14yo Destiny Rodriguez co-hosts Brains On! Patt Morrison interviews Broadway icon Patricia Morison. We uncover the true facts behind the Rose Hills cemetery's neon sign.
James Franco's USC filmmaking class breaks ground by, you know, making a movie
Actor and filmmaker James Franco is noted, and at times mocked, for treating his life and career as a kind of ongoing art project, but one of his projects might change the way you think of him, and the future of filmmaking.
Our story starts at the Palm Springs Film Festival in January of this year. One of the festival premieres was "Don Quixote: The Ingenious Gentleman of La Mancha." In movie terms, "Don Quixote" is a cursed text. Failed adaptations of the literary classic about a delusional Spanish knight nearly ended the careers of both Orson Welles and Terry Gilliam.
WATCH the trailer for Franco's "Don Quixote"
Who'd be crazy enough to attempt that one? James Franco. Make that professor James Franco, because the "Don Quixote" that premiered at Palm Springs was co-directed by 11 USC students. All professor Franco did was teach the class, fund the project, and co-star in the movie as a brutal highwayman.
"I like to explore alternative approaches to filmmaking," he says. "And maybe one could say teaching is also a new approach, where I am bringing resources to young filmmakers, I am bringing a source text to be adapted, and then after that, I'm trying to take my hands off the final product, turning it over to my students."
But a premiere is the third act of a production process. To understand the Franco/Watson student production model, you'd really have to start over, from Act One, the preproduction phase. Or, the start of class. Veteran producer John Watson co-teaches Franco's class. He says, "My first rule I say to them is leave your ego at the door. This is a joint project." And they leave accepted wisdom for student films at the door, too. "We broke all the rules. They say you don't do period. You don't do horses and animals and children. You don't do stunts. And you certainly don't do massive complicated effects sequences." But they HAD to do windmills, right?
When I visited the class in late February, they were on to the next project. A fresh group of actors, directors and support crew were assembled in a small theatre on the USC campus for a read-through of a script in progress. The script is called "Actor's Anonymous," adapted by student screenwriters from Franco's blackly comic Hollywood novel.
In "Actor's Anonymous," Franco will have a small, self-mocking role as a pontificating actor/celebrity with a dark side. It's a role that mirrors both Franco's status in Hollywood and his passion for teaching. There are 12 student directors this time, 13 including the AD. They are male and female, multi-ethnic. And two days before the start of principal photography, their emotions run the gamut, from chomping at the bit to quietly terrified.
At the end of the class, Professor Franco gives his student filmmakers some last-minute script notes. His comments are solid. Practical. And scanning all the young faces in the room, it's hard not to root for them. Fresh and eager, and watching a shared dream come to life. In class after class, Franco's students aren't creating resume pieces to prove they can make a feature film later. They're making real movies — now — that people are paying to see.
EVENT: Gary Leonard to take us deep into LA's punk music scene
"We were all extremely powerful (even if that meant a particular, sensitive stupidity that led to jail), we were all young or young at heart, we were all flirting with death and laughing at life."--Exene Cervenka
Given the extremes of LA's punk era, it's a miracle any of the icons -- like Exene, the Urinals , Mike Watt -- are left. But luckily, Gary Leonard was there with his camera, and he'll be giving a talk about that time Saturday at the Central Library in downtown Los Angeles.
(Phil Alvin and Exene Cervenka at MOCA in 2012. Credit: LAPL/Gary Leonard.)
Gary, who runs Take My Picture Gary Leonard gallery in downtown LA, will be narrating images from the book Make The Music Go Bang!: The Early L.A. Punk Scene , edited by Don Snowden, featuring Gary's photos. He'll also be showing some of his new photos of the musicians from the era.
And, it's free!
L.A. in Focus: Gary Leonard and the Los Angeles Music Scene: Sat. March 14. 2pm. LAPL Central Library, 630 W. 5th Street, Los Angeles, CA 90071.
Ferguson, fire, Mexico City protests ignite LA artist’s creativity
Images of fire, protests, and tear gas from Ferguson, Missouri, Mexico City, and downtown Los Angeles have circled the globe through social media the last six months. They landed in the inbox of painter Sandy Rodriguez , who works out of a studio in South L.A.'s Leimert Park.
