September 2008 Archives
Election '08: Let Sarah Be Sarah, But Don't Let her Wear That
All the talking heads are saying that the key to Sarah Palin's success in Thursday night's Vice Presidential debate with Joe Biden is to "let Sarah be Sarah."
I'm not entirely sure what that means, but I think the gist of it is that Palin has been over-managed by handlers who are stuffing her head with too much knowledge. And we all know a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. Seems she does better in these setting when she knows less and is free to just let her stunning disposition shine. To put it another way, people like her when she's not trying to be knowledgeable. You could say she's on a need-to-not-know basis. I think it's about time we elected someone who doesn't know much. That would be a refreshing change.
Well, whatever they decide -- whether to try to fill her mind with useless stuff like knowledge, or not -- I do hope they give Palin one piece of advice. Stop wearing those Mother of the Children of The Corn, stiff-collar, hawk-neck, Amish prom dress type blouses. Particularly that red one. Put them away. They kill whatever tiny amount of kinky sex appeal is still left.
Unless you pick up a pitchfork to go with it. Then, I'm back in!
Election '08: Seven-Out -- McCain No Longer Serious Presidential Candidate
BY MARC COOPER
Here's the only tin-foil if not exactly the silver lining in yesterday's literally depressing economic news: Next year's bread lines will be administered by a Democratic, not a Republican, administration. You can bet on it.
For personal reasons (like now I have to work till I'm 113) I'm not going to dwell on the monetary side of yesterday's events.
Let's stick with the political. Get out your tops, mix-masters or even your cement trucks but there are ain't no possible way to spin this episode other than as a crushing and humiliating setback for McCain in specific and the Republicans in general. It's not just that McBumbler was taking credit for the deal before the deal imploded.
That, my friends, is but a mere detail.
Continue reading "Election '08: Seven-Out -- McCain No Longer Serious Presidential Candidate"...
Villaraigosa's Weirdly Timed Housing Plan
On Monday, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa unveiled a $5 billion housing plan for the middle class and poor. Reaction to the plan was definitely mixed, and with good reason: According to the LA Times, "many City Council members and business and housing groups said they had not yet seen" it.
Continue reading "Villaraigosa's Weirdly Timed Housing Plan"...
Tonight: Linda Blair Goes Bad at the Grindhouse Film Festival
Like so many young actors after the ravages of puberty or the pitfalls of adulthood had rendered them into celebrity non grata, Linda Blair’s post-Exorcist acting career dove headfirst into low-budget exploitation like Roller Boogie (1979) and Night Patrol (1984, which partners her with Pat Paulsen and The Gong Show’s Unknown Comic). However, unlike such never-was cases as Richard Grieco or Christopher Atkins, Blair’s fallow period was actually kinda fun, and she took to the grimier material with a remarkable good cheer motivated either by financial appreciation or genuine let’s-put-on-a-show spunkiness. The best of her B-pictures, 1984’s Savage Streets and Chained Heat (1983), get a rare screening at the New Beverly Cinema’s Grindhouse Film Festival tonight, which has been keeping creeps and weirdos off the streets with prints of rare horror and sexploitation movies for the better part of the last five years.
Savage Streets (which also received a recent double-disc treatment from Code Red) has Ms. B copping the Runaways’ fashion sense and attitude as the leader of the all-girl Satins, a good-girl gang who run afoul of the Scars, a psychotic male gang who rape and butcher Linda’s deaf-mute sister (psychotronic saint Linnea Quigley) over a perceived slight. Blair’s all-grown-up (and decidedly va-va-voomish) frame is central to the imagery of the film’s second half; decked out in spandex tights and toting a crossbow, she invests herself whole-heartedly into her role as avenging street angel, and if you don’t entirely believe her, she’s at least awfully nice to look at. TV habitués will note the presence of Johnny Venocur, a.k.a. Johnny V, whose deep-rooted bromance with Scott Baio is one of the most curious aspects of the latter’s reality series.
Continue reading "Tonight: Linda Blair Goes Bad at the Grindhouse Film Festival"...
Planning Commission Votes to Tighten Sign District Laws
Last week, the City's planning commission voted on a proposal that would tighten up the city's "specialty billboard district" laws. The plan to revamp the sign district ordinance came about after concerns that the city was frivolously granting too many sign districts to billboard companies.
The plan sets the minimum size of a billboard or sign district to one block or three acres, "which would have the effect of discouraging very small sign districts designed for one or two signs," says Dennis Hathaway, president of the Coalition to Ban Billboard Blight.
Continue reading "Planning Commission Votes to Tighten Sign District Laws "...
Caltrans Proposes Plan for "Vegetative Advertisements" along the Freeways
What would you think if you saw a Fed Ex logo made out of tulips as you were motoring along one of California's freeways? How about the Golden Arches made from yellow roses or buttercups along the shoulder of the road?
It turns out that putting "vegetative advertising" - a logo or advertisement made out of flowers, shrubs and other plants - along California's freeways is Caltrans latest plan to raise funds towards the financially strapped highway fund.
Continue reading "Caltrans Proposes Plan for "Vegetative Advertisements" along the Freeways "...
Another Piano for LACMA: $45 Million Donation from Stewart and Lynda Resnick
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art announced this morning (well, if you don't count the New York Times and L.A. Times, both of which got the story last week for publication today) a $45 million donation from Stewart and Lynda Resnick. The gift will fund the building of a large new Renzo Piano exhibition space directly behind the architect’s Broad Contemporary Art Museum (BCAM). The one-story building, 200 feet by 180 feet, will feature all natural light via a skylight system like that of BCAM, and is expected to house special exhibitions.
The announcement, held in a tent on the site, was made by LACMA director Michael Govan. (Okay, the CEO and Wallis Annenberg Director, yadda yadda.) He introduced Lynda Resnick, who has been on the acquisitions board at the museum for 16 years. She credited Govan's leadership as being central to her and her husband's decision. Stewart Resnick said there were two reasons he decided to make the donation: "Number one, because Lynda wanted to do it."
At this point, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, sitting next to the podium, made an aside to Stewart Resnick, who laughed and said, "Antonio, who knows something about the relationship between men and women" – doh! – "says that's also the second reason." Stewart Resnick went on to add that Los Angeles had been very good to him, better than other places might have been, and that he believed in giving back to the community.
When the mayor spoke, he said how amazing it was that the Resnicks had accumulated so much wealth having started washing windows. Lynda Resnick, who was wearing a fetching gray outfit that suggested there are more millions where the 45 came from, immediately noted with a faint look of horror that it was not she who had done the windows.
Continue reading "Another Piano for LACMA: $45 Million Donation from Stewart and Lynda Resnick"...
Queer Town: Opponents of Gay Marriage Release New TV Ad
The Yes on Prop. 8 campaign has released a new television ad today, featuring San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom. Frank Schubert, campaign manager of ProtectMarriage.com, the umbrella group leading the fight to ban same sex marriage in California, also asks supporters to donate $3.6 million in the coming weeks so TV ads can be aired throughout the state. The additional money would put anti-gay marriage proponents over the $20 million mark in total contributions.
Continue reading "Queer Town: Opponents of Gay Marriage Release New TV Ad"...
Alt-Weeky Chain Creative Loafing Files Chapter 11
Amidst the failed federal bailout and the ensuing stock market tumble, the media world had its own depressing contribution to today's news cycle. Tampa-based Creative Loafing, owners of the second largest alternative weekly chain in the country, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection today.
The move comes just more than a year after Creative Loafing's purchase of the highly regarded Washington City Paper and Chicago Reader. Creative Loafing CEO Ben Eason counters suggestions his company may have overstretched by insisting the chain's failure to pay nearly $500,000 in interest payments and service fees, which contributed to the filing, "has little to do with the acquisition."
Washington City Paper's Erik Wemple reports that the company has no immediate plans for "liquidation," or layoffs, and that the move even has its sunny side: "Cuts to edit staffs at all the papers would be rolled back."
Wemple goes on to report, however, that the chain will hereby follow a new editorial mandate that "stress[es] that all the papers should proceed with “Web-first” publishing strategies, in which writers and editors customize their content for the Internet and subsequently transfer that content into their print products."
For some reason this sounds ominous. As good as putting LOL cats on the front page seems, take it from the L.A. Times -- not the way to go.
Stage Raw: Abuse for Its Own Sake
Abuse for Its Own Sake
Needtheater's Fatboy is this week's Pick of the Week (See New Theater Reviews by pressing the READ ON tab at the bottom of this section.) It's John Clancy's vaudeville-clown show adaptation of Alfred Jarry's Ubu Roi which is a nihilistic spin on Macbeth, which is quite nihilistic to begin with. It's performing at Imagined Life Theater (formerly 2100 Square Feet), 5615 San Vicente Boulevard. www.needtheater.org.
To access a sneak preview of the weekend's NEW THEATER REVIEWS, press the READ ON tab at the bottom of this section. (The reviews are embedded in this coming week's comprehensive theater listings).
For this week's stage feature on The House of Blue Leaves and the larger purpose of the Mark Taper Forum, visit http://www.laweekly.com/2008-09-25/stage/renewal-at-the-mark-taper-forum-is-it-all-skin-deep/
FATHOMING AMERICA
If you want to understand this country, Colorado Springs, Colorado is a pretty good to start. If you want to understand Colorado Springs, check out The Civilians' This Beautiful City. It opened yesterday at the Kirk Douglas and is also reviewed below. http://centertheatregroup.org
Other reviews below include East West Players production incorporating Bruce Lee flicks, Be Like Water; Charlie Lustman's solo show with music about surviving cancer, Made Me Nuclear, at Santa Monica Playhouse; John Stark's The Great Election at the Odyssey; Open Fist Theatre Company's premiere of Frank Zappa's Joe's Garage; Nick Salamone's latest, Sea Change, at the L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center's Davidson/Valentini Theatre; a pair of plays by Steve Stajich, Little Black Lies, at the Avery Schreiber; Sarah Ruhl's Dead Man's Cell Phone at South Coast Repertory, and Kristina Wong's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest at Miles Memorial Playhouse, presented by TeAda Productions.
ROBERT WILSON, ONSTAGE LIVE
The legendary director choreographer will discuss his creative process at USC's Bing Auditorium Tuesday night, Oct. 31, 7:30 p.m. It's free.
"FROM JAIL TO YALE"
Tuesday, October 7th at 8 p.m. at the Freud Playhouse at UCLA is a dramatization of the true story of Emmy Award winning actor, director and humanitarian Charles S. ‘Roc’ Dutton. It's about how he found his ‘moment of truth’ while serving time in prison, and went on to earn his college degree, graduate from the prestigious Yale School of Drama, and world wide acclaim on Broadway, on Television and in Movies.
The evening will launch a new dramatic arts education program that will give that same pathway for success to 1 million ‘at risk’ students over the next 4 years. http://www.actorshalloffame.org/benefit.html
For the weekend's latest NEW THEATER REVIEWS embedded in the coming week's comprehensive theater listings, press the READ ON tab directly below
Over the Weekend: Dodgers in Snorkel Masks, Charles Bukowski Remembered, Italian Feast in Hollywood, Abbot Kinney Festival
They say people turn to comfort food in times of grief and, well, nothing proved more true in Los Angeles over the weekend. To ease the worry brought on by the current economic crisis and looming presidential election, we gladly welcomed a weekend of over-eating and over-imbibing. Check out what we ate, who wet met and what we drank...
Dodger Debauchery
The Dodgers started their weekend early as they celebrated their Western Division championship on Thursday night in Echo Park. Pitcher Chan Ho Park and shortstop Angel Berroa donned goggles and snorkel masks as they showered fans with Moet champagne. Read Mark Groubert's full account of the evening.
Photo by Mark Groubert.
Art About Bukowski
Saturday at the Hyaena Gallery in Burbank was the opening of Art About Bukowski, a group show dedicated to the life of Charles Bukowski. In addition to the 13-plus artists involved, the opening also showcased Weirdo Delux author Matt Dukes Jordan who signed copies of his new book Bukowski's L.A. Guests were treated to a surprise appearance from Bukowski's wife, Linda, who smiled and greeted artists as she checked out the many portraits done of her husband. Check out the slideshow here or click on the image below.
Artist Jeremy Cross and Linda Bukowski.
Precious Cheese Italian Feast of San Gennaro L.A.
Friday through Sunday marked the seventh annual Precious Cheese Italian Feast of San Gennaro on Highland in Hollywood, hosted by funny guys Jimmy Kimmel and Adam Carolla. We ignored the creepy carnies while we drank Pironi beer, feasted on cannolis and boned up on our history of Italian-American culture in Los Angeles. Check out the slideshow here or click on the image below.
Photo by Shannon Cottrell.
Abbot Kinney Festival
On Sunday we took in the ocean air and enjoyed the swap meet vibe of the Abbot Kinney Festival in Venice Beach. Later that night the weekend ground to a sobering halt when news broke of a deadly shooting that occurred on Abbot Kinney and San Juan streets, almost three hours after the festival closed. For details, read Liz Ohanesian's account of her day in Venice. Check out the slideshow here or click the image below.
Photo by Shannon Cottrell.
At 9:20 p.m., almost three hours after Abbot Kinney Festival closed, a shooting occurred on Abbot Kinney and San Juan, killing one man and hospitalizing a woman. As of late Sunday night, no further information was available.
Organizers for the Abbot Kinney Festival make the claim that nearly 150,000 attend this annual street fair. That figure just might be accurate.
It took almost 40 minutes to find parking, and even then, the spot cost $10 and was an eight minute hike to the festivities. Inside the roped-off stretch of Abbot Kinney Boulevard, hordes of people sporting oversized sunglasses and miniscule dogs (yes, sometimes tucked into large shoulder bags) milled between rows of vendors hawking everything from handmade jewelry to Barack Obama t-shirts to mass produced clothing guaranteed to be out of style next summer and a few paintings thrown in for good measure. With 350 booths, the scene on Abbot Kinney was more swap meet than festival, albeit a swap meet without the piles of discounted tube socks and bootlegged DVDs.
Photograph by Shannon Cottrell. Click image for slideshow.
Debauchery as Dodgers Clinch Western Division Title
Thursday night at Chavez Ravine, a crowd of 52, 569 crazed cheerleaders came to celebrate something that had already happened five hours earlier. With the loss of the Arizona Diamondbacks to the St. Louis Cardinals, the Dodgers were automatically the winners of the Western Division and heading into the post season for the second time in three years. Apparently nobody bothered to tell Padres pitcher Jake Peavy, the legendary Dodger-killer who led his team to a 7-5 meaningless victory over the newly crowned champs.
Dodgers pre-game ceremony announcing they've won division.
Continue reading "Debauchery as Dodgers Clinch Western Division Title"...
BY MARC COOPER
What a shriveled tiny man John McCain turns out to be. And I don't mean physically.
I mean his soul.
Chris Matthews characterized McCain on MSNBC as a "troll" who was "angry at the world."
No kidding.
I am not the first to have noticed that in the first presidential debate, John McCain oozed contempt as he refused to as much as once even look at his opponent. And when Obama would differ with him on any issue of urgent seriousness, McCain would crack a condescending smile, a painful grimace as if someone was stuffing Freddie Mac up his arse.
