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

Kevin Scanlon

Tim Heidecker

One of the fascinating Angelenos featured in L.A. Weekly's People 2013 issue. Check out our entire People 2013 issue here.

When Tim Heidecker says his wife is in school studying "criminalistics" to be a "private investigator, in law enforcement," it's hard to know whether to believe him. After all, the Atwater Village–based comedian is known for his stunts, pranks and fabrications. Last year he impersonated Bob Dylan in a 15-minute song about the sinking of the Titanic, and he continued the joke by later "announcing" to his hundreds of thousands of Twitter followers that Dylan would be replacing Beyoncé in the Super Bowl halftime show. (Folks in many corners of the Internet were hysterical.) For a web series called On Cinema at the Cinema, meanwhile, he pretends to be the hackiest, least knowledgeable film critic imaginable.

But that's just part of his charm. The 37-year-old, eastern Pennsylvania–bred parodist is best known for his experimental, schizophrenic Adult Swim comedy Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!, which ran for three years in the late aughts and was created with his former Temple University film school classmate Eric Warheim. Since then, Heidecker has been involved in practically a new project every week, including films (Tim and Eric's Billion Dollar Movie), albums (a parody tribute album to failed presidential candidate Herman Cain) and even commercials — he and Warheim directed a series of Old Spice ads.

See also:
*12 Comedy Acts to Watch in 2013
*10 Best Stand-Up Comedy Shows in Los Angeles

Kevin Scanlon

Elayne Boosler

One of the fascinating Angelenos featured in L.A. Weekly's People 2013 issue. Check out our entire People 2013 issue here.

"Doesn't she look like Audrey Hepburn?" asks Elayne Boosler of Jazzy, a visiting pit bull–Weimaraner mix. Boosler does an impression of Jazzy as Hepburn, playing off the way the actress would draw out "really" to sound like "raaa-lllly." "I like your hair — raaa-lllly I do," Boosler, 60, coos. When Jazzy starts happily lapping from a water glass, Boosler quips, "She does that with scotch, too, which is even funnier."

From its decor, you would never know that this house in the Studio City hills belongs to a groundbreaking comic, the first female to get her own one-hour cable comedy special. There are no photos of Boosler with former flame Andy Kaufman; none that show her performing on Late Night With David Letterman or The Tonight Show. Instead, it's filled with folk art, much of it made by her. A lifelong Mets fan who grew up in Brooklyn, she also owns a pair of Shea Stadium seats. "The blue ones," she specifies. "Even the seats in my house suck."

Also the founder of Tails of Joy animal rescue organization, Boosler is a dog lover — but other than the occasional visiting pooch, her home is currently dog-free. "I've gone through eight dogs," she says dolefully. "I can't take the heartbreak."

See also:
*12 Comedy Acts to Watch in 2013
*10 Best Stand-Up Comedy Shows in Los Angeles

Kevin Scanlon

Chelsea Peretti

One of the fascinating Angelenos featured in L.A. Weekly's People 2013 issue. Check out our entire People 2013 issue here.

Comedian Chelsea Peretti thrives on awkwardness, making her audience feel uncomfortable by obsessing on her shortcomings. Though her good looks are enough to inspire Internet stalkers (including, she's noted, foot fetishists), she plays up her small flaws. "I'm Jewish and Italian and I lucked out and got the nose of both cultures," she says in her stand-up act.

Sometimes you aren't sure whether to laugh at her jokes. Usually, you do.

The 35-year-old Bay Area native has written for groundbreaking comedy shows like Portlandia and Parks and Recreation and has a popular podcast, Call Chelsea Peretti, in which she treats callers as savagely as she treats herself (often by hanging up on them). It's hard to know where her act stops and her real personality begins: Like her friend Louis C.K., who once followed her around with a camera for a botched film project, she uses her comedy as a platform to sort through her issues.

See also:
*12 Comedy Acts to Watch in 2013
*10 Best Stand-Up Comedy Shows in Los Angeles

Photo by Keith Black / HOIXIOH

Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner and Robert Trachtenberg at Paley Center

That's someone like Mark Twain or Ernest Hemingway, says the creator of the funniest farting scene in the history of film.

But Susan Lacy, executive producer of PBS' American Masters series, thought differently, and convinced Brooks to dispense with his modesty just this once.

Siran Babayan

Morgan Jay, symbol of the Bluth family business

On Saturday, Silver Lake's Lyric Hyperion Theater staged an Arrested Development-inspired variety hour called Bluth Fest for us fans who were as blue as Tobias Funke when the short-lived, cult show was cancelled in 2006, but are now doing the chicken dance a la Gob Bluth in anticipation of the cast's return on Netflix May 26.

