Are you a rice hoarder? Not anymore. Dramatic headlines all throughout the day are saying we are seeing food rationing of rice and some wheat products, a first since World War II. Due to a global shortage, Sam’s Club "is limiting sales of Jasmine, Basmati and long grain white rices because of global shortages," reports the Orange County Register's Fast Food Maven blog. "Sam’s Club is not restricting purchases of flour or oil... The decision......

Shadow & Light in Little Tokyo | Photo by pink_fish13 via LAist's Featured Photos pool on Flickr. Monday Jeremy D. Popkin presents Facing Racial Revolution 7pm @ Dutton's Tuesday Alan Corey presents A Million Bucks by 30 7pm @ Book Soup Christopher Rice presents Blind Fall 7pm @ Borders, West Hollywood Wednesday Milo Martin presents Poems for a Utopian Nihilist 7pm @ Book Soup Leslie Lehr presents Wife Goes On 7pm @ Dutton's Josh......

Young fans watch the Project Runway finale with Season 3 winner Jeffery Sebelia Anyone following the phenomenon that is Project Runway now knows that Christian Siriano won Season 4. The judges loved his dramatic collection, feathers and all. Though my favorite Rami Kashou did not win, he will always be a style icon in LA and around the world. Last night as fans of the show gather around TV’s throughout the country to see......

Can you re-imagine the LA Riverfront? Then checkout tonight's lecture at SCI-Arc. / Photo by Lush.i.ous via LAist's flickr pool. FILM* A classic Japanese double feature plays at the New Beverly tonight and tomorrow. While these films were made more than 50 years ago, the themes are timeless: Flavor of Green Tea Over Rice (1952) focuses on a housewife who’s sick and tired of her boring life with her business-minded husband as her niece......

Photo courtesy of 20th Century Fox The term B-movie has to many persons the connotation of a movie of substandard quality. Traditionally, it meant a low-budget movie with lesser stars meant primarily to entertain. Now an appropriate definition would probably be a genre film that has little to no serious artistic intent: entertainment, not enlightenment.* Doug Liman's Jumper is a B-movie.** I certainly wasn't enlightened by the time it was over. What would you......

Andrew Hurvitz, who many know from Here in Van Nuys, snaps this shot of the behemoth Rice Bowl image at Wilshire and Vermont and submitted it the LAist Featured Photos Pool. Some love the architecture and art: Even though I find this neither simple nor minimalistic, I like it a lot!" Some hate it: "That is an ugly, architecturally inept building." The LA Times doesn't like it either. Photo by Here in Van Nuys......

Red Beans and Rice from The Gumbo Pot/ Photo by Elise Thompson In Louisiana, red beans and rice are traditionally served on Mondays. Monday was wash day, and once all of the ingredients were thrown in, you could ignore the beans all day while you tended to the laundry. I am obsessed with red beans and rice. The only version I've eaten that beat my own recipe was made by Mike Anderson's in New Orleans.......

Photograph of the Trump Soho by Riccardo Sinti Gothamist went to the scene of the Trump Soho construction collapse, which left one construction worker dead and others injured (an indirect culprit - Manhattan's hot real estate market, causing rushed construction jobs).Shanghaiist is confused by media reports as to whether Playboy will be available in China during the year of the Olympics.LAist got fugged in an interview with the Go Fug Yourself girls.Torontoist set hearts......

If you want to do something else tonight besides the mind-numbing seventh season opener of American Idol, here are a few options: WORDS Nobel Prizewinner Mohammad Yunus has a conversation with Rick Wartzman, director of the Drucker Institute, Claremont Graduate University (and former editor of the Los Angeles Times' West) on "Creating a World without Poverty." The evening will focus on questions like: "What if you could harness the power of the free market......

