What happens in La Vida never stays in La Vida. Partly, I like to think of the section as a tour through the city’s various cultures and subcultures. The people profiled here are helicopter pilots, fencers, plush-food collectors, organic gardeners and skinny-jeans connoisseurs. What’s been going on since last we spoke? In monster news, Charlotte and Vendetta of Amy Winfrey’s Making Fiends now have their very own TV episodes. The city of Clamburg continues to be terrorized by fiends and a giant red cat. Children across the nation can now hear the citizens’ screaming and cries of pain on Nickelodeon every Saturday at 8:30 a.m.

Illustrator Stefan Bucher of The Daily Monster book and Web site took a short break from the obsessive drawing of monsters. But he missed them so much, he quickly got back to it. He drew the winter quarter cover of the UCLA Extension catalog. He made a “Send a Monster” app for Facebook. He even taught a monster-drawing workshop at the Echo Park Time Travel Mart.

Paul Dateh, the hip-hop violinist, is currently finishing up his first West Coast tour with the Grouch and Eligh of the Living Legends. He is excited to report that his album comes out on January 27. He will have more exciting news in the coming months, but is not allowed to disclose it at the moment. When he’s in town, which is rarer and rarer these days, he still lives in the Little Tokyo apartment with his mom and dad and the dog.

Mike Macadaan’s Twiistup juggernaut geek-chic tech mixer party has gotten so big it’s having its next iteration this February 12 at Santa Monica Airport. Did you know you could meet the next Bill Gates there, or Google, or Apple? Tickets are on sale now.

The Los Angeles Carnivorous Plant Society took on a few new members this year. When they got together for their holiday party, plant prodigy Wesley bought jambalaya with meat, which, rumor aside, they did not feed to the venus flytraps.

Speaking of vicious carnivores, Los Angeles Fashion Week as presented by Mercedes Benz and IMG died a sad, malnourished death this past year. But never fear: The size-0 girls in pretty dresses will be stomping the SoCal runways at a brand-new trade-expo-style event. REVEAL Los Angeles takes up the torch March 20-22 in downtown at L.A. Live and the California Market Center.

What else? Upon Barack Obama’s election to the presidency, Erica Easley immediately sold out of her Obama knee-high socks. She was stuck in traffic trying to get to an election-night party when she heard the news he was elected. It was anticlimactic. Also anticlimactic: She won’t be doing an inaugural sock. But she is working on “a new, non-Obama sock that is just as cool and unprecedented” (two words not often used when discussing socks).

And perhaps you remember It-girl Cory Kennedy’s dirty socks, which may or may not have been stolen from her birthday party in NYC on February 21. They fetched a handsome (that is, handsome for used socks) price on eBay. Though neither my L.A. Weekly colleague Mark “The Cobrasnake” Hunter nor Cory nor their friend Stryder, who ran the auction, can remember precisely what that amount was ($46, they think) or what they did with the money — that was sooo March 13, 2007.

Hunter forwards me an e-mail conversation that took place between him and Stryder way back then: “Fuck yessss,” Hunter says. “I think you should pretend you stole them . but don’t make it too joke we want people to bid on them . lets see how it do. And we can start doing shit like this more.”

Advertising disclosure: We may receive compensation for some of the links in our stories. Thank you for supporting LA Weekly and our advertisers.