Director of "1915" on growing up with the Armenian genocide as family history; Jane Lynch sings as a candle; Brains On!
LACMA's 50 at 50 celebration brings in art, raises money and questions
A broken wineglass perched on a curb and a half-smoked luxury cigar in the plants were among the leavings of the big weekend LACMA high-roller blowout that were still visible at the Monday press conference at the museum.
At that conference, with its cold, morning-after air, LACMA director Michael Govan confirmed that the museum’s 750-celebrity, $160-a-bottle-champagne-fueled and Patina-catered 50th-birthday gala had netted the museum $5 million in donations.
More importantly, from the art-lover’s point of view, the media got a preview of the 50 generally very substantial works of art simultaneously offered as birthday honors from big time donors. Actually, many of them were "promised" donations. This generally means, according to LACMA Senior Communications Manager Stephanie Sykes, that they will be given to the museum on the owners’ passing. Of course one knows not when that will be.
So if you want to encounter all of these works of art in the proximate future, the time is now, in the Resnick Pavilion, where they can be seen starting April 26. It will be very much worth the effort.
An ad hoc collection if ever there was one, the 50-50 assembly consists of work in several media created over seven centuries, ending up just about now. There are some real surprises here — it’s not all Old Masters and Impressionists by any means.
There’s a fine collection of circa-1400 Ethiopian iron and bronze crosses, and a roughly contemporary crucifixion by the Florentine Taddeo Gaddi that shines with inner light. There is a powerful 1600s Bernini bust of a gentleman that somehow evokes the swank and swagger of an 1800s railroad tycoon.
There is a giddy Boucher of Leda and the Swan and an unusual Ingres portrayal of the Madonna (both offered by LACMA stalwarts Lynda and Stewart Resnick), a terrific septet of Whistler engravings, and collections of early Hawaiian photographs and mid-20th-century L.A. posters.
On the modern-classic side of things, there are works by Rosenquist, Klein, Lichtenstein, Segal, Warhol and Hockney. And a vast, transparent red lens by Dewain Valentine.
When was the last time one had seen so solidly a disparate assortment of intriguing to great artworks? Probably never. The LACMA Nifty 50, whenever they all do go on display officially, will not only augment the present museum collection but also increase its breadth and depth and suggest new acquisitional directions in its future.
But a question of that future hung over six of the finest things on display. These included a Toulouse Lautrec, a Vuillard, and Degas’s delectable nude primary study for his famous young ballerina statue. These were offerings from Malibu magnate A. Jerrold Perenchio, representing the 50 works he’s offered LACMA under one condition: that his works be housed in the proposed new Peter Zumthor LACMA building, a 700-foot-long Wilshire-Boulevard-hopping amoeba that'd cost LACMA $650 million.
And where that money will come from is a question that still hangs in the air. It amounts to another 130 of these $5 million fundraisers.
Husband-wife songwriting team of 'Frozen' honored by LA Children's Chorus
If you haven't heard the song "Let It Go," you’ve either been living in Antarctica or you've done a terrific job avoiding children for the last two years. Look the song up on YouTube and you'll see the top three videos have over a billion views combined.
Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez are the husband-wife songwriting team behind Disney's "Frozen,” and they’re having a pretty incredible year. They won an Oscar and a Grammy, and this week they were honored by the world-renowned Los Angeles Children's Chorus.
Third-grader Eden Wilder is fanatical about “Frozen.” She came early to the award ceremony tonight to meet her songwriting heroes — and who could be better to kick off the interview?
Eden Wilder: What was your inspiration for “Let It Go”?
Kristen Anderson-Lopez: When we started the project, Elsa was a villain, and we were hanging in the balance about whether Elsa was truly a villain. Then we went to the park near our house and we were walking around and then we jumped up on picnic tables and thought about what it would feel like if you’d been keeping a secret your whole life and then the minute it came out, all the people turned on you and chased you away. We started to feel sorry for her, and we started to channel what it feels like to try to live up to other people’s expectations and how good it feels to let that go.
