It is a rather worrying and tragic fact that each year thousands of people seem to vanish from the face of the earth, never to be seen again. Of course, many of these absentee's may well have been murdered or suffered accidental death, but what about the victim in the following case....the weird disappearance of Dixie-Lee. Dixie-Lee Arensen was a gifted and sensitive girl. Aged just twenty-years, she was the bride of an associate youth......

Cupcakes from West Hollywood's Wedding Park Day (more photos here) | Photo by Tom Andrews/LAist Remember when the IRS investigated All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena for a sermon that they thought might void the church's tax-exempt status due to political endorsement during the 2004 Presidential Race (it was a What Would Jesus Do if he were Bush or Kerry on the war)? Now churches in California, including one nonprofit, are using their pulpits......

Photo by mil8 via the LAist Featured Pools on Flickr Yesterday marked 40 years since Dr Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated. But did you know this? MLK Jr spoke at a packed congregation in Los Angeles just three weeks before his assassination: The 40th anniversary of the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. comes as a poignant reminder of the day the civil rights leader stood in the pulpit at Holman United......

'V' ran amok through the streets of Hollywood today as hundreds of picketers descended on the Church of Scientology complex at Sunset and L. Ron Hubbard Way. | All photos by Tony Pierce The global day of action was initially announced last month after a video attributed to "Anonymous" coincided with an online effort that managed to temporarily knock out Internet servers belonging to the Church of Scientology. Another speech by "Anonymous" appeared this......

In order to inspire you to get those last-minute cards in the mail today, here are four very personal holiday messages to and from your favorite musicians. WILD BILLY CHILDISH AND THE MUSICIANS OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE - A Quick One (Pete Townshend's Christmas) The garage-spawned Childish remains up to no good in his latest venture, the quite fab Christmas 1979. For this one, he reimagines the final third or so of The Who's......

My mother has been making these Central/Eastern European influenced cookies since before I was born. Every Christmas, we have these delicious powdered sugared, jam filled treats. It turns out, the dessert is also interchangeably a cookie and/or a pastry and has quite an old and varied history:The oldest ritual leavened loaf which came into being soon after the Slavs embraced Christianity is shaped in a round, ring or like a cart and is called......

What's the holiday season without one of the most popular and famous works in Western choral literature -- George Frideric Handel's "Messiah"? And who doesn't like sing-alongs? (Remember our love for The Sound of Music Sing-A-Long at the Hollywood Bowl?) So many questions, so many... Los Angeles Master Chorale: Messiah Sing-Along Monday, December 10 & Sunday, December 16 @ 7:30 pm Walt Disney Concert Hall Angeles Chorale: George Frideric Handel Messiah December 15 @......

As traffic worsens on Ventura Boulevard, a new L.A. City report found that developers could add 3 million square feet of commercial space to the Ventura Boulevard corridor under current zoning rules. If you thought getting from Sepulveda to Van Nuys down Ventura was bad before. Umph... Not sure what to buy that ragamuffin who has everything this holiday season? Franklin Avenue found a great set of Lego-ish toys featuring people in casts, babies......

1812: A major earthquake struck Southern California, destroying the church at Mission San Juan Capistrano and damaging the San Gabriel Mission. 1873: J. R. Toberman, Mayor approved a franchise for a street railway which have a run "commencing at Temple and Spring Streets, and along Spring to First; First to Fort Street, (now Broadway); Fort Street to Fourth Street, Fourth to Hill Street, on Hill to Fifth Street; on Fifth to Olive Street; on......

Let's get this out of the way immediately--if you are a fan of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, you will be disappointed by some of the elisions and excisions made in this movie. The degree to which it bothers you will largely determine how much you enjoy The Golden Compass. I won't get into the details too much since it would spoil the movie for those unfamiliar with the novels. Let's just say......

