Oh shit, Mastodon Mesa news bonus round!! Dudes, truly, I cannot tell you how excited I am about our new show at Mastodon Mesa. Basically, it’s this: 25 of our favorite artists exhibiting work inspired by found photography, alongside thousands of forgotten snapshots from Mark Kologi’s immense collection. The line-up is insane! Come join the fun at Private Investigation and sort through decades of anonymous memories on Wednesday, September 15th!

Featuring: Ben Aqua, Beastburn, Derrick Beckles (TV Carnage), Jordan Crane, Stephanie Davidson, Kirk Demarais, Steven Andrew Garcia, Adan de la Garza, Desiree Holman, Michael C. Hsiung, Parker Ito, Nathan Jones, Mike Kitchell, Sage Keeler, Mark Kologi, Roz Leibowitz, Suki-Rose Otter, Paul Pescador, The Perlorian Brothers, Christian Ramirez, Benjy Russell, Tanner America, Brad Troemel, Richard Vergez, Adam Villacin and Melissa Wallen.

After the jump, the full flier for Private Investigation, plus a hyperbolic manifesto for the show.

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RuPaul’s Drag Race production house World of Wonder dispatched their wildly gregarious ace journalist Damiana Garcia (aka Michael Lucid of Pretty Thingsss) to cover the opening of Albert Reyes’ Never Dies the Dream at Mastodon Mesa. She navigated the dangerous corridors of Reyes’ legendary haunted maze like a pro, warding off werewolf harassment, snatching up interviews and finding her inner self!

Watch Damiana’s in-depth coverage below, followed by two videos I filmed for her earlier this summer. The first explores the opening of Ryan Trecartin’s mind-blowing Any Ever show at MOCA and the ensuing Dis Magazine Pool Party, and the second was filmed at L.A. leather bar The Faultline’s annual Tom of Finland Foundation Fundraiser!

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The sounds that emerge from the clear red vinyl of Superhumanoids’ Urgency EP feel like home. It’s the kind of music that instantly puts your nerves at ease on a long nighttime drive, striking a perfect balance between shoegazing coziness and dreamy danceability. Superhumanoids are not only an impossibly charming L.A. indie pop quartet, but also one of my favorite new bands this year— so it is with great honor that I present to you the exclusive world-wide debut of their brand new music video!

Watch the wistful and hilarious “Persona” above, and then read on for an interview with razor-sharp director Eli Gunn-Jones!

Where did the idea behind “Persona” stem from?

Oftentimes I prefer my videos to echo the theme or premise of the song, or at the very least have some sort of tangential relationship to the track. After talking with Cameron for a bit about what Persona meant to him—how it was conceived, the writing process, etc— I let it float around my head for a while. I kept coming back to the idea of surveillance, of trying to encapsulate or define another through a wide swath of observations both traditional and unusual. Trying to understand somebody’s core without any personal interaction. The other elements like the 70s attire, vintage recording gear, his car, those were all stylistic choices to better engage the audience and create a fuller, more complete world.

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When Wu Tsang and Ashland Mines started Wildness— surely the most glorious of all L.A. club nights in recent memory— at The Silver Platter, they placed a huge spotlight on that small and obscure gay bar tucked away in MacArthur Park. The Silver Platter has for decades catered to a split clientele of discretely dressed macho Latino men and fabulous transgendered women, two factions once at odds that have slowly coalesced into an organic community. Wildness, through its unique mixture of contemporary art, drag, performance and hip DJs, attracted a brand new audience of artsy young queers spanning class and race boundaries to The Silver Platter.

Damelo Todo (Give Me Everything) is Wu’s bracingly intelligent and beautifully shot film that delves deep into the world of The Silver Platter, the hard social realities of transgender life, and the politics of partying. This innovative documentary/narrative hybrid has been in production for nearly two years, fueled by hard-won grants, small donations, and the tireless efforts of a devoted crew. Now Wu needs your help to finish the film. The Kickstarter finish line is less than $500 away, so every dollar invested in these final 4 days will make an enormous difference! Does the world need Damelo Todo in it? Yes, it does. And it’s up to you to make it happen.

+ Don’t miss Wu’s blog, Class.

Stop by our opening at Mastodon Mesa tonight and say hello! Then check out our performance art bonanza The Human Groom-In at Show Cave, later in the evening. It’s going to be insane. Social grooming interactions will be rewarded by tasty treats.

