Terry Richardson's James Franco in Drag, Courtesy of the artist and OHWOW Gallery

Franco poses in drag for fashion photographer Terry Richardson, as part of the "Rebel" exhibit currently on display at JF Chen.

"There's just a lot of dicks in there. A lot of porno," painter Ty Williams says, shaking his head. "But I get it, though. I understand the prevalence of penises."

We're standing in the alleyway behind JF Chen, a collectible-furniture showroom and exhibit space, at the opening party for "Rebel," an off-site MOCA multimedia extravaganza produced by the world's most famous grad student, James Franco, in collaboration with an all-star cast of contemporary artists, including Ed Ruscha, Aaron Young, Terry Richardson, Paul McCarthy and Douglas Gordon.

Though Franco was somehow involved in all of the projects shown here, and his ongoing obsession with the sexual secrets and adolescent turmoil behind James Dean and Rebel Without a Cause drives the exhibit, the lineup of bigwigs confers an air of legitimacy lacking at some of Franco's previous shows and stunts.

The exhibit itself has been impressively built-out, looking like a soundstage resembling the Chateau Marmont, with videos playing in individual bungalows and shrubbery strewn with blow-up sex dolls and other detritus referencing the art.

And yes, there were a number of penises on display inside, as Franco and his partners grappled with the pent-up, feverish sexuality of adolescence by exploring, among other themes, the homoerotic tension on-screen in the 1955 film, Dean's real-life bisexuality and a smattering of behind-the-scenes affairs that reportedly took place before and during the shooting of the movie.

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Louisette Geiss

ROLL UP ROLL UP FOR THE MYSTERY TOUR! RIGHT THIS WAY!!!!!!!!!!

You're standing on the corner of Third and San Vicente in a silly hat on a Sunday morning, sipping a Bloody Mary from a blue Solo cup, ready for anything. You were told to bring a beach towel, a $2 bill, a vegetable and your favorite movie candy, among other things, but you have no idea why. This is a Mystery Trip, after all, and you've placed control of the next six and a half hours of your life in the hands of Chief Mysterious Officer Dave Green, 41, also known as Mysterious Dave.

"We're going into Cedars[-Sinai Medical Center], to massage people's bed sores!" Green tells the 35 Mysterions who gathered May 6 for a private tour to celebrate Tara O'Brien's 33rd birthday. Just kidding! Instead, the group heads across the street to Third Street Dance studio, where Dancing With the Stars is filmed, for a private break-dance lesson with JT Tyler, an assistant choreographer on So You Think You Can Dance. Tyler pops and locks in reptilian black-and-red sneakers, dark jeans with a red belt and a red hat with a black brim, urging Hollywood-thin women in animal prints and klutzy overweight men alike to push out their pelvises for a closer approximation of the aggressive b-boy style.

Mysterious Dave is the type of boisterous guy who thinks the adult world should be more like summer camp -- more cheesy bonding, more goofy competition, more unexpected field trips -- and so in 2003 he began organizing an alcohol-laced version of his favorite activity from Camp Saginaw: Hop on a bus without knowing where you're going! What began as an annual excursion for friends to learn more about L.A.'s quirky nooks and crannies transformed a few years ago, with a $1,000 grant from the Awesome Foundation, into Mystery Trip L.A., a raucous BYOB bus tour customized to fit the needs and hobbies of participants using Green's database of hundreds of potential destinations, including eccentric neighborhoods, museums, performances, restaurants and attractions ("L.A. Weekly is my bible," he says).

Past Mystery Trips have mostly been private affairs -- birthday parties or corporate retreats -- featuring stops at offbeat tourist spots like the Museum of Jurassic Technology, picnic dinners at Barnsdall Art Park and behind-the-scenes tours at Dodger Stadium, but this summer Green plans to host monthly Mystery Trips open to the public; $65 tickets are already on sale for the first of these, to be held June 9.

