Results tagged “thisweek”

This week there's some really great free shows going down at 8p at the Comedy Central stage, so you've really got no excuse to not get out there. Around town, you can also shake off the candy withdrawals and expensive bar tab by keeping it cheap at the usual haunts: UCB, iO West, Westside Comedy. If you've got a little more coin in your pocket, there's a couple of great shows going down at Largo - particularly The League fellas on Wednesday. If you think I missed something or want to let me know about something you're going to see, email Farley here. Happy November everyone.

Stand up abounds this week in the comedy world, but there's also some great opportunities to check back in with the improv roots you know you have. Beer Shark Mice are only around for one more show (that we know of), TNT and Crashbar are doing their usual great stuff.

This week is a stand up bonanza, with great shows all over town and even down in Irvine. There's also too much good improv to mention, with Boomtown doing stuff Tuesday and Thursday at TNT and Crashbar, respectively. Ladies & Gentlemen are at Let's Do This! on Friday at UCB. It's practically raining jokes out there folks, so grab your chuckle buckets.

The Smokes, 7p UCB. These improv veterans do two different long-form improv forms every single week, and every time they are fucking hilarious. An absolute can’t-miss for anyone seriously interested in long form improvisation. | You Say Tomato, I Say Shut Up, 8p Comedy Central Stage. Based on excerpts from the upcoming book of the same name, Annabelle Gurwitch and Jeff Kahn tell tales of what it takes to be married. Apparently, it’s a lot.

This week is a great one for comedy, as a lot of heavy hitters are performing all over town. the Comedy Central Stage is getting a lot of love, as is Largo with back to back nights featuring Aziz Ansari and Sarah Silverman. Beer Shark Mice is back at iO, and Harold Night tonight at UCB promises great things. I will too, if you send me a link to the show's you're interested in and want to hype. Hit me up.

It's 4.20! Smoke all your smokes and whatnot. You'd think I'd hype The Smokes show at UCB tonight at 7, or the 4.20 Crash Test show or SOMETHING, but nope. Smoke free since 1983, playas! Anywho, UCB has so much else going on this week you can't believe it. The great shows like CDR are killing it this week and Nick Kroll as Fabrice Fabrice is a must, even if you have to hit the standby line. Largo drops off this week, but looks very promising in the near future. Email Farley if you want to spread your own love. Eww.

The Mike Birbiglia one man show hits Largo on Tuesday and Wednesday, but UCB has CDR Sketch with Casey Wilson on Tuesday night too, so choose wisely. Help out the Midnight Mission on Sunday, see the USS Rock N' Roll at the Westside Eclectic, or spend tonight at UCB with Flap Jackson and Sentimental Lady, then stick around for the Dirty Laundry show at 11. As always hit me up if you want to hype a show you know about.

MONDAY 4/06

Around Los Angeles, Largo has long been known as a solid comedy spot to see great people doing exactly what made you love them in the first place. Six months ago, you probably wouldn’t have found as much experimental comedy going on there as you do know, and that is certainly a good thing. Lately, it seems, Largo is undergoing another comedy renaissance; with the arrival of the Doug Benson Interruption, the emergence of Largo from a once-or-twice-a-month spot into a weekly venue for great laughs is becoming unavoidable, and completely welcome. The Reno 911! Benefit Show last Wednesday is a great example of where Largo is headed, and the future looks bright.

Largo at the Coronet, on La Cienega, is absolutely killing it this week. The Reno 911! benefit show is an absolute must, and CDR at UCB should be it's usual long-as-hell-but-also-gut-busting self. Naked Babies on Thursday should prove to be a great improv show from a lot of top names, and The Improv has the Sklars on Saturday. Hot DAMN folks. This recession can go to hell.

Don't let the rain get you down this week. Get out there and enjoy yourself some comedy! There's Sarah Silverman, Andy Daly, Brendon Burns, Maya Rudolph, Jon Lajoie, John Pinette, just to name a few. Hit me up here to promote your own show.

This week, as always, there’s lots to see and do in the Los Angeles comedy scene. Be sure to check out some of the great happenings throughout the week. There’s no better way to fight off those post-Halloween and pre-Thanksgiving blues.