Sandy Rodriguez has a 9-to-5 job at the Getty’s education department. During her off hours she paints at a former hair salon converted into an artist studio.
"I'm one of three artists in residence with Art+Practice Foundation here in Leimert Park. This is the first year of the program. It is a 14 month residency so I get to create and just work here for 14 months, started in August of 2014," Rodriguez says.
When she started the residency, she proposed a dozen paintings about Leimert Park’s revitalization. She painted a 1920s home, a street scene, and the nighttime fog of nearby Mar Vista.
(Fog in Mar Vista, a painting by Sandy Rodriguez. Image: KPCC/Maya Sugarman)
And then Ferguson, Missouri happened.
One of her paintings includes an image of a McDonald's restaurant.
"A number of reporters and people had been arrested inside a McDonald's in Ferguson during the first few days of the demonstrations, and they were being accused of trespassing in a public space. You hope that you include just a little bit of information, that it’ll jog recent memory and conversations and think about a lot of topics that come up, right?" Rodriguez says.
(Ferguson, Missouri, in a painting by Sandy Rodriguez. Image: KPCC/Maya Sugarman)
The first time she painted fire? "I remember it was ’92," Rodriguez says. "It was the civil unrest, and it was only through the front page of the LA Times. And I still have old, crumbled LA Times front page images from various kinds of moments that I’ve painted."
It’s a process of mentally cutting and pasting, editing the found images, and channeling the results through her hand, paint brush, and onto the canvas.
Sandy Rodriguez is a Chicana. She grew up in L.A. and Tijuana in a family with three generations of artists and painters. Next to the Ferguson works are paintings of an overturned car bathed in fire and a nighttime scene of Mexico City’s national palace, with crowds circling a burning effigy of the president. The paintings are reactions to the November protests in Mexico over the police killing of 43 young teachers.
What moved her?
“My empathy to the cause and to the work that they were doing, the work that they had hoped to be able to do of educating rural Mexican students that didn’t have the opportunities that they had, right? And there was an absolute sadness and outrage, powerlessness over the scenario, over the scene, and what could I do. Then you’re reading the newspaper. Then you've got tears coming down your face. You’re trying to have breakfast and reading the sources and you’re like, 'Well, what can I do?' I can go to the studio and I can make a painting about this moment so that it’s not forgotten, so that as more news and more horrific, awful things happen, people don’t just forget.”
Sandy Rodriguez is fascinated by fire and the rebirth that follows. Friends know this and send her pictures of fires. She got one of these pictures in the middle of the night in December. It was of Geoff Palmer's massive apartment complex on fire in downtown L.A.
“It was one of those moments, you’re like, 'This is a historic fire. I can’t believe this is happening in my lifetime.' I know it’s not a good thing when a whole entire block goes up in flames, but hopefully they’ll rethink what happens in that same plot of land next.”
Rodriguez doesn’t create alone. She opens up her studio to visitors to hear what they have to say about her work. “There’s an idea that there’s a lone artistic creator, toiling away by themselves in a space, and it’s not in a vacuum. That process is about being a part of a larger community, a larger dialogue, a larger history.”
In June, a curator will pick some of Sandy Rodriguez’s paintings for a group show at the Art + Practice space in L.A.’s Leimert Park. She'll be talking about the art she's created on March 18.
LA artist Charles Gaines makes meaning with grids and numbers
The first thing you'll see at "Charles Gaines: Gridwork, 1974-1989" is a walnut tree. There are dozens of them.
It starts out with a triptych — an artwork made up of three panels. There's a photo of a tree, an outline of the tree’s silhouette on a grid, and then a third drawing, in which the tree’s outline has been filled in with numbers. It looks kind of like a needlepoint pattern.
Move on to the second piece, and it's another triptych — a photo of a different tree, the outline of that tree on a grid, but in the third panel, he's drawn the second tree on top of the first. Gaines repeats these steps 27 times altogether, using a different color for each new tree.
The final drawing in the series is a colorful explosion of numbers on a grid, all 27 trees layered on top of each other. You’re seeing an entire orchard in just one drawing. Hence the name of the series: "Walnut Tree Orchard."
This process and variations on it have defined Gaines’ career. He’s used it on different subjects, like human faces and dance.
