Where To Play In L.A. This Week
This week features a plethora of 420 enhancing "all you can eat and experience" festivals including one stop shop art and music events like The Magic Bus Experience, BROKE LA, and Odd Nights at the Autry which are perfect for when you smoke yourself into an immobile stupor. If you never make it out of the house or your idea of a fabulous 420 celebration includes yourself, your couch, and your remote, this week delivers all you can get delivered from Postmates free of fees and the 8th Online Performance Art Festival featuring pieces performed live by artists worldwide for you to immerse your THC-ed senses in, in real time, from the dazed and confused confines of your apartment.
Well, it's 420, everyday. But, we still like to set aside a whole day for the celebration of good old cannabis. It is probably the most legit "___ Day" celebration compared to the nonsense of Doughnut Day, Pizza Day, Ride Share Day, or whatever is being used as a marketing ploy on a daily basis. It is actually fairly simple to "declare" a day a National Holiday of or for something, because believe me, I've looked into it. So, this anal artist can definitely get behind the day as the pot smokers aren't greedy. They don't ask for National Joint Day in July or Organic Cannabis Day in October or Pass The Dutch Day in December or the entire month of Sativa September. Granted it's 4:20 twice a day, that's just a fun perk like making a wish when you catch the clock at 11:11. However I do find it rather comical that Earth Day manages to find its celebration overlapping with 420 every year, but I think that is quite fitting, and not much to complain about, because what better place to spend high than outside and barefoot listening to jam bands in a beer garden celebrating the place where pot came from for Christ's sake. Anywho, wherever you spend your 420, which will most likely roll straight into Monday since we have been graced with April 20th falling on a Friday this year, your activities are destined to be heightened, pending you can get out of the house. I often found smoking on the way to my destination being ideal, otherwise I might not leave the house, or at least my friends wouldn't. So here are my picks for this week, which pretty much culminate this entire weekend, and you don't have to be a hippy to partake or enjoy, though you still might be surrounded by them. Hell, this is California.
[Be advised, everyone was too high to document these events in years previous that I cannot find any actual photographs on their websites. Including Alex Grey's "Cannabis Woman" (featured above) seemed like a no brainer.]
The Magic Bus Experience
April 20 6pm to 11pm
April 21 11:30am to 4:20pm and 6pm to 11pm
The Reef DTLA 1933 S Broadway
The Magic Bus Experience is coming to Los Angeles for two days, so get on the bus. It's a 60,000 square foot immersive multi environment sensory utopia complete with food, art, and alcohol---bud is given, but byob I believe. Smoke yourself stupid in a Hot Box White Out Maze, or laugh yourself stupid watching others---intoxicated or not, who doesn't love getting lost in a maze that doesn't even lead to a psychedelic side show?---Because this one does. There's artwork galore and interactive art via a Giant Coloring Book, and if you get tired, the bar lounge is a pillow fort so find yourself a cozy unoccupied nook while navigating the fluffed cushion floor with already passed out bodies. The Magic Bus has a wall to wall snack bar called "Munchie Mountain," and if there already weren't enough options on what to eat, take a stroll down a row of roadside meal trucks. If you're feeling like a baller as far as your wallet is concerned, VIP tickets include an all you can eat Chicken and Tater Tot Bar and a private Cloud Room VIP Lounge where you will be less likely to have to fight for a pillow. Love games? Me too. There's an arcade. And, when you crawl out from your mid-outing nap, you'll be surrounded by acrobats, puppeteers, and stilt walkers, forgetting where you are and how.
http://magicbusexperience.com for tix and more info
BROKE LA
April 21 & 22 2pm to 2am
Regent Theater
There's something called BROKE LA, but don't worry, it's nothing like that TV show, I hope. It's a festival of all things art that apparently you don't know about yet. That is what they claim. Artists of all kinds and an outdoor market of all things art and provisions. Its timing allows for the perfect go-between festival for musicians playing SXSW, Coachella, and FYF to grace the broke stages along the way. Hip Hop, Indie, DJs, and if you've had enough music lately or would rather make the most of your weed high or haze rather, there will be laughs via comedy acts. So yea, another all you can eat buffet of an event for the creative Mary Jane brain, except this one also has free yoga, in case you are so severely stoned you actually need a human to direct you and your body movement for the day.
http://brokelafest.com for tix and more info
Odd Nights At The Autry
April 20th 6pm to 11pm
2 Acres of Griffith Park
4700 Western Heritage Way
And the third hodgepodge 420 free for all is Odd Nights at the Autry. Tickets access entry to the Autry gallery until 9pm in addition to bounce houses and rock climbing (there may be a height limit that does not work in the over 4 foot favor), mobile pop ups, music, vendors of everything your heightened senses could desire or even think up including cuisine, and there's a full bar. Starting tonight, this event will reappear every 3rd Friday through October, so if you happen to miss it, you've got options. This is the only event in my list that allows children under the age of 18 AND pets, so the kids and pets can babysit each other as you calmly crash into a lawn chair, pack a bowl, and sigh with relief.