Cardinal Roger Mahoney revealed that he had been assaulted in July outside of Our Lady of the Angels Cathedral; the attacker was "enraged by the Catholic Church's sexual-abuse scandal within days of a record settlement with hundreds of victims." Karl Dorrell will not be coaching UCLA in its upcoming Las Vegas Bowl game. Defensive coordinator DeWayne Walker will coach in the interim. If the world weren't already all shook up by Jakob Lodwick's departure......

How apropos; today on LAist it's Sex Saturday, but today also happens to be World AIDS Day. Several events took place yesterday and will happen today in order to remind the world community that HIV/AIDS remains a global threat. The LA Times reports today on President Bush's public appearance yesterday at a church in northern Maryland, and that his speeches did not propose new plans or funding, but rather focused on humanitarianism. According to the......

By William S. Burroughs For John Dillinger In hope he is still alive Thanks for the wild turkey and the Passenger Pigeons, destined to be shit out through wholesome American guts — thanks for a Continent to despoil and poison — thanks for Indians to provide a modicum of challenge and danger — thanks for vast herds of bison to kill and skin, leaving the carcass to rot — thanks for bounties on wolves......

Born and raised in Chicago, award winning fiddler Liz Carroll has Irish music in her bones. She has composed dozens of traditional tunes, many of which have become standards among her peers. At the young age of eighteen, she won the prestigious Senior All-Ireland Championship and is also the recipient of the prestigious National Heritage Award. This weekend she and guitarist John Doyle will fill the Throop Church in Pasadena with the powerful sounds......

Monday Shalom Auslander presents Foreskin's Lament 7pm @ Vroman's Valerie Plame Wilson presents Fair Game 7pm @ Carpenter Performing Arts Center, Long Beach Barbara Firestone presents Autism Heroes 7pm @ Dutton's Slash presents Slash 7pm @ Borders, Torrance Lawrence Wright presents The Looming Tower 7:30pm @ UCLA Tuesday David Plante, with host Mark Danielewski, presents ABC 7pm @ Book Soup Michael Lent presents Christmas Letters from Hell 7pm @ Vroman's Tommy Lasorda & Bill Plaschke......

Spider-Man 3 would have been an immeasurably better movie if it had just stuck to one villain. Seriously, Venom should not be sharing the screen with anyone else. No End in Sight received ecstatic reviews when it was released in theaters so, naturally, no one saw it. Correct that mistake when it lands on DVD shelves. Talk to Me was better than I expected; Wendell Baker was worse; Day Watch was unwatchable nonsense. The......

The Red Sox has permeated nearly every facet of Bostonist's lives. When they're not live-blogging the games, waxing poetic about the games, thanking Curt Schilling for his splendid work, or telling Dane Cook to watch his hair, they're watching certain presidential candidates hop on the Red Sox bandwagon (sorry, Gothamist). The Sox are so branded on the local brain that people are using the Series to spice up their sex lives. Speaking of spice, Bostonist......

Sneaking into my seat in the Skirball Center’s small auditorium, I look around to notice that I may be the youngest person in the audience by about thirty years, with the exception of a painfully bored looking teen two rows back. “The truth,” the emcee is saying in a rich British accent as he introduces the show, “can be inconvenient.” Applause breaks through from the crowd at his tie-in to pop culture. He’s introducing The......

Monday Edmund White presents Hotel de Dream: A New York Novel 7pm @ Central Library Patricia Hampl presents The Florist's Daughter 7pm @ Dutton's Red Hen Press poets read their work 8pm @ Boston Court Main Stage, Pasadena Tuesday Oliver Sacks presents Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain 7pm @ Central Library Roger Director presents I Dream in Blue 7:30pm @ Barnes & Noble, The Grove Francisco Goldman presents The Art of Politcal......

The Original Rock God's name was J.S. Bach. Wait, I take that back, Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina may have been the first Rock n' Roll god back in the Renaissance period, but then you might say LAist is getting a little weird on you. So Bach it is. Today marks the official opening of the 74th Annual Los Angeles Bach Festival, taking place in the Gothic sanctuaries of the First Congregational Church of Los......

