"Santa Claus is Comin' to Town" is also Jewish ... Leonard Maltin's Christmas movies for when you're tired of the usual suspects ... marching band ... walking safer ...
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.)
Frayed: Mental illness steals David Haldane's son, and the system makes it worse
NOTE from John Rabe 12/18/2012: I'm reposting this story in the wake of the Newtown massacre. It's a really good, personal look into how hard it is to commit a truly troubled and dangerous mentally ill person, and how the problems with the system affect the patients and the families.
(David Haldane's Off-Ramp story is based on a longer article that appears in Orange Coast Magazine.)
The call I feared finally came on a Friday. A woman's voice said, "I'm a nurse at Hollywood Presbyterian Hospital. Don't panic but we have your son."
Schizophrenic and homeless at 24, my son Drew was in the ICU with a blow to the head. I had imagined this conversation, or variations if it, many times. Now I rubbed my eyes and grabbed the car keys.
My boy hadn't always inspired alarming calls. Once he had a winning smile and unlimited future. Then he got arrested for setting fire to trash cans, stole candy from a liquor store, and ran away from home. We thought these were teenage shenanigans. But they were signs of something far more sinister. Drew always had an active imagination. In elementary school he had a mysterious friend named Carlos whom only he could see. He also had trouble focusing in class. The ADD meds they prescribed didn't work; Drew fell behind, eventually landing at a continuation school. For a time, under the tutelage of a caring teacher, he seemed to be reborn.
I knew something was seriously wrong when his mom called while I was out of town. We were divorced by then and Drew had recently moved to my house. "Are you home yet?" Dawn asked, confused. "Because Drew says he hears your voice." A few weeks later he drove to a construction site and nearly killed himself injesting sealant. My son spent his high school graduation day in a psychiatric hospital--the first of many stays.
I thought of all this as I drove to Hollywood Presbyterian. And I remembered his 19th birthday, when I had gone to his apartment. Before I could even knock he opened the door and began pummeling me in the hall. Then, when the anger subsided, he retreated silently into his room as I called 911. The police arrived with just one question: Did I want to press charges? I convinced them that he needed help, not jail, and they took him back to the hospital on a 72-hour hold.
Thus began the process of having Drew conserved. That's a legal procedure by which the court assigns someone to act on another person's behalf. In our case a public guardian became Drew's conservator, with broad powers and obligations including forcing him to get psychiatric care. Drew was put in several board-and-care homes, but got evicted for attacking other residents and made more suicide attempts. Finally he was sent to a locked psychiatric facility where at least we knew that he and those around him were safe.
But four years later, disaster struck anew. As usual, the news reached me by phone. My ex-wife Dawn asked, "Are you sitting down? Drew's conservatorship has been dropped." It happened after a psychiatrist missed three court hearings. The hospital said he claimed "not to have gotten the fax." So my son was set free and our nightmare went on.
Drew's situation is not unusual. In any given year, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, roughly one in 17 Americans suffers from serious mental disease. And yet only a third of them ever get treatment. There's a serious lack of funding, few empty beds in psychiatric hospitals, and strong patients' rights laws that block getting many people the help they need. Conservatorships, like the one Drew fell out of, are difficult to get and annually reviewed.
Pulling into the ICU's parking lot, I recalled another drive to Hollywood just days before. It had been weeks since anyone had seen Drew at the Lynwood board-and-care home to which he'd voluntarily been assigned. Then he called.
"Hey, Dad, what night is it?"
"Saturday," I told him. "We're wondering where you are."
"Working in LA," he said. "I'm at Hollywood and Orange; why don't you and Mom visit me wearing black ties?"
The next day Dawn and I drove to that intersection and, sure enough, Drew appeared and jumped into the car. I had never seen him like this; disheveled and sunburned with long hair and wild eyes. "Let's go!" he ordered, glancing nervously behind. "You guys are in so much trouble."