There's plenty of spin out there so I'll keep it very, very short:
The Great Election at the Odyssey Theatre. Photo by Greg Jardin
For this weekend's comprehensive theater listings, press the READ ON tab at the bottom of this section.
Check back here Monday after noon for new reviews of Hamlet at A Noise Within; The Civilians' This Beautiful City (written by Steve Cosson and Jim Lewis) at the Kirk Douglas; East West Players production incorporating Bruce Lee flicks, Be Like Water; Charlie Lustman's solo show with music about surviving cancer, Made Me Nuclear, at Santa Monica Playhouse; John Stark's The Great Election at the Odyssey; Open Fist Theatre Company's premiere of Frank Zappa's Joe's Garage; Nick Salamone's latest, Sea Change, at the L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center's Davidson/Valentini Theatre; a pair of plays by Steve Stajich, Little Black Lies, at the Avery Schreiber; needtheater's west-coast premiere of John Clancy's Fatboy; Sarah Ruhl's Dead Man's Cell Phone and Kristina Wong's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest at Miles Memorial Playhouse, presented by TeAda Productions.
Last weekend's New Theater Reviews can be found at http://www.laweekly.com/2008-09-25/stage/theater-reviews-9-to-5-the-musical-43-plays-for-43-presidents/http://law
for this week's stage feature on The House of Blue Leaves and the larger purpose of the Mark Taper Forum, visit http://www.laweekly.com/2008-09-25/stage/renewal-at-the-mark-taper-forum-is-it-all-skin-deep/
Creative Criticism
Just got back from five days in New York to sit in on the first couple of read-throughs of my play that's just started rehearsals at Abingdon Theatre Company. The whole atmosphere was intensely serious; answering the actors questions as they went through the play line by line, I felt like a student defending a dissertation, and it was great.
They were probing the play's ligaments with questions about time-lines and tone. They also wanted to know in detail about L.A.'s Beachwood Drive, where the play is set and where it takes its title from. Who lives there, what ethnicities, what's the traffic like, the architecture, etc.
What landed on me quite clearly was how the creative and critical impulses hold hands all the time. In this case they were dancing in the same room.
This was theater criticism at its best – driven by relentless curiosity and investigation in order to open up the world of the play. This company of actors made the case for me that artists can be among the most rigorous and qualified theater critics. What came to mind was the reality of one local SoCal newspaper dropping freelance critics from its payrolls and goading crime reporters to cover gallery openings and stage plays – people reluctant to do so because they themselves feel unqualified for the task.
Artist-critics open up the old can containing potential conflict of interest. But weigh that against the real conflict of interest when exhausted news writers are sent to cover an event in a field they know nothing about, when that venue's audience members may be better qualified to write a review. Chances are that a large percentage of that audience will be artists.
The key to sustaining some kind of enriching assessment of the still thriving activity we call theater is is to get qualified people to write on productions that are devoid of their personal friendships and ambitions. No easy answer, but that newspaper's solution is catastrophic for all parties, including their own readers.
For comprehensive theater listings, press theREAD ON tab directly below
The first of nine alleged sexual assault victims began testifying against fashion designer Anand Jon Thursday. “Jessie B” told deputy D.A. Mara McIlvain she was an 18-year-old aspiring model from Lake Stevens, Washington, when, she was contacted on her MySpace page by Jon.
Avenues Gangster on Trial for Assault with a Firearm
The trial of an alleged Avenues gangster is currently underway in a Los Angeles criminal courtroom. Nicolas Real is accused of pulling a gun on a family who accidentally drove their car through gang territory in Glassell Park.
Real, 26, is charged with two counts of assault with a firearm and other gun charges stemming from the June 2, 2007 incident.
Continue reading "Avenues Gangster on Trial for Assault with a Firearm "...
Election '08: A Day In The Life At The End Of The World
My head is spinning and not just because this is the third time I've tried to write this. Unfortunately, as far as clarity and fresh thinking is concerned, my computer kept crashing as I pecked away at these thoughts last night, trying to make some sense of a dizzying day. Maybe my laptop was having some empathetic response to the banking crisis. Now I'm left feeling hungover and fuzzy. Probably like a lot of Washington Mutual customers.
More to the point, though, what can you say about a day like yesterday that begins with a walk in the park, literally, and ends with the largest bank failure in the history of the world? I don't have a brush wide enough for the strokes necessary to paint the picture of an average day in these times, one filled with blessings and a sense of impending doom. I wonder what's being taught in school, because I believe we're experiencing one of the most pointed lessons in civics in our time.
Let me start with how the day began. A beautiful day, like today. A couple friends and I took our dogs to Elysian Park and were treated to views of the San Gabriel mountains to the north and downtown Los Angeles to the south, which looked splendid peaking through the trees. The views were unfettered by clouds or smog. The whole magnificent metropolis spread out around us from the hills of the park. But there was something ominous in the air - a sense of uncertainty about what the day or the coming days would bring.
After the hike, I went to get what was left of my hair buzzed. My barber, Tony, is a hard-working immigrant who's made good. Tony doesn't suffer fools or bullshit. Once, a gang-banger tried to skip out on his bill and Tony locked him in and threatened to call the police until the kid paid up. Tony's old-school. And he's old. But his liver-spotted hands are still steady and he has a great chair-side manner. We discussed the financial system bailout that was all-but-agreed upon by mid-morning yesterday. Tony, who doesn't take credit cards and doesn't keep money in the bank, isn't in favor. Like a lot of "Main Street" Americans (whatever that is) he doesn't know why taxpayers should be on the hook for $700 million dollars to bail out Wall Street, which he think should be made to pay for its own sins.
I respect Tony immensely, but I have to disagree. If this was about bailing out Wall Street, I'd say "hell no" too. But it's not. This is a financial system bailout, not a Wall Street bailout. It's about whether or not in the coming days or weeks you go to the bank to withdraw some money to buy groceries, or whatever, only to have your ATM card chewed up and the machine blinking system error or you get your $60 and go on your way. It's about whether or not my neighbor, whom I went to the park with, can continue to draw the payroll for her small business from her bank. It's about whether or not the money you have in the bank in savings or checking accounts or CDs or IRAs or the like have any basis in reality and are not just empty promises. It's that fundamental.
Here's an example of how unnerved the system is. I have had a fairly significant, relatively speaking, wad of cash in the bank for more than a year -- the result of selling a home I'd have rather kept. It's been just sitting there earning some small level of interest. I've basically ignored it because of some antipathy towards to the nature of how it came to be.
Yesterday, concerned that all that I have to show for a lot of work and some heartache might be gone if the banks fails, I decided to spread it around to other banks so it's at least covered by FDIC insurance. When I asked my bank for two sizable cashier's checks (I'd still be leaving a decent sized account with it), the manager nearly cried. I'm not kidding. It was as if i were breaking up with her. I felt bad. She felt bad. We both kind of understood.
Then, I walked across the street to another big bank and presented them with one of the cashier's checks and said I'd like to open an account and make a deposit. They almost didn't seem to understand. What was this thing before them? Someone with money... to put in a bank? A deposit? Liquid funds? It didn't quite compute. They were very happy. Same with the next bank, which got an even larger deposit. The bank nearly shut down to attend to me. I think they made a documentary of the whole transaction so they'd have something to use as a learning too for employees who have never seen such a thing.
Somehow I, who is less adept financially than a piece of wood had become that rarest of things -- a person with money. And that's the problem. Nobody has money. Everybody has debt. Collectively, our debt far outweighs our cash. And the fundamental law of physics, when it comes to finances, is that cash goes to debt. Thus the crisis -- there's not enough cash and way too much debt. And our banks to some extent are merely the institutions that hold our cash and our debt. So, if, as Tony and others say, we let the market run its course, there will soon be no cash in our banks. And, like Washington Mutual, they will collapse and your checkbook and ATM card stand a pretty decent chance of becoming souvenirs of ancient times.
By the way, I'm not sure my attempt to find FDIC coverage for my little nest egg is anything more than psychological, or stupid. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation has enough assets to handle about half of the deposits it's on the line for.
So, as hard to digest as this bailout is, the calculus is pretty simple. But apparently not simple enough to be above exploiting by a political system that's become disingenuous at it's core. Instead of showing leadership by pushing Republicans to put politics aside and work towards the agreement, John "I'm In Charge Here" McCain uses the event for an almost comical stab at political theater. It would be comical if the joke weren't going to be on us. If ever you needed an example that this guy puts himself above the welfare of the country, this has been it.
McCain's been trying to exploit the situation in every way possible -- to delay his inevitable pummeling during the debates, to fog over his extreme complicity in the unchecked, trickle-down, greed-is-good, deregulating, securitizing, privatizing, bullshit brand of capitalism that got us into this -- and make himself look like a white knight. Instead he looks like a buffoon and was all but called that yesterday by those who are seriously trying to salvage this mess.
Continue reading "Election '08: A Day In The Life At The End Of The World"...
Queer Town: The Faithful Fast, Valley Business Opposes
Churches across California are pulling out the stops, according to a recent Associated Press report, by praying and fasting for the next 40 days for the passage of Proposition 8, the anti-gay marriage ballot measure. The faithful are reportedly planning to subsist on soup and juice, and then gather in San Diego for a tent revival of sorts three days before Election Day in November.
“This is not political to us," Jim Garlow, the pastor of the evangelical Skyline Church in San Diego County, told the AP. "We see it as very spiritual.”
Continue reading "Queer Town: The Faithful Fast, Valley Business Opposes"...
BY MARC COOPER
Call me naive or even delusional, but I think we can surmise the political implications of McCain's transparent campaign-suspension gimmick. I'm standing by my view that these past two weeks we have witnessed the implosion of his campaign. The American people take this catastrophic threat to their economic security far too seriously to be toyed with so blatantly by a desperate and failing McCain-Palin campaign.
Adam Nagourney and Elizabeth Bumiller say all you need to hear:
"Senator John McCain had intended to ride back into Washington on Thursday as a leader who had put aside presidential politics to help broker a solution to the financial crisis. Instead he found himself in the midst of a remarkable partisan showdown, lacking a clear public message for how to bring it to an end.
"At the bipartisan White House meeting that Mr. McCain had called for a day earlier, he sat silently for more than 40 minutes, more observer than leader, and then offered only a vague sense of where he stood, said people in the meeting.
Twelve years ago, Joe Torre was hired by the New York Yankees to manage a team that was expected to be a contender, but not necessarily the next world champions. In his first year, Torre made all the right moves, and with some dramatic hitting in the World Series against the Atlanta Braves--Yankee fans will never forget Jim Leyritz's home run in game 4--the Bronx Bombers won another championship.
Today, Joe Torre and his team have the chance to win the National League West Division and head into the playoffs. If the Arizona Diamondbacks lose today, the Dodgers will automatically clinch. If the D'Backs win and the Dodgers win, Big Blue will also clinch a playoff berth. A dramatic collapse by the Dodgers seems very unlikely, especially with Joe Torre at the helm.
The Trickle Down Economics of the Nation's Financial Crisis
This week, the Los Angeles Business Journal explains how the trickle down economics of the country's financial crisis may hurt LA...as well as some of its wealthiest citizens. Billionaire Eli Broad, who's a major shareholder of American International Group, the insurance company that the federal government wants to stabilize through its reported $700 billion bail out plan, has been particularly susceptible to the crunch, according to the newspaper.
Continue reading "The Trickle Down Economics of the Nation's Financial Crisis"...
State Considers Advertising on Amber Alerts
The Schwarzenegger administration is considering advertisements on freeway signs used for Amber Alerts and other emergencies.
The advertisements would be posted on 674 electronic roadside message boards according to the LA Times. The funds raised – estimated at millions - would go towards the financially strapped highway fund.
Continue reading "State Considers Advertising on Amber Alerts"...
Stage Raw: Don't Blame Me, I Voted for Helen Gahagan Douglas
For last weekend's New Theater Reviews plus the latest comprehensive theater listings for this coming weekend, press the READ ON tab at the bottom of this section.
The West Coast premiere of This Beautiful City, commissioned by The Civilians and co-produced by L.A.'s Center Theatre Group and New York's Vineyard Theatre, opens at the Kirk Douglas Theatre on Sunday. Visit http://centertheatregroup.org Photo by Craig Schwartz
Don't Blame Me . . .
A staged reading of Wendy Kout and Michele Willens' play, Don't Blame Me, I voted for Helen Gahagan Douglas will be held on Thursday October 2 at the Landmark, 10850 West Pico Boulevard, following a big screen broadcast of the Vice Presidential Candidates' debate starting at 6 p.m. The event is a benefit for The Nation Magazine and will be hosted by editor Katrina vanden Heuvel. A reception in the Landmark Wine Bar follows the reading.
Based on the life of the Republican actress turned progressive pol, the play studies the life of the woman who the victim of "tricky Dick" Nixon's red-baiting, anti-Semitic smear campaign during the 1950 U.S. senate campaign. Douglas refused to respond to NIxon's underhanded technniques, resulting in the end of her political career.
In 1973, as the Watergate scandal was breaking, bumper stickers began to appear in California reading "Don't Blame Me I Voted for Helen Gahagan Douglas."
The contemporary resonances of this play go without saying.
The reading features Christine Lahti and Charles Shaughnessy.
L.A. Stage Alliance has announced this year's Ovation Awards nominees
For the complete list, visit http://lastagealliance.com
To see the latest New Theater Reviews embedded in the coming weekend's comprehensive theater listings, press the Read On tab directly below.
Continue reading "Stage Raw: Don't Blame Me, I Voted for Helen Gahagan Douglas"...
Last Night: Chuck Klosterman and Spike Lee Double-Header at Book Soup
There were moments when listening to journalist Chuck Klosterman read from his debut novel, Downtown Owl, inside Book Soup felt like watching a performance from the late comedian Mitch Hedberg. It was all in the pacing, with a simple pause and a slight shift in pitch turned simple observations into one-liners that drove the crowd to riotous laughter.
In Downtown Owl, Klosterman finds beauty in the ordinary, weaving together three different experiences-- those of rock music-hating teenager Mitch, new teacher Julia and widower Horace -- of life in the fictional small town of Owl, North Dakota. As with the non-fiction pieces that have made Klosterman an icon amongst music geeks and pop culture freaks, he does this by highlighting his subjects’ eccentricities in a thoughtful fashion-- never mocking, never condescending.
Photograph by Shannon Cottrell.
The Klosterman event was part of September 23rd’s double-header at Book Soup completed by an appearance from noted director Spike Lee. Promoting his upcoming film Miracle at St. Anna and the just-released screenplay, which look at the Buffalo Soldiers of World War II Italy, Lee fielded a handful of questions prior to the book signing. These ranged from background details of the film shoot to matters of race and war to his thoughts on the Yankees. It was the Yankees questions that seemed to perk up Lee.
Prior to the event, L.A. Weekly had the opportunity to catch up with Chuck Klosterman for a few questions.
Continue reading "Last Night: Chuck Klosterman and Spike Lee Double-Header at Book Soup"...
LA Weekly Newspaper Helps Solve String of Arson Fires
Los Angeles Fire Department arson investigators were perplexed by a rash of arson fires around the neighborhood of Los Feliz in early June. The dozen or so rubbish fires were started in trashcans near bus shelters and were put out immediately by city firefighters.
