Brando Skyhorse on his tortured Echo Park upbringing, band Harbor Party pays tribute to Yacht Rock, and Kevin and Russ cook the perfect hamburger
Miss the fireworks? A listener helps out.
In case you were out of the city over the long July 4 weekend and missed your local fireworks, legal and/or illegal, we got this email from Off-Ramp listener Carleton Christy, along with the photo and sound file.
I recorded this from my roof in north Long Beach on the night o the 4th, 2014, about 9:30 PM.
You can hear a low, rolling thunder sound under all the big pops. The low rumble is the hundreds, probably thousands of large fireworks reverberating from around LA and Orange Counties. There really isn't much hiss in this recording; it's all firework sounds. The big bangs are all kinds of fireworks, including some big, seemingly professional-grade ones from closer by.
Peace!
Thanks, Carleton!
Louis Zamperini's epic life story
UPDATE 7/3/2014: Olympian and World War 2 vet Louis Zamperini died yesterday of pneumonia; he was 97. Zamperini was also a spellbinding storyteller, and in 2010 he regaled a packed Crawford Family Forum with tales of his long and remarkable life.
Epic in the most literal sense possible: Zamperini's life plays out like a grandiose American hero's tale. Louis Zamperini is a living legend you probably have never heard of, but you've seen his name everywhere. Listen to the on-air version by clicking on the first icon, listen to the whole Olympic Panel by clicking on the second!
You might have seen a football game Torrance High School’s Zamperini Stadium, or landed an airplane Zamperini Field, even Zamperini Plaza, at the front of USC’s track and field stadium. They’re all named after Louis Zamperini. A former Olympic track runner, World War Two veteran and Los Angeles native who at 93 years old shares his story to this day. This past June, at KPCC’s Crawford Family Forum, Zamperini spoke with Fellow Olympian John Naber about how he ended up in the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, met Hitler, stole a Nazi flag, served in the airforce, survived for a month and half on a life raft in the Pacific, and endured years of life in captivity as a Japanese prisoner of war.
Paul Mazursky, 84. Director of 'Harry & Tonto' & 'Down & Out in Beverly Hills'
7/1/2014: UPDATE: Paul Mazursky died Monday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, according to his spokeswoman. He was 84 and died of pulmonary cardiac arrest. Here is Off-Ramp contributor R.H. Greene's appreciation of Mazursky, filed in 2011.
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Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969), Alex in Wonderland (1970), Blume in Love (1973), Harry and Tonto (1974), Next Stop, Greenwich Village (1976), An Unmarried Woman (1978), Willie & Phil (1980), Tempest (1982), Moscow on the Hudson (1984), Down and Out in Beverly Hills (1986), Moon Over Parador (1988), Enemies, a Love Story (1989), Scenes from a Mall (1991) ... these are most of the films of Paul Mazursky, who turns 81 in April.
Next Saturday, the LA Film Critics Association is giving director Paul Mazursky its lifetime achievement award, which is often a bellwether for an Honorary Oscar. As part of the celebration, LACMA is screening “Harry and Tonto” on Thursday, January 13, and Off-Ramp contributor RH Greene has the honor of hosting Mazursky for the Q and A. But Greene did his own interview with Mazursky for this special Off-Ramp appreciation of the great director.
CLICK THROUGH for the "Harry and Tonto" trailer.
Animator Floyd Norman, from Disney to 'Fat Albert'
You may remember Floyd Norman's cameo in C.J. Greenspon’s Off-Ramp story about Disney Golden Books. Norman, who turned 79 a couple weeks ago, worked for Disney, on and off, from 1957 until 2001, and was the company's first black animator. He sat down to talk with C.J. about his long life and career.
Floyd Norman was born in 1935, in Santa Barbara, to James and Evelyn Norman. Norman decided he wanted to be an animator when he was six, after his mom took him to see "Dumbo."
His parents encouraged his dream, and it seems like the community of Santa Barbara did too. "My science teacher, Jacob Turnoff, played golf with a local cartoonist," says Norman, "and my science teacher said, 'Agh, we got this kid in my class who doesn't do his work. He's always drawing cartoons,' and the cartoonist said, "Send him over to me.'" That cartoonist, Bill Woggon, made Norman his assistant on "Katy Keene: The Fashion Queen" for Archie Comics.
