Jason Toney

- The very cool Apartment Therapy now has an LA version. - This seems like an odd week to be profiling Chatsworth as an ideal place to buy a home. - Porn Valley gets the documentary treatment on Playboy starting this weekend and the documentary was done by the Wow Report folks. - What Latino-Black divide? South Los Angeles churches are seeing continued charity for Katrina across cultural lines. - Our friends at the...

Heather and Jessica, local blog queens and friends of LAist, having already conquered VH-1 and trashy gossip rags with their acerbic wit and keen eye for crazy-ugly-uncool get even more blog famous today with a profile in the Wall Street Journal (complete with sexy laptop picture). How popular is gfy? The blog, which is called "Go Fug Yourself", has become a small sensation. (The creators say the name is short for "frightfully ugly.") The...

We're still not quite sure what's really going on between the disgruntled former models of Suicide Girls and the company behind the site. From everything we've been able to gather, most of the complaints seem to be about one of the company's owners and founders, Sean Suhl, and the perception of SG as a punk-feminist-free speech advocating adult site versus a reality of what many former employees feel is about censorship and the exploitation...

That's the view from the front door of koganuts's house. It's also the view we had while trying to drive up the 101 to Woodland Hills last night. Traffic was abysmal. There's a risk of things getting worse today: With shifty and unpredictable winds expected to gust to 25 mph today, firefighters were hoping to prevent the blaze from spreading. In particular, they hoped to contain one end of the blaze from moving into...

The LAFD warns that we're entering the peak wildfire season and notes that their weather forecast is updated twice daily to issue warnings for potential fire areas. Our current forecast is hot and dry with strong winds going through the mountains and canyons of LA and Ventura counties. Thankfully, though, we'll be cooling down this weekend. Update: LAist was just in Chatsworth and saw the crazy billowing smoke clouds that can only mean a...

It seems like something out of a movie or a bad tv show but it appears that someone at St. Vincent's medical center gamed the national organ network for profit. In 2003, a liver was transplanted into a patient who sat 52nd on the list while the hospital was paid 30% more than normal for the action. In a routine audit of their organ donor services, the incident and subsequent cover up were found....

- It's all adult entertainment around here today. First, we talked Suicide Girls, now we want you to know that city workers are getting trained to pick out human smuggling victims, many of whom end up in the adult film industry in the San Fernando Valley. An industry that isn't doing enough to protect its performers from HIV infection. - Speaking of city workers, probation officers walked out yesterday in a dispute with the...

30 models have left Suicide Girls in the last few weeks complaining of unfair pay and exploitation. The women argue that while the site's alt-porn image is built on empowerment and a feminist-forward thinking erotica aesthetic, the Los Angeles based company is really run by a man, Sean Suhl. Wired points to unPink and tales from the dark site , blogs that are pulling together stories of unfair treatment by former suicide girls. SG...

We're not quite sure how Captain Smith could have been confused by what he saw when El Segundo officers dropped off a homeless gentleman on Skid Row with his bag but El Segundo's Police Department claims he must've been. See, they, like Pasadena, Burbank and El Monte would never do such a thing. That the LAPD had to issue an order to stop other out-of-area police whom they suspected of delivering their homeless to...

We haven't gotten confirmation on this yet but it all looks legit and nutty enough: In October and November, Tom Cruise will be giving 4 lectures on "Scientology's Mental Health Solutions" at the Scientology Celebrity Centre, International right here in Hollywood. The events are open to all humans of all thetan levels and will be streamed online and available for broadcast (although we don't quite know where. The wonder that is the scientology celebrity...