Jason Mandell of The Coals sings in studio ... how is tattooed Jahsan doing? ... meet LA's new coroner ... Marc Haefele on the new Sam Francis exhibit ...
World's oldest man... isn't; Aging experts debunk Bolivian man's claim to be 123
This week, this story crossed the wires:
FRASQUIA, Bolivia (AP) - If Bolivia's public records are correct, Carmelo Flores Laura is the oldest living person ever documented. They say he turned 123 a month ago. The native Aymara lives in a straw-roofed dirt-floor hut in an isolated hamlet near Lake Titicaca at 13,100 feet (4,000 meters), is illiterate, speaks no Spanish and has no teeth. He walks without a cane and doesn't wear glasses. And though he speaks Aymara with a firm voice, one must talk into his ear to be heard. "I see a bit dimly. I had good vision before. But I saw you coming," he tells Associated Press journalists who visit after a local TV report touts him as the world's oldest person.
The story has all the elements that make it irresistible to the public ... and journalists. To be fair, the story contains qualifiers like "If Bolivia's public records are correct," but the claim was relatively easily debunked within a few days.
UCLA's Dr Stephen Coles, director of the Gerontology Research Group, which investigates these kinds of claims for the Guinness Book of World Records, says he was skeptical from the start, especially because there was no documentary proof dating to the year Laura was supposedly born. "I was immediately suspicious because no man to our knowledge has ever lived past the age of 116, because 90% of people we call super-centenarians are female."
He listed other red flags:
- This gentlemen is illiterate;
- There's no proof of birth dating to the original time of birth;
- There's no documentation for this man's age until he applied for a pension (giving him a financial incentive for age exaggeration);
- There's an alleged Baptismal Record (which, if it exists at all, could be for an entirely different person);
- There's no current ID;
- He can still walk at age "123" yo;
- His oldest child is 67 (that's a huge generation gap).
Then, researchers went on the Internet.
"There was," Coles said, "to our surprise, a baptismal certificate, which I'm holding in my hand right now."
I asked, "Was he born in 1890, like they said?"
"Not at all," Coles responded. "Not 1890, but 1906."
107 is nothing to sneeze at, but we'll check back with Carmelo Flores Laura in 16 years.
The oldest person in history remains a Frenchwoman, Jeanne Calment, who lived to 122.
LA County's chief coroner, Dr. Lakshmanan Sathyavagiswaran, retires
Last Friday, in the LA County Coroner's office, Dr. Lakshmanan Sathyavagiswaran came in for his last day on the job and then took his first weekend of retirement.
Dr Lak -- as he's known to his colleagues -- was the county's Chief Medical Examiner - Coroner. Since taking the job in 1992, his office has seen countless changes and been involved in dozens of very public trials--Dr Lak was involved in the OJ Simpson case, he performed Michael Jackson's autopsy.
Off-Ramp Producer Kevin Ferguson talked with the outgoing coroner about what it's like doing such a private job in the public eye, and how the department has changed over the years.
His replacement, Dr. Mark Farjado, starts Monday.
Interview Highlights:
On how/why he got into this line of work:
"I got interested in forensic science in medical school, and I watched my first autopsy. It was a case of tuberculosis and it pointed to me the role of a pathologist in public health...We speak for the person who died, and we try to figure out why they died and bring closure to families."
On how crime TV shows have influenced his industry:
"In our line of work the circumstances are very important, the scene investigation is very important, and in our line of work when the circumstances don't match the findings, something's wrong with the circumstances, not with the findings. The story told to you by somebody, it might not be the right story. We have had those situations where we go back and reinvestigate. I think what the shows have done is created an interest in forensic science, it'll definitely make some of the younger scientists in the world get interested in our field, which is good for our field."
On dealing with high-profile people:
"It happened during the Simpson trial. There was an ABC reporter who did confront me behind the office. To me sometimes, it's better not to discuss anything in those situations. In that case I think I said some things that haunted me during the trial, because they replayed the tape during the trial."