After high school, Norman quit Katy Keene and moved to L.A., in hopes of working for Disney. When he showed his portfolio to the people at Disney's Burbank studio, they told him he needed formal training. Norman enrolled at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. Then, one weekend in his junior year, "I was in Santa Barbara, believe it or not, watching the Mickey Mouse Club on television, and my phone rang. It was the Disney Studios calling, saying 'Kid, do you still want that job? Be here 8 o'clock Monday morning.'"
Norman started his dream job in 1957. He began, like everyone else, as an in-betweener, drawing the animation frames that go in-between a character's important poses. Norman calls it "a grunt job, a monotonous job, a tedious job," but he stills looks back on it as one of the most exciting times of his life. But then Walt Disney made him a Story Artist for "The Jungle Book."
Sing along with "I Want to Be Like You," from "The Jungle Book"
"When Walt says to do something, you do it," says Norman. " The story artist is the writer who writes the animated movie. It's just that we don't sit down with a typewriter, we sit down with a sketch pad and pencil." It was in fact, a very important job, and Norman found himself doing it for years to come on many cartoon series and movies.
RELATED: Floyd Norman's long list of credits
The latter half of the 1960's found Floyd Norman breaking out on his own as an artist. Disney died in 1966, before "The Jungle Book" was released, and Norman left Disney at this time to form Vignette Films with his partner Leo Sullivan and Norm Edlin and Dick Allen. Norman says Vignette Films produced Black Profiles, short animated films "detailing famous African Americans that made their contribution to their country and to their people as well."
Even before leaving Disney, Norman and his friends were driven by creative wanderlust. Using a camera he purchased from Disney's nephew, Norman and a few others captured footage of the Watts Riots in 1965, and their footage aired on an NBC report.
One of Norman and Sullivan's most important works from this time period was the NBC special "Hey, Hey, Hey, It's Fat Albert", which aired once, in 1969, the prototype of the popular "Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids" cartoon from the 70's.
If you're not careful, you might just learn something
Leo Sullivan had heard a rumor that Bill Cosby wanted to make the character from his stand-up routine into a cartoon, so he and Norman animated to the sound of one the Fat Albert routines. Cosby and his managers liked the demo and hired Sullivan. Norman worked on it unofficially, and he recalls the animation process as being unlike any other in the world, because rather than being a division of labor, every artist did every job.
READ MORE about the production of Fat Albert
Floyd Norman's credits from the 1970s on include "Soul Train's" intro, "Josie and the Pussycats," "Robin Hood," "Alvin & the Chipmunks," "Mulan," "Toy Story 2," and "Monsters, Inc." He's simply never stopped working, and though he's been given a plaque certifying his status as a "Disney Legend," he says didn't set out to prove anything. "I've often been called Disney's First Black Animator. Maybe I was, maybe I wasn't. Some people say I was. Okay, then I accept that, but the color of my skin, I don't think makes me unique. I think what this business is really based on is talent, and what you bring to it."
LA Anime Expo: Japan focusing anime and manga on foreign audiences
As AnimeExpo descends on L.A. this weekend, Off-Ramp animation expert Charles Solomon talked with Japanese culture expert Roland Kelts, author of "Japanamerica," about how shifting demographics in Japan are leading to a change in how anime and manga are developed and marketed.
(Hayao Miyazaki's "My Neighbor Totoro." Image: Studio Ghibli)
The annual Anime Expo, now in its 22nd year, is at the L.A. Convention Center from July 3—July 6, with 100,000 people expected for North America's largest convention focused on anime, manga and Japanese culture.
In addition to the screenings, panels, contests and performances at the Expo, the Society for the Promotion of Japanese Animation will hold serious discussions on the state of animation in Japan, how the American market is affecting production, and the potential for greater international cooperation.
At an Expo-related event, Project Anime, Roland Kelts, the author of “Japanamerica: How Japanese Pop Culture has Invaded the U.S.,” will deliver the keynote address. He outlined some of his points with Off Ramp animation expert Charles Solomon Tuesday.
RELATED: Charles Solomon's new book on charming Disney Golden Books
INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS
Solomon: Anime seems to be increasing in its popularity in this country. At the same time, it's influencing American animation. When you look at "Avatar: The Last Airbender," "Samurai Jack," there seems to be a real cross-pollination going to appeal to that younger audience.
Kelts: "Oh, there's no question. And, of course, a certain generation of animation and film directors in the U.S. and other parts of the world have grown up with Japanese animation. And so now they're heavily influenced by that work, and they're turning it around. Even a franchise like 'Transformers,' which was originally a Japanese toy that turned into an animation, and now, of course, is a blockbuster Hollywood franchise.