(From Charles Gaines' "Motion: Trisha Brown Dance" series (1980–81). Courtesy Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects. Photo by Robert Wedemeyer)
Gaines was born in Charleston, South Carolina and studied art at the Rochester Institute of Technology. He started teaching at CalArts in 1989 and has lived in Los Angeles ever since. Charles is African American, but he says that despite coming of age as an artist in the 1970s — when the art world was interested in what he called "discernibly black art" — his work never fit the bill.
Yet Gaines says his career has always been driven by his identity as a black man. Conceptual art let him experiment with the idea of arbitrary systems, which he relates to the racism he’s experienced from a young age.
"As a three or four-year-old, I always wondered about Jim Crow laws in the South and why these laws existed," says Gaines. "I was really confused about the laws of chance where you’re born into a minority group, and what’s at stake and how do you get out of that kind of identification. So my interest in representation grows out of my experience as a black person."
Being a conceptual artist also allowed him to separate himself from his work. When you look at one of his grid-based drawings, you don’t see Gaines. You see the system he invented to make it.
(From Charles Gaines' "Motion: Trisha Brown Dance" series (1980–81). Courtesy Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects. Photo by Robert Wedemeyer.)
"Nobody knew I was a black artist. So when I was introduced in social situations, people were always surprised," says Gaines. "Which is to say that people are surprised when they meet a black artist."
One encounter with racism stands out to him in particular. He was part of a traveling show at the Leo Castelli Gallery and one of the places it stopped was Dartmouth College. Gaines just happened to be driving through the area and decided to drop in for the opening.
"The curator of the show and the director of the gallery there came up to me and said how wonderful it was for me to come," says Gaines. "There was problem — they’re all going out to a dinner reception at a restaurant and they can’t invite me because they don’t serve black people there. And this was like Dartmouth, in 1979. It’s not that long ago."
It was a catch-22. He often faced discrimination from white critics and curators, but other African American artists didn’t consider him a part of their community at the time either. So when The Studio Museum in Harlem, which focuses on African American artists, proposed a retrospective to Charles in 2014, he was thrilled.
Now, it's here at the Hammer Museum. Curator Anne Ellegood, who organized the exhibition’s visit, says it makes sense for it to come to Los Angeles, where Gaines has been making art and teaching for over 25 years.
"The show focuses on his work from the 1970s and 80s, a fifteen-year period in which he was very productive. He made a lot of work, but also, it was a very formative part of his career," says Ellegood. "For audiences in Los Angeles, I think it will be very eye-opening for them to see this incredibly important Los Angeles artist at a pivotal point in his career."
The exhibition, "Charles Gaines: Gridwork 1974-1989 ," runs until May 24th at the Hammer Museum .
Patt Morrison interviews nearly 100-year-old actress Patricia Morison
UPDATE: Thursday, March 19, is Broadway icon Patricia Morison's 100th birthday. Please leave your birthday greetings for her in the comments section below!
On Sunday, March 15, veteran Broadway actress Patricia Morison will perform one more time. The 99-year-old star of shows like "Kiss Me Kate" and "The King and I" will take part in a live conversation at the University Club in Pasadena . She'll even sing a few of her favorite songs.
We at Off-Ramp believe strongly that anyone a century old deserves to be on the radio, and with Patricia Morison about to turn 100 on March 19, we knew the perfect person person to interview her: KPCC's own Patt Morrison. Interview highlights are below:
On getting started in acting
I wanted an arts scholarship. I was in Washington Irving High School in New York. And they were doing a play called "Growing Pains" about teenagers and I got a part in it. And I was so bad they fired me. And I cried so hard they gave me a walk on! That was my first experience.
[Then], they were auditioning for a British musical called "The Two Bouquets" — it's sort of a spoof of Victorian operettas. They took me — all these women were auditioning — and I was terrified! I'd never auditioned. And they put me up on the stage and said "Now, don't worry, be comfortable!"
I got the part. And Alfred Drake was my leading man.
On playing on Broadway and on screen opposite Yul Brynner
It was a big adventure, a lot of fun. I have to tell you, when I first was going to be interviewed — going to meet him — somebody had asked him what he thought of me. He said "I don't know, I haven't been to bed with her yet!"
