What do you call a party with a huge proportion of women with huge proportions, bleached blond hair and garish makeup? If you picked: "Just Another Night in Hollywood," or "Just Another Night at the Strip Club," or "Just Another Night in My Bedroom," take a number and go to the back of the line. Rather, the party in question —held at the appropriately named World of Wonder gallery on Hollywood Boulevard— was for a very specific, large-proportioned, bleached-blond beauty. No, not Jenna Jameson. This would be someone with actual talent, not to mention a huge gay following. OK, fine, I'll tell you. Dolly Parton!

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Hello, class. Welcome to Punk Rock 101. Today's lesson is about the seminal LA punk band the Germs, who are finally getting thanks to a new biopic called What We Do Is Secret (playing for the rest of this week at the Nuart). For those of you who are not familiar with the band or why they're deserving of a movie, here's a quick cheat sheet. The Germs made history because they were A) completely insane and B) their singer, Darby Crash, committed the self-mythologizing move of killing himself back in 1980. Unfortunately, he happened to pick the day before John Lennon was murdered to intentionally overdose on heroin, so most people didn't even notice.

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I can't remember any other politician in recent memory who has inspired artists as much as Barack Obama. From the moment I saw the Shepard Fairey "Hope" poster, I knew that Hillary Clinton's presidential bid was toast. Just as she had inspired t-shirts eight years ago that gave an indication she was gaining enough buzz to enable her to win the Senate seat, I knew that Obama had captured the imagination of the general public when his visage turned into iconography.

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As an ex-New Yorker who is brand spanking new to L.A., the concept of downtown being a dead zone is quite strange. And having only driven through late at night (going the wrong way, on a one-way street, natch) I was curious to see what an L.A. downtown art walk would be like (held every second Thursday of the month from 12 to 9). Art Walks in Seattle's Pioneer Square were fun, but were too often filled with "Look ma, I has knitted you a rainbow hat!"--a/k/a bad hippie art. And the Chelsea Art Walks in NYC were impenetrable and thick with snobbery and unintentional comedy: rich people wearing all black, posing seriously in front of pictures with their heads cocked just so to the sides. L.A.'s version proved to be far more pleasant and interesting--exhilarating even. Won't you join along as I take you on a photographic tour?

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Hollywood Forever Cemetery—that beloved local necropolis where in one visit you can pay your respects to Don Adams and Mel Blanc, have a picnic, then catch an outdoor screening of Shampoo with a couple thousand of your closest friends—is in jeopardy, friends. Noting that the atmosphere has become significantly less relaxed for visitors in recent months, LAist did a little further digging, and learned that Brent and Tyler Cassity, the charismatic brothers from Missouri who rescued the celebrity graveyard from years of neglect, are now under investigation for suspicious business transactions involving prepaid burials at their Midwest locations. From the St. Louis Dispatch:

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DING-DONG! DONG-DING! The rainbow-coloured smoke has emerged from the chimney atop the California Supreme Court. The Court bells, each recently adorned with a giant portrait of Dave Beckham and Posh Spice, are sounding. For it's official! Same-sex couples in our glorious, seaside state have the right to be wed! We know you have questions, so we went directly to the Defamer special correspondent on Legal Fine Print Accompanying Totally Fabulous Rulings to answer all your burning questions:
Defamer: So what does this mean?

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Metromix L.A. posted an angry—and justifiably so, we'd say—response to a NY Times piece from earlier in the week about the movement to save L.A.'s beloved taco trucks, currently endangered thanks to new city ordinances that would limit where they can do business. (The article begins, "Los Angeles, loath to rally cohesively around a local cause, has joined hands around tortillas," and continues to paint a portrait of an apathetic community who only manage to rally when the fate of their al pastor-access is in danger.) Decries Metromix:

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Kudos to the Wall Street Journal for profiling an atypical celebrity of sorts this morning: John Wesley Jermyn, better known as "The Crazy Robertson" or "The Robertson Dancer" to locals. Jermyn, onetime draft choice for the Kansas City Royals and... Read More »