"The industry is starting to think of overseas markets, especially given the demographic situation in Japan. Very low birthrate, aging society. I think most people in the industry in Japan would say that the market has peaked in Japan; it's not going to grow anymore, and so if they want growth, they have to reach out to overseas markets. The market is growing in America, in South America, Europe, and actually the Middle East."
Solomon: If you're downtown this weekend and see people dressed up as Sailor Moon or Edward Elric or Pikachu, these are cosplayers, which we tend to think of as something uniquely Japanese. Yet that isn't the case.
Kelts: "No, not at all. In fact, the story is that Japanese fans were looking through American sci-fi magazines, and in particular the 'Star Trek' conventions. And they thought, 'Wow, what a fantastic idea.' Of course, 'Star Trek' wasn't widely known in Japan at that time, so they began dressing up as their favorite characters from their own home-made animation series and manga series.
"Then the term crosses the Pacific again, back to the United States, and you get young Americans thinking it's a Japanese phenomenon. And stories like that run throughout the animation industry."
Solomon: In America, Japanese animation doesn't seem to be a theatrical experience. When the films are released theatrically here, they generally don't do well. But they do well on disc and through electronic platforms.
Kelts: "Well, in the United States at least, most filmgoers still think of animation as children's fare. If they're going to go to the cinema, they might see a Pixar film — which is usually 3D, CGI, more photorealistic. Anime from Japan is still largely two-dimensional. It's an aesthetic that doesn't necessarily have mainstream appeal in the movie theater.
"And, to be fair, a lot of the animation in Japan is made for television. There are only select filmmakers who actually make feature-length animation for the cinema. Hayao Miyazaki is obviously the most famous, and his films top the box office in Japan."
Visit the Expo's website for more information on the four-day event, including hotel accommodations and programming.
LA band Harbor Party pays tribute to Yacht Rock
UPDATE: Harbor Party is playing The Satellite in Silver Lake on Tuesday, March 15. Doors at 8:30, music at 9:00, and it's free.
Off-Ramp host John Rabe talks with Landon Beard, lead singer for Harbor Party, which plays yacht rock every Tuesday night at Rockwell in Los Feliz.
Yacht Rock: Another name for the adult-contemporary musical movement in the late 1970's and the early 1980's. It was defined mostly by its smooth sound. Popular Yacht Rockers include: Kenny Loggins, the Doobie Brothers, and Steely Dan. — Urban Dictionary definition
Talk about your guilty pleasures. Some people watch old McMillan & Wife episodes; others read Jackie Collins novels. Me? I like Yacht Rock — music that comes from a simpler and possibly better time. If that floats your boat, too, slip on your Topsiders and join Harbor Party late Tuesday nights at the music club Rockwell.
Tickets for Harbor Party are just five bucks - cheap!
I caught what turned out to be Harbor Party's first performance. After the show, I talked with lead singer and
, former backup singer for Frankie Valli, who hails from the port of San Diego. "We figured out it's specifically a genre of music that was written between 1978 and 1984. Tends to be your Hall & Oates, Kenny Loggins, Toto, Christopher Cross, Michael MacDonald, who were brilliant songwriters."
Christopher Cross singing "Sailing" in 1980
Beard says he got hooked to yacht rock listening to his dad's music when he was only 6-years-old, and he admits that yacht rock might seem "fluffy" at first. But Harbor Party — most of whom are elite USC music grads — find the tunes "super, super tough."
A lot of music now, he says, is about solo singers and a brand more than an act. There's something to be said for when that musicianship was still so strong. "I mean, when we're really picking out things, there are 4, 5, 6 parts on certain songs. It's a blend, it's harmony still."
VIDEO: Watch a casual home movie of "Harbor Party" doing an Eagles tune
Why is it called yacht rock? "I actually don't know who coined the term but I think it's so apropos. It's sad to say, but it's like white people in boat shoes."
Spoiler alert: Beard does not own a yacht, and he can't even sail a boat. But the music of Harbor Party is smooth sailing.
RELATED: Watch Hollywood Steve Huey's hilarious series on the history of yacht rock
Harbor Party is playing the late set (10 p.m.) at Rockwell every Tuesday night. The band also includes Alex "Huntington Newport" Ellis, backing vocals; John Schroeder, guitar; Jack Kovacs, bass; Dan Reckard, keyboard & sax; and Ben Rose and Sam Brawner, drums.