I made up my mind that was not going to be. So I go to his dressing room — knock the door of his dressing room — he said "come in," and he's sitting in front of the mirror nude! I looked him in the eyes and I said "Mr. Brynner, you wished to speak to me?"
He said, "Well, you know I have stay in my body." I said "Oh, I understand."
We ended up the best of friends.
On her first appearance on-screen
I enjoyed my first movie — " Persons in Hiding " — in which I played Kitty Kelly, the actual wife of Machine Gun Kelly. She made him public enemy No. 1 because she liked perfume. Perfume and furs, things like that.
And the way she was caught — [Machine Gun Kelly] had been caught, and she was on the run. Well, she couldn't resist going in and buying a bottle of perfume from the perfume shop.
Off-Ramp solves the mystery of Rose Hills Cemetery's giant neon sign
To Joseph Romero, a 30-year Pico Rivera resident, a huge neon sign — maybe the biggest commercial sign in Southern California — is very personal. It's the sign that stands guardian over Whittier's Rose Hills Memorial Park, more than a century old and the largest cemetery in North America.
"A couple of my friends are interned [sic] here," Romero says. "We've spent days of our youth here by the sign, and it does bring back memories of them, especially as one of my friends is buried within a hundred feet of the sign. It has a place in my heart, I can honestly say that."
How old does he think it is? "I assume that it's been there since the '50s," he says.
The story goes that Rose Hills ' president John Gregg commissioned the sign in the 1940s. But exactly who manufactured it was lost to history — until we did some digging that surprised even the cemetery's PR man.
But first, let's talk about the sign itself.
Eric Lynxwiler, a historian with L.A.'s Museum of Neon Art , says a garish neon sign isn't odd in a cemetery.
"In the 1940s every modern business in America had to have a neon sign in order to say that they were a modern business."
But it sure is big. He compares it to the sign on the Bendix tower in downtown L.A.
"The capital letter B at the top is about 25 feet tall, but the letters below it are about 10 feet tall each."
But the Rose Hills sign's letters are each 19'6" tall — on average, much bigger than the Bendix sign.
(The neon sign atop the Bendix Tower in Downtown L.A., installed in 1930. Credit: J. Eric Lynxwiler/Museum of Neon Art)
But back to our mystery.
Nick Clark, Rose Hills' PR man, says he doesn't know how old the sign is or who built it.
"The people who know," he says, "might still be here at Rose Hills, but they're probably buried."
Clark also said that the sign has been moved a few times since the 1940s, and was briefly turned off during the energy crisis of the 1970s — until the FAA asked for it to be turned back on since pilots used it for reference.
Clark suggested we check with Power Up, the company that maintains the neon lights on the sign today. They didn't know how old the sign is or who made it, but in turn sent us to Quiel Brothers Sign Company , which cared for the sign before them. And that was the lead we were looking for, with a result that shocked Lynxwiler and Clark.
Quiel Brothers co-owner Larry Quiel found invoices and design cards from 1990 for an entire replacement of a wooden-neon sign, meaning the sign is really only 25 years old. Quiel explained the original wooden sign had to go because, "between the warping and the splitting they were flexing too much, breaking the neon on them." The wood letters were replaced with metal "open-channel" letters and new neon tubes.
(The original wooden Rose Hills sign. Date unknown. Note the serif points that distinguish the sign from its metal replacement. Courtesy Rose Hills Memorial Park)
But they did a great job. Lynxwiler says the sign has the craftsmanship of one built in the 1940s.
Says Rose Hills' Nick Clark, "We're the caretakers of peoples' memories, so we come to value things from the past and that are old, and having the sign here and now learning that it's not as old as I thought it was, it's a little disappointing."
(A recovered sign from Reseda's Lorenzen Mortuary,1950-2010, in transit to L.A.'s Museum of Neon Art. Credit: J. Eric Lynxwiler/Museum of Neon Art)
Meet LA's Destiny Rodriguez, 14-year old star of latest BrainsOn! science podcast
Every other week on Off-Ramp, we play an excerpt from BrainsOn!, the new science podcast from KPCC's Sanden Totten and MPR's Molly Bloom. Over the months, we've heard how sound works, why roller coasters make us sick, and why dogs sniff each others' butts.