Human Giant unleashed itself upon an unsuspecting public last year via MTV and the bell just rang for Round 2 - are you ready? There's sketch comedy, there's underground sketch comedy, there's in your face on-the-streets sketch comedy, and then there's Human Giant, a team that presents, in each episode, collections of bits that are more like experimental movies than the sketch comedy we've been seeing for the last 15 years. There's plenty of parody to be sure although none of it is familiar-feeling, "safe", or boring - which is perfect for Human Giant's 11:00pm slot (what, the kids can't handle this at 10:00pm?).

This is last Friday as reported by LAist Featured Photos contributor Jonathan Alcom: "A gallon of regular gasoline priced at 3.99 at a Unocal gas station on Pico Bl and Barrington in West Los Angeles on Friday March 7, 2008 as surging oil prices jumped to a new record above $106 Friday. This gas station was about 40 cents higher than other gas stations in the area."

Everyone is in a tizzy about The Wire coming to a close yesterday - it's one of the few shows that decided to go out while it was on top so kudos to them. The TV Junkie is barely keeping his head above water with the deluge of new shows coming out in the next week, tonight it's Julianna Margulies' return to the little screen with Canterbury's Law (that's a mouthful, say: Julianna Margulies in Canterbury's Law 10x fast). Stay tuned for more shows this week, including the fabulous Lewis Black (right) in Lewis Black's Root of All Evil which premieres on Wednesday at 10:30pm - I hope he does "the finger thing" a lot.

Elvis Costello and The Attractions essential 1978 record This Year’s Model was re-released for the twenty-third time earlier this week as a deluxe 2-CD set. This year’s model of This Year’s Model includes a bevy of previously released bonus tracks, and a previously unreleased live concert.

Back in June 2002, a crime drama from the minds of former Baltimore Sun writer David Simon (who spoke at USC earlier this week) and former Baltimore police officer Ed Burns made its debut on HBO. The Wire was more than just another cop show, it was an examination of both sides of the Baltimore drug trade - the organization profiting off of the projects' heroine addiction and the police department trying to stop them. The gritty, realism and complexity of the show helped the show win over critics coast-to-coast. However, that very same gritty, realism and complexity that won over the press might be the reason why nobody outside of the people who were being paid to watch television were watching the show. The American public, including myself, didn't want to jump into a fictional world that was as depressing and bleak as our actual world.

When you read something you like on LAist, we love it when you hit the "recommend" button, and we love it even more if you put your two cents' worth in the comments. Getting a dialog going with our readers and making sure we're giving you content you can use are top priorities for us. So here's this week's top posts, as endorsed by you via the recommend feature, or as indicated by the level of talk going on in the comments:

• Sacramento to California's teachers: I love you, but I just can't pay you. Thousands of teachers across the state this week could receive pink slips in the wake of the $14.5 billion budget gap. Teachers to Sacramento: I'd like to see you try and force us out.
• The Air Quality Management District loves clean air so much they decided to impose fines on those who burn wood in fire places when the pollution is especially evident outside. "It's a fair trade off," they say. "Hands off my chimney," some homeowners responded.
• In political news, Wyoming professed their love for Obama by handing him a caucus win and Bush continues to be enamored of torture.
• On Tuesday, a Veterans Thrift Store owner returned a box with $30,000 that was left inside some clothes she was sifting through. She received a cash reward because the family loved that there are still some honest people out there. The thrift worker said she will send some of the reward to Mexico so her mother can have an eye operation and will use the rest to buy a digital camera.
• No love lost: A whistle blower claims that the state's Planned Parenthood overcharged the government close to $180 million for birth control pills. Planned Parenthood hasn't issued an opinion because they haven't seen the lawsuit yet.
• Birds and water lovers said, Where's the love as they looked on to the dry vestiges of the empty Silverlake reservoir. Now that the reservoir is free of the carcinogenic bromate-tainted water that was discovered a few months back, the LADWP can commence patching and other necessary repairs, Metroblogging said.
• How much do you love sunlight? At 2 a.m., it's officially time to set your clocks ahead one hour.

We would like to take a moment to thank this week's advertisers on LAist.

Sherman Oaks and South LA made national news yesterday when a Los Angeles native, now based in Oregon, became the latest decried author who penned a fraudulent memoir. Yes, Margaret Seltzer grew up in the Valley, no Margaret B. Jones (her non de plume) did not gangbang in South Central as her book said.

