LAT tells us what L.A.'s top 25 "culinary bargains" are (find more Foodie news from today here). Did you know that a Louis Vuitton store also qualified as a public art gallery? Sex, scandal and assault at the Playboy Mansion: oh my! The Walk of Fame's stars have been temporarily "displaced" to make way for the construction of the new W Hotel. City Beat pleads L.A. City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo's case. A woman in......

LA eggheads gather at the REDCAT tonight at 8:30 PM to ponder a panel on "What Makes a Magazine Great," which will ask guest to explore the "special alchemy when the right editor confronts the zeitgeist to create a magazine that speaks to and reflects the moment." Guests include Gil Maurer, former president of Hearst Magazines and winner of the Henry Johnson Fisher award for distinguished service to the magazine industry; Eric Nakamura and......

Over at the TEV book blog, Mark Sarvas spreads the rumor from Publishers Weekly that Steve Wasserman, the Los Angeles Times Book Review editor, may be leaving. Sarvas pretty much echos our feelings about Wasserman's editorship of the section. He writes: Now, since Wasserman's apparently only "likely leaving", we'd like to urge Wasserman in the strongest possible terms to follow your impulses and skeddadle. We'll even help you pack your books. Really, the door's......

Influential intellectual and author Susan Sontag died today at 71. Steve Wasserman, Los Angeles Times Book Review Editor, published her obituary in today's issue of the Times. The author of 17 books translated into 32 languages, she vaulted to public attention and critical acclaim with the 1964 publication of "Notes on Camp," written for Partisan Review and included in "Against Interpretation," her first collection of essays, published two years later. Sontag died at Memorial......

Anyone can tell you what's wrong with Los Angeles and its surrounding areas, but few can clearly articulate what's right, magical and true about this place as well as Lawrence Weschler does in his 1998 New Yorker essay, "LA Glows," which is included in Weschler's latest collection of New Yorker articles, Vermeer in Bosnia. That essay inspired many Angelenos, including local writer Jim Ruland, who interviews Weschler in the "The Golden West" issue of......