A few scrumptious events this week to attend, including a cooking class, a webinar about the history of Grand Central Market, and a discussion on Gluttony. But if you’re looking for some non-food related events, there are movies, performances, and more.
Arts & Culture
The Groundlings Annual Holiday Show: Online Edition gets started this weekend and will be going on Fridays and Saturdays at 7:00 p.m. through December 19th. Tickets to watch The Groundlings perform original sketch and live improv range from $20-$35.
A different kind of interactive performance you can attend with any kids in your life plays on Saturday, December 5th at 3:00 p.m. – Kid Koala Music To Draw To from UCLA’s Center for the Art of Performance. The Montreal-based DJ and animator Kid Koala “has built a wildly eclectic career following his creative whims with projects based on far-fetched concepts that really shouldn’t work out yet somehow turn into ridiculously delightful works.” For this online version of Music to Draw To, “people come together online for an hour of quiet time to draw, sculpt, paint, knit, code, write…in a cozy environment while listening to music designed to keep everyone in their creative zones.”
On Sunday, December 6th at 11:00 a.m., The Getty presents “Blackness Is in the Making: Materials of the 18th-Century Artist.” The lecture features Anne Lafont, a professor at the Center for the History and Theory of Art at the School for Advanced Study in the Social Sciences in Paris, in conversation with Lyneise Williams, an associate professor of art history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The discussion will focus “on the materials, techniques, and challenges involved in 18th-century artistic representations of Blackness in works from across the Atlantic world” and “how European conceptualizations of African subjectivity were expressed through images, and how the artistic materiality involved in figuring Black bodies and subjects contributed to the visual construction of race during the Enlightenment.”
If you’re itching to get out of the house for some culture, another drive-in has popped up behind the Egyptian Theater. The Arena Cinelounge presents nightly movies…and this week’s selection includes Love, Weddings and Other Disasters starring Diane Keaton and Jeremy Irons, Black Bear starring Aubrey Plaza, and Wander starring Aaron Eckhart and Tommy Lee Jones. Tickets start at $40 per car. (Note: the three films play every night this week, but at different times each day. Check the Arena Cinelounge calendar for specific showtimes each day.)
Community & History
As always, Larchmont’s own Chevalier’s book events are well worth attending. This week they include a virtual book party on Saturday, December 5th at 12:00 p.m. to celebrate Antarctica: The Waking Giant, the winner of the 2020 International Photographers Award for Professional Book Photographer of the Year, by Sebastian Copeland. The book captures “the story of a changing environment that spells the oncoming redrawing of the world’s map, and all that it implicates.” On Monday, December 7th at 7:00 p.m. hear author Daphne Merkin discuss her new novel 22 Minutes Of Unconditional Love about “a wife and mother look[ing] back at the moment when her life as a young book editor is upended by a casual encounter with an intriguing man who seems to intuit her every thought.”
Another local institution you can support this holiday season is the Ebell of Los Angeles, which has an online boutique, where you can shop for a wide range of specially curated gifts including clothes, jewelry, accessories, chocolate, and more. Ongoing through December 21st. (Also be sure to see our separate post about bot this event and the Ebell’s VIrtual Holiday Celebration, on Wednesday, December 9, at 4 p.m., elsewhere in today’s Buzz.)
On Saturday, December 5th, at 4:00 p.m., FoodCycle LA, a nonprofit aiming to eliminate hunger and reduce food waste, is teaming up with Impastiamo for a cooking class fundraiser where you can learn how to make a Pumpkin Soup and a Risotto with Porcini Mushrooms with Chef Francesco Lucatorto, live from Italy, and support the work that FoodCycle LA does.
If you’re more interested in buying food from professionals than making it yourself, or in learning about the history of those food purveyors, Esotouric’s webinar this week is for you. On Saturday, December 5th at 12:00 p.m., catch A Cultural History Of Grand Central Market, 1917-2020, where you can learn about about the place where “multicultural Los Angeles simmered in a vibrant and beautiful melting pot, where colorful characters plied their trade and influenced the greater world beyond.”
On the other hand, if you’ve partaken in perhaps a few too many food-based events since Thanksgiving, you might want to join Big Sunday’s next in its series on the Seven Deadly Sins: 7D- Can’t Live With ‘Em, Can’t Live Without Them, this time spotlighting Gluttony. On Wednesday, December 9th at 7:00 p.m., hear Hyepin Im lead a discussion on the objectively most delicious sin.
Local Government
Finally, the Greater Wilshire Neighborhood Council Outreach Committee meets Saturday, December 5th at 9:30 a.m., and there will be a general board meeting on Wednesday, December 9th at 7:00 p.m..
