Festivals

Determined to prevent the Mongols motorcycle club from using a Lancaster motel to host its annual meeting this weekend, the city's mayor has taken steps to shut down the establishment. Mayor R. Rex Parris said the members of the Mongols, which law enforcement agencies consider a violent biker gang, are not welcome in Lancaster because they "are engaged in domestic terrorism . . . and they kill our children."

Tim Robbins jokes that he could've given the title "While Rome Burns" to his new festival at the Actors' Gang. Times are tough, people are angry, "and they have every right to be," says the Oscar-winning actor and artistic director of the Culver City-based theater company. "There've been really bad decisions made that we're paying the bill for now." Like most cultural entities, the Gang, one of L.A.'s most accomplished theatrical institutions, has been scorched financially by the economic crisis.

JAMES FLAGG doesn't notice the rainwater puddling around his feet. And he doesn't care that a storm is raging outside the giant tent pitched next to Bien Nacido Vineyards in Santa Maria. The president of Valencia-based Ocean Park Hotels is absorbed in a panel discussion about the genetic history of a particular strain of Pinot Noir vine. He's having fun. OK, it's not laugh-out-loud fun, but Flagg is a Pinot Noir fanatic. And at last week's World of Pinot Noir festival in Shell Beach, one thing was abundantly clear: Pinot Noir lovers aren't like other wine enthusiasts.

Despite its long-held reputation as the most aesthetically minded nation in the civilized West, Italy has never been able to produce a decent, well-known rock band. With (H)itweek L.A., Rome-based music promoter Francesco Del Maro is hoping to change that. "My main goal is to show the world we're not just about the mandolino," said Del Maro, 37, who is behind the Italian music and culture festival that comes to town this week and concludes Sunday. "We have very successful artists, from rock to heavy metal to reggae to world music.

Sydney Shiotani considers herself an artist. The 8-year-old gripped a brown coloring pencil, her electric green nail polish glistening in the sun, and began etching her very own masterpiece on a white card stock. Huddled over her workstation, she adorned the card with heart-shaped embellishments and finished the piece by drawing an ivy-like border -- featuring petite leaves sketched with a gel pen. "I'm done!" she declared. "Can I do another one?" She did. And beside her Sunday afternoon were dozens of other children doing the same at the multicultural trading cards station -- just one of many workshops and performances that make up the annual Children's Festival of the Arts, a daylong celebration of arts and culture in Hollywood.

A reunion of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," a tribute to writer-producer Judd Apatow and salutes to several first-year series highlight the 25th annual William S. Paley Television Festival being announced today. Organized by the Paley Center for Media, the festival will be held for the first time this year at the ArcLight Cinemas in Hollywood instead of the center's Beverly Hills facility. It runs March 14-27.

Theresa Fajardo had a moment of fright Friday afternoon as she waited to sing her solo in front of a nearly full house at Walt Disney Concert Hall. But as the gospel-style Christian anthem "Let Everything That Hath Breath" simmered to the drum beat, Fajardo, 18, felt at peace. Mid-song, the Agoura High School senior fell out of line to stand apart from the other singers -- one of about 900 from 28 Southern California schools gathered for the 19th annual High School Choir Festival.

Performance artist Kristina Wong never imagined that living in her West L.A. apartment with her cat Oliver -- her sweet, reliable companion as a single woman -- would prove as difficult as navigating a bad relationship. But several months ago, she and Oliver became locked in a territorial struggle. Oliver "had this huge problem where he was spraying everywhere," says Wong. "I was a victim in my own home. . . . It became his domain."

It sounds like the archetypal young actor's plight, one repeated with every fresh arrival to Hollywood. "We've been working really hard for no money for a year," says Jesse Bonnell, 23, president of the fledgling performance collective Poor Dog Group, composed of recent CalArts graduates.

LOS ANGELES has long been known for its stars, both corporeal and celestial, but for one night, its oceanfront sibling hopes to shine as the West Coast's own City of Light. Santa Monica, taking a page from Nuit Blanche, an all-night cultural festival that premiered in Paris in 2002 and has since spread to more than a dozen cities around the world, will host the Glow festival, a dusk-to-dawn celebration of temporary public art.