LA Hit List: Nov 7
Chelsea earlier, notes from the Pacific Rim, a misleadingly titled play, and a sort of Needle Park for comedy addicts highlight this first frosty weekend in November. Brrrrrrrr.
Chelsea Not So Late
Many of you actually work for a living and do not stay up til the sun comes up over Santa Monicah Boolevard. You therefore may be only peripherally aware of the first truly successful talk show host in television history: Chelsea Handler. Her late night talkfest, "Chelsea Lately" is a homosexual paradise for no other reason than there are no taboos or holy relics in Handler’s world. Everything is fair game, which is how real life really is. Miss Handler (not Miss Lately as a dim bulb acquaintance of ours had it) goes onstage at the very reasonable hour of 8 p.m. Friday night at the Fred Kavli Theater in the Thousand Oaks Civic Center, 2100 E. Thousand Oaks Blvd., for an evening of her irrepressible humor. For info and tickets, visit the Oaks website.
Los Angeles Comedy Festival
The L.A. Comedy Festival gets underway Friday night and runs through November 23 at the Arts/Works Theater at 6569 Santa Monica Blvd. in Hollywood. The festival features a cornucopia of comedic talents that range from stand-ups to comedy troupes, engaging in every sort of comic indulgence from joke telling to improve and sketch comedy to prop comedy. Why, the troupe herein pictured, FUCT, even get some of their privates into the act! The Festival is a Needle Park for comedy addicts. (Watch EDGE next week as we profile three of the up-and-coming gay comics in the festival. Tickets for all events are $10; $40 gets you a five-event pass, and the complex schedule of the many dozens of performances is easily digested by visiting the festival website.
U.S. Drag
No, no, no, no, NO! It’s just a play. Now onstage at the Carrie Hamilton Theatre, one of the development spaces under the auspices of the Pasadena Playhouse, U.S. Drag is a hilarious and horrifying look at that peculiar American insanity which is the mindless lust for fame. "I want a lot. What do we have to do to get a lot?," asks a main character. The L.A. Times called it "an absinthe-fueled Alice in Wonderland," though a somewhat old ladyish comment for a review, still intriguing. Performances and further info are available online through the Pasadena Playhouse website.
Eine Kleine Khmer Musik
The Los Angeles Master Chorale takes the stage Sunday evening at 7 a.m. at the Walt Disney Concert Hall to present performances of its third in a multi-year series of newly commissioned works. This concert features the world premiere of Spiral XII: Space Between Heaven and Earth by Cambodian composer Chinary Ung, as well as a performance of Lou Harrison’s La Koro Sutro, performed in part on something Harrison called his American gamelon, an homage or a goof (your choice) on the classic Javanese orchestra. Ung’s piece involves instruments, chorus, and dance - the latter performed by artists of the Khmer Arts Academy of Cambodia. Tickets are $19-$124. Further info at www.lamc.org