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Brendan A. Murray

An American tradition since 1875, the annual Kentucky Derby is a high-profile horse-racing event in Louisville, Ky., and the first installment of the U.S. Triple Crown -- the equine equivalent of the Super Bowl, World Series and NBA Finals. But here in Los Angeles, more than 2,000 miles from the Churchill Downs racetrack, it's an excuse to drink mint juleps and wear crazy hats.

To celebrate the 100-plus years of horse-racing history, the Los Angeles Athletic Club hosted its second annual Kentucky Derby Viewing Party, featuring Southern-inspired cuisine, side bets and specialty whiskey-based cocktails by Marcos Tello.

Multiple monitors screened the Kentucky Derby live, but it's not like anyone was really watching the so-called "most important two minutes in sports history," because people were too busy checking out the hats -- like these fancy numbers from the Pooka Queen pop-up hat shop.

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Andy Robert

Car Martin and Linda Wei's puppets perform folk tales of transformation while Dzian! rocks out with surf and garage rock as heard in 1960s Asia.

Concord, in Cypress Park, is not your typical performance venue.

Lining the hallway as you enter the space are wooden shelves covered in colanders, plates, pots, peanut butter, dried beans, hot sauce and the like, sorted and labeled: "Joshua," "Collective," "Marco," etc. Long fluorescent bulbs hang from the rafters, haphazardly rigged with wire, chain and hooks. "New bills $41 each" shouts the whiteboard on the fridge. "Whomever has used the sink - CLEAN IT ☺"

Established last July by a group of CalArts grad students, Concord was inspired by the discipline-blurring mayhem at Echo Park's Machine Project. In addition to hosting weekly free performances, screenings and interactive events, this 3,000-square-foot warehouse provides sleeping and work space for four to six artists in residence at a time.

"One night it's a literary circus and the next it's two academics talking about film," prose-poetry writer and artist-in-residence Marco Di Domenico says. Fellow resident Andy Robert makes small mixed-media sculptures where "giraffes become meteors" and elephants take on the patterns of zebras and the structural integrity of Swiss cheese.

Canadian architect and designer Car Martin moved in last fall and organized last Saturday's jubilant concert called "It's playback time!" featuring "shape-shifting puppets" and "Asian garage-pop revivalists" Dzian!.

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Aerial produced by Interconnected.is in collaboration with Air Evidence, GOOD, Spectral Q.

Volunteers made this formation on the event space's rooftop to kick off the day.

[Note: The previous headline in this story said that the event raised cash for Occupy L.A. It actually raised cash for activist Van Jones' nonprofit organization Rebuild the Dream]

It rained just a little bit last Saturday afternoon, but that didn't stop several hundred people from showing up at the ACE Museum on Fourth and La Brea for All in for the 99%, a mammoth art show, with readings, video, music, activism workshops and calls to action on behalf of the Occupy movement, set to re-emerge with the return of springtime and the onset of election season in earnest.

The show featured nearly 100 painters, sculptors, photographers, printmakers, neon artists, performance artists and installation artists involved -- with names as big as Retna, Shepard Fairey, Skullphone, the Clayton Brothers and Jill Greenberg hanging right alongside the work of unknowns and newcomers.

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Mike Ciriaco

OWBC founder AB, aka Mormon Rockwell of the Air Guitar scene

This past Sunday, the Westboro Baptist Church gagged on a spoonful of its own medicine. During its annual demonstration against the Academy Awards show in Hollywood, the homophobic religious group, notorious for its zealous protesting of military funerals, was itself the target of picketing by the aptly named Occupy the WBC organization, at Sunset Boulevard and Highland Avenue.

While the WBC brandished placards stating "God Hates Fags," "God H8s Media" and the more event-specific "Whitney in Hell," its political analogs countered with signs of their own. Messages ranged from the positive ("God Loves Everyone," "...And the Oscar Goes to Love"), to the confrontational ("F*** You Haters"), and even the facetious ("I Have a Sign Too"). The OWBC movement leader, who simply answers to the moniker AB, claims the WBC has earned their ire.

