As Neil Diamond once said, "Summer love; They call it summer love; But oh, how it feels; And I don't believe make believe."
Bookends made from Ray Bradbury's house support his legacy
UPDATE 6/26/2015: And now they're sold out. Good work, folks!
UPDATE 6/25/2015: The warehouse manager just told me that they probably only have only fifty sets of bookends left. So if you want a set, order them now. -- John
This is a simple, cool idea. You can, literally* support* Ray Bradbury books with bookends made from the timbers of his demolished Cheviot Hills home, and support his legacy at the same time.
Listen to the Off-Ramp interview with Bradbury's biographer about Ray's red file
The ReUse People, a company that carefully tears down buildings to salvage and reuse the material, has turned 2x6's from the home into these rustic bookends.
After Ray's death in 2012 the house was sold to local architect, Thom Mayne, who ... planned to build a home on the property. A lot of buyers (most, I’m sorry to say) would simply have torn down the old Bradbury house, but ... his office asked TRP Regional Manager Arthur Renaud to submit a deconstruction bid. The contract was awarded to TRP, and the house was carefully taken apart by a TRP-certified deconstruction contractor in January, 2015. In addition to the vintage doors, windows, cabinetry, hardwood flooring, plumbing and electrical fixtures, TRP salvaged 10.7 tons of lumber for reuse. -- The ReUse People website
The bookends go for $88.50 per set, and are limited to 451 sets. A portion of the proceeds benefits the Center for Ray Bradbury Studies at Indiana University.
*Pun intended.
Sister Corita Kent gets a retrospective at the Pasadena Museum of California Art
Someday is Now: The Art of Corita Kent is the first full-scale exhibition to survey the entire career of pioneering artist and designer Corita Kent (1918–1986). For over three decades, Corita experimented in printmaking, producing a groundbreaking body of work that combines faith, activism, and teaching with messages of acceptance and hope.
-- Pasadena Museum of California Art
She loved flowers, colors, poetry, Jesus, and love itself. Now and then, she also liked a good belt of Jack Daniels. She helped change the way art is taught in America. And she is likely to be remembered as one of the greatest Los Angeles artists to emerge in the 20th century.
Sister Frances Elizabeth Corita Kent, who jumped over the convent wall in the last part of her life to become known simply as “Corita,” embodied the humanization of the movement known as “Pop Art.” But she was also the nun on the cover of Newsweek, famous associate of the activist Berrigan Brothers and other progressive Catholic "partners in protest," and lifelong protestor against war, racism and all kinds of injustice.
All of her efforts arose from a profound sense of right and wrong, rooted in the deep Christian religiosity that carried her through her astonishing life, which linked her born spirituality with an ascending creativity, a wildly inventive talent with social engagement.
A new show of Corita Kent’s work is now on display at the Pasadena Museum of California Art, called “Someday is Now.’’
(Sister Corita Kent. Courtesy of the Corita Art Center, Immaculate Hearts Community, LA)
Even if her name doesn’t come quickly to mind, you’ll quickly recall, among her prints, paintings and serigraphs, that you've been browsing through her world for much of your life — including putting many of her bright 700-million selling “Love” stamps on your mail.
Kent doesn’t so much do pictures and illustrations. Her artworks are vivid, actinic and perfect statements — of words mostly found but unforgettable, irresistibly memorable, sunk deeply in tiny white letters in flamboyant flourishes of pure raving color. She illuminated her quoted apothegms like a medieval monk illuminating the letters of a manuscript — but in the flaming colors of counter-cultural pop.
But the basic ingredients in her art ranged from the most naturally humble things — like tree branches, plant stems and flowers — to the most bombastically commercial, like her ferocious yet endearing serial deconstruction of the Wonder Bread commercial, with its slogans morphing ironically but gently into the deepest meanings of the holy sacraments.
For decades, as her work went viral and her reputation soared, she and her colleague, Sister Magdalen Mary, taught art at Hollywood’s Immaculate Heart College. Their teaching methods were much more like those of a New York progressive prep school than a traditional Catholic institution for young women.
It was perhaps natural that she and her sisters would have problems with the Church’s hierarchy. But it was deeply unfortunate that for most of her IHC career, she had to deal with James MacIntyre, perhaps the most conservative American ever to wear a cardinal’s hat. He was a prelate much given to racial slurs, who vowed to bring the Church and the John Birch Society together, and he fought a long-running skirmish with Corita and her order that first forbade her to paint her “blasphemous” sacred pictures, and ultimately resulted in the obliteration of Immaculate Heart College itself.
