Saturday night's huge LACMA Halloween party sold out so quickly I had to buy my tickets on Ebay. Even then, 40 bucks a ticket for an entire night of drinking, hors d' ouvres, DJs, and entry into the Dali exhibition sounded too good to be true. It was definitely clear where corners were cut to make the event affordable. But I don't know anywhere you will find more creative costumes. Even WeHo has some... more ›

We're constantly surprised to discover that people with the darkest sensibilities live in this blindingly bright city. Somehow these individuals learn to survive and thrive in an area famous for its sunshine. For example, artist/musician Dame Darcy chooses to live in our city instead of more appropriately goth-inspiring spots like San Francisco or New York or Prague. Darcy is a startlingly prolific author whose style can best be described as "Francesca Lia Block meets Edward Gorey." Most fans discovered Darcy's talents via her amusingly gothic and morbid graphic novel series, Meat Cake. more ›

They are Las Vegas launched into space on a 70’s sitcom. They are Edward Gorey, the musical (with a little of the kitsch of that Buffy The Vampire musical episode which we kinda thought rocked in its own special way). They are unorthodox histrionic pop eccentrics whose musical shifts, feel, and key changes are an abusive form of Mozart, Queen and Danny Elfman/Oingo Boingo. more ›

These calmly malevolent lines from Gorey's The Gashlycrumb Tinies, an alphabet book of dying children, are some of his best-known work, and they open The fast-paced musical incorporates vignettes from all of Gorey's oeuvre, from sexual sofas to rhyming monsters, from beasts to bestial, from maudlin to malevolent, from Rose Marshmary to the Osbick Bird and Little Charlotte Sophia. A troupe of whitefaced dancers takes up one story after another, and are reborn as new characters just as soon as they die. more ›

Not that LA doesn't have a very fair share of excellent art-related events, but LAist is cheating a bit and covering a special exhibit being held in San Diego. The largest collection of the work of Edward Gorey, illustrator extraordinaire, is currently on display at San Diego State University. "From Prodigy to Polymath: The Singular Journey of Edward Gorey," originally scheduled to end May 31st, has been extended to August 6th because of its popularity. "Not since Phantasmagorey, Clifford Ross's exhibition at Yale in 1974 has there been such a rich collection of significant artwork, manuscripts, sketches, notebooks, and ephemera." more ›