David Dean Bottrell's Crafty Christmas, counting pools in LA, a man who hates Christmas songs, and Jonathan Gold on the impact of King Taco.
Merry Lepper, first American woman to run a marathon: 1963, Culver City
12/9/2013 UPDATE: Tonight at 7, the Culver City City Council will honor Merry Lepper for her accomplishment, which came 50 years ago this month. Lepper will be on hand to accept her commendation. We'll have more on this weekend's Off-Ramp.
In "Marathon Crasher," a great longread on Kindle released today, LA-based sports journalist David Davis tells a story few people know, about a woman everyone should know about. "Marathon Crasher" is about the day in 1963 that Merry Lepper became the first American woman to run a marathon. His story is also about the absurdity that patronizing, un-scientific, misogynist (pick one or all) track and field officials kept women from participating in all but the easiest races for decades. Here's an excerpt that takes us to December, 1963 (Merry's friend Lyn Carman had planned to become the first woman to run a marathon and trained with her husband Bob):
Merry dressed in clothes that were more appropriate for a day at the beach: a light-green blouse, with half sleeves, buttons and a collar, and a pair of white shorts. Over that she pulled on grey warm-up sweats. She had a new pair of white sneakers, flimsy compared to today's cushiony models.
In her haste she forgot to have breakfast. En route, she ate a Baby Ruth candy-bar. That would serve as her fuel—her protein and carbs--for the 26.2-mile race.
Outside Veterans Memorial Park in Culver City, the smallest Western Hemisphere field in years–just 67 men--bunched together by the starting line, stretching their legs, rotating their necks, windmilling their arms, and eyeing the competition.
Bob Carman was a last-minute scratch. Days before the race, he had suffered a fractured skull after tripping and falling inside their home. He had been discharged from the hospital, but he was unable to run or provide his usual support.
Merry and Lyn did not linger at the starting line. After removing their sweats, they hid in the bushes across the street, out of sight from the officials.
Merry felt nervous. "What have we got ourselves into?" she whispered to herself. "They don't want us here, we're not supposed to be here."
She took a deep breath and drew strength from Lyn's grim determination. At the gun, the pair hesitated for a moment as the men began their journey. Then, they jumped from the bushes and took off after them, chasing the field down Overland Boulevard.
Today, Merry lives along the border between Arizona and New Mexico, and Lyn lives in Northern California. They had lost touch until David reached them for his story. As Culver City continues its revitalization, perhaps it's time for a statue commemorating the city's place in history, and Merry Lepper's.
King Taco: Critic Jonathan Gold on what it means to LA
King Taco founder Raul Martinez Sr. — who died Tuesday at the age of 71 — didn't invent better tacos — but he did bring them to the masses, according to Pulitzer-winning Los Angeles Times food critic Jonathan Gold.
At the first King Taco restaurant on Cypress Avenue in Cypress Park neighborhood, just around the corner from where Martinez lived with his family years ago, Gold had this to say on Thursday:
"King Taco may have been the first place that solidified what we all think of as the modern Los Angles taco sensibility. Sure, there had been tacos al pastor before he did them, but after the popularity of King Taco, everybody had tacos al pastor. People had had carnitas before, but, suddenly, everybody had carnitas. It just seemed to form the template of what the modern Los Angeles taqueria should be."
Best of all, for those of us from the Midwest who spent years crunching through Old El Paso concrete-hard taco product, King Taco helped popularize the soft, sensuous taco. "Suddenly, almost all at the same time, everybody in the city realized that a taco was not this ... crunchy, pre-fried thing," Gold said
Gold was a relative latecomer to King Taco. "I didn't get around to going to King Taco until the gigantic immensely popular East L.A. branch opened, which still had [Ramirez's] original truck under an awning," he said.
You'd show up late at night, and there'd be huge crowds, Gold recalled. "They'd be buying chicken. They'd be buying tacos. They'd be buying meats to go. But the biggest line of all — sometimes hour-long — was in front of the original taco truck. There was something almost magical about it."
Are King Taco's tacos good, I ask?
Gold responds, "They're very good. They're solid B+ tacos."
'The Big Atlas of LA Pools' finds more than just pools in our backyards
Second only to palm trees, maybe, pools are one of the most iconic parts of Los Angeles — they dot the landscape as tourists fly into Burbank or LAX.
Geographer Joseph K. Lee and graphic designer Benedikt Gross aren't from L.A., but they were fascinated by those private oases, so they set out to count all the swimming pools in L.A. Basin. They found more than 43,000, and list them in their Big Atlas of LA Pools.
Lee says that originally, he and Gross saw the project as a facetious question: how many pools are there in Los Angeles? But the project quickly grew into more than just a head count.
RELATED: AudioVision: A Google Maps Tour of LA's 43,123 pools
Using publicly available resources, Lee and Gross compiled the locations of the pools, how old the houses are, crime data, whether or not the homeowner donated money to support California's Proposition 8.
The team decided to study Los Angeles based on Gross' first visit here.
"His idea of L.A. was this desert, that is already having all these water issues," said Lee. "To fly into the country for the first time and to see this array of pools — I think for him it was just really fascinating."
