"the road home," by pink_fish13 via LAist Featured Photos Pool on Flickr Boy am I glad I don't live in this Torrance neighborhood, where a cache of machine guns, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, assault rifles and thousands of rounds of ammunition were found in a house Friday. The residents may be terrorists, police say, but the owner of the weapons said he is just a collector. Do you think he also collects dead bodies in......

"He knows, Doctor. He knows." A Flickr user gives us what he calls a "dramatic and gritty view of [his] silly Star Trek action figures." GEEK OUT You know you want to...so you may as well do it. Star Trek: The Tour has docked on the Queen Mary. Beam yourself up and get yourself to Long Beach to see exhibits from all five TV shows and each of the 10 movies, including Captain Kirk's chair.......

It was a great year of new books, re-discovered books, and books we meant to get to last year but didn't. The end of the year is nearly here and before we look forward, we'll take a look back. Last week, LAist Editors shared their favorite books of 2007. This week, a few LAist Contributors share their favorite book they read this year: Who: Christine Ziemba What: The Ominvore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan Why:......

Monday William Shatner presents Star Trek: The Academy - Collision Course 7pm @ Book Soup Janet Fitch presents Paint it Black 7pm @ Vroman's Robin Maxwell presents Mademoiselle Boleyn 7pm @ Dutton's Memorial Reading for Mutanabbi Street with Chris Abani, Beau Beausoleil, Laila Lalami, Suzanne Lummis, Majid Naficy, Marisela Norte, Sholeh Wolpe & Terry Wolverton 7pm @ Centraly Library Tuesday Judith Freeman presents The Long Embrace 7pm @ Dutton's Anthony Hernandez signs Waiting, Sitting,......

Transformers would have been perfect as a 20-minute demo reel for ILM. Instead, it's a long, dull live-action cartoon. And I still don't understand all the fuss about Shia LaBeouf. He's good. Not amazing. Good. No one saw A Mighty Heart at the theater, but it's worth a rental. Angelina Jolie the Actress has been replaced by Angelina the Star, but she doesn't get in the way of a gripping, horrifying story. No one......

Here are some of my favorite LAist stories from this week: Anti reviews a cd that was sent to him, he gives it a "Good", but someone from the band writes in to complain that it wasn't a good enough Peggy Archer showed us that Malibu is finding that whoring out their best beachfront homes to corporations isn't all they hoped it would be Charles Bukowski is my favorite writer, so I liked this......

Don't get me wrong, I love Beirut, but last Thursday I was lucky enough to be invited by a friend at Harmonia Mundi to the pre-screening of GYPSY CARAVAN...When The Road Bends. Written and directed by Jasmine Dellal of Little Dust Productions, the film is a documentary about five bands that play different kinds of Gypsy music, who united for a highly successful 6-week tour across North America. Descendents of the Roma, a group......

Starting tomorrow, lots of folks are going to be rushing area theaters to check out the latest Quentin Tarantino+Robert Rodriguez splatterfest, Grindhouse. And yes, Los Angeles has definitely gone grindhouse crazy in general. But before running off to The Grove, consider a truly authentic alternative. We think the best way to see the Tarantino/Rodriguez homage to 1970s and 1980s schlock cinema is by heading to an equally entertaining relic of a bygone era; the......

Still wondering what to give your sweet transgressive for Valentine's Day? Filthy, lovable, mustachioed filmmaker John Waters is releasing A Date With John Waters, a stirring yet suitably bizarre compilation album of his favorite love songs. To celebrate the album's release Waters will be at Amoeba Records in Hollywood tomorrow, February 6 at 6 PM, signing CDs and posing with fans in a Valentines setting. The album spans oddities such as the first record......

Look. We know how it’s going to go down. By this time tomorrow, Oscar nominees will be announced and madness will ensue. There will be the campaigning amongst friends. The mad dash to see the films you haven’t seen. The endless questioning about who should win, who shouldn’t win and who should never be allowed to direct again. In certain circles, the mad “What will they wear? Who will they wear?”debating will also begin.......

Bowling for Soup - The Great Burrito Extortion Case (Jive) J.J. Cale & Eric Clapton - The Road to Escondido (Reprise) The Chelsea Smiles - Thirty Six Hours Later (Acetate) El Goodo - El Goodo (Empyrean) Europe - Secret Society (Sanctuary) The Evens - Get Evens (Dischord) Foo Fighters - Skin and Bones (RCA) Josh Groban - Awake (Reprise) Jim Jones - Hustler's P.O.M.E. (Product of My Environment) (Koch) Librarians - Alright Easy Candy......

Jack Kerouac gave William Burroughs the pseudonym "Old Bull" in his novel On The Road. Fifty-five years ago yesterday, Old Bull blew his wife Joan's brains out with a pistol during a drinking party. And now we get some information that Old Bull is going to be performing at some carnival/hoedown thing downtown on Saturday. A very dangerous-sounding carnival, featuring "dirty darts, inflatable farm animals, insulting caricatures, drunk duck pond, cactus ring toss, sleazy......

Silver Lake-based author, Joy Nicholson, doesn't focus solely on the Southern California region, but her two books certainly capture many aspects of the region's anomie. Her first book, "The Tribes of Palos Verdes," chartered the journey of a young girl lost admist the SoCal surf culture after her parent's divorce. Nicholson's latest novel, "The Road to Esmeralda," travels further south to record the adventures of a couple living in Mexico. When she's not writing,......