Kevin Scanlon

One of the fascinating Angelenos featured in L.A. Weekly's People 2012 issue. Check out our entire People 2012 issue here.

If you've been to the website of a buzzy new tech startup in the last few years -- Groupon, Airbnb, Square -- chances are you've seen the work of Adam Lisagor. Not just his short videos, which are passed around the Internet to promote and teach you how to use these products, but also Lisagor himself, the 34-year-old creative director who stars in them. He's the guy in the thick-rimmed glasses and frizzy beard, an uber-accessible Everyman who walks you through a complicated idea with refreshingly deadpan yet thoroughly earnest delivery.

"The purpose of the videos is to make the information exciting," he says. The result is somewhere between a Michel Gondry movie and an OK Go music video: highly visual, rich with metaphor, giddily clever.

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Alissa Walker

Weary transit riders undoubtedly have noticed an improvement to the Los Angeles streetscape in the past few weeks. New bus benches -- a shiny green metal model that wouldn't look too out of place in a local park -- are cropping up on sidewalks.

Six thousand new benches are, thank goodness, slowly replacing the slimy brown plastic versions currently seen around L.A. With their awkward scale and styling, the old benches are more like a Playskool version of a toy bench rather than a functional seat -- hardly a place to sit. The matte surface was an ideal canvas for graffiti by both humans and pigeons. Plus the pitch of the seat and the slickness of the material made it nearly impossible to keep yourself from sliding down toward the sidewalk. (And maybe that was the message they wanted to send: Don't get too comfortable.)

The new green benches are certainly an aesthetic improvement for our streets. They offer a wide, right-angled seat that would not be difficult to occupy while waiting for a late 780. The metallic surface, while not tag-proof, is certainly a deterrent. The slits in the bottom prevents urban detritus and mysterious fluids from pooling (a big problem with the brown ones). But the disheartening truth about bus benches in L.A. remains: This is not an enlightened civic service for transit riders. This is how a broke city makes money.

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Special Entertainment

The iconic "What" zeppelin, projected onto MOCA downtown

In 1972 Asco spray-painted their signatures onto the walls of LACMA, asserting themselves as active members of the art community despite the fact that LACMA wasn't yet willing to show their work.

Last Wednesday night, Milwaukee-based Special Entertainment, the partnership between artists Andrew Swant and Bobby Ciraldo, also inserted their signature into the L.A. art world. Swant and Ciraldo, creators of Samwell's "What What (In the Butt)" viral video, which has gotten 45 million views since it was posted to YouTube five years ago, projected the video's iconic zeppelin with the word "What" on it onto MOCA downtown, the Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Scientology Center and various other cultural institutions and locations around Los Angeles.

Then, on Thursday, the duo presented video footage of the drive-by projection event at Nate Page's Machine Overnight Guerrilla Project at Storefront Plaza, hosted by Machine Project.

Special Entertainment's trip out West and its series of projections was organized in part by Sara Daleiden's MKE-LAX program, promoting artistic exchange between Milwaukee and L.A., fostered in celebration of the five-year anniversary of "What What (In the Butt)."

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Have you seen that video of the dogs barking the Darth Vader song? Chances are, if you have a pulse and an Internet connection, you have. The viral video is a teaser for a Volkswagen Super Bowl commercial, so yes, that makes it a commercial for a commercial.

It's bold new territory for advertising companies, who now acknowledge what many Super Bowl viewers suspect: The commercials are the best part. To find out more about this viral hit, we spoke with music video and commercial director Keith Schofield. He's the man behind the Duck Sauce human-heads-on-crotches, Wintergreen's "How to Make Meth," Diesel XXX Safe for Work Porn, Fat Boy Slim's Censored Naked party videos and more.

We talked with Keith about the making of the video, dog whisperers, canine erections and the key elements for directors who want to make a video go viral.

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Earlier this week, our news blog The Informer reported on ​the Robbins Brothers jewelry store Facebook campaign that lets people use Facebook to post rather bland messages of love to an electronic billboard over the westbound 91 freeway in Corona. It's not known as the most happening part of town, but apparently that freeway is always jammed, so the eight-second long billboard messages will get a good share a viewers.

Of course, the messages, submitted through the store's "Share The Love" page on Facebook are moderated, but how carefully? Can double entendres and naughty imagery slip through the cracks?

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Courtesy of the artist

Susan Mogul's Mogul Celebrates Mogul poster hanging alongside the official PST ads in Echo Park

Anthony Kiedis and Ed Ruscha both like words. The Red Hot Chili Peppers' front man and now-iconic L.A. artist drive around L.A. discussing this shared affinity in a promo video for Pacific Standard Time, the region-wide initiative to celebrate SoCal art's postwar history.

In addition to the video, viewable on youtube and PST's website, there's a poster plastered around the city of shirtless Kiedis, tattooed arms crossed over his chest, pointing behind his head to the word "Hollywood" spelled out backwards like it is in Ruscha's 1977 painting Back of Hollywood. Text along the bottom says, "Kiedis celebrates Ruscha." In another ad, actor Jason Schwartzman celebrates wry conceptualist John Baldessari, appearing puzzled with a blue circle like those Baldessari superimposed over his photographs hovering above his head. These ads motivated artist Susan Mogul's current project, a spoof on PST's male-centric promos.

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John Zur

The official sneaker of Barry Bonds' career, these "shoes on steroids" can be seen at Santa Monica Blvd. and Sawtelle Blvd.

Downtown's planned football stadium could become a Las Vegas-style sea of billboards, as LA Weekly reported this week.

But we L.A. drivers already deal with billboards' landscape pollution on a daily basis.
Here's our list of the top 5 most obnoxious billboards. Let's hope the downtown stadium doesn't bring more like them...

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Photo by Silje at siljeohlala

The Hopper posters that are popping up all over town.

You must have noticed his eyes, with their slightly mournful, softened edges. And his beard, which looks like a bristling, black-and-grey hedgehog. Or at least the slogan in giant white letters, spelling out a simple "Hopper Lives." It would be a wonderful poster if it weren't an ad.

Dennis Hopper's face is showing up all over town as part of an advertising campaign for a Hopper-inspired clothes collection by skater brand Vans. The Easy Rider star, artist and counterculture icon signed a deal with the clothing company a year or two before his death to work on a clothing and shoe collaboration. His daughter Marine Hopper, along with the Hopper Foundation, helped to finish the line, which was still in its early design stages when her father passed away on May 29, 2010.

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