Investigators caught a break later that month after a fire chief driving around Los Feliz for clues happened upon a rubbish fire slowly burning in a trashcan near Louise’s Trattoria on Los Feliz Boulevard. The culprit was nowhere to be found. However, a witness saw a man wearing a Hawaiian shirt with a copy of the LA Weekly sticking out of his back pocket leaving the scene.
Continue reading "LA Weekly Newspaper Helps Solve String of Arson Fires "...
Election '08: Postcard From The End Of The World
Rant Alert: Be warned, this is a rant.
We don't give President Bush enough credit. Seriously, we have failed to give him his proper due. Here we thought his culture, philosophies (if you can call them that), politics and policies were just wrecking the country. Turns out, they were on the verge of wrecking the entire world.
At least that's what all the smart people gathered together to figure out some way to bail us out of this current financial mess are saying. Of course, the way it's going to be bailed out is by foisting more debt on cash strapped Americans, thus ensuring that we're cash strapped for generations to come. That is, if the entire house of cards doesn't come melting down like the polar ice caps that finally show in stark relief that global warming is real, unless you're of the Palin crowd and don't believe in global warming but do believe humans once rode dinosaurs like horses.
Yes, this crisis is real and more banks will fail, just like more Manhattan-size ice floes will break off and melt into the ocean. And before you know it, nobody's going to be able to afford to visit those saddle-backed Stegasours at your Creationism Museum.
The thing is, things will get worse before they get better and nobody's saying when they'll get better, only how worse they could get if we don't do this $700 billion bailout. Which is kiss all your money goodbye, your ATM card will only be good for picking locks or food out of your teeth worse. And they might get that bad anyway. Nobody knows and that's the truth.
Sure this is about sub-prime lending and securitization and deregulation, etc., but mostly it's about culture coming home to roost. And it's a no-accountability, instant-gratification, incompetence-loving, corrupt, cronyistic, arrogant, ignorant culture that has been allowed to run wild in the Bush years.
We are all complicit. Why haven't we been marching in the streets for years?
Continue reading "Election '08: Postcard From The End Of The World"...
LA Business Journal Reports on Billboard Blight
The Los Angeles Business Journal published an article yesterday about the city’s billboard ban, which exempts itself and a few large billboard companies.
The article focuses on two lawsuits filed by two smaller billboard companies that are suing the city of Los Angeles for – among other things - granting exemptions to its 2002 billboard ban to “favored” companies. The lawsuits also challenge the city’s “unfettered right to erect new outdoor ads on its property while prohibiting competition from doing the same.”
Continue reading "LA Business Journal Reports on Billboard Blight"...
Queer Town: A Prop. 8 Town Hall Meeting at Young Israel
On Monday evening, three and a half hours after Variety reported that movie director Steven Speilberg had donated $100,000 to the "No on Prop. 8" campaign, Rabbi Elazar Muskin turned over his synagogue, Young Israel of Century City, to supporters of the anti-gay marriage ballot measure. Under Muskin's direction, according to its own web site, Young Israel "has become one of the fastest growing Orthodox synagogues in the West Coast." It was also apparently joining forces with a mostly Christian movement to ban same sex marriage in California.
Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse speaks at Young Israel of Century City synagogue on Pico Boulevard.
Continue reading "Queer Town: A Prop. 8 Town Hall Meeting at Young Israel"...
Election '08: MoDo Conjures New Obama Advisor: West Wing's President Bartlet
BY MARC COOPER
I was around a lot of gloomy Democrats today who are more or less convinced that McCain's got this thing in the bag.
They came to me looking to get cheered up because I've been writing columns to the contrary. In the end, of course, I don't know. I can only guess.
But one of my arguments or, better said, talking points is this: Yes, you can say that something is awry because Obama ought to be up 20 points in the polls. Or you can take the opposite tack, one I've been pointing out, and say: "Here we have John McCain. A long-time senator. A bona fide war hero in a time of war. Someone who has indeed showed moments of great independence from his party. And yet, he's running a couple of points behind a 47-year-old, black freshman senator whose middle name is Hussein. So, exactly who is in trouble here?"
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/21/opinion/21dowd-sorkin.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Continue reading "Election '08: MoDo Conjures New Obama Advisor: West Wing's President Bartlet"...
The sexual assault trial of fashion designer Anand Jon turned uglier today amid disclosures that the sister of prosecution background witness “Kristin S” was contacted over the weekend in North Carolina by an anonymous caller who told the sister that Kristin was missing, and who then asked the woman if she knew Kristin’s whereabouts. The female caller hung up, prompting Kristin’s parents to ask their daughter to return from Los Angeles, where she is scheduled to testify against Jon this afternoon.
Stage Raw: Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Ex-Presidents
Rave reviews this week for 43 Plays for 43 Presidents at Sacred Fools Theatre, and 9 to 5: The Musical at the Ahmanson
For these, and more, plus the latest comprehensive theater listings for this coming weekend, press the READ ON tab at the bottom of this section.
This week's New Theater Reviews include Adriano Shaplin's The Pugilist Specialist, presented by VS. Theatre Company; the Groundlings' latest offering of sketch comedy and improv , Groundlings, Your Body and You; Sacred Fools' political comedy, 43 Plays for 43 Presidents; Music Theatre of Los Angeles' production of Ragtime the Musical; Stephen Karam's dark comedy with music, Speech and Debate, about a young adult's view of older adults' hypocrisy at Blank Theatre Company; Dolly Parton and Patricia Resnick's 9 to 5: The Musical at the Ahmanson; and Tony Foster's new dreamscape play, Asleep on a Bicycle.
For last weekend's New Reviews, visit
http://www.laweekly.com/2008-09-18/stage/theater-reviews-red-scare-on-sunset-miracle-in-rwanda/
For the cover story of the opening of Joe's Garage at Open Fist Theater,
visit
http://www.laweekly.com/2008-09-18/stage/racy-against-time/
To proceed with a sneak preview of the latest New Theater Reviews, press the Read On tab directly below.
Continue reading "Stage Raw: Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Ex-Presidents"...
Queer Town: Tracking the Money for Prop. 8
While Brad Pitt's $100,000 contribution to the "No on 8" campaign made big news last week, the larger money picture for the anti-gay ballot measure doesn't look so good for opponents of Proposition 8, and may be why gay and lesbian activists are still concerned about defeating the proposed gay marriage ban.
Continue reading "Queer Town: Tracking the Money for Prop. 8"...
Over the Weekend: Beck at the Bowl, Man Man Taco Fiesta, and Anniversary of Gram Parsons' Death
I've never welcomed a Monday with more relief. Over the weekend, pre-Emmy parties on Friday and Saturday crowded Hollywood, while the actual ceremony on Sunday at the Nokia made living downtown a pain the ass for anyone like me who wasn't glued to a television. Plus, we got a shock Saturday morning when news broke of Travis Barker and Adam “DJ AM” Goldstein's tragic Learjet crash that left the two in critical condition and killed four others. Los Angeles was a mess this weekend; it's a surprise Angelenos wanted to leave the house at all. But the L.A. Weekly did, and here's what went down.
Election '08: The McCain in Spain Fails Mostly to Explain
BY MARC COOPER
I'm a bit surprised by how little coverage The Great McCain-Spain Gaffe has gotten (Well, not really that surprised given the relative insularity of the American media/political complex).
But anyway you cut it, you've got to be alarmed. McCain's campaign is now officially saying that in a phone interview earlier this week on a Miami Latino radio station, the GOP candidate did not misunderstand the question nor make any mistake when he said he would not necessarily meet with Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Zapatero.
Huh? The President of the U.S. would not receive the leader of a fellow member of NATO? Presumably because Zapatero represents a mildly left-of-center social democratic coalition that withdrew Spanish troops from Iraq?
This is pretty friggin' far out, no?
Continue reading "Election '08: The McCain in Spain Fails Mostly to Explain"...
Queer Town: New Poll Shows Voter Hesitancy To Strip Gays of Marriage Right
The Sacramento Bee reported about a new Field Poll yesterday, which showed 55 percent of Californians would oppose Proposition 8, the anti-gay marriage November ballot measure. The numbers for voters who support the ban have remained stagnant at 38 percent. Whether or not people are comfortable with gays and lesbians getting married seems to be beside the point with the new polling data. Instead, it appears people simply don't want to take away a right that's already been established.
Continue reading "Queer Town: New Poll Shows Voter Hesitancy To Strip Gays of Marriage Right "...
For the latest comprehensive theater listings for this coming weekend, press the READ ON tab at the bottom of this section.
Check back here Monday, after noon, for the latest New Theater Reviews of Adriano Shaplin's The Pugilist Specialist, presented by VS. Theatre Company; the Groundlings' latest offering of sketch comedy and improv , Groundlings, Your Body and You; Sacred Fools' political comedy, 43 Plays for 43 Presidents; Music Theatre of Los Angeles' production of Ragtime the Musical; Stephen Karam's dark comedy with music, Speech and Debate, about a young adult's view of older adults' hypocrisy at Blank Theatre Company; Dolly Parton and Patricia Resnick's 9 to 5: The Musical at the Ahmanson; and Tony Foster's new dreamscape play, Asleep on a Bicycle.
For last weekend's New Reviews, visit
http://www.laweekly.com/2008-09-18/stage/theater-reviews-red-scare-on-sunset-miracle-in-rwanda/
For the cover story of the opening of Joe's Garage at Open Fist Theater,
visit
http://www.laweekly.com/2008-09-18/stage/racy-against-time/
Dolly Parton with Tony-nominee Allison Janney, who performs in Parton's 9 to 5: The Musical opening on Saturday at the Ahmanson. The book is by Patricia Resnick. Question of the week: Will 9 to 5 -- the story of office employees challenging their boss -- cast any light on the folly of business leaders, whose decisions have led to our current economic malaise? If not, will it be a pleasant distraction? If not, will it be an unpleasant distraction? We'll know by Monday. Photo by C. Ryan Miller/Capture Imaging
On the Blume
Jill Soloway, Carrie Aizley, Maggie Rowe, Melanie Hutsell, Joanna Rubiner, and others read excerpts from the celebrated and sometimes banned children's fiction by Judy Blume. The event started started as part of a Blumesday celebration, you know the Irish thing, and it kind of evolved. It's at 8 p.m. tonight at M Bar, 1253 Vine Street in Hollywood. (323) 856-0036; $8 cover, $10 dinner minimum.
Fleck and Loh
John Fleck and Sandra Tsing Loh slide into The New LATC's Face of the World Festival with solo perfs billed Side Effects May Include. His looks at consumer society and the shreds of humanity left behind; hers spins from her hit show and new book Mother on Fire 514 S. Spring Street, Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 3 p.m. http://thenewlatc.com
For the latest New Theater Reviews and comprehensive theater listings for this coming weekend, press the READ ON tab directly below.
Los Angeles Convention Center Before and After
Last week, the Los Angeles City Council approved a deal that could lead to dozens of monster-size billboards and video displays to be mounted on the outer walls of the Los Angeles Convention Center – aimed at tens of thousands of motorists driving by one of the most congested intersections in America.
The City Council's decision grants exclusive “signage rights” to wealthy Anschutz Entertainment Group, owners of the Staples Center and major contributors to the political campaigns of several city leaders.
Continue reading "Los Angeles Convention Center Before and After"...
Last Night: Lucent Dossier Seduces the Absinthe Fairy, Turns Acrobatics into Erotics
Last night, September 17, marked the decadent premiere of Lucent Dossier’s Wednesday night residency at the Edison Bar. Deep in the dungeonesque belly of the first private power plant in downtown Los Angeles, the Vaudeville circus pranced around with feather headdresses and lace lingerie, dangling from sashes strung from the high, industrial ceilings of the spacious bar. Silent films flashed in sepia tones on cement walls while the troupe’s resident DJ –- DJ Imagika -- spun a surreal soundtrack and gorgeous dancers turned acrobatics into erotics. Lucent Dossier at the Edison is a night for voyeurs.
Click the image for slideshow.
Queer Town: Brad Pitt Challenges Hollywood on Prop. 8 Fight
This morning, Queer Town reported that wealthy folks in Los Angeles County weren't donating as much as they could to fight Proposition 8. Karen Ocamb, news editor of In and Frontiers magazines, also wrote a top notch story about A-list gays missing from action. But now actor Brad Pitt may have changed the course of that apathy with a $100,000 contribution to defeat the anti-gay marriage ballot measure.
Continue reading "Queer Town: Brad Pitt Challenges Hollywood on Prop. 8 Fight"...
For the latest New Theater Reviews press the READ ON tab at the bottom of this section and for comprehensive theater listings for this coming weekend, press the READ ON tab at the bottom of this section.
Speech and Debate opens at Blank Theater Company tomorrow night. 6500 Santa Monica Boulevard. http://theblank.com Photo by Rick Baumgartner
Speech & Debate
Ran into a colleague during intermission of The House of Blue Leaves on Sunday, who was so angry at me, he couldn't even speak at first. Then came his words “hurt” and “personally wounded” -- by something I had written.
I just couldn't imagine what had aroused such upset, so he spent the entire intermission telling me.
It was the following 30-word explanation, that ran in the letters section: “Both reviewer and editor visited Phelps' Web site before the review ran. Both agree that the site is appalling, which is why Provenzano employed it as a form of deliberate exaggeration.”
To back up for a moment, the explanation is in response to C. Pearson's letter to the editor
http://www.laweekly.com/2008-09-11/news/letters/
complaining about wording used by critic Tom Provenzano in his review of Sissystrata at the Celebration Theater.
http://www.laweekly.com/2008-08-28/calendar/sissystrata/
In that review, Provenzano, completely put off by the gay stereotypes delivered through campiness, wrote, “Lip-synching drag numbers and lisping limp-wristed stereotypes, worthy of Fred Phelps' slogan "God hates fags," abound in this self-mocking production.”
In his earnest and thoughtful letter, cast member C. Pearson presumed that both Provenzano and I (the section editor) had never visited Phelps' outrageously homophobic website, and that therefore we might be excused on the grounds of ignorance rather than charged with malice.
Hence, my response. And hence, the grilling I received in the beautiful new lobby of the Mark Taper Forum.
“There is no way that Phelps' website should EVER be used as joke,” Jack said – he's now named Jack for the purpose of this blog. "Here was your chance to apologize, to say, 'Yes, we were wrong, we crossed a line.' Obama is teaching all of us that it's okay to apologize.'”
I looked into his eyes; he was on fire with passion – a passion I couldn't help but respect. At the same time, his condescension was so maddening, I thought to myself, “Please, don't say more about the lessons Obama is teaching us. I'm already working the phone banks for Obama. Please don't to push me to vote for McCain.”
The point about an apology is that you first have to believe that there is something to apologize for.
Provenzano and I had discussed his reference in an email correspondence. I sent him Pearson's letter with my proposed response. Interestingly, his first reaction was profound remorse. “Pearson's right,” Provenzano wrote me. “I need to apologize.” I dutifully submitted his words to the paper's managing editor, who runs the letters section.
An hour later, Provenzano had re-thought his position. He wrote back that he was so offended by the production's campy treatment of limp wrists, and the gay self-loathing it expressed in the guise of parody, he felt that only an allusion as horrific as Phelps' website would do justice to his own fury.
