Stuff To Do

Editorial cartoonist and illustrator Mr. Fish, a.k.a. Dwayne Booth, has landed in Los Angeles via his book tour. Mr. Fish is a regular contributor to Truthdig and Harper’s, though Angelenos may remember him best for his six-year gig at the LA Weekly. He was blacklisted by the alt-weekly back in 2010 for speaking rather candidly about what he viewed as the paper’s “obvious drop in quality,” but then, what else would you expect from a guy whose bread n’ butter is political satire and social commentary?

Point is, he’s mouthy, he came out with a book, and he’s in town to sign it. Where to find him:

* Thursday, 2/9, 7:00 pm
Revolution Books
5726 Hollywood Blvd., Los Angeles

* Monday, 2/13, 7:30 pm – 9:30 pm
In conversation Robert Scheer, author of Playing President. Presented by the Center for the Study of Political Graphics.
West Hollywood Library
625 N. San Vicente Blvd., West Hollywood

* Tuesday, 2/14, 7:00pm
Vroman’s
695 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena

Create a social media strategy, launch your campaign, and track the results in our Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting February 16. The online event and workshop will feature speakers including The Onion‘s Baratunde Thurston (left), Facebook’s Morin Oluwole, and bitly’s Tim Devane. Register now.

On February 5, stand-up comic, actress and reality TV personality Suzanne Whang will open her one-woman show Cracked Open: Let Go & Let Gook at Beyond Baroque in Venice. As is customary with these sorts of things, she is trying to drum up some excitement and ticket sales with an advance press release that includes some heady praise:

Jim Vallely, co-executive producer and writer of Arrested Development: “This is the most powerful piece of theatre I’ve ever seen in my life.”

Tom Bergeron, Dancing with the Stars and America’s Funniest Home Videos: “Bold, funny, and committed on stage. Actually, she should probably just be committed.”

Tracy Newman, founding member of The Groundlings: “Here’s how funny, beautiful and smart Suzanne Whang is: She has cancer and I’m jealous of her.”

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Marc Maron isn’t the only comedian who’s turned a podcast into reconstituted celebrity. Chris Hardwick, who used to host MTV’s Singled Out back in the day, has a similarly successful twice-weekly “Nerdist Podcast”–which has an audience of about 200,000. Hardwick was recently profiled in the LA Times and has a new book out: The Nerdist Way. He’ll be making an appearance tonight at Meltdown Comics on Sunset for a reading/signing. And it looks like he’ll have company.

That’s right, king of all geeks Wil Wheaton will be joining tonight’s nerdfest as a moderator. We’ll see if the dual draw is big enough to pull the geek/nerd set away from their battlestations.

This Friday-Saturday, Landmark’s Regent Theater in Westwood will play host to midnight screenings of Santa’s Cool Holiday Film Festival. Along with a couple of Fleischer brother shorts, Ozzie and Harriet, Howdy Doody and vintage theater management greetings PSAs, there will also be a restored version of 1964′s Santa Claus Conquers the Martians.

The festival moves on locally the following weekend to Baldwin Hills, Chino Hills and the Bridge complex, but for fans of the woman whose husband would go on to buy her a Golden Globe for another Christmas, this is a perfect way to get into the cheesy holiday spirit. From the official program notes:

Santa Claus Conquers the Martians is a baffling mixture of sci-fi, Christmas cheer and childish slapstick, all filmed in garish (or as the poster says, “Space-Blazing”) color.  And you’ll see how important that color is when you find out that Pia Zadora plays the entire role with a bright green face.

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Greetings loyal Fishbowl readers. It’s holiday time, and we’re feeling the Hanukkah spirit. So all you fans of Chelsea Lately (or of comedy in general) listen up. We have five pairs of tickets to giveaway to see The Comedians of Chelsea Lately perform at Club Nokia on December 16. Ross Mathews, Heather McDonald, Josh Wolf and Jen Kirkman will all be performing.

First five people to email us will get tickets. The show starts at 9. More info here.

*Three of our winners have since told us they can’t make the show. So keep emailing if you’re interested. We have three pairs of tickets left.

Legal mumbo jumbo after the jump.

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Los Angeles Film Critics Association President Brent Simon nicely illustrates the downside of crowd-sourced film criticism in today’s tweet o’ the day. Nicely done, sir.

Something tells us said-UPS guy is probably a Yelper too. The one who inexplicably gave Luscious Dumplings one star. A borderline criminal offense.

After a premiere earlier this week in journalist Mitch Albom‘s adopted hometown of Detroit, the November 27 ABC-TV Hallmark Hall of Fame adaptation of his latest book Have a Little Faith will be shown tonight at another most appropriate location—the Beverly Hills Temple of the Arts at the Saban Theatre.

In the movie, the larger-than-life Rabbi who interacts with Albom (Bradley Whitford) and Laurence Fishburne‘s reformed preacher is played by Martin Landau. In real life, the man who oversees the Wilshire Blvd. temple’s unique artistic approach to religion (and who will preside over a Shabbat service before tonight’s 9 p.m. screening) is Rabbi David Baron.

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The Rapture never came May 21. Nor on Harold Camping‘s revised date of October 21. But switch around those numerals and swap out one weird guy for another, and you’ve got the next best thing for Angelenos–Weird Al Yankovic‘s “Alpocalypse” tour performance at the Pantages Theatre this Saturday, November 12.

One big difference between Harold’s Rapture and Al’s ‘Pocalypse is the fact that in the latter case, children under five will not be admitted. From the show’s promotional blurb:

Weird Al’s first full-length studio album in nearly five years debuted at No. 9 on the U.S. album charts, marking the highest-charting album of his storied career. Alpocalypse features the much-talked-about Lady Gaga parody “Perform This Way” as well as parodies of hits by Taylor Swift, Miley Cyrus, T.I. and B.o.B featuring Bruno Mars. Al and his long-time bandmates were aided and abetted in the recording studio by guest appearances from Taylor Hanson and The Doors’ Ray Manzarek.

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Today is the final day of this year’s AFI Fest–and this afternoon a luncheon was held to announce and honor the winning films. FishbowlLA went to nearly every day of the festival and caught at least eight films. But, sadly, we only managed to see one one of the big winners–Kinyarwanda by Alrick Brown, which co-won this year’s World Cinema Section category along with Jiro Dreams of Sushi by David Gelb.

With Every Heartbeat by Alexandra-Therese Keining won the Audience Award while Bullhead by Michaël R. Roskam won the New Auteur prize.

AFI Fest is screening the majority of its winning films today. So if you happened to miss out, like we did, better get over to Hollywood soon.

Full list of winners, via press release, after the jump.

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KCRW announced over the weekend that it is cutting its ambitious “Are Friends Eclectic?” benefit series from two nights to one. Jimmy Cliff was originally supposed to headline a December 2 show at the Orpheum Theatre while Iron and Wine would headline the following night. Instead, the two will combine forces for a lone December 3 event.

“Early ticket sales for the first night were slow,” says KCRW music director Jason Bentley, “so we decided to make it one blockbuster night of KCRW music that will blow your mind.”

The remainder of the mind-blowing lineup has yet to be announced. Fool’s Gold, Mia Doi Todd, Belle Brigade and Anna Calvi were among those originally schedule to play.

We take Bentley for his word that the new lineup will be solid. KCRW has proven it knows how to throw a party. Its recent Halloween “Masquerade” party raised $60,000 for the station.