This time, BrainsOn! looks at the science of volcanos , and the co-host of the show is Destiny Rodriguez, a 14-year old at St. Helen Catholic School in South Gate.
Destiny plans to be a mechanical engineer. What's that? "They innovate the future," she says. "Everything from toasters to cars to even space ships. They make them better, they find problems, and they fix them. All engineers, whether you're a biomechanical, medical, any type of engineeer ... they're problem solvers."
Destiny's father Albert says, "She broke the news to me about three years ago and I was totally surprised because I am so removed from that. I'm an artist. For a living, what pays the bills is graphics, but I do tattoos, airbrush, you name it." Like this:
(One of Albert Rodriguez's apparel designs .)
"I've been doing (art) since I was 13," Albert says, "So I can relate to Destiny's fortitude, as far as being driven to her goal. I just opened my eyes to the field (of mechanical engineering) through the eyes of my child."
BrainsOn co-creator Sanden Totten, KPCC's science correspondent, says the podcast uses kids as co-hosts because kids have such great, basic questions about things. Plus, if a scientist is being interviewed by an adult, their answers are often too complicated for kids (and adults). But if they're talking to kids, they make it understandable to kids (and adults). Totten calls the kid co-hosts the show's "secret weapon."
For the episode, Sanden took Destiny to JPL where she met everybody, saw lots of scientific equipment, a few deer on the grounds, and cool cars in the parking lot. She's into cars, too, and recently helped Albert fix his '64 Impala. And she's running her own business, designing and selling bows to her classmates.
Song of the week: 'No Exit' by Media Jeweler
This time, Off-Ramp's song of the week is "No Exit "— the instrumental single by Santa Ana's Media Jeweler. The band's made up of members of Moon Pearl , Windy and founders of UC Irvine's
event organizers. They're recording their debut album this month. Media Jeweler is playing live at 313 N Bush Street in downtown Santa Ana on Friday, March 13.
KPCC expert's advice to new LA Marathon runners: Fight 'Taper Madness'
“Staying ‘sane’ during taper. Ha! I’m not sure I’ve mastered that yet,” jokes Whitney Bevins-Lazzara, 2:41-marathoner of Hudson Training Systems Elite. “I try to stay busy with other things; spending more time with my dogs, reading and baking. I love staying busy so just making the conscience effort to rest is important for me.”
-- Caitlin Chock, Competitor.com
The 30th edition of the LA Marathon is Sunday, March 15. And if this year is like past years, most (53%) of the 25,000 people running will be running their first marathon, according to organizers.
That means that right now, at least 13,000 people might be suffering from a syndrome called Taper Madness. (Maybe more. See the quote above.)
According to KPCC's Sharon McNary , for whom this will be her 123d marathon, Taper Madness often happens to inexperienced runners who've been going through a sensible training regimen. "You've probably built up to about 18, 20, maybe 26 miles in advance of the marathon out in training," she says, "but in the 2 weeks before the marathon, you're cutting back to about half, or a third of your weekly volume. But there are people who will go out and do 20 miles, 18 miles, really close to the marathon, and they risk leaving their good race out on the training course."
McNary, an official marathon pacesetter for those who run 5-1/2 hour marathons, says it's not that Taper Madness sufferers are hooked on the adrenaline of running. "No, it comes from an insecurity. They just don't believe that after two weeks of low-volume running they'll be able to come back and do that 26.2 miles really strong and really fast."
So, she says. Relax. Make the marathon a celebration of your training. And don't pig out on the samples at the LA Marathon Expo at the convention center.
'Famous for being famous' icon Angelyne lets Off-Ramp hitch a ride in her pink Corvette
In 2000, when I arrived in Los Angeles from an obscure state in the Upper Midwest, people tried to explain Angelyne. "Who is she? What does she do? Why is she famous, again?" Then, after a while, you get it: She is Angelyne, and Angelyne simply is.
In an article about her new 2015 pink Corvette,
Los Angeles magazine described her thus
: "The enigmatic billboard legend Angelyne is famous for being famous — the original Kim Kardashian (without the sex tape) — and though her pictures have appeared above city streets for the last three decades, only her closest confidants know her original identity."