Robert Lopez: We knew when we were writing it that it was a song of transformation and we knew that that was a great spot to write a song because everybody likes a song where a character transforms themselves, and when they start singing they’re one person — she was buttoned up and kind of holding it all in — and by the end she had let it all out.
Eden Wilder: How old are your daughters and where are they involved in the eight songs of “Frozen”?
Kristen Anderson-Lopez: Our daughters now are 10 and almost six, but yes, they were involved almost daily. We would come home at night and they would say “Hey, what are you doing?” And then sometimes we would say, “Guess what we wrote for Elsa and Ana today!” 'Cause they were the original Elsa and Ana fans.
Robert Lopez: Yeah, and if they liked the song, we would play it for Disney and if they didn’t, we would rewrite it.
The Lopezes say they’re still amazed at what incredible success “Frozen” has had. It’s now the highest-grossing animated movie of all time and it’s won a long list of awards, including two Oscars.
“It feels wonderful. It’s so much bigger than anyone thought it would be. We were walking in the desert in Arizona once on a vacation and we heard someone singing ‘Let It Go’ from beyond a dune and they were singing it in French,” says Lopez. “It was incredible.”
They credit a good portion of its success to the movie’s strong female characters. As the parents of two girls, turning the typical Disney princess story on its head was an important part of the project for them.
“I was raising girls and I was dealing with the princess problem of — these girls, they want to wear these Cinderella dresses and they want to get married. How do I channel that in a way that celebrates imagination and all the amazing things about that tradition, but also doesn’t make them feel like the goal is to get married to a prince?” says Anderson-Lopez. “I always try and say, ‘Go to college, find a career that’s fulfilling, make sure you meet someone that loves you exactly as much as you love them, then talk about marriage.’ So I wanted to put that in a Disney fairy tale.”
As the Lopezes watched the Los Angeles Children’s Chorus perform songs they’d written, Kristen teared up. When they got to the stage, she read a long list of singing groups she’d been a part of since she was young and shared with the choristers how important music education has always been to her.
“We’re really pleased to be honored,” says Anderson-Lopez. “Music education and group singing is something that really had an impact on both of our lives and it’s the way that we’re going to save the world honestly.”
You can read Eden Wilder’s full interview on Variety’s website here (she’s the daughter of the magazine’s managing editor).
Let's give P-22 the mountain lion a better name!
This week, we got another glimpse of P-22, the mountain lion who has graced Los Angeles with its presence, appearing impossibly iconic near the Hollywood sign in one photo, mangy and sad in another, and Monday, a little ticked off but ultimately surprisingly patient when discovered under a house near Griffith Park.
But Google "P-22," and you get, alongside the lion, photos of a handgun made by Walther, the makers of James Bond's famous PPK.
(Image: Walther Arms website.)
I suppose there are parallels. Each P-22 is a beautifully made precision killing machine. But Off-Ramp thinks the lion deserves more of a name than P-22, which, for all I know, denotes the number of poodles he's eaten.
And that's were you come in. Please suggest a better name for old P-22 and we'll pick a winner, and rename him in an on-air ceremony next week. Leave your suggestions below, and stay tuned.
In 'The Musician's Secret,' blackmail, music, all haunted by the Armenian genocide
Writer Litty Mathew set her debut novel — “The Musician’s Secret” — in Glendale, the heart of the nation's Armenian American population. It tells the story of Rupen Najarian, an aging musician who was his family’s sole survivor of the Armenian genocide in 1915. Rupen plays the duduk, a traditionally Armenian wind instrument with a 5,000 year history.
As Rupen slides gracefully intro retirement, he’s confronted by a young Armenian immigrant who blackmails Ruben, threatening to expose a decades-old secret. KPCC’s Patt Morrison talked with Mathew about the book, Armenian traditions, and the 5,000 year old instrument that plays a central role in “The Musician’s Secret.”