The study took a lot of work. Lee and Gross recruited workers in India to sketch the outlines of pools and crowdsourced their findings through Amazon's Mechanical Turk before publishing the 6,000+ page atlas.
Despite that, Lee — a graduate student of Geography at Vancouver's University of British Columbia and a UCLA alum — says he was shocked to find out how much information was publicly available online.
In their data, the atlas didn't record any pools in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Watts. Lee cautions the atlas isn't meant to be taken as a serious statistical study.
However, he says, "Even if you go on Google Maps right now, and you were to look at Watts. You can see lots of, sort of temporary pools, that … people have just constructed in their back or in their front yard...it doesn't seem like there's anything more permanent."
Lee is also a native of Vallejo, California. For the record — he didn't grow up with a pool in his backyard, either.
Who flocks Christmas trees anymore? These guys, and it makes all the difference
Until a few years ago, I thought flocked Christmas trees were strictly kitsch. I grew up in Northern Michigan, where we thought it was silly to bring snow — even ersatz snow — into the house. We spent enough time moving around the stuff outside.
But a couple years ago, something changed, and I suddenly wanted a flocked tree. Who knows, maybe I missed the snow.
So we got one, and it looked fabulous.
See, I told you.
There are probably hundreds of pop-up Christmas tree lots in Southern California, but few of them flock trees anymore. One of those is Cougar Mountain Christmas Trees in Eagle Rock (next to the Target), where Bruce Morrison works. He's been flocking for more than 20 years. "It's an art," he says. "Anybody can paint a wall, but to do the tree, you need a little bit of technique. Once you do a couple hundred of them, you get the hang of it."
First they wet the tree down with a water mister, so the flocking sticks. Then comes the flocking itself, a starchy powder that has to be sprayed on with finesse. For a natural look, more goes on the top of the tree and on the branches that hang out. Then, a quick mist with more water to seal the flocking and keep it from shedding too much when you get it home. You still need to water the tree, of course, but flocking not only looks pretty, it also adds a level of flame resistance to the tree.
Sam Nassar — with more than a decade in the business — donned the protective suit and Bane-like respirator for our video. "Every single tree looks different," he says. "So it's always an amazing experience to see what comes out of the flocker. And the look in our customers' eyes when they see it come out, ... it's something they've ever seen before. When you see the kids, their eyes light up. The mom and dad's eyes light up. It's awesome."
TV stars tell holiday stories at 'Once Upon a Christmas'
On Sunday, Dec. 8, television stars will be telling Christmas stories at Hollywood United Methodist Church in a program called "Once Upon a Christmas."
It's an annual event, and this year Pauley Perrette (“NCIS”), Geri Jewell (“The Facts of Life,” “Deadwood”), Rondi Reed (“Mike & Molly,” Tony winner “August: Osage County”), Beth Grant (“The Mindy Project,” “Sordid Lives”), Bill Brochtrup (“NYPD Blue”) and David Dean Bottrell (“Boston Legal”) are scheduled to appear.
We don't know what they'll come up with this year, but last year, in "A Crafty Little Christmas," David Dean Bottrell told about his family in Eastern Kentucky, where Christmas was heralded by arrival of the good book. That is, the Sears Christmas catalog.
With my glass of grape Kool-Aid in hand, I would slowly begin to page through it, making big plans for how I would someday ... buy that beautiful brown polyester suit for my father, that washing machine for my mother, that rocking chair for my grandmother. Slowly, I would run my sticky fingers across images that seemed to be beamed from some magical, alternative universe where people gave dinner parties and owned patio furniture.
Then, after a brief but exciting stopover in the men’s underwear section, I would make my way to the back of the catalog, where I would float into a heaven beyond my imagining, gazing at 47 pages of Christmas toys. Brightly colored dream machines. The Show 'n Tell record player and slide show, Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots, the Johnny Seven O.M.A. (One Man Army) gun, the Spirograph, the Etch A Sketch, Twister, the Bowl-a-Matic, the Thingmaker, or the miniature Troll Village with 75 individual pieces!
How parents managed to actually buy anything for David, his siblings, and the waifs and strays who were always welcomed to their house is something of a Christmas miracle.
People of all or no faiths are welcome, and while it's definitely religious in nature (this is not a generic "holiday" event), it's not preachy.
"Once Upon a Christmas" is Sunday, Dec. 8, at 7 p.m. at Hollywood United Methodist Church, 6817 Franklin Ave., Los Angeles, Calif. 90068. $20 tickets at the door.
Images: 1970 Sears "Wish Book" from Wishbook Web scans.
A Charlie Brown Christmas almost didn't get aired
"Christmas is coming, but I'm not happy. I don't feel the way I'm supposed to feel. I just don't understand Christmas, I guess." -- Charlie Brown in A Charlie Brown Christmas
On December 12, 1965, a little boy with a round head walked onto more than 15 million American television screens, and became an instant success. But A Charlie Brown Christmas almost didn't air.
