About the Sidebar

I'm home sick today, so I have a little time to let you know what I'm doing here.
The sidebar is full of links to helpful information and listings that I use all the time. When I'm figuring out what to do, planning where to go and how to get there and keeping up with ma'peeps. The "Help Me" box has links to Rand McNally, publisher of the Thomas Guide which is the LA driver's bible. LA is huge and the roads are constantly changing--but I've never been lost (for long) because I have the Guide in my car. If and when you move here, everyone asks if you have a Thomas Guide, yet.
City Search, Craigslist, LA.com and Daily Candy are all pretty obvious sources of information on everything from where to eat, where to party, where to live, and what to do.
Under "Entertain Me" is a link to Metacritic, which compiles reviews from all over the place into a meta score so you don't have to read more than one review yourself. I mainly use it for movies, but they have also review DVDs, TV, music, books and games. It's pretty helpful and can save you from spending $12 on The Black Dahlia.
IMDB is a great way to stalk your fav new actor through the low points of his career, but also to keep track of what's coming out soon and to check out the trailers.
I am in love with KCRW! The best part is, wherever you are, you can listen to it on the internet and they have 24-hour on-line music programming--if you listen everyday like I do, you'll hear repeat programs. However, they're awesome shows and it's still way less repetitive than something like KROQ.
Below that is a list of bands I've found mostly through my KCRW listening. And they're mostly on MySpace, which is a surprisingly great place to get deeper into new bands. Hopefully I'll be updating and rotating that list to keep things interesting.