L.A. Weekly is determining the best L.A. novel ever by holding a tournament featuring 32 of our favorites in head-to-head matchups, until there's only one novel standing. For further reading:
*Best L.A. Novel Ever: The Tournament Brackets
*Best L.A. Novel Ever: More Matchups

This contest may seem like an unfair one for Hollywood Regional Final of our Best L.A. Novel Tournament. What Makes Sammy Run?, written by Budd Schulberg, who would later win an Oscar for writing On the Waterfront, is synonymous with Hollywood, while Evelyn Waugh's The Loved One spends only a couple chapters there. Still, both books poke fun at a brand of phoniness that's become synonymous with the place.

The titular Sammy is Sammy Glick, who lies and scams his way from the Lower East Side tenements up the ranks of New York journalism and then Hollywood, his story told through the eyes of the older, wiser, morally principled Al Manheim, who can't help but tag along as he attempts his own transition from one coast to another.

The Loved One, published just seven years after Sammy, in 1948, goes the opposite direction, starting in Hollywood and moving elsewhere. It follows Dennis, a poet who came to L.A. from England to write for Hollywood but now works works at a pet cemetery called the Happier Hunting Ground. When his roommate Sir Francis gets fired from his studio job and then commits suicide, the funeral arrangements bring Dennis to the fancy human cemetery Whispering Glades, where he falls for a mortician named Aimee.

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YouTube/DanceBistro

Dance Bistro 2013, to be held May 24-25, will feature 13 different dance companies performing.

See also:
*Our Calendar Section, Listing More Great Things to Do in L.A.

With Memorial Day weekend on the horizon, L.A. is giving you the opportunity to expect the unexpected. Save the burgers, fireworks and beer to fuel your patriotic fervor for the Fourth of July -- this week, Korean BBQ, knit graffiti and HempCon, among other endeavors, will help burst your celebrations out of the box.

5. Everybody Must Get Stoned
This year's HempCon features live actions by some of the controlled substance's most uncontrollable creative forces: EPMD, Cypress Hill's DJ Muggs, Cappadonna of Wu-Tang Clan and Redman, among many others. Lest you think this is one big, blacklight orgy of people flapping their arms like chickens on their way to score some M, there also are seminars on how to start a delivery service (just like Samson Simpson!), how to be compliant in California (whether that means being in line with California law or just acting nice when the cops bust down your door) and a lecture (but not a scolding) by keynote speaker and helpful attorney Freddy Sayegh. Yes, we can(nabis)! L.A. Convention Center, Hall B, 1201 S. Figueroa St., dwntwn.; Fri., May 24-Sun., May 26; $20 per day. (626) 961-6522, hempcon.com. -- David Cotner

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John Flynn

Burt Grinstead and Laurie Okin in Christopher Shinn's Dying City at Rogue Machine

Lee Melville, a true gentleman and decades-long friend of our theater, died last night. Melville was a critic and editor at Drama-Logue and, most recently, L.A. Stage. More details as they come in.

Christopher Shinn's drama Dying City, about a family in the wake of the Iraq War, being performed at Rogue Machine, is this week's pick. For all the latest new theater reviews, see below.

This week's theater feature is on a one-man show that chronicles five characters, each showing up at a gay bar called the Flash, during a different decade. With this scheme, the play becomes a kind of history of gay attitudes in the U.S.

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Photo courtesy of Dance Bistro

Dance Bistro

See also:
*5 Artsy Things to Do in L.A. This Week
*Our Latest Theater Reviews
*Our Calendar Section, Listing More Great Things to Do in L.A.

This week's dance events include Dance Bistro serving up international fare, Datugan Dance Theatre's repertoire concert and the penultimate week of Los Angeles Ballet's Balanchine Festival Red.

5. Serving up a Dance Bistro
More than a festival, Dance Bistro 2013 is more like a feast with 13 companies in two mostly different programs over two nights, each show preceded by video streaming of the dress rehearsals, and with low priced tickets to lure dance fans away from their barbecues Memorial Day weekend. Presented by the TuTu Foundation and Madarin Orange Performing Arts, both nights promise an aerial kickline from Luminario Ballet, a premiere from choreographer Kyle Abraham danced by the excellent modern troupe BODYTRAFFIC, and a contemporary Chinese dance company performing to new music from Swedish composer Henrik Åström. Friday also includes Body Current Dance, the Latin troupe CONTRA-TIEMPO, Elke Calvert Dance Project, Los Angeles Movement Arts, Renaissance Arts Academy, and Watson Dance. The lineup Saturday includes ChoreoLive, Cortines High School Dance Company, Elke Calvert Dance Project, Grandeza Mexicana Folk Ballet Company, the L.A. Follies, and Watson Dance. As a mecca for fusion cuisine drawing on SoCal's diversity, it's only natural the region should also give rise to a fusion dance festival. Get tickets at www.dancebistro2013.brownpapertickets.com. Catch at preview at www.dancebistro.com. At the Richard & Karen Carpenter Performing Arts Center, 6200 Atherton St., Long Beach; Fri.-Sat., May 24-25, 8 p.m., $5. www.carpenterarts.org, 562-985-7000.

