Photo by highervision via the LAist Featured Photos pool on Flickr This evening a public viewing will be held for slain LA High football star Jamiel Shaw, with funeral services to follow tomorrow. Shaw's tragic murder has prompted many LA residents to refocus on the senselessness of gang-related violence. Go, stop, go, stop: Commuters northbound on the 57 and the 605 transitioning to the 210 westbound this morning were greeted by the new traffic......

Why is this man so happy? | Photo via AP New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer, who rode into office on the high horse of morality after years of spearing Wall Street robber barrons as the attorney general, has been linked to a prostitiution ring that has operated in Los Angeles. According to the New York Times, Spitzer, who is married and has three kids, was nabbed after a federal wiretap showed he tried to......

On Monday the NY Times reported that ABC and Cox Communications are collaborating on a video-on-demand service with disabled fast-forward, meaning, yeah, that you can't skip the commercials. This isn't that new an idea as Time Warner Cable has been doing the equivalent with two features called "Start Over" and "Look Back" (after using them IMHO they stink). This is another example of old media protectionist attitudes that think the strategy is to avoid being......

Today's Wall Street Journal reports that '24' co-creator Joel Surnow is bailing from the show and the Fox network. Surnow is the "right-wing nutjob" who is a personal friend of Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, and President Bush - he's the one that had the brilliant idea to come up with a right wing "answer" to 'The Daily Show' for Fox, but the failure to produce one is evidence he never understood the question. 8:00pm Survivor:......

Vague language is the name of the (big) game. There's a sports game on right now. The Big Game. You know, the championship game between two conferences of a league that specializes in playing the sport with a football. But hey since I'm not an advertiser, I can call a spade a spade: It's the Super Bowl. Super Bowl Super Bowl. Super Bowl. Between the New England Patriots and New York Giants. See, I......

In some TV news with local flavor, Santa Monica-based Ovation, "The Arts Network" (I thought this was Lifetime's tagline?), has announced a series of partnerships with cultural institutions across the country to produce and promote their content and collections. Local organizations include: the LA Opera, Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, and P.S. ARTS. Now if I could only get Ovation on local cable.... Also, despite our tailspin into recession and the lack of decent......

As you can see below it's slim pickins tonight. Last Friday the Wall Street Journal ran an article about all the smoke that the networks are blowing with their overuse of the word "new" as it applies to their programming. ABC's "all new (but partial) season of Lost" and the "all new funny" Carpoolers, which would be a welcome change for that sub par offering. I guess we're supposed to be excited about this and......

Would you like a nonfat latte with that Big Mac? That’s what you’ll probably be hearing in the near future, if you’re a fan of the Golden Arches. McDonald’s announced recently plans to add “coffee bars” to its 14,000 U.S. locations starting this year. They’ll also be hiring baristas to work the new stations serving up mochas, lattes and the Frappe – kind of a like a Starbucks Frappuccino or a Coffee Bean Ice......

Finishing the book, the high that I got living vicariously through Mr. Jordan Belfort slowly started fading away. As he started sinking deeper into a drug addled paranoia, I began to empathize more than envy and the rooting for the protagonist of his book (so to speak), namely him, took on a new meaning (read Part 1). So what was your favorite part of the book? My favorite part of the book was leading up......

Stuck in the muck of collegiate winter fun (and by fun I mean endless hours of non-comprehension of Middle Eastern languages and religious legal texts, staring and pretending to read as your eyes begin to learn to work under the constant rain of exhaustion), I, in my perpetual procrastination mode, rummaged through my emails to find the title "The Wolf of Wall Street" leap out at me. Needless to say, I was as ecstatic......

It's too hot for C-SPAN: Bush rocks out -- slightly -- to a band playing “Guantanamera” at a Hispanic heritage month event. "It's time to end the tradition of holocaust denial that has only deepened the pain of those whose parents and grandparents suffered the unspeakable horror of ethnic cleansing," Mayor Villaraigosa said about City Council's calling the 1.5 million Armenians killed a genocide. "When we don't speak up, when we are silent, what......

Most people who don't know me are surprised when they learn that I am a born again Christian. I don't know why they're surprised. I think I'm a nice person. For example, even though for the last decade or so I've been writing article and post and column about how the Conservatives are evil and untrustworthy and now I am telling people how excited I am to be voting for the most conservative presidential......

In what the Wall Street crowd might call a flight to quality, North American audiences made The Bourne Ultimatum this weekend's box office champ by spending 70.1 million dollars on the superb third installment of the Matt Damon franchise. Expect across-the-board great reviews and excellent word-of-mouth to keep Bourne afloat for the rest of the summer, especially now that the release schedule is lightening up a bit. The Simpsons Movie nose-dived 65% after an......

Waiting on hold just got a lot better. Forbes ranks L.A. as one of the "top 10 cities for foodies." A highway overpass under construction near Oroville, CA, collapsed this morning, burying a delivery truck and seriously injuring at least one man. The J. Paul Getty Museum has resumed talks with the Italian government over disputed antiquities after an eight-month deadlock. City officials want a new system to estimate traffic that would be based......

A NASA investigation revealed that some astronauts got hammered before flying. The scandal-plagued Tour de France is slowly grinding to a finish. How to extricate yourself from a tricky police encounter. A fuel spill caused by an accident involving a big-rig truck shut down most of the 60 freeway in Pomona this morning. Fancy yourself a good football player? A few more spots on the Trojan roster have just opened up. 10 more L.A.......