Provenzano is a gay man who has lost a partner to AIDS, which, in my view, gives him the right to interpret homophobia through the lens of his own experiences, and to express his anger with whatever allusions he finds appropriate. The other gulf of misunderstanding comes from what Jack took as a literal interpretation (“worthy of Fred Phelps' Web site – that's what he wrote!”) and what I read as a euphemistic one.
I hope, after the hypocritical shrieking in the McCain camp over Obama's quip about putting lipstick on a pig – a joke that's been used by McCain and Dick Cheney -- that we're not returning to an era of endless apologies for perceived and invented slights. Such apologies are meaningless, anyway. In a 1986 episode of CNN's Crossfire, Frank Zappa challenged the policy of placing warning labels on rock music CDs and videos that contain offensive words. “They're just words,” Zappa kept repeating. Words never killed anybody.”
That's not entirely true. Words can stir up a hatred that incites violence. Words can lead soldiers into war, to do things they might otherwise never have done. But there's a fine line between sensitivity and censorship, even self-censorship. That's the line we're talking about here. Provenzano's allusion is upsetting. It was meant to be, because he was upset. Sometimes that's what words are for.
For more on this, visit http://thewickedstage.blogspot.com/2008/09/timely-tips.html
For the latest New Theater Reviews and comprehensive theater listings for this coming weekend, press the READ ON tab directly below.
LAPD Chief Bratton Wants 4 Officers 86'ed for May Day Screw Up
More than a year later, Los Angeles Police Department Chief Bill Bratton has offered his suggestions for disciplining 15 officers who were involved in the May Day fiasco in 2007, which saw groups of police officers swinging at, and connecting with, a mostly peaceful crowd at a demonstration in MacArthur Park. At a Police Commission meeting, Bratton said he wants four of those 15 officers to be fired.
Continue reading "LAPD Chief Bratton Wants 4 Officers 86'ed for May Day Screw Up"...
Queer Town: Gay Marriage Supporters Behind in Fund Raising
Yesterday, the "No on 8" campaign sent out an urgent email to their supporters asking for $200,000 in the next 48 hours, and with good reason.
According to the most recent campaign contribution reports from the California Secretary of State, supporters of the anti-gay marriage November ballot measure have raised $16.2 million in their effort to pass Proposition 8. Opponents have brought in $10.8 million, which is still a sizable chunk of money.
But Dale Kelly Bankhead, who signed the email as campaign manager of "No On 8," writes, "We must match what is raised dollar for dollar with the right wing; if we do not, we are at serious risk of losing this November."
Continue reading "Queer Town: Gay Marriage Supporters Behind in Fund Raising"...
Thanks, Tim Wise, whoever you are.
White Privilege, White Entitlement and the 2008 Election
By Tim Wise /
BuzzFlash / 13 September 2008
[Tim Wise is the author of White Like Me (Soft Skull, 2005, revised
2008), and of Speaking Treason Fluently, published this month, also by
Soft Skull.]
For those who still can't grasp the concept of white privilege, or those who
are constantly looking for some easy-to-understand examples of it,
perhaps this list will help.
White privilege is when you can get pregnant at seventeen like Bristol
Palin and everyone is quick to insist that your life and that of your
family is a personal matter, and that no one has a right to judge you
or your parents, because "every family has challenges," even as black
and Latino families with similar "challenges" are regularly typified as
irresponsible, pathological and arbiters of social decay.
White privilege is when you can call yourself a "fuckin' redneck, like
Bristol Palin's boyfriend does, and talk about how if anyone messes
with you, you'll "kick their fuckin' ass," and talk about how you like
to "shoot shit" for fun, and still be viewed as a responsible,
all-American boy (and a great son-in-law to be) rather than a thug.
White privilege is when you can attend four different colleges in six
years like Sarah Palin did (one of which you basically failed out of,
then returned to after making up some coursework at a community
college), and no one questions your intelligence or commitment t
achievement, whereas a person of color who did this would be viewed as
unfit for college, and probably someone who only got in in the first
place because of affirmative action.
White privilege is when you can claim that being mayor of a town
smaller than most medium-sized colleges, and then Governor of a state
with about the same number of people as the lower fifth of the island
of Manhattan, makes you ready to potentially be president, and people
don't all die with laughter, while being a black U.S.
Senator, two-term state Senator, and constitutional law scholar, means
you're "untested."
White privilege is being able to say that you support the words "under
God" in the pledge of allegiance because "if it was good enough for the
founding fathers, it's good enough for me," and not be immediately
disqualified from holding office--since, after all, the pledge was
written in the late 1800s and the "under God" part wasn't added until
the 1950s--while believing that reading accused criminals and
terrorists their rights (because the Constitution, which you
used to teach at a prestigious law school requires it), is a dangerous
and silly idea only supported by mushy liberals.
White privilege is being able to be a gun enthusiast and not make
people immediately scared of you.
White privilege is being able to have a husband who was a member of an extremist political party that wants your state to secede from the Union, and whose motto was "Alaska first," and no one questions your patriotism or that of your family,
while if you're black and your spouse merely fails to come to a 9/11
memorial so she can be home with her kids on the first day of school,
people immediately think she's being disrespectful.
White privilege is being able to make fun of community organizers and
the work they do--like, among other things, fight for the right of
women to vote, or for civil rights, or the 8-hour workday, or an end to
child labor--and people think you're being pithy and tough, but if you
merely question the experience of a small town mayor and 18-month
governor with no foreign policy expertise beyond a class she took in
college--you're somehow being mean, or even sexist.
White privilege is being able to convince white women who don't even
agree with you on any substantive issue to vote for you and your
running mate anyway, because all of a sudden your presence on the
ticket has inspired confidence in these same white women, and made them
give your party a "second look."
White privilege is being able to fire people who didn't support your
political campaigns and not be accused of abusing your power or being a
typical politician who engages in favoritism, while being black and
merely knowing some folks from the old-line political machines in
Chicago means you must be corrupt.
White privilege is being able to attend churches over the years whose
pastors say that people who voted for John Kerry or merely criticize
George W. Bush are going to hell, and that the U.S. is an explicitly
Christian nation and the job of Christians is to bring Christian
theological principles into government, and who bring in speakers who
say the conflict in the Middle East is God's punishment on Jews for
rejecting Jesus, and everyone can still think you're just a good
church-going Christian, but if you're black and friends with a black
pastor who has noted (as have Colin Powell and the U.S. Department of
Defense) that terrorist attacks are often the result of U.S. foreign
policy and who talks about the history of racism and its effect on
black people, you're an extremist who probably hates America.
White privilege is not knowing what the Bush Doctrine is when asked by
a reporter, and then people get angry at the reporter for asking you
such a "trick question," while being black and merely refusing to give
one-word answers to the queries of Bill O'Reilly means you're dodging
the question, or trying to seem overly intellectual and nuanced.
White privilege is being able to claim your experience as a POW has
anything at all to do with your fitness for president, while being
black and experiencing racism is, as Sarah Palin has referred to it, a
"light" burden.
And finally, white privilege is the only thing that could possibly
allow someone to become president when he has voted with George W. Bush
90 percent of the time, even as unemployment is skyrocketing, people
are losing their homes, inflation is rising, and the U.S. is
increasingly isolated from world opinion, just because white voters
aren't sure about that whole "change" thing. You know, it's just too
vague and ill-defined, unlike, say, four more years of the same, which
is very concrete and certain.
Grim Sleeper Serial Killer Website Makes its Debut
Since the LA Weekly broke the news in late August that a serial killer is operating in South Los Angeles a lot of things have transpired.
Last week, Los Angeles Police Department detectives held a press conference asking for the public’s help in finding the serial killer believed to be responsible for at least 11 murders over a 23-year span. DNA and ballistics matching have linked the killer, dubbed the Grim Sleeper by the LA Weekly because he took a 13-year break before bizarrely resuming his slayings, to 10 women and one man killed almost exclusively along a section of Western Avenue.
The week before, the Los Angeles City Council voted to reward $200,000 to any person who supplies information leading to his arrest and conviction. In addition, the council approved a record-high $500,000 if the clues lead to more than one conviction, such as with an accomplice.
Continue reading "Grim Sleeper Serial Killer Website Makes its Debut"...
"Valley Vote" and the "All About Me Mayor"
I guess they really do read LA Weekly in the San Fernando Valley. Monday night, Weekly writer Patrick McDonald was covering a meeting of Valley Vote, which spearheaded the Valley secession movement in 2001-02 and is still a highly active voice in questioning the leadership at Los Angeles City Hall.
After Wilshire-area resident Jack Humphreville spoke to the group about his concerns over the Department of Water and Power, which has enacted very steep rate hikes, Humphreville pointed out McDonald and said, "That's Patrick McDonald of the LA Weekly. He's the guy who wrote the piece about the mayor."
How did this audience react to McDonald, whose story and sidebar painted a fairly shocking picture of what Antonio Villaraigosa does with his "16-hour" days? The audience members at Valley Vote erupted in applause.
Schwarzenegger may make history with a budget veto
Staffers to the governor are giving media outlets strong indications that Arnold Schwarzenegger will tonight go on the air to announce that he is vetoing the California state budget — which was approved weeks late by Sacramento legislators — because it is filled with accounting tricks and contains the seeds of even more overspending in 2009 and 2010.
If the governor issues a budget veto, it will be a historic first in California. It will also be a huge embarrassment to an extremely unpopular legislature (its approval rating has sunk to very low double-digits) led by Assembly Speaker Karen Bass of Los Angeles and Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata of the Bay Area.
It's also a big mark against Schwarzenegger, who failed to bring two long-warring political parties in Sacramento to agreement when he had the chance much earlier this year. You can thank a perfect storm — of ineptitude.
Continue reading "Schwarzenegger may make history with a budget veto"...
Election '08: Happy Days Are Here Again!
BY MARC COOPER
Let's see Lehman Brothers goes bust, Merrill Lynch auctions itself off to B of A, WaMu circles the drain along with countless other banks, Wall Street itself is in the balance and with it the entire global economy teeters on the abyss. Other than that...
Alan Greenspan, former Fed Chief, libertarian economist and general darling of the corporate class, calls it " a once-in-a-century" financial crisis. What a worry wort.
Maybe it's all in his head, like Phil Gramm told us. Or maybe it's because Greenspan is married to NBC's Andrea Mitchell and he's really a sock puppet for the Angry Left Media. After all, Comrade Greenspan is now publicly warning against the McCain-Palin-Bush tax plan saying he is "not in favor of financing tax cuts with borrowed money."
What a wuss.
I say we go for it. These seem like perfect times to renew tax cuts for billionaires and big corporations -- provided there are any left in solvency by the end of the month. This seems like a great time to cut back the safety net and other federal entitlements and let the masses figure their own way out of the coming crash. Who needs Big Government when you have the right economic and political leadership at the helm, right? I say we do away with unemployment insurance altogether while we're at it. Give the American People the chance to show their real grit and gumption. Maybe they can each sell off one of their nine houses. Or marry an alcohol distributor heiress, right?
Continue reading "Election '08: Happy Days Are Here Again!"...
Queer Town: Pro-Gay Marriage Fund Raiser at Ultra Suede
It was a quiet early evening in West Hollywood this past Saturday--few people were walking the strip on Santa Monica Boulevard, the Abbey wasn't jammed, and the house music wasn't pounding away. But a little after 8 p.m., a hundred or so gays and lesbians met up at Ultra Suede on Robertson Boulevard to raise money to fight Proposition 8, the anti-gay marriage November ballot measure.
The event was called "You May Kiss The...", and it was hosted by top promoters in gay and lesbian nightlife: Tom Whitman, Fuse Events, and TigerHeat. The Los Angeles Gay & Lesbian Center's Young Professionals Council also helped organized the fund raiser, which hoped to draw a mixed, gay and lesbian crowd. Bruce Vilanch, Jai Rodriguez, and others performed, and donations ranged between $30 to $25.
Jai Rodriguez, left, chats with one of the only legally married couples who attended the fund raiser at Ultra Suede on Saturday night.
Continue reading "Queer Town: Pro-Gay Marriage Fund Raiser at Ultra Suede"...
Stage Raw: Underestimating Public Intelligence
For the latest New Theater Reviews press the READ ON tab at the bottom of this section. New Reviews include Chazz Palminteri's hit Broadway memoir, A Bronx Tale, at the Wadsworth; John Guare's farce The House of Blue Leaves at the Taper; John Strand and Dennis McCarthy's new musical farce, The Italian Straw Hat, first presented as a workshop at SCR's Pacific Playwrights Festival two years ago, and now being fully staged at the Costa Mesa theater; Leslie Lewis' solo show Miracle in Rwanda, at LATCl Ian McDonald's new Lewis Carroll-esque fantasia, The Caucus Race, at The Complex; Itamar Moses' play, The Four of Us, presented by Firefly and VS. theater companies at the Elephant Lab; Charles Busch's '50s farce, Red Scare on Sunset at the Attic; local wit Tom Jacobson's latest, The Friendly Hour, at Road Theatre Company; Laurence Juber, Hope Juber, and Ellen Guylas new rock musical about moms and the PTA, It's the Houswives! at Whitefire Theatre; and Inside Private Lives, the interactive bio-drama spun from historical characters, now at the Fremont Center Theater.
Also, for comprehensive theater listings for this coming weekend, press the READ ON tab at the bottom of this section.
The Friendly Hour, Tom Jacobson's new play now being performed at Road Theatre Company. Photo by Matt Kaiser
Underestimating Public Intelligence
I found myself last week in the inverted position (for an arts writer) of being interviewed for my play that's just now going into rehearsals in New York. The Abingdon Theatre Company is opening its new season with two plays by theater critics -- Robert Brustein, once regarded as "the dean" of American drama critics, has a new play about Shakespeare, The English Channel, opening this week, followed by a production of my noirish L.A. saga about human trafficking, Beachwood Drive.
This caught the attention of Back Stage's Leonard Jacobs.
http://www.backstage.com/bso/news_reviews/features/feature_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=10038482
He remarked, without impudence, about how strange it must feel to walk among the dinosaurs. He was referring to anybody still writing for the print media in general, and theater critics in particular.
Later that week, I saw Tom Jacobson's new play The Friendly Hour at the Road Theatre Company and spoke with an L.A. Times reporter at intermission, who recalled nostalgically the days when her editors goaded her to dig beneath a story to expose what nobody else knew about. Now, she said, they urge her to find as much puff as possible for blogs.
The exchange brings to mind Henry Louis Mencken's adage that "Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public." Mencken died in 1956. Today, he might take those word back: Our print media seems to be accomplishing that dubious achievement.
Jacobson's play tracks the lives and activities of a women's club in South Dakota, from the late '30s through 2007 -- sort of like a extended, rural version of Vanities, but Jacobson follows his women well into their dotage, which is where it gets to be so heart-wrenching, as they ponder the implication of their significance and insignificance in the larger scheme of things.
What is a the meaning behind the growing obsolesence of a club, or an activity, or a newspaper, or a theater, that provides a core purpose for such a long time.
I suspect that there remains a large hunger for the qualities that the best journalism and the best theater offer: reflectiveness, thoughtfulness, perspective, wisdom, and context, or there wouldn't be so much angst over their misperceived demise. Many stage blogs serve or provoke exactly those purposes (for a sampling, start with Rob Kendt's http://thewickedstage.blogspot.com . Kendt lists some good blogs within his own, and "context" is the prevailing aspect of Jacobson's beautiful play.
