Don and Chris Murray finally go to Night of a Hundred Stars together ... Jon Bon Jovi and Steve Lopez go to a homeless shelter together ... Queena Kim gets together with a beer float ... RIP Bobby Espinosa, and thanks for "Viva Tirado" ... CyberFrequencies watches an episode of iCarly with its target audience: kids.
Jon Bon Jovi, Steve Lopez, and Rabe visit LAMP homeless center
(THIS PIECE ORIGINALLY RAN IN MARCH ON OFF-RAMP)
Most people know Jon Bon Jovi as a rock hero. But for the last six years, he’s used his fame and money to fight homelessness. The Jon Bon Jovi Soul Foundation has built 250 units of affordable housing around the country. When he’s on tour, Bon Jovi makes fact-finding visits to the poor parts of town to learn more about the causes and cures of homelessness.
Ahead of his gig at Staples Center (Thursday, March 4), on Monday he toured LAMP Community, the homeless center on Skid Row. Steve Lopez, the LA Times columnist who has chronicled the recovery of homeless musician Nathaniel Ayers, brought Bon Jovi to LAMP and was impressed with the work he's done.
(L-R: LAMP Interim Executive Director Shannon Murray, Jon Bon Jovi, LA Times columnist Steve Lopez, KPCC’s John Rabe.)
If you’re a big Bon Jovi fan, you know that Jon Bon Jovi’s Soul Foundation does a lot for homeless people. If you’re a former 1980s DJ who played Bon Jovi back then but wasn’t really into their music all that much, it might come as a surprise.
I’m in the latter camp, and now my eyes are open. The LA Times’ Steve Lopez (read his Skid Row stories here) got me invited to Jon’s tour of LAMP Monday afternoon. (Bon Jovi is in SoCal for the band’s big concert tour, and plays Staples Center Thursday.) Turns out Bon Jovi has been seriously working on the issue for years, since a day he saw a homeless man asleep in front of Philly’s city hall and said to himself, “I can do something about this.”
(Of this photo, Steve Lopez said, “While I am several years older than Jon, it’s interesting that we have exactly the same hair.”)
For the fans: JBJ is a really good looking 48-year old (DOB: 3/2/1962). Medium height, good hair, lean like Montgomery Clift, but with better arms. And best of all, smart and well-spoken. Here he is outside LAMP:
What I also liked: he wouldn’t sign some non-homeless jerk’s guitar, which was obviously destined for e-Bay, but he gladly and graciously signed autographs for homeless guys.
The Beer Float
Off-Ramp producer Queena Kim has been hanging out at Golden State on Fairfax lately. They’re known for their burgers and beer, but they also make a delicious ... beer float. Don't gag. Queena talked with co-owner Jason Bernstein, and tried one.
Come inside for the Beer Float movie and a link to Golden State. If you can't make it to Golden State yourself, have a virtual beer float with Queena below.
Don Murray and son Chris Murray are each other's dates at the "Night of a Hundred Stars" Oscar Party
KPCC's John Rabe gets on the line with Don Murray ("Bus Stop," "Advise and Consent," "Knott's Landing") and his son Chris Murray ("Zoey 101" and "Parks & Rec") to get the inside poop on the Night of a Hundred Stars. Come inside to see Don, wife Hope Lange, and baby Chris.
(Listen to the long or the short version of their interview. The long one features a lot more information on how seriously Don Murray takes his role as Academy member when it comes to voting for the Oscar-nominated films.)
Sweetums film from Parks&Rec less sweet than original
Rabe compares "Sweetums" film (with Chris Murray) from NBC's Parks&Rec to "Sugar Crinkles" cereal ad from 1950s epidode of "Gunsmoke." Come inside for the "Sweetums" video, which includes a line cut from the broadcast version.
Mmmmm. Parks & Rec’s Sweetums makes for contented cows and docile people.
Who could have predicted, that crazy night at House of Pies …
(Photo: Julian Bermudez.)
… that my friend, the actor Chris Murray , would soon be corporate creep Nick Newport in NBC’s new Thursday night series Parks & Rec? Here’s “Newport” extolling the virtues of corn syrup.
Chris, who played Dean Rivers on Zoey 101, and who is the son of Don Murray and Hope Lange, has appeared on Off-Ramp a few times. He’s told us the story of his unjust handcuffing by an overzealous security guard in the employ of a Malibu Beach Baron, updated us on his efforts to get Lange a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and revealed the secrets of being staff announcer for the Pinewood Derby at his kids’ elementary school.
What's On Your Browser? iCarly!
This week we ask the hot new digi-band iOla, "What's on your browser." Their answer: iCarly. It's one of the most popular kid's TV shows. CyberFrequencies also hangs out with the band!
