winter TV Press Tour and the Golden Globes, another type of press convocation also transpired earlier this month. The Catholic News reports on the poverty tour of Los Angeles taken by religious writers on January 11th. As part of the annual observance of Poverty in America Awareness Month, Catholic Campaign for Human Development, the U.S. bishops' domestic anti-poverty program, sponsored the tour. The tour revealed......

Few people in Los Angeles are as plugged into the urban and cultural planning scenes and other fascinating areas of overlap as James Rojas. In addition to his 9-to-5 as a project manager at the MTA, James's irons in the fire include helming the Latino Urban Forum and lecturing on various planning and cultural issues at venues that range from the university to the community grass roots level. He's also co-owner of the Gallery......

There was a time when mankind was befuddled, confused, and lost. There was a time when human nature was stricken with grief, anguish, and misery. But 25 years ago, that all changed. 25 years ago, ESPN saved the day. Suddenly man discovered the cures for AIDS, cancer, and all other diseases which had harmed individuals on the planet for years. Suddenly, thanks to ESPN, the world was rid of poverty, strife, and hunger. When......