At a McDonald's, Drew said he was working undercover for the CIA, protecting the president from assassins. Did he actually know the president, we asked? Our son said he'd written speeches for him and they spoke by phone. "People keep messing with me," he said. "The cops follow me everywhere, security guards follow me around; it's all over the news."
Was he still on his meds, Dawn wondered? "Sure," he said. "Actually I make my own from stuff on the street." Suddenly, Drew growled, "Got to get back to work." And we watched him disappear into the crowd.
When I finally entered Hollywood-Presbyterian, I hardly recognized my son. And, semiconscious with a thick bandage around his head, he barely recognized me. Huddling in the hallway, I got the full story.
Apparently Drew had returned to his board-and-care just long enough to pick a fight. The much-larger man had knocked him out cold, literally bruising his brain. "Is there damage?" I asked, almost afraid to know. "If there is," the doctor said, "it will be evident from his behavior." But Drew's behavior was already erratic. In the previous months he'd been calling us at odd hours, sometimes angry, sometimes in tears. "You have five days to live," he told his mom in one conversation. Then later: "Dad, I don't know what's going on." Around Christmastime, he wrote his stepfather asking for a gun.
Here's how it's supposed to work with the gravely mentally ill: The presiding psychiatrist at a hospital to which the dangerously-acting patient has been admitted initiates conservatorship proceedings. Then, if the judge agrees, the patient is put on a waiting list for longer-term care.
How it actually works is far different: If you're lucky enough to learn that your loved one is hospitalized, you have 72 hours to respond. So you get on the horn with the hospital's social worker and fax a detailed history. The next day you learn that the social worker is off and his replacement has no idea what you're talking about. So you fax the document again, or personally deliver it to the front office, praying that it will land in the right hands. Then you get a call from your loved one saying he has been released and is back on the street.
In a year and a half, Drew was hospitalized 10 times. Each time we swung into action, making as much noise as possible. And each time we were rebuffed or ignored. The same patients' rights laws that were designed to protect him were also blocking much-needed care. Until one day, seven months after being released from the ICU, he showed up at his mother's house pounding on the front door. "I need money right now!" With the door opened only a crack, she asked, "Would you like us to take you to the hospital?"
He readily agreed, probably assuming he'd get a warm bed and hot meal. The next day we again got on the phone and manned the fax. This time the authorities listened; Drew was transferred to the same hospital where, years before, his horrific journey began. Six weeks later a judge ordered a one-year conservatorship by a public guardian. So our son is safe at least until the next renewal hearing, which we will attend ourselves.
To be honest, I can't tell you how much Drew understands. Visiting him is like being on a carnival ride; sometimes it's smooth, then the craziness pops up to holler boo. At various times Drew has told us he's a powerful drug dealer and a famous songwriter on TV. Recently he had to be restrained after violently attacking an aide.
As bad as it gets, though, we see glimmers of the boy we love. On Father's Day, he was the first to call. "Have a wonderful day," he said. "Life is a gift; unwrap it and be glad."
Yet we still live by our phones. Mine rang again recently with one of those calls I dread. "Dad," Drew said weakly, "am I going to die?" "Not any time soon," I told him. "Just cooperate with the doctors and you'll improve."
Our fondest wish is for that to be true.
Haefele says 'Bah, humbug!' to Renaissance skeptics, points to new show at Getty
Nowadays, many historians chafe at the idea of the Renaissance. Call it "early Modern," they say. Or even "continuation Medieval." I say, Bah, humbug!
These same historians assert that the revolution in painting and sculpture that brought us, among thousands of others, Giotto, Leonardo, Michelangelo and Botticelli, was merely a development of the manuscript painting and religious sculpture of the high middle ages.
Anyone who believes this theory is well advised to rush off to the Getty's new Florence at the Dawn of the Renaissance show for a historical reality check. The exhibit of nearly 100 masterpieces from early 1300's Florence shows the art of this time and place simply blasting away from the recent Middle-Ages past into a world of innovation and manifest creative beauty at a pace that still baffles the imagination. How did art come so far in this little city of just 50,000 people in so short a time?