The community of Watts seems to be undergoing a shift in atmosphere, reports the Daily News, as the area's gang violence has been decreasing, thanks in part to the Watts Gang Task Force. In terms of statistics, homicides were halved last year from the year before--11 in 2007 as compared to the 24 in 2006, and 2007 saw "a three-month stretch without a single slaying. Gang homicides for the approximately 1-square-mile home to an estimated......

LAist watched the Season 4 premiere of Project Runway with Santino Rice and chatted with Rami Kashou about dressing celebrities. Next Tuesday Heidi Klum will bring the glow of the beautiful Project Runway world to The Paley Center for Media in Beverly Hills. Will the uber German supermodel say her famous catch phrase 'in fashion one day you are in and the next day you are out'? Will she wear a dress designed by......

While waiting for the premiere of Project Runway, I came across the list of designers that were participating this season. One name caught my eye. This is a name I already knew. He lives in LA. I had noticed several of his designs in photos from red carpet events. His dresses were always the ones I'd put in my 'if I could ever buy' category. Here was his name on the list of designers......

Last night some of my friends got together to watch the season premiere of "Project Runway". With a very tall surprise up my cap sleeve, I showed up to the viewing party with the one and only Santino Rice. Santino and I had met this summer at the Project Angel Food party backstage at the Rufus Wainwright concert. I thought who better to give us the inside scoop on all things "Project Runway"? First......

As development wraps up on the first of two major redevelopments above subway stations on Wilshire, the reviews are begining to come in. The Wilshire/Vermont station is just about complete and tomorrow the LA Times will give the design of the complex a negative review, complaining, among other things that it just doesn't fit in with what else is going on with the legendary boulevard. During the many decades that architects enthusiastically celebrated the......

Feeling lucky punk? Well, are ya? LAist hopes you are: Win a pair of VIP passes to LA Weekly's Detour Festival on October 6 and a pair of tickets for The Crystal Method at The Roxy next Tuesday. Good luck! Prosecutors plan to refile charges against Phil Spector. Jeez, what's a murderer brutha gotta do to walk free? Britney Spears "dined" at Acapulco in Burbank last night and the paparazzo’s freaked. It's like they'd......

They're probably the best band in the world right now. And they're playing at the world famous Hollywood Bowl. If you don't have tickets, break your piggy banks, go to the show and overpay for the Arcade Fire. Think of how much you hand over to cable each month or your cell phone carrier. These Canadians with their punk sensibilities and violins and megaphones deserve your attention. If not, there are some mighty fine......

It is the best musical you’ve (probably) never heard of. It boasts music by Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson of ABBA, and lyrics by Tim Rice. Its rich songs fuse classical Broadway influences with sprinklings of disco. And it’s the only musical gutsy enough to include songs like “One Night in Bangkok” alongside the beautifully patriotic “Anthem.” The musical is “CHESS,” which tells the story of Victor Korchnoi and Bobby Fischer-esque competitors in a......

Smooshed between two auto insurance storefronts just a tad west of the official Thai Town boundaries hides Jao^ka, sheepishly, shyly, and easily overlooked. Indeed, inside the quaint restaurant on Hollywood Blvd. one could confuse this little place with any of the others in and around LA. Which is why we put their food up to a standard that no restaurant would ever wish for: the Take Out and Early Morning Re-Heat Test. We ordered......

Chicagoist is gearing up for this weekend's annual Air & Water Show along the lakefront. In what's becoming an annual tradition around there, staff member Todd McClamroch even got to fly with one of the participants. Chicagoist's decidedly opinionated readership was also appalled that one of their staffers found a popular local brewpub to be a great place to bring a kid. They also think that an unlikely activist for immigration rights should just take......

Since seeing Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova back in November, opening up for Damien Rice, I have been, and this is fairly rare these days, mesmerized by their music. You know, when I first started listening to Damien Rice, a friend asked what kind of music I would label it and I replied, sad rock. Sad though it is, I think you could put Glen and Marketa's music in the same category, though I believe......

