Festivals

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.

EVENTS The Topanga Days festival gets surprisingly funky with a lineup that includes legendary ska-rock band Fishbone and the jazz-infused Dumpstaphunk, along with the Young Dubliners and scores of others with with all the trimmings of a good neighborhood fair. 1440 N. Topanga Canyon Blvd., L.A. Sat.-Mon. $20. topangadays.com.

Ah, 'tis spring and all the land is faire . . . at the Renaissance Pleasure Faire at ye olde Paramount Ranch in the gently dimpled hills of Agoura. Rain postponed the opening of the Faire last weekend, but everything is in place today for the usual pageantry and play. This year (the Faire's 26th), the 400th anniversary of Sir Francis Drake's defeat of the Spanish Armada, is being celebrated every weekend through June 5. Fairegoers can see the great navigator himself or listen to his compatriots spin yarns along Freebooter's Way. Or perhaps pay their respects to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth I when she makes her daily progress through the village at 3 p.m. From downtown Los Angeles, take U.S. 101 north to the Chesebro exit, then follow the signs to the Faire's imaginary English village of Chipping-under-Oakwood.

Southwest Chamber Music's L.A. International New Music Festival is more a Los Angeles interstitial new music festival. Skirting touristy Europe, these Southwesterners are not interested in inclusiveness but in filling gaps that very much need filling. Monday's installment, the third of the festival's four concerts at the Colburn School's Zipper Concert Hall, did feature two admired L.A. composers who do not lack local institutional attention. Anne LeBaron, on the faculty at CalArts, happens to be the local composer of the moment with her breathtaking opera "Crescent City" currently in production and a piece on the Los Angeles Philharmonic's opening Hollywood Bowl concert in July.

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."

Across the town of San Fernando, in kitchens where pigs' feet hang from clothespins and caldrons bubble with murky soup, families are gearing up for a historic event that may put this city on the culinary map: a menudo cook-off. The soup made from cow's stomach, pigs' feet and hominy is quintessentially Mexican, and this Sunday San Fernando will sponsor its first menudo festival to celebrate its Mexican American heritage.

While most Southern Californians are snug in their beds on the weekend mornings of May 19 and 20, thousands of people will be gathering in a huge grassy field in the rolling countryside of Temecula. They usually arrive at 5 a.m., when the gates of the seventh annual Temecula Valley Balloon & Wine Festival, this year at Rancon Park, open. And they will watch in fascination as 35 rainbow-colored hot air balloons are inflated, slowly growing to their full size eight of 10 stories in height.

Expectations of a Christmas "love-in"--a Woodstock West--drew 25,000 people to Laguna Canyon 20 years ago this week. But when the love festival had became a weeklong party and guests still refused to leave, police donned riot gear, sang "Here Comes Santa Claus" and broke it up. Even in a community known for its tolerance, the event panicked city officials and some residents who feared the surge of people descending on the small city could cause a riot.

In an environment perked up by performances from pianist Dr. John, singer Irma Thomas, guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan and singer/harmonica player John Mayall, the lineup for Benson and Hedges Blues, a weeklong blues festival to be held in the Southland in June, was announced Thursday at a press conference at the China Club in Hollywood. Blues greats B. B.

The shores of Seal Beach will be transformed into a fantasy land of sandcastles Saturday when the United Way of Orange County holds its annual sand sculpting competition. Last year, more than 20,000 people flocked to Seal Beach to watch teams compete to build the best sandcastle. The contest kicks off the United Way's fund-raising season. "The event is not a fund-raiser.

CANNES, France - Walter Salles carefully raises the fingers of his right hand and gently strokes the back of his left. "These are characters," he says, explaining the gesture, "who experience things not vicariously but on the flesh. Men and women in a quest for something they couldn't define yet, who are trying to amplify their knowledge of the world. " More than half a century after "On the Road" was published, 30-plus years since Francis Ford Coppola bought the rights in 1978, and nearly a decade after Salles began working on the film, Jack Kerouac's peerless anthem to the romance of youthful freedom and experience has finally made it to the screen with its virtues and spirit intact.

