80+ rapper Kwayzar: "I'm a tripod!" ... amateur historian discovers obscure US President Franklin Marshall ... Hearts Apart for vets and their families ... Ian Whitcomb, the happy iconoclast ... Hunter Davis makes Sir Ian McKellen say naughty things.
Kwayzar: The 84-year-old rapper who auditioned for 'Little Rascals'
The city of Downey has a rich history of musical talent. It spawned The Carpenters and Metallica's front man James Hetfield. The town's newest addition to the roster is an 84-year-old rapper named Kwayzar.
His real name is Stanley Jerry Hoffman. When he was starting as a rapper in the early 1990's, he was looking through some astronomy books and found the term quasar, "It's a big pulsing, massive amount of energy, but very mysterious and unknown," he says, and it described him perfectly. He changed the spelling, but he's still full of energy.
Hoffman started his career in showbiz long before he picked up rapping. When he was four, he tried to break into acting. It was 1932, he auditioned for a role in the The Little Rascals. Hoffman's mom was bed-ridden with tuberculosis, so a family friend drove Stanley to the audition.
The director made Stanley's guardian leave the room, which made him panic. He said they began to ask him basic questions -- like where he was from, his name -- and he just froze. The studio called him back for another interview, but the same thing happened. He didn't say a word. Kwayzar still thinks of that moment, and says; "What would have happened to me in that career if I just talked?"
Stanley changed his game plan, and instead of talking his way into stardom, he started singing. He was touring the country doing comedy gigs in 1951. While on the road, he wrote a song about the space race between the U.S. and Russia. When Stanley had a tour stop in New York in 1956, he recorded his song and called it "Satellite Baby."
He went to radio stations around New York City to get them to play his record. But Hoffman couldn't land a record deal, and spent $3,000 on trying to get the song pushed.
Stanley wasn't going to give up and pursued a career in stand-up comedy. He almost landed a gig on the Ed Sullivan show, but right before he was booked to go on, the show got cancelled. He then went on to a more stable career in real estate, and finally started making money -- before losing $375,000 in the stock market.
After all of his setbacks, Hoffman said, "What do you do in life? Are you just gonna quit? So I figured, the hell with it! I'll just go back into showbiz and see if I could drum up anything."
He read an article in the paper in the early nineties about Ice Cube--the rapper. That's when he discovered a new kind of music. He took a listen and said, "Hell, all they're doing is rhyming, and a lot of it is really bad rhyming. I said, 'Well God, I could do that.'"
He took a bunch of his comedy routines and turned them into rap songs around 1992. He wrote songs about space, the Internet, and futurist sex.
Kwayzar has now been in the rap business for twenty years and like a lot of artists, still hasn't broken through. His YouTube videos only have a couple thousand hits. So why hasn't he dropped the whole "showbiz" thing? "Well I know one thing," he says. "If you stop you're dead. I got so much behind me. Why would I just want to leave it all and forget about it?"
Kwayzar says -- especially to older people -- pursue your dream, never quit, and follow his personal motto, "I Can Still Do It."
For military families, Hearts Apart makes memories that can survive anything
Ross Whitaker lives in San Clemente. By day, he works in commercial photography. When he isn’t getting paid to shoot Kix ads, Whittaker volunteers for Hearts Apart: a nonprofit organization that gives military families a free, professional portrait session before deployment. The family can keep the photos at home and the soldier gets a vinyl bifold card with four pictures that can withstand dirt, rain, water—almost anything a war can bring.
"It’s absolutely pure to photograph someone’s family and give them the pictures, and see them moved," said Whitaker.
"My first shooting with Hearts Apart was really fantastic. Since I live on the edge of Camp Pendleton in Southern California, I have Marines. All Marines. So I had a gunnery sergeant, and his wife, and his two young boys. I believe he was going to the South China Sea. We usually go either to my home or we go to venues, so we went up to the Rancho San Clemente Tennis Club. And it was very posh. They have a bridal changing room there."
Hearts Apart was founded last year in North Carolina by photographer Brownie Harris and businessman Brett Martin. For Harris, it didn't take long for him to realize the impact of his work. "After the first shoot, one of the Marine wives said to us when they were leaving the studio," said Harris.
"She was crying and she said 'We didn’t think anyone cared in this country.'"
Hearts Apart is now in over 40 states. And among its 300 plus photographers, there are professional artists, commercial photographers and Pulitzer Prize winners—all trying the best they can to keep families connected. Families like Amy and Tim McCoy, of Helendale, a small community halfway between Victorville and Barstow on Route 66.
Amy and Tim are both Army reservists, and they met when they were both on active duty. "It was a love hate relationship at first," said Amy at home, her daughter Sami sitting nearby.
Tim, who's currently deployed in Afghanistan, chimed in via Skype. "It was definitely a hate relationship at first. She took a book of mine, when I first met her," he said. "It was a patrol book."
"He showed up at the unit and he carried that thing everywhere," said Amy.
"And after watching him for most of the day, I decided to take it and watch him freak out. And freak out he did! We were married for about a month when I got deployed with the Navy for six months. So our first five years, over half of that was apart. It’s something we’ve always done, we don’t know any different to be honest with you."
The McCoys got their pictures taken last Summer, just before Tim's most recent deployment—David Kennerly, a former white house photographer was behind the lens. For the McCoy’s, that day was more than just a photo session. "With David giving us time, and people like him dedicating their time, it does show you more that you care," said Tim.
"We’ve come a long way from the time that the soldiers and men and women were treated the way we were during like Vietnam. You go to the airport, some airports, people don’t recognize you. Others, they actually go over and hug you. Same thing with the photo. You have a photographer that… he does this because he wants to, not because he has to."
Sitting at the kitchen table, in front of a laptop, Amy chimed in: "He’s given up his time, literally his money and livelihood to spend all day with us," she said. "I mean, it was… it was an honor."
If you know photography, makeup, or just want to lend a hand, Hearts Apart can use you.
Hunter Davis and "Will the real Ian McKellen please stand up?"
Look at his picture! He's only 29, probably shaves once a week, and is a self-described "skinny kid." Does this look like someone out of whose mouth could come the time- and smoke-worn voice of Richard the Third and Gandalf the Grey?
Things got a little out of hand when Hunter Davis came into the Off-Ramp studio to talk about his spot-on Ian McKellen impression in this million+ hit YouTube video.
We walked out of the studio not knowing exactly what happened. Was that really Ian McKellen and does he like big butts? Are we mad or gratified? How badly did we want it to happen? Who punk'd who?
Meantime, Hunter continues to do voice over and theatre, and has just launched a new project. He writes, "It's rather silly, but the main project I'm about to release on my YouTube channel is a parody web series called 'The Dark Knight Retires' in which I play Batman (believe it or not) giving up crimefighting to try something else in life while still dealing with villains and whatnot."
(If you want to listen to the entire half-hour shenanigan, I've posted the whole interview here.)