Charlie Brown and the gang from Charles Schulz's "Peanuts" had already been animated for TV commercials and titles, but this Christmas show established a pattern for "Peanuts" specials over the next four decades: intelligent stories, stylized animation, real children's voices and a stylish jazz score. Yet A Charlie Brown Christmas had been made quickly and on a minimal budget. Director Bill Melendez feared he'd ended Charlie Brown's TV career before it really began. CBS executives more accustomed to the madcap pace and slapstick humor of Hollywood theatrical cartoons dismissed it as "flat" and "slow." They only aired it because it was already scheduled and they had nothing to show in its place.
But A Charlie Brown Christmas beat Gomer Pyle, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and The Beverly Hillbillies in the ratings, won an Emmy and a Peabody Award, and made the half-hour animated special a staple of network television. Chuck Jones' adaptation of Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas followed in 1966, and Rankin-Bass' Frosty the Snowman aired in 1969.
As an animation critic, I've sat through dozens of holiday jollifications over the years. The Chipmunks, the Flintstones, the Smurfs, Yogi Bear, He-Man and Fat Albert have all celebrated Christmas. Countless little animals and kids have "saved" Christmas and kept Santa from forgetting one kid or one town. Elves have reconnoitered houses for Santa's arrival, and reindeer noses have shown through snowy nights. Most holiday specials have been as saccharine and empty as a Twinkie. Only A Charlie Brown Christmas talks about what the holiday actually celebrates.
Bill Melendez told me that when he first read in the script that Linus would recite the Gospel according to St. Luke, he told Charles Schulz, "This is religion. It just doesn't go in a cartoon." Schulz looked at him very coldly and said, "Bill, if we don't do it, who will? We can do it."
And they could. Ironically, Linus' recitation -- one of the most memorable speeches in television history -- gives A Charlie Brown Christmas an honesty that appeals to people of all faiths - and no faith. Almost 50 years after its debut, it's a special that is actually special.
Charles Solomon is author of the newly published The Art and Making of Peanuts Animation: Celebrating Fifty Years of Television Specials.
Looking for a good Hanukkah TV special? Try 'Santa Claus is Comin' to Town'
I used to feel sorry for my Jewish friends at Christmastime, and not just during the slightly sad Christmas dinners we sometimes shared down in Chinatown.
What got to me more was the sense of encirclement I was sure they felt, as White Christmas, Silent Night, Adeste Fidelis and all the usual suspects erupted from every speaker in America, while Rudolph, Charlie Brown, and the Grinch invaded every TV screen. I was raised a Catholic, and sometimes all that makes me feel encircled too.
On TV, there was virtually nothing Hanukkah-related to compare to the annual Christmas hits. And when I thought about Jewish families, and especially their kids, this seemed like a serious lack. Because TV? It's still our communal hearth this time of year, and the essence of community is inclusion.
Well, despair not, children of Abraham, because I'm here to share an epiphany I had maybe 15 years ago, when I watched the big holiday specials with similar thoughts in mind. It turns out Hanukkah has its own annual TV celebration. A richly beloved program that's a cultural institution, and easily the coolest holiday show of all -- because it's gently subversive, and it hides in plain sight.
Ladies and (merry) gentlemen, I give you: Arthur Rankin and Jules Bass' 1970 masterwork Santa Claus is Comin' to Town: an origin myth for Santa, and almost as Jewish thematically as the annual Chabad telethon.
To begin with--the villains. They're Nazis, okay? They wear Kaiser Wilhelm Pickelhaube helmets, and their leader is called Burgermesiter Meisterburger, and the accent it straight out of Stalag 17.
The scariest moments in the special are when the Burgermeister's minions gather up Santa's first toys just after they're delivered and then burn them in front of the children they were meant for, the way the Nazis burned books at Wartburg.
By this point in the film, here's what we know about Santa: he's a foundling, who was delivered to his destiny on a winter wind the way Moses was carried by the Nile in the bulrushes. The elves who adopted him are ruled by a matriarch: Tante Kringle -- the Yiddish word for "aunt."
So Santa? He's a Jew.
And he's increasingly a freedom fighter, bringing toys to the children despite the Burgermeister's anti-toy decrees.
Important to note: the Burgermeister is one of the few villains ever created by teleplay writer Romeo Mueller who isn't redeemed in some way. Mueller wrote the script for the Rudolph the Red-Nose Reindeer special too, and you probably remember what a softie the abominable snowman turned out to be. But even cartoon Nazis couldn't be forgiven so easily. So it's only when time marches on and history rounds a few more bends that the Burgermeister is forgotten.
And Santa and his ragged band? Why, they leave the land of their sorrows and trials, and make what can only be called an Exodus, across trackless wastes, to found their own Promised Land at the North Pole.
Call it Santa's Village, or call it Israel. What I call it is an ingenious exploration of one religious community's core foundation myths, using the syntax of another's.
It makes Santa Claus is Comin' to Town a rich, cross-cultural experience if you know where to look.
Just like a good Christmas dinner.
In Chinatown.
(RH Greene is a writer and filmmaker. His latest film is Vampira and Me.)
Andy Rooney Doesn't Like Christmas
Andy Rooney tried, but he just doesn't like Christmas.
("Celebrity" voice impersonated.)