Monday Mike Carey presents The Devil You Know 7pm @ Book Soup Tuesday Doug Stumpf presents Confessions of a Wall Street Shoeshine Boy 7pm @ Book Soup Joy Horowitz presents Parts per Million: The Poisoning of Beverly Hills High School 7pm @ Central Library Michael Tucker signs Living a Foreign Language: A Memoir of Food, Wine and Love in Italy 7pm @ Dutton's Jerry Stahl presents Love Without 7pm @ Borders, Long Beach Thomas......

Rarely does anything good come from the keyboard of an anonymous negative commentor. Despite the fact that one could hide from the bushes and snipe at people from the bushes doesn't mean that one should. Likewise, when commentors refuse to put their real name next to their criticism, the validity of the statement should be seriously questioned, as should its motives. Case in point this week comes from the CEO of one of the......

This montage by Kelly Gallaher is upsetting enough to make me want to storm Capitol Hill and Wall Street to begin a mass boycott of the products sold by all of the big campaign-donating corporations until our Congress is forced to get American soldiers out of Iraq. Given that something drastic like a true boycott has not yet happened, I am going to agree with the Gallaher's montage accusation that we are all too......

Do you want to get screwed? I know this sell-out whore who will screw anybody for five billion dollars. All you gotta do is call this number: 1-800-JOURNAL (1-800-568-7623). Just ask for Dow Jones, or Wall Street Journal, as that sell-out whore is known as on the street. But be careful because Dow Jones is crazy and could turn on you at any time. Everyone says that Down Jones used to be pretty honest......

George Lucas is notoriously stringent when it comes to copyright and trademark issues, but it looks like the director has finally realized that remix is the aesthetic of the new millennium, or at least this first decade of it. The Wall Street Journal reported that Lucasfilm is taking approximately 250 clips from the various Star Wars movies and making them available to fans who want to download and use them in Internet mash-ups, re-mixes and......

In like a fox and out with a yodel? Microsoft wants to buy Yahoo for $50 billion. Many have speculated that Microsoft would eventually spring for big Y, as a marriage with the online media giant increasingly appears to be the most viable option to compete with Google in the great war of search and online advertising. Always a fun rumor to kick around, but today it's being corroborated by the WSJ, and considering......

Saturday’s “The Future of News” panel at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books was quite a raucous event. Panelists were James Taranto, editor of the Wall Street Journal’s opinion website, ABC News political analyst Mark Halperin and Times editor James O’Shea (whose introduction met with hisses and boos). The discussion was moderated by Marjorie Miller from the Times, who opened with the comforting observation that ”we don’t really have a clue about the......

Will someone please start putting some cameras in the LA Times building? It wouldn't be much different than The Real World meets Survivor, with people having to live with each other even though they don't want to, and either quitting or getting fired in very bizarre power plays. Today episode involves the Times Ed Page editor Andrés Martinez, who resigned today out of protest when the paper announced that it would not run the special......

Valentine's Day can be rough on guys. There's flowers ($80 for a dozen roses at a store on La Cienega), candy ("Are you trying to get me fat?"), jewelry (That little diamond thingie costs how much?), and dinner (you did make reservations in January, right?). You could have taken Tom Lykis' advice and dumped her last week, or planned an out of town business trip. Or you could go to the Flower District with......

Weekend Edition Friday - Today "The 7th Voyage of Sinbad" (TCM, 5:00 p.m.) An evening of stop-action animation starts with this one followed by "Jason and the Argonauts" and "Mysterious Island" "NHL Hockey" (5:30 p.m.) Kings @ Stars "NBA Basketball" (KCAL, 6:00 p.m.) Lakers @ Jazz "College Football" (ESPN2, 6:00 p.m.) Fresno State @ Louisiana Tech "College Basketball" (PRIME, 7:30 p.m.) Long Beach State @ USC "Ghost Whisperer/Close To Home/NUMB3RS" (CBS, 8-11:00 p.m.) All......

Congrats Liana who won the "I Voted" cd six-pack contest with her entry above. - Bush Admits He Lied To Reporters - Think Progress - Bush channels Madonna's faux British accent: "I say, why all the glum faces" - White House - Righties see a blossom out of the turd: "And it is a wonderful day for new media, especially talk radio. For two years we have had to defend the Congressional gang that......

If you vote, take a picture like xTx did, above, of your sticker. Then upload the picture on Flickr or Buzznet or somewhere, and put the link in the comments below. One lucky winner will get a cd six pack. Deadline tomorrow at noon. - Experience polling problems? Log them on this nationwide election blog - Voters Unite - Voting snags across the country - MSNBC - Delays in voting in Denver. Dems ask......

LA journalist Cathy Seipp is interviewed by adult video journalist Luke Ford, not about porn, but about silly things....

We have to thank KCRW for bringing us Joe Morgenstern from the Wall Street Journal, who delivers weekly movie reviews in prose that mellifluously flow into our aural space. Most of the time we agree, but we were surprised at his review of the latest installment of the X-Men series. "Terrifically entertaining... a single great idea." We're thinking more along the lines of "mildly entertaining... a few cheesy moments." If you witnessed X2: X-Men......

Big news — that conservative cartoonist Michael Ramirez was hired by Investor's Business Daily after losing his gig with the LA Times — was reported last week, by LAObserved and others. But the other shoe, which is probably more financial than anything else, dropped this week, when the Copley News Service syndication outlet confirmed that it would continue to distribute Ramirez's right-leaning cartoons to newspapers around the country. Now, it's true that Ramirez won......