One of Pop Art’s founding fathers, Andy Warhol, once told an interviewer that, in his opinion, “everybody should like everybody.” The interviewer then asked Warhol if liking everybody was what Pop Art was all about, to which Warhol replied, “Yes. It’s liking things.”

In a paper explaining his study on what he titled the “Mere Exposure Effect,” R.B. Zajonc tells us that “repetitions of an experience…are capable of producing a diffuse positive affective state.” The crux of Zajonc’s argument is that seeing familiar images puts us in a better mood — a “liking things” kind of mood. The crux of Pop Art is arguably the use of familiar images, so it makes sense that Pop Art is, as Andy Warhol said, all about liking things.

So if Pop Art is all about “liking things” then “Pop Universe,” the latest art-music-fashion showcase event from the folks at Project Ethos, certainly lived up to its name on Friday night. From the moment I walked in the doors of The Avalon and saw the Star Wars, Frank Sinatra, and E.T. posters on the walls of the lobby, I caught the “liking things” bug. I had a hunch that “liking things” at “Pop Universe” was going to be unavoidable, and my hunch proved correct. Over the course of the evening, my taste and judgment sensors got lost in the Pop enthusiasm of the 18+ crowd and the young artists, designers, and musicians showcasing their work at what Project Ethos called the “Sundance Film Festival of fashion, music and art.”

Upstairs, the art rooms were jammed with loud colors, bold texts, and cheeky, familiar graphics — Janet Leigh from Psycho, Kim Kardashian, Mona Lisa, and even the gymnastics rings at Venice Beach. I made the rounds and talked to the folks responsible for the likeable mayhem on the walls.

As anyone who has lived in LA long enough knows, this town is full of slashes (artist-slash-musician, actor-slash-model), so I wasn’t surprised to find that every artist I talked to was quick to inform me that art was not his or her only form of self-expression. Photographer Heather Petrey is am FIDM graduate and aspiring designer, and artists Linelle Schultz and Nick Gusz make films and music respectively. The artists seemed reluctant to label not only themselves but their artwork as well. When asked if she would consider her work Pop Art, Heather Petrey said she preferred “Abstract Realism.” Linelle Schultz told me she’d rather be classified as “Contemporary Mixed Media.” When I asked Nick Gusz the question, he replied, “I’ve never been that big of a fan of the word ‘Pop.’ At first, I’d say graffiti, but I only ‘tag’ canvas, so Expressionism with stencils! How about that?”

Part of me wanted to point at the painting in the corner by Thomas Hannsz, a take-off on the Warhol soup cans, and say, “But come on, guys, give credit where credit is due. Aren’t we all just under one big Pop Umbrella here? One big ‘Pop Universe,’ as it were?” I didn’t end up saying this because a) I’m a writer-slash-musician, so my creative knowledge is fairly limited in the fine arts arena, and b) The presence of Pop had put me in the “liking things” spirit, so I felt no need to dislike or disagree with what anyone said.

The same goes for the fashion show: Okay, I did like some designers slightly more than others. Eva deVore’s line, Spooky, was subtly stunning with its original combination of earthy-ethereal and geek chic. Another stand-out, demonstrated by models in silver lipstick, was Jen Garcia’s Vim Trousseau, a retro-futuristic line that called to mind The Jetsons with its ’60s-style shift dresses made of shimmering “space age” material. (It didn’t hurt that the full moon décor hanging behind the catwalk was a perfect backdrop for Garcia’s designs.) So yes, I liked those two a tad more than the other ones, but only a tad. Now that I have shaken off the “liking things” bug, I can tell you, in retrospect, about two of the designers I actually really did not like. Looking back on it, I find their designs to be unoriginal faux-punk Hot Topic imitations. Looking back on it, I can also tell you that I found one or two of the artists a little too Venice Beach Boardwalk-y for my taste. However, on Friday night, under Pop Universe’s likeable spell, I liked every single piece of clothing up on that runway, and all of the art on the walls.

Prior to the fashion show was electro rap duo LMFAO. They were good at ironic cheek, at one point sampling Handsome Boy Modeling School and yelling the line, “I am not a whore” on repeat. They were also good at irony-free encouragement, prefacing another song by asking the crowd, “How many of y’all got goals? How many of y’all got dreams?” With their danceable beats, hysterical lyrics, bright outfits, and all-over-the-place-in-a-good-way Millennial Generation outlook on life, LMFAO’s Red Foo and Sky Blu were intensely likeable and a perfect musical fit for “Pop Universe.”

If Andy Warhol and Zajonc’s “Mere Exposure” theory are to be believed, Pop Art inspires the positive in us because of its familiarity. What seemed to sum up the attitude of the artists, audience, and entire “liking things” energy that was “Pop Universe” is one of the most familiar and positive words in the English language, and this single word was on Red Foo’s hot pink T-shirt with an exclamation point after it for emphasis — that word was “Yes!”

With the economy and the country in their current depressing states, couldn’t we all use a little Pop enthusiasm, a little more “Yes!” in our lives? I know I could.