Brando Skyhorse: What it's like growing up in Echo Park with 5 stepfathers
Off-Ramp host John Rabe spoke with Brando Skyhorse about his memoir "Take This Man," which details the astounding lies his mother told him about his father and family. They talked at the Echo Park boathouse. Frank, one of Skyhorse's five stepfathers, joined the interview. We've posted the entire, unedited interview here as a bonus for our online family.
I was three years old when my father abandoned me and my mother in my grandmother’s house atop a crooked hill on Portia Street in a Los Angeles neighborhood called Echo Park. My mother, Maria Teresa, a Mexican who wanted to be an American Indian, transformed me into Brando Skyhorse, a full-blooded American Indian brave. I became the son of Paul Skyhorse Johnson, an American Indian activist incarcerated for armed robbery whom my mother had met through the mail. She became Running Deer Skyhorse, a full-blooded “squaw” who had traded in her most common of Mexican names for the most stereotypical of Indian ones.
My mother was mesmerizing and could make crazy schemes and lies sound electric and honest. Her deception was so good, or so obvious, she fooled each of her five husbands, our neighbors, her friends, my elementary school vice principal, even me. I lived most of my childhood without knowing who I really was. All I knew was the power in my own name: “Brando Skyhorse? That’s beautiful.”
— The opening of Brando Skyhorse's memoir, "Take This Man" (read more here)
INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS:
John Rabe: You start your memoir, "Take This Man," by telling readers the secret of your life — the thing it took you years to discover. Why'd you make that decision?
Brando Skyhorse: I figured that in order to be honest with myself and with the reader, I needed to put that information up front. Because this isn't really a "whodunnit," it's a "whydunnit" ... It's a simple story of reinvention but it's so complicated and there's so many dimensions to it. It was important to me to give that information to the readers up front so that they didn't have to keep constantly puzzling as they're reading the book, "Wait, what's true? What's false?"
Tell me about your mom. She invented a whole history for you, a whole history for herself.
Brando: My mother was one of those electric personalities that really was the center of attention wherever she went. She was beautiful, she was dynamic, she had this sort of overflowing personality. And I think she wanted to be more than what she was and I think she saw herself as just this sort of, like, simple, Mexican-American young woman living in a neighborhood that nobody really cared about. But if she could reinvent herself as an American-Indian and become something fantastic — I mean, when was the last time you met an authentic American Indian?
[To Frank, one of Skyhorse's "five fathers"] Did you eventually feel angry because she lied to you?
Frank: No, because I'm looking at the offshoot of the relationship, and I was telling Brando, one thing I remember she said to me, "I will never take Brando away from you." And I held her to that. And hell, to this day, she's no longer here, but we're here as father and son. So I really appreciated that.
[To Frank] From your position, what did her fabrications do to Brando as you watched him grow up?
Frank: I think it confused him, but it also gave him a sense of who he really was when he finally found out. Then he also embraced his true heritage, his true ethnicity. And I think it helped him grow as an individual.
So, Brando, was this "the pain that made you stronger?" I've always hated that phrase because it involves pain.
Brando: The situation is what it is. So, one can either accept the parameters of it and say, "Here's the pain that was caused, here's basically the ways you can try and manage it," or you can try to run from it. And I think there are certainly periods in my life where I tried to run from the pain, where I tried to deny who I was, or to just tell people the convenient lie that my mom had planned for me. Because not only was it so much easier and less complicated, it really seemed to be what people wanted to hear.
How important is it to have Frank in your life?
Brando: Frank's the rudder. When I tell people what my book's about, it's like, "Oh, you know, I had five fathers, I had a really crazy childhood, my mom was really complicated, my grandmother was really complicated." The one sort of steady presence throughout this book, and the reason that it doesn't read like a grim catalog of just horrible atrocities, is because of Frank. Frank's the light, Frank is basically the redemption.
And after all of this, after all the hell your grandmother and mother put you through, you dedicate the book to them.
Brando: You know, it was a hell, but hell can be quite comfortable sometimes. And more specifically, it was my hell. So I'm actually pretty darn proud of that hell. And if anything, I would love for people reading this book, who are perhaps going through their own versions of hell, to understand that there's always a way out of hell.
Brando Skyhorse will be at Skylight Books in Los Feliz Wednesday night to read and sign "Take This Man." Visit Brando's website for more information on his work.