On setting the novel in Glendale:
I think of Glendale as being really exotic. It's a destination. It's also my home — I've lived in Glendale for more than 20 years, and I've actually married into the fold.
In very old cultures, like the Armenian culture, sometimes you don't understand. Or you don't think about where the actions, or why you follow certain cultural rules. But they've been there for thousands of years. And there are all these myths and traditions that are attached to it. And I was just fascinated by it, because of my own culture. I'm South Indian — I'm Syrian Christian — we have also those tendencies where, you know, it's so a part of our daily routine. But you don't stop to ask yourself: why do we do the things that we do?
On learning about the duduk — the instrument played by the novel's protagonist:
There are some things you just can't forget. And for me it's the sound of the duduk. In 2005, I wrote a story for the LA Times calendar section. My husband, Melkon, was noticing the sound showing up in all these Hollywood scores. And every time it would come on, he'd say "Hey, listen to this. That's an Armenian instrument!"
So I asked my editor at the Times "Hey, there's this musical instrument, it's taking over all these scores, I'd love to find out more." I interviewed some very famous duduk players, including Djivan Gasparian, who is the most notable duduk player. And I interviewed several composers in Hollywood, who wrote these great compositions.
After the story was done, I just kept thinking about the instrument. I couldn't get it out of my head. It got to be such an obsession that I wrote a whole book about it!
On weaving culture and the immigrant experience into the novel's plot:
I think when we're talking about an old culture, like the Armenians, you can't get away with it: why you do certain things. Every time a piece of bread falls, an Armenian relative will be like "Hey! Don't feed the spirits. Pick it up!"
Or if a child misbehaves, the thing to say is "Hey! Do you want the Turks to be happy with your bad behavior?"
I think Los Angeles, more than any other big city in the U.S., is such an interesting place to be when you're from somewhere else. Because Los Angeles doesn't judge you. That's what I love about the city, is that you can actually come here and choose your future, as opposed to your past.
Director of '1915' on growing up with Armenian genocide as family history
Turkey was on the defensive Wednesday, lashing out at both Pope Francis and the European Union's legislature for their descriptions of the Ottoman-era killing of Armenians as genocide. Turkey's prime minister Ahmet Davutoglu said that the pontiff has joined "an evil front" plotting against Turkey... Later Wednesday, the European Parliament triggered more Turkish ire by passing a non-binding resolution to commemorate "the centenary of the Armenian genocide." In a quick response, the Turkish Foreign Ministry said the resolution was an attempt to rewrite history and threatens to harm bilateral relations between the EU and Turkey. — Associated Press, April 15, 2015
This month, most of the world commemorates the 100th anniversary of the Armenian genocide, in which the Turks killed an estimated 1.5 million Armenians. This weekend marks the opening of a new movie that tells the story again, but through a production of a play staged at the historic Los Angeles Theatre in downtown LA.
Alec Mouhibian and Garin Hovannisian's "1915" opens this weekend in Southern California and next weekend in New York, and Hovannisian came to the Off-Ramp studio to talk with host John Rabe about the film.
(Filmmaker Garin Hovannisian at the Mohn Broadcast Center. Credit: John Rabe)
How did you first learn of the genocide?
"I came from a very special family that was connected directly with the Armenian genocide. My grandfather, Richard Hovannisian, who has taught history at UCLA for the past 50 years, and who is one of the founding scholars of Armenian studies in the United States, made it no option for me not to know. The way he came to discover it from his own father, who was a survivor, was very different. His father survived, escaped, moved to the San Joaquin Valley, and the instinct of many people of his generation was to forget, to overcome the past. But many nights, Kaspar, my great-grandfather, could be heard screaming in his sleep."
How did they describe the genocide to a child?
"There was this mythic land called Armenia, with a wonderful mountain called Ararat, where the Bible says Noah's arc landed, a land where Christianity first proclaimed. But for some reason, that land didn't exist, that land was destroyed, it was a land of ruined churches, it was a ghost land. And so the stories that my father would tell me deep into the night always began with 'there was this land called Armenia.' To me, it was the place of my dreams. It was the place that, having been born in Los Angeles, growing up in Los Angeles, we would return to."