All of those qualities will prevail, in different forms, online or off, onstage or off, so long as we remain human.
Ovations
L.A. Stage Alliance announces its Ovations nominees September 22, 7 p.m. The event will be hosted by Ebony Repertory Theatre at the The Nate Holden Performing Arts Center, 4718 West Washington Boulevard in Los Angeles. Rsvp to
http://events@lastagealliance.com
For the latest New Theater Reviews and comprehensive theater listings for this coming weekend, press the READ ON tab directly below.
Continue reading "Stage Raw: Underestimating Public Intelligence"...
Fiestas Patrias are here! Ahoo-aaahh!!!
It may be a typical Monday for many in Southern California but for millions there and across the U.S. families are preparing to celebrate fiestas patrias, the season of Independence Day celebrations for Latin American countries that begins tonight with the "Grito," or The Yell, of Mexican Independence. The ritual marks the beginning of the long war that Mexicans waged against Spanish rule beginning on 16 September, 1810.
Here in Mexico, it's Monday and the streets of the Centro Historico are already packed with people and vendors selling every imaginable kind of item with the tricolor of the Mexican national flag. On Sunday night at the sparkling Zocalo it was almost as if the hour of the "Grito" had already arrived. The plaza and the surrounding cantinas were alight with all the glorious desmadre of Mexican partying, in the form of drumming and party foam and street food-eating and firework-popping and cartoony Zapata mustaches.
The country like the world at large may in a state of social decay, but bad times have never been a hindrance to the high ritual of the fiesta in Mexico. And on the actual holiday, Tuesday, the citizenry comes together to face a national hangover, felt, painfully yet bravely, across the Republic and beyond.
Over the Weekend: Pee-wee's Big Adventure at Hollywood Forever Cemetery, Paul Reubens Unveils Plans for Next Herman Film
Before there was Beetle Juice, Batman or Edward Scissor Hands, there was Pee-wee Herman. Yes, the original guy you didn’t want to get mixed up with. The loner. The rebel. In 1985, Pee-wee's Big Adventure premiered at Grauman's Chinese Theatre and marked the breakthrough collaboration for director Tim Burton and composer Danny Elfman. It also cemented Paul Reubens' status as the eternal man-child of a million catch phrases.
This last weekend in Hollywood, Pee-wee's Big Adventure returned to the big screen, this time against a mausoleum wall in a graveyard. For the last four years, hordes of Angelenos have ritualistically descended upon the Hollywood Forever Cemetery to watch Pee-wee's Big Adventure as part of Cinespia – the ultimate L.A. summer screening series founded by John Wyatt.
David Foster Wallace Friend John Seery Remembers the Late Writer
The news of David Foster Wallace's apparent suicide this weekend here in Southern California -- he was found in his Claremont home Friday night by his wife Karen Green -- has prompted tributes all over the web. One of the most unusual and intimate portraits comes from Pomona College political theory professor and author John Seery, who writes on The Huffington Post that he was a longtime workout partner of Wallace's. "I didn't dare divulge that fact to anyone in the vicinity," Seery writes. "He called himself agoraphobic. I didn't want a bunch of people descending upon the gym. It was thus I had the privilege of getting to know him in a quiet space, while stretching and doing sit-ups, and talking and talking between sets."
Seery also describes "a creepy-funny David Foster Wallacesque moment, something weird you'd read about in one of his essays -- yet there he was in person, in the flesh, while it happened."
Continue reading "David Foster Wallace Friend John Seery Remembers the Late Writer"...
Seth MacFarlane + YouTube: Master of Parody Launches Cavalcade Web Series
Los Angeles premiere parties are full of perks like free cocktails, irreverent celebrity commentary and, if you're lucky, a few laughs and plenty of photo opportunities. Wednesday September 10 marked the debut of Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane's new Web series, Seth MacFarlane's Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy, a 10-part independent series of YouTube shorts created exclusively for Internet consumption.
Seth MacFarlane introduced himself to the crowd as "just another hockey mom."
The night prior to the debut, L.A. Weekly stopped by the Cavalcade premiere and MRC (Media Rights Capital) bash at Palihouse in West Hollywood and not since childhood have I based the success of a party on the amount of gooey cupcake frosting stuck underneath my fingernails the next morning. Let's just say, it was good times had by all. Joined by Jonah Hill (Superbad), Seth Green (Family Guy), Ken Davitian (Borat), Seth Morris (FunnyorDie.com) and MacFarlane, we gorged on gourmet cupcakes and tapped the open bar while enjoying a night of animated pop culture parody.
Later we caught up with the comedic crew and asked, "What is the funniest or weirdest YouTube video you've seen recently?"
Here are some of their answers.
Continue reading "Seth MacFarlane + YouTube: Master of Parody Launches Cavalcade Web Series "...
Goddesses & Doormats: Anand Jon’s Rape Trial Begins
“I am my own god and I get whatever I want,” fashion designer Anand Jon is quoted in court documents as telling one of his alleged rape victims. Another girl was a 16-year-old virgin and home-schooled Mormon who, in 2003, was taking her first tentative step into secular society. She claims Jon, 34, whose full name is Anand Jon Alexander, welcomed her to that society by sodomizing her until she bled.
Continue reading "Goddesses & Doormats: Anand Jon’s Rape Trial Begins "...
Warning, this is a rant.
I can't help myself. I'd like to ignore Sarah Palin, but I can't. The Palin factor is just too mind-boggling and too scary. Her popularity continues to drive McCain's presidential bid from moribund to vital to frighteningly possible. She's like a trick mirror in which America can only see the illusion of a plucky, attractive, god-fearing hockey mom.
But that image is a lie. This mirror has two faces and the other one is of an extremist, a liar, an incompetent ignoramus who is so unprepared to be a 72-year-old's heartbeat away from running this country that electing Palin-McCain takes on catastrophic consequences for anyone paying attention. And here I owe my sincerest apologies to Charlie Gibson, who did as best as he could to expose this illusion. But what can you do to engage a robot? She came off in Gibson's interview like the Stepford VP.
In the face of Gibson's probing about the Bush doctrine, what she'd do if Israel decided to bomb Iran, about Russia, about the fact that she's never met any foreign leaders or even been out of the country for all intents and purposes, Palin answered like a doll whose string gets pulled and can only repeat the same nonsensical-to-terrifying answers. The manufacturing of Sarah Palin is intended to perpetrate the grand illusion that McCain's chose a refreshing, no-nonsense, down-home outsider -- someone just like you and me, darn it -- and didn't make a devastating mistake and misjudgment.
It's a cynical ploy and it appears to be getting rewarded. Recent polls show whites and rural voters running over to the Palin-McCain ticket in droves, driven by some kind of terrifying cultural affinity for small-mindedness and reactionary ideology, philosophy and thought. Is this country not in ruin enough after seven years of this?
What she says about this country's electorate is the most frightening thing of all. As she hewed closely -- or even more extremely than the Bushies themselves -- to the Bush administration's perspective on the world, and seems to be getting rewarded in spiking polls and frightening, visceral adulation for it, it's as if the past seven years never happened.
At this point, I can't blame anybody, not Charlie Gibson, Obama, the Dems -- nobody but we are to blame for what seems like a slow moving tragedy, a political hurricane Ike, in process.
The intellectual laziness of this country baffles and depresses. One would hope we wake up from this long, national nightmare perpetrated by Karl Rove and perpetuated by our own stupidity and fear.
LAPD Asks for Public’s Help in Solving Grim Sleeper Murders
Los Angeles Police Department detectives held a press conference today asking for the public’s help in finding a serial killer believed to be responsible for at least 11 murders in South Los Angeles over a 23-year span.
Dubbed the Grim Sleeper by the LA Weekly, which broke the news that he is still operating in the area, the murderer left the bodies of 10 women and one man almost exclusively along a section of Western Avenue.
“It is the LAPD’s top priority,” said LAPD Deputy Chief Charlie Beck who was flanked by close to a dozen detectives.
LAPD Deputy Chief Charlie Beck asks for the public's help in solving Grim Sleeper murders.
Continue reading "LAPD Asks for Public’s Help in Solving Grim Sleeper Murders"...
Stage Raw: A New Era, or Just Another Robinsons?
For this week's Theater Feature on Agamemnon at the Getty Villa, visit http://www.laweekly.com/2008-09-11/stage/agamemnon-at-the-getty-villa/
For the latest New Theater Reviews and comprehensive theater listings for this weekend, press the READ ON tab at the bottom of this section.
Just Another Robinsons?
John Guare's 1971 off-Broadway hit farce, The House of Blue Leaves – remounted on Broadway in 1986 -- opens to the press on Sunday, launching the remodeled Mark Taper Foum's “Act II” campaign, centering on the theater's impressive architectural makeover. Floors have been lowered, a downstairs lobby and new elevators added, restrooms, lobby space and the back-stage door expanded. The play is set during the Pope's visit to New York in 1965. In the context of the long dormant Taper's reopening, and all the symbolism that engenders, is the staging of a 1971 comedy about domestic cruelty and deferred artistic dreams really ushering in new era for L.A. theater? Or is it, as one less than enthralled member of the local stage community put it, “like the opening of another Robinsons”? . Visit www.taperahmanson.org Photo by Craig Schwartz
Face of the World
The New LATC's second annual Face of the World Festival opens this weekend with Leslie Lewis Sword's Miracle in Rwanda, the story of Immaculee Llibagiza, surivor of the 1994 Rwandan genocide. The other weekend opening at the same venue is Mexico's solo performer Ofelia Medina, and her musical presentation, Intimante -- Rosario de Chiapas, based on the book of poems “Poesia No Eres Tu,” by Rosario Castellanos. English supertitles are provided for Spanish-language performance. Her performance is co-sponsored by the University of Guadalajara. For more information visit www.thenewlatc.com
Stripping for Art and Health
Bruce Vilanch, Leslie Jordan and Dita Von Teese join more than 100 professional dancers who will strut their stuff on Sunday night, starting at 8 p.m., in Sunset Strips, a “provocative, burlesque style dance production” to benefit AIDS Project Los Angeles and The Actors Fund. Boulevard3, 6523 West Sunset Blvd. in Hollywood. www.apla.org and www.actorsfund.org.
Check back here after Monday, noon, for the latest New Theater Reviews of: Chazz Palminteri's hit Broadway memoir, A Bronx Tale, at the Wadsworth; John Guare's farce The House of Blue Leaves at the Taper; John Strand and Dennis McCarthy's new musical farce, The Italian Straw Hat, first presented as a workshop at SCR's Pacific Playwrights Festival two years ago, and now being fully staged at the Costa Mesa theater; Leslie Lewis' solo show Miracle in Rwanda, at LATCl Ian McDonald's new Lewis Carroll-esque fantasia, The Caucus Race, at The Complex; Itamar Moses' play, The Four of Us, presented by Firefly and VS. theater companies at the Elephant Lab; Charles Busch's '50s farce, Red Scare on Sunset at the Attic; local wit Tom Jacobson's latest, The Friendly Hour, at Road Theatre Company; Laurence Juber, Hope Juber, and Ellen Guylas new rock musical about moms and the PTA, It's the Houswives! at Whitefire Theatre; and Inside Private Lives, the interactive bio-drama spun from historical characters, now at the Fremont Center Theater.
For this week's comprehensive theater listings, press the READ ON tab directly below
Continue reading "Stage Raw: A New Era, or Just Another Robinsons?"...
Fall-Time Yuk-Fest: Time Travel With Patton Oswalt and Comedy's Finest
Deep in the heart of Echo Park, surrounded by taco trucks and fruit vendors, cash-only dive bars and my ex-boyfriends, there exists a Time Travel Mart off Sunset Boulevard that supplies an array of collectibles one might need (or want) from the past or future; collectibles like human emotion chips for robots, Ricky Martin lunch boxes, caveman candy, robot milk, dinosaur eggs, time machine parts, bottled time, dead languages and Pogs. The store is one-stop shopping for all your nerdy needs. But forget hoverboards and flux capacitors, the Echo Park Time Travel Mart serves a greater purpose as the home for 826LA, a non-profit tutoring organization dedicated to impacting the lives of young students by encouraging them to write creatively.
Wednesday night, while most Angelenos were glued to their TVs watching the newest Sons of Anarchy episode, 826LA welcomed comedy's finest performers to the Avalon theater in Hollywood for a night of stand-up at the Fall-Time Yuk-Fest, with all proceeds going to the organization's free student tutoring. Those who took the stage included Patton Oswalt (who recently gave the Weekly a hard time on Indie 103.1 for our "least-creepy" Grim Sleeper serial killer name), Dana Gould, Janeane Garofalo, Jimmy Pardo, Al Madrigal, Sire, Tim & Eric (of Adult Swim's Awesome Show, Great Job!), Bill Burr, and Bob Moore (complete with his tight-rope walking dogs).
The Avalon was packed so while the audience took to the bar and their seats, I crashed the green room and snagged some one-on-one time with the performers. And while we were all unanimous in our support of youth education and creative writing, there was one burning question I was dying to ask the comedians: When it comes to time travel supplies, which would be the coolest to own and why?
Patton Oswalt: "The coolest time travel supply you could get would be, like, when you go to travel stores and they have those little racks of spices you take with you to travel, but instead they give you a tackle box full of the world's currencies for different time periods so wherever you are, you're like, 'Hold on. We need Confederate Bills. We're in Atlanta in 1863.' It should be called 'Wherever you go, you're a millionaire.' That's what the thing would be. You'd have the world's currencies and history's currencies."
Dana Gould:"The coolest time travel supplies would be lightweight togs, like in the 1700s. That, and lightweight flouncy polyester would be great. By the way, interesting fact, do you know how we know that no one will ever invent a time machine? Because they have yet to come back and tell us. If somebody in 2478 invents a time machine they would have come back... if you invented a time machine, you'd get so laid. You'd go to every decade. You'd go all the way through."
Jimmy Pardo: "It would have to be a space pack, although I don't know if that would make you time travel; it would just get you across the street faster. For me, time travel is all about going into the future. I want to see what's happening on 30 Rock next season. If I'm going back [in time], I'm going back to punch some guys in junior high. Or I'm going to go back and bring my Tonight Show set and show them that and go, 'Look what I'm about to be. Wanna make fun of me now? Wanna mock me now?'"
Janeane Garofalo: "A jet pack. We were supposed to have jet packs by now. I know there are jet packs but they only lift a person temporarily a little bit high and then it's a bust. So I guess an improved jet pack."
826LA is located at 1714 W. Sunset Boulevard in Echo Park. For more information on the organization and the Echo Park Time Travel Mart check out 826la.org. Check out L.A. Weekly's slideshow from the Yuk-Fest here.
Photo credit: Shannon Cottrell
Sarah Palin Action Figures, Get 'Em While They're Out of Ammo!
While fumbling through the endless blogs and offbeat news the Internet has to offer, every so often a person comes across nutty online stores that specialize in things like Goldfish tiaras or Mercury Retrograde Spray. Any excuse to bust out the credit card, right? Well, today I found a true gem: Sarah Palin action figures. The Palin figures are made by Herobuilders.com, an online store that specializes in making custom toys and action figures. And man, they really outdid themselves this time. Not only did the company create the "Sarah Palin School Girl" and "Sarah Palin Super Hero Action Figure," but its 2008 collection also includes action figures of Elliott Spitzer, John McCain, John Edwards and a "Beach Blanket Obama."