4 things you probably didn't know about Marlon Brando
July 1 of this year marks the 10th anniversary of actor Marlon Brando’s death. While most people know Brando as a leading man, not everyone knows of his wide and varied exploits beyond the screen. Here are four things you might not have known about Marlon Brando, as provided by Austin Wilkin, archivist for the Marlon Brando estate.
1. He was shot at by FBI agents
Shortly after he had Sacheen Littlefeather refuse his Oscar at the 1973 Academy Awards, Brando joined a group of Native Americans in a standoff at Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, where he was shot at by FBI agents. When asked what it was like inside the stand-off, Brando replied, "At first it was like Disneyland, but then later when we were on the roof, and the bullets started to fly all around us, there was a sudden change of reality.”
2. He loved practical jokes — and bagels.
Brando owned a fake bagel with a plastic cockroach that he would offer to guests at his home. He also had a remote-controlled “fart machine” that he would hide in chair cushions — it made rude sounds at the touch of a button.
Also, when he was cast as Superman's father in Richard Donner's 1978 version of the film, he insisted he should only voice his character, and that Superman's father appear on screen as a floating green bagel.
3. He was a high school drop out
As a high schooler, Brando was kicked out of Shattuck Military Academy in Minnesota for, among other offenses, stealing the bell that tolled at the beginning and end of classes and burying it in the nearby woods. “In theory, that bell is still buried in the woods outside the academy,” Wilkin said.
4. He was arrested for fishing
To protest the U.S. government's withdrawal of fishing rights for Native Americans in Tacoma, Wash., Brando participated in a “fish-in."
“Brando knew where he went, cameras would follow," Wilkin said. "So he went to fish in these waters illegally to say how ludicrous this law was.” As a result, the actor was arrested.
Want to see more of Marlon? The New Beverly Cinema will screen two Brando films in July: "Mutiny on the Bounty" on July 15 and 16, and "The Young Lions" on July 17 and 18. Both films will be presented by Brando biographer Susan Mizruchi.
Joan Baez on Inside Llewyn Davis, folk's early days, and what it's like performing now
Joan Baez is a folk singer, guitarist, activist and writer. She's been called the queen of folk — having performed and collaborated with fellow legends in the genre like Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger and Odetta. She's performing July 3 at the Greek Theatre in Los Feliz and in anticipation of her show, Off-Ramp producer Kevin Ferguson got Baez on the phone and talked about the old days of the folk revival, and what her music is like now.
On how she started her career in folk music:
"I was, at age 14 and 15, enamored of rhythm and blues. And that was about all I listened to. And then my aunt took me to see a Pete Seeger show when I was 16. It took like a good vaccine! And I entered that world — which I was headed towards anyway — of interest in social action, social concerns, and music. And Pete was all of that in one.
"And by then, we were moving to the East Coast, which is where all the folk clubs were, you know — in Cambridge and New York. And I lived near Cambridge and got started there."
On how the Coen Bros' "Inside Llewyn Davis" depicted the early East Coast folk revival:
"They did a good job. I mean, it was kind of ragged. And it was very smoky. It's really interesting to think back that I came up in the age when everybody was smoking and had short hair! That's kind of strange to think.
"It was mysterious and very new. Everybody was learning new stuff constantly. They weren't really writing much yet. And I was, I guess, then I was 18 when I started at Club 47. I think Club 47 was pretty typical of the clubs. It was dingy, it served coffee — no drinks. Students came in and wanted to read or hang out and talk. And I was just impossible. If anybody said anything I would stop singing and make an issue out of it — pretty awful."
On how she discovered songs for her repertoire:
"Mostly [I learned them] through other people playing them. I mean, I could name some of those names. Or at least one of them was Debbie Green. She was a classmate of mine from my fifteen minutes in college. She taught me "Fair and Tender Maidens." That whole ilk of songs I got just from her and her teaching me. That's how a lot of us functioned.
"I didn't read much. And I got practically nothing out of song books. I started collecting things like the Carter Family and learning from that. And some more esoteric stuff. I don't know, someone would give me a record — like "El Preso Numero Nueve" was my boyfriend's record from God knows when. I tried to track it on the Internet and went way back to the 40s in Mexico. So occasional things like that that have stuck with the repertoire forever."
On how Baez' relationship with her songs changes over time:
"I think that the key word with all of this — new songs, old songs, whatever — is that they are fresh. So if it's a song that's from the beginning of time in my career and I feel like singing it again, the trick is to make it come alive. That if it's sounding has-been, then it isn't going to work. But I have clever enough musicians with me that number one: the job is to take a new song and make it listener friendly. And then the other part of the job is to find the things they recognize, and make them feel fresh."
