Alina Szapocznikow's work got more intimate when she got cancer ... why did James Kim lose his ability to speak his native Korean? ... AirSplat and hiring vets ... LA's only known superhero.
California might issue vintage-style license plates under new bill
It's not a big thing, but it's important to a lot of people.
Mike Gatto, a Democratic Assemblyman from LA, announced today that the Assembly Transportation Committee passed CA Assembly Bill (AB) 1658. That's the California Legacy License Plate Program, his bill that would let drivers pick a vintage-style California license plate from the three styles above.
In a news release Gatto says, “Aside from not salting our roads, California doesn’t often do much for automobile enthusiasts. This is an easy way for the state to make life a little more enjoyable for those of us who appreciate the classic era of automobile design.”
There's only one hitch, and it's not the chrome knob beneath the license plate. It's that the state has to receive at least 7,500 paid applications for the plates before it'll start issuing them.
Gatto would not comment on whether having the appropriate plate on my 1980 Mercedes would make it run better. I figure it can't hurt.
First Language Attrition: Why my parents and I don't speak the same language
UPDATE: James Kim's Off-Ramp piece received a 2013 Mark Twain Award by the Associated Press Television-Radio Association for best light feature. Congratulations, James! -- John Rabe
I have always had a tough time understanding my parents. Not because we’re from different generations, or born and raised in different countries; it’s that we don’t speak the same language. Growing up, I remembered that my Korean was actually pretty good. My mom said that I “spoke Korean very well for seven years.” But afterwards, I “stopped speaking Korean and only spoke English.”
This has made my relationship with my parents difficult to cultivate. We always are easily irritated with each other because we constantly misunderstand what each of us is saying. We can hardly explain a movie’s plot line to one another, let alone express what we’re going through. The only time I talk with my parents is when I’m asking them “what’s for dinner?” I wanted to try and fix this problem by taking the first initial step; that is to figure out if my condition is common or not.
I talked to Linda Light, a Linguistics professor at Cal State Long Beach, who assured me that I wasn’t a screw up and that the condition is called First Language Attrition. Light says “there’s a tendency across all minority groups of a three-generation thing.” The first generation of immigrants speaks their native language; the second generation tends to be bilingual, while the third generation loses the native language. “But Koreans especially often lose it in the second generation, not the third.” It was a relief to find out that my ineptness towards speaking Korean was actually common in my immigrant generation. Yet, I still couldn’t help but feel guilty for not being able to communicate with my parents.
I decided that the only thing to do was to take initiative and have a one-on-one personal conversation with my parents. Of course, I brought my friend along to help translate the conversation. Going into the interview, I thought that the only thing I had to improve was my Korean language. After doing that, all our problems would be fixed. Wrong. My Dad believes that my “apathy towards Korean culture” is what caused our relationship to tear apart. My mom replied that not only should I express myself to them, but I also need to listen to how they used to live in Korea to understand them better.
My lack of Korean language wasn’t the problem; it was my attitude towards Korean culture. This whole time I thought the solution was as simple as taking some courses at a Korean language school. Instead, I learned that my whole demeanor towards my native culture needs a revision.
Irwindale airsoft gun seller AirSplat roughly doubles workforce during tough economy
During the past few years, one company in Irwindale has been creating jobs with a bang,
The company is called AirSplat. At its 80-thousand square foot warehouse in Irwindale, about 60 workers sell, pack and ship paint ball guns and “airsoft” guns that fire tiny pellets. AirSplat says it has the world’s largest inventory of airsoft guns – from $4 pistols for backyard beginners to $1,500 rifles for staged combat scenes.
In a safe corner, under the guidance of AirSplat’s Jon Dibblee, I tried out a $215 MP9 sub-machine gun that shoots little BB's instead of bullets. it felt just like a real gun, and I managed to hit a target box in the distance. Beginner’s luck. A lot of AirSplat customers get tips and training from Jon Dibblee, but not in person like I did. He’s in AirSplat’s YouTube videos.