Further Reading: Stage Raw: In Defense of Sarah Palin
Further Reading: Sarah Palin's Office Decor & Her Bearskin Rug
Further Reading: You'll Never Be Vice President: A Letter to My Daughter, the Community Organizer
Action figure images after the jump...
Continue reading "Sarah Palin Action Figures, Get 'Em While They're Out of Ammo!"...
Weekly writer Patrick McDonald has a great scoop today about Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's purported "16-hour" work days, which are filled with ceremonies, PR events and travel -- including a recent session in which the "All About Me Mayor" posed for a wax statue of himself for Madame Tussaud's.
We scoured the Internet looking for a good shot of the mayor in a wax-like pose, but we have to admit that today's Los Angeles Times photo, in a blog by Shelby Grad, is even better.
Election '08: Remembering Kissinger and the Original September 11th
BY MARC COOPER
I'll leave the exploitation of 9/11 to the professional pols. The date -- and its surrounding commemoration -- has become about as meaningless as Thanksgiving, except you don't get a day off from school or work.
We all know we are not an iota safer than we were seven years ago. Quite to the contrary. Our global position continues to degrade and everyday we remain as an occupier in an Arab nation we merely generate that many more determined enemies. The degradation of our economy is also a threat to our national security. Ditto the irrational stretch of our military. Equally diseased: our respect for our own constitution and for the humanitarian values we like to think are embodied in the American ideal.
As many of you know, I prefer to remember the original September 11th. The CIA-backed Chilean coup of 35 years ago that installed one of the most barbaric military dictatorships of modern times and that I was fortunate enough to survive. You can lay a great measure of the responsibility for that dictatorship at the well-heeled feet of Henry A. Kissinger. Who, unfortunately, still walks among us impugn.
Almost totally un-remarked by a media that prefers pigs-with-lipstick stories, a new set of telephone transcripts of some of Kissinger's calls at the time have just been declassified and released to the public. My good bud, Peter Kornbluh, who works at the National Security Archive works full time assembling and analyzing these sort of documents. He has a new story out detailing --as never before-- the depth of Kissinger's involvement in that bloody, butcherous coup of 1973.
Continue reading "Election '08: Remembering Kissinger and the Original September 11th"...
In the effort to go green, Texas appears to be kicking the crap out of California.
After a summer that saw sewage spill after sewage spill mar beaches across L.A. County, it's refreshing to see that at least one city in America has its shit together. Yesterday, San Antonio, Texas announced plans to turn the city's annual 140,000 ton load of "biosolids" -- i.e. human feces -- into natural gas, which then will be used to generate green power for the city.
Under the new plan 90 percent of all materials flushed down sinks and toilets in San Antonio will converted to either natural gas or fertilizer, while water will be reclaimed for irrigation.
The move comes shortly after Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens announced plans to build a $10 billion wind farm in the Texas panhandle -- the largest wind energy effort in the world.
California utilities, meanwhile, under the gun to meet strict green energy mandates by 2010, are countering by proposing importing energy from Arizona by putting hundreds of miles of transmission lines through Imperial Valley farmland and through the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park. And Los Angeles, despite impending water shortages and the aforementioned sewage spills, doesn't appear anywhere near instituting its proposed "toilet-to-tap" water recycling program.
Who would have thought California would be lagging behind redder than red state Texas in its environmental policy?
Green and red makes...brown. How fitting.
Stage Raw: In Defense of Sarah Palin
For this week's Theater Feature on Agamemnon at the Getty Villa, visit http://www.laweekly.com/2008-09-11/stage/agamemnon-at-the-getty-villa/
For the latest New Theater Reviews and comprehensive theater listings for this coming week, press the READ ON tab at the bottom of this section.
Chazz Palminteri's Broadway-hit memoir A Bronx Tale opens tonight at the Wadsworth. Photo by Joan Marcus. For tickets, visit www.ticketmaster.com
Press Release of the Week: Would you visit S.F., New York and London for the express purpose of seeing Wicked in all three cities, while munching on a bucket of chocolates?
Here's an excerpt, for your temptation and delight:
“LOS ANGELES (For Immediate Release) This summer, premium confectioner See's Candies, the smash hit musical Wicked and Hilton HHonors® will grant one lucky individual the prize of a lifetime -- an around-the-world trip to see Wicked on the West Coast in New York and in London.
"The winner will embark on a three-city tour to see Wicked, and will be given a Wicked Hilton HHonors card for VIP accommodations at Hilton Family hotels during their tour. The winner will also receive a one-year supply of See's Candies. The trip for two, which includes airfare and accommodations at Hilton Family hotels, will take the winner to Los Angeles or San Francisco, New York and London. The show currently performs at the Pantages Theatre in Los Angeles and, in late January 2009, will move to the Orpheum in San Francisco. The winner will also visit the Gershwin Theatre in New York City and the Apollo Victoria Theatre in London.”
In Defense of Sarah Palin
The day after Stage Raw posted writer-performer April Fitzsimmons' Sarah Palin Dictionary on Wednesday http://blogs.laweekly.com/ladaily/stage-news/stage-raw-point-break-live-lea/, I received a commentary from Katharine DeBrecht, a graduate of Saint Mary's College, Notre Dame and the mother of three. She is a freelance writer and the author of the popular Help! Mom! children’s book series.
I'm not convinced, as DeBrecht asserts, that "liberal-feminists" characterize all men as "abusers and oppressors, rather than supporters and partners" -- but that's the spike with which DeBrecht gores Palin's detractors. Nor do I see Todd Palin's loving support of his wife as particularly helpful to the nation if her policies are theocratic, and her actions, spiteful. They say Eva Braun was a very loving wife. DeBrecht's essay raises the prospect of how family values could be defined in the McCain administration.
"Are Fathers Not Important?"
by Kathryn DeBrecht
“Since the selection of Governor Sarah Palin as John McCain’s Vice Presidential running mate, the liberal left has been in a tizzy. After years of championing women’s rights, liberals and feminists are now attacking the one woman who shattered one of the highest glass ceilings in our nation.
“'Liberal pundits and pols alike are questioning how this mother of five (one with special needs) will be able handle the job of Vice President and role of mother at the same time.' Washington Post columnist Sally Quinn complained 'Her first priority has to be her children.' Reporters Katty Kay and Claire Shipman wrote, 'It’s not because she’s a woman with children trying to do a man’s job. It’s because she’s actually pushing the combination of professional and personal ambitions beyond the sensibilities of this generation of working moms.'”
“News flash: Sarah Palin is not a single mom, and her husband, Todd Palin, will be tending to the children. A production operator on the oil fields in the North Slope of Alaska, Palin quit his job when his wife was elected Governor to help take care of the children, working part time for the United Steel Workers Union. Mr. Palin is not unlike many fathers. This generation of working moms has supportive husbands. The number of stay at home dads has risen 83 percent since 1996.
“Liberal feminists refuse to acknowledge this because men are supposed to be abusers and oppressors, rather than supporters and partners. Liberal feminists are still clinging to Gloria Steinem’s outdated remarks that 'a woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.' They refuse to accept that fathers are important, and yes, competent.
“Studies have shown that children of involved fathers have higher I.Q.s, fare better in school, are more emotionally secure, and are less likely to get into trouble at home, school and their community. Instead of being bumbling idiots, as portrayed by liberals in Hollywood, fathers have a positive and deep impact on their children.
“To liberal feminists, fathers are merely there to earn more money than women, take out the trash and cut the grass. Todd Palin just shattered the grass ceiling.”
Season's Greetings
[Inside] the Ford has just announced its upcoming season. The venue – tucked within the structure of the Ford Amphitheater in the Cahuenga Pass – is administered by the L.A. County Arts Commission, which hosts high quality, gypsy companies for temporary residences. For further details visit www.fordtheatres.org
Moving Arts launches the season November 7 – December 14 with Song of Extinction (winner of the 2008 Ashland New Plays Festival). In the world premiere of E.M. Lewis' “ode to the science of life and loss,” a musically gifted high school student is falling off the edge of the world, and his biology teacher is the only one who has noticed. In his efforts to save the youth, the teacher finds himself on a magical journey from the Cambodian fields of his youth into the undiscovered country beyond.
Circle X Theatre Company returns for the third successive year with Jim Leonard's new play, Battle Hymn, about an American Mother Courage. On the eve of the Civil War, 16-year-old Martha finds herself pregnant and ostracized. As Martha travels through and fights in the Civil War, she settles on one incontrovertible fact: she will not raise her baby in a blood-soaked, violent country. Battle Hymn is being performed January 17-February 21
Capping the season, a trilogy more than 10 years in the making becomes complete beginning March 26. Inspired in part by The Oresteia, The Ghost Road Company's Home Siege Home is a highly theatrical multi-media piece that explores the intimate lives of one powerful family bent on vengeance for past wrongs. Conceived and written by Katharine Noon and developed in workshop by the entire ensemble, this epic comes in three parts (Clytemnestra, Elektra and Orestes), which can be viewed in one day or over the course of two evenings. The company has been examining the impact of war on those left at home. (March 26-May 3).
[Inside] the Ford is located in the Ford Theatres complex at 2580 Cahuenga Blvd. East in Hollywood, just off the 101 Hollywood Freeway across from the Hollywood Bowl and south of Universal Studios. On-site, non-stacked parking is free.
And for something completely different, Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee's 1965 classic Auntie Mame kicks off the Long Beach Playhouse 80th Anniversary Mainstage season on September 19. The Long Beach Playhouse is located at 5021 East Anaheim Street. www.lbph.com.
For this week's comprehensive theater listings, press the READ ON tab directly below
Queer Town: LA Unified Opposes Prop. 8
Board members of the Los Angeles Unified School District leaped into the political arena yesterday and unanimously voted on a resolution to oppose Proposition 8, the November ballot measure that changes California's state constitution and bans same sex marriage. Today, Sacramento mayoral candidate Kevin Johnson will voice his opposition to the ballot measure. Taken all together, it's been a good week so far for the "No on Prop. 8" team.
Continue reading "Queer Town: LA Unified Opposes Prop. 8"...
City Council Will Consider Selling Rights for Electronic Billboards
The Los Angeles City Council will consider a proposal today to allow massive electronic signs along the 10 and 110 freeways next to the Los Angeles Convention Center. The proposal by Anschutz Entertainment Group reportedly calls for 50,000 square feet of advertising signs.
Last week, the Trade, Commerce, and Tourism Committee - a city committee that oversees the LA Convention Center – approved the agreement to sell the city’s signage rights to AEG, owners of Staples Center. The agreement would give AEG exclusive rights to build electronic displays, message boards and standard, static signs.
The City Council has the final say.
Continue reading "City Council Will Consider Selling Rights for Electronic Billboards "...
Ape Escape: Bikini-Clad Gorilla Girls Strike a Pose
Downtown Los Angeles is known for its hidden nighttime gems. With its after-hour speakeasies and never-ending supply of street meat (specifically the "illegal" bacon-wrapped hot dog) -- this city is a treasure trove of late night indulgences. Last Saturday, however, I stumbled across one of its finest oddities, the Bronx Zoo, in broad daylight.
Each Saturday afternoon through the third week in October, Silver Lake art gallery Ghettogloss invades La Cita bar (off 3rd and Hill) to host the Bronx Zoo -- a weekly art class that re-invents figure drawing, King Kong style. From 3-8 p.m. on La Cita's outdoor patio, every hour on the hour there is an "ape escape" when leggy bikini-clad models, with faces obscured by gorilla masks, are released from a backstage holding cell of sorts. Gorilla mask and black bikini firmly in place, the models take center stage where they strike and hold a pose for patrons (or artists) to sketch.
The models typically hold still for 12-15 minutes until a Ghettogloss rep blows the "monkey alarm," signaling a change in pose. Bloody Mary in hand, I watched as the artists furiously smeared charcoal and pastel across canvas, determined to have their pieces selected for the upcoming November 14th Ghettogloss group show curated by Flavorpill's Shana Nys Dambrot, featuring the best of the Bronx Zoo drawings.
Los Feliz local Tom Voorhies, one of the first artists to arrive at La Cita, has been studying figure drawing since college and this marked his fifth time at the Bronx Zoo. He laughed, “The gorilla mask is so funny I think it helps the artist open up.” I asked another artist, Robert Vargas, a second timer who lives Downtown, why he keeps coming back. He simply smiled and said, “I love painting in a concrete jungle.”
Though Ghettogloss maintains a strict "no cameras or photography allowed" rule, the gallery gave L.A. Weekly inside access to shoot the afternoon of drinks, live drawing and nearly naked gorilla girls. Check out the entire slideshow here.
The Bronx Zoo
Presented by Ghettogloss
Each Saturday from 3-8 p.m. at La Cita
336 S Hill Street, Los Angeles, CA 90013
Los Angeles City Committee Will Consider Motion to Rewrite Billboard Ordinance
The City’s Planning and Land Use Management (PLUM) Committee will consider a motion today that would address and fix the colossal problems that have been raised in court cases challenging the city's sign ordinance.
The motion, introduced by Los Angeles city councilmember Jack Weiss on July 29, calls for the city's planning department, Department of Building and Safety and City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo's office to revise and toughen the 2002 ban on billboards.
The motion is the city’s latest effort to control the public’s airspace from obnoxious building-sized ads and billboards that have popped up after the city opened the door to it, setting precedent by allowing certain hand-picked companies to slather the city with advertising.
The Coalition to Ban Billboard Blight says that sign company lobbyists will no doubt oppose the toughening of billboard regulations.
According to their new campaign ads, McCain and Palin, or, rather Palin and McCain are the new mavericks, the real agents of change. They'll clean up Washington with their maverick ways and outsider approaches. Uh huh.
But they're no agents of change. Rather, they're alchemists, turning their histories and records into a fool's gold of instant mythology that the wizard of all alchemy, Karl Rove, is betting will trick the American public. Just as alchemists tried to spin base metals into gold and silver, the Palin-McCain campaign is trying to turn their ticket's abysmal record into a narrative of two system-buckers who will bring real change to the White House.
It's a narrative that the mainstream media, dazzled by Sarah Palin's gleaming white teeth and sheep's clothing, seem all too willing to go along with. Or, at least willing to surrender its hopes for any kind of questioning of this fabrication unto ABC's Charlie Gibson, a patsy and a shill, who has been granted the first main stage interview of Palin. Good grief, Charlie Brown.
The truth, though, is that McCain's campaign has been managed by an all-star team of lobbyists that includes Mr. Rick "This election is not about the issues," Davis whose firm's clients include SBC Telecommunications and Verizon. Chief political advisor, Charles R. Black, Jr., the man who told Fortune magazine that a terrorist attack would be "a big advantage" for McCain is another super lobbyist whose clients have included AT&T, Alcoa and JP Morgan. Campaign manager Steve Schmidt founded lobbying firm DC Navigators, whose clients include, according the New York Times, insurance companies and Indian Gaming Associations.
Many members of this team are the same guys who brought us Bush 2000 and 2004. Not to mention, a couple of McCain's top advisors had to leave in the spring because of their lobbying ties to shady lender Ameriquest Mortgage, a firm that's helped bring us Foreclosure '08.