The show at the Getty includes seven pieces by Giotto, a record compendium. But the one piece in the entire vivid show that, to me, manifests the pure emergent dazzle of this new art is a painting of Jesus from an illuminated book of the late 1330s. It's by Florentine pioneer Pacino de Bonaguida, a lesser-known Tuscan master--one whose works, only one of which is signed, quite properly dominate this show. The picture is done in the tempera, ink, and gold leaf typical of Medieval manuscript illuminations. But it's a mighty portrait of the supernatural, with sunrays shooting out of Christ's head, an inverted background of day and night skies, and a dozen gold horizons behind the seated divine figure. It blasts its way out of a cozy illuminated manuscript and portends a new world of art.
Exhibition curator Christina Sciacca notes that the new artistic techniques spilled over at the source, as the great masters, such as Giotto, taught, employed and collaborated with scores of aspiring young students, many of whom became famous in their own right. Others in the show--the Master of the Codex of St. George and the Master of the Dominican Effigies--are known only by their working styles. The great art historian Jakob Burckhardt said that the keystone of the Renaissance was the dawn of individualism. But in the early 1300s, many painters didn't even sign the work that we marvel at in this exhibition. Among these are some wonderful illuminated music books containing the "plain songs" or lauds sung by members of the local social clubs that reportedly descended from the crowds of medieval flagellants who roamed the countryside a century earlier. This transition itself seems as symbolic of the passage from medieval to Renaissance as anything could be.
Why did the Renaissance start in Florence, of all the rich, independent nation-cities in 1300's Italy? Why not Milan, or Siena? Or mighty Venice? Curator Sciacca says it has to do with the astonishingly fast-growing wealth of the Florentine Republic that inclined its rich men to invest in the new, secularly-created art that was still largely based on religious themes. Others note that this art was impelled by earlier local cultural pioneers, including the great Dante, whose poetry set forth the Italian that became the Renaissance's own language and is illustrated in spectacular codices shown at the Getty. And Cimabue, the first painter of the Renaissance, who discovered Giotto as a shepherd boy, who was drawing a picture on a rock with a piece of charcoal.
Another simple reason the Renaissance started in Florence is that Florence, while not a modern democracy in any sense, was a mercantile, rather than an aristocratic, city. A city with a rule of law in which the humble could rise, and where, at least in this era, privilege did not dictate nor tyrants terrorize. This attitude is best demonstrated by the subject of one of the first items in the show -- a brilliant diptych showing "The Expulsion of the Poor from Siena and the Poor Being Generously Received in Florence."
Maybe the Renaissance began in Florence just because it was the city with the biggest heart.
Leonard Maltin movie picks: try 'Joyeux Noel' and 'Family Stone' for Christmas
It's okay if you're tired of Miracle on 34th Street, A Christmas Story, It's a Wonderful Life, and the other Christmas standards. Or maybe you're just looking for something new to watch this holiday season.
Movie historian and critic Leonard Maltin came up with two options exclusively for Off-Ramp listeners:
Joyeux Noel (2005) tells the story of a battleground truce in 1914. As the movie tells it, based on real events, soldiers on opposite sides in World War One laid down their guns for a few hours to celebrate Christmas in the No Man's Land between the trenches. The movie also tells what happened to them afterward, when they had to face the consequences of being soldiers following their human instincts instead of soldiers following orders. "It's an amazing and I think quite movie, even - dare I say the word - inspiring film," Maltin says.
Family Stone (2005) is less historically remarkable: a family of New England lefties, led by Diane Keaton and Craig T. Nelson, deal with their son's uptight girlfriend, Sarah Jessica Parker. Complications, comical and tragic, ensue. As Maltin puts it, "It's not a perfect family. It's not a perfect Christmas. I think that's why the movie works as well as it does."