Also: I’m headed down to San Diego for Comic Con late tonight. You’ll be able to find me working at the Giant Robot booth Friday-Sunday— so don’t be a stranger, fellow nerds and geeks!

Being an all-around rad dude primarily, and a master of children’s literature on the side, it’s only natural that An Awesome Book author Dallas Clayton finds himself frequently pulled into fantastic situations. Like how on his last book tour, he ended up reading to both pre-schoolers on a sheep ranch in Bodega and college students at a crusty punk house in Eugene.

Or how he was recently invited to paint a mural on the walls of Silver Lake children’s boutique Tomboy. I accompanied him on a midnight mural-painting mission and shot a little video (with my beloved new GH1) about the opportunities that keep popping up as a result of being Dallas Clayton.

I know you don’t need any more incentive to leave the house tonight than the mere mention of an amazing screening of video art— but would it be the cherry on the cake to know there’s going to be a pygmy goat present? Because there will be. And his name is Oreo.

The brilliant Ben Bigelow curated Goat Helper with Michael Mallis, and they’ve built an entire goat-themed happening based around a series of thrilling videos from some of my favorite people. To name a few: Jacob Ciocci & Shana Moulton (two of the geniuses from Deterioration, They Said), Party Food, Jon Clark, Mike Jitlov (The Wizard of Speed and Time), and the creator of Gumby, Art Clokey. Swing by Show Cave in Eagle Rock to check it out tonight! The screening starts at 9:00 PM sharp— goats can’t stand it when you’re late.

This LIVE screening of experimental video art and animation is framed within a performance including: light installation, live video, goat themed food art, costumed “Helpers”, and of course Oreo the beloved pygmy goat.

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Have you ever been touched in a way that confused you? Thrilled you? Helped you understand someone better? Have you ever longed for human contact? At Mastodon Mesa, we know how you feel. We’re putting together a group exhibition for July called “The Touching Show.” Focusing on touch as a social phenomenon, rather than a tactile one, we’d like to examine the ways in which humans have abandoned touch in favor of language as a primary form of communication.

We’re encouraging a broad, multi-disciplinary interpretation of this theme, and planning two consecutive events: the art opening at our new space in the Pacific Design Center, followed by a series of interactive performance pieces at awesome Eagle Rock art space Show Cave later in the evening.

This is an open invitation to join in the fun. Send me an e-mail and let’s talk about it!

Pablo Picasso wrote a play once. It was wacky and abstract and made up of bizarre conceptual characters like “Fat Anxiety,” “Round Piece” and “Curtains.” In spite of Gertrude Stein’s keen advice— that he should abandon his ill-informed dramaturgic whims and stick to painting— Picasso organized an underground production of the incomprehensible one-act as gesture of rebellion in the midst of Nazi-occupied France.

Under the cover of darkness, and with the threat of a Nazi raid lingering in the air, Picasso’s terminally goofy play, Desire Caught by the Tail, was performed in the living room of surrealist Michel Leiris. The cast was comprised of 1944 Paris’ most serious intellectual heavyweights: Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, and Simone de Beauvoir. Picasso himself, along with his mistress Dora Maar (sporting Chiquita Banana headpiece for her role as “The Tart,” above), rounded out the cast.

What must that strange evening have been like? In the brand new play Leiris/Picasso, we’re given a hilarious picture of how the night’s festivities might have unfolded. Egos clash, Nazis are hit on the head with toilet plungers, delectable miscommunication abounds, and the title of Picasso’s play’s proves prescient for polyamorous pair Sartre and de Beauvoir— along with everyone else. If all that sounds crazy to you, it is. Don’t pass up a chance to check out the farce and the madness of Leiris/Picasso at the Bootleg Theater, where it’s playing through July 24th!

Ahh, summer! I celebrated the dawning of this most relaxed of seasons by doing something I’ve always wanted to do: I walked across Los Angeles. Joining up with my friend Brandon at 10:00pm on Memorial Day, we made a pact to walk the 15 miles from Silver Lake to the beach without uttering a word. We strayed from Santa Monica Blvd. for only a few fantastic detours: through the incomparably eerie solitude of a 3:00am Century City, all echoes and silence and steam; down alleyways in Beverly Hills where ghost cars and armed security eyed us with incredulity; beneath the shadows of floodlit palm trees in the emptied playgrounds of West Hollywood—nothing but pure magic. By 5:04am, with our legs locking down and blisters burning our feet, we finally reached sand. Five minutes later, the first summer sun rose on the west coast. And it was rad.

