We go to Wilson High School in El Sereno to talk with students in the brand new firefighter magnet school, which preps kids for as firefighting career with everything from military discipline to the science of firefighting ... The Summit Inn in the Cajon Pass may be the most famous casualty of the Blue Cut fire so far, and its destruction has hit one community especially hard: the hot-rodders who traditionally stopped at the diner on the way to and from the Bonneville Salt Flats ... The brand new LA Rams are off to a good start, but adjusting to playing in Southern California will be tough. We got advice for the league’s youngest team from linebacker Roman Pfifer, who moved with the Rams from Anaheim to St Louis in 1995 ... Brains On, the science podcast for kids, takes some kids into a glass factory to see how the odd substance is made ... And we hear why you should go to the Huntington right after you see “London Calling” at the Getty.
Review: Huntington's 'Blast' is the backstory to Getty's 'London Calling'
Off-Ramp commentator Marc Haefele reviews "Blast! Modernist Painting in Britain, 1900-1940," at the Huntington Gallery through November 12. "London Calling" is at the Getty Center through November 13.
In England in the decade after World War 2, a third of the housing was bombed out; shops were empty. Food and even clothing were tightly rationed. As the old Empire vanished into thin air, the nation hovered on the edge of economic collapse. But from this stressed, sad, grayed-out culture came an unprecedented outpouring of great art.
The Getty Museum just opened a new exhibit called “London Calling,” featuring six artists from England’s post war era. And across the county, the Huntington has a new show called “Blast," which showcases a dozen pictures by predecessors, mentors, and teachers of those six “London” artists.
The Getty’s display offers more spectacle, and of course it includes Freud and Bacon, the two most famous British artists of our time. On the Getty’s streetlight posters you see Lucien Freud’s “Girl with a Kitten”— the cat somehow content in a stranglehold, the girl’s attention diverted into the middle distance. The geometry is loose, but Freud’s attention to detail is achingly fastidious. 10 years later, these aspects reverse—Freud’s fussiness is now a studied blotchiness, the shapes more massive and real, as he reaches toward the incredible physicality and presence of his last great nudes.
Francis Bacon spoke of his art as “sensation without the boredom of its conveyance,” and many think he intended to shock and appall. The Bacons at the Getty are relatively sedate, stressing his mighty shaping technique, his figurative genius, his startling color sense.
There’s also R. B. Kitaj, who’s been called the greatest historical painter of our time. He’s almost blissfully figurative with his wedding, his refugees; his tributes to the murdered Rosa Luxemburg and Isaac Babel riding with the Red Cavalry; something like Chagall if he’d apprenticed with Breughel.
Frank Auerbach and Leon Kossoff -- still painting today in their 80s and 90s – are more expressionist, but still invoke the plain, battered surroundings of a weary metropolis. And Michael Andrews wrapped up his short career with pure landscape, pictures literally infused with the sand and dirt in his paintings.
Go see “London Calling” at the Getty first, then head to the Huntington, to see a dozen recently acquired or loaned prime British paintings from before World War 2, some of which strongly influenced the Getty painters.
There’s pioneering modernist David Bomberg, with whom both Auerbach and Kossoff studied. You can see in their work Bomberg’s bold use of layered paint and colors, and a leaning toward abstraction.
There’s Stanley Spencer, whose powerfully emotional work with its combining of plants, humans, and animals foreshadowed themes of Lucien Freud.
Walter Richard Sickert is represented by one of his placidly unsettling "ennui" studies. He’s the Godfather of most modern English painting, and in his later years revised his style in keeping with the younger generation he sometimes mentored.
There is the sardonic "Cubist Museum" of Wyndham Lewis, who carried the avant garde torch in British painting until he lost faith in modernism and found equal fame as a novelist.
And there’s a fine, subtle portrait by Gwen John, the only woman painter in either of these shows.
It’s 28 miles from the Getty to the Huntington, but you should make the trip to see “London Calling” and “Blast.” Together, they provide a rich, continuous century’s span of English figurative art we’ve seldom seen here.
Blue Cut Fire victim: Route 66 diner Summit Inn, haven for road-trippers and hotrodders
The Summit Inn, in the Cajon Pass a couple hours from L.A., was a Route 66 landmark, and Tuesday it became a victim of the in the Blue Cut fire. Off-Ramp host John Rabe revisited its history with L.A. bar owner Bobby Green.
Green is part of the 1933 Group, which has restored a number of historic bars in LA like the Highland Park Bowl and The Idle Hour in North Hollywood. He's a old time hot rod enthusiast, and the Summit Inn, opened in 1952, was a haven for hotrodders.
"In 1952," he says, "You're gonna drive your hot rod or your race car from Los Angeles 12, 14 hours to the Bonneville Salt Flats. You're gonna stop at several points, and the Summit Inn was the perfect place to stop. You make it up this hill from Los Angeles, and hopefully you haven't overheated. Most people did, and they'd stop at the Summit Inn and let their car cool down.
Green says it was also a happy reminder that you were almost home after the long drive from the Salt Flats. Now, it's gone, and Green says there's nothing else like it.
"The whole valley beyond it is modern and corporate. It's familiar, and when you're traveling, you're lonely, you miss home. So you have these little icons along the way. And we have so few of them now. The Subways and Starbucks don't really cut for me. I need a place like the Summit Inn to feel a little slice of home."
Listen to the audio in the player for much more of the conversation.
