Andy Sternberg

The Flaming Lips is coming to town this summer for two special nights at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery. Using the tagline "Every One You Know Some Day Will Die" (a lyric from the 2002 single "Do You Realize," the Lips' wildly entertaining psycho-pop shenanigans will attempt to bury you on June 14th and 15th. And there's a bonus...

LAPD is prepared for the May Day rally and march expected to draw tens of thousands to the downtown streets on Sunday. Organizers expect up to 50,000 activists -- well short of the hundreds of thousands who showed up for the downtown and MacArthur Park rallies of 2007.

near Chantry Flat, photo by John Wood via LAist Featured Photo Flickr Pool. Homicide detectives are seeking clues in the shooting death of a man at Chantry Flats Campground in Angeles National Forest north of Arcadia Thursday night. A passerby reported seeing a wounded man collapsed on the road to authorities around 5:40 p.m. The man transported to a nearby hospital where he was pronounced dead, according to the L.A. County Sheriff's Department. The...

If you're a Sony PlayStation user, you probably noticed that you couldn't connect to the gaming console's online network for the past ten days or so. Most figured it was probably just a network outage. But as we learned Tuesday -- one week into the outage -- Sony deliberately pulled the plug on its online network as well as its streaming and on demand content services on April 20. PlayStation's unencrypted user database was breached, allowing hackers access to info entered by the network's 77 million users. If you are one of the 77 million Sony Playstation users with a PlayStation Network or Qriocity account, a class-action lawsuit was filed on your behalf Wednesday.

Attention-starved real estate tycoon and reality television superstar Donald Trump is going to run for president in 2012, according to the media. Visibly embarrassed after being shamed by The President, The Donald, and The Public at large after seeing the clamp come down on a far-right fringe group called The Birthers, the media establishment gladly passed the mic off to Trump on Wednesday.

A 24-year-old man suspected in the shooting death of a man outside a Koreatown karaoke bar was sentenced to 54 years to life. In June 2009, Louis Woo Lee was called by friends after a fight broke out outside M2 Cafe & Karaoke on 6th St. at Manhattan in K-town. Lee showed up with a gun and fired away, killing one and wounding another.

Meth abuse dropped 43 percent between 2005 and 2009 and arrests for the drug were reduced by more than half, according to the County of San Diego's Methamphetamine Task Force. Despite the results, the county once known as the Meth Capital of the World still saw 28 percent of all arrested adults test positive for the drug in 2009 and 138 deaths. Emergency room admissions related to meth use remained unchanged between 2005 and 2009.

example of proper chest bump (photo by thaths via flickr) Estancia High School English teacher Joel Ruben Flores filed a police report last weekend claiming he was assaulted by Costa Mesa Councilman Steve Mensinger after a confrontation following a community fun run. Mensinger countered on Monday by filing a complaint against Flores with the Newport-Mesa Unified School District over an altercation described by Flores to police as a "chest-bumping." Flores apparently aggravated Mensinger with...

Screenshot via KTLA Three male students were cited for felony vandalism and suspended from school after admitting their involvement in creating racist graffiti that was spotted last weekend on the grounds of Calabasas High School. While the trio of all 11th graders could face criminal charges, they will not face hate-crime charges related to the incident, according to officials who say the teenagers did not target a specific group. Indeed, in spite of the...

The 2007 film Skid Row screens tonight at the Downtown Independent. A Q&A follows. MUSIC Barre's newest resident, Jackie Tohn's, "There's a Big Show in Here" is more animated than a Saturday morning cartoon, funnier than a barrel of funny things and is clinically proven to stop your spring doldrums in a single bound. A musical story of guts and glory, the voice that launched a thousand, "Wow I wish I could sing like...

Last weekend, John Belitsky and Dan Wuebben hailed a cab at LaGuardia Airport and asked the driver to take them to Los Angeles. It started out as somewhat of a dare when Belitsky's father, a former NYC cab driver, was certain nobody would be up to the task. Belitsky and Wuebben bought a camera and started a YouTube channel (NY2LAinacab) with the profile: "Heading from NYC to LA. In. a. cab. Follow us at...

"We want candidate Obama back," said human rights activist and Grammy-award winning musician Serj Tankian before leading a gathering mostly Armenian-Americans outside Sony Pictures Studios in Culver City Thursday afternoon. As many as 1,500 community members participated in the protest, according to Asbarez.com. Reported crowd size varied from 500 to 2,000 according to the Daily News. MyFoxLA counted only 200 protesters. "Obama keep your promise," they chanted, referring to the president's campaign promise to...