· The corrosively, explosively great Sacramento band Th' Losin Streaks is at the Blue Star.
· The Faint's Joel Petersen spins off all solo and gadgety with his side project Broken Spindles at the Echo.

SATURDAY
·The lovely and talented Lisa Hannigan breaks out of the Damien Rice compound long enough for a show at the Troubador.
· This year's Oscar-nominated art directors join a panel discussion on something we're sure is related to art and/or direction. At the Egyptian.
· Singer/songwriters Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings team up at Largo.

SUNDAY
· Defamer liveblogs the Oscars. See you here!

· Folk legend Joan Baez plays Royce Hall.
· Spring Awakening composer Duncan Sheik plays The Echoplex, with Lauren Pritchard, who played Ilse in the Broadway production.

· The Egyptian screens its collection of Academy Award winners, starting tonight with Ken Russell's 1969 adaptation of D.H. Lawrence's Women in Love.
· The Phaaaaan. TomoftheOpera is heeeeere...inside the Pantages. DuhDuhDuhDuhDuhhhh!!!

· Valentine's Day brings two colorful French romances—The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and Amelie—to the New Beverly. As Pepe le Pew would say, "I shoot you with the ack-ack of love."
· Last week you heard what Edward Albee had to say. Now see his most famous play, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, at NoHo Arts Center. One big twist: the Blue Zone Theatre production utilizes three actors who are physically disabled.

Saturday
· Danish punk-rockabilly-ska outfit HorrorPops play Avalon.
· The L.A. Times Travel & Adventure Show takes over the Los Angeles Convention Center, with 550 exhibitors "from Louisiana to Greece and from Africa to Alaska."
· Fellini's Amarcord screens at the Nuart.

Sunday
· Who will be the bull of the ball? You'll just have to go to The Bulldog Beauty Contest at Long Beach's Marine Stadium to find out!
· The Music Tapes w/ Nana Grizol and Brian Dewan bring some lo-fi fun to the Echoplex.
· The Harlem Globetrotters' "Spinning the Globe" World tour lands at the Staples Center, where it looks like they'll be playing the Washington Generals. Anyone's game!

· Or just keep your money, skip the exercise and hear Quincy Jones dodge Chris Brown/Rihanna questions at Borders in Westwood.
· Being one of the most influential living jazz bassists just wasn't enough for Charlie Haden. He had to go sit for a documentary — Charlie Haden: Rambling Boy — having its US premiere over at REDCAT. Showoff.

· Gonzo Hollywood journalist extraordinaire Mark Ebner presents and signs his new book, Six Degrees of Paris Hilton, at Book Soup.
· You love Mexican wrestling! You love burlesque! Ergo, you love Lucha va Voom. At the Mayan.

· The Mael brothers—i.e. eccentric experimental pop duo Sparks—performs both Exotic Creatures of the Deep and Kimono My House in their entirety at Royce Hall.
· "What Happens When California's Cash Runs Out?" An excellent question, explored at this Zocalo Public Square at the LA Central Library.

· Le Switch, Blank Blue and Les Blanks (we can't keep them straight either) are at Spaceland; Golden State is at the Viper Room.
· As per every Monday, you can screen your undistributed and/or unfinished and/or unheralded cinematic masterpiece for free at the Bungalow Club.

· Kogi, the Korean taco truck sensation, comes to Silver Lake.

Saturday
· Ne-Yo plays Club Nokia.
· 100-year-old country music legend Charlie Louvin brings his Ballads of Murder and Disaster to Spaceland.
· It's an evening with Edward Albee at Royce Hall. Ask all those questions you had walking out of The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia?.

Sunday
· Fake Radio presents Preston Sturges' political drama The Great McGinty at Bang.
· Go see Coraline.
· Aimee Bender and poet Marlys West are the authors of honor at Book Party, at the Mandrake.

· Italy's Klezmerata Fiorentina perform chamber versions of klezmer music. Top it off with some nice matzo ball minestrone soup, what could be bad, eh? At the Skirball.
· We lied. You have one more opportunity to pee on Snark author David Denby, at Vroman's.

· We just can't imagine how a conversation called The Pluto Files: The Rise and Fall of America's Favorite Planet can go bad, especially when hosted at the library.
· And if you can imagine a superior alternative, it would probably be something along the lines of Explodity: An Evening of Transrational Sound Poetry out at the Getty Center.

