Billy Ray Cyrus and his Hillbilly Heart ... puppet month ... hidden and forbidden staircases ...
RIP Antronette Yancey, public health advocate, author, poet, model
I wrote an obit today and worked really hard to keep from using the words “tireless,” “fierce,” and “passionate.” Not because they weren’t true, but because in Toni Yancey’s case, they were true, but their overuse might make you think Toni wasn’t the epitome of tireless, fierce, and passionate. She was; I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone as dynamic, engaging, and genuine.
Dr. Antronette Yancey died Tuesday. She was just 55. She died of lung cancer, even though she was a non-smoker. She had an amazingly varied resume and I don’t think she failed at anything she tried. She was a college basketball player and a model - she was 6’2” and strikingly beautiful – she earned her MD and became a public health doctor, winding up her career at UCLA's Fielding School of Public Health. She was a poet who could deliver one of her works at any time, and the author of the book Instant Recess, which I edited. She was an out lesbian with the coolest partner, Darlene Edgley. Yancey led exercise programs for the crowds at Padres and Sparks games, advocated getting healthy food into stores in the poor parts of town, and attacked educators for putting standardized tests ahead of phys ed. PE, she pointed out, was proven to raise grades.
If this sounds like Toni might have been was one of those nagging, imperious types – “I can do all this stuff, why can’t you?” – nothing could be further from the truth, and that was what was special about her. When she and Darlene had us over for dinner, we had chicken that was – gasp! – breaded. We just didn’t have a ton of it, and we also had a ton of vegetables.
She still played ball with some friends, but she had a little belly like almost everybody over 40. She didn’t want Americans to become ripped Men’s Health cover models; she just wanted us to think harder about taking better care of ourselves, and wanted government and industry to get involved … if only because it would lower health care costs and increase productivity and profits.
She was a rigorous academic, who knew you also have to inspire if you want to help people change their habits. Here are a few stanzas from one of her poems, sent out by her friends today:
And if you can recapture
Even a little of the joy
Of unbridled movement
Then just maybe
There's hope
For the couch potatoes
Those of you
Too worn down
Even to fidget
And some thoughts from her friends, from that same email.
Her long limbs were essential to Toni’s life path of reaching out and walking with anyone she could inspire and motivate. Most people hope to leave one footprint in society; she has left footprints not just with those she met but through the work she has inspired us to carry on. Toni has pointed the way for thousands – family, friends, academic peers, students and everyone they touch – through education and public health advocacy across our nation. Toni Yancey’s creative, inspiring, and motivating leadership and spirit will be missed by all.
Toni, you helped a lot of people, you made a difference, you kept active for 55 years. Finally, rest in peace.
Listen, on the left, to KPCC's Nick Roman recalling the day we met Antronette.
Billy Ray Cyrus bares his 'Hillbilly Heart' and his musical roots
There's something very refreshing about Billy Ray Cyrus' new memoir Hillbilly Heart. It's not just that he's candid about being, at many points throughout his life, a headstrong jerk, or, as he puts it, a "heathen," an imperfect man.
That makes good reading, but what I like is that he took the songwriting advice he got years ago, pares everything down to its essence, and leaves out the preaching. He says, This is what happened to me, make of it what you will.
Cyrus had two parents that loved him, but that couldn't get along with each other. They split when he was young, and although he doesn't say so in the book, Cyrus' life afterwards was rife with classic incidents of a child of divorce - in Eastern Kentucky where divorce was taboo - acting out: shoplifting, vandalism, angry outbursts and displays, lost weekends, blown opportunities.
But while at least one of Cyrus' friends strayed over the edge, he managed to keep clear, or jump clear at the last minute. Partly, as he tells it, with the help of voices he says he heard distinctly. The voice of a murdered child, a warning against stealing, and more. Was this divine intervention? Or simply the way his conscience manifested itself? Cyrus says he doesn't know. He also got some good earthly advice from his dad early on, when he said how much he wanted to have a normal life with two parents at home: life isn't fair. But that didn't seem to sink in for a long time.
Eventually, in what seemed at impetuous, life-wrecking move at the time, Cyrus gave up a career in baseball - he was a star catcher - he decided he would be a musician. A famous musician. His mother was a musician, his father a regionally famous member of a Gospel quartet, and music was always in the house. But, as he explains it, he didn't really connect it to his future until he bought a left-handed guitar. He could play it, he started writing and singing songs, he formed a few bands, and, a decade of sweat, tears, flaming drinks, burnt-down bars, and music industry brush-offs later, came Achy Breaky Heart and instant stardom.
Later came Miley Cyrus and Hannah Montana, and more drama, but you'll have to read all about that in Hillbilly Heart.
(To the left you'll find the long version of the interview Billy Ray Cyrus and I recorded in the green room of at Ora TV in Glendale, where Larry King tapes Larry King Now.)
UPDATE: Redevelopment might eat East LA's giant tamale building
UPDATE 4/25/2013: A few years ago, we toured Whittier Blvd with Charles Phoenix, ending our trip with the famous building built like a giant tamale. Now, esoutouric.com reports that the building is up for sale, and hints that it might be torn down unless someone - like LA County Supervisor Gloria Molina - steps in, as she did for the Golden Gate Theatre.
Although it's among the last of an indigenous California architectural form, unfortunately there is no structure in place for protecting or preserving the Tamale. Located in unincorporated Los Angeles County, it is not subject to the city's historic preservation guidelines. State and National monument status is dependent on the whim of the property owner. And so she sits, caked in plaster, under the blazing east side sun, waiting for something to happen.
