Kristen Bell is smart, fun, and a KPCC member. She's the main event this week, talking "Veronica Mars," her campaign against the pederazzi, and The Oscars.
Meet East LA's El Haru Kuroi
Grammy winner La Santa Cecilia is not the only socially conscious, female-fronted, Latino band out of East L.A. El Haru Kuroi is fronted by Mexican-American Eddika Organista, with bassist Michael Ibarra and drummer/percussionist Dominique "Chief" Rodriguez. Their sound is a mix of Mexican, Brazilian and African, and they've built a strong following in L.A.
El Haru Kuroi has a gig Sunday night at The Continental Room in Fullerton, so I commandeered their rehearsal last night and turned it into an Off-Ramp interview, talking with Eddika and listening to a few of their songs.
Eddika's cross-cultural story is a familiar one in Southern California: her mother crossed the Mexican border when she was pregnant with Eddika and was deported when her daughter was about six. Eddika returned to the U.S. in elementary school and then during high school went back to Mexico with her father. Eddika says she got her musical start from her father, a conservatory-trained guitarist, and from her training at Pasadena City College under Professor Bobby Bradford.
Their sound? As one reviewer puts it:
The influence of Brazil’s Tropicalia movement weighs heavy on them, yet much like those artists involved in that movement, El Haru Kuroi adapted the music they grew up on and took the essence. The result is a haunting mixture of Bossa Nova and Boleros mixed with urgency of post-punk groups like Gang Of Four and Fugazi.
Just one question remains. That name. El Haru Kuroi. Eddika explained to Afroxander of Remezcla Musica:
I was on the bus. My dad had just returned from Japan and he gave me his English-Japanese dictionary. I wanted it not to be in Spanish or English or in Portuguese and I was looking for words that described us in a way. I looked up dark, black, and spring. I was born in the spring. I felt like our music could have beauty but it could [also] have a lot of darkness in it. We could be playing something really beautiful and sweet but the lyrics are really dark. And we added “El” because a friend of ours was like “you guys should do something in Spanish. Your stuff’s in Spanish.”
Video: El Haru Kuroi performing Sin Saber
Hit-and-run victim Damian Kevitt plans to finish his Griffith Park bike ride
Last February, cyclist Damian Kevitt survived a gruesome accident while riding near Griffith Park. He was dragged 600 feet by a minivan that never stopped. The driver is still at large. The accident devastated Kevitt: his ribs were broken, he underwent 10 surgeries and dozens of skin grafts, and his leg was amputated. But he's alive, and riding again.
On April 27, Kevitt, with several charities, politicians, and as many members of the public as want to come, for Finish the Ride. Kevitt plans to take same route and finish the ride that was cut short by the accident. He says he hopes the event will bring more attention to hit and run accidents.
Off-Ramp producer Kevin Ferguson met with Kevitt to see how he's recovered since last year's accident.
Kevitt says his memory of the crash is surprisingly clear. It was February 17 last year, and he and his wife were riding their bikes near Griffith Park on Zoo Drive. Traffic was backed up, and Damian says he remembered seeing a light gray minivan turn into oncoming traffic to go around it.
"The actual impact itself wasn't that bad," says Kevitt. "I saw him a split second before him and tried to get out of the way...but I ended up on the hood of his car, briefly. He definitely saw me, there was no way he didn't see me."
Kevitt says as the minivan stopped, he fell on the ground. The minivan then drove over Kevitt, crushing his ankle. He didn't realize he lost his leg until he woke up in intensive care after the first surgery.
Despite his injuries, Kevitt said he knew right away he'd ride again. "As soon as I possibly can, I'm going to back on the bicycle and finish the ride," he said.
He spent four months in the hospital recovering, learning to adjust to his new prosthetic leg, and learning to walk again. When Kevitt got home, he emerged with a new awareness of hit and run accidents—he says he didn't pay attention to them all that much beforehand. But he didn't come out of it angry at the driver who hit him.
"I pity him," said Kevitt. "I have bounced back and am leading a relatively normal life. I'm missing a leg. I spent months and months in the hospital recovering, so I lost months of my life. But I'm able to bounce back and move forward. This guy — unless he comes forward — he'll never be able to close on that particular incident."
Kevitt doesn't know if the driver will ever come forward, but he says the mission of Finish the Ride is bigger than that.
"If I can prevent one other person from having to go through the pain and suffering I went through with that hit and run accident, then my accident would in some way, some deep down way would have been worth it," he said.
