-- Only in LA would there be an Emilio Estevez directorial double-feature hosted by bro himself. Tonight at the Aero they will screen a sneak preview of "Bobby" followed by "The War at Home". Q&A with Mr. Estevez between films. -- The New Beverly is having a David Lynch double-feature (maybe he will show up and bring his cow). The films will be the creepy "Blue Velvet", and the X-rated version of "Wild At......

too cool The LA Times takes a special interactive look back at real estate hotspots and starts with the Pacific Electric building at 6th and Main. While the tour guide notes the building now has loft-dwellers who share rides to Coachella, he entirely skips Cole's PE Buffet on the ground floor. Cole's serves both a mean dip sandwich and fantastic beer on tap — between you and us, it's one of the best bars......

Mark Sarvas has championed local reading series, excoriated the LA Times Book Review, and tirelessly blogged about all things literary on his site The Elegant Variation. With its smart writing, frequent updates and splashes of wicked humor, it has become required daily reading — for both Angelenos and folks in the Big Established Publishing World in NY. He is also a founding member of the LitBlog Co-Op (more about that below), which announced its latest......

It's time for the LAIST prize roundup in the book world. John Banville, in a surprise turn, has won the Booker Prize for his novel, The Sea, beating out favorite Julian Barnes, Kazuo Ishiguro, Zadie Smith, Sebastian Barry, and Ali Smith. Apparently the voting was as close as it's ever been. There's a great 3-part interview with Banville at the litblog The Elegant Variation. The Nobel Prize for Literature has not yet been announced......

After an exhausting — and possibly soggy — day at the LA Times Festival of Books tomorrow, literati of the most fun persuasion will be heading to Chinatown for the Vermin on the Mount reading series. Held at the Mountain Bar, this Vermin is co-produced by Swink Magazine, and promises to be both liquor- and literature-friendly. Readers coming in from afar include poet Alex Lemon, Steve Almond (My Life in Heavy Metal), and litblogger......

LA eggheads gather at the REDCAT tonight at 8:30 PM to ponder a panel on "What Makes a Magazine Great," which will ask guest to explore the "special alchemy when the right editor confronts the zeitgeist to create a magazine that speaks to and reflects the moment." Guests include Gil Maurer, former president of Hearst Magazines and winner of the Henry Johnson Fisher award for distinguished service to the magazine industry; Eric Nakamura and......

Open your Feb 05 issue of Los Angeles Magazine to find their 8 favorite LA blogs. Perhaps by nature of our pithy name, we top the list. And our seven compatriots are: Blogging.la (stuff) Art.blogging.la (art) LA Voice (stuff, events) Defamer (hollywood gossip -- this week, Park City) The Elegant Variation (books, literary events) Sports by Brooks (sports, boobies) LA Observed (newsy news) Many of these can be found permanently in our links, below......

Lots of aural and literary treats available today as we experience a break in the rainy weather: Listen to Mark Sarvas of The Elegant Variation at 4:30 today on killradio. Description: Pinky's Paperhaus features authors playing guest DJ. Famed sound editor Walter Murch converses with Charles Koppleman about his new book, "Behind the Seen: How Walter Murch Edited Cold Mountain Using Apple's Final Cut Pro and What This Means for Cinema" The title says......

Drive. Damn it people, take a drive. Succumb to the privileges of western expansion. Get all Bush-like and blow some money on gas and drive around the city this weekend. Some call it a Nietzschean undertaking. LAist calls it coping. Read. There’s some good gay Truman Capote anecdotes over at The Elegant Variation this morning. Perhaps that’ll inspire some soul-searching. If that fails, you can read the Da Vinci Code again. Sleep. And realize......

LAist talked with Ezra Klein of the political blog pandagon.net this weekend. Ezra’s been engaged and blogging this election for over a year and a half. His site, which he co-blogs along with Jesse Taylor, boasts around 25,000 hits a day. Needless to say, his voice gets heard (or his words get read). He recently transferred to UCLA from UC Santa Cruz and has much to say about politics, Los Angeles and everything in......

Some guy named Dave Eggers was in town recently. We think he's a writer or something. Literary blog The Elegant Variation has published Katherine Darnell's report of Tuesday's Book Soup event. She enjoyed the show but was a bit dissatisfied with Eggers & Co's hard sell. According to Ms. Darnell, Eggers plans to open an LA-branch of his nonprofit writing center, 826 Valencia, which provides tutoring and writing skills workshops for kids. They're seeking......

Jim Ruland hosts "Vermin on the Mount: A Night of Irreverent Readings" at the Mountain Bar, 475 Gin Ling Way, on Sunday. Show starts around 7 PM. Call (213) 625-7500 for details. For a larger view of the event flyer, visit The Elegant Variation.......

LA Observed shares the frustrations of blogger Lee Watters, as he struggles with the inoperable Calendar Live registration system. A VERY BRAVE LA Times.com web developer wades into the LA Observed comments section, faces readers' wrath and vents a few frustrations of his own. Who says Angelenos don't have real conversations? Speaking of frustration with Calendar Live, Dan Green gets in a dig at the Los Angeles Times in his The Reading Experience: A......

Local author Mark Sarvas's literary blog, The Elegant Variation, reminds us that Los Angeles City Beat takes a short and shallow look at the L.A. Literary scene in two pieces: one on local readings and another on the two new LA-based literary journals (does 2 journals make a “scene”?) that focus (for the most part) on voices from Southern California. Apparently, we owe this bounty to McSweeney’s success. L.A.'s long-neglected literary scene is due......