Inspired by her commitment to protecting the murals on the facade of the First Street Store, we're reaching out to Supervisor Gloria Molina and asking for her support in ensuring that the Tamale is preserved, even if that requires moving the structure from its current location. If you agree that the Tamale is an important L.A. landmark worth preserving, you can share your thoughts with Sup. Molina's office via email.
That address is molina@lacbos.org.
Listen to my interview, top left, with esotouric's Richard Schave.
(Tip of the hat to LA Observed.)
Photos: Celebrating LA Puppet Fest at the International Puppetry Museum
April marks Los Angeles' first ever Puppet Festival: a celebration of an artform that includes marionettes, muppets, action figures and more. There've been events at the Skirball Cultural Center, Bob Baker's Marionette Theater and--still to come--a Million Puppet March in Santa Monica.
RELATED: Sock Puppet Sitcom Theater connects new audiences with old TV shows
Off-Ramp producer Kevin Ferguson went to the International Puppetry Museum in Pasadena and talked with Joe Smoke, from the LA Department of Cultural Affairs, who co-sponsored the festival and the Museum's founder, Alan Cook.
Interview: Love and Rockets cartoonist Gilbert Hernandez on Marble Season, his new book
Gilbert Hernandez is the co-author of Love and Rockets--the sprawling and influential alternative comic book series. Since 1981 Gilbert and his brother Jaime have written and drawn stories about art, love, earthquakes, revolution and more.
Gilbert's latest graphic novel, though, tells a much more focused tale: Marble Season is a semi-autobiographical story that follows 10-year-old Huey and his brothers in 1960s suburbia. Hernandez talked with Off-Ramp producer Kevin Ferguson.
For those who aren't familiar with your work, or Marble Season, tell me about the book.
Marble Season is a book that took, say 50 years in the making. It's basically about a ten-year-old boy who grows up in the early 60s and he's trying to figure out what the world's all about. So he only understands comic books and horror movies and playing marbles.
It's about the neighborhood kids. It's just basically a semi-autobiographical story. What it's like to be ten years old, where you basically run the universe. There's no past, no future, nothing in between. You're just existing in this sort of imaginative state.
You said in an interview that your previous work was dense. And that you wanted Marble Season not to be dense. First off: I want to know what you mean by that, and I also want to ask how Marble Season differs from your previous work?
Well my earlier work was more dense, in the sense that there was a lot more panels, a lot more characters crowding the panels. Same with my writing: I was putting in 40, 60 words in a word balloon. And maybe there'd be three balloons in one panel.
And with Love and Rockets there were different stories going on at the same time too.
Right. What I wanted to do was have something read more like a comic strip, like Peanuts. Where it's just very simple and very easy to follow.
I was kind of excited when I read your bio, because you grew up in Oxnard. What was it like back then?
Oxnard is mostly an agricultural place. It's most notable for it's strawberries. You can still get the best strawberries in California in Oxnard! But it was pretty quiet growing up, and it was pretty quiet. We grew up in a pretty new neighborhood, so it was nice and clean, sparse. That was also what I was going for in the backgrounds and the settings for Marble Season.
I couldn't wait to get out of Oxnard, myself. As a teenager, it drove me crazy. It was fine for little kids, when you're just playing baseball and running around. But as you get older, you start to burn it out. And pretty soon it becomes claustrophobic. And you don't feel like there's any future there.
You were saying earlier that you tell the story from the point of view of a 10-year-old and that the 10-year-old is the center of the universe. Every time if you're going out, and you meet some parents or one parent with a kid. The parent's always fighting to get that kid to acknowledge adults—to not just stay in your own world.
It took me about two thirds of that book to realize there weren't adults anywhere. And I realized I was taken into that mindset!
Yeah. When you're in that zone, when you're in that part of your life as a kid. Parent's aren't around. They're just sort of in the way.
You were also saying earlier that you were taking inspiration from comic strips that you'd see in the newspaper. Peanuts also managed to keep adults completely out of the picture.
One thing that I saw in Marble Season that I did not see in Peanuts ever, I don't think, is that the characters at least in a couple scenes were pretty conscious of race. Huey's older brother Junior is accused of having a crush on a white girl. And that's the main thing: "I can't believe you have a crush on a white girl." Since it's semi-autobiographical, was that a big part of your childhood, too?
Most of that stuff comes from observation. I really didn't have to deal with that too much in my own crowd, because nobody really cared. But I would hear that. I would hear things like that. Like for example: The Beatles are introduced to some of the characters. For me and my little neighborhood kids, the Beatles were fine. We loved them. We thought they were great. But there were other kids who said "Oh, you're not supposed to like that music. That's what white people like."
So I'm just pointing that out—that was an attitude of the time for others. But you'd run into that once in a while. And yea, if you had a crush on a little blonde girl with freckles, eyebrows were raised.
What—if anything—do you want readers to take away after reading Marble Season?
I guess the main point is just that I'm still interested in the shared experience. I still want to connect to readers, to be able to relate. This is stuff you don't really see too much in movies. For example, if you try to get something done like Marble Season before it was a comic—like just an idea for a television show or a film—it's more compromised. It's like, "Yeah, you can have so much of that stuff but we have to have the slapstick and we have to have the funny voices and that kind of thing."
I think they would also want a huge narrative arc and a really overriding conflict to happen in that if they were trying to put it on a big screen. And I think that's one of the things that made Marble Season interesting to me. It's episodic. It's something that's ongoing. And it's like what life is when you're a kid.
Yeah, that's what I was going for. Basically, Marble Season is the moment you're ten years old. Only toward the end where he kind of hints that "Well, I'm not going to be a little kid forever. I hope I like it when I'm not a little kid forever."