A sad week for LAist as they lose their trusted and amazing editor Tony Pierce to the LA Times, but what a blast his last week was. He shared his 25 Favorite CDs of 2007 and wrote a great review of just a good movie, No Country For Old Men. At UCLA, thousands of students celebrated the end of their quarter by running around campus in their undies (lots of photos in a two-part photo essay, one, two). That wasn't the only photo essay either: Joss Whedon/Mutant Enemy friends and Star Trek actors all joined in at the Writers Strike and KROQ's Almost Acoustic Christmas brought two nights of amazing bands that included Avenged Sevenfold, Linkin Park (Part I), Modest Mouse, Muse, Spoon and The Killers (Part II). Not only is L.A. a great music town, it has just been named the best city for bookish types. For those who are looking for something a little more active, American Gladiators are back (yes!) and if that's not enough, how about a Christmas gift of action and adventure? more ›

Timothy Krajcir, a currently incarcerated repeat violent sex offender, pleaded guilty yesterday to killing Deborah Sheppard, an SIU student who was murdered in 1982. And then he confessed to eight other murders in Missouri and another area police haven't disclosed yet (possibly Kentucky). So far, he's been charged with five counts of murder and three counts of rape, and was sentenced to 40 years in prison for Sheppard's murder. Krajcir is 63. Krajcir's rap sheet... more ›

We'd just like to point out that for the price of one Hannah Montana ticket, you could feed a starving indie rock band for a year. For reals. Conrad Black got a 6 1/2 year sentence today. Oddly enough, we're not feeling sorry for him. Cheryl Lavin continues to dispense awesome advice. In this case she tells a woman who is upset at only having sex 4 times a week to tell her boyfriend... more ›

The Holiday season is in full swing in NYC, with holiday lights in Brooklyn, a giant snow globe in Bryan Park and Chanukah specials for ham. One citizen decided to go vigilante on annoying car alarms, a murder suspect used a fake Asian accent on the stand and a video of a man being beaten up by teenage girls on a subway shocked the city. And we interviewed soon-to-be-leaving-Gawker editor Choire Sicha, who said,... more ›

Mike Ditka's red-faced this weekend, and not because of overindulging on his vanity wines. A report in yesterday's USA Today showed that a charity "Da Coach" founded three years ago to help retired Hall of Fame football players whose bodies are ravaged by the violent demands of the NFL has only doled out $57,000 in assistance. Federal and state tax records indicate that $715,000 of the $1.3 million raised by the Mike Ditka Hall of... more ›

A report released today from the Justice Policy Institute compares drug imprisonment statistics for big counties and concludes that everything is messed up. Granted, the Institutes's slogan is "dedicated to ending society's reliance on incarceration," but the report is still fascinating and surprisingly easy to read. Cook County has the ninth highest rate of admission to prison for drug offenses, with 166 out of every 100,000 people going to prison for a drug offense. But... more ›

Thanksgiving came at the perfect time for Topps Beef. Two months after the second-largest beef recall in history (over 21 million pounds), the company filed for bankruptcy protection in New Jersey last week; any other time and the news would have been bigger. In the filing, Topps listed assets and debts totaling nearly $100 million each, and over 10,000 creditors lining up for what's theirs, including high-ranking executives at Topps. Seeing as how the recall... more ›

Today's New York Times has a profile of Tom Nauman, a mushroom hunter in downstate Magnolia who also owns a store dedicated to morels with his wife. The story tracked the Nauman as he searched the woods in search of edible mushrooms. It wasn't really news that edible mushrooms grow in Illinois. The story did prompt us to ask why we don't hunt for mushrooms ourselves, with the Forest Preserves nearby? A couple calls to... more ›

We've heard a lot more lately about the importance of hand washing, but we apparently still don’t rank when it comes to overall healthiness. Public-health groups placed Illinois at a mediocre 27th when compared with the rest of the nation. Factors detrimental to our health include binge drinking, violent crime and preventable hospitalizations, which makes us want to drink ourselves into a stupor and talk our friends into starting a fight club. Positive aspects were... more ›

