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?

Phillyist is counting down to 2008 (and really enjoying it - yes, in that way!), leaving them exhausted, disoriented, and irritable.

At Pine and Divisadero on Wednesday afternoon, a man severely slashed a woman with a box cutter (some reports we saw said she might die, while others said the wounds were not life-threatening); the cops subsequently caught him.

A police officer in Oakland shot a man to death yesterday afternoon at 54th and MLK, where a number of shootings have occurred recently. The officer confronted the man for reasons that they declined to specify to the media, and a fight broke out. After the officer's attempts to taser the suspect didn't work, the suspect reached into his waistband, at which point the officer shot him. The suspect was later found to have a loaded handgun in his possession.

And hey! Remember all those women pretending to live at Stanford when they didn't really? Well, Azia Kim (the girl who pretended to be a freshman and got away with it for almost a whole school year, by sneaking into dorms through open windows and just pretending she always lost her ID card) still hasn't heard from the Santa Clara DA's office, despite Stanford's saying they were going to press charges for trespass. Santa Clara says they're still waiting on paperwork from the Stanford PD. Elizabeth Okasaki, on the other hand, the other squatter who had been living in a Stanford physics building for four years, moved to UCLA and their music library, pretending to be a grad student in the "philosophy of music." UCLA managed to evict her after only four months, in part due to a suspicious administrator who had heard about Okasaki's time at Stanford.

What with Paris Hilton's release earlier this week and the upcoming celebration of American Independence (sorry, Londonist!), we've been thinking a lot about freedom. Freedom to vote, freedom to choose, and most importantly, freedom to blog. Here are a few things we're happy we've been free to blog about this week.

Bostonist plans to bring the right tunes for a July 4th backyard barbecue. Side one of the Bostonist Chock-Full-o-Freedom Summer Soundtrack comes courtesy of the Ryan Montbleau Band. Side two is a mix from Red Sox pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka and former Extreme guitarist Nuno Bettencourt. If the barbecue is really ragin', they'll bring new singles from Mitt Romney's dog called "Station Wagon From Hell" and new Celtic Ray Allen's cover of "Age Ain't Nothin' But a Number."

As neither American (they have their own birthday to worry about) nor interested in Paris Hilton in any capacity whatsoever, Torontoist freely covered what it knows best – its local beat. They compared notes on what the city's greatest albums of all time were, watched some sweet-ass rock balancing, and continued covering the sale of one of its favourite CD stores, Sam the Record Man, with a report from its merchandise auction. They freely checked out the smallest bar in town, then told their readers to go beat the shit out of a car. When emergency vehicles were ordered to "Support Our Troops," they debated the issue and watched as a street artist, Posterchild, mocked it (and then re-published his manifesto a few days later).

SFist had freedom to love covered, with coverage of the city's famous annual gay pride parade. And of course, they covered the freedom to rock, with an interview of local American air guitar champion Hot Lixx Houlihan. The commenters were free to complain about the terrible parking situation in San Francisco, in not one, not two, but three posts this week. What San Francisco's not free to do, though? Throw away garbage – the city's taken away over 300 of our city trash cans!

Overseas, Londonist was politely pretending not to be aware of Independence Day, but everyone was keeping busy with a variety of big, outdoor events, all washed out by ceaseless rain, as is traditional for all of London's "summer" shenanigans. As everyone limbered up for a slightly confused Canada Day, the whole of London was suddenly unnerved by a major bomb scare - news still coming in so watch that link. Despite the troubling situation, Londoners are still embracing their freedom and are marching and partying for London Pride, Europe's biggest gay and lesbian festival. And with the famously stoic and bravest of faces only Londoners know how to produce in troubled times, chins are up and voices are soaring for the week-long London-wide Sing London event. Let's hope the stiff upper lips are relaxed a little for the big finale next weekend.

For those who say they don't like LA, filmmaker Werner Herzog says this: "Los Angeles is raw, uncouth, and bizarre, but it's a place of substance." Therefore, LAist has been celebrating film, day by day, this past week by following the Los Angeles Film Festival. (But let's not forget about the erotic stuff, okay?) Angelenos are also savoring their last year of using cell phones while driving – was that why all those UCLA students were running around in their underwear? And with such freedom of mobility in their car culture (okay, the traffic doesn't help much), why not host an art exhibition called The Parking Lot Show?

Summer in the city has been heating up for Gothamist. The Big Apple had a forty-eight-minute blackout that freaked everyone out. Even still, there were people celebrating their freedom to camp out for iPhones, which arrived in NYC with possibly more media and spectators than people on line. A fight broke out between two cozy seafood restaurants over claims of intellectual property theft (the Caesar salad, the wainscotting, and the marble counters, for starters) and some people got upset at vehicles violating no-car rules in a Brooklyn park. Luckily, there is Matt Allen, who has been handing out free frozen treats across the country, and is now in NYC. And the Splasher, the strange figure who's been splashing street art, sent us a 16-page manifesto.