In an early video, he lists his real-life Army experience - two-and-a-half years in Iraq. "I played multiple roles in the Army, everything from a rifleman to grenadier to assistant machine gunner," he explains in the video.
"Yeah, it was very, very intense to say the least," Dibblee remembered in the AirSplat marketing office overlooking the warehouse. When Dibblee decided not to re-enlist, the Army helped him draw up a resume, which he sent to AirSplat 3 years ago. The company hired him for an entry-level customer service job. Soon he moved to tech repair and then to the web site as the resident weapons expert. All along, Dibblee marvels at how the airsoft hobby grew while the economy sputtered.
"I find it odd because generally when it comes to the recession, it’s the entertainment and hobbies that get cut first," Dibblee said. "Everybody saves money for bills and food. You know, to see a hobby grow is unbelievable."
AirSplat has grown along with it. “Inc. Magazine” placed it among the country’s fastest growing retailers for the past three years. It now brings in more than $15,000,000 dollars annually.
Kenneth Wu founded AirSplat 11 years ago when he was a 25-year-old entrepreneur with a small office and an eBay account. He filled orders one gun at a time by himself. Now his operation has moved into the giant warehouse in Irwindale – and in the past few years, he’s nearly doubled the size of his staff.
"We had a couple of key players and key strategies all kinda come together," Wu explained. "Social media, the viral marketing and partly, consumer behavior has changed as well. They’ve shifted a lot more to online. And this shift is moving in our direction."
AirSplat’s Marketing Chief Martin Francisco says video games have also helped.
"Every big video game released that comes out - the newest 'Call of Duty,' or 'Modern Warfare' - those new [gun] models that come out and highlight and showcase, generally you see that reflected in the airsoft industry," Francisco said. "The manufacturers in China and Asia bring out the real airsoft version of those six months later and suddenly those are the hot items,"
Francisco also started with AirSplat in customer service. That was two years ago; now he’s the marketing boss. Josh Hayes of Upland wandered into the AirSplat call center with only a high school equivalency degree.
"I’m 25 and before this, I was working as a butcher for Ralph’s grocery store," he said. Hayes was recently promoted to supervisor. "Here I feel like I can apply some of my strengths a little bit better than when I was hurling pieces of meat around," Hayes said, chuckling.
AirSplat founder Kenneth Wu says his team of flexible fast learners triggered his company's success. In slow years, he doesn’t get paid - but he makes sure his employees do. "You kinda roll with it," Wu said. " You appreciate the fact that you can support all your employees here, and you give them a good environment to work in and an ability to grow and at least they are rewarded for what they’re supposed to be doing."
An employment strategy that's right on target.
Sculptor Alina Szapocznikow's work got better as she got worse
Her name was Alina Szapocznikow, and she was a Polish sculptor. The most astounding thing about her show at the Hammer is its spectacular voyage of self-discovery. Her life of pain, disrupted relationships, illness and the final anguish of a 4-year death by cancer.
She passed through all the phases of mid-century modern plastic arts—even including a friendly Teddy-bearish bronze Stalin monument and photographs of her own used chewing gum. Through spindly modern bronzes influenced by Picasso and Mailol that paralleled her native Poland’s rise from Stalinoid jackbooted Communism. And then in the 60s, she emerged into the magical garden she’d spend the rest of her life portraying, the world of her own flesh. Which gave her a new country to explore with mounting accomplishment until the untimely end in 1973. That brought us a final, simple self-portrait from her deathbed. Saying goodbye with a wave of a hand somewhat like a last frail gesture of a drowning person. But with a smile.
Over all the anguish of her immense body of work, her smile hangs, like the smile of Lewis Carroll’s Cheshire Cat. Or like her own over-life-size lips and chin, rendered in lifelike, glowing resin, an image that permeates much of her work, sometimes in stacks, once as a luscious sweet on a desert plate, complete with a representation of a yellow buttery sauce. In her own silent lips, she finds her own answer to cancer.