Well, it's finally happened: the Writer's Guild of America declared a strike early this morning after midnight negotiations stalled. Naturally there's been plenty of finger-pointing, with writers claiming that the producers broke off talks while producers say that the writers were the ones who walked out. Regardless, the strike will have some very immediate effects, which the Trib has handily put in chart form. Daily shows will suffer the most at first, with programs like... more ›

Barack Obama might not be Ronald Reagan (thank God for small blessings?), but he and Dick Cheney share something: A common ancestor. Yes, our junior senator and the good old face-shooter are distant cousins. Freaking out! Oh wait, no we're not: The Sun Times reported this over a month ago. Obama definitely has presidential timber in his family tree: He's distantly related to three U.S. presidents — Harry S Truman, George W. Bush and George... more ›

This year's edition of the Great American Beer Festival is in the books, and Illinois breweries racked up an impressive 16 medals. Both Pabst (their corporate headquarters are in suburban Woodridge, so they qualified as an Illinois beer company) and Goose Island took home four medals each. Pabst earned respective gold and silver medals for Lone Star and Old Style (American-style cream ale or lager), and repeated the feat for Old Milwaukee Light and PBR... more ›

Translation: Kobayashi was defeated again! (We couldn't resist busting out the Japanese for the headline.) Chicago's very own Patrick "Deep Dish" Bertoletti managed to out-chew not only the reigning chicken-wing-eating champ Joey Chestnut, he also licked the hot-dog legend Takeru Kobayashi. Bertoletti inhaled a whopping 4.1 pounds of chicken wings in eight minutes during the "Wedges & Wings" eating competition held in Las Vegas yesterday. Chestnut downed an equally impressive 4.05 pounds, while Kobayashi wolfed... more ›

This week, Phillyist saw the waters of a landmark fountain run red for a Showtime marketing stunt, the Phils pull ahead, and some serious nostalgia. They also got a chance to review an awesome tribute album, reminded folks to see the King and appreciated their beautiful skyline. Chicagoist knows what it's like to like the Cubs. But naming your kid Wrigley Fields? At least they can breathe a little easier now that Grossman's out... more ›

Kramer and Newman couldn't make it work, but crooks in Ohio and Michigan can. Michigan police officers have busted a crime ring that transports and sells out-of-state, non-redeemable cans and turns them in for that sweet, sweet 10 cent payoff. The 13 crooks were arrested with $500,000 in cash. That's...a lot of cans. The 67-count warrant was a part of Operation Can Scam that busted two smuggling rings based in Ohio and Michigan. Investigators allege... more ›

Will San Fransisco adopt our police surveillance strategies? Not likely, according to this comparison. The biggest difference right now is that SF police are just recording the action; Chicago police are actually moving the cameras, too. In an emergency operations center one recent Saturday night, a civilian former police officer sat in front of four monitors and 16 larger screens covering a wall, conducting "missions," whirling and zooming cameras in eight neighborhoods that had seen... more ›

It was a Tuesday — a beautiful, sunny Tuesday at that. Most likely, most of the United States was getting ready for or just starting an average Tuesday in September. And then, the unthinkable happened. Two planes hit the World Trade Center towers in New York. Another plane crashed into the Pentagon, and yet another plane was crashed in Pennsylvania. The country was legitmately in "shock and awe." However, there were those of us who... more ›

There was very little else for Londonist to be concerned with when the threat of a Tube strike became a very unpleasant reality. The inconvenience was extreme: there aren't many alternatives to the Tube in London despite the best efforts of the Londonist team to get everyone from A to B. Brighter news came in the form of the first ever female Yeoman Warder, or Beefeater as the position is more commonly known, and... more ›

We're not sure if you've managed to stay outside R. Kelly's Trapped in the Closet, or if you've managed to avoid the real-life "hip-hopera" of his ongoing saga surrounding a sex tape that surfaced several years ago featuring Kelly and an underage girl. If you have, kudos. Every time we think about Kelly peeing on anyone, much less a girl in her early teens, we just cringe. Golden showers are fine if that's your thing,... more ›