You remember the Bluths, the once-rich, dysfunctional family from Newport Beach that includes mom Lucille (Jessica Walter), dad George Sr. (Jeffrey Tambor), sons Gob (Will Arnett) and Buster (Tony Hale), daughter Lindsay (Portia de Rossi), her husband Tobias (David Cross) and daughter Maeby (Alia Shawkat) -- a crooked bunch who'd sooner eat the furniture in their fake, model mini-mansion than do an honest day's work. There's also third son Michael, (Jason Bateman) single dad to George Michael (Michael Cera) and the only normal one of the group.

Co-hosts Monika Scott and Rhiannon Houch of sketch duo Theme Party took us on a Bluth-ian journey that featured skits, music and stand-up, not to mention a chicken dance-off -- a celebration of one of the series' running gags, which looks more Mick Jagger than foul. (The theater was even decorated with blue hand-prints, another running gag referring to Tobias' failed attempt to join the Blue Man Group).

Here are some of our favorite moments:

Robyn Von Swank

Jen Kirkman

Ever laughed at the song "Pregnant Women Are Smug" by Garfunkel and Oates? ("This Zen world you're enjoying/Makes you really annoying.") If so, you'll really like fellow comedian Jen Kirkman's new book, I Can Barely Take Care of Myself: Tales From a Happy Life Without Kids (out April 16), in which she makes clear that she doesn't want to be a mom. "The urge that most people feel to have kids is the exact same as the urge that I have to not have kids," she writes. "I do not want to raise a child."

Kirkman, 38, has worked her entire adult life to get that point across, and her book is filled with funny, sometimes deeply painful stories that delve into why she is child-free by choice and also the way our culture judges women who've made that determination.

Ryan Forbes

Legendary Bingo's Jeffery Bowman with hostesses Calpernia Addams, Willam Belli, Roxy Wood and Porsha Hayy

"I just touched your boob." When was the last time you heard a bingo caller say that at a bingo game? When was the last time you played bingo?

If you have recently, and you're not on social security, you were probably at Legendary Bingo at Hamburger Mary's in West Hollywood. The irreverent twist on the old-fashioned game, held four times a week (and once a month at the Magnolia Lounge in Pasadena), turns 15 this year -- that's 30 in drag queen years.

To help celebrate, founder and producer Jeffery Bowman is hosting a three-day party, which kicks off at Magnolia Lounge April 8 and continues at the WeHo hotspot April 9 and 10 with bingo games, a champagne toast, drag and burlesque performances and celebrity guests, including the casts of ABC's Suburgatory, CBS' Golden Boy , Sheryl Lee Ralph from Smash and others.

Randall Mills

Cast of Monster Party, winners of the Sketch Cage Match at the 1st Annual LA Scripted Comedy Festival on the iO West Theater Mainstage

Over the weekend, Improv Olympic became a Scripted Olympic. From Thursday through Sunday, Hollywood's iO West Theater hosted its first annual L.A. Scripted Comedy Festival, featuring a collection of talent from across the country showcasing sketch, variety, storytelling, stand up and short films.

The event marked a departure from the improvised comedy that defines iO. According to James Grace, the coordinator of SFC, this venture was an organic evolution for the theater.

"iO West has had an explosion of sketch, solo, storytelling and stand up shows over the last year," explained Grace during a pre-festival interview. "So featuring all the talent at this theater in L.A., and across the country, seemed like a natural progression. The industry is always looking for product and scripted comedy is the best way to consistently showcase talent."

Anthony D'Alessandro

Emily Maya Mills as Eve proves to God that women are knee-slap funny.

Such was comedienne Emily Maya Mills's query to a fellow performer in the dressing room at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre. Mills needed a nook or two to stash a slew of props -- in the Lady Gaga number range -- for her 35-minute show God Hates Figs.

"There are minimal costume changes. I wear no shoes in the show, but everything else is the craziest prop situation I've ever handled," explained Mills about her 60th show at UCB -- her second one-woman -- directed by fellow UCB vet Julie Brister. "This is going to look like a living cartoon."

Though we live in a city that's a comedy bellwether, in particular the alternative comedy queen scene -- which over the last decade or so has been punctuated by such greats as Beth Lapides, Mary Lynn Rajskub, Maria Bamford, Natasha Leggero, to name a few -- we can lose track of what's new. Let's add Mills to that group of next-gen femmes helping to obliterate the women-aren't-funny cliche -- which, incidentally, is part of her act.