You can almost feel the grit coming off this picture | Photo courtesy of Lionsgate Entertainment I've always thought it was a shame that Jason Statham got stuck in the ghetto of glossy, empty action flicks. You'd never guess it by watching The Transporter 2 or Crank but Statham can be a legitimately good actor. I'm glad to see him in The Bank Job, a re-telling of the 1971 Baker Street bank robbery. Director......

Bikes and graffiti are on tap for today. / Photo by Lush.i.ous via LAist's flickr pool. GRAFFITI ART Ghettogloss presents the graffiti art of Jersey Joe in Silverlake. The exhibit runs until March 20, but the opening reception is tonight from 7-midnight. 7 pm // Ghettogloss // 2380 Glendale Blvd #C, Los Angeles // Free. RIDE & TALK * RIDE-Arc monthly ride -- themed "Trolly" -- happens tonight. The group rides along for awhile......

Photo by puck90 via the LAist Featured Photos pool on Flickr An update to this week's tragic Oxnard junior high school shooting: The 15-year-old victim was taken off life support after his organs were donated today. 49-year-old transient Steven Emory Butcher was found guilty of starting one of the largest wildfires in state history. The Day Fire began on Labor Day in 2006, burned over 162,000 acres and took a month to put out.......

Twilight Sleeps is one of the bands that opens for Pity Party tonight at Spaceland | Photo by Joya Martuscello Sometimes Monday nights lead to tough choices. For Jax at Rock Insider, it's between The Pity Party (who we interviewed this morning) and The Henry Clay People. Luckily, both bands are playing all month. Still, there are many choices. If you like your music Folk, your drinks cheap and have never been to Joe's......

I'm hoping you got a bunch of DVDs to tide you over during this dead week as well as until the writer's strike ends. It looks like TCM is running an "aviation in movies" marathon tonight and IFC's featuring Harvey Keitel. For further marathon action, check out BRAVO which is showing all of Project Runway's fourth season (starts at 6:00pm). 4:15pm Five Easy Pieces IFC - (1970) If you've got the day off like me,......

Okay, so in case you haven't heard, Green Day now has a new side project to tack onto the list, right smack under The Network. (You remember the Fembot song. Billie Joe's vocals did sort of give them away, but it was still exciting.) This one was reportedly leaked in a Green Day blog (are we talking "The Idiot Club" or what? I can't get in there, you have to pay), and is titled Foxboro......

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 surf was so big, no one was surfing here and the Pier was closed. Apparently, all the surfers were in Redondo," explains LAist Featured Photos contributer, Jake Rome, about yesterday's surf. LA Times: No big waves yesterday. We beg to differ. [LAist] Lure of waves draws many from workaday world [LA Times] The Day of Waves [Daily Breeze] Photo by jakerome via the LAist Featured Photos pool on Flickr......

Artist: Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan + Gaudi Album: Dub Qawwali Label: Six Degrees Records Release Date: August 7th, 2007 I count myself incredibly fortunate to have seen Qawwali singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan perform while he was still alive, this was back in 1990, at a little hamlet called Santa Barbara, a year or so after Martin Scorsese's Last Temptation of Christ came out, which featured Khan on the soundtrack. The essence of one......

Monday Bridget Kinsella Visiting Life: Women Doing Time on The Outside 7pm @ Book Soup Trevor Corson discusses and signs The Zen of Fish 7pm @ Vroman's Tuesday Viken Berberian presents Das Kapital: A Novel of Love and Money Markets 7pm @ Book Soup Bridget Kinsella presents Visiting Life: Women Doing Time on the Outside 12pm @ Vroman's Joseph Marshall presents The Day the World Ended at Little Bighorn 7pm @ Vroman's Eric Lichtenfeld......

Spurs 93, Clipper 84 - With all the talk about the winning streak from that team in Texas, it's easy to get confused. That's because the Mav's 17 game streak is over, but San Antonio is on their own run of 13. Los Angeles was the latest victim, and in convincing fashion. The Spurs had 18 points from the charity stripe compared to just 3 for the Clippers, who also gave up 22 points off......

Knicks 107, Lakers 106 - With time running out, the Lakers employed a brand new strategy against New York. Unofficially dubbed the "Let's not pass it to Kobe" play, Lamar Odom fired up an air ball as the clock ran out. So much for that idea. 7.1 seconds earlier, Eddy Curry slammed home the go-ahead dunk and propelled the Knicks to their 23rd win of the year -- matching last year's total with 30 games......