On what her performances are like now:
"At the very beginning I had nobody for a few years. And then at some point, I guess, I started adding people. Then I had big noisy bands. I mean, you know. We all reinvent ourselves forever. And now, I have one musician who plays seven instruments — that's Dirk Powell. And my son is on percussion — light percussion. And that's it.
"And we all get along. If we didn't get along, no matter how wonderful they were, it wouldn't work out."
BONUS: We've made a Spotify playlist with of our favorite Joan Baez songs:
Did we forget one? A couple? Let us know in the comments!
The American Way: Freedom, liberty and buying stuff
Off-Ramp commentator Taylor Orci on the meaning of liberty, freedom, and financial slavery.
I hate money. Or at least I love money, I hate financing. You have to sit in a room and wait while all the numbers that make you a person in the eyes of money are being added up in mysterious ways and then the finance man points to those numbers and you sign them.
It's all very judge-y, kinda like you're being put on trial in money court.
(Image: LA Public Library photo archive)
So I'm in money court, rifling through my purse 'cause I finished doing everything my phone had to offer, and I came across a book of stamps. That's how bored I was, I started to care about stamps. Not fun ones that have like Tito Puente and Carmen Miranda...
... but the boring regular 'Forever' stamps that have the Liberty Bell on them. I stared at the Liberty stamp, trying to find a shred of something interesting to entertain me, and realized I didn't know the difference between liberty and freedom. Oh thank God, another thing to occupy myself in the land of bad coffee and credit scores.
I began looking up the definitions for both "liberty" and "freedom," trying to figure out the two. Was freedom more broad and liberty used more when talking about laws? Or was that just something I'd made up in my head? Were the two redundant, and was I living in a land founded on redundant words?
The finance guy seemed nice. As he collated papers coming from what sounded like a dot matrix printer, I asked him, "Hey, do you know the difference between freedom and liberty?" He looked at me like I told him I had a bomb under my shirt, then, as he highlighted a few places for me to sign, he said, "It doesn't really matter anyway, we're all under financial slavery." And then I signed the clause opting in for gap insurance.
I said, "You think it's weird you think we're all under financial slavery, and you're the guy in change of financing at this car dealership?" Above him was a framed poster sized version of the sporty Honda CR-Z, hugging a turn at lighting speed.
(Closed track with professional driver. Do not attempt from your desk.)
He shrugged. "I don't know, I guess with everyone trying to put food on the table and everything, it's just something you have to accept," he said.
I took this to mean: Trying to provide for basic human needs already puts you in debt, so if you're never gonna get out from under debt, why not get a turbo-charged two-seater with a moon roof and that key clicker that can start your car from 400 feet away. In other words: YOLO*.
After that conversation, I walked out of that dealership feeling pretty good about myself. I mean, I was one of the good eggs, I was buying my car I'd already leased for the last four years trying to pay it off so I had one less monthly payment.
I went to a public college and worked the whole way through, so I have zero student loan debt, and one of the mysterious men in the dealership said my credit was pretty good. You know who's not gonna fall victim to financial slavery, this girl right here:
(This girl right here, also a drought denier. Image: John Rabe)
Then I realized I had not one, but two AmExes, one gold card because I wanted to feel more important when I paid for things, and then another credit card 'cause Tina Fey was in an AmEx commercial.
(Moroccan pouf, at Overstock.com)
I have looked online at Moroccan poufs for hours, and my search history on eBay includes both vintage Pyrex and Civil War-era hair lockets. The other day I went on Honda's website, and you know what? That CR-Z is really cool.
God bless America.
*You Only Live Once
In-depth with NPR's new president, Jarl Mohn
Off-Ramp host John Rabe talks with incoming NPR President Jarl Mohn. Mohn has been a top radio DJ, a guiding force at MTV and VH1, and now promises to raise the kind of money NPR deserves, given its audience numbers and quality. Mohn served on the SCPR board (KPCC's parent company) from 2002-2014, acting as chair the last two years, and has given close to $7 million to the station.
"To reach 38-million people in the United States each week, reach that number of people, and be struggling financially, is silly. Particularly given the kind of person that listens to NPR or KPCC, it's silly; that's just outrageous." -- Jarl Mohn
On July 1, Jarl Mohn will take over NPR, an organization with a troubled bottom line, but, in his words, "spectacular" programming. While some may scoff at his commercial background — he helped shape the modern media by programming MTV and VH1 — Mohn promises to bring commercial business practices to public radio to leverage the power and quality of its huge audience.