Tell us about "1915," your movie.
"This movie follows a mysterious, intense theater director, who on one day, April 24, 2015, which happens to be the 100th anniversary of the Armenian genocide, believes that if he brings the right cast together, and if he stages this play to perfection, he can actually bring the ghosts of the Armenian genocide back to life. So in an age when nobody believes in the theater anymore, this one theater director is on the mission of his life."
For much more from our interview with Garin Hovannisian, listen to the audio interview near the top of the screen.
"1915" opens Friday in Hollywood, Glendale, Beverly Hills, Encino, Pasadena, Santa Ana, Anaheim, Rancho Palos Verdes, and Whittier; and April 25 at the Moscow Cinema in Yerevan, Armenia.
Smash hit podcast 'Welcome to Night Vale' comes to LA and Off-Ramp
UPDATE: Welcome to Nightvale, the hit bizarre podcast, is at the Orpheum Theatre in downtown LA Saturday night. Here's our interview with Nightvale creator Joseph Fink from 2014.
Imagine it's 11:30 at night and you're listening to one final podcast before you fall asleep. And the one you choose sounds like a community radio station in a small desert city that might have been taken over by aliens or a shadow government. In Night Vale, murders and massacres are commonplace, not to mention bleeding mailboxes and glow clouds.
(Welcome to Night Vale merch at TopatoCo)
To coin a phrase, Welcome to Night Vale.
It's dropped back to #4 on iTunes, but this summer, "Welcome to Night Vale" reigned as #1, beating even "Radiolab" and "This American Life." It's written by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor, and usually narrated by Cecil Baldwin. In the wake of the podcast's success, a Night Vale novel is promised next year, and the team is in the middle of a West Coast tour, with dates next weekend at Largo at the Coronet.
When I reached him in Seattle, co-creator Joseph Fink understood when I told him his show reminds me of the AM radio station in my home town, mixed with Art Bell's "Coast to Coast," and maybe a little Garrison Keillor. But, nope.
"I think those comparisons are very flattering," he said. "I actually have listened to little to none of any of those things. ... I wanted to do a podcast and I didn't want it to be like any podcast I was already listening to. And so I eventually came up with the idea of this town where every conspiracy theory is true, and then we just go on with life."
I said "Welcome to Night Vale" is, at its heart, people getting on with their lives, and Fink agreed.
"Well, yeah. I feel like that's what people really connect to in Night Vale. Night Vale is terrifying. There are terrifying things all around, and people die constantly, and yet the citizens of Night Vale have to just keep going on and living their lives within the circumstances they have. And that's true of real life, too. Real life it terrifying, too. ... And in that way, we are very similar to the people of Night Vale; it's just Night Vale exaggerates that a little bit. And it's aliens instead of cancer. But it's the same basic idea of just taking the circumstance you have and dealing with it the best you can."
Listen for much more, and to hear KPCC's Molly Peterson tell us about her favorite episode of "Welcome to Night Vale."
Song of the week: 'Cool Breeze' by Adam Lipman
This week's song of the week comes from a Los Angeles native: singer songwriter Adam Lipman. Lipman was born and raised on the Westside, has released about half a dozen albums. Cool Breeze is off his latest record — "Prove the Beast," which is available on Spotify. You can see him perform live on Friday, April 24 at 8pm at 329 N Burlington Avenue in Historic Filipinotown.
https://open.spotify.com/track/6tWRxYlKsarLd1ffpFi3OL
'Glee' actress Jane Lynch takes to the stage in 'See Jane Sing!'
Jane Lynch — the actress famous for her role as Sue Sylvester in TV's "Glee," Christopher Guests' films "Best in Show" and "A Mighty Wind" — is coming to a stage near you. The Emmy award-winner is touring the country in See Jane Sing — a live musical performance of some of her favorite songs with a live band. She plays the Wallis Annenberg Center in Beverly Hills on Friday, May 1.