Way to rebel from politics as usual, Maverick McCain. Here's a man who not only has few decipherable policy complaints with Bush, he's also hired the folks who fooled/feared you into electing him, twice.
For her part, Palin, the anti-earmark heroine, hired lobbyists to bring back $27 million in earmarks for Wasilla, Alaska, when she was mayor. The town's population is under 10,000. Still, she managed to leave the town $22 million in debt when she left. She also was a proponent of the Alaska's famed Bridge to Nowhere, a nearly $400 million dollar taxpayer boondoggle that she only tepidly opposed after it became a national embarrassment and symbol of pork-barrel politics. In the new auto-iconography of Rovian campaigning, though, she's the common-sense Hockey Mom who will put an end to this kind of Beltway madness. If you say so, Karl.
Look this shit happens. It happens everywhere with every politician to larger and less degrees. But the truth here is that these mavericks are owned by the game they are supposedly going to change. The alchemy is mindblowing in it's audacity and evil in its simple genius: if you don't like history, simply rewrite it into disposable pop culture. Turn it into a video montage of the sort where an extremist like Palin is made over into the folksy hero next door and a guy who whose nuts Karl Rove dined on in 2000, and has been an administration lapdog ever since, is a maverick.
Polish a turd and sell it as gold. And it works in no small part because network news cowardly follows the whims of the prevailing pop cultural moment rather than doggedly pursuing the truth. Now, Palin isn't the Alaska secessionist who believes that even victims of rape and incest should have no choice in the matter, she's the breath of fresh air, the underdog outsider like half-pint Notre Dame walk-on Rudy Ruettiger. And she belongs on the field about just as much.
Despite that, as yet, you have to go deep into the back pages, or the blogosphere or the internet, or newspaper websites or tune into the recently chastened Keith Olbermann's show to get up to speed about about any of this. Or about Palin's wackadoodle church, where' they speak in tongues, pray for federal funding for gas pipelines ("It's God's will," said Palin.) and believe that Alaska will be a refuge, like Noah's Ark, during the coming Rapture, after it converts all the gays, that is, through prayer.
So far, any franks discussion of this stuff is deemed the unfair rantings of the media fringe. But this isn't a problem of the media fringe, it's one of the mainstream media not doing its job, but instead cowering before the popular passions of the cultural moment instead of calling bullshit, just as it has been doing since, well, 2000ish, when Karl Rove started manipulating the culture in earnest.
A response to this isn't to tell me everything that's wrong with Obama. We know about Jeremiah Wright and about Michelle's finally being proud of America and Obama's dubious association with Tony Rezko, and, yes, he brought some earmarks to Illinois, and all that. We know about it because he's been put under a Hubble-sized microscope.
Now, we wait on Charlie Gibson. God help us.
Oops.
Stage Raw: The Sarah Palin Dictionary
For comprehensive theater listings for this coming week, plus the latest New Theater Reviews, press the READ ON tab at the bottom of this section.
Seeing Red
R.R.R.E.D. -- The Redhead Musical Manifesto is this week's Pick of the Week. To see the review, click the READ ON tab at the bottom of this section, and search for any word in the title using your computer's search function, or simply scroll down to Continuing Performances: The Valleys Photo by Eric Scot/GTC
Reviewed over the weekend: Agamemnon at the Getty Villa, The Belle of Amherst at Actors Forum Theatre, Long Stay Cut Short (two Tennessee Williams one-acts) at Actors Art Theatre, Moliere Plays Paris at the Knightsbridge Theatre, Once on This Island by Reprise Theatre Company at UCLA, R.R.R.E.D. The Redhead Musical Manifesto at GTC Burbank, True Love at the Complex, and Rose's Dilemma at Sierra Madre Playhouse.
Point Break Live! heads to Vegas
Jaime Keeling's hit lampoon of the 1991 action flick starring Keanu Reeves and Gary Busey is pulling up its tent at the Dragonfly and heading to Vegas. After a run of almost a year in L.A., the show has been invited to perform at the V Theater, at the Planet Hollywood Resort and Casino on the Las Vegas Strip, beginning October 1, 2008, with four shows weekly, Wednesday through Saturday, at 10:00 p.m. In his review of the show, the Weekly's Lovell Estell III wrote of the show's surprises, "like picking an audience member to play Reeves' role of Special Agent Johnny Utah. The city’s banks are being hit by a gang of robbers known as the Ex Presidents, surfers who always wear the masks of former chief executives while making their withdrawals (in this version Ms. Condi Rice makes an appearance). Utah gets his man, but not before a Grand Guignol scene of blood and guts that’s so hideously over the top you can’t stop laughing."
The Sarah Palin Dictionary by April Fitzsimmons
Fitzsimmons is a writer-performer (The Need to Know), a former U.S. Air Force intelligence officer and peace activist who works on behalf of military veterans in general, and female veterans in particular. Her dictionary is posted here courtesy of http://madashellclub.net
Palinactors: The actors that will play the Palin family in the inevitable TV Movie of the Week.
Palinamour: The s chool-boy crush that John McCain clearly has on Sarah Palin. Look out stay-at-home-Todd and frozen-face-Cindy!
Palinaked: The inevitable Playboy centerfold to appear by end of year to show that 44 is the new 24. Furs, guns and skin – is there anything more American?
Palination: The future state of Alaska when it secedes from the US as Sarah and Todd Palin hope it will.
Palinator: The first time Sarah and Schwarzenegger meet… in public.
Palinazi: When the anger and frustration of being a woman who “has to do it all” finally implodes, she may become a Palinazi.
Palineptitude: The term used to describe an 8-month-pregnant woman who (without checking with her doctor) boards an airplane even though her water had br oken.
Palinectomy: A special procedure that allows all women to return to work within 1-3 days after delivering their newborn.
Palinistas: The small gaggle of folks who still go to bat for Sarah in her home city of Wasilla, Alaska. For example: “Anne Kilkenny of Wasilla, Alaska, is not a Palinista.”
Palinomics: How to put your city 22 million dollars into debt in 20 months or less.
Palinondom: The new term for pulling out before you blow your wad and make another gift from God.
Palinooky: Sex with Sarah
Palinormal: When you believe the Iraq War and global warming are all God’s Plan.
Palinoscopy: The feeling of America taking it in the rear should the Republicans steal the election again in November.
Palinosis: When you inquire about banning books from the library and tell your staff not to talk to any media without your permission.
Palinotomy: A special operation where the doctors remove the part of your brain associated with common sense, curiosity and scientific reasoning.
Palinundrum: The conundrum that is Sarah Palin
Palinots: The more qualified, experienced women in the Republican Party whom John McCain could have chosen like: Republican Congresswoman Kay Bailey Hutchison or Republican Senator Elizabeth Dole.
Palintonic: A special tonic to help you forget that we evolved from apes; that the Iraq War was started by George W. Bush’s unfounded belief about WMD’s and the knowledge that his buddies were behind schedule=2 0on their Project for a New American Century and that a woman’s body does not belong to her it belongs to the government silly.
Palindromia - a relapse into the disease of the last eight years: more religious fundamentalism, scientific incompetence and hasty decision-making.
Palindrone: What you hear if you play all of Palin’s speeches backwards: the New Testament.
Palincea: The Republican belief that a Hockey Mom can fix a country that has lost international respect, is illegally occupying Iraq, is in the middle of a recession and a looming energy crisis, and has an abysmal health care and education system. After all, she was Miss Congeniality and bore five kids and can still bring home the bacon and fry it up in a pan.
Palinccino: The new frozen drink at Starbucks made with breast milk, powdered moose horn and saltpeter.
Palini citious: When you believe that abortion is wrong but capital punishment is A-OK.
Palinified: A person who feels qualified even though they are unqualified.
Palinilot: The pilot that flies the helicopter for Sarah’s wolf hunts in the great North.
Palinimal: What you get when you cross a pit bull with a barracuda.
Palinite: Anyone who mutters half-truths coated in chipper sarcasm, sports a layer cake hairdo and believes the bible is a more credible governing document than the US constitution.
Palinitude: The superior attitude of a working hockey mom, who raises five kids, runs a household and a governor’s office and doesn’t ever bother to ask: “Hey kids, what’s it like to never have your mother at home?”
Palinoia: What McCain is experiencing realizing that his running mate was not fully vetted.
Palinudder: A new strap-on nipple with a silky-soft polar bear fur hoody that is handy for publicly breast-feeding your children, grand-children,
and/or your constituent’s children.
For this week's comprehensive theater listings, press the READ ON tab directly below
Strange & Ugly Times for Villaraigosa
Something strange and ugly is happening in Los Angeles, although you don't hear Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa speaking much about it. On Tuesday, the National Fair Housing Commission visits Los Angeles to hold a hearing on the foreclosure crisis. According to the commission's press release, "Forty years after the enactment of the Fair Housing Act in 1968, significant housing discrimination still exists in Los Angeles and across the country."
Rirkrit Tiravanija and his 'Palm Pavilion'
The palm trees are laid out everywhere, in rows and clumps, in corners, and all over the structure that from a distance -- with its metal surfaces and elevated floor -- evokes the broken tropical landscapes of war and dislocation. Buenos Aires-born New York-based Thai artist Rirkrit Tiravanija landed in Mexico City last week to present this his "Palm Pavilion" installation at the Kurimanzutto temporary gallery space in the Condesa on Thursday night. The piece, less interactive than Tiravanija's works tend to be, is a weirdly seductive temple to what (when you think about it) really is one of the most enduring symbols in the history of man, from Biblical times to the Orientalized travel catalogs of today.
"It's the pavilion for the palm plant, and in a way, a look at the palm plant as a kind of witness to the going-ons in civilization," Tiravanija said on Thursday. "It's interesting that of course the palm is everywhere else but in the West. It's in the 'Other' zones."
The palms, fresh from a Mexico City hardware store, brushed against the bodies of spectators at the opening, who glanced at one another flirtatiously between the fronds while sipping the waters of fresh young coconuts. The plants beckoned from nooks inside the elevated pavilion. There, screens play a video focused on the tree and display cases feature found items such as postcards and soft drink bottles, reminding the viewer of the infinitely layered ways in which this symbol of peace, godliness, and tranquility has been commodified by every new wave of colonialism and globalization.
Continue reading "Rirkrit Tiravanija and his 'Palm Pavilion'"...
Stage Raw: Zombie Joe's Underground Scores in New York
The Labor Day weekend's New Theater Reviews are now online at
http://www.laweekly.com/2008-09-04/stage/also-spider-bites-hands-on-therapy-more/
For comprehensive theater listings, press the READ ON tab at the bottom of this section.
ZOMBIE JOE'S UNDERGROUND SCORES IN NEW YORK
Nice review in today's New York Times for ZJU's production of Masque of the Red Death. ZJU is a North Hollywood-based company. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/05/theater/reviews/05masq.html?_r=1&ref=theater&oref=slogin
THE SOUND AND THE FURY
Stephen Wadsworth's Agamemnon at the Getty Villa; Photo by Craig Schwartz (C) 2008 J. Paul Getty Trust
The sounds of some neighbor's radio from a nearby hillside wafted over the amphitheater at the Getty Villa, as Tyne Daly, Delroy Lindo and ensemble worked heroically to render the dense prose of Aeschylus' play, Agamemnon (translation by Robert Fagles), intelligible to Wednesday's opening night crowd. The actors competed for a good 40-minutes with strains of ethnic pop at decibel levels sometimes louder than the theater event's own sound effects.
Getty publicist Mike Winder explained that Getty security contacted "the authorities" -- that would be L.A. County Sheriff's Department -- which Winder presumes found the offending neighbor and persuaded him/her/them to turn the thing off.
Twenty-four hours later at the Geffen Playhouse, pianist-actor Hershey Felder was in the midst of his one-man showcase about Ludwig van You Know Who -- Beethoven, as I Knew Him . The act features a small grand piano center stage, at which Felder settles in, sometimes mid-soliloquy, to plunk out another in a stream of Ludwig's greatest hits. Just as Felder was easing into the "Moonlight Sonata," off goes somebody's cell phone. It's not just that it went off. It went went off at the very moment Felder's hand was descending onto the piano keys. I saw Felder's face blanch with frustration and fury, but he continued, undeterred, while that cell phone rang, and rang, and rang, competing with the comparatively pristine tones of Beethoven performed live.
So noise wins two out of two in the live-stage showdown between noise and sound. Radios have been around for over 80 years, and it's true that, like TV, they often unify the society by broadcasting sporting events, political speeches or coverage of major crimes and natural disasters. But like iPhones and iPods, radio and TV are designed to make their money by serving mass markets in small groups and as individuals, rather than in public forums, like the theater. It's the technology of individuation, leading to new dimensions of loneliness and solipsism that's been widely reported in our culture by the New York Times and the Guardian, particularly among the 20-something generation.
Live theater is the attempt, however feeble, to counter such isolation by speaking collectively, communally, primarily through human instruments rather than technological ones. And the noise versus sound war over the last 48 hours on the westside is really an allegory for the ever-louder cultural intrusion of the private arena, and its technologies, upon the public one -- actors in a space, just trying to be heard.
Check back here Monday afternoon for reviews of: Agamemnon at the Getty Villa, The Belle of Amherst at Actors Forum Theatre, Long Stay Cut Short (two Tennessee Williams one-acts) at Actors Art Theatre, Moliere Plays Paris at the Knightsbridge Theatre, Once on This Island by Reprise Theatre Company at UCLA, R.R.R.E.D. The Redhead Musical Manifesto at GTC Burbank, True Love at the Complex, and Rose's Dilemma at Sierra Madre Playhouse.
For this week's comprehensive theater listings, press the READ ON tab directly below
Continue reading "Stage Raw: Zombie Joe's Underground Scores in New York"...
How hilarious to see Talking Points Memo and other bloggers track down that interesting "mansion" used as a set piece behind John McCain last night at the RNC. McCain must be trying to match, in his own way, the fake, creepy Greek columns chosen as Barack Obama's backdrop by some real idiots in the Obama camp, earning them endless ridicule.
Turns out the McCain backdrop is an image of a troubled high school in Los Angeles Unified School District (well, most of them are troubled in some way). Apparently McCain's folks used a free image of Walter Reed Middle School in North Hollywood, when what they really wanted was a shot of Walter Reed Army Medical Center. It would have been a lot more fun if McCain had flashed a shot of Obama's multimillion-dollar pad, or one of McCain's own luxury homes or investment properties, of which there are seven.
LAPD Tip Line Busy After News of $500,000 Reward in Grim Sleeper Investigation
The phone lines at 1-877-LAWFULL, a number that rings at the Los Angeles Police Department’s Parker Center, have been hopping since news broke Wednesday that the Los Angeles City Council offered a whopping $500,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the serial killer dubbed “the Grim Sleeper.”
One operator, who didn’t want to be identified, told the Weekly that he has received numerous calls about the elusive serial killer believed to be responsible for the murders of 11 people in South Los Angeles dating to 1985.
“Some want to remain anonymous, and want the reward,” he said. “They don’t hesitate about the reward.”
Continue reading "LAPD Tip Line Busy After News of $500,000 Reward in Grim Sleeper Investigation"...
