This is it! The weekend horror hounds have been waiting for all month - everyone & Bates' mother has a Halloween Event, all guaranteed to be a scream! Go old school with Noise-feratu, Downtown Independent & Summer Fun Time Society's live performance of ghoulish grandaddy Nosferatu, featuring hardcore bands Kill Kill Kill, 0rgan Music, 8-bit blooper WMX, and other artists so crazy they've been banned from the internet. more ›

Record shops and CD purveyors are going the way of the 8-track. Joining the now-defunct ranks of Aron's Records, Rhino Records and Tower on Sunset is the Virgin Megastore. The rent's too high (tell us something we don't know!) And maybe, the sluggish music sales don't help much, either. more ›

• Want a Wii this holiday season? Well toooooo fuckin bad. The best you can hope for is a rain check certificate that will entitle you to a console at some point in January. Even the Wii people themselves are now admitting what a mess they've made of manufacturing this thing.
• Two members of a terrorist cell have pleaded guilty to charges of conspiring to wage war: the splinter group was "was poised to attack military sites, synagogues and other targets" in Southern California. The two men face 20-25 years in prison.
• Oh noes! The hipsters will be so dry now! The DWP will be draining Elysian Park and Silver Lake reservoirs because of high levels of toxic chemicals in the water.
• Gas prices soar, consumer inflation also goes up: "Consumer Price Index rose 0.8 percent last month, the biggest one-month increase since a 1.2 percent surge in September 2005, when the country was hit by rising energy costs in the wake of Hurricane Katrina."
• It's the PLAGUE!!! Actually, no, it's just the flu, and a child in the Valley is the first to be diagnosed this season. Get your flu shots! Unless you're like me and treat every illness with a few stiff shots of whiskey.
• Rhino Records is open again! Not at their storied Westwood location (sniff sniff), but they're operating a "pop-up" store during the month of December only over at Third and Fairfax.
• A "guns-for-gifts" exchange will be held tomorrow in Compton: "People turning in a gun to sheriff's personnel will receive a $50 gift card to Best Buy, Home Depot, Ralphs or Target. $100 gift cards will be given for each of the first 50 guns turned in. About 400 guns were turned in at a similar exchange in 2005".
• Conan O'Brien and NBC are getting sued...by a bodybuilder...over a Clay Aiken gay joke. Do we live on the moon or something? Oh no, that's right -- Hollywood.
• Midnight Ridazz are doing an all-city Bring-A-Toy-For-Charity bike ride tonight. Check their website for details.

If one were to name an LA blogging power-couple, LAist would look no further than Franklin Avenue's Mike and Maria. more ›

In what could be the best cd in a long time, or the most laughable, Fox News is reporting that Esquire's Sexiest Woman Alive is negotiating with Rhino Records to record an album of Tom Waits covers. Scarlett Johansson, who earlier this month fell from a horse while filming "The Other Boleyn Girl" in England, is going to jump into the ring with the likes of Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, J-Lo, and Juliette Lewis... more ›

With all the hand-wringing over the closures of Aron's and Rhino Records, you might think any non-Amoeba record store in Los Angeles is doomed. But that would mean you've never visited Sea Level Records in Echo Park. Dedicated music fanatic Todd Clifford opened the store in December 2001, and it's survived ever since selling CDs, vinyl and the occasional art piece. Sea Level's speciality is indie rock and local music; it's got listening stations stocked with new CDs and frequent in-store performances (Hudson Bell and The Glass Family are next, on March 4 and 5). Of course, Sea Level is on MySpace; it also has a plain old website. In the offline world, it can be found at 1716 W. Sunset Blvd. in Echo Park. more ›

Join music fans from around the city in bidding a sad farewell to the Rhino Records Store in Westwood this weekend. After a couple of decades of selling records, then 8-tracks, cassettes and CDs, it will be shutting its doors; the very last parking lot sale is this Saturday and Sunday from 10am-4pm. That's at 2028 Westwood Blvd, in the parking lot. more ›

• At 7:30 PM, the Egyptian Theatre hosts the documentary Inside Deep Throat, produced by Brian Grazer and directed by Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato (Party Monster), exploring the historical and cultural legacy of Deep Throat. [17+] more ›

Today in the Daily Trojan there appeared the article "Record Penny-pinching," a profile of the best record stores in Los Angeles. While LAist can't fault the need for such a list—and the conclusion that Amoeba Music is the best in LA—there are some fairly notable omissions. more ›