The British are coming! The British are coming!

Actually, at this point, with the announcement Monday that Eddie Izzard will be hosting the 25th Annual Film Independent Spirit Awards on March 5, Paul Revere has become positively passé as Hollywood surrenders without a shot to the latest British Host Invasion.

Last year it was Russell Brand at MTV, last week it was “Office” creator Ricky Gervais as the first host of the Golden Globes in 15 years, and now it’s Izzard’s turn to fly the Union Jack over Tinseltown.

1. Ticketmaster/Live Nation merger. With a combined revenues of more than $6 billion, the projected bonding of the largest concert ticket seller and the largest concert promoter could be, depending on who you ask, either a monster or simply a monolith. Approved in the U.K. last week, the merger, which was announced in February with Live Nation’s intent to purchase Ticketmaster for around $400 million in stock, is still awaiting the judgment of Congressional committees and regulators here in the U.S.

Christmas in LA.

The Writers Guild's members-only "Candidates Night" was packed on Wednesday night as all 17 candidates for the WGA board  vacancies pitched themselves.

Guarded with a velvet rope presence that wouldn't have been out of place at a Hollywood hot spot on a Saturday night minus the eye candy but not the inevitable drama, the event was just the latest round in the ongoing bout the union has seemingly been having with itself since the strike during the winter of 2007/2008.

The fanboys will weep, but it looks like "The Watchmen" was and is going to remain one of those movies that just couldn't live up to its hype -- on screen or on the new DVD.

Released on March 6, the adaptation of the acclaimed distopian graphic novel, which Time magazine once called one of the 20th century's "100 Best English-language novels," hit thousands of theaters harder than a caped crusading body blow. Unfortunately there wasn't much of a follow-up punch.

My grandmother once told me that when she heard on the BBC that America had dropped an atomic weapon on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, she suddenly thought how, with man now possessing the true might of Gods, the world had fundamentally changed. She would say that there was a pre-Hiroshima world and a post-Hiroshima world and they had very little in common.

It’s one of those nights when Reese Witherspoon and Jake Gyllenhaal cruise on by and you find yourself thinking “what a cute couple” instead of “don’t stare at the movie stars.”

There was no denying that, with the flagellation of the Michael Jackson Memorial and mourning, it had been a week where it sometimes felt that all the light had been beaten out of the glitter and the grime of the City of Angels.

To paraphrase Jon Landau’s famous quote about Bruce Springsteen, I have seen the future of rock’n’roll and its name is Air Guitar.

The thing is, unlike Landau’s praise of New Jersey’s finest, it sort of snuck up on me. I’d seen the odd news item and heard a story or two, but I’d never given it much thought beyond the kitsch value.

Nonetheless, the revelation became clear at a packed Troubadour on Friday night at the Los Angeles Regional heat of the 2009 US Air Guitar Championship.

Call it a tale of two types of towns.

Barack Obama’s appearance in Las Vegas Tuesday night at a Caesar’s Palace fundraiser that brought in $2 million for incumbent Harry Reid saw the President share billing with Bette Midler and Sheryl Crow.