Then, I asked Leonard to indulge me as I promoted the Rabe-Bermudez Christmas favorite, Auntie Mame (1958). Only a small part of the movie happens during Christmas, but I always cry when Mame, Patrick, and her maid, and butler share their meagre Christmas gifts with each other. Then there's the wonderful release when Beau shows up at the door as, essentially, a male Auntie Mame, and whisks them off to Christmas dinner. (At :54 in the trailer below:)
Please, let us know your offbeat (Off-Ramp?) holiday favorites in the Comments below.
Leonard Maltin is author of Leonard Maltin's 2013 Movie Guide and Leonard Maltin's Classic Movie Guide, both of which make great stocking stuffers.
SKETCHES: Mike Sheehan's grand drawings of downtown LA's Grand Park
Off-Ramp likes it that not only does the web offer unparalleled new opportunities for photographers, but also a place for artists like Mike Sheehan to interpret Southern California. He's watched the Endeavour parade, toured the city on Election Day, and now visits Grand Park, one of downtown LA's latest success stories.
Grand Park will be happy to know that it's getting generally positive reviews on Yelp!, with 4 of 5 stars:
Craig R: Sadly, most (of the) places to sit are out in the open with almost zero shade ... There's also a spectacular, giant water fountain in the park that's particularly beautiful at night because the water changes colors ... Because the park is so new its spotless. How long that will last, who knows ... I could honestly see myself coming here a lot more if the parking wasn't so ridiculously pricey.
Les S: There are no BBQ pits.
Christine A: It's an exceptional green patch with an immense fountain, surrounded by many of L.A.'s iconic buildings. Grand Park is much more spacious than when it was known as the Civic Center's "sunken gardens." It's great standing down the hill and looking up at Grand Park's Arthur J. Will Memorial Fountain with the Peace on Earth Fountain across Grand in the Music Center behind it. The 1960s Department of Water and Power building stands in the background of the two.
Robert A: If you're looking for the next Central Park (a la NYC), you're setting yourself up for disappointment. But if you're looking for a clean, spacious area that is dog friendly, has lots of potential for community events (i.e. Park Your Politics) and has a Starbucks, a pretty cool fountain and clean restrooms, then you're in for a treat!
Josh C: Los Angeles finally decided to turn an open space in downtown into something OTHER than a parking lot.
Rachel Bloom joins Mantle, Carolla, Poggioli and more in our All Star Night Before Christmas
Rachel Bloom of "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend" was in the The Frame studio today, and after she was done, I asked if she'd lend her voice to our annual audio holiday card to listeners, the All Star Night Before Christmas.
"I'd love to!" she said. "Our family reads this every year at Christmas!"
And thirty seconds later, she'd nailed:
He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot,
And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot;
A bundle of toys he had flung on his back,
And he looked like a peddler just opening his pack.
And now Rachel joins the ranks of celebs and KPCC hosts who hammed it up for us, including A Martinez, Alex Cohen, Larry Mantle, John Horn, Adam Carolla, Salman Rushdie, Kathleen Turner, NPR's Sylvia Poggioli, Ted ("Isaac" on the Love Boat) Lange, and John ("Q" on Star Trek) de Lancie. Patt Morrison specifically asked to read the reindeer names, so she say Donder, not Donner. (I'm sure she's right.)
The late great Steve Julian corralled many of the voices a few years ago in his local theater work, so of course I couldn't take his velvety voice out of there. And neither could I switch out Huell Howser, who closes out the poem in signature Huell fashion.
But there's no need. After all, it's at Christmas that we remember old and new friends, those with us in the flesh, and those with us in our hearts.
'You don't understand marching band!' South Hills High School goes for the glory
On a gloomy Saturday morning, Mike Wooten directs his 125-member band and color guard at the South Hills High School football field in Covina, and it isn't going smoothly. "It sounds like forty of you just stopped playing right there!" he yells. "You can't expose a weakness this late like that." This is the last practice before the Southern California School Band and Orchestra Association Championships.
