CIA   

Whoever said all the freaks come out at night must have started at CIA, the California Institute of Abnormal Arts. Skulking on a dark corner just off Burbank Boulevard in the eccentric North Hollywood arts district, CIA is a live music/performance art "odditorium" dedicated to digging up the best and most bizarre of the underground. Step right up to the barred ticket booth and behold the CIA's introductory museum, a virtual shrine to the sick and twisted. Passing through the spooky open-air display of precious somethings, you feel like you've just ignored the "Enter At Your Own Risk" sign to your creepy 10-year-old brother's room, with petrified body parts, two dead fairies and the notorious mummified clown. TV screens loop obscure videos and vintage Looney Tunes episodes, serving as a twisted, slap-happy kind of requiem for the staring, freeze-dried, unavoidably loyal audience of grotesques on view. Inside, the theater and refreshment areas look like you've entered the depths of David Lynch's psyche, with walls done in wild circus stripes and hanging moose heads. Black lights showcase further curiosities such as Mike and Tike the two-headed baby and various skeletons of dubious classification. Alcoholic beverages and other drinks are available, along with all the free Starburst you can eat off the counter. And now, for our show. Like an 'X-Files' audition, it takes all kinds to make up a CIA audience, as anyone from soccer moms to guys in grass Hawaiian skirts show up to see such treats as the Voodoo Organist or the Girly Freak Show -- a burlesque-style sideshow of fire eating, glass munching and bullwhipping to 'These Boots Were Made for Walking.' The theater is cramped, but a giant screen on the outdoor patio broadcasts the show for those who can't see -- or are too scared to get up close. Steeped in the surreal, CIA almost feels like that traveling haunted circus that vanishes at midnight -- you get the distinct impression upon leaving that you may have imagined the whole thing. Thankfully, it does exist, either a wrong turn in the Twilight Zone or a home away from home for the freak in all of us.