Nikki Bazar

The second day of the Bottled Smoke Festival continued last night at Mr. T's Bowl in Highland Park after a full day of bands at Echo Curio in Echo Park. Mr. T's was the only portion of the festival that cost money, but $8 got you a lot, including the powerful ambient noises of one-man show Ghosting, instrumental rock by San Francisco's Tarantel, and the spooky sounds of Humboldt County's Starving Weirdos played to...

Rumors are flying about the future of L.A. Weekly founder Jay Levin's latest venture, RealTALK LA. Kevin Roderick of LAObserved posted Friday that the new magazine may be folding due to the inability to make payroll. Today, he posted a note from Levin's executive assistant refuting the payroll claim saying, "It is true that we are re-organizing even while we prepare our next issue and will have more to report at a later date."...

Portland's disco-punk duo Glass Candy graced L.A.'s presence twice this past weekend. On Friday night, Johnny Jewel and Ida No played to a sardine-packed crowd of teenagers at Echo Park's Tribal Cafe, a juice and coffee bar that clears out part of its floor for bands. Everybody danced and yelled out requests and put the band in a chipper mood. On Sunday night Glass Candy played Part Time Punks at the Echo, this time...

Seven Grand had its official "hard opening" Thursday night. (It "softly" opened last month.) The bar is the latest from 213, which also owns Broadway Bar and Golden Gopher and plans to reopen Downtown establishment Cole's, aka "originator of the French Dip," in winter 2007. Seven Grand is in the former home of Brocks Jewelry Emporium, although now it's stocked with stuffed stag and elk heads, a few hot tattooed- and mohawked waiters, and...

Now that the Lakers have been eliminated from the playoffs after last night's 119-110 loss to the Phoenix Suns, local sports writers weighed in this morning about where to place the blame. Times columnist J.A. Adande joins a growing number of people who are looking to coach Phil Jackson for some answers. Jackson is a Hall of Famer and is considered by many to be one of the best coaches in NBA history, but...

The Clientele have a new record coming out on Merge on May 8 and that means they're back on tour! This is the band's chance to redeem themselves for contributing a song to the incredibly lame-looking Keanu-Bullock movie, "The Lake House." Seriously, though, I saw The Clientele live last year in San Francisco and they were amazing. Their new record, God Save the Clientele, offers more mid-tempo numbers with elegant string arrangements and a...

Saturday's "New Media: Blogging and Beyond" panel at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books found bloggers Hugh Hewitt (pictured), Kevin Roderick and Jill Leovy deliberating over the merits of print vs. e-media. The panel was moderated by RJ Smith, a senior editor at Los Angeles magazine. "I got into it because I hate editors," said Hewitt, blogger at HughHewitt.com and author of Blog: Understanding the Information Reformation That is Changing Your World. "Blogging...

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...

Architect geeks and other assorted party-goers descended on the A+D Architecture and Design Museum last weekend for the opening reception of Crosswired, a performance and installation series featuring design, motion visual art and experimental electronic music. We didn't really hear anything too experimental, unless it was the deafening "rave" music that was possibly experimenting to see how much pressure our eardrums could take. We did elbow our way through a maze of Skyy 90...

Despite all the talk about the Lakers' newly revitalized motivation after reading about how the Phoenix Suns and their coach put them down in a book about last year's playoff series, no one realistically expects the Lakers to beat the Suns in this year's playoffs. Recent projections by four "NBA experts" printed in Sports Illustrated called Phoenix to win in either five or six games. Couple that with the Times reporting Lakers coach Phil...