Best Coast bed bugs.

According to a new report from giant pest-control company Orkin -- based on the number of treatments it conducted in each major U.S. city last year -- L.A. experienced somewhat of an embarrassing bed-bug renaissance in 2011.

The numbers are staggering:

Facebook

Cleo Berry: alive and two-legged.

It's another to wake up to an unflattering (and even more unflatteringly manipulated) photo of yourself on a New York City billboard, and all over the Internet, posing as a fat guy who ate so much junk food that he had to get his leg amputated.

Welcome to L.A. actor/director Cleo Berry's Friday night:

Kerry Tribe

Welcome to the future, New York.

You've got plenty of your usual fare: Social media is everything! Commenter is king! Down with the paywalls! Apps! Apps! Apps!

But one prediction in particular is crazy uncharacteristic of that crowd. University of Washington-bred media man Rex Sorgatz, now a full-fledged New Yorker, is biting the bullet and giving some pre-emptive kudos to Los Angeles, which he has dubbed "the future" of new media.

Carolyn Cole/Los Angeles Times

Will OWS thaw its toes out west?

SoCal's famously bland winter weather is looking mighty appealing to the frozen campers at Occupy Wall Street right about now.

The roughly 200 tents occupying New York's Zuccotti Park are facing a long season of snowstorms and freezing temperatures. "Is it time to Occupy Miami Beach?" one camper wondered aloud to a Los Angeles Times reporter last month.

But today, USC zine Neon Tommy reports that L.A. might be the next best thing. David DeGraw, a head organizer for OWS, "told a crowded tent at Occupy L.A. on Sunday night" ...

From Ed Ruscha's "Standard Editions."

Well, good -- 'cause we don't wanna be.

Just as the Wall Street Journal completely missed the point, earlier this year, in assuming the tacky (yet quarantined) influx of moneyed developments into the L.A. Live area somehow signaled a wannabe "Manhattanization" downtown (WTF)...

'Aftershock: Earthquake in New York'

Don't get us wrong, a 5.8 is the real deal. But it's nothing to panic about. Remember, the epicenter was 316 miles away from New York.

That's more than the driving distance between L.A. and Las Vegas (and trust us, if a 5.8 hit Vegas we wouldn't be evacuating buildings here). It's even more than ...

Greenwich Village.

You can just hear your aunt saying she'd never, ever settle down in SoCal.

But this summer is giving the East Coast a little taste of its own medicine.

After all ...

NYC wannabe?

TIME Magazine runs a big out-of-touch feature today on the alleged "Manhattanization" of downtown L.A., which has allegedly gone from the tumbleweedy "laughingstock" of West Coast party people to a "happening city center" where your average TIME reporter is likely to come across "apparently inebriated clubgoers" climbing atop Denny's signs and waving their arms for an "off-balance picture."

TimeOut

And nobody here is going to tell you to forget about it.

The website Correlated is running an online poll today asking that very question.

And guess what?

Our kinda girl.

Yes, the famed Googleplex is located in our nerdy nothern region (another reason not to secede, you freaks), with a chic southern satellite right here in Venice, and yes, we're all a bunch of social-media-binging fame whores, but according to "Find People on Plus," we have twice as many users as New York, at 22,000 [via LAist].

Seems like a disproportionately huge gap, if you ask us. Population could account for some of it:

New York Daily News

But none of our jabs could make the point as well as this story: A cop in New York actually stopped a short-skirt wearing tourist who was riding a bike to inform her she was showing off to much below the waist.

We can almost guarantee you that ...

unclebumpy

Code red.

You know, to prevent the likes of former International Monetary Fund honcho Dominique Strauss-Kahn from getting his (alleged) rape on.

We can't be too judgmental, though. One of our own, Charlie Sheen, probably did his part to inspire the warning system too, since he went apeshit in a hotel room there late last year (though we're not sure a panic button would have helped, unless it could have summoned the nearest coke dealer).

Car, meet Robot.

Yay for robots! Mayor John Duran is already hopelessly in love with his new toy, beaming in a city statement today:

​

Even New York's world-famous Statue of Liberty, apparently. Her likeness stands over the Las Vegas strip, torch raised...

The Others shall walk among us

Better still, all that studying has the potential to evolve into some actual doing in L.A., as the next movie or commercial set is never more than a stone's throw away.

Two separate East Coast schools are giving into their coastal inferiority in 2011. Syracuse University and Emerson College will both be offering more spots in their cross-country "study abroad"-type programs...

Nothin' to see here

The New York Post reports that Giovani the Bad Brooklyn Tortoise, looking for a big adventure on a Sunday afternoon, used his basketball-sized tortoise body (gross) to send his plastic terrarium careening to the floor, where the heat lamp introduced itself to a can of paint thinner and such massive chaos ensued that it took 60 firefighters to set things straight.

There are so many lessons to be learned here, New York.

L.A. Sheriff Lee Baca: Terrorists come in all colors but red, white 'n' blue

We're proud to call L.A. County Sheriff Lee Baca our own today, as he does both Los Angeles and the nation a solid by sticking up for thousands of innocent Muslims at the House Homeland Security Committee's hearing on U.S. Muslim radicalization.

The hearing was called by -- who else? -- Rep. Peter King (New York), the guy who recently proposed Wikileaks be declared a "terrorist organization." So yeah, this is the kind of wackjob Baca's up against.

New York Post

The important things in life

We've been doing a lot of thinking since then. You know, about our place in the universe. The state of the union. Evolution. That kind of thing.

Not that the Charlie Sheen-Kacey Jordan "36 hour party" isn't exactly the kind of story we can expect from the Post [or better yet, read the LA Weekly's version! Heh]. It's more just --

Rodney Alcala on the "Dating Game" in 1978

Sixty-seven-year-old Rodney Alcala, infamous for his calm, sophisticated demeanor and cameo on the "Dating Game" -- he won, but the date never happened because was voted down because the girl found "something creepy" about him [watch video here] -- apparently made a couple trips to New York during his 1970s killing spree. Anonymous officials tell the New York papers today that he's been indicted for the cold-case killings of Cornelia Crilley and Ellen Hover.

Christine Pelisek, the LA Weekly's former serial-killer expert, delved into the psyche of a madman with "Rodney Alcala: The Fine Art of Killing." Alcala is already on death row in California for strangling four women and a 12-year-old girl...