USE YOUR GOURD
Doug Goodreau knows a few things about carving pumpkins. This multitalented craftsman, 35, won one pumpkin-carving contest so many times, he was asked to stop entering so someone could else win. For now, hes happy just doing demonstrations where pumpkins are plentiful, such as the 11th Annual California Pumpkin Festival, this weekend in Calabasas.
Much of the festival fare will be traditional (food, crafts, cloggers), but theres nothing ordinary about Goodreaus 3-D creations. I typically pick the most distorted pumpkins, ones that have grown really weird, he says. Designs have ranged from a coiled dragon to the types of things youd expect at the adults-only parties he occasionally works. A pumpkin is an organic form; why limit yourself to a face? he asks.
Goodreau keeps his artistic chops up by molding and casting fossils at the Natural History Museum, sculpting clay, and embalming dead bodies. (He went to mortuary school and makeup school, and had college majors in sculpture and biology.) Indeed, his funeral-industry work prettying-up suicide and accident victims gives him a lot of good ideas. Still, not every gourds a go: A lot of designs fail, but people still like them, he says gently, adding that, despite more than 10 years of working with squash, he still loves pumpkin pie. Eating his subjects doesnt bother him at all. Im weird, he says with a laugh, but Im not that weird.
Rebecca Epstein
Thursday 16
HAPPY HEXAGONS
Happy Birthday, Cinerama Dome! We didnt think youd make it to 40, but youre still here. And so geodesically alluring! Celebrate with a daily screening of a new 70mm print of Stanley Kramers Its a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, which ran at the Dome for a record 66 weeks from 1963 to 1965. And tonights gala event includes a mad, mad mess of celebrities, with proceeds benefiting the Stanley Kramer Graduate Fellowship in Directing at UCLA. Red carpet arrivals 6 p.m.; screening 7:30 p.m. Gala, $30. ArcLight Cinemas, 6360 W. Sunset Blvd., Hollywood, (323) 464-1478. Arclightcinemas.com.
Friday 17
WHIPPERSNAPPER SNAPPERS
The young shutterbugs in the Anti-Defamation Leagues Dream Dialogue youth program took to the streets earlier this year to chronicle the diversity of their daily lives. The result is Faces of L.A., a photo exhibit of 75 works organized into categories ranging from Pride & Politics to Families & Culture, presented in hopes of dispelling hurtful biases toward groups and individuals. The exhibit, which has been traveling around the city, opens today at John Muir Middle School Library. 9 a.m.-3 p.m. Free. 5928 S. Vermont Ave., (323) 971-4361.
Saturday 18
COMMUNITY MARRIAGE
Its the wedding of the year, and were all invited. Todays 5th Annual Latino History Parade and Jamaica Celebration features staged nuptials in the Californio style of the 1840s, along with arts & crafts and historical and community information booths. The ceremony is a gift to the city of Pasadena and its surrounding communities by the Latino Heritage Association, and includes a wedding cake to serve 1,000 attendees. Free. 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Jamaica Washington Park, Los Robles Ave. at Washington Blvd., Pasadena. Parade at noon; wedding at 3 p.m. Info: Latinohistoryparade.org.
Sunday 19
SMELL THE FUN
Tar. Sure, its stinky, but thats no reason not to have a party for it. Yesterday and today mark the debut of TarFest, a weekend-long celebration of film, art, and music taking place along Wilshire Boulevard in the Miracle Mile district, where tar bubbles up like soda pop. The event features plenty of films and live music, and area galleries, museums, restaurants, and other businesses will give a special welcome to TarFest-goers. Sat. 5 p.m.-11 p.m.; Sun. 12:30 p.m.-3 p.m. Free; music and film program, $10. Details: (323) 964-5454 or Tarfest.com.
Monday 20
WRITERS ON WARTIME
National Public Radio correspondent Anne Garrels was one of only 16 journalists staying in the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad during the initial weeks of the U.S. invasion. Tonight she discusses her experience in a public, sure-to-be-insightful and moving conversation with Tracy Wood, one of the few female combat correspondents to cover the Vietnam War. 7 p.m. Free. Los Angeles Central Library, 630 W Fifth St, downtown L.A., (213) 228-7025. Reservations suggested. Lapl.org.
Tuesday 21
PRIZE WRITER
David Mamet does Hollywood often, writing scripts and making films, in addition to penning plays and everything else that makes him a Pulitzer Prize winner and Academy Award nominee. He does speaking appearances here far less regularly, so you wont want to miss him tonight when film critic and essayist F.X. Feeney asks the tough questions Mamets works always demand of us. Part of the Writers Guild Foundation Writers on Writing Series. 7:30 p.m. $20 general; $15 WGA members; $10 students with ID. Writers Guild Theatre, 135 S. Doheny Dr., Beverly Hills, (323) 782-4692.
Wednesday 22
ART HAUS
Its sundown at the Schindler House corral. Fritz Haeg, a multi-hyphenate to rival J-Lo (architect-artist-curator-designer-educator-gardener-producer-writer), brings together 14 artistic projects from works by multimedia artist Dawn Kasper, to the punk-inflected live rock of Los Super Elegantes, to readings, dance, and installation art for Sundown Salon, an avant-garde evening at the MAK Center. 6:30 p.m.-9:30 p.m. Free; $5-$10 donation encouraged. MAK Center for Art & Architecture at the Schindler House, 835 N. Kings Rd., West Hollywood, (323) 651-1510. MAKcenter.org.