http://theoddmarket.com for tix and more info
Postmates
Delivering anything and everything daily until they go bankrupt
Special April 20th All Day Free Deliveries with Promo Code 420
Now, if your idea of celebrating 420 consists of you, Netflix, cannabis and chill, you really do have it made in the shade. Postmates, which is similar to GrubHub, but with a way more aesthetically pleasing app, better user interface, where you can fill up a cart at each restaurant menu you tour through and not have to delete your whole cart merchant to merchant like the G-Hub (i.e. so if you don't get Thai tonight, you can get it tomorrow and already have your order picked out and waiting for you), AND featuring an unheard of amount of photos of the dishes next to the listed items in menus from every goddam place under the sun---even the supermarket. Nom Nom Nom Nom Nom. When I'm high and hungry, pics or I can't even read the menu. That's not all, Postmates has a 420 promo that even the starving sober person can appreciate. They are waving all delivery fees for up to four hundred twenty orders when you use the promo code "420" at checkout. Yes, that sounds like you think it does. You can order anything from anywhere via Postmates up to 420 times, however, you only have 24 hours to do so. Any thrifty psychotics out there or super stoned sumo wrestlers wanna shoot for the max, it's on. But even if you just want a salad (because you want to be healthy) or Ben & Jerry's (like 5 flavors because you can't decide), or more rolling papers and a swisher from 7-Eleven, you can remain in your couch coma and just reach for the door.
http://postmates.com or, like everything these days, download the app for more info.
The 8th Online Performance Art Festival
April 18 to April 22 (check program for performance times)
Lastly, and this one will pair up nicely with your unlimited delivery delicacies and FOMA, The 8th Online Performance Art Festival (yes that exists) is this weekend. I know this because I submitted and was selected to be in it. So I'll toot my horn all I want, figuratively and literally, because this festival should be pretty rad. And, if you happen to check out my performance (which is on Sunday April 22nd at precisely 8pm UTC/1pm PST), and hate it, don't worry, you're allowed to. This is art people---do it, share it, spread it, and if they don't like you, tell them to take a hike and keep doing you. Which, by the way, taking a hike seems damn near impossible with the apparent thriving appeal of taking out your inner turmoil as an internet troll. I choose art, you choose troll , tom - mate - to / toe - mah - toe. So yea, toke your inner troll into temporal judgement or sensory transformation via performance pieces by artists from around the globe in real time. You get your own Magical Bus Experience in the comfort of your hot boxed bedroom. And hell, if you just gotta troll, you might as well be trolling this than the tragedies on Facebook.
http://onlineperformanceart.com for more info and to watch live
The Exhibition Back-burner.
(for when there's still time for you to find time)
Paper-Thin Hotel
Daily until May 5th
Corey Helford Gallery
Artists David Connelly and Zoey Taylor (together known as Dosshaus collective) will be wandering in cardboard costumes about the multi-room cardboard crafted exhibition every Saturday at 1pm until May 5.
coreyhelfordgallery.com for more info
Something Resembling Truth
Daily until May 13
The Broad
Jasper Johns retrospective of over 120 pieces never to be see in LA. Free admission first Thursdays April 5 and May 3 from 4-7pm. The Broad is always a fun time, and if it sucks, MOCA is right across the street.
http://thebroad.org for tickets and more info
King Tut: Treasures of the Golden Pharaoh
Daily until January 19
California Science Center
The collection is the largest ever to be displayed outside of Egypt. LA is just one location as part of a years-long international tour. Why now? Well, it's the centennial of the discovery of King Tut's tomb by British archeologist Howard Carter in 1922. Don't worry, you have plenty of time, it's open from 10am to 5pm daily until January 19th of next year.
http://californiasciencecenter.org for tickets and more info
Museum of Failure
Daily until March 8, 2019
Hollywood & Highland
From Sweden to Hollywood, this exhibit with spend 1 year inviting Los Angelans and beyond a look into great failures over human history. This museum is a reminder when in this world it seems there is no time for failure (or that any misstep is death sentence of perpetual inability), failures often precede works of art, and if we don't learn to learn from and later laugh at ours, we will become resistant to trying and in turn resistant to living with our imperfect selves or imperfections. They are there for a reason, and they have a purpose. Our greatest failures as artists have the potential to birth our greatest assets if we take the time to channel them.
http://failuremuseum.com for tickets and more info
Noah's Ark
Permanent Exhibition
Skirball Cultural Center
A permanent collection for kids, yet playing and climbing a life size arc filled with animals sounds like a great time for me. Finding your inner child as an adult is a must if you are going to survive in this world where people, places, and things old and new become less and less mind blowing. Ya feel me? Oh they invented a flying car? Figured they'd do that.
Sensory Sensitive Fridays encourage and accommodate through art special demos and activities for children with developmental disabilities such as Autism. I find this very very spectacular as studies show that Autistic children learn from and interact best with other children their own age as opposed to adults. Add art to the equation = gold.
https://www.skirball.org/noahs-ark for tickets, calendar of events, and more info
Something I missed? Let me know, email art@theanalartist.life