· Man of a Thousand People You'd Find Hanging Out on an NYC Street Corner Danny Hoch brings his show Taking Over to the Kirk Douglas Theatre.
· Swedish Yiddimetal band Meshuggah comes to the House of Blues.

· Have you ever seen Disney's 1940 Pinocchio on the big screen? Now you can. It's playing at the El Capitan until February 12.
· Nightmares on Wax (George Evelyn aka DJ EASE) plays the Echoplex.

· You'll laugh your balls off at Monsters and Prodigies: The History of the Castrati, a farce from Mexico's acclaimed Teatro de Ciertos Habitantes at the REDCAT.
· West Fest 2009 New Works Festival is Hollywood's long-running theater festival. Highlights include a book-club showdown, Bodice Rippers; a supernatural life-support musical, Two Lives; and Sally Spectre, the Musical, a "children's horror story for adults." [via Flavorpill]

Saturday
· An Evening with the Prelinger Archives at the Silent Movie Theater pulls a few selections out from his collection of 60,000 advertising, classroom, industrial, and amateur films.
· The Edward Gorey-inspired Edwardian Ball makes its L.A. debut after many years in San Francisco. "A turn of the century celebration of music, theatre, dance, circus arts, DJs, ballroom dance, fashion, technology, and of course, the art and stories of Edward Gorey." At the Tower Theater downtown.
· Dimitri From Paris spins you into a retrofrenzy at Club Avalon. Always fun.

Sunday
· Mother F****r! is all-girl improv at UCB.
· Radio Free Silverlake join the fight against Huntington's disease with a Rock Against HD benefit concert. Light FM, Fol Chen, and Radars to the Sky perform. At Spaceland.
· Dancers from Rabbit in the Moon, Cirque du Soleil and Lucent Dossier perform in Mystic, at Venice's Electric Lodge.
· It's the Super Bowl. And the Puppy Bowl.

· It'll cost you more than the price of his new book for PR maven Howard Bragman to make you famous. Or you can just listen to him share wisdom for free at Book Soup.
· In their own words, "the Yard Dogs Road Show is a hobo cabaret, a living patchwork of vaudeville and rock and roll. In the enchanting land of stage show entertainment theirs is both pleasant and formidable terrain..." Or like LaBelle, but without the costume changes. (At the El Rey)

· Trinidad, the acclaimed documentary about the eponymous, small-town Colorado "sex-change capital of the world," headlines tonight's Outfest Wednesdays event at the Egyptian.
· The comedy event of the week: The 10-34 Clippers host the 18-27 Bulls at the Staples Center. Paper-bag head contest at halftime!

· The Ian Harvie Show with Felon O'Reilly in the Largo Little Room—because having a laugh shouldn't be a crime punishable with hard time!
· The New Beverly invited Peter Bogdanovich to curate a series of three double features. Tonight: Hitchcock's North by Northwest and Howard Hawks's To Have and Have Not.

· Walk, bike, or take public transportation to the Go Green Expo at the Convention Center, where early-adopters Ed Begley Jr. and Mariel Hemingway will speak.
· Department of Eagles, side project of Grizzly Bear guitarist/singer Dan Rossen, play The Troubadour.

Saturday
· Sarah's back! Sarah Silverman & Friends at the Largo.
· Double feature alert! James Caan and Alan Arkin buddy movie Freebie and the Bean (1974) & Bill Cosby P.I. drama Hickey and Boggs (1972) screen at the Egyptian.
· Danish duo The Raveonettes play the Henry Fonda.

Sunday
· All of the soul, none of the mess: Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings (Amy Winehouse's band) play Club Nokia.
· Get into the groove: Marques Wyatt spins at ALL NIGHT LONG at Club Deep at the Vanguard.
· Editor Paula Derrow reads and signs her new anthology Behind the Bedroom Door ("twenty-six acclaimed writers go Behind the Bedroom Door and lay bare the messy, mind-blowing, often hilarious encounters that make up a woman’s history") at Book Soup.

· The Walkmen play the Henry Fonda.
· Author Charlie Huston discusses and signs his book The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death: A Novel, at Vroman's.

· Early (really early—1920) avant-garde film work Manhatta, by Alfred Stieglitz proteges Paul Strand and Charles Sheeler, screens at REDCAT. It's digitally restored to its original condition.
· Author and Harvard Law School professor Randall Kennedy and author and journalist Debra Dickerson lecture on the true meaning of MLK day at the Hammer Museum.