Off-Ramp producer Kevin Ferguson talked with Jane Lynch about her history as a singer and actress and about the upcoming gig.
Lynch started in theater (her very first role was a singing candle in third grade), but it wasn't until being offered the role of Miss Hannigan in a Broadway production of Annie that Lynch wanted to return to the stage. Lynch is a classically trained actor, who attended Cornell University, and sang professionally for a touring company of the Second City comedy troupe.
Jane Lynch on stage with Chicago's Second City comedy group
Lynch didn't have a theme in mind for See Jane Sing — she simply picked what she loves, calling the show "a musical journey through songs that have very little to do with one another.” As if to bring that point home, she says she’ll be performing "Far from the Home I Love" from Fiddler on the Roof and the vintage novelty song "Mairzy Doats" sung in a three-part harmony.
Mairzy Doats 78 rpm 10" record
Lynch also teased the possibility of working a Nicki Minaj rap into her set in time for her show — but not the one from Glee.
Jane Lynch raps Nicki Minaj's "Super Bass"
Purchase tickets for Lynch's See Jane Sing on May 1st at the Wallis Annenberg Center here.
Patt Morrison on Abraham Lincoln's SoCal legacy
Abraham Lincoln loved the idea of California, that far away place, the terminus of the Transcontinental Railroad he helped to create but never lived to see.
When he heard that a friend was heading back to California, Lincoln wrote:
"I have long desired to see California. The production of her gold mines has been a marvel to me — and her stand for the union. Nothing would give me more pleasure than a visit to the Pacific Shore. I have it now in purpose, when the railroad is finished, to visit your wonderful state."
Only a handful of hours before he was assassinated, he spoke to his wife Mary about journeying to California when they left the White House. And on that very same day, Lincoln buttonholed the Speaker of the House, Schuyler Colfax, who was leaving for the Golden State, and asked him to tell California's miners:
"I shall promote their interests to the utmost of my ability. Because their prosperity is the prosperity of the nation and we shall prove in a very few years that we are, indeed, the treasury of the world."
Lincoln, like Moses, envisioned the promised land yet was destined never to see it.
But California remembered him. All sorts of Golden State spots like roads and schools are named for Honest Abe. Lincoln Boulevard, for one, is a stretch of Pacific Coast Highway that runs alongside Los Angeles International Airport and into Santa Monica. It's only about eight miles long compared to Washington Blvd.'s 27 miles, but George Washington had a big head start. He died 10 years before Lincoln was even born.
But the paradox is that, during the Civil War, Los Angeles was a Confederate town.
Of its 5,000 residents, as many as half had come from the South. In the presidential election of 1860, Lincoln got barely 25 percent of the vote. As the war was underway, Confederate troops advanced into Arizona with an eye on the California gold fields.
Then, a couple of pro-Union businessmen — one of them the grandfather of General George S. Patton — handed over a piece of land to the Union Army. Dixie sympathy and state secession talk didn't disappear from L.A., but it held its tongue.
But another piece of L.A. real estate would give Lincoln a posthumous triumph. It's probably the city's oldest suburb, more than 150-years-old, and situated on the bluffs of the L.A. River. It was called East Los Angeles, and the man who helped to develop it into a fine neighborhood called it Enchanted Hill.
He was John Griffin and his brother-in-law was Albert Sidney Johnston — General Johnston — until 1861 the commander of the U.S. Army Department of the Pacific. Johnston was living with his relatives on the Enchanted Hill when war began. He quit the U.S. Army, joined the Confederacy and escaped from L.A. before he could be arrested.
Today, that neighborhood where a top Confederate general once lived is called Lincoln Heights. In 1917, residents voted unanimously to rename their neighborhood for the assassinated president and for the new high school already bearing his name. East Lake Park became Lincoln Park and the Eastside police station became Lincoln Heights police station.