The announcement of Finish the Ride joins a growing political discussion of hit and run accidents. in January, California State Assemblyman Mike Gatto introduced AB 1532 to the state legislature. Gatto's bill would automatically revoke the licenses of hit and run drivers for six months, regardless of how severely the victim was injured.
Finish the Ride is planned to take place Sunday, April 27. The event will include short and long distance bike rides and all donations to the event will go to the Challenged Athletes Foundation and the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition. Participants can register for the ride at Finish the Ride's website.
Do I really have to buy Kleenex so my kid can get a better grade?
Off-Ramp commentator L.J. Williamson's son, a student in the Los Angeles Unified School District, came home with an unusual homework assignment from his history class: Bring in five boxes of facial tissues. This assignment would be worth 100 points in extra credit.
“The soft kind, not the cheap kind, ” his teacher said.
A hundred points is equivalent to a full week’s worth of homework. So I wondered: if five boxes of tissues meant 100 points, would 100 boxes of tissues buy us out of homework for a full semester? Imagine the family time we could have! But I knew my son would complain about stuffing a hundred boxes of Kleenex into his backpack, so I started thinking about alternatives.
Then I did the math. Assuming 30 students per class, five classes per day, five boxes per student, after this my kid’s teacher would be sitting on a mother lode of 750 tissue boxes — a virtual tissue gold mine.
Of course, that assumes every single parent has the time and money to go out and buy the five boxes of tissues. But what about the ones who can’t? When I thought about their plight, I got angry.
I wrote the school counselor. “The tissue was for extra credit, not for a grade,” she explained. “If a student chooses not to bring in tissue, there is no penalty.” She added the teacher "would NEVER tie an assignment of bringing in tissue to a grade. I'm sorry that your son did not relay the correct message to you."
But when I pressed, she admitted, "Yes, any extra credit WILL help a student's grade. The teacher asked students to help out because we can't order tissues from LAUSD at the moment."
Why can't they order tissues? “They have changed the way schools order from the District warehouse, and our computers don't support the ordering software.” She guessed that many schools with old computers were having the same problems.
So a software “upgrade” left a number of campuses unable to order supplies … like tissues. In the middle of cold and flu season. So teachers began bribing students’ families into buying supplies themselves.
I wrote one last email, explaining that I harbored serious philosophical objections to letting donations impact student grades. It was immoral. It was unethical. And any history teacher should know that trading Kleenex for grades is no better than trading arms for hostages.
Then I went to the store and bought five boxes of tissues. In the end, 100 points is nothing to sneeze at.
Live from Crawford Family Forum: Robert Hilburn on Johnny Cash
Monday night at the Crawford Family Forum, we hosted a legend when KPCC's Oscar Garza interviewed longtime LA Times music critic Robert Hilburn about his new biography of Johnny Cash.
In "Johnny Cash: the Life," Hillburn dispels the "fairy tale" of the "Walk the Line" Cash biopic. Cash was much deeper intro drugs than most people realized, and a bigger philanderer as well ... even including June's sister. But the big picture comes through: A great man with demons who truly sought redemption, and found it, in music. His final collaboration with Rick Rubin sold better than his first big hit, the live concert from Folsom Prison.
By the way, Hilburn was the only reporter at the Folsom Concert. Cash's people didn't want any writers, because the musician was so unreliable, and Hilburn had to convince the LA Times to let him go as a freelancer.
Here's an excerpt of Hilburn's book, as adapted for the LA Times.
Overdoses and near overdoses were so common that everyone in the touring party cited various times and places: Johnny Western mentioned Waterloo, June Carter named Des Moines, Grant alluded to a string of towns. In addition, there were the near-fatal drug-induced accidents, including the time Cash borrowed June's Cadillac and crashed it into a telephone pole, breaking his nose and knocking out four upper front teeth.
To break the tension, Luther Perkins came up with a piece of advice people in Cash's camp would repeat for years: "Let him sleep for 24 hours. If he wakes up, he's alive, if he doesn't, he's dead."
Two years later, in a different part of California, Cash would begin his march to superstardom with a triumphant concert at Folsom State Prison. By 1970, he was the biggest-selling record artist in the country. But he was fighting drugs again in the late 1970s and 1980s, and his sales sank so sharply that he was dropped by Columbia. At the start of the 1990s, Cash believed his record career was over and his musical legacy wasted.
Don't miss another great event at the Crawford Family Forum.