On seeing the morbid-side of LA:
"Remember that we are medical examiner-coroners. I am a doctor. And when I do the examination I am trying to find out why that person passed away. With that approach, nothing traumatizes you. Of course, it's quite traumatizing when you see young children being murdered, or other kinds of violent crimes.
"It is difficult sometimes, but the important thing is if you approach it as a scientist, and also remember there's a loving family behind this person awaiting to know what happened."
On staying focused on the job:
"I tell my staff: be thorough, be systematic, follow procedure. So we can come to the right conclusion, and just since I got an opportunity to tell the public, sometimes we do not find a cause of death. But the important thing is preserve specimens, evidence, so we can do a proper consultation and do further testing if needed."
On one of the most gratifying cases of his career:
"We had skeletonized remains of a young boy found in a chimney in one of the residences in 2005. After recovery, we estimated him to be African American and a teenager, based off our anthropological findings. We managed to produce a portrait of him which we published in the news media, and the cousin recognized him by the picture. She then put us in touch with the mother. With the help of the mother's DNA and DNA from the skeletal remains, we were able to identify him.
"This case was found in 2005, but really he went missing in 1977. So this was a big story, and the important thing is we brought closure to the mother. There's a lot of good people in the world. You know, the other big client is the funeral director industry—the funeral directors, the funeral homes. The mother didn't have enough money for the burial, and so the House of Winston [Mortuary] provided the funeral services for this child.
"We try hard with the staffing we have to give the best quality work product for the public in a timely manager. And I just want to thank the public for the trust they place in this office.
On his retirement plans:
"My plans when I retire is to do consultation, teaching. I love teaching young scientists, residents, medical students. And hopefully, one day, I can put my experiences into a book format, God willing."
Crenshaw Grads: Jahsan Lambey finds a dream job, but are his dreams too big?
Jahsan Lambey is one of the Crenshaw High class of 2012 I've been following as they make the transition from high school to the the adult world. Jahsan got his lucky break when he reconnected with his “big brother” Quinn – a guy he’d met in church as a kid.
Quinn turned out to be the right guy at the right time. He hooked Jahsan up with a job in auto tech a few days after he graduated. Not bad considering that youth unemployment hovers at 25%. And for African American youth you can almost double that.
Jahsan spoke with excitement about the “free education” he was getting at the auto tech shop. He watched more experienced technicians and asking them questions.
But to turn that lucky break into something -- like escaping the cycle of unemployment and underemployment -- Jahsan needed stability. This means having a car, and a place to live, two things that are hard to get without a good paying job.
When I left Jahsan, he was just about to move out of Quinn's house and looking for a place to rent. But I could tell the math wasn't going to work out in his favor. Food, bills, part-time work and now rent?
The next time I was in LA, Jahsan wasn’t answering calls. His big brother said things hadn’t worked out with the job due to logistical problems, like Jahsan navigating the two hour ride to get there on time and having a steady place to live. When I finally reached Jahsan by phone, he wasn’t that bright shiny kid of a few months before. He sounded distant and closed off.
I kinda think if he hadn’t expected to rise so far up, he might not have fallen so far down.
But he’s 19 with some magic to him and a lifetime to figure things out.
And as my mother-in-law once said “life is long,” and I suspect Jahsan will find a place for himself in the world. He’s certainly got a lot to offer, and hopefully the world can offer him a few things back, like a little time, grace and luck to figure it all out.
Patt Morrison: How pancakes, french toast and omelettes became breakfast staples
Why do you eat breakfast? We don’t mean why do you have a meal in the morning – it’s because you’re hungry, or because your mother always told you to.
More specifically, why do we eat the food we do at breakfast? Most of it we’d almost never eat for lunch or dinner: pancakes, bacon, french toast or waffles.
Patt Morrison has been doing a little reportorial taste test on what makes breakfast such a different meal in this country, and why we love it just the way it is. She poses the question to food historian Heather Arndt Anderson, author of "Breakfast: A History," and restaurateur Jim McCarty.