They're practicing their eight minute field show -- basically their halftime show. Each show has a concept, and this year, the South Hills High School Marching Band based its performance on Space Shuttle Endeavour. You hear keyboards, space sound effects, and sound bites of Endeavour astronauts while the band marches in the shapes of stars, planets, and rockets. Last year, the band won the gold medal in their division and this year rank second. Wooten's been the South Hills' band director for 14 years. He says a lot of people don't understand marching band and think they're out there "rehearsing all these hours to go to the football game."
Wooten and his students start practice in August. Come September, they rehearse an hour before class in the morning and once a week at night. Gerald Aguilar, a snare player in band, says he "stays up till 11:30, and then maybe wakes up a little earlier to finish the rest of [his] homework." On those days, he gets about 5 hours of sleep.
Brandon King, a member of color guard, says he was hesitant to join the program because he didn't want to put in the work. But in his sophomore year, he decided to audition and fell in love with it. "When I go to perform, when I see the lights and the roar of the crowd ... I just know that this is where I belong."
Wooten knows most of these kids won't stick with music after they graduate and for the seniors, the competition is their last experience to perform in a marching band. So he teaches his students real life skills they can take away from the activity. Wooten says all 125-members "rely on each other to do a certain job, and without that person, we can't do the job anymore."
After the morning rehearsal, the band and color guard head to Warren High in Downey for the Championships. They march to the football field and wait to enter the stadium. After the band finishes their warm up, the announcer gives the cue to start.
The marching band moves quickly across the field as the color guard spins their red and yellow flags in the air. The crowd cheers and the band marches into a shape of a shooting star. It starts to rain, yet the band and color guard keep marching and playing. After a loud flourish, they walk off the field and wait in the bleachers for the results to come in.
The kids get quiet; some close their eyes and some lock arms. Justin Chow, a junior trumpet player, says he's nervous "because West Ranch -- the show before ours -- looked pretty good." Chow said West Ranch was their main rival, and could easily take the Championship title.
The band members huddle closer as they hear the announcer say "and now the winner of the Southern California School Band and Orchestra Association Championships silver medal, with a final score of 86.76 ... South Hills High School!"
Second place. The band doesn't look happy. But as they walk to the field to get their silver medals, friends and family members cheer. Wooten's eyes were a little watery. Not because they got second place, but "seeing the kids' faces after they perform and putting five months of their lives into an activity like this ... it's very emotional."
The kids leave the stadium to celebrate with their families as the season comes to an end. But Wooten and his staff start prepping for next year's Championships.
Here's a video of the South Hills High Schooll marching band at this year's SCSBOA Championships.
What are LA's worst pedestrian intersections?
Earlier this year, KPCC's Kim Bui reported that LA has the highest rate of car accidents involving pedestrians in the nation. Of course the LA Department of Transportation wants to fix that, and they've got a brand new Pedestrian Coordinator to prove it.
At the corner of 7th St. and Alvarado St., Margot Ocañas sees an endless array of problems. At each pedestrian crossing, cars making left and right turns must battle with pedestrians for the right of way. Meanwhile, the flow of pedestrians in non-stop, coming and going in every way, and all the while cars are whizzing by at 50 miles an hour. But Ocañas sees solutions.
"It may make sense to actually phase our pedestrian signaling, so pedestrians can get a start into the crosswalk before cars are permitted to make their right-hand turn. Another objective is to narrow the width of the crossing. You are bringing the pedestrian a bit farther out into the street, so there's better visibility to those waiting pedestrians, and likewise that shortens their distance."
There are many proven ways to affect change, but not many avenues to get them done in the city of LA. Ocañas was hired in large part to bring many agencies, including LADOT and the Bureau of Street Services, which share responsibilities between the street and the sidewalk, to actually get things done.
"Overall one of the things we recognize is that speed is really the biggest enemy to pedestrians. We need to start thinking about putting in medians into middle lanes and curb extensions. When you start putting in elements into the street space, these act as visual cues, which have been shown through research to actually slow the speed of the driver."
