Courtesy of Marianne Williams Photography

Meaghan Monster models Dapper Cadaver

See also "10 Oddball L.A. Museums Worth Seeing"

Looking for a book about the Coney Island Amateur Psychoanalytic Society? Perhaps you need a Jolly Roger doormat for the house. Maybe you just want to pick up some time-travel-sickness pills, a spray bottle of barbarian repellant or a few fresh dinosaur eggs before you blast to the past. Whatever your needs, Los Angeles is definitely not lacking in the quirky-shop department.

Our city's diverse population and its reputation as an arts metropolis give local merchants plenty of opportunity to sell unusual goods. Since many stores are independently owned, most of them don't just reflect unique tastes -- they are physical manifestations of someone's life work.

Like the Eagle Rock Rock and Eagle Shop, some stores are temporary pop-ups, while others, such as the L.A. County Coroner's Skeletons in the Closet and the Bodhi Tree metaphysical bookstore, have packed up and moved online (though Bodhi Tree's new owners plan to open a new location).

But a few brick-and-mortar gems continue to offer a selection of weird material, affording Angelenos a kind of public-art experience while promoting an overall creative mission. Here are 10 of our favorite strange boutiques.

More >>

Bettina Hubby

The eagle side of the Rock and Eagle Shop

Last Saturday, less than a week after she opened the Rock and Eagle Shop on Eagle Rock Boulevard, artist and curator Bettina Hubby heard a man outside the door. "I'm just going to make sure it's not just an adult rock and eagle shop," he said to his children.

The exterior is painted a bright, pot-dispensary green, and the store's name is written in a graffiti-like font, so it's hard to know what to expect. But when the man walked in and saw shelves of rock and eagle paraphernalia -- eagle magnets, eagle do-rags and other eagle-related stuff to the left, and pet rocks, sling shots and rock-related stuff to the right -- he dashed out to get the kids.

More >>

See also:
UCLA Professors Say eHarmony Is Unscientific and Its Customers Are 'Duped.' Here's Why.

Remember that time in college you walked into your dorm room and found the weird guy from down the hall sitting on your bed smelling your shirts? This is just like that, but less creepy and more organized.

Last night Cinefamily and art gallery Mastodon Mesa co-presented a Pheromone Party, thrown by Pheromone Party creator, filmmaker, rapper and California native Judith Prays, for those hoping to find love using their sense of smell and faith in science.

The first Pheromone Party was thrown in New York City about a year and a half ago and was a private party, consisting of 40 guests, mostly ad industry folks. It received a great amount of positive feedback and was successful enough (12 people hooked up that night and some formed actual relationships) for Prays to continue the dating science experiment.

For her next party, she told me, she wanted to bring it back to her home state, "the way Snoop Dogg always brings it back to his home town of Long Beach." California love, y'all. Last night was the first Pheromone Party open to the public, with more than 100 attendees, ready to smell strangers' T-shirts in hopes of finding their perfect match. The typical nervous anticipation one finds at organized dating events was in the air, this one having the added weird idea of, "Your future husband or wife could potentially be ... in this plastic bag."

More >>

During the obligatory morning check of my inbox to see which spa was offering a Groupon for a colon cleanse and infrared therapy (what?), I noticed a smug cat atop a stratocumulus cloud giving me the evil eye from underneath the participating spa's details. I scrolled down to see that he was spouting off some nonsense about purchasing Ferraris in the "Groupon Says" portion of the email at the bottom of each featured deal, where the cat typically appears.

What does buying a Ferrari have to do with colon hydrotherapy? And why must this cat have his tongue out, as if to brazenly hiss his point across? It is too early for that kind of sass. This cat is snarky, arbitrary, nonsensical and omnipotent. If Garfield is a depressed cynic, Groupon Cat is a digressive comedian.

More >>

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."

More >>

The main virtual hall

Most conventions are pants-mandatory kinds of affairs -- even those of the adult nature. For the world's first virtual porn convention, however, I'm not wearing any (relax -- I'm in my PJs).

This past weekend, XBiz and Red Light Center hosted the Adult Entertainment Virtual Convention, porn's first online-exclusive gathering in a 3-D web environment called "Utherverse." If that all sounds a bit strange and complicated -- you don't even know the half of it.

Trying to explain the very nature of this whole thing requires more nerd references than I'm capable of conveying to a broad audience -- but here goes. Imagine if World of Warcraft wasn't all about wizards and war but instead sex and stimulation, and was designed by Neil Stephenson and William Gibson's bastard love child. Did I lose you? What if each porn website you visited was a little 3-D world and all of the people looking at it were in it with you, rubbing pixilated elbows (or crotches). That's pretty much it. Only the Utherverse isn't all porn, per se. Or maybe it is. We'll get to that.

More >>

Floppy-haired conductor Gustavo Dudamel made an appearance on Sesame Street last week to teach Elmo a musical thing or two about a musical thing or two -- including the definition of the word stupendous. You know what would be truly stupendous? For the affable maestro to show up on some other TV shows. He's got a killer mane and facial expressions that rival an early-'90s Jim Carrey, so finding other spots shouldn't be tough.

Here are five we'd love to see:

More >>

Nanette Gonzales

Cannibal! The Musical performed by students at Cortines High School's Theatre Arts Academy

The first two rows of the black-box theater at Ramón C. Cortines High School's Theatre Arts Academy have been designated a "splash zone," so before the play can begin, the audience members seated there are given giant trash bags with a warning to cover up. They put them on, laughing and curious. It's as if the audience for this high school musical is about to go through a tornado drill.

Not long into the first act, though, it becomes clear: Holy shit, they are not messing around. Onstage, a small team of travelers is lost when a maniac comes bursting out of nowhere, tearing off one man's arm and beating another guy with it, before biting big chunks out of their necks. Blood streams everywhere, in upward geysers and undulating sprays, against the black floor and all over the front rows of the sold-out crowd of 180 gape-jawed observers.

Toto, we are definitely not in Kansas anymore. Hell, these students make Sweeney Todd look as wholesome as The Sound of Music. In Cannibal! The Musical, Cortines students sing and dance their way through a seemingly endless parade of dismembered limbs, slit throats, impalements and even bear traps -- along with seven gallons of fake blood.

More >>

YouTube/HellflowersinLA

The artist in question

Paul Abramson, the UCLA psychology professor who helped spearhead our sex issue (on newsstands tomorrow), has a YouTube channel called Hellflowers in L.A., in which he examines various fascinating characters in our fair city.

After the jump, check out one of his videos, on a woman who creates paintings of penises. Yes, penises. (We did say he helped with the sex issue.)

More >>

Nanette Gonzales

Patrick Davis, Brawler

With a fit build and a face that's equal parts Ryan O'Neal and Ralph Lauren model, Patrick Davis looks like a dude who'd play beach volleyball, or audition for "handsome" roles in TV commercials. Scratch the surface, though, and you'll find a fearless brawler who can transform in the blink of an eye from a mellow, endearingly spacey soul to a whirlwind of hard-swinging fists.

"It was never like someone would step on my shoe and I'd be, like, 'Let's fight, bro,' " says Davis, 42. "It was more like somebody would shove me in a bar, and I'd be, like, 'Hey, calm down.' And he'd be, like, 'What are you, Mr. Tough Guy?' "

As it turns out, he was Mr. Tough Guy. After about 35 street fights -- many in L.A. -- he was hit with the inspiration to combine his bloody, bare-knuckle hobby with his mostly deferred dream of being a writer. He self-published Fighteytown: An Auto-Fight-Ography, the self-deprecating story of an overprivileged underachiever told through the prism of his often ridiculous fights.

More >>