RELATED: Spanish radio's Piolin to pay $100k in legal fees to targets of his lawsuit
In a long interview for Off-Ramp at the Mohn Broadcast Center, Mohn talked about his upbringing, his career as a DJ and station owner, the MTV and VH1 years, his time at the ACLU of Southern California, and his plans for NPR.
His name, Jarl Mohn: "Weird, very weird. Very bad name for radio," he said. His father, instead of naming him Earl Mohn, Jr., turned to the Norwegian original, Jarl. Mohn is a German last name.
Radio career: His family didn't have a TV or radio; he was expected to entertain himself by reading books. "So this whole thing has been an overreaction and a rebellion. My whole career has been a rebellion," he said.
He began dreaming about being a radio DJ and when he was 13, created a "mystery persona," Lee Masters, which became his radio name in the pre-NPR era when names like Ofeibea Quist-Arcton and Martin Kaste were not acceptable for radio personalities.
At 15, at WBUX, Doylestown, 30 miles north of Philadelphia, he had the "God squad" shift, playing religious programs on Sunday morning. Ten years later, he was doing afternoons at the Top 40 station WNBC in New York.
Cash Call! Listen to Jarl Mohn as "Lee Masters" on WNBC in 1978
But he was at WNBC for only two years.
"It was like many things in life, a bit of a letdown. It was so heavily formatted; it was kind of boring," he said. So he bought into a radio station in El Paso, then a few more, and then wound up programming MTV and VH1.
MTV: Mohn says ratings started to decline after the Michael Jackson "Thriller" phenomenon. "Ultimately, I concluded that what the network needed was not a radio guy, but a television guy, but I figured I better not tell them that, so I figured what would a TV guy do?"
That led to Kurt Loder, Downtown Julie Brown, the game show "Remote Control" and more. Plus, when they realized the impact they were having on society, Mohn says, the collaboration with Rock the Vote and PSA's about AIDS prevention. He says he's very proud of providing a platform for "very talented video directors, who were trying very different things. Some were spectacular." Like:
A-ha's video for "Take On Me" won six awards at the 1986 MTV Video Music Awards
ACLU: Mohn was chairman of the ACLU of Southern California from 1994-2009, which stemmed from his wife Pamela pointing out that they were doing well and should start paying it back. His initial focus on First Amendment issues shifted to the rights of people of color, gays and lesbians, and now, "the people that really don't even have well-funded organizations that represent them," like the homeless, extremely poor, and prisoners," said Mohn. He is a democrat, but says he's backing off on "political things" with his new job about to begin.
NPR: Listen to our full interview for more details, but in short, Mohn says he'll apply his commercial media expertise to help NPR sell more of its underwriting inventory (what would be commercials in the commercial world) and get a much better price for underwriting.
"I'm really lucky in that almost everything else I've done in my career I've had to go into something where there was a massive problem with the product, and with NPR the programming is spectacular," said Mohn. "It's the business part of the business that needs the help."
Recipe: If you grill your hamburger, you're doing it wrong
As the Fourth of July approaches, Angelenos of all stripes are firing up their grill and putting on it the most American of foods: the hamburger.
But according to food writers like the New York Times' Sam Sifton and the L.A. Times' Russ Parsons, if you're grilling your burger, you're cheating yourself.
Instead, Parsons says, use a heavy stovetop pan like a cast iron skillet or griddle.
"You get great surface contact all the way across the burger," he says. "On a grill you've got the bars, and so there's parts of the hamburger that are in contact with the hot metal, and you'll get striping. But there's other parts that aren't, and you don't get the same kind of crust that you can off a griddle."
You can put steaks, chicken, tri-tip, just about anything on a grill. But, says Parsons, burgers should be the last thing.
Recipe: Russ Parson's basic hamburger patty
(makes 6 patties)
Ingredients:
- 2 pounds ground beef — 20-25% fat
- Salt, pepper to taste
- 1 tablespoon grape seed oil
Directions:
- Warm a cast iron skillet or griddle over medium heat with the oil. If no cast iron is available, any heavy pan will do.
- In a mixing bowl, sprinkle ground beef with salt and pepper and lightly toss the beef so the seasoning is worked through but the ground beef still retains its consistency.
- Patting lightly, form the ground beef into 6-to-7-ounce patties, a little wider than the diameter of a coffee mug. Gently press a dimple into the center of each patty — this keeps the burger's surface even and prevents rounding. If you have time, refrigerate 30 minutes to set the fat.
