Ross Ching

From left to right: Lara Flynn Boyle, director Penelope Spheeris, Mike Myers, producer Lorne Michaels, Rob Lowe, Tia Carrere, Dana Carvey and executive producer Hawk Koch

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*The Five Most Culturally Significant Wayne's World Songs

Last night, the cast and crew of the SNL sketch-turned-feature Wayne's World gathered at the Academy -- of all places -- to celebrate the film's 21st anniversary. (It probably helped that host Hawk Koch, executive producer of Wayne's World, currently serves as Academy president.) There were no signs of any residual, alleged animosity between Mike Myers and co-star Dana Carvey or director Penelope Spheeris. But just in case, no interviews were allowed during the reception prior to the pre-screening panel and Koch kept his questions neutral during the Q&A.

It played more like a family reunion -- a hugging fest with people who probably haven't seen or talked to each other in ages. Tia Carrere showed a photo of her daughter on her phone with co-stars Lowe, Myers and Carvey. Lowe jumped into Myers' individual photo op moment to kiss him on the cheek. Everyone simply seemed to want to celebrate the fruit of their labor from over two decades ago and rehash the good times had in the process -- especially the fans, who, according to Koch, bought out all the tickets to this event within ninety seconds of it going on sale.

So for those of you who weren't as quick on the trigger, here are the highlights from the panel, which included Myers, Carvey, Lowe, Spheeris and producer Lorne Michaels:

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Gilbert Hernandez

In Marble Season, Gilbert Hernandez creates a world that is as detailed as it is vague. The setting is suburban America, in a neighborhood similar to the one the famed cartoonist knew as a child in Oxnard. The exact year is intentionally unspecified, but it's sometime during the 1960s.

"I fudged a lot of the details," says Hernandez by phone, in advance of his appearance at Skylight Books on Wednesday, April 24. "I'm putting it right in the middle of the '60s in a way. The Beatles are introduced, that would have been 1964. The comics that they're looking at would have been earlier."

Hernandez calls the micro-universe in his latest book "a dreamworld of the '60s." References float in and out of the consciousness of the children who play with actions figures and argue about television shows. "I wanted to be specific with certain comic books and TV shows and music of the day, but also didn't want to be restricted," he says.

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Markus Alias

Burlesque meets science fiction in Flying Saucers Over Burlesque!

It's good to step back from the present-day and look back on the city's -- or your own -- history once a while and this week lets you do just that with events ranging from bizarre to nostalgic.

Check out a mid-career retrospective from artist Gary Baseman, an Esoutoric program exploring Tom Waits' haunts in L.A. and even a spoof of the 1936 anti-weed movie Reefer Madness.

5. Stories From His Life
It's rare that an artist reaches the heights in such disparate worlds as gritty independent comics and British psychedelic music, but Oxnard-born cartoonist Gilbert "Beto" Hernandez has for more than 30 years taken his experiences from life and punk rock and distilled them into an ever-evolving universe that readers ignore at their peril. The co-creator of the nigh-unto-perennial Love & Rockets comic book tonight presents his memoir ,Marble Season (Drawn and Quarterly) -- and, as a special bonus, will present the slideshow "From Funnybooks to Graphic Novels," which shines a light on the childhood comic books that fueled his growing confidence and vision. The main character Huey, based on the artist, is the middle child in an extended family making its way in the SoCal suburbs of the '60s. Illustrator Howard Chaykin once observed, "What's the Golden Age of comics? Twelve!" -- and Hernandez is no stranger to the truth of this particular quip, his adolescence shot through with an unfolding imagination that moves readers the world over, far from the strawberry fields of beautiful downtown Oxnard. Skylight Books, 1818 N. Vermont Ave., Los Feliz; Wed., April 24, 7:30 p.m.; free, book is $21.95. (323) 660-1175, skylightbooks.com. -- David Cotner

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Courtesy Jancar Gallery

Lena Nyman in a still from I Am Curious (Yellow)

This weekend, a dinner pays homage to Jonathan Swift, a virus dances to Beyonce and the politically minded star of a soft-core film crosses paths with a pair of kings.

5. Imaginary island dinner
In Jonathan Swift's satirical Gulliver's Travels, Lilliput is an island inhabited by tiny people involved in a dispute over eggs. Traditionally, all islanders had broken hardboiled eggs starting on the wider end. But the Emperor, who cut himself doing this as a child, decrees that all hardboiled eggs be broken on the smaller side, prompting some enraged Lilliputians to flee to the neighboring island. Concord Space will not serve eggs at when it hosts a Lilliputian holiday dinner this weekend, but it will serve various more colorful dishes -- pork chops, carrot sauces, candied pumpkin. There will be menu options for omnivores and herbivores.1010 N. San Fernando Road, Glassell Park. $15, RSVP required. (818) 649-0189, concordspace.com.

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Rachel Heller

Rad vintage figurines make visitors wax nostalgic.

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

Nothing says happy holidays to a nerd like a shelf full of vintage action figures in Santa caps.

That's the sight that greets customers outside Curry House in West Los Angeles, drawing gasps and nostalgic smiles from passersby who peer into the display window outside the restaurant. In a large glass case, the usual faux-food spread has been cleared aside to make way for more than 120 late-80s and early-90s figurines, arms raised in yuletide glee. And atop their plastic and metal heads sit more than 120 tiny, red-and-white felt Santa caps handcrafted by Curry House assistant manager Hiroichi Echizen and his wife, Yoshiko.