John Rabe blog shoots for Guggenheim with Vast Wasteland Project
John Rabe's blog, "John Rabe" on the SCPR home page, has been featuring Hipstamatic photos of the discarded televisions of Cypress Park. But, as it turns out, they're more than just photos ... they're art ... and so is the blog.
WARNING: By reading this, you are participating in an art project.
As you may know if you’ve read this blog at all regularly, I’ve been looking for some traction for my ongoing photo essay on the abandoned television sets of Lincoln Heights and Cypress Park.
On Monday I wrote, “So far, no calls from Taschen or the Annenberg photo center. Maybe because of the glaring lack on conflict or even the vaugest narrative thread. No arc, as they say.”
So when Kevin Roderick charitably linked to the blog on LA Observed, I took it as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, a sign to get a move on.
I e-mailed Mark, a professional grant-writing friend, about how I might take this further. Mark wrote back:
“A Guggenheim Fellowship, I think: an artist transplanted from the Midwest to LA wants a grant to drive around California to document the state's love/hate relationship with television, as expressed through a certain physicality, an undeniable confrontation with the physical reality of television: when you hate more than just what television represents, but the structure itself and what it represents in your living space. What is it, exactly, we're kicking to the curb here?”
Eureka! And other California towns!
In other words, Mr. Guggenheim, how did we get from here …
(“A small child stands with his hand on one of the new Hoffman TV sets.” LA Public Library photo archive.)
… in which the television set becomes a part of the family, trusted with our children, the nation’s future … and here …
(“Picture of a console model of a Hoffman 19" TV set in a living room setting, with blonde wood. This is Model 896. A picture of a girl with a horse is shown on the screen. LA Public Library photo archive.)
... in which the television becomes an integral part of The American Home, the "blonde wood" of the set mirroring the American ideal of beauty … to here ...
(March, 2010. Cypress Park, abandoned television. Vast Wasteland Project, (C) 2010 John Rabe.)
... where the beloved televisions of the past are so much trash, have themselves become, in essence, the “vast wasteland” that Newton Minnow bemoaned in his famous oration on the evils of television so many years ago. Indeed, “What is it, exactly, we're kicking to the curb here?”
The Guggenheim application period doesn’t open for a few more months, so I’ll keep you posted.
Haefele Tribute to Early-Childhood Icon, Docia Zavitkovsky
Docia Zavitkovsky – a Westsider who died on Christmas Eve -- spent more than 70 of her 96 years working with the very young. She became a national treasure of infant lore and practice. Her ideas informed Head Start and earned her a devoted following, including Off-Ramp commentator Marc Haefele.
Camille Rose Garcia illustrates new edition of "Alice in Wonderland"
Camille Rose Garcia, the SoCal-born painter we introduced you to last fall, has a book on the New York Times bestseller list. She's illustrated a new edition of "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland," just in time for a new imagining of the book, and the Tim Burton movie with Johnny Depp. Some of the artwork from Garcia's book is on display at Merry Karnowsky Gallery on LaBrea in Los Angeles.
Here's Julian Bermudez's piece on Garcia, filed when she opened her "Hydra of Babylon" show in September, 2009.
Gerald Wilson, El Chicano, and 'Viva Tirado'
LA and the jazz world are mourning Gerald Wilson, a worldwide jazz giant who lived in LA and who died Monday at the age of 96. Gerald Wilson was a jazz trumpeter who played in the big bands, he was a bandleader, and he was a venerated teacher.
RELATED: Gerald Wilson's son talks about his dad on KPCC's Airtalk.
But Wilson was also a composer, and he wrote the song "Viva Tirado," which became a huge hit for a band out of East LA called El Chicano, and was later sampled by Kid Frost. As Oliver Wang wrote a few years ago on his blog:
"Viva Tirado" is at the center of a rather remarkable, multi-generational conversation between L.A.'s Black and Brown communities. After all, here's a song, originally written by a Black composer in honor of a Mexican bullfighter, covered by a Chicano band steeped in Black R&B and jazz, then sampled by the first major Chicano rap artist. It seems no matter where the song goes, it's always a bridge between cultures. -- Oliver Wang
Just how big Gerald Wilson's composition (he always called them "numbers") was comes through loud and clear in this 2009 Off-Ramp interview between Jesus Velo of the band Los Illegals, and one of his heroes: the late Bobby Espinosa of the band El Chicano, who remembered when "Viva Tirado" hit it big in 1970.
Watch El Chicano perform "Viva Tirado" live in 1971
MarriageTrial.com does the Federal Challege to Prop 8
The federal case challenging Prop 8 is winding up in San Francisco next week but you can’t see it. Television cameras weren't allowed to safeguard the privacy of the witnesses.
But if you want to see the trial, a group actors have been creating a series – in which they take the court transcript and act it out. You can see the video re-enactment "MarriageTrial.com."
KPCC’s Alex Cohen spoke to John Ireland, who co-produced the series with John Ainsworth