- Place the patties on the hot pan and leave untouched — this is where the crust forms and the fat outside renders; poking and prodding the patty too much will hamper that. When about three minutes have gone by, check to see if the patty can move easily. If it sticks, a crust hasn't formed.
- Flip the patty and cook for another three minutes for medium doneness. Remove from the pan and serve immediately with the bun and condiments of your choice.
Here's Sam Sifton's video on how to cook a burger indoors:
'Do the Right Thing' at 25: How Spike Lee's classic changed race dialogue in film
Off-Ramp contributor RH Greene's appreciation of "Do the Right Thing," Spike Lee's seminal film, which was released 25 years ago, on June 30, 1989. The Academy is showing "Do the Right Thing" June 27 as part of a wider Spike retrospective called By Any Means Necessary:a Spike Lee Joints Retrospective.
About a week after the riots in 1992, I got together in Silver Lake with about 15 friends in an improvised dinner party that was also a group therapy session. After the riots you worried about everyone you knew and we had a fierce need to see people in the flesh afterward, to hug them harder than usual.
That night, there was also a friend's housewarming a block up the street, so I left the first party for an hour or so. Before I went, I commandeered the VHS player and popped in a movie I'd brought to share: Spike Lee's “Do the Right Thing.”
RELATED: What is your race? A shifting answer for many Americans
It's largely a comedy, in case you didn't know that — a loving and layered urban fairytale shot with the color palette of a Technicolor musical about a few multicultural blocks in the Bedford-Stuyvescent neighborhood of Brooklyn on the hottest night of the year.
Watch the original trailer for "Do the Right Thing"
In “Do the Right Thing,” there's no protagonist. No, the neighborhood is the protagonist. Lee's entire cast came to the set every day, to fill in the shots with background action as Lee's character — Mookie the pizza delivery man — moves through his world exchanging greetings like a cousin at a family reunion. Lee grew up in Brooklyn, and it occupies a space in his work similar to Rome in the work of Fellini. It's his Wonderland, a place of magic and reckonings.
Though mistakenly thought of as a flamethrower of a film, “Do the Right Thing” is one of Lee's most tenderly personal works. Still, as an African-American, Lee vividly understands an uncomfortable truth: in America, race informs nearly everything.
Part of the brilliance of “Do the Right Thing” is that it makes that subtext text, pushing it to the surface, often in rawly hilarious ways that diverge completely from the puerile discourse on bigotry that was Hollywood's stock-in-trade.
(Title card from "The Birth of a Nation")
The very syntax of American cinema —the way shots are staged and cut together, the way movies deal with the physics of space and time — descends to us from D. W. Griffith's obscene but seminal 1915 epic "The Birth of a Nation," the racist blockbuster that is also an origin myth for the Ku Klux Klan.
Before Martin Luther King, American cinema mostly just embodied racism rather than commenting on it. Black domestics were flightly and unreliable, as demonstrated by the entire careers of African-American actors Steppin Fetchit and Butterfly McQueen. Tapmaster Bill Bojangles Robinson could dance with Shirley Temple, but caused a scandal when he took her by the hand.
Watch the famous Bojangles Robinson - Shirley Temple dance scene
After Montgomery, Selma and Memphis, a more well-meaning Hollywood trafficked in simplicities by taking the "a few bad apples" approach. Racists were epithet-spouting monsters, whose recognizably Southern cadence and tendency to use "boy" or "wetback" to impugn non-white manhood made them easily identifiable and thereby easy to punish or shun.
“Do the Right Thing” knows what all great narrative art understands, which is that people are more than one thing. From Mookie the delivery man to Sal the pizza king, you love almost every character, and you understand them all. So when a brutal police action leaves a black youth dead on the sidewalk, it's not a faceless mob that riots, but a sea of intricate human beings, capable of tenderness and virtue, bigotry and righteous wrath.
On either side of the billy club and the torch, each figure is both racism's victim and its accomplice. The small apocalypse of a single New York neighborhood on the hottest night of the year isn't about heroes and villains. It implicates us all.
The riots so many contemporaneous critics anticipated “Do the Right Thing” would incite never materialized. It took the real world, a viral video, and the police beating of Rodney King to make Spike Lee's prophecy flesh.
One week later, I turned on a video player in a roomful of friends and left them for an hour or so. And when I came back, every conversation had stopped. And there wasn't a dry eye in the house.