If you are seeing what we're seeing when you log into your Google Mail account, you're not alone, and no, the "errors" aren't your fault. What to do? Well, you can go to the beach, take a nap, follow the grumbling session on Twitter and throughout the blogosphere, or take a chance on the GMail HTML interface, which is still functioning for some users. UPDATE: GMail is back up after a couple hours on the......

Photo by darkpatator via Flickr Here at LAist, we get hundreds of e-mails a day, sometimes at the rate of one e-mail per minute. Press releases, invites, statements and tips all flood our boxes. Many of these e-mails are from bands. Whether they are local or traveling through, there are lots and lots of shows every single night in this town and that adds up in the inbox (and sometimes it's coming at you......

Sure, we get the voting guides in the mail (not to mention the endless stream of postcards and pamphlets telling us who is endorsing who or what proposition) but in the digital age it should be easier to keep track of your intended votes. (Not to mention a great way to save paper!) The LA Times has just released its Electronic Voter Guide, which gives you a form to fill out with your selections that......

Coming next Tuesday, Los Angeles is gonna get bitten by the green bug -- not that it already is eco-minded, except for dumb politicians. Ideal Bite, a daily weekday e-mail that provides one simple green environmentally hip tip to around 170,000 people, has been doing a national version for a couple years. Now, concentrating on Metro areas, Los Angeles gets its own local version (you can sign up here). And what's there to expect? Organic......

We've all seen phishing e-mails before (thank you eBay, PayPal) but it's a bit trickier when the e-mail deliberately asking you to pony up your e-mail username and password comes from a sender purporting to be USCTEAM. The e-mail received today by several USC e-mail account holders suggests that the user's e-mail account will be terminated "permanently" within 7 days lest the recipient respond with account details including username, password, date of birth, and "country......

On News Year's Eve, Belinda Carlisle and Rufus Wainwright will sing classic French cabaret songs and more accompanied by a Parisian band and dancers. You could be with them in Los Angeles' living room, the Walt Disney Concert Hall, as we are giving away a pair of tickets to the 10:30 p.m. show, which will take you into 2008. To enter, leave a comment telling us about your favorite New Year's Eve in the past.......

Did you know that residents of Los Angeles County use 6 billion plastic bags a year, and only 5% of bags in the US are recycled? In the state of California the average person uses 552 bags, according to the environmental organization Heal the Bay. These bags are then left to choke up our waterways, landfills, streets, and urban landscapes, causing harm to animal life and our ecosystem. This is why Heal the Bay, along......

photo by gotomattex via flickr Uh Oh, not sure what to get for that sullen-eyed teen or Vampira look-a-like on your list this year? Is shopping for your little darkling turning into a real nightmare before Christmas? Fear not! We live in L.A.: one of the best places to be dark and spooky or at least look the part. Not only do we have a thriving Goth scene, but tons of local vendors that......

We are giving away a pair or tickets to Friday night's 8:00 p.m. concert of Joanna Newsom. This Friday, she will be playing at the Walt Disney Concert Hall with 28-piece orchestra conducted by Sean O'Loughlin, featuring arrangements by Van Dyke Parks....

Foothill Ranch, Orange County, CA. Santiago Canyon Fire. Canyon hills behind homes on Viaggio Ln. Alex Miroshnichenko is a freelance photojournalist who shared his neighborhood with some nasty wildfires this past week. As a photographer, he naturally snapped shots of the fire in and around his house and community. But he didn't want to try to profit off these photos. "This wasn't just another photojournalism job," he wrote in an essay he posted online.......

Out of taverns and streetcorners in poor sections of Lisbon, the mournful music, that tells emotional tales of longing and loss, was born. Since then, fado has become Portugal's most famous music. With a Mozambican background and a love for the Portuguese fado singing, Mariza has become one of the world's most famous singers. Her first album went quadruple platinum. After a 2002 visit to Lisbon, famed architect and creator of the Walt Disney Concert......

Here's a theme for City Council: they publish e-mail addresses on their websites so the public can contact them, but you e-mail them and get a bounced e-mail in return. You've seen this before. 1. The city's Webmaster (see the LaBonge story link) 2. Councilman Tom LaBonge 3. Councilman Greig Smith The next victim in the city's published e-mail address shenanigans is Councilman Tony Cárdenas, representing Council District 6 in The Valley. "No such recipient."......

A quarter million people are evacuating areas of San Diego County. We knew it was coming and now, one of the worst-case wildfire scenarios imaginable is spreading through parts of Southern California. While the rest of us stare at blue skies from cubicles at air-conditioned workspaces, here's a shortlist of media, official, and citizen coverage to keep us posted: CBS2/KCAL9 has multiple live video feeds available here, ABC7 is live here. KNX 1070 is......

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......

Here's a Music Medley of some tunes from bands reviewed or highlighted here over the last couple months (some lyrics NSFW BTW): No Age - Every Artist Needs a Tragedy Caribou - Irene Five O' Clock Heroes - Head Games Bitter:sweet - Dirty Laundry (Skeewiff Remix) CINEMATIC: Classic Film Music Remixed - The Taking of Pelham 1, 2, 3 Main Title (Phillip Charles' Signs in Mallorca Rewerk) Shocking Pinks - Victims Sunset Rubdown - Colt......

