Megan Tandy, Erica Rose and Mark Foster from Foster The People hit up the imaginatively named F*CK CANCER event at Avalon Hollywood; Bruce Vilanch, Jaime Pressly, Greg Louganis, Missi Pyle and many others show up to support an ageless Christie Brinkley and John O'Hurley at the Pantages L.A. premiere of "Chicago"; composers John Williams and Rolfe Kent are the big winners at BMI's Film/TV Awards in Beverly Hills honoring achievements in film and television music; international human rights activist Archbishop Desmond Tutu is honored by Swiss luxury watchmaker Girard-Perregaux. Wednesday night was anything but boring in L.A., so check out all the charity events, stage premieres, awards shows and deep philosophical conversations that went down in this Thursday edition of Last Night's Parties!

Christie Brinkey outside the "Chicago" Opening Night [via] More»

A college education is a precious gift. Not only does it mean that you, your parents and/or the state have made a massive commitment of money and resources to mold you into an adult and future leader, but it's also pretty much the only guaranteed time that you and 2,000 other people can get drunk, strip down to your underwear, and run around outside, just for kicks. Which is exactly what UCLA did last night on their Winter Quarter Undie Run.

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Heidi Klum, Tom Hanks, and Rita Wilson play dress-up and sing karaoke to raise funds for UNICEF; Santa Monica Museum of Art's PRECOGNITO Gala draws Emmy Rossum, Ben McKenzie, and a Mary-Kate-less Ashley Olsen to preview the INCOGNITO art exhibition; Lana Del Rey, Quincy Jones, Owen Wilson and Jared Leto hit up the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability—get all of this and more and to see who got a head-start on weekend fun on Thursday in L.A. in this edition of Last Night's Parties. More»

Super Tuesday! If the phrase makes you picture cartoon heroes, leaping tall buildings and rescuing the innocent from danger, then you clearly haven't been paying too much attention to this year's Republican Primaries. Innocent people don't give millions to SuperPACs, after all, and lord knows Newt Gingrich has never leapt over a tall anything in his life. In fact, with apologies to our three, maybe four Republican readers, the sorry state of these Primaries (and to be fair, electoral politics in general) really puts you in the mood to just get drunk. Luckily for all, the Hammer Museum in Westwood agrees, which is why they hosted a Super Tuesday party. Drink every time someone says "Obamacare!" More»

• More than 100 colleges and universities around the country including UCLA and Stanford are using Turnitin, an anti-plagiarism database service with a vast archive of scholarly writing, to detect plagiarism in application essays of prospective students. [LATimes]
• An argument erupting in gunfire on the patio of popular Thai eatery the Pink Pepper on La Brea and Hollywood Friday night leaves one woman dead, one man expected to survive gunshots. [KTLA]

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So all your friends went off to Sundance to party with movie stars and alcoholic babies, and you're still here in L.A.? Maybe you're a little jealous, because it seems like every night they're checking out some big name like Drake, playing for free? Don't sweat it, because there's actually a lot of great live music happening right here in town this week, including plenty of artists that give ol' Wiz Khalifa a run for his money. So instead of sitting at home feeling left out, Go See A Show!! [L.A. punk legends X play the MOCA on Friday, photo via] More»

Although I generally have nothing but love for UCLA, I must confess that I sometimes think of their student body as a little... ineffectual. How is it that a major university with 26,000+ undergrads can't fill up their three neighborhood bars on a Thursday night? Nevertheless, while walking around my Westwood neighborhood yesterday afternoon, I was delighted to see that there are some Bruins out there interested in more than just studying and/or being extremely racist, as a group of politically active students were staging a sit-in in the middle of Wilshire Boulevard.

• Shia LaBeouf cops to hooking up with Transformers co-star Megan Fox while filming, utters "I don't know" 12 times when asked if she was dating husband Brian Austin Green at the time. [TMZ]
• L.A. cracks down on Westwood "apron parking", when cars park in driveways so they block sidewalks and hang out into the streets, around UCLA campus. [LATimes]
• Reports say Charlie Sheen's "Two and a Half Men" character Charlie Harper has been killed off the show. [KTLA]
• Demonstrators protest in Greece over country's financial crisis and need for reform, clash with police in the streets. [KABC]
• Former chief of staff to Michele Bachmann Ron Carey contends the Minn. congresswoman, who launched her presidential campaign yesterday, is "not prepared" to be the leader of the free world. [HuffPo]