For those of you who might not be familiar with the story, this is a tale of suspicion, revenge, and MySpace gone terribly wrong. In 2006, Lori Drew of Dardenne, Missouri, invented a fake profile on MySpace pretending to be a young boy named "Josh". Her intent was to use "Josh" to romance and keep tabs on her daughter's ex-best-friend, Megan Meier, who Drew believed was harassing her daughter via MySpace. "Josh" also "friended"......

What's your best costume? Who needs slutty costumes and overwhelming, overhyped street parades when you've got one of the most original voices in music today? Regina Spektor is playing the Grove in Anaheim on Halloween night, and because LAist loves you so so so much, we are going to give away a pair of tickets to one lucky lucky reader. What do you have to do to get the tix? Just leave us a......

The Los Angeles Times sports blog has been breaking a story this morning about the arrest of UCLA's assistant football coach, Eric Scott, on suspicion of residential burglary. The 32-year-old was caught in the act of breaking into a house in Norwalk with two other men; he was booked and then released for $50,000 bail. Scott came on board as a wide receiver coach last March after an internship in the athletics office; he......

It's summer, it's hot and I've been craving some cold dishes with the pizazz of freshness. Then it hit me - Cold Peanut Sesame Noodles. Yum! Great! But wait... Another thought smacked me on the head: store bought Asian peanut sauces are the worst tasting sauces out there. I've never been able to find one to satisfy my pallet. That leaves only one option: do it myself. I headed to Epicurious.com and found their......

What with Paris Hilton's release earlier this week and the upcoming celebration of American Independence (sorry, Londonist!), we've been thinking a lot about freedom. Freedom to vote, freedom to choose, and most importantly, freedom to blog. Here are a few things we're happy we've been free to blog about this week. Being the nation's capital, DCist felt especially proud to let freedom ring this week by exposing the really important issues, like how sad they......

by Jake Dobkin Hey everyone-- you may have noticed that we've made a few small changes to our commenting and feedback systems: 1. Commenters now have profile pages with a bit of information about them, and links to their recent comments, along with comments other people have left in response. If the commenter is also a LAist or Gothamist or Ist author, the page will include a list of their recent posts. Here's mine. You......

Sea Wolf - "You're a Wolf" It occurred to us that not everyone is aware of Sea Wolf as we thought. So we are going to give away the Sea Wolf ep Get To The River Before It Runs Too Low to three random commenters who watch the video above and explain what they like about it. Simple! The Police @ Honda Center Norah Jones, M. Ward @ Greek Sea Wolf, Josie Cotton, Nikki......

All across the Ist-A-Verse (or at least the American parts thereof), writers and editors are in the midst of enjoying their three-day weekend. But after the week we've all had, we feel like the break is not only needed, but deserved. Just look at everything we've been doing! Gothamist headed into the Memorial Day weekend with a number of tasks accomplished. They worried about Long Islanders giving New Yorkers a bad name. They tried......

For every one of the negative anonymous commenters who complain that we cover Britney too much or Anna Nicole or whomever, we get three times the amount of emails from people with tips and photos and videos of random shit going down. And even though we'd love to run half the photos that a lot of the gossip blogs use, we know that those are images that could get us in trouble. Clearly Perez......

Sunday. Usually, a quiet, contemplative day in the Blogosphere. But not here in the Ist-a-Verse. Nonono! Just look below and see all of the wild and crazy stuff our staffs are up to. In Austin, bands are beginning to confirm for SXSW and the rumor mill is up and running. Good thing, too, because we all know how much Austinites love live performances. Austin also found itself in the national spotlight, with Longhorn Legend......

Before we begin, we'd like to extend our deepest sympathies to the family of James Kim. We are not, by any means, trying to discount that tragedy by juxtaposing posts about the Kims with more light-hearted posts. It's the nature of doing a compilation such as this one: we're trying to give a full slice of the goings-on in the Ist-a-Verse: the good, the bad, and the ugly. Londonist wants you to know where......

Some updates since yesterday... After the day cooled down... LAPD's blog was updated and the commenters have taken sides. It gets Federal The FBI is now looking into the video: LA Observed | CNN Power to the Tube At 4 pm on Thursday, the video on YouTube had been viewed just under 4,000 times. At 11:15 pm, the video had been viewed just shy of 27,000 times. As of 12:30 pm today, the video......

Halloween is Tuesday, which means this weekend is really the time for all of the –ists to celebrate. And whether they’re designing super-spooky costumes or talking about the super-spooky upcoming elections, we’d say that they’re doing a fine job of it. Austinist knows that few things in life are scarier than zombies, people with way too much money, and politicians who try too hard to be funny. Slightly less scary, depending on whom you......

As we sat down to write this week's Best of the -ists post, a car blaring "21 Questions'" passed by our house. And that started us thinking about how some of the best -ist posts out there have at their hearts questions, some of which are answered, and some of which are left open. Check out the Best of the -ists from this week, and see if you agree. Londonist answers the questions "How much......

Breaking the law, breaking the law We -ist folks love us some crime, and no misdemeanor is too petty for a post on any of our sites. This week, join us for a rogues' gallery of miscreants major, minor, and alleged. Gothamist gets us started with "Law & Order", muppet style. Oh, you know what isn't a crime? Taking pictures on the MTA. So, why are cops stopping photographers? In other Gotham crime, a......

God, we're so sick of Snakes on a Plane that we want to kill anyone and everyone that makes a "something on a something" joke. But then we realized that there was no way we could ever win this fight, and, hell, if you can't beat them, we might as well join them. And with that, you have the theme of this weeks' Gothamist network post. Austinist makes it easy for us, with Candidate on......

LAist has so much fun this week! They go to E3, where they overhear the timeless remark "Man, this is where nerdy girls get laid." Is that a promise? They also give us this week's best CDs and make us realize that LA is the best place to use Zillow. Ah, Houstonist. They're biking to work, that is, if they can figure out how to get there. That's right, Mapquest says "Houston had the......

Londonist prepares a Happy Birthday bath for Buddah this week and then things get all cliched. A madman goes on a rampage while axe-wiedling and London's mayor warns an American diplomat to avoid the kitchen if the heat bothers him so much. LAist has finally come around to purchasing tickets for Clipper Train. Hyper local dating sites are spamming L.A. neighborhoods and the fascinating Dame Darcy talks with LAist about art, the city and earthquakes.......

SFist commeters pose for before and aftershocks when the mayor commemorates a 1906 earthquake...at 4:30 in the morning. A hot tip on the Chronicle vending machines comes in and the SFist war correspondent risks life and limb to post this dispatch from the frontlines. Houstonist announces their new Cops spinoff "World's Funniest Tazer Videos" and the possible cancellation of their pervs' "World's Grossest Bathroom Videos" and PBS trains cams on cows at, uhg, Mootube. Also,......

Academically speaking, the above title (a quote from one of our commenters) is correct and it only took 15 comments to get there! Not every part of the valley is within city limits (haha, Wiki left out West Toluca Lake!) of the City of Los Angeles (as pointed out: there is Bizarrebank, Glendale, City of San Fernando, the occasional unincorporated Los Angeles County, etc). Should New York City be our example? If you live......