It is her answer to the world. Rosy, barely parted in a half-voiced plea, they are on the clusters of angelic faces, hinted in strange grotesque shapes like interplanetary conch shells, a strewing of human faced boulders on the ground, also suggesting, as did so much of the rest of her work in her last years, the tumor that was eating up her life. They glow quite literally from her signature pursed-lip table lamps and become interchangeable with roses.
Another recurring image: Growths on a leg that cover it like fungus on an old tree. Another is an assortment of human, really female, plastic abdomens, strewn around like the pillows that they actually are, in an imaginary room, on an imaginary, dark, Northern seashore.
Then there is the nude life size portrait of her 20-year-old adopted son, as traductive and yet as loving and gentle as American painter Larry Rivers’ nude of his mother.
But among the morbid foreshadowings, works of purest exuberance. Like the pink marble model Rolls Royce Phantom 2, her symbol of artistic vanity and success. She planned to make this over in double life size as some rich person’s monument to vanity and wealth.
She said, "This work or object will be very expensive, completely useless, and a reflection of the god of complete luxury. In other words, a complete work of art. If there exists a fantastic snob as who would order this work to be made and put it right on his private lawn to fete his guests and invite them for drinks on the marble seats, then my American dream will be accomplished."
Maybe someone may still take her up on it.
This is the first comprehensive show of her work in the US. It brings to us someone most of us have never heard of, a world figure, whose work was touched by, but stands apart from the world of 60s Pop. It runs through the end of this month at the Hammer in Westwood. Maybe you should go at least twice.
Job fair in Boyle Heights - 600 jobs, with focus on vets
Veterans, young professionals and seniors all descended on a Boyle Heights job fair Tuesday when word got out it was sponsored by Chase Bank.
Chase says it’s looking to hire 200 workers in Boyle Heights and other areas throughout Los Angeles where unemployment is high.
The lender has taken flack from critics who say Chase unfairly kicks low-income people out of their homes when they have trouble paying their mortgages.
“We will commit $7 million over the next three years to nonprofit work here in Boyle Heights," said Chase spokesman Gary Kishner, emphasizing the bank's more positive efforts.
“Last year, we gave about $66 million to nonprofits," he continued. "That includes homes so that they could create affordable housing, that includes grants to nonprofits so that they could provide education within the schools. We are committed to the communities.”
Travis Burnham of Venice has been looking for work ever since he returned from Iraq, and the vet shook plenty of hands with Chase people and other prospective employers at the job fair.
It’s been difficult, especially considering Burnham has had some problems with the law.
“Never had a criminal history before that," he said. "When I came back, I got into some trouble and I’m clearing that up now."
Professional counseling has, according to Burnham, helped prepare him to reenter the job market.
Companies like UPS, Staples Center, Vons, Starbucks and Target are reviewing Burnham’s resume — and hundreds of others.
But, according to the fair's organizers, there are hundreds of jobs to go around.
Eat-LA on Off-Ramp: The California Homemade Food Act
A couple years ago, we profiled Mark Stambler, a Silverlake man who bakes bread in a brick oven in his backyard. He started baking bread as a young man to impress women (he says it worked), but got serious and even won a blue ribbon at the state fair for his baguette.
A while later, the LA Times picked up the story, adding that Stambler was selling his bread to local stores and restaurants. The very morning the story ran, the county health department came calling to shut down Stambler's efforts. State law, it said, bans the bartering of backyard baguettes.
In stepped Assemblyman Mike Gatto with AB 1616, the California Homemade Food Act.
"If the Act passes," according to Gatto's office, "homemade foods available for sale within the state would include breads and other baked goods, granola and other dry cereal, popcorn, nut mixes, chocolate-covered non-perishables, roasted coffee, dry baking mixes, herb blends, dried tea, honey, dried fruits, jams and jellies, and candy."
