Dance Party

Andy Horsfield sometimes wonders whether he did something special in a previous life to deserve the one he has now. The 34-year-old Englishman travels to exotic locations around the world with superstar DJs in tow to throw huge parties, then puts together a compilation CD based on the trip. His 19-album series is titled "Global Underground" and has sold 1.5 million albums worldwide, almost half of them in the U.S., he says. "I have to pinch myself and ask if it's all real," he says with a smile.

"Cold Weather," the third feature from filmmaker Aaron Katz, fuses the untethered emotions and ambient anxieties of his earlier work onto a purposefully off-beat detective story that launches him in a new direction. Where his previous features, "Quiet City" (2007) and "Dance Party, USA" (2006), were diffuse romances, making Katz seem something of a lo-fi sensualist and new American independent variation on art-house stalwarts Michelangelo Antonioni or Wong Kar-wai, "Cold Weather" has just enough of a jolt of conventional plotting to make it a more audience-friendly and, dare one say it, commercial picture.

This weekend, a truly iconic piece of L.A. club culture says a fond farewell: The monthly drag dance party Dragstrip 66 closes the curtains on a 17- year-long stretch of glitter-drenched, gender-blurring, pop culture playfulness. Held at such iconic Eastside venues as Rudolpho's, Safari Sam's, the Echo and the Echoplex, this DJ dance night/deviant drag show attracted tens of thousands of patrons, inspired dozens of drag performers and club spinoffs, and quickly became a much-loved institution of underground Los Angeles night life.

A church that rented its gym for what was billed as a community dance was tricked into holding a crowded underground party at which a Stanton youth was stabbed to death, police said Monday. Edgar Francisco Aviles, 16, and Artemio Saldana, 20, both of Fontana, were arrested Monday on suspicion of murder in connection with the stabbing death of Alejandro Lopez, 16, as the party at Zion Lutheran Church drew to a close just after midnight Sunday, said Lt. Vince Howard.

That old party pooper, recession, didn't succeed in crashing New Year's celebrations. Tens of thousands of people packed New York's Times Square and revelers crowded restaurants, hotels and showrooms from Los Angeles to Boston. Each city had its signature celebration. In Atlanta, about 100,000 people waited in near-freezing weather downtown for the "Peach"--their city's version of the brilliant white ball above Times Square--to drop.

"Where's the Party, Yaar?" is too corny and drawn-out to appeal to crossover audiences but may strike a nerve in Indian communities. Fueled by a hard-driving, eclectic score, it is a broad, raucous comedy about a graduate student, Hari (Sunil Malhotra), who arrives in Houston for further studies, staying with friends of his parents who live in an upscale tract crammed with grandiose overbuilt houses, proof that they have made it in contemporary America. ("Yaar" roughly translates as "dude."

Party professionals like to plan events for those with big budgets, but they have some budget-wise advice for the rest of us as well: Music "Making your own music is as simple as putting together a great playlist on an iPod, and getting the right genre to play," said Yifat Oren of Yifat Oren & Associates. What's the age group? Is it mixed? If so, be sure to have something for all ages. People like to hear things they know." With an iPod, plus a DJ software program, Mark Yumkas of Angel City Designs said anyone can have a dance party.

Six young people at an all-night macabre-themed party were shot to death Saturday morning by a man who unloaded dozens of rounds of ammunition before killing himself in front of a police officer arriving at the scene, police said. The execution-style rampage occurred just after 7 a.m. at a home on a normally placid street in Seattle's well-to-do Capitol Hill neighborhood, said Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske.

It was his first pass through a singles bar in 15 years, and a sight that would have thrilled him last time around--wall-to-wall young women, wearing tight dresses and tall shoes--sent him fleeing in a cold sweat to the bathroom to hide. He had no lines, no rap this time. . . . Gone was the confidence of youth that had let him swagger over to the prettiest woman in the place. That was how he'd met his wife--the woman from whom he'd just been divorced--two kids and a lifetime ago.