Hands Across America, eat your heart out. Tonight, on the last Friday of the first month of the Pagan new year (this is not true), the hardest working blog in showbiz salutes you, Los Angeles, the object of our collective desire, with a high-hoisted brew, and a coordinated, planet-wide toast. You are all invited to join in the revelry, and together in nerdiness we will plot our success, literally, on a google map. The bottle-opening......

Dear LAist, Roger Waters is playing the Hollywood Bowl tonight and you haven't said WORD ONE about it! What more does a man have to do than write the best parts of THE WALL, and Dark Side of the Moon? Poseurs, Adam in Tarzana Bro, we were just waiting to see if anyone noticed. Congratulations, send us your cell phone number and we will buy you a beer at the show. We've had our......

He wrote The Wall, he wrote Animals, and he wrote pretty much all of Dark Side of the Moon; still, somehow, when Roger Waters split ways with guitarist David Gilmour and the rest of the band, it was the guitarist who got to keep the name Pink Floyd. And to add insult to injury, when the new Pink Floyd put out new records, it was they who outsold their songwriter. Tonight Waters returns to......

You asked for it, we listened. Our "essentials" list has a decidedly local flavor now. All bands are either LA-based, LA-natives or playing gigs in the Southland. Some bands are so new that they don't have an EP, MP3 or CD yet. To remedy that, we've linked to their myspace streams and included upcoming tour info so you can catch them locally. Army Navy | Local Rock Silvery Sleds [stream] Although their latest EP......

Grab a jacket, some friends and get out of the house. There are plenty of free gigs to keep you occupied. SATURDAY, 10/8 Catch Hot Club Quartette at Cafe Z in the Skirball Cultural Center followed by a free screening of Algeria in a Smile. The show starts at noon. Call (310) 440-4500. DJs Michael Stock and Benjamin White of Part Time Punks continue their residency at MOCA. The show starts at 6pm. It's......

People from across Los Angeles will come together tonight for the dedication of The Wall-Las Memorias, the AIDS monument in Lincoln Park, in the Los Angeles community of Lincoln Heights. Singer Dionne Warwick is scheduled to perform at the event. The AIDS monument will eventually hold the names of approximately 7,500 Californians who lost their lives to AIDS. Over ten years in the making, the nearly 10,000 square foot monument includes six panels (9'x12')......

LAist talked with Ezra Klein of the political blog pandagon.net this weekend. Ezra’s been engaged and blogging this election for over a year and a half. His site, which he co-blogs along with Jesse Taylor, boasts around 25,000 hits a day. Needless to say, his voice gets heard (or his words get read). He recently transferred to UCLA from UC Santa Cruz and has much to say about politics, Los Angeles and everything in......