Fermilab — home to a herd of American Bison; strange, little, colored homes*; and the Tevatron. Fermilab currently is the world's foremost authority on all things atomic. The Tevatron is currently the world's highest energy collider, and it's being used in the race to find the Higgs boson, considered by some to be the "god particle." It's a piece of the Unified Theory puzzle that continues to elude scientists and whose verfiied existence, according to... more ›

Chemicals — what would we do without them? Twinkies wouldn't have a shelf life of a decade. Diet Coke wouldn't be diet. And microwave popcorn wouldn't cause some weird lung disease. We just read today that diacetyl, one of the main substances used to flavor microwave popcorn*, isn't so good for the lungs. Truthfully, when we read the first article about the first consumer that is likely to have "popcorn lung" (bronchiolitis obliterans syndrome, or... more ›

In light of last week's news that almost a quarter of Ilinoisians are obese, should a new study that found that 98% of all food advertised to children between the ages of two and 11 was high in sugar, fat or sodium really surprise us? Slightly less alarming (but only slightly) was the finding that 89.4% of food-product advertisements viewed by 12-to-17 year olds, were high in fat, sugar, or sodium. The study was conducted... more ›

The search continues today for extreme sporting adventurer and former Chicago options trader Steve Fossett, who has been missing since Monday. Fossett was visiting the Flying M Ranch near Yerington, Nev., scouting for dry lake beds that could be used for breaking a land-speed record. He was piloting a Single Engine Bellanca Citabria Super Decathlon, a two-seat aerobatic plane, for his reconnaissance flight. The aircraft had over five hours of fuel on board when it... more ›

Happy first weekend of September - and happy Labor Day weekend, too, for our American cities! Let's take a look at what's been happening around the Ist-a-verse. The deaths of two firefighters shook Bostonist this week. Boston's firefighters bent over backwards all week long - first, they fought flames pouring from the Boston Tea Party museum, and then a restaurant fire killed two and injured many more. Their efforts make everything else - like Tom... more ›

No, it isn't us; we'll get there soon enough, thank you. The Big Mac, one of Oak Brook-based McDonald's signature hamburgers, debuted forty years ago this week. The sandwich was created by Jim Delligatti in Uniontown, Pennsylvania. Even though the Big Mac today is a part of American food and popular culture, Delligatti had to convince executives at Hamburger U that the concept of "two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on... more ›

Here are some other newsworthy items to ponder while we slap some Tiger Balm on our knees. Serves us right for riding our bikes to Morgan Park and back. Even when being deported, Elvira Arellano can't stop talking. She also got to see her 8-year-old son, Saul, before leaving. He's staying with his grandmother godmother. The "cell-phone bandit?" Now that's a robber with a gimmick. Bond for two men accused of robbing former Bull... more ›

Chicagoist is gearing up for this weekend's annual Air & Water Show along the lakefront. In what's becoming an annual tradition around there, staff member Todd McClamroch even got to fly with one of the participants. Chicagoist's decidedly opinionated readership was also appalled that one of their staffers found a popular local brewpub to be a great place to bring a kid. They also think that an unlikely activist for immigration rights should just take... more ›

The news broke late yesterday of an arrest in the case of Dr. David Cornbleet, the dermatologist who was murdered in his Loop office last October. Authorities filed a warrant for 29-year-old Hans R. Peterson, who was arrested August 6 on a federal fugitive warrant for unlawful flight on the French Caribbean island of St. Martin. After his arrest in St. Martin, Peterson, who lists his occupation as an "Internet gambler," allegedly confessed to the... more ›

Londonist are starting to think their city is getting just a little bit too expensive, when even Christian Slater can't afford to go out there. And there's no escaping, as local singer Lily Allen discovered when she was barred entry to the US. The British mapping agency caused further bad karma, by blocking a 3-D representation of London in Google Earth. But the smiles returned to Londonist's faces as they interviewed Baroness von Reichardt,... more ›

As all of us watch the terrible news in Minnesota unfold, many state governments are starting to look at their own inventory of bridges. Illinois ranks in the middle of bridge condition when compared to other states, according to an AP article in The Daily Southtown, with around 10% of our bridges rated "structurally deficient" - slightly better than the national average of 12%. Yesterday Governor Rod Blagojevich ordered immediate inspections of high-volume bridges and... more ›