You may have noticed a new button on our left-hand column with the title We See The Best Concerts. It dawned on us the other day that we really do go to the best concerts and we usually write about them the next day or a few days later. So here's a wrap up of all 37 shows we reviewed this month, with links to the posts just in case you missed it. Chris......

More video snippets of Bush administration "truthiness" about the war in Iraq than you can shake a stick at... If this doesn't push you over the edge and make you at least consider the prospects for impeachment, I don't know what will (h/t to Juan Cole).......

Sonic Youth - "Kool Thing" (yes we know tonight they're playing Daydream Nation in its entirety but surely there will be an encore, right?) Sonic Youth, Redd Kross @ The Greek The Dwarves @ Safari Sam's The Bird & the Bee @ El Rey Pigeon John @ The Troubadour The Cribs @ Amoeba (6pm) Boz Scaggs @ The Canyon Jon Brion @ Largo Cool Britannia @ Hollywood Bowl Johnathan Rice, Whispertown 2000, Everest @......

Aaaah, Beverly Hills - Los Angeles' beacon of wealth and privilege. I don't think I've been there in over ten years. But on Tuesday I had an entire day to just wander the streets. Normally, I don't trust popular opinion. Maybe it's because I grew up in the 80s, when popular opinion gave us big shoulder pads, bigger hair, the Star-Wars defense system, Hall and Oats and Chubacca-like eyebrows. But that mistrust caused me......

Whoever is booking the Silent Movie Theater on Fairfax deserves a raise. Recently they got Henry Rollins and Janeane Garofalo to do a show there, and now we find our favorite bald Irishwoman Sinead O'Conner is going to play a gig there next month. In what seems to be one of her two "intimate" acoustic shows in the States (the other will be in NYC), as O' Conner prepares to go on a world......

A Word or 89(approx): One thing I didn't mention over the weekend was Sunday's SNL In the '90s because I thought it woudl suck. I was right. First, why did it take them 7 years to come up with this 2 hours of dreck? Second, the equal emphasis of the (pathetic) music acts and the comedy was a mistake - the show is an hour and a half with 2 songs in it, the......

Tonight - Tuesday - May 1, 2007 NCIS/The Unit (CBS, 8-10:00 p.m.) This week the gimmick is a blind photographer - dude, what's your Flickr site?/Parachute malfunction Brando (TCM, 8-??) Biography of Marlon Brando followed by several of his films, starting with A Streetcar Named Desire. Dateline NBC (NBC, 8:00 p.m.) Boys confess to 2004 murder of 12-year-old girl Gilmore Girls/Veronica Mars (the CW, 8-10:00 p.m.) Lorelai eating, drinking, shopping, karaoke/Veronica investigates vandalism of......

Wilshire is the most congested artery in the nation, right? So putting dedicated bus lanes during rush hour until the subway is built would make it worse for the cars, right? Good. Let's do it like City Councilman Tom LaBonge said in his recent newsletter: "I do support a dedicated Rapid Bus lane during peak traffic hours along Wilshire to encourage riders… as long as the MTA fixes the roadway they are helping to......

Our most anticipated band at Coachella did not disappoint. They mixed their new songs off the amazing "Neon Bible" with your faves from their debut, "Funeral". And although we love love love "Neon Bible", the best moment in last night's performance was when singer Win Butler jumped into the crowd during "Rebellion (Lies)", never once wiping a smile on his face. Lighten up Win, they're cheering! This clip was taken from the AT&T Blue......

No Chicago Dunkin' Donuts for LA So where are the best donut in Los Angeles? LA City Nerd asks and readers respond. Is it the Donut Man in Glendora or Bob's at the Farmer's Market? How about California Donuts? Mike Trujillo for LA City Gang Czar Mayor Sam puts up a quick poll for who should be LA's Gang Czar. Ahead of Bill Clinton and Connie Rice is Mike Trujillo. Who the hell is he?......