Washington was the nation's first president. But Lincoln became the first to leave a lasting mark on the state he never got to see.
Roz Wyman's front row seats to the birth of the Los Angeles Dodgers
Monday was Opening Day at Dodgers Stadium in Los Angeles, where LA beat the San Diego Padres 6-3 on a 3-run homer in the 8th inning. Roz Wyman was there, in front-row seats, as she has been every single year, ever since she helped bring the team to Los Angeles in 1958.
Roz Wyman was elected to the LA City Council in 1953. At 22, she was not only its youngest member ever, but only its second woman, and Jewish to boot. She and her husband were big Democrats … Hubert Humphrey stayed at their Bel Air home and the studios would send over first-run films to screen in their living room.
LA was not a world-class city back then, and Wyman knew that one of the keys to elevating the city's prominence was to bring in a major league team. Meanwhile, Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley was trying and failing to replace the team’s stadium in Brooklyn. Eventually, O'Malley made that flight over Los Angeles and saw Chavez Ravine, a former Mexican-American hillside neighborhood that had been razed for a public housing project that was never built, with easy access to the freeways.
The rest is history.
Opening Day: Superfans don Dodger blue mohawks, clown makeup, vintage Padres jerseys
Imagine getting lost in Dodger Stadium before the cell phone age. It's 1989. Your friend, the one in the Kirk Gibson jersey, said he'd meet you in front of the bathrooms near the right field pavilion. But look around: everyone has a Kirk Gibson jersey. It's three innings before you and your friend reunite.
To go to a Dodger game — especially on Opening Day — is to be surrounded in a sea of blue. But even at the most packed games, some people stand out.
Robert Rocha is probably one of the hardest fans to miss. For Opening Day, he dyed his enormous mohawk blue and stencils a white "LA" logo in the middle of it. "I've been doing my hair in mohawk style, probably for like five years," he said. "The bigger the hair, the bigger the heart."
Rocha — also known as Bluehawk — runs a popular Instagram with a little under 4,000 followers. He said it takes about an hour to get his hair styled. "It used to take me a lot longer until I got the science down," he said. "It's chemistry, you know? There's heat, there's coolness."
Other fans stand out for totally different reasons. Angel Perez came all the way from San Diego to root for the Padres, the Dodgers opponents on Opening Day. He wore a brown Padres jersey — not unlike this one.
"It feels a little awkward. I haven't seen that many Padre fans — maybe less than ten," he said. He acknowledged he'd gotten a couple of glares but was careful to add that the atmosphere wasn't that hostile. "It feels great, supporting my team, coming out from San Diego for the game."
On almost any given game day, you can find Bobby Crosby in the Left Field Pavilion. Crosby is a lifelong Dodgers fan and has held season tickets since 1997. Crosby also runs a popular Youtube channel where he films himself catching home runs. "The key is — it's just muscle memory and practice. Knowing where your hand is supposed to be, vaguely hoping, while your eyes never leave the ball," he said.
Crosby's caught hundreds of home runs during batting practice — on Opening Day he caught one from third baseman Juan Uribe. But he's only caught one during a game — a home run from Pittsburgh Pirate center fielder and former MVP Andrew McCutchen. Crosby hopes to catch a home run from a Dodgers player, but hasn't yet.
Meet Chaz Perea, Dodger Stadium's landscape manager
Woven into the fabric of Dodger Stadium's beauty is its plant life: the rolling hills of Elysian Park, the meticulously manicured field and the thousands of decorative plants found outside the stadium’s gates. Those are managed by one man, landscape manager and certified arborist Chaz Perea.
Perea is 29 years old, he’s worked for the Dodgers since 2009, and at any given time about 10 people are working under him. He graduated from the horticultural studies program at Mt. San Antonio College in Walnut, but he grew up in Arizona. He’s diplomatic when you ask him what team he roots for — he won't name his favorite team, but says, laughing "I support the Dodgers. I love the hand that feeds me. I’m very happy to be here."