Stars 1, Ducks 0 - Rookie goalie Mike Smith blocked 32 shots for Dallas and didn't allow a goal in six power plays, leading the Stars to a tight win against their division rival. The game featured a fight after just 35 seconds, resulting in a couple 5 minute penalties and another classic photo for LAist. Anaheim's wheels started to fall off just before the All Star break, and the team has spiraled to 3-6-1......

OK so last night's Colbert/Decembrist Green Screen thing wasn't such a great premise but the line-up was incredible. Due to non-existent new programming somebody here suggested that I occupy my time with porn, but this is the TV Junkie spot, not the Porn Junkie spot, I'm not sure that the LAist editorial staff want that to happen yet, and no one has stepped forward to start supplying me with said porn yet either --......

Not that we care what they think in Frisco but the SF Weekly (wait, we thought you weren't supposed to call it SF? hmmmm) named Honeycut the Best Soul/Funk Band in town. Well, this isn't your father's soul music. There's Garbage in there, some electronica... modern might be a good way to put it. Sorta sounds like Beck's forays into nu whiteboy funk which is dangerous because even Beck has failed in that world......

Your phone is tapped. Your news is suppressed. You fund a war but you can’t afford gas. Your President lies and embarrasses you. Your country is making enemies. And your planet is frying. Now might be a good time to protest. No one will call you a hippie. At this moment, 234+ nationwide protests are planned for tomorrow, October 5th. People will be walking out of school, walking out of work and freakin’ in......

Yom Kippur begins tonight at sundown. Challah! The Day of Atonement, is when we look back at the past year and ask for forgiveness for the sins we've committed against God. If you did anything wrong to an actual person in the past year you'll want to ask that specific person for forgiveness before sundown today, as Yom Kippur is really reserved for the stuff between you and God in particular. He/She wants you......

Today's Piece O' Shit Product O' The Day award goes to Fun Betty. Not only does dying one's pubes seem distinctly un-fun and potentially dangerous (I don’t care how toxin-free they claim this crap is), but now we’re all supposed to refer to our cooters/pussies/hairy pink tacos as a Betty? Unilaterally deciding that "Betty" is commonly used slang for vagina doesn’t make it so. The manufacturers of this product can spew all the girl......

Beenie Man - Undisputed (Virgin) Blag Dahlia - Nina ... and Other Delights (MVD Audio) Damage Case - Tyranny (Punkcore) Támar Davis - Milk & Honey (Universal Motown) Dirty Dozen Brass Band - What's Going On (Shout! Factory) Dream Theater - Score: 20th Anniversary World Tour Live (Rhino) Bob Dylan - Modern Times (Columbia) Grates - Gravity Won't Get You High (Cherry Tree) Gwar - Beyond Hell (limited-edition version with DVD also available; DRT)......

Very much like the vanilla-and-chocolate frozen yogurt swirl, when a dj combines two different records together to make a new tune, that's a mashup. Sometimes the results are horrible, like peanut butter and fish, sometimes the results are beautiful, like The Who's "Won't Get Fooled Again" with the Beastie Boys "Body Movin'" (sped up really fast). Because Indie 103 rules, they've given DJ Paul V. the "Mashup Of The Day" feature and his own......

jail violence Fighting broke out at the men's central jail in downtown LA last night; dozens of inmates rioted. February riots spread across the jail system and lasted for days. cyber violence Hart High School was sparsely attended yesterday after a student's myspace posting made administrators nervous. Apparently the student called for "take your weapons to school day." Back before myspace people just made moronic jokes in the lunchroom and wrote this stuff on......

Here in Los Angeles, they say you should write about what you know. Which gets us to thinking about the whole Raiders of the Lost Ark scenario where a movie presents a classic sequence involving a dirty, unshaven college professor who is running for his life as an unwieldy boulder chases after him, threatening to end his life once and for all. And that, of course, makes us think about the Topanga Canyon folks......

Let's face it. People in California have pretty much resigned themselves to the fact that come November 2nd, the electoral votes from this great state will most likely be piling up for Mr. John Kerry. It's the result of having a very liberal state which almost always ends up voting for the Democratic candidate. That's the reality, and that's fine. But lately, LAist has come in contact with (if you can believe it) a......