Good thing the Los Angeles Fire Department (LAFD) put out a Red Flat Alert (move your car if you live in the hills or you could be towed) last night for today -- a major brush fire began this morning around 5:50 a.m. near Tampa Ave and Sesnon Bl (yo, Valley, people, this is Porter Ranch) in Los Angeles County territory according to alerts from the LAFD. In the name of mutual aid, the......

Gothamist learned about the craziest urban nightmare come true: A huge python found in the bathroom pipes. It was also a nightmare for some Yankees fans, as manger Joe Torre declined to come back and manage the Bronx Bombers. At least the city's attempt to give some direction to subway riders was interesting, pranksters went shirtless at the Fifth Avenue Abercrombie & Fitch and the I Heart Brooklyn Girls calendars came out. And just......

Who are these people who credit the controversial religion Scientology for changing their lives for the better? One of them is tv's Jerry Seinfeld who told the typically worthless Parade magazine that the church helped him communicate early in his career so that he could control his audiences. I last really studied, oh, it’s almost 30 years ago. But what I did do, I really liked, in terms of it’s very...it was interesting. Believe......

Forest Lawn in the Hollywood Hills has a variety of gardens, stained glass and art exhibits that attract a lot of attention. However, the Court of Liberty and the Birth of Liberty Mosaic don't hold much interest for me as a photographer. I am touched by the juxtoposition of beauty and sorrow in the marble statuary. I find peace in the serene faces, and I marvel at the way people are always able to......

Monday Porochista Khakpour presents Sons and Other Flammable Objects 7pm @ Dutton's Kenneth Turan presents Never Coming to a Theater Near You 7pm @ Studio City Branch Library Tuesday Susan Faludi presents The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post-9/11 America 7pm @ Central Library Max Brooks presents World War Z 7pm @ Book Soup Walter Mosley presents Blonde Faith 7:30pm @ Skirball Cultural Center President Vicente Fox discusses and signs Revolution of Hope......

There’s certainly no shortage of seasonally creepy movies to choose from, from the cartoonish to the sickeningly realistic, whatever floats your boat. But if you prefer all your eggs in one basket - cartoonishly evil violence in documentary form – prepare to stay glued to the computer screen for half an hour. We all knew kids who were just a little bit TOO INTO heavy metal. Kids who wore Motley Crue make-up to class,......

This video is a few weeks old, but the story is still developing:The council has sent the church a $40,000 bill for police services and sent a letter to the secretary of Homeland Security asking for personal assistance to end the city and church stalemate. Emotions were more muted Monday night, after several weeks of heated rhetoric on all sides of the debate. Homeland Security over this? More at the Ventura County Star.......

Hide the knives, Joan Didion: the Santa Anas are coming! The Santa Anas are coming! The new assistant director over at the Los Angeles branch of the FBI has experience in the domestic terror, white-collar crime, and foreign relations divisions; he has also spent time in Mexico City as an FBI legal attache. This week's Sign of the Apocalypse: kids as young as thirteen and fourteen are now getting into the paparazzi business. We......

Within the first 10 pages of Brandon Christopher's Dirty Little Altar Boy, a black-rubber dildo makes an appearance, a church's Eucharist wafers get stolen, and young Brandon reveals that he has to wear two pairs of underwear to deal with the anxieties of sixth grade. That's when you start to realize that you're not reading the standard collection of childhood reflections, but are perusing the memories of a great storyteller, one with the ability to......

A woman saved a man's life after spotting 79-year-old Blain Hudson lying on a hill near train tracks in Lancaster. The man had been missing for two days and, authority's said, would not have been discovered if it wasn't for the woman. A Wilshire Blvd. Episcopal church completed a 75-year stained glass window project detailing the history of Los Angeles. The project features images of Cesar Chavez, freeways, traffic and other historically relevant panes.......