[Editor's Note: After we went to press, we were informed that the date for Bass Elegy/Devil's Night (for M.K.) has been moved from Sat., Aug. 25 to Sat., Sept. 1 at 8 p.m.]

Courtesy of the artist and Night Gallery

Invitation image for Adam Gordon's "The Light Will Shine: Bulimic gushing tears at the bottom of an indoor well with a broken wrist."

This week, an exhibition feels like a haunted graveyard, a performer turns his body into a chemistry experiment and a sculptor exploits building codes.

5. Devil's Night in the middle of the day
In urban Detroit in the 1970s and '80s, the night before Halloween, called Devil's Night, was a mess of arson and violence: Eight hundred fires were set in 1984 alone. L.A. artist Mike Kelley came from Detroit, as did his bandmates in punk group Destroy All Monsters. The weird legacy of violence and urban decay haunted Kelley's work and the band's music and, in some sense, it will haunt Scott Benzel and Mark Hagen's performance at LAXART this weekend. Called Bass Elegy/Devil's Night (for M.K.) in honor of Kelley, who died in February, the performance will involve a wrecked car with a bass cabinet inside it. Detroit techno, ghettotech, booty bass and some original compositions will play out of the wreck. 2640 S. La Cienega Blvd.; Sept. 1, 8 p.m. (323) 868-5893, laxart.org.

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Photo by Brian Forrest

John Baldessari's ... and Léger, from his exhibit "Double Bill (Part 2)" (2012)

"John Baldessari is so successful, he carries absolutely nothing in his pockets," says gravelly voiced Tom Waits, halfway through a six-minute film about the 80-year-old, 6-feet-7-inch-tall, L.A. pop-conceptualist. "Not a thing," Baldessari confirms.

Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman, the duo behind the Facebook romance documentary Catfish, made this nonchalant short in November for LACMA's inaugural Art and Film gala. It screened at SXSW this spring, then appeared on YouTube mid-May. And while Baldessari has his empty pockets and a half-century of art successes to his credit, the film's quick popularity had to do with a tweet by someone with a different kind of success -- Dianna Agron, who plays Quinn on Glee. "This is why I love Dianna," and "Her links never ceases to amaze me," said YouTube commenters, though others pointed out that actor Jonah Hill and Tom Waits tweeted to their followers, too.

Regardless of the source, Baldessari likely appreciated the plugs. He's never chased exclusivity. "I'm interested in leveling the playing field," he says in the film, at Tom Waits' prompting.

The same week Agron sent her fan base Baldessari's way, the artist debuted a series of new works called "Double Bill" at West Hollywood's Margo Leavin Gallery, for an exhibition open through June 30. Like those ubiquitous images in which Baldessari put colored dots over faces of people in film stills, this new work strikes that great, cartoon-strip-style balance between black-and-white and color. It also uses those confident capital letters he has used many times before. But this time, Baldessari is leveling a playing field where players are less instantly familiar than the movie stars, paper clips and palm trees from his past work.

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See more photos in "Sanrio Celebrates Its 50th Anniversary with 'Small Gift.'"

L.A.-based artist Peekaboo Monster has neighbors who make soap. He wanted to include soap in his work for Small Gift, Sanrio's 50th anniversary art show currently running at Santa Monica Barker Hangar. But how was he going to combine the two?

Shannon Cottrell

Fight Club, of course.

"Honestly, we were all just kind of hanging out one night and drinking and having fun and it just kind of clicked," he said at the November 11 opening party. "I was like, 'Let's tie it into a Fight Club theme. It will tie it in with the soap and we'll make the characters basically kind of being turned into the soap bars.'"

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When we first saw this mash-up of Scott Pilgrim and The Venture Bros. floating around on Twitter, it made our day. The piece was created by Annie Wu, a Baltimore-based artist and recent graduate of Maryland Institute College of Art, as part of a contest Scott Pilgrim creator Bryan Lee O'Malley held. She didn't win, but her work has traveled amongst fans of both series.

Annie Wu

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Read more in "Inside Misha's Studio: Where Hello Kitty Meets 'Ghost in the Shell.'"

Last week, we paid a visit to Misha, an L.A.-based artist whose work will be featured in the forthcoming Harajuku-themed group show Sweet Streets. We began chatting about pop culture influences and Misha mentioned video games.

Shannon Cottrell

"Return of Mario Bros."

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Political Remix Video recently posted a small collection of mash-ups commenting on the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and BP's reaction. Of the smattering of YouTube clips, we were entranced by one that juxtaposed "Under the Sea" from The Little Mermaid with news footage of the spill and a bit from Star Trek: The Next Generation.

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Lando pimped the 'stache even in a galaxy far, far away

We're nearing the end of Mustache May and as people across the web compare facial hair, we couldn't help but wonder if some of our favorite, classic sci-fi characters would look even cooler with a little (or a lot) of fuzz above the lip. Our inspiration was Lando Calrissian, but we know that not everyone can pull off the mustachioed look like the coolest Baron Administrator of Cloud City. Check out our top 5 looks below:

Captain James T. Kirk, Star Trek

When you're dealing with the ladies' man of the USS Enterprise, only one mustache will do, the Tom Selleck 'stache.

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See more images of Party Against Westboro in Christopher Victorio's photo gallery.

Saturday morning, Westboro Baptist Church, Fred Phelps' Kansas-based group infamous for their "God Hates [insert target du jour here]" signs and habit of protesting funerals, descended upon Long Beach for the second time this year. The church's latest visit, which coincided with the city's annual Lesbian and Gay Pride Festival, sparked the Party Against Westboro, an Internet-driven, pop culture-centric meet-up that drowned out antagonism with memes.

Christopher Victorio

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Have you ever wondered what Mos Eisley Cantina might be like if it were Lebowski-fied? We haven't, but YouTube user mrdreamisasleep did.

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Tonight at the Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood, TCM Classic Film Fest opens with a poolside screening of Neptune's Daughter, a 1949 musical featuring Esther Williams, Betty Garrett and Ricardo Montalban. In the spirit of Williams' famed water ballet scenes, the screening will feature a performance from L.A. performance troupe, Aqualillies.

Shannon Cottrell

Aqualillies are no strangers to the Roosevelt. Last year, they held a Thursday night residency at the hotel. The company, which features twenty synchronized swimmers and dancers (typically between six and twelve will perform at a time), has played numerous events and private parties over the course of the past year. They have also held synchronized swimming lessons and have a new series of courses coming up this June at the Annenberg Beach House.

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