Just a few years ago, Margot Ocañas had no experience working the public sector. But the mother of two children wanted her neighborhood to be a safe place to ride a bicycle, and she came up with an idea to shut down her street for a bicycle block party. She followed what she calls the "packaged approach", contacting her neighborhood association and local police, but she got what she wanted, and hundreds of people showed up.
Among them was prominent city planner Ryan Snyder, who encouraged Ocañas to apply for a unique new position with the LA County Department of Public Health. The department, under a specific mandate from President Obama's 2009 stimulus monies, was in the midst of an unusual new campaign focused on making communities more accomodating for biking and walking. The health department was looking for ways to engage and improve the built environment.
"Their take is that we've got high incidences of heart disease and obesity, and the way to address them is that at a minimum people should be walking thirty minutes a day. That means that either the door outside their workplace or their residence needs to be a place where they can comfortably and safely do that walking."
Ocañas did not disappoint. One of her first projects was the Silverlake Pedestrian Plaza. Near the intersection of Sunset and Maltman, the plaza began as a block that the Silverlake community agreed was underutilized by traffic. Ocañas lead an effort to barricade the block with planters, paint it bright green, dot it with tables and chairs and thus turn it into an instant gathering space. There's even a basketball court.
Now as Pedestrian Coordinate, Ocañas is working to streamline that process for future plazas and other smaller curbside parklets, but her main task is still to fix broken intersections. She has to cope with the fact that city engineers had a driver-first mentality when they designed LA streets, and re-designing for pedestrians requires re-writing the books. She also has to untangle a complicated web of different agencies. It can be frustrating job in a city so devoted to cars. But Ocañas got into this business for her children, and for her the job is anything but pedestrian.
Do you live in a neighborhood with a treacherous pedestrian intersection? Or how about a street block that never gets any traffic? Let us know what you think could do to make your neighborhood more pedestrian friendly.
This month's Instagram contest winner is the first from LA
If it weren't for Instagram, Taiyo Watanabe of Silverlake might not be a photographer. Nor would he have a more than 2,100-image body of work.
"Before Instagram I didn't really take that many pictures, it's definitely affected how I shoot," explains Watanabe, known as @mello_yello. "It's become more like my journal."
Watanabe won our most recent challenge with Instagram Lovers Anonymous, with his surreal image of a silohuetted girl on a swing backlit by the crowded Santa Monica Pier on a hazy evening. The picture was taken during Glow, an annual night festival at the pier.
The contest theme, Fleeting Glance, challenged Instagrammers to capture a decisive, split-second moment when the perfect combination of light, action or facial expression creates a story-telling image.
Watanabe took the winning image with his Olympus E-P1, which he takes with him everywhere. He also uses his iPhone and Cannon 5D for many of his Instagram photos.
In three months of challenges, Taiyo Watanabe is our first local contest winner. He grew up in Los Angeles, and was born blocks away from his Silverlake workplace, Deegan-Day Design LLC.
Much of the architectural designer's Instagram feed plays with composition, color and dimensionality. Watanabe says the other designers he follows inspire his photography work.
"I like the exploration of space, and how people interact within that space," he said.
But Watanabe loves photography most because it is different from architectural design. For him, making pictures is instinctual and in-the-moment.
The next contest will begin at the start of the month. To find out more and to play, just follow @KPCC on Instagram.
Silverlake couple makes it official on 12-12-12
Wednesday was 12-12-12, so KPCC's Brian Watt went looking for couples who decided to make that auspicious date their wedding anniversary. He found a Silverlake couple in their fifties, Lisa Leist and Ron Hershewe.
How the cards work: inside Metro's TAP laboratory
Nowadays, a one way fare on a Metro bus or train will run you $1.50. You can use cash, credit, or buy a pass--but one thing's certain: you're not getting a paper ticket. This past summer, Metro switched its entire fare system to plastic, refillable TAP cards. Off-Ramp producer Kevin Ferguson met with Metro's David Sutton--the head of the TAP program--inside the lab where TAP was developed, tested, and reworked.
Thanks to the inimitable LA Streetsblog for the idea.