Jason Toney

Martini Republic points out that the LA Times "scooped the blogosphere" in announcing the launch of The Litblog Co-Op. The Litblog is the brainchild of Mark Sarvas who runs the LA Based blog, Elegant Variation. More interesting to us than the Times beating most of us to the punch on this story is that the web version of Scott Martelle's article actually includes a hotlink to the LBC. That's the first time we've seen...

Before we get into the week that was, there are a few announcements. As should be obvious from what he writes about, Phil Wallace is our Sports editor and the staff page now reflects that. Jessica Ritz is our resident queen of interview and the staff page showcases that now as well. You'll also notice that we've made it easy to print items from LAist now. There's a cool little print link on all items...

Guess we won't be visiting Forty Deuce Hollywood again. In what mostly can be described as a 44 minute infomercial, the burlesque bar noted for its famous clientele and high energy dance routines (not to mention insanely expensive drinks and tight quarters) began its run as a reality show on Bravo last night. Bravo has taken to Hollywood life like crazy with its reality schedule in the past year with Blow Out, Project Greenlight,...

Blogging.la is coordinating a LA bloggers meetup tomorrow night at the Original Farmer's Market. LAist will be there, too. I don't think we're going to be bringing our laptops but you probably will find us with a drink in our hand wondering when the DJ will start to spin hot records. In fact, we're so excited about the meetup that we're going to start lining up at the Gelson's market on Santa Monica this...

While we're heading over to Granada Hills Charter School to see a teenager that we love perform as the lead in a high school production of Up the Down Staircase tonight, you can go dancing. If you're an Aries, maybe you want to go to Zodiac, a monthly birthday dance party at The Larchmont. Azul (who is an Aquarius) and the gang spin some funky rhythms for you inside while the real party might...

So is this "war" between LA's most powerful Latino gang and the vigilante border patrol group actually happening? Minutemen organizer James Gilchrist claimed that Mara Salvatrucha was planning to go toe-to-toe with his team of Mexico-America border watchers because their efforts were going to limit their smuggling trade. With as many reporters there as there are minute men, we haven't heard anything about gun play and gang warfare. Mostly, there seems to be a...

LAist reader Craig showed up at the Arclight for the Talking Heads documentary Stop Making Sense on the wrong night (Tuesday) only to find it wasn't playing and was furious at us. Don't worry, Craig, even if you had shown up on Wednesday, you wouldn't have gotten in (update: Craig did better than we did and made it in). Tickets for the Jonathan Demme directed concert film have been mostly sold out for the...

LA Observed reported on this yesterday and now it's officially open. Sploid.com is what happens when you let New York's Choire Sicha and LA's own Ken Layne loose on the internet and tell them to link to things. Sploid is kind of the essence of blogging on acid. No original content, all fast and furious linking, all with shocking headlines and tabloid style pics. We're not quite sure if this is a wonderful addition...

For the past week, we've been marvelling over the great butterfly explosion around town and telling anyone who would listen about how we were caught on the freeway as seemingly thousands of the monarch butterflies decided it was time to cross the 405 at the same time. Turns out they aren't monarchs at all. The Daily Breeze reports that the insects are actually painted lady butterflies and are flying from Northern Mexico to the...

Giant Robot's takeover of Sawtelle Blvd is complete with the official opening of gr/eats. The restaurant has been in "soft open" for the past few weeks but now you should be telling all your friends to stop by. We snuck in for a meal a little over a week ago and were quite impressed with the food (a mixture of Asian and American cuisines). Hopefully, we'll get a chance to go by for lunch...