104-year old animator Tyrus Wong to headline Otis College annual kite festival
UPDATE: On Saturday, April 11, Otis College of Art and Design holds its 4th annual Otis Kite Festival on the beach adjacent the Santa Monica Pier. The event runs from 10am - 4pm and is free, and it includes an appearance by Otis alum Tyrus Wong, who designed the look of Disney's "Bambi" (see below), and in his later years has been designing, building, and flying kites.
"A special workshop for kids focused on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) to STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math) will integrate California Common Core requirements in Science with instruction in Art and Design. Kids will learn about the physics of flight, climate and wind, sustainable materials, and color theory while designing and decorating their own unique kites." -- Otis College news release
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The new Walt Disney Family Museum at the Presidio in San Francisco beat Los Angeles to the punch, and is staging a career retrospective for Tyrus Wong, the man who gave Disney's animated film "Bambi" its look.
As we told you in a 2007 Off-Ramp profile, produced by Queena Kim and featuring animation expert Charles Solomon, Wong, now 102 and still very active (somehow, he gets younger looking every year), took his cue for Bambi from the simplicity of Chinese painting.
(Wong painting at home in the 1950s. Courtesy Tyrus Wong)
Here's what the museum says about Water to Paper, Paint to Sky: The Art of Tyrus Wong, which is up until February 3, 2014:
Organized by Michael Labrie, the museum’s director of collections, the exhibition will focus on the life and work of Chinese-American artist Tyrus Wong—a celebrated painter, muralist, kite maker, lithographer, Hollywood sketch artist, calligrapher, ceramicist, and Disney Legend. At age 102, Wong is still a practicing artist today.
This retrospective features more than 150 works including paintings, sculptures, works on paper, painted scarves, kites, and more. Although he never met Walt Disney, it was the ethereal beauty of Wong’s Eastern influenced paintings that caught Walt’s eye and became the inspiration for the animated feature Bambi, which changed the way animation art was presented, and continues to be an inspiration to contemporary artists.
OCMA Triennial: Video artist Yoshua Okón takes video violence head-on
Over the last couple months, we've been talking with artists featured in the California Pacific Triennial--the Orange County Museum of Art's new group exhibit thats puts side-by-side artists from Australia, Seattle, Los Angeles ... and Mexico City, the hometown of artist Yoshua Okón.
Okón's work is political, assertive and often confrontational. His contribution to the Triennial is a two channel video installation called "latex." In it, you see a very strange, very graphic scene play out with plenty of blood, guts and gore. But as Okón tells Off-Ramp Producer Kevin Ferguson, the work is about a lot more than just violence.
Jason Mandell on The Coals' new album 'A Happy Animal,' unashamed LA country music
"Så gör även detta countryfolkiga band som på sin andra platta A Happy Animal ger lyssnaren tjugotvå behagliga minuters lyssning." Ikon Magazine (Sweden), 2013
That's the understatement of the year. Yes, A Happy Animal, the new record from the LA-based country band The Coals, is only 22 minutes long, but the music is much better than "pleasant," Ikon. It's inventive, catchy, genuine, and moving.
The very tall Jason Mandell, lead singer, songwriter, and guitarist, says The Coals derives its name from Cole's PE Buffet, the downtown restaurant and bar that's allegedly the originator of the French Dip sandwich. "A much earlier version of this band used to play there, back when it was a total dive and everyone was afraid to go in. We just had to change (the spelling of the name) for legal reasons."
Southland Serenade: Jason, are you one of these guys who can write anywhere? Some guys need to be on a mountainside in total quiet. Where do you fit on that scale?
Jason Mandell: It's very simple. On one side I have a woman fanning me, and on the other a woman feeding me grapes.
You'll understand why the ladies would agree to fanning and grapery if you listen to our interview with Mandell, in which he gives us an exclusive rendition of Kris Kristofferson's 1970 tune Help Me Make It Through the Night. Kristofferson, Mandell says, along with Townes Van Zandt and Gene Clark, taught him a lot about songwriting: keeping the soul of country music, but using unexpected and more complex chord changes to keep it interesting.
Why country? Mandell says, "I think when I started writing songs, it felt like the only style I could comfortably write in, because it's about lyrics and stories, and every song needs a reason to be."