There's still a long way to go, but Stambler, who built his own 900-degree oven, can take the heat.
It's a bird, it's a plane, it's Heroman! Who's Heroman?
It’s a cool February night and I’m standing outside LACMA with my headphones on and microphone in hand. I’m waiting to get in the car of David Fillmore aka Heroman, LA’s only known superhero. We’re going on a ride along so I can get a glimpse of what he’s about.
Fillmore pulls up in his "attack vehicle," a black Nissan SUV wielding a large obtrusive toy clamped to the top that he calls his "raygun." I'm easily distracted by the raygun's cheesy sound effects, pulling the trigger repeatedly on passerby who's faces light up in laughter and confusion.
I ease into my comfy leather seat and start the interview. Fillmore fills me in on his story and mission.
"Many times, stuff will come up where the cops are just uninterested or they don’t have the time or they don’t have the resources or frankly they just don’t give a damn, and in those cases people should have somewhere to turn to. I want to be that person," says Fillmore.
There are no evil villains or radioactive spiders in Fillmore’s story. He got robbed, then got sick and decided to live life to the fullest.
"Well after I was robbed I almost died. I collapsed on a bus in West Hollywood. I went to my doctor and a bunch of tests, a long story short I have ulcerative colitis."
Fillmore's nasty disease is an impetus for doing good. He takes requests for help through his website and receives anywhere from 5-10 pleas a week, some of which he says are a little too outlandish for him.
But also Fillmore spends a lot of his time carousing back alleys and side streets, looking for people up to no good. His pursuits have actually gotten physical at times.
"And I took a step back thinking holy cow this dude just stabbed me, and I looked down and I had this giant gash in my leg. It was so deep I could see my femur."
Fillmore is an observant Jew who sees his caped crusading as an extension of his faith. He says his actions correspond with a Jewish philosophy of repairing the world.
Fillmore criticizes other superheroes for being fakers, noting that they line Hollywood boulevard to be a part of the tourist spectacle and would rather pose for pictures than help someone in need.
"Well I don’t think those guys are fighting any crime. I think they’re just in it for the glory of take my photo, look at me and have a nice holiday precious tourists I guess. That’s not what it’s about. It’s about doing something right and correcting wrongs, because superman, batman-the classic superheroes, that’s what the code is about," Fillmore said.
On the night of our ridealong, Fillmore stayed in the car and didn’t have to tackle any crime. That’s okay, I didn’t feel too much like being Heroboy. But to see Heroman in action in his new movie and read testimonials on his superhero services follow the links to his website.
Nick Stern photo taken with actual film and actual camera
Last month, I interviewed freelance photographer Nick Stern about his stance on Hipstamatic and Instagram photos.
In a nutshell, he said they are fine for everything but hard news, which I agree with.
I took a Hipstamatic shot of Nick, which you can see above, but I also unearthed an old SLR (and almost as old black and white film) and made a couple photos of Nick during our interview in Hollywood. I finally got the negs developed and then scanned to disc, and they're in the slideshow above.
Enjoy!
An alliance: Martin Luther King, Jr and Los Angeles Jews
(To mark the 44th anniversary of the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., here's a piece from the 2008 Off-Ramp archives.)
In 1965, during the height of the civil rights movement, Martin Luther King gave a sermon at Temple Israel in Hollywood at the invitation of Rabbi Max Nussbaum. It was tape recorded, but forgotten in a pile of other recordings. The rabbi’s widow Ruth unearthed it more than a decade ago but the digital age has now let the Temple make King’s sermon public.
95-year-old Ruth Nussbaum says her husband, who was born in Eastern Europe, knew from his earliest days about the persecution of all minorities, so it was natural for King to speak at his temple.
Speaking to the congregation, King said, "Our destinies are tied together. For some strange reason, I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. And you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be."
The words ring true today.