Despite SXSW starting up this week with 100+ Los Angeles based bands heading over there, residencies are growing stronger and more venue-diverse across the line, especially on Monday nights where the volume makes it hard to choose from. Here's to a great month of residencies, rock on.

• Newly elected state speaker, a Democrat named Karen Bass who was raised in Los Angeles, has made friends on both sides of the aisle, the LA Times said. She is the first African-American to assume the top spot and has some pretty lofty goals, including providing healthcare and improving education. Wait, those are things EVERY politician should be doing.
• Of course, by now you know all about the L.A. Marathon. But you may not have heard that the Los Angeles Fire Department treated 73 participants; transporting 23 of them to area hospitals. None of the injuries were life-threatening, they said.
• What's one of the best part about Spring Training? Rumors! The Daily News reports that Nomar could play a "handful of games" at shortstop this season. Just four more weeks until Opening Day.
• The blood in my veins is Dodger Blue, but the color of my face when driving to games is sometimes red. So, I applaud the City Council for at least broaching the possibility of public transportation to Dodger Stadium late this week.\
• An El Segundo woman warded off an attacker last night with pepper spray as he pinned her to the ground straddling and fondling her. She reached for the pepper spray and ran away, gagging and coughing.
• But her weapon of choice would not have worked if she was a reporter at the Daily News. Yesterday, we told you that the Daily News laid off 22 staffers earlier in the week. Today, the list of the fireds was published. The deceased includes Alex Dobuzinskis, a great reporter who covered Glendale and Burbank and the News' lone Washington D.C. reporter.
• The newspaper business is not the only one hurting these days. Nearly 1,600 teachers could lose their jobs as Orange County's 28 school districts scramble to find ways to cut from their operating budgets amid a mounting state budget crisis.
• Is Hillary Clinton being subversively endorsed by Saturday Night Live? Last week, SNL feature a skit parodying the media's "love affair" with Barack Obama and last night, they had Clinton on the show getting two minutes of free campaign air time. SNL has not officially endorsed Clinton, but should media outlets allow candidates a free shot at advertising? If NBC allowed Obama two free minutes, don't you think the Clinton camp would be the ones needing a pillow?

When you read something you like on LAist, we love it when you hit the "recommend" button, and we love it even more if you put your two cents' worth in the comments. Getting a dialog going with our readers and making sure we're giving you content you can use are top priorities for us. So here's this week's top posts, as endorsed by you via the recommend feature, or as indicated by the level of talk going on in the comments:

• 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 the basement?
• Does the name Chuck Quackenbush ring a bell? He was the Insurance Commissioner for Califorina until he was forced to resign amid corruption allegations in 2000. Gosh, I wonder what he's doing now. Probably tanning on a beach...wait, oh, um, turns out he is now a Sherrif's deupty and just shot a suspect in Florida who was allegedly resisting arrest. OK, now he can go and tan on the beach as Chuck was placed on paid administrative leave.
• More bad news for area newspapers as positions at the Long Beach Press-Telegram were eliminated recently. Earlier in February, the LA Times reported they were going to cut up to 150 jobs and this week, the Daily News cut 22 people from their staff. Christ people, don't you read on paper anymore? I mean, when you're not checking LAist and the hundreds of other sites we link to, that is?
• Speaking of the LA Times, new owner Sam Zell stands to profit to the tune of $15 million if an eminent domain a June ballot initiative passes. Just think how many strip club ads he could buy with that.
• Owing mostly to the Writers Strike, L.A. County lost more than 75,000 jobs from December to January.
• Victoria's Secret is saying its line of revealing lingerie is too sultry and will "get back to the ultra feminine and not just sexy look." In other news, 300 million men started a letter writing campaign today with Justin Timberlake as their spokesman.
• John Wooden, Bruin legend and inventor of winning, remains in the hospital but is "in good spirits" after he fell Thursday night and broke his left wrist and collar bone. I have a feeling beating Arizona tomorrow will really help lift the spirits of the 97-year-old former UCLA coach.
• Tomorrow is the L.A .Marathon. Don't say we didn't warn you. Good luck to all those running, walking, cycling and wheelchairing!
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