INDIO, Calif. - In one corner stands a music promoter that made its mark in L.A.'s punk scene, throwing gritty events at warehouses and velodromes, giving voice to songs like "Beat Me Senseless" and "I Kill Children" before birthing an annual desert bacchanal that might be the world's most successful music festival. In the other corner is the master-planned community that put the O.C. in Orange County, where safety, schooling and temperance are hallmarks and a homeowners association can overrule one's choice of house paint.

Successful, micro-targeted neighborhood music festivals have been proliferating — including Make Music Pasadena, the Eagle Rock Music Festival, Venice's Abbott Kinney Music Festival and Echo Park's Culture Collide — and now we can now add "The Nice Stretch of West Hollywood That's West of Fairfax Avenue but East of the Sunset Strip Festival. " Sunday's festival is actually called the Hudson Block Party, and for a second year the classy-casual bar and restaurant that throws it has booked an unexpectedly buzzy bill of local and national acts, including White Rabbits, LP and Haim.

MUSIC Dance your heart out in the desert at the 10th Annual Joshua Tree Music Festival. This fantastic roster of bands including Fork Knox Five, Gaudi, Breakestra and MC Rai is guaranteed to satisfy all your world-music and open-space cravings. The Joshua Tree Lake Campground, 2601 Sunfair Road, Joshua Tree. Various times, Fri. to Sun. $120. http://www.joshuatreemusicfestival.com.

EVENTS Gorge on strawberries, toss strawberry tarts, compete in a strawberry pie-eating contest or watch others do it at the 29th Annual Strawberry Festival in Oxnard. Live music, cooking demonstrations and plenty of fruity activities for the kids round off this tasty weekend event. Strawberry Meadows College Park, 3250 S. Rose Ave., Oxnard. 10 a.m. to 6: 30 p.m. Sat. and Sun. $12. http://www.strawberry-fest.org.

LONDON - Posthumus, the protagonist of Shakespeare's "Cymbeline," marched through the Herculean columns of the Globe theater, stopped abruptly at the front of the stage and looked up at an audience of hundreds - most of whom didn't speak a whisper of the language they were about to hear. His voice boomed, and he raised his arms and curled his hands into fists. "All these people have come from the newest country in the world," shouted actor Francis Paulino Lugali in Juba Arabic, "and this country is South Sudan!"

The date that turned John Owens' girlfriend into his wife didn't cost much. He filled a cooler full of beer and sandwiches and took her on a night-fishing trip with another couple. "It was a great night and it cost me a couple of bucks for bait and that was it," said Owens, now head of marketing for ING Direct USA in Wilmington, Del. In a still-dragging economy, Owens thinks more people should follow that example. But a new study by his company indicates that cheap dates might be dicey for guys.

Island breezes and ukulele tunes will waft across Northridge Park today in a spring festival that celebrates Hawaiian culture and raises money for youth scholarships. Now in its 27th year, the Northridge Ho'olaule'a, sponsored by the San Fernando Valley Ohana Kakou, features performances by a Samoan drum corps, hula dancers and ukulele groups from Ventura, San Fernando and Newport Beach.

It was September 2010 and anticipation for Dustin Lance Black's directorial debut at the Toronto International Film Festival was running high. A year earlier, the "Milk" screenwriter had made a splash at the Oscars with his moving acceptance speech touching on the difficulty of growing up gay, transforming him into a hero for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. Now, his Southern-set film, "What's Wrong With Virginia" - starring Jennifer Connelly and Ed Harris - was unspooling in Toronto's special presentation section alongside the works of Danny Boyle, John Sayles and Clint Eastwood.

"Tonight You're Mine," set at (and filmed during) Scotland's largest outdoor rock festival, T in the Park, is a "Once"-like attempt at mixing simple romance, off-the-cuff charm and music. When preening American frontman Adam (Luke Treadaway), one-half of a hipster electronic duo, is accidentally handcuffed to Morello, the cheeky lead singer of a punk-lite all-girl band (a frisky, appealing Natalia Tena), it's not hard to figure out what the refrain of this meet-cute two-hander is going to sound like.