There are characters from Street Fighter, Power Rangers, Dragon Ball, Gundam, Transformers, Godzilla and Kamen Rider, and even a bulky Arnold Schwarzenegger figurine from Last Action Hero. Marge Simpson, perched in the front row with her family, sports a modified hat that hugs her blue beehive. Ninja Turtles crony Usagi Yojimbo has paper carrots taped to his cap's brim.

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Flickr User jericl cat

Familiar to anyone who drives the 110 near Exposition Park, the recently altered Felix the Cat neon sign at Felix Chevrolet has become the focus of preservationist ire after owners replaced its neon lights with LEDs.

Says a letter from Los Angeles historian and preservationist Kim Cooper, who is circulating an online petition to save the sign:

The cold, thin light of LEDs is a pale imitation of the beautiful natural gas glow of neon -- the neon which made this sign historic, unique and beloved by Angelenoes.

The sign was very nearly designated a historic-cultural monument by the Los Angeles Cultural Heritage Commission in 2007, but the designation was thwarted by objections of Felix Chevrolet's owners and of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Councilwoman Jan Perry, who argued that the designation would inhibit business growth in the area.

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Tanja M. Laden

Fraggle Rock

When she was 12 years old, Beth Barrial had a life-changing experience in a park after dark with some friends.

"A scent passed me by that sparked a strange, unfocused memory from early childhood," she describes. "I had a sudden recollection of one perfect moment of joy and complete freedom, unfettered by worry, responsibility or care, and it was truly a moment of contact with the sublime."

Not unlike in Marcel Proust's famously extended account of eating a madeleine and drinking some tea in his early-20th century work Remembrances of Things Past, Barrial realized that the scent is what triggered her memory, so she immediately became enamored with the sense itself: "I pursued my interests in fragrance the old-fashioned way -- through apprenticeship. I had no intentions of turning my interest in perfumery into a career. It was something I loved, and something I wanted to learn and experience for the sake of that love."

But she has turned it into a career. Together with her brother Brian Constantine, Barrial started Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab in 2000 in the back room of her then-boyfriend Ted's Echo Park apartment. That boyfriend is now her husband, who's since launched Black Phoenix Trading Post, which deals in dry goods, beauty products and other stuff related to the fragrance line. Together, the trio still runs a family-owned business that specializes in making one-of-a-kind products inspired by specific memories, pop-culture icons and a wide variety of other unusual sources.

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Flickr/Dawn Zarimba

Southern California's dry winds in fall and winter can rise up to speeds of 90 mph. Commonly known as the Santa Ana winds, they're now making their first attack on the area.

Panic has arisen on social media. That can't change the winds' mind, but you can find Twitter accounts personifying the winds with posts updating us on their progress.

Here are 10 pop culture references to the famous winds to keep you occupied in the house for a few minutes -- and spare you from heading outside and getting yourself blown away.

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Tanja M. Laden

Voila! Art for the Modern Eye

A peek inside this weekend's 17th annual Los Angeles Antiques Art + Design Show, which runs through Sunday, should be enough to convince anyone that there really is such a thing as the 1 percent, because those of us covering the opening-night party at Santa Monica's Barker Hangar clearly weren't among the so-called elite. Luckily, it benefited LACMA's Decorative Arts and Design Council, so it was a little easier to overlook the ridiculously astronomical sums on most of the items, especially considering this is in fact what the LACMA council is all about: the appreciation of good design, which doesn't always come at a low price.

Likewise, even on (dare we say it?) eBay, the word "antique" almost always means "pricey," so it should come as no surprise that the fair is organized by the Antiques Dealers Association of California. With museum-quality items, it's usually acceptable for price tags to reflect five-figure sums, and these dealers obviously need to make a living. But no one should have to pay vastly inflated amounts for items that are meant to furnish and decorate such a personal and sacred space as the home. Yes, good design isn't always cheap, but a sofa shouldn't cost $22,000, either. It just shouldn't.

With this in mind, here are a few things we'd buy if we had a limitless budget, a massive amount of storage space and if we weren't actually part of the 99 percent.

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Tanja M. Laden

The Kansas

Los Angeles Union Station isn't just a mass-transport hub. It's also a semi-retirement home for a cluster of vintage railroad cars that occupy the station's annex, also known as "the garden." Most of the trains won't move. A few get lucky and land the occasional film permit, scoring a cameo in a scene that calls for an old-timey train. Others, like the garden's newest residents, get facelifts and hit the tracks.

The American Railway Explorer is a group of three train cars, each named after a U.S. state: Kansas, Utah and California. They were originally part of the Ski Train, a 14-car passenger railway shuttle that transported Denver residents (mostly kids) 56 miles to the Winter Park Resort. The Ski Train ran from the 1940s until 2009, when the Canadian National Railway bought most of its cars, except these. Now, each of the three vehicles is available for charter at a rate of $5000 a day, not including Amtrak charges, liquor and food by the American Railway Explorer's exclusive caterer, Wolfgang Puck. Still, it seems like a decent price to travel back in time to the golden age of travel, if you have the money.

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