As wildfires rage, students at firefighting magnet school in El Sereno learn the basics
Nestled high in El Sereno, by Ascot Hills Park, shaded by towering pines, is Woodrow Wilson High School, with 1600 students and, now, three LAUSD magnet schools.
One is for police, one is for law, and - maybe most appropriate given our new normal year-round wildfire season - a brand new magnet school for firefighters ... and as I discovered Thursday, just three days into the new school year, its students are startlingly focused for high school freshmen.
15-year-old Matthew Ruiz, one of the 28 kids in the firefighting magnet, says he's been watching wildfires burning around LA. "Yeah, those fires look kind of crazy, and I want to get out there, but I'm not old enough. I can't wait til I'm older so I can actually do something."
Genesis Williams, 14, says her friends ask her, "Is it hard? And even though we've barely started class, I told them that we're putting a lot of effort in this. It's not like something little; to train to be a firefighter in the future is not a game. You have to be really serious about it."
14-year-old Israel Quinillo says his classmates say the same things to him, and he says, "It's not something to fool around with. It's really important because you see the mountains right now, some of them are burning down." And without firefighters, "we would have no one to control it."
If you even need to hear what the adults say - including one of the teachers, LA Fire Dept. Captain Eddie Marez, Wilson High Class of '91 - listen to the audio.
Ex-Ram Roman Phifer's advice to new LA Rams: Stay focused, avoid traffic!
At the Memorial Coliseum last week, the Los Angeles Rams played their first preseason game against the Dallas Cowboys, eking out a 28-24 victory. (Parking, you might've heard, was pricey.) They play the Kansas City Chiefs at the Coliseum Saturday.
It’s the first time the Rams have played home games in Southern California in decades. Until 1995, the Rams played in Anaheim before moving to St. Louis. One of the players on that team was Roman Phifer, a linebacker and UCLA graduate. For him, it was a surreal experience, and he learned a lot from the move. So what advice would he give the players who just moved out here?
Off-Ramp producer Kevin Ferguson called Phifer to find out.
For people who don't remember, what kind of team were the Rams in 1995?
It wasn't a great team. I was drafted in 1991, we actually won three games my rookie year. Usually when we had a home game, especially when we played teams like the 49ers or San Diego, it always seemed like they had more fans than we had in the stands.
You know, in L.A., there's so many things to do on a Sunday afternoon than to sit in a stadium and watch the Rams get beat down.
When you can't win in a city like this, it's very hard to focus. I mean, in L.A., there's a lot going on. And the culture's great, and there's a lot to do and the weather's nice. But that can be a distraction.
The talk about the Rams leaving Southern California; you probably knew this was a possibility coming up, right?
There were rumors, and I wasn't excited about it. L.A. is a great city, obviously, what's not to like? Except for the traffic.
After my fourth season, which was 1994, I had just re-signed with the Rams as a free agent for another four years. So I was committed to the Rams! Then probably like a month or two later I found out we were moving to St. Louis.
Now the good thing about going to a place like St. Louis, a smaller market, after you leave a place like Los Angeles: you're like the big deal in town. There's no other football team, there's nothing else competing. You go from being a losing team in L.A., where barely 25,000 people are in the stands, to people welcoming you. I mean, we had more people at our practices in St. Louis than we probably did at games on Sundays!
What's your advice for an NFL player who never lived in Los Angeles?
As far as living, there's great pockets in L.A. You definitely always got to consider the traffic.
Yeah, it doesn't matter how much money you're making, you're still stuck.
Unless you got a helicopter, yeah. But number two: Just understand that the NFL, it's the business of winning football games. It's tough to win in this league, but that's what you're evaluated on. NFL still stands for "Not For Long," and the average career lasts, last I checked, is still about three and a half years. You really have to be disciplined, you really have to have focus in an environment like that.
Because with the media attention, there's a whole lot that distract guys from focusing on what they're there for, and that's to play football and win games.
When we were in L.A., you're competing not only with the Lakers, the Clippers, the Raiders, the Dodgers, the Angels... and then you got actors! We weren't anywhere near the top of that totem pole. And we wear helmets!
In St. Louis, we were recognizable. People knew our faces. We'd go to restaurants and people would want to comp our meals. I think in St. Louis, the red carpet was rolled out. In L.A., you really have to earn that.
Song of the week: "Black Lipstick" by Chicano Batman
This week's Off-Ramp song of the week is the latest single from Los Angeles' own Chicano Batman.
It's called "Black Lipstick" and it's on a 7" single released on El Relleno records, you can purchase it here.
Formed in 2008, the bands describes themselves as a quartet that draws from "a spectrum of influences ranging from psychedelia, soul, to Tropicalia."
As a live act they're fun, compelling and almost always wearing uniforms. You can catch them this Friday, August 19 at the Echo Park Rising Festival.
Here's a video of the band playing live on Seattle's KEXP:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7HJuMH7nS0
Is Canada looking pretty good right now? Imagining a transnational booty call...
How many of you have posted angrily to Facebook: "If Trump/Clinton wins, I'm moving to Toronto ... wherever that is."
Liberal America: "So whatcha been up to? Still doing that very attractive socialized medicine, maple syrup, gun law thing? Just wanted to… you know… see if you… wanted some company?"
Canada, skeptically: "What is this, a transnational booty call?"
Liberal America: "Don’t say it like that!"
Listen to the audio to hear more of how that phone call might go, in a skit by Off-Ramp contributor Collin Friesen, a Canadian writer and filmmaker who lives in Los Angeles and won’t be voting in November.