Tomorrow night’s Live Talks Los Angeles event featuring Burt Bacharach in conversation with Mitch Albom is notable for a couple of additional reasons. It will mark the three-year anniversary of the popular local series and is the first of several Live Talks events planned for Glendale’s Alex Theatre.

It all began May 14, 2010 with author Jane Smiley interviewing Dave Barry. Since then, series founder-producer Ted Habte-Gabr has staged more than 100 events, bringing together everyone from Steve Martin and Tina Fey to Fred Willard and Darrell Hammond to Sharon Waxman and Sir Michael Caine. In addition to the evening series, which focuses for the most part on arts and culture, Habte-Gabr curates a downtown daytime business-themed bracket, Live Talks Business.

“We have three events booked at the Alex,” Habte-Gabr tells FishbowlLA via telephone. “The first one is Burt Bacharach; the second one is Phil Jackson in conversation with John Salley on June 12; and the third one is Neil Gaiman in conversation with Geoff Boucher, June 27. Then the Alex shuts down for some major renovations and they open back up in November, at which point we’ll probably have one or two more events there before the end of the year.”

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How cool is this? A few years ago, Toronto-based animator Steve Stark tweeted out to Kevin Smith and Jason Mewes a cartoon he put together based on a Jay & Silent Bob SModcast. It led to a relationship that now has the Canuck first-time directing the pair’s cartoon feature.

Jay & Silent Bob’s Super Groovy Cartoon Movie will start rolling out this spring by means of a Red State USA-style cross-country road show, with the two leads in tow for lively post-show podcast Q&A. From today’s announcement:

“This is what can happen when you put the plug in the jug, kids,” said Mewes. “As an actor, it was awesome to play Jay again. But as a producer, I sweated every nickel because I wanted to keep the budget low… And dirty.”

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Musician Amanda Palmer is taking some heat for her recent efforts to “crowdsource” musicians for her latest concert tour. Palmer, who raised nearly $1.2 million via a Kickstarter campaign to fund her new album and concert, says she cannot afford to pay for a string quartet and a couple of horn players and is asking for volunteer musicians in each city the tour visits.

Palmer vigorously defended asking musicians to play for free via her blog, saying that she’s played many gigs for no pay throughout her long career, and that “this isn’t about money. For me, this is about freedom. And about choices.” Arianna Huffington made a similar argument in defense of her unpaid writers, claiming the opportunity to be heard was reward enough for most contributors. Her network of thousands of bloggers, like Palmer’s devoted fan base, appear to agree.

Palmer, who rose to fame with her former band The Dresden Dolls, told the New York Times she couldn’t afford the extra $35,000 it would cost to hire musicians in place of volunteers. While we don’t know the details of Palmer’s personal finances, it should be noted that she is married to best-selling author, screenwriter and graphic novelist Neil Gaiman, whose net worth is estimated at $18 million.

Tickets for the concert will run you about $35. At least Arianna gives it away for free!

The American Booksellers Association, a network of independent booksellers, have announced the winners of the 2009 Indies Choice Book Awards. We think they’ve done good:

Best Indie Buzz Book (Fiction): The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows (The Dial Press)

Best Conversation Starter (Nonfiction): The Wordy Shipmates, by Sarah Vowell (Riverhead)

Best Author Discovery: The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, by David Wroblewski (Ecco)

Best Indie Young Adult Buzz Book (Fiction): The Graveyard Book, by Neil Gaiman (HarperCollins)

Best New Picture Book: Bats at the Library, by Brian Lies (Houghton Mifflin)

Most Engaging Author: Sherman Alexie

If you haven’t read ‘The Story of Edgar Sawtelle’ yet, do. Part of the story is told from the point of view of a dog, a tricky endeavor that even in the hands of gifted writers often comes across as sentimental and contrived. But with the character of Almondine, the novel has what may be the most accurate- and compelling- depiction of the canine mind in modern fiction.