Much of Corita’s controversial early work is on display at the PCMA. In general, it is astonishingly good: Full of Fauvist influences, her impressionist depictions of the Holy Family and the Passion of Christ would not have offended anyone familiar with early 20th century painting, which MacIntyre was obviously not.
MacIntyre's ban on Corita’s work cost the Church the work of a great, representational deeply religious painter. Ironically, it gave us instead an entire generation of unique new art: Corita’s freshly imagined serigraphic word-picture statements, spreading all over the nation and inspiring generations of artists. This is the art of “Someday is Now,” which you ought to experience as soon as you can.
Someday is Now: The Art of Corita Kent is at the Pasadena Museum of California art through November 1. 490 East Union Street, Pasadena, CA 91101
Lake Fire: Evacuating Camp de Benneville Pines, refuge from LA for 50-plus years
This week the Lake Fire forced the evacuation of nearly 200 campers, most of them kids, from campgrounds in the San Bernardino National Forest.
That includes 120 kids in a theater arts group who were at Camp de Benneville Pines, a retreat and conference center in Barton Flats, 90 miles east of LA and 6,800 up in the mountains. The camp is run by the Unitarian-Universalist Association, and is open to all people.
Off-Ramp host John Rabe talked with Janet James, the camp's executive director, about the fire, the nature-centered philosophy of the camp, and camp dog Daisy Doodle.
(James and Daisy Doodle)
Stay up to date on the Lake Fire and all the other wildfires in the area using our Fire Tracker tool.
LAST CHANCE: MOCA's huge American flag exhibit will blow you away
UPDATE: This is the last week to see trinket; the exhibit's last day is Sunday, June 28. Saturday and Sunday hours: 11-6.
Take a 55 x 16-foot American flag, add a few spotlights and four huge movie wind fans, and you have an unexpectedly overwhelming and moving art exhibit.
"Trinket," by William Pope.L (pronounced poh-PELL) is the centerpiece of a show of the same name at the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA in downtown L.A.'s Little Tokyo. It's wonderful in its simplicity, and bewildering in its complexity. It's just a flag in the wind, but it's so much more.
WATCH Off-Ramp's special slo-mo video of William Pope.L's "Trinket" at MOCA
The noise and the wind from the fans, plus the ever-changing shape of the flag in the lights, create an immersive experience even before you start thinking about what "Trinket" means to you — especially in the context of the Tunis museum attack, the baby cradled in a flag, Rudy Giuliani's claim that President Obama doesn't love America, U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, etc.
"People need to see it," said MOCA chief curator Bennett Simpson as we stood downwind, like CNN anchors covering a hurricane. "But, more than that, they need to feel it. The artist Pope.L says people should physically feel their democracy, and not just understand it as an abstract symbol, and with this work, yeah, you are physically enveloped in the work."
William Pope.L's Trinket is at the Geffen Contemporary through June 28.
The last hurrah of Tom LaBonge
Guess what song was on the radio when I got into Los Angeles City Councilman Tom LaBonge’s car for his exit interview?
Of course it was Randy Newman's "I Love L.A." And love LaBonge or hate him, nobody loves L.A.. more than LaBonge, and nobody better knows his district, which stretches from Sherman Oaks to Toluca Lake to the Silver Lake Reservoir to Olympic Boulevard, and includes Hollywood, Griffith Park, and the Miracle Mile.
(Council District 4 is highlighted in yellow. City of Los Angeles graphic)
But now, after decades as a council aide, then 15 years as city councilman, Tom LaBonge is in his final month in office (his official last day in office is June 30). He's termed out and will be replaced by David Ryu, who will be the city's first Korean-American council member.
"When I was serving the city, I wasn't writing legislation. You know, sometimes I get criticized, and they say I'm not a visionary. I'm an absolute visionary, and the vision comes from people, and how people feel about their city." — L.A. City Councilman Tom LaBonge
The idea for the interview was that we'd drive all over his district, but President Obama was in town, so we stayed in the Los Feliz-Silverlake area. Still, there were plenty of signature LaBonge moments: he handed out maps of Griffith Park to tourists at the Observatory and gave one of his photo calendars to a constituent, chastised smokers in the park, opened a gate to a maintenance yard for a worker who'd forgotten his key (of course, LaBonge has one), and negotiated with a resident whose retaining wall and sewer are being ruined by a street tree.
The only thing he didn't do was fill a pothole or clear a storm drain, both of which I can confirm he's done, even when nobody was looking.
