Mariano Pensotti

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Argentine theater auteur Mariano Pensotti has staged performance pieces on a Cologne train station platform, on the sidewalk of a Buenos Aires street and inside a boxlike "movie" set on which actors "reproduced" scenes from Jean-Luc Godard's 1967 film, La Chinoise.

At REDCAT, beginning tomorrow, Pensotti is presenting The Past Is a Grotesque Animal, his kaleidoscopic spin on the lives of four Argentineans following the collapse of the country's economy in 1999. L.A. Weekly discussed the production with the director via email.

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Shunk-Kender, © Lichtenstein Foundation

Niki de Saint Phalle shooting with a .22 rifle in the Impasse Ronsin, Paris, 1961.

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Everything on this week's list is either radical or rebellious, or hopelessly nostalgic about being radical and rebellious.

5. Revolutionizing the Sunset Strip
The original Artists' Tower of Protest, a looming yellow steeple surrounded by artist-designed posters, went up in 1966 at La Cienega and Sunset in direct response to the Vietnam War. One night, painter Irving Petlin, who helped organize the tower, used a broken lightbulb to fend off a vandal. Another night, people tried to burn the tower. "If you were an artist at the time, you were a radical," says Mark di Suvero. He designed the first Tower of Protest and the reincarnation that's now on the corner of Sunset and Hilldale in West Hollywood. The new tower doesn't feel as provocative as the first must have, but it does interrupt the Sunset Strip's ad-heavy veneer. Through the end of March. (310) 559-0166, laxart.org.

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​"I'm glad I remembered the 'cum salad' story," is the first thing Greg Behrendt said backstage after "Iron Comic" at the UCB Theater on Saturday night.

Fortunately, we are talking about comedy. Iron Comic is an improvisational stand-up competition created by Nato Green. Behrendt and four other contestants (Louis Katz, Alex Koll, Morgan Murphy -- who won -- and Chelsea Peretti) have just been run through a creative wringer -- live, for a very receptive, sold-out house.

Green's creation (which had only been performed in L.A. once before, five years ago) tests the joke-writing skills of its contestant comics. Similar in format to its namesake, TV reality series Iron Chef, the show challenges comics to write original material on the spot. Each round starts with an audience-suggested topic being pulled from a hat. The comics then repair backstage for seven minutes, during which they all write two minutes' worth of material on that topic before returning to the stage to perform it. After three rounds are scored by guest judges, the two top-scoring comics square off in a final lightning round.

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Aaron Morgan

"Candida," produced by Crysalis Stage at The Complex

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Chrysalis Stage's revival of G.B. Shaw's Candida at The Complex nabbed this week's Pick of the Week.

​ Our critics also liked On Holy Ground with Salome Jens at the MET, in Hollywood. See here for all the latest New Theater Reviews. Also, later this evening, check out this coming week's Stage Features on Beth Henley's The Jacksonian at the Geffen, with Bill Pullman, Ed Harris and Amy Madigan; and a peek at a work-in-progress, Critical Mass' An Alcestis Project, being developed at the Getty Villa under Nancy Keystone's direction.

2012 L.A. Weekly Theater Awards nominees were announced last week. Reservations are now open for nominees at (310) 574-7208; tix for guests and the public go on sale Feb. 23 at http://laweekly.com/theaterawards

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CuriousJosh

Burning Man 2011

​Looks like the local news is starting to care about Burning Man. Our ace L.A. Weekly photographer Josh "CuriousJosh" Reis chatted about the event on FOX 11 last night.

Check out the video after the jump.

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Courtesy Machine Project

A from-the-street view of Infantcore, in which composer Scott Cazan used babies to generate music

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Babies came in waves on Saturday, for Machine Project's Infantcore, a five-hour experimental jam session in which playing 6- to 18-month-olds determined what erratic, synthesized sounds would be heard in the adjoining gallery. At 11 a.m., when Infantcore officially started, there was a crowd, but by 1:30 or 2 p.m., only two or three babies were left ("Maybe it's naptime," suggested David Eng, Machine's operations manager).

Around 3 p.m., there was another swell, and eight or nine babies played in front of a camera that fed into the computer of sound artist Scott Cazan. He had developed software that isolated baby-sized blobs of color and then determined where those blobs were in an allotted space. Depending on the location of the baby blobs, which the software mapped on a grid with x and y coordinates, rhythms, pitches and sound qualities would be assigned.

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photobucket (bella_13_SPMS)

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So far, no signs of the apocalypse for the startup-company-for-startups kickstarter.com, a website successfully proving that frugal, unemployed Americans do care about things enough to donate a dollar to a dreamer.

February brought about two million-dollar projects that amazingly surpassed their fundraising goals, and of course about a million projects that weren't worth two dollars.

Surfing though the ideas of its hopefuls, we found a few Los Angeles-based, Los Angeles-bettered projects worth looking into your Google wallet for, in no particular order:

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OK, let's just get this out of the way: "Benincasa" is a pretty funny name for someone who's agoraphobic.

Sara Benincasa, who has gobs of credits as a comic, sex-chat show host and TV performer, signs her book on her bout with the anxiety disorder, Agorafabulous!: Dispatches From My Bedroom, tonight at Book Soup.

Our Q&A with Benicasa:

You deal with a serious subject -- mental illness -- with great humor. That takes courage -- but is there anything in the book that you wish you hadn't included?

I tried really hard to be fair to the other characters and hardest on my own character. I'm pretty cool with everything I included. Maybe I would've written even more about pissing in bowls when I was afraid of my toilet. That's the sort of thing that could really take up an entire book. And in certain fetish circles, it'd be quite the hit.

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Josh "CuriousJosh" Reiss

​See more photos in "CuriousJosh: The Edwardian Ball 2012 @ the Belasco Theater."

Whether the setting is the Victorian era or the Roaring '20s, vintage-themed parties have become increasingly common in recent years. Few, though, can create a world that bridges eras as seamlessly as the Edwardian Ball. A long-running event in San Francisco, the Ball's founders added an annual L.A. party not too long ago and their most recent gathering, Sunday night at downtown's Belasco, drew large crowds of costumed partygoers for a night of performance and dancing.

The Edwardian Ball is primarily a tribute to author and illustrator Edward Gorey, whose grim and often darkly humorous tales appeared to be loosely set between the late 19th and early 20th centuries. While nods to Gorey's work peppered the venue and its stage, those now-classic books served as more of a launch pad than a guide for the attendees. Overall, the look on the dance floor was Downton Abbey meets Boardwalk Empire meets The Road Warrior. They keep things loose and that helps make the crowd feel comfortable.

Here's what works about Edwardian Ball. Try applying some of these techniques next time you throw a vintage-themed party.

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Lina Lecaro

Angels pair up with Kings nightly at Pete Wentz's rockin' Hollywood bar Angels & Kings

​If there's one thing Valentine's Day hammers home, it's the suckiness (or lack thereof) of being solo. We're talking S-E-X, people, and for you poor souls who had an unsatisfying week sans even a prospect for V***** or D*** (we're talking body parts, not venereal disease), it's time to put it all behind you and get to prowling the bars again.

We can't guarantee a hookup at any of the following, but we will say that, based on atmosphere, comely crowds, our own get-hit-on ratios and those of our scenester pals (both male and female), these drinking holes seem to provide the best chance to get your hoe down.

As always, boozers looking to get bumpin' should drink responsibly, not drive and be safe about who you go home with. Tell a friend where you'll be, with whom, and promise to call the next day. Here's hoping all you have to deal with after your hookup is a hangover, a walk of shame and a little regret. Who knows? Maybe you'll actually meet your Valentine for next year?

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