And in Philadelphia, where that whole Fourth of July thing got started, Phillyist was celebrating freedom left and right: freedom to act for twenty-four hours straight, freedom to shop and drink at the same time, freedom to make Seinfeld references and the mayor's freedom to get his iPhone on. They were happy to see their local transit corporation feels free to ask people to keep it quiet, that kittens are free from cheesesteak restaurants, and that The Nightwatchman is still all about a different kind of freedom. On a completely different note, they educated their readers about pulmonary embolism, which took the life of their beloved editor, Star "Sarcasmo" Foster, in December.

Compiled and edited by Jillian Ashley Blair Ivey.

Top image by Flickr user 37°C, via SFist. Middle image by Flickr user NYCViaRachel . Bottom image by Michael Femia at Bostonist.

That's what the Ohio State University and the entire sporting world, with the exception of diehard Gator lovers and their recently embarked bandwagon brethren across the land, are thinking after the University of Florida beat down the OSU 84-75 last night to capture the men's NCAA basketball national championship. It's OSU's second consecutive national championship game defeat to Florida, this year.

If you're thinking it's deja vu all over again, you're right. The Gators came into the championship game as the defending NCAA champs -- and went out the same way. Their hard-fought but decisive victory marked the first back-to-back basketball championships by any Division I men's team since Duke's 1990-1992 run and only the second repeat since the end of the John Wooden era at UCLA more than 30 years ago.

Even more amazing, Florida did it with the exact same starting five that won last year's title. Consensus is that this is the first time such a feat has ever been accomplished. In the age of big-money NBA contracts and celebrity pimpage, at a time when one or two years of college ball is becoming the norm, that's really saying something about the commitment and camaraderie of the Florida players and the magnetism and dynamic personality of Gator coach Billy Donovan.

The game itself was not that amazing, except as a canvas for the exceptional teamwork of Florida and the exceptional potential of Buckeye big man Greg Oden. By the end of the first half, Florida had opened up a double-digit lead thanks to lights-out shooting by Lee Humphrey, the all-time NCAA tournament three-point leader, Taurean Green, and Corey Brewer, and they were never really threatened the rest of the game. Superior depth and experience were the difference, with the OSU guards showing the type of inconsistency (4-23 three-point shooting) that many thought would catch up to them much earlier in the bracket.

This year the Ohio State University has been Gator-bait in two national championship games. With apologies to McRib, CHOMP!. Photo from somewhere off the Internet.

In the second half, OSU made a couple of quasi-runs at the Gators, but never got closer than six points. Whenever it seemed that Ohio State might be on the verge of closing the gap, a Florida player -- pick a player, any player (Florida had four players who scored in double digits and seven players who logged more than 10 minutes of game time) -- stemmed the tide with a killer three, a hustle put-back, or a scrappy rebound. At every turn, at every critical moment of the game, it was Florida that prevailed.

And well they should have. As with the title game for the NCAA Division I football championship, Florida proved itself to be the best team in the country and among the greatest teams of all time. Last night's game also proved the NCAA powers that be know what they are doing, whether its making tournament selections or deciding on BCS matchups.

The bodies in the mortuary were moved to another mortuary in Novato.

Also in cadevar news, two men were arrested for taking cadvers from UCLA and selling them. Man, we just aren't checking the right Cragislist postings. Actually, the men didn't sell them online, but sold them to a bunch of medical, pharmaceutical and hospital research companies. We wonder how that was done. Like in a secret hiding place in downtown LA? Maybe in an undisclosed parking garage? Did they put the bodies in the trunk of the car and transport them that way? And if they did, would that qualify them for the carpool lane? Or did they use UPS? One of the men arrested confessed to walking into the body freezer with a saw and cutting of various bits and pieces of bodies.

It may have been a tough football season, but they were dancing down on The Farm last night.

In fact, they might still be dancing at center court in Maples Pavilion, savoring the Cardinal's 75-68 upset of third-ranked UCLA.

Despite not being ranked, the Cardinal have been lurking in the weeds all season, and Sunday night they reared up and took a bite out of the Bruins. The way that they won it was especially startling: rallying back from a 17-point first-half deficit to cut the lead to seven in the second half, then going on a 15-0 run over the next three and one-half minutes to take the lead for good. They shot 70 percent from the floor in the second half! Stanford coach Trent Johnson showed great coaching chops by moving swingman Lawrence Hill to power forward in the second half to negate UCLA's quickness, and Hill responded with 22 points.

Huge comebacks and lopsided, game-changing runs are not something this hard-nosed UCLA squad gives up. No doubt UCLA got caught looking ahead to the plane ride home, but this was a damn impressive win for the Lelands. Scott Ostler is calling it one of the great wins in Stanford basketball history (yeah, but quick, name another).

Lawrence Hill and the Stanford crazies practiced their new March Madness line dance Sunday night against UCLA. Photo from espn.com.

The bus driver, driving towards the Castro, was tooling up the steep Noe Street hill between 29th and Valley when the electric bus was blocked by the offending garbage truck. The truck driver refused to move, so the bus driver attemped to go around it. That took the bus off the wire, which made it lose power. The driver couldn't reconnect the wire, so she placed a block on the back wheel and put all her passengers on the next bus.

As she was waiting, the block slipped and the bus rolled backwards down the hill. It hit eight cars and a building (but with no injuries to people). Meanwhile, reps from the city attorney's office are racing over to the area to help out with the car claims processing.

Remember -- UCLA: uphill curb left always! And use your parking brake.