"Jon Stewart, when he announced (he was quitting "The Daily Show"), he said I'm told I have a great family. And everybody laughed. My family, my wife Brigid, my children, Mary-Catherine and Charles, they don't like going out with me; they want to go out with me when I'm just Dad, and that's something I've got to do better at. This is not a family job." — L.A. City Councilman Tom LaBonge
Some kids start cooking when they're kids and become chefs. Some kids are loudmouths and become radio journalists. The way LaBonge tells it, as a kid he was "infatuated" with the city itself and the people who made it run: the hospitals, the firefighters, the high school teachers, the architects and garbage men. He even knows which street lights in his district were the first to be wired underground, decades ago. So it was natural for him to become a public servant.
Either LaBonge truly doesn't know what his next job will be, or he wouldn't say. But in an age of term limits, when every politician seems to be positioning themselves for the next gig, LaBonge stands apart. This is the job he wanted, and this is the job he loved, in the city he loves.
Director Mel Stuart's kids tell stories from the making of the original 'Willy Wonka'
Madeline Stuart says, "I couldn't imagine a kid who wouldn't want to finish school every day" and come hang out on the movie set.
That kid was Madeline (and her brother Peter), and the film was 1971's "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory," based on Roald Dahl's book, directed by their father Mel Stuart.
Stuart worked in TV and film, directing "If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium," the documentary "Wattstax," and more than a hundred other projects. "But there's no question," Madeline says, "that Willy Wonka is what endeared him to so many millions of people."
Madeline and Peter Stuart will be joining me onstage at the Orpheum Theatre in downtown L.A. on Wednesday, June 24, at 8 p.m., to introduce a screening of "Willy Wonka" with stories and photos from their time on the set. It's part of the L.A. Conservancy's Last Remaining Seats series.
"This was my favorite book," she says. "I brought the book to my father and said, 'Dad, I'd like you to make a movie out of my favorite book.' Granted not every little girl's father is a director, and not every little girl's father is inclined to listen to a little girl, but my father wisely did."
So, they lived in Germany, where the film was shot, and every day after school at a U.S. military base they would take the tram to the studio. "For us, it was like walking into the pages of your favorite book," but not just for the few hours when you watch a movie or read a book, but for days and days during the shoot.
She and Peter have small roles in the film, and she says she delights in the dark tone that startled many moviegoers. "We all have a dark side to our nature, and children are evil little creatures. And the book and the film really capture that, that children can be spoiled, bratty, obnoxious, and the film outs kids for their own bad behavior." And they get their comeuppance ... except for Charlie.
For much more, listen to the audio of our interview.
Many critics love Pixar's 'Inside Out.' Not this guy.
Every time a Pixar Animation feature comes out, I know the entire world is about to go crazy over something that will only fill me with dread and disgust. It happened again the other night. I saw an advance screening of "Inside Out." People all around me cooed with pleasure. I sat there punching my knee.
To my eye, "Inside Out" is the single most hideously ugly animated movie ever made. It’s so garish you feel like you've been swallowed by a jelly bean and are watching the world through a candy coated stomach. The character designs could have been cooked up by a Montessori preschool: giant eyes, monochromatic color, and extreme poses that never deviate from the promotional posters.
We are locked inside a young girl's head as she deals with the emotional trauma of a family move and adolescent pressures about her role in a new social setting. The emotions themselves are the characters we're tracking. Joy. Sadness. Anger. Fear. Disgust. They left out Grumpy and Doc.
Like "Up" before it, "Inside Out" will be praised by a lot of people for its emotional honesty, which is code for "it made me cry." But to me it’s designed to tamp down human behaviors and desires into shapes so flat the movie should have come wrapped in a fortune cookie.
Did you know that Happiness and Sadness are both part of life? Or that parents are sometimes preoccupied by things other than their kids?
Whew. Devastating.
And because this is Pixar, we are asked — no, make that forced — to weep for childhood as some sort of thumb-sucking "Paradise Lost." The nostalgia for a simpler time of diapers and fluffy pillows is fetishistic.
"But it's so original!" you say. It’s not. Disney nearly won an Oscar in 1943 for the propaganda short called "Reason and Emotion," which takes place in the cockpit of a human skull, where competing impulses wrestle for control of the steering wheel.
But "Reason and Emotion" sought to personify the intellect as well as the id. "Inside Out" is all id, all the time. People are just bundles of emotion lurching from one experience to the next based on which of their buttons is being pushed. And if that doesn't sound like a modern studio's idea of its audience, nothing does.