With unseasonable weather descending upon much of North America, schools getting ready to reconvene, and sports seasons getting exciting, it's a busy time of year for us here in the Ist-A-Verse. Luckily, even with all the things we have to do, we still managed to get together to let you know what we've all been up to. After cooling down from a hot weekend of many badass Sunset Junction Street Fair photo dispatches, LAist asked......

LAist is experimenting with blogging dates from J-Date, but finds the best men are found offline. Some date vicariously online and that is one reason why porn is big -- really freaking big -- so they ask if they should cover XXX since the heart of it lays in the city's San Fernando Valley. A writer grapples with her food porn photography obsession, another gets censored on Flickr, one gets scooped by the LA......

For a brief moment at Avalon Monday night, Bostonist felt like we'd been transported to 1964. Flanked on both sides by an eight piece, horn-fueled band, a young woman and her towering bee hive took the mic in front of a simple back drop strung with twinkling lights. Two male back-up singers, elegantly suited-up, began moving in unison. But this ain't no lame Motown review featuring tired, retro-dance moves. This is Amy "believe the hype"......

Yeah, it was inevitable. The backlash, that is. When the turbo-hype visited upon soul sensation Amy Winehouse in the UK started to pick-up steam stateside, it was only a matter of time before the chorus of praise would be matched by a groundswell of derision -- or what's the BFD questioning (at least one gawker simply can't understand what all the fuss is about). But when you set aside the tabloid tales of excess drinking......

Perhaps with all the recent hype surrounding UK soul sensation Amy Winehouse, you plum forgot about Alice Smith, who made a bit of a splash her own damn self last Fall. Smith's debut album For Lovers, Dreamers & Me on ultra hip UK underground hip hop label BBE (J Dilla, Pete Rock, DJ Vadim, "Return Of The Magnificent DJ Jazzy Jeff," etc.) is just as impressive as Amy's heralded sophomore effort Back to Black. And......