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More First Person pieces:
*I Was Sick of L.A. Traffic. So I Took a Plane to Work
*I Rode the Entire L.A. Metro in a Single Day
*Why the San Fernando Valley Hate Needs to End Once and For All

When I first moved to Los Angeles, I read a lot of how-to books on making it in this city. Hollywood's multiple versions of How to Win Friends and Influence People could fill the shelves of the Mar Vista Library (which is really small, but still). The books are stuffed with mindless industry platitudes; in my early L.A. days, the one I always tried to follow, often against my better judgment, was "Always say yes."

Which is exactly how I ended up in handcuffs on Hollywood Boulevard. At 11 a.m. On a Tuesday.

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laphil.com/education/yola press photos

Gustavo Dudamel with the Youth Orchestra of Los Angeles in October 2012

When her son Jacob was barely a year old, Teresa Esquivel noticed that music powerfully affected his demeanor. Certain tunes would even make him cry. In particular, if Pokémon was on, Jigglypuff's leitmotif would reduce him to wails, even if Jacob hadn't been previously focused on the TV.

Jacob's parents live in South Central L.A. — Teresa works at the DMV, husband Peter at a motorcycle shop. Now that the shop is more established, things are better, but when the family was just starting out, Peter Esquivel says private lessons for his music-obsessed son would have been out of reach.

Until, that is, the family discovered Youth Orchestra of Los Angeles. The organization provides free music instruction to kids in underserved areas of the city, with the motto "Social Change Through Music."

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L.J. Williamson

Street art is a commentary on the nature of ownership, and the push-pull between public and private property. Using the city as a stolen canvas is in and of itself an artistic statement that art hemmed into the confines of a gallery or museum could never make.

The questions that street art raises -- "who does this city belong to?" and "who gets to decide what it looks like?" will always be a source of tension -- the sort of tension inherent in city life.

Pop star Chris Brown, of "F.A.M.E." fame, has placed himself at the center of that sort of tension in his Hollywood Dell neighborhood by painting a tableau of monster faces on his otherwise elegant home. The ensuing conflict with neighbors, which made front page news and which Brown plainly courted, can be framed a number of ways, but primarily it's an argument between "a man's home is his castle" versus community standards.

Like great architecture, great art installations seek harmony with the surrounding environment -- or if not harmony, then a pointed juxtaposition. Driving up Rinconia Drive in the lushly overgrown Hollywood Dell, when one happens upon the Brown home, the effect is neither. The curbside paintings stick out, to be sure, but in an opportunistic, rather than a deeply considered way. Round the corner and there they are, but the images aren't as glaring on the the approach as one would suspect from newspaper photos -- because of their orientation on the street, passersby view them from the side rather than head-on. In fact, most of Brown's paintings are tucked away into the recessed portions of the house's façade, seeming downright discreet.

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This year's People issue celebrates the 56 Angelenos we find most intriguing. Among those 56 are fashionistas, musicians and novelists -- and, of course, the movers-and-shakers in Hollywood.

Check out all of our People 2013 profiles

Their influence can be felt on both the screen and behind the scenes. From multihyphenates like Anna Kendrick and Tyrese Gibson to scribes like Jennifer Lee and Janice Gibson, these are 10 of Hollywood's finest who are shaping the industry.

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From the national battle for marriage equality to the ever-increasing pool of public figures blasting down their closet doors, it's a good time to be LGBT.

Check out all of our People 2013 profiles

This year's People issue celebrates the 56 Angelenos we find most intriguing, including some LGBT individuals making their mark on the city and beyond. From a playwright to a poet, or a therapist to a Trekkie, here are five people who are making things happen in the L.A.'s gay community.

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Calling all you virtual movers and shakers! (And those of you hip to what the cool kids are doing online these days.) We want to hear from you, because right now we're gathering nominees for the 2013 L.A. Weekly Web Awards!

The Web Awards celebrate all that's awesome on the internet, as well as the local go-getters who are making things happen online. That's right, even though the internet knows no bounds, we want to honor the web-savvy self-starters who call L.A. home.

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