Over on the left, you'll see exclusive web audio in which Mandell explains the origins of the song Dirt Road, and hints that he'd wished he'd gotten his shoes dusty that day. In our main interview, you'll hear us talk about Sally Dworsky, who sings with Mandell on "Baseline Blues," and whom Garrison Keillor says has "the voice of an angel."
Want to go see The Coals play? Here are their next two gigs:
- Sept 9 at Witz End, 1717 Lincoln Blvd, Venice CA 90291
- Sept 14 at 701 Santa Monica Blvd, Santa Monica, in the parking lot under the building (Jason writes: "It's much cooler than it sounds.")
Review: Sam Francis made great art through great pain. New exhibit at Pasadena Museum of California Art
The exhibition celebrates California native Sam Francis (1923–1994), one of the state’s most historically significant artists. Featuring a range of the artist’s paintings and works on paper, as represented in public and private California collections. Represented are works made in the artist’s California studios in Palo Alto, Point Reyes, Santa Monica, and Venice, as well as those made when Francis was living in New York, Switzerland, and Japan. (Pasadena Museum of California Art)
He began his artistic career in a body cast at age 21, and died at 71 of cancer, working with the utmost difficulty—using only his left hand and strapped to a wheelchair. Yet of all the great American abstract impressionists, Sam Francis’ work is perhaps the most delightful.
“The personal lives of American painters are tragic…and inevitable. And do not explain the artist,” said Sam Francis, who was as articulate with words as he was with ink and paint. But often, the work itself does.
Now there’s an immense show, largely focusing on his bigger works, that’s just opened at the Pasadena Museum of California Art. It assembles landscapes from the very beginning of his career—when he was learning basic watercolor techniques while recovering from spinal tuberculosis at the end of World War II—to his last forebodingly great paintings of 1994. Although he roved the world with and for his art, for much of his life he based himself in Santa Monica. He loved the Southland’s light, “clear, bright, even through the haze.”
The Bay-Area borne Francis took to abstract impressionism as fast as he learned to paint in Paris after 1950 under the GI Bill. Within months, he was one of the best known—and best-accepted--of the wild new generation of American modern painters that included Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko. By the mid-`50s, Time magazine acclaimed him the most popular US painter in Paris. He was doing murals for major New York banks. Yet, unlike some of his compeers, he was evolving constantly, finding new forms, new textures, even formulating new paints for his scalene bubbles of joy.
“You go as far as you can, as fast as you can,” he wrote. But he rarely interpreted his work: “Paintings are my thinking,” he said. “Not about anything.” But the viewer may find his or her own feelings, memories, thoughts, hopes and fear drawn out by their surfaces with their shapes of what were sometimes called “insistent biomorphic forms,” bright, evocative colored areas that hit you like animated Rorschach blobs. This isn’t the cooler, alienated work of the later East Coast expressionists. Francis’ pictures are brilliant, emotive, alive, engaging. He said, “They perform the unique mathematics of my imagination.”
Unlike his popular and widely distributed lithographs, which he cranked out with great rapidity in his Santa Monica Litho Shop, Inc., Francis took his time with his big paintings. Sometimes, however, they form a tight historical sequence—like the “Blue Ball” series of 50 years ago, imagined as he lay ill with severe kidney disease in a Swiss hospital. There, round shapes hung before his vision, “A hell-like paradise of blue balls,” he later wrote. By the end of the paintings’ sequence, the “balls” begin to look like intricate extraterrestrial devices. Representational, perhaps, but of nothing on earth.
Then, as earlier and later, he tried to use his art to paint away his disease, his pain. Only in the very end, when he was crippled by advanced prostate cancer, did it fail him. But the pictures he did in his last months, with their new submarine greens and early sunrise reds, exceed in their imagination anything he’d done before. Go see them while you can.
The Sam Francis exhibit is curated by Peter Selz and Debra Burchett-Lere, and is organized by the Pasadena Museum of California Art, the Crocker Art Museum, and the Sam Francis Foundation.