"Why not target the WBC?" AB posits. "If you are looking for the most fervent, destructive, vindictive, religious extremist group in America, it's them."

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This is what a wall of Ellen portraits looks like

Pop art will never die, so long as bizarre celebrity obsessions keep it fresh, fun and, y'know, weird. So what's with Ellen? How many renditions of her mug do you think you can handle in one gallery opening?

This weekend at the Terrell Moore Gallery, artist Renda Writer assembled his second annual birthday tribute to Ellen DeGeneres, with exactly 67 portraits of Ms. DeGeneres (that's, um, her age...plus 13 extra for shits and giggles). Fortunately, Mr. Writer's idée fixe on the syndicated talk show host comes with some solid altruism: A portion of all the proceeds from the evening's take and the paintings' sales went to the Trevor Project, an L.A.-based crisis-intervention organization for LGBT youth.

On to the paintings:

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Courtesy Judy Chicago. Photo: Donald Woodman.

Judy Chicago and Materials & Applications, "Disappearing Environments," 2012.

Sure, if you arrived at Art Los Angeles Contemporary 2012 after seven last Thursday night, when the opening party ended, you had to lay down cash for your drinks. But outside, in the parking lot, the ice -- actually the dry ice -- was free. Thirty-seven tons of it, thanks to its implementation in a site-specific piece called Disappearing Environments.

The installation was a collaboration between artist Judy Chicago, known for her pioneering feminist work in the 1960s and 1970s, and Materials & Applications, a Silver Lake-based studio that combines notions architecture and art through experimentation.

As late afternoon gave way to dusk, as dusk gave way to night, steamy fog rose from a series of five-foot high pyramids built from blocks of the ice and lit by road flares to produce a seductive, elusive, ever-changing environment that enveloped fair attendees. Coinciding with the fair's opening bash, it became the instant must-post-on-Facebook-image, the art-fair-takeaway, the marker that you to had been there. But by the time the fair ended on Sunday, the piece had disintegrated. And that was the point.

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A fully functioning hoverboard...y'know...for the kids

Local memorabilia-selling powerhouse, Profiles in History did another one of their epic auctions this weekend at the Paley Media Center in Beverly Hills -- and the nerds cleaned house. Again.

Compared to Debbie Reynolds' series of show-stopping auctions this year, this one was a quiet affair...there was a maximum of thirty people (including Profiles' staff) in the room at any one time...at least on Friday...and we're not sure of the internet numbers. All we know is that we wanted to be there to get our hands on something cool and maybe snag a pair of Vincent Price's shoes as an X-Mas present for the classic movie lover in their lives.

While the auction, true to its "Icons of Hollywood" name, included a wide variety of items from all ages, genres, and importance of cinema history -- including some head-scratchers (Gidget Goes to Rome title art? WTF?). There were photos, storyboards, swords, costumes, cars, a few actual space suits, two hoverboards, and a partridge in a pear tree.

Sure, there were some ruby slippers that were in that one movie...and the dress to match...but the most interesting section of the auction auction block, and the most bizarrely completist, was the Back to the Future item block.

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Nanette Gonzales

Breakfast for dinner

Also check out our slideshow by Nanette Gonzales on The Pancakes and Booze Art Show
Some gallery owners organizing a show might draw inspiration from their college degrees in art history. But when Tom Kirlin curated his first art show, he was inspired by college memories of drunken pancake breakfasts.

Three years ago, Kirlin, a 33-year-old Arizona native, was working in Hollywood as a cameraman when he rented a warehouse downtown and threw an art, alcohol and pancake party for an artist friend.

"It was something that I always did in college," Kirlin says. "You'd go out and drink all night long, and then the only place that's open for 24 hours is IHOP."

The Pancakes & Booze art show, billed as the largest underground art show in Los Angeles, takes place locally about once every three months now. The latest installment, a "Best of" show representing over 100 Pancakes & Booze artists, happened this past weekend.

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