Before joining the Dodgers organization, Perea worked at a country club in Whittier. The change of scenery couldn't be more different for him. "There’s not a day I don’t drive in here and [think], 'Are you kidding me?'" he says. "It’s fabulous, it’s every day, and it’s kind of hard to wrap your head around."
It’s before sunrise when I go out to meet Chaz. Already, his team is at work — overhauling the landscaping near the stadium’s Sunset Gate. Opening day is a week and a half away. We start our tour of Dodger Stadium in Perea's golf cart.
First on the agenda: blue Mediterranean fan palms — of course they’re blue. A truckload just arrived and his team dug up a fresh new planter in the middle of the stadium parking lot. Where last season there was asphalt, 2015 will see an island of flora that’s lush, pretty and — most importantly — drought-tolerant.
"This guy’s gonna love the heat," he says of the fan palm as we drive over. "It’s gonna reflect sun really well. He’s gonna have a slow to moderate growth. It’s gonna use a fraction of the water that most plants would need."
Perea says plants like these can go with as little as 12 minutes of watering each week — that’s important for one of the biggest stadiums in California.
After inspecting the fan palms — which look great, by the way — we move on. We visit the landscape management workshop. Then behind it, the garden where they keep extra plants ready to go. Every now and then fans will trample the landscaping, and Perea has a fresh batch ready to replace them in the event that happens.
We finish our interview outside the top deck at the stadium — just as the sun starts rising over downtown Los Angeles. I ask him about the future — the drought isn’t letting up any time soon, and they can’t really let the grass on the field at Dodger Stadium go brown.
Perea says it's no longer simply a matter of finding drought-tolerant plants, but ones that can survive on reclaimed water. "That’s where all this exterior irrigation is gonna be pushed in the coming years, for all of us," he says. "Reclaimed water is tricky — in the sense that it introduces a handful of salts into your soil that more or less don’t get along with your plants so much."
It’s the same story for Dodger fans. Many are digging up their lawns or letting them go brown. Or they live in apartments with no green at all. Chaz Perea and his team give fans an escape from all that — what better reason to get up before dawn?
Legendary Dodgers scout Mike Brito on the right stuff on the mound and in the wardrobe
Not only did legendary Dodgers scout Mike Brito discover Fernando Valenzuela and Yasiel Puig, and thirty players in between. Not only did he man the radar gun behind home plate for years, calmly smoking a cigar. Not only are his fingers so crowded with championship rings you crunch them when you shake his hand. But Mike Brito is also the best-dressed person on the field.
From his Cordoba penny loafers, to the hat that perfectly complements his matching tie and handkerchief, even down to the brown-tinted sunglasses, he is an antidote to Zubaz America.
In our interview he describes what he looks for in a player, and reveals his secret clothing weapon. Okay, we'll tell you: his wife picks out his "combinations."
Even a star of Culture Clash's 'Chavez Ravine' roots for the Dodgers
For our Dodgers Opening Day Off-Ramp special, I wanted to make sure to pay respect to the memory of what used to be in Chavez Ravine ... the working class Mexican-American neighborhood that was razed to make way for a public housing project that was never built.
(LA County Sheriffs forcibly remove Chavez Ravine resident Aurora Vargas from her home. Bulldozers then knocked over the few remaining dwellings; four months later, ground-breaking for Dodger Stadium began. Photograph dated May 8, 1959. Credit: LAPL/Herald-Examiner Collection)
So I met Richard Montoya, one of the members of the performance group Culture Clash, at one of the Dodger Stadium overlooks to talk about "Chavez Ravine," the hit play that tells the story of the businessmen and politicians who killed the public housing plan with Red-baiting and lies, and how Fernando Valenzuela's breakout success in 1981 helped heal some of the wounds.
Montoya, who plays - among other parts - Vin Scully and Dodger Dog Girl in "Chavez Ravine," confesses to being a Dodger fan, and says he loves bringing his 4-year old son to the stadium to run the bases.