An interview with Souther Salazar about his upcoming show 'Make It Real', opening Saturday October 13th at GR2....

While you were minding your own business, Mel Gibson, the LA Sheriff's Department were making sport of their power - arresting people and messing with gang members - simply to rack up points during in-house games and contests. One recent competition, described in an internal Sheriff's Department e-mail obtained by The Times, was called "Operation Any Booking." The object was to arrest as many people as possible within a specific 24-hour period. Other one-day......

LAist just lost a writer to the Midwest, and on Monday, the Los Angeles blogasphere may lose another major player -- Mayor Sam, otherwise known as Michael Higby who is a City Hall watchdog and whistle blower. "The last week or so I've been exploring whether to stay in LA or move to my family's hometown of Waterloo, Iowa," Higby wrote in an e-mail last night to LAist. Over the past week, he's compared......

Just got an e-mail from NYTimes.com confirming the end of the two-year-old TimesSelect subscription experiment. Our friends in New York are thrilled about this and so are we. All the content fit to publish should be freely available. The e-mail isn't exactly a Steve Jobs-esque love letter, leaving us to wonder whether or not there will be rebates for those who recently plunked down $50 for the right to indulge in the opinions of Maureen......

On Friday afternoon, the Beverly Hills Police Department presented Gothamist, LLC, LAist's parent company in New York City, with a Search Warrant and Affidavit due to an e-mail threat to an officer after last week's controversial article about a Beverly Hills SUV driver attacking a bicyclist where the bicyclist was given two tickets. The warrant states that the police are to search the author's information and any relevant IP associations (even though the author......

Artist: Small Sins Album: Mood Swings Label: Astralwerks Release Date: 09/25/2007 The Small Sins is a group led by former Carnations member, Thomas D'Arcy. Small Sins is his baby and you can tell as every song is almost, but not quite, overwhelmed by his presence. This album starts very solidly, with several outstanding tracks: the anthematic "I Need A Friend", the wonderfully banjo-infused "Morning Face", and potentially my favorite, the Magical Mystery Tour-esque "What Your......

Dear LAist, Lordy, lord, lord. Today I called 311 about a issue: a noise complaint about a neighbor's dog that had been barking for 2 straight hours. The 311 lady asked me my zip code than transferred me to the LAPD. The annoyed LAPD operator explained to me that the police didn't handle barking dog noise complaints. I explained that this was where the 311 operator had transferred me. The LAPD operator then transferred......

LAX JFK via Virgin Airlines began today. Are you flexing it? A stage 1 power emergency has been declared. If there are any superfluous lights on, turn 'em off. Get Flex Alerts via e-mail at www.fypower.org. Richard Jewel, the man cleared of the 1996 Olympic bombing, passed away today. The former home of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles that we know as St. Vibiana's Cathedral in Downtown got its cupola returned today thanks to......

Who knew that for nearly a decade, newly appointed Poet Laureate Charles Simic’s work has been on display in the unlikeliest of places in Downtown Los Angeles? At 7+FIG to be more precise. Yep. You read that right. On the plaza above the bustling food court and the retail stores stands “Portals to Poetry” (1989), a collaborative effort between Simic and artist George Herms. The piece is one of eight works commissioned for a......

Today in Column One of the LA Times, Mitchell Landsberg along with Cao Jun examine Shanghai's subway system of five lines and 95 stations that serve 2 million people a day (with six lines scheduled to open in a couple of years). Juxtaposing it to Los Angeles with that fact that construction in Shanghai began four years after LA's Red Line, it makes our city look a bureaucratic embarrassment hung up in NIMBYism and......

Via Ideal Bite, a daily green e-mail tip, comes this thought: We know you aren't into porn. But your "friends" can save paper and plastic by feeding their fetishes via this neat, new doohickey called the internets. (The rest of us can get our PG-rated magazines, movies, and music online.) That feels common sense, but we didn't know that "less than 5% of paper used to produce magazines is recycled." We also didn't know......

I'm not quite sure what lured me into going to see Hanson. I saw an e-mail about it, contemplated replying with a not-so-elaborate joke at their expense, and quickly snagged the opportunity without thinking twice. However, when I called my friend to jokingly present the Hanson show as a concert option for the night she vehemently lurched at it. I began to think twice. Apparently, I was completely unaware of her Hanson phase. I'm......

I was angry and hurt. I said some things I didn't really mean. I used words like "hate" and "twits." I take it all back. The production company that used my street and forced the towing of my car is going to reimburse me. Yesterday I contacted the city and they directed me to FilmLA (as did several LAist readers' comments -- thank you), who gave me the name and phone number for the......

I received an e-mail today from Netflix. Usually I delete those messages right away, assuming they're advertising something or encouraging me to sell Netflix to my friends. But the subject line on this one caught my eye: "We're lowering the price of your Netflix plan!" ME?? MY NETFLIX PLAN IS CHEAPER?!? YAY!! I have the one-at-a-time unlimited plan (meaning I get one DVD at a time, but as many as I can watch and......

People are freaking out by a law that requires that you be hands-free if you use a cell phone in your car. The law goes in effect July 1, 2008 but the LA Daily News is reporting that locals are thinking that the law will kick in this weekend, so they are rushing to the phone stores to get their blue tooth accessories. Officials have blamed an e-mail hoax for helping to spread the......