(1997 photo of an Angelyne billboard. Anthony Friedkin/LAPL/L.A. Neighborhoods Collection)
A friend in his 30s remembered in a tweet:
Such an icon. I remember her billboard was the highlight of the school bus ride for many pre-teen boys.
— Jordan Davis (@jordancdavis)
@KPCCofframp Such an icon. I remember her billboard was the highlight of the school bus ride for many pre-teen boys. #losangelesmemories
— Jordan Davis (@jordancdavis) February 8, 2015
I'd glimpsed her signature pink Corvette a few times, but until I went to an art opening at Meltdown Comics a few weekends ago, I had never seen Angelyne in the flesh. But there she was, promoting one of her acrylics — a self-portrait of her, nude but Barbie-neutered, astride a skeleton.
We can't really show the picture, but she's an artist, a singer:
Angelyne singing "My List" in a music video from the early 1980s
... and an actor:
Angelyne in "Earth Girls Are Easy" (1988)
She's also, as I was to learn, beloved by many — including a fish named Lightning at the French Market — and a very good parallel parker. I know because, after 15 years in L.A., I not only got to meet Angelyne, but ride with her in the famous car. I knew Off-Ramp producer Kevin Ferguson would appreciate it:
I already was. (And, by the way, if Huell and Angelyne would have met, there would have been a cosmic singularity that would have destroyed the world.)
During our half-hour drive, I learned:
- Why she charges for fan photos and shields her face behind the Japanese fan: she doesn't want to "blow her wad" by giving everything away for cheap
- That she puts proceeds from her sales into a purse shaped like a chicken
- That she's happy, "because I make people happy." Although she is "questing for a pink, pain-free existence, and I'm going to find it, gods and faeries."
In all, I have to say Angelyne seems old-fashioned nowadays. Almost demure. She's sexy and sex-positive, sure. But while she shakes her silhouetted boobs in that music video, there's no sex tape of her. She's much more a Mae West than a Kim Kardashian. In an age when many famous people share everything about themselves, we still know almost nothing of Angelyne but what she wants us to know.
That moment when you realize Angelyne is in front of you at
. Too good not to share with
— Lana Rushing (@lanarushing)
That moment when you realize Angelyne is in front of you at @TheCoffeeBean. Too good not to share with #mydayinla! pic.twitter.com/cV5xuZIS6p
— Lana Rushing (@lanarushing) February 11, 2015
(Photo of Cassie reacting to Angelyne reposted courtesy Erica Fields)
And still, people get a kick out of seeing her (there were many honks as we drove around) and meeting her, and nobody balked at paying for a photo. They seem to admire her for continuing to do her own thing. "God bless America," said local historian Chris Nichols, talking that night about Angelyne.
Or as Peggy McKay, star of "Days of Our Lives," put it in the French Market parking lot as Angelyne sold T-shirts to fans, "I can't explain [Angelyne's allure], but I recognize it. I think it's an amazing legend that she has created. And I congratulate her on being Angelyne."
Punk legend Mike Watt on the Minutemen's early days in San Pedro
When the Mount Rushmore of California Punk is built, there will be debates over who to include, but at least one name is a shoe-in: Mike Watt.
Mike Watt, the bass player for the Minutemen, one of the most unique bands in the history of Southern California music. Mike Watt, the champion of San Pedro history and member of Firehose, and the Stooges, the solo artist and composer of three operas.
Mike Watt, the enthusiastic, unflappable talker.
The Minutemen started in 1980, and today it's been nearly 30 years since they last performed — guitarist and singer D. Boon died in a car crash in 1985, while the band was on tour. Drummer George Hurley is still alive and plays with Watt.
On how growing up in San Pedro impacted The Minutemen's sound
I do think Pedro was like a thermos bottle for us. I remember people asking us to move to Hollywood. Hey, that's where it's happening, you know? And me and D. Boon were talking about it. D. Boon said, "OK, if we move to Hollywood, what are we gonna write songs about?"
"I don't know."
He said, "Hollywood! Let's stay in Pedro."
I thought about it, and I said "You're right, man, you're right." But the trippy thing about that is some people think there's a whole bunch of people like the Minutemen in this town.
On how the Minutemen developed their sound
The R&B guys played trebly guitar