Election '08: Governor Gidget -- Sorry, Sarah Palin -- Speaks . . . Once I Was Blind
BY MARC COOPER
Governor Gidget appeared on screen melting my heart and conquering my soul. That was after The Mayor of America softened me up.
Once I was blind. But now I can see.
I agree with every one of their points.
Black is white.
Up is Down.
Slavery is Freedom.
Arbeit Macht Frei.
We are winning in Iraq.
The WMD did exist.
Saddam was the leader of Al Qaeda.
Torture is legal.
Mitt Romney is a populist renegade.
Running Wasilla is more or less like running New York City.
Black men who become president of the Harvard Law Review are effete snobs.
Community organizers are sinister.
The media is run by Socialists.
Ivy League universities should be shuttered and replaced by trade schools.
Writing two best-selling memoirs is, um, a black mark.
Having a baby out of wedlock or aborting the fetus is strictly a personal, private issue even when the state wants to criminalize the latter.
America's perceived economic crisis is a mental aberration curable by sexual abstention.
Reading someone their legal rights is an act of wussiness.
Sarah has had more executive experience than Joe Biden and Barack Obama combined.
Hockey moms are more intelligent than hockey pucks.
Running the PTA is very much like the CIA.
Piloting a snowboard is the same as flying an F-16.
Garnering about 655 votes to win a Mayor's seat is major executive experience.
Palin would be the perfect President to stare down Vladimir Putin.
As I was talking to the editor of the LA Weekly this morning about Sarah Palin, I said that I hoped the American people were smart enough to see through this bit of Karl Rove-ian evil genius. Just as I said it, a Ford van, jacked up to monster truck proportions, powered by a 345 horsepower V-8, went barreling down Echo Park Avenue. And I lost some of my hope.
Sarah Palin is stunt casting at its worst. The Rove acolytes working with McCain have foisted a near-bullet proof metaphor upon the American public. How are you supposed to attack Palin, a self-proclaimed hockey mom from rural America who has risen to the top? But attack her is what needs to happen, because she is now the face of the Republican ticket. John McCain can do little, and is expected to do little, to bring the attention back to him. The election, I believe, is now a referendum on her and Barack Obama and who do you think is going to play better to middle America? In one clever trick, the Republicans have turned this election away from the issues at hand and back into the theater in which they have been successful for most of my life -- a cultural war upon which reason turns to ash in the fire of emotion.
It sucks because this woman is beyond the pale. She waves the flag and tells her story and says that she has loved America from day one. Yes, she loved America so much she once seriously courted a militant movement to get Alaska to secede from the Union. Hey, I'm not opposed to secession. I wrote after George Bush got re-elected that California should think about seceding from the union. I was only half joking, but the reason I wrote that was so that we could separate ourselves from the kind of people who are taken by this idiotic cultural-war nonsense that has been so destructive to our country.
But on that note, does Palin represent the kind of culture you wish upon this country? It's a culture that believes, really, in Creationism. It's a culture that believes humans were riding dinosaurs a la Fred Flinstone. I'm not joking. There's actually a Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky -- a $27 million, 60,000 square-foot theme park in which dinosaurs and humans are displayed frolicking as if in the Garden of Eden. It includes a Triceratops with a saddle on it that kids can pretend to ride. A Stegosaurus is aboard Noah's Ark. Accuse me of lacking a sense of humor, but I don't think its funny that someone who is potentially one heartbeat from the presidency believes this shit.
Some argue that George Bush does, too. I rest my case.
Besides that, Palin has a dismal governing record both as mayor of Wasilla (population about 5,000 when she was mayor), a hamlet that was once flush with money that she somehow left $22 million in debt, and as governor of Alaska. Her record as governor is rife with questionable ethics -- including her association with the same fundraising scheme that led to the indictment of Senator Ted Stevens in Alaska and her apparent use of executive power to grind a personal axe when she allegedly fired Public Safety Commissioner, Walter Monegan, because he wouldn't fire Palin's former brother in law, State Trooper Mike Wooten. He happened to be involved in a custody battle with Palin's sister at the time. That's some family values for you. Oh, then there's the $50 billion Bridge To Nowhere, a pork-barrel project Palin ran for governor on and which she later stopped as it became symbolic of corruption and cronyism. That's real maverick governing, Ms. Palin.
She also believes that we're on a mission from God in Iraq. Not in the Blues Brothers way, but, literally, that it's god's will that we smite the infidels. You want a look into a scary church, forget Jeremiah Wright and check out The Assembly of God in Wasilla, a church Palin has somewhat distanced herself from, but still attends.
For good measure, God also wants a $30 billion federally funded nation-gas pipeline in Alaska. "I think God's will has to be done in unifying people and companies to get that gas line built, so pray for that," she said.
But in the media orgy following Palin's speech last night, we're being told to behold the "new face of the Republican Party." She's their Obama, everyone crows, only she has real executive experience. So far, any attempts to vet her as a candidate and a potential leader are thrown back as being a bullying double standard. She has five kids damnit! Hey, that's a miracle, I mean there are only 7 billion people on this planet. How'd she manage that? But I guess wanton procreation runs in the family.
There's something unseemly in the way we're supposed to bow down because the Republicans have taken by decree a place in history that Hillary Clinton busted her ass for. Palin didn't rise to the top, she was plucked by puppet masters. Clinton earned everyone of her 18 million primary votes. She worked and suffered for them. Palin is merely a spokesmodel, a very cleverly chosen one, who is here to dazzle you with her teeth and fool you with the lie that she feels your pain. She's good enough to read a canned, mean-spirited speech that any actress could have read, but she can't even run a small town properly, a job which by some accounts she treated as part-time work.
Of course, if the Obama camp had not succumbed to some combination of hubris and the same irrational Fear of Clinton that has kept Democrats out of the White House for two Bush terms, and possibly a third by proxy, and had simply put Clinton on the ticket, a spot which she, despite what you might think of her, at least went out and earned, we wouldn't be having this conversation. We'd already be talking about plans for the first 100 days of the Obama-Clinton White House.
As it is, we're in a fight we never should be in, fighting it on the same battlefield --the swamps of the culture wars -- upon which we never win.
Queer Town: The Obama Pool Report
Rather than watch the Republican National Convention or the U.S. Open in tennis, I covered Michelle Obama's visit to Los Angeles on Wednesday night as a "pool reporter."
A pool reporter is someone who's chosen by a political campaign to cover an event that would otherwise be closed to the press. It's a way to keep a media horde from showing up at someone's private residence, for example, and creating a circus of sorts. A "pool report" is then distributed to newspapers and magazines across the nation. So if the New York Times or Wall Street Journal wants to know what Michelle Obama said last night, they request what I wrote.
One of the goals of Obama's visit was to reach out to the gay community...and to raise money in the process. So without further ado, here's the pool report, which has its own kind of straightforward style:
Election '08: Taking Down Amy Goodman and Donna Brazile
The scene outside MSNBC's outdoor RNC studio at St. Paul's Rice Park, just outside Xcel Center.
BY VANESSA SILVERTON-PEEL
The 1999 World Trade Organization protests in Seattle were like the Big Bang in the evolution of modern police tactics and policies toward protesters. When the political base elements and the energy of media hyperbole combined cities militarized their police forces; and from the tear gas sludge of the Pacific Northwest evolved a new genus of officers clad in black ballistic fabric exoskeletons. Now they've invaded St. Paul, Minnesota with no natural enemy. Unless of course you count Amy Goodman, the soft-spoken radio host from Pacifica Radio (arrested along with two of her producers) or Donna Brazile, the level-headed Democratic strategist and CNN analyst (pepper sprayed).
But that was Tuesday. As of Wednesday most of the larger anti-war, anti-Republican, anti-Bush protests had moved or split into smaller chanting bunches along the perimeter of the Xcel Center. Even the usually front-and-center group Code Pink held one of its events off the streets in the Lowry Theater with performance artists, a lady playing the washboard and a film crew from IFC.
The "9-11 Truth" screamers, however, never budged. Just as in Denver they haunted MSNBC's outdoor stage adjacent to Xcel all week chanting "9-11 was an inside job!" The bug-like riot police? They were three blocks over making sure the dozen or so men dressed in orange jumpsuits recreating the famous Abu Ghraib torture photographs didn't cast down their wires and hoods and take to the streets. If they did, each cop was outfitted in the latest in taser technology.
Come to think of it, what would complete the Abu Ghraib tableau better than 50,000 volts of actual electricity? Now that's honesty in protesting.
Los Angeles City Hall offers $500,000 for Grim Sleeper
By Christine Pelisek
In response to a four-month investigation by the L.A. Weekly that last week revealed the existence of an active serial killer who has been slaughtering people in South Los Angeles since 1985, the Los Angeles City Council voted today to reward $200,000 to any person who supplies information leading to his arrest and conviction. In addition, the council approved a record-high $500,000 if the clues lead to more than one conviction, such as with an accomplice.
The killer, dubbed the Grim Sleeper by the Weekly because he took a 13-year break before bizarrely resuming his slayings, has been linked to the deaths of 11 people by DNA and ballistics matching.
In a packed press conference not far from City Council chambers this morning, Councilman Bernard Parks called for the huge reward. He was joined by Porter and Mary Alexander, parents of 18-year-old victim Monique Alexander. Porter Alexander urged anyone with possible information to come forward, calling the serial killer, who has eluded police for 23 years, a "turkey" who needs to be caught before he kills again.
Stage Raw: Last Call for "Wicked"
The Labor Day weekend's New Theater Reviews are now online at
http://www.laweekly.com/2008-09-04/stage/also-spider-bites-hands-on-therapy-more/
For comprehensive theater listings, press the READ ON tab at the bottom of this section.
Last Call for Wicked in L.A.
The Nederlander Organization is announcing final sales for blocks of tickets to the musical at the Pantages, which closes January 9 – ending a run that started February 10, 2007. The production will now transfer to San Francisco. www.ticketmaster.com/wicked
True Love, by Walter Williamson and Larry Thomlinson -- who also perform in their play and are featured in the photo above -- studies the partnership between playwright John Patrick and his partner, Bill Myers. It opens Sept. 5 at the Complex. www.plays411.com/truelove Photo by Dan Holm
Nuclear Power
When Edward M. Kennedy arrived at the DNC against doctors' orders, and suffering from the ravaging of brain cancer, the spectacle was romantic – Camelot versus death, and Camelot prevailed for a moment. It was another illustration of the redemptive power of theater. Kennedy understood that simply being on the political stage would give him life, and his was a triumphant speech – booming voice, hands steady.
Singer/Songerwriter Charlie Lustman – who's also known fro rescuing the Silent Movie Theatre on Fairfax -- has been using theater to counter his own Sarcoma diagnosis in a new operetta that he wrote, Made Me Nuclear, which started as a pop music album about surviving cancer. His show of the same name, which he performs in, opens at the Santa Monica Playhouse September 5. www.MadeMeNuclear.com
Charlie Lustman in Made Me Nuclear Photo by Cydne Moore
Atreus on the Beach
Stephen Wadsworth's staging of Agamemnon opens tonight at the Getty Villa. It performs thorugh September 24. www.getty.edu
For this week's comprehensive theater listings, press the READ ON tab directly below
LA Weekly Catches Grief Over Serial Killer Nickname
L.A. Weekly has been getting loads of grief about our choice to name L.A.'s elusive serial killer the Grim Sleeper. (Because he stopped killing Angelenos for 13 years, but now he's back.) This afternoon, comedian Patton Oswalt, who was guest hosting on Indie 103.1's “Jonesy's Jukebox,” ridiculed the name Grim Sleeper, saying it was the dumbest, least-creepy name for a serial killer. The former star of “The King of Queens” and the voice of “Ratatouille” had the listeners make suggestions. Some included “Hooker Hacker,” “Ho Bagger,” “South LA Slayer,” “Bangkok Killer,” “Street Sweeper,” and “O.J. Simpson.”
More Angelenos have since weighed in. One wiseacre sent an email to the Weekly calling our nickname: “by FAR the worst serial killer name ever.”
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Stage Raw: Better Late Than Never?
Reviewed over the Labor Day Weekend: Troubadour Theater Company's As U2 Like It at the Falcon, Bouncers at the Lost Studio, Boyle Heights at Casa 0101, Educating Rita at the Colony Theatre, Fucking Hollywood at Ark Theatre Company, Hands-on Therapy at the Secret Rose Theatre, Spider Bites at Theatre of NOTE, and Vanities at the Pasadena Playhouse.
To find these New Reviews (embedded in this coming week's comprehensive listings), press the READ ON tab at the bottom of this section.
Better Late Than Never?
As part of my Quixotic effort to get to see theater using public transportation, I took the MTA's bus 222 from Cahuenga and Franklin on Wednesday to get to the Falcon in Burbank for an 8 p.m. performance of Troubadour Theater Company's As U2 Like It. I had a choice, to leave to Hollywood at 7 p.m. getting me to the theater 45 minutes early, or the next bus 7:47, getting me there at exactly 8 p.m. I chose the latter option, not from presumptuousness, but with an attitude absorbed from years of experience, that L.A. shows routinely start 5 to 7 minutes late. However, when I hustled into the theater at 8:03, the Troubies had already started their show -- leaving me standing with a dozen or so other latecomers in the back of the theater to watch the opening number. At the end of that routine, the house lights came up, the small crowd of newcomers flowed in rivulets to their seats, while the Troubie's MC, Matt Walker, announced to the crowd that I was arriving and that they could read about it in the Weekly. Thanks, Matt.
Meanwhile, the company sang a variation on an old Carly Simon song, "You're so late, I bet you think this song is about you."
The next evening, I walked from Franklin and Bronson to make a 7:30 curtain at the Fountain Theatre on Fountain and Normandie for a production of Bernard Weinraub's The Accomplices. After dutifully arriving at 7:15, I stood with a small crowd shivering on the sidewalk 45-minutes for a show that started 30 minutes later than announced.
Former Back Stage West editor Rob Kendt has spoken of the cold-blooded efficiency of the New York theater that starts so promptly, you can set your watch by it. I think he was feeling nostalgic for L.A. at the time, finding some charm in L.A. theater's comparatively lackadaisical attitude to punctuality.
I think I suffered the worst of both worlds over the weekend. If individually or collectively, theaters are going to try to impose an ethos of discipline that includes starting a show at the announced time, and re-educating audiences to that ethos, I'm guessing it should be universally applied, or not at all. I predict the latter.
Eastern Standard
A new play, The Patriot Act: A Reality Show, by City Garage's Charles Duncombe is being presented in New York by Castillo Theatre. It's a one-act in which a middle-aged man auditions for a reality TV show, trying to prove that he's the most patriotic man in America. It performs September 5 through 21 a the All Stars Project Performing Arts and Development Center, 543 W. 42nd Street. (212) 941-1234.
Meanwhile in New York, L.A. publicist-producer David Elzer has been prepping for the off-Broadway opening of The Marvelous Wonderettes, the musical, born as a one-act at Milwaukee Rep that Elzer produced at El Portal in North Hollywood. It's been enjoying an Equity production at Laguna Playhouse, and starts NYC perfs this week at Westside Theatre Upstairs, 407 W. 43rd Street. (212) 239-6200.
For the Labor Day weekend's New Theater Reviews, embedded in the coming week's comprehensive theater listings, press the READ ON tab directly below
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