Back in real life, we’re busy wrapping up the Albert Reyes: Never Dies the Dream show over at Mastodon Mesa. Since we could only keep the show open for one day, we’re still struggling to repay the stunning costs of purchasing and applying chemicals from a warehouse in Canyon Country for the sole purpose of assuring the fire department that a bunch of wood isn’t going to light on fire.

So, we’re selling a series of glorious fine art (super limited) edition prints on MastodonMesa.com, aptly titled Elegant, Classic Shit. The works in this set of four 18” x 24” poster-sized pay homage to the greatest pop culture juggernauts of our day: Elvira, Superman, Woody Allen and Ronald McDonald, and they was printed by the legendary serigraph studio Modern Multiples. It’s $350 for the whole set, which is a pretty crazy bargain considering they could transform an entire wall in your home into a monument to sheer radness.

Albert wants to keep the sets together for the most part, BUT! To help spread the word, I’m giving away a print (of your choice) from Elegant, Classic Shit exclusively on Future Shipwreck! This is how it’s going to work: one winner will be chosen from the comments on this post and one runner up will be given a $75 discount on the purchase of a complete set.

Your prompt is: what do you want to do this summer? No, really— If you could do anything, if your jobs and commitments and car payments weren’t holding you back, what’s the one thing you would do this season? What’s your summertime fantasy? The contest will end on Wednesday, June 9th. And… go!

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Cartoonist Tim Hensley stopped by Giant Robot 2 yesterday to sign copies of his epic new graphic novel, Wally Gropius. It’s an irresistable satire about a Huey Lewis-obsessed teenage millionaire who falls under the threat of disinheritance if he refuses to marry “the saddest girl in the world,” launching an increasingly bizarre odyssey involving an icy seductress with a taste of money, men and national anthems.

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After a veritable minefield of obstacles threatening to shut down the show at every turn, the title of Albert Reyes’ solo show at Mastodon Mesa has proven prescient: NEVER DIES THE DREAM. Come down to the gallery to see it tonight between 5-8pm, for one night only. We are being evicted tomorrow, so this is your one chance to check it out Albert’s amazing maze before it all comes crashing down!

Bait me with promises of ventriloquy and you’ll ensure my attendance to any event. That was the strategy employed by Mya, my trusty Mastodon Mesa co-curator, to lure me to the screening of cuckoo 1981 Z-movie Carnival Magic this weekend. The film is about a magician, his talking chimp, and their friends in a travelling carnival— but the only problem is that everyone in the movie is beyond creepy, especially the chimpanzee, who repeatedly requests (in gravely, growling tones) to be scratched by teenage girls.

The film was hilarious and mind-blowing, but the icing on the cake was the presence of magician Dave Markham, warming up the crowd in front of Cinefamily with his wisecracking sidekick Squeaker, a psychic wisenheimer who bears an eerie resemblance to Davy Jones. I had my new camera with me, so I captured the wary movie buffs as they responded to Squeaker’s sassy inquiries.

Don’t miss the rest of Cinefamily’s “Fucked Up Kids’ Movies” series, running each Saturday in May. Coming up: a night of E.T. rip-offs featuring Mac and Me, the sadistic South African kids movie Lost in the Desert, and misguided Bugsy Malone wannabe Hawk Jones.

Spike Jonze designed some awesome air dancers for Opening Ceremony. Head over to We Love You So to see more photos of these glorious balloon beasts in action!

Right around the corner from Rodeo Drive, in the hollowed-out vestiges of a former clothing boutique, David Choe has filled the 8,000-square-foot Lazarides Gallery with staggeringly vibrant paintings, excellently explicit watercolors, and and Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade-sized balloons.

I stopped by on Friday with my art-loving bud Dave White, and discovered dimensions in Choe’s work that I had never noticed until seeing it on such a large scale. The massive paintings were surely impressive, but my favorites might be Choe’s more subtly executed watercolor homages to Neck Face, Pee-Wee Herman and Die Antwoord.

Read the L.A. Times’ article on the show, Nothing to Prove, for a primer on Dave Choe.

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