Pumpkin time! / Photo by Christine N. Ziemba FILM: The LA Freewaves Festival starts today and runs through Oct. 13. This fest “fuses media arts with Hollywood Boulevard, turning it into a massive, multi-faceted screening room showcasing 160 works in film, video and other visual media.” More than 40 physical venues and locations along seven blocks of Hollywood Boulevard will participate in “Hollywould” from the Knitting Factory to Kung Pao Kitty. THEATRE: Glendale’s A......

Photo by Tyler Andrews via the LAist Featured Photos pool on Flickr GROW YOUR OWN DINNER Garden designer Marta Teegen teaches a workshop today on how to create a garden inside your own kitchen. For those on the run, learn how to grow organic produce with out ever having to step outside. It's easy, fun, and delicious! TAKE A TRIP TO THE ZOO Carmichael Gallery opens its new exhibit, "Diverge: The Art of Oddzoo"......

The closing program of the fifth annual New Original Works Festival (NOW) ended this weekend at REDCAT with a trio of works-in-progress. Composer Anne LeBaron with librettist Douglas Kearney, choreographer Rosanna Gamson and performance artist Kristina Wong presented excerpts from projects they’re currently working on in all their not-fully-edited, let’s try this, and I-wonder-if-this-belongs-here glory. Not surprisingly, the results were both good and not so good. Are they teasers for REDCAT’s next season? No comment......

Moving into the third and final weekend of REDCAT's New Original Works Festival, the program is at its most varied--music, dance and performance art. Included in this evening of innovative projects are alumni of previous REDCAT productions Anne LeBaron (with Douglas Kearney) and Rosanna Gamson/World Wide with one woman bundle of fury and fun Kristina Wong! Award-winning composer Anne LeBaron and poet/writer Douglas Kearney present a theatrical song cycle they call Sucktion, telling the story......

Interesting interview with Menotti Go next weekend to UCLA to see the Medium, an opera by Gian Carlo Menotti, who sadly passed away last year. Seating is extremely limited, but you guys are in for a treat because its playing four days in a row, it’s FREE, and it’s in English. You can also join us in our dubious distinction as the oddest group of people ever (see the comments). The opera is structured......

Photo by Cylla von Tiedemann, courtesy of the company In 1989, then modern dance bad boy Mark Morris took a seventeenth century opera and turned it into a cause celebre in staging the work for his dance company, then in residence at the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels. Almost twenty years later, and in a precedent-setting collaboration between the now-world renowned Mark Morris Dance Group. the Irvine Barclay Theatre, the Pacific Symphony......

Photo by puck90 via the LAist Featured Photos pool on Flickr. FILM COL COA (City of Light, City of Angels) French Film Festival ends its run today with five screenings, including a series of short films. The program aims to promote French films and the industry’s diversity. 12 p.m. // Directors Guild of America Theater Complex // 7920 Sunset Blvd, Los Angeles // $10 FESTIVAL The Green Apple Music Festival takes place today at......

She's singing, he's playing a clarinet | Photo provided by production From doing Anne Frank in a parking garage to Greek mythology in a swimming pool, it's too bad that this site-specific Long Beach Opera production of Orpheus and Euridice by RIcky Ian Gordon is having such a short run (last night through tomorrow night) because this looks simply fantastic and Gordon's music has been praised by the New York Times and others (we......

WINE TASTING Rock 'n Roll Wine brings exactly those two things at the Santa Monica Bar & Grille tonight. Vegas-based The Bends play live music while guests taste more than a dozen wines throughout the evening. No one will judge if you swallow it all and don’t spit – between wines. 7 pm // Santa Monica Bar and Grille // 3321 Pico Blvd., Los Angeles // $40 at the door. OPERA USC’s Thornton Opera......

COMIC BOOK ART The gallery named for the year that brought us Hypercolor T-Shirts, Yo! MTV Raps, and Salt N Pepa's single "Push It" (that's 1988 for those who didn't immediately connect) is currently featuring "Under the Influence: A Tribute to Stan Lee" in a show that runs until February 1. Preview some of the artwork online and then activate your Spidey webs and crawl over to Melrose Ave. 11 a.m. - 6 p.m. //......

There was an article in the LA Times some time ago about the Downtown arts and culture scene suffering Westside patronage due to rush hour traffic. Unless residents we're already Downtown, buying a ticket to a play, symphony concert or opera was not worth the frustration stuck in traffic. On Wednesday, the LA Opera announced their new weekday service to take ticket holders on a luxury motor coach from the Federal Building in Westwood to......

-- For £10 million and a private jet you’d do it too. They’re getting the band back together. [AOL Canada] -- $80 for the new Smashing Pumpkins record? Fantastic. [Shoutmouth] -- Rape me and a bag of chips. [Pitchfork] -- Leaking the leakers. Applications for 'snitch’ now being accepted. [Idolator] -- Choose your own Bob Dylan adventure. [Billboard] -- Woody “I don't want to move to a city where the only cultural advantage is......

Remember the good old days, when Italian restaurants had opera-singing waiters? Mario and Larry Lalli grew up in the good old days, in one such restaurant. Mario and Larry’s family has been in the restaurant business for over 50 years. The two cousins have continued the tradition begun by their fathers, previously with a pizzeria in Palm Springs, and now with Café 322 in Sierra Madre. Larry tears it up in the kitchen while......

- Why did The Departed beat Dreamgirls at the Oscars even though Dreamgirls threw a lot of money in hyping it to voters? - Reuters - Where will you be tomorrow at 11:30am when the Doors get their star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in front of the Virgin Megastore? Also, according to the Doors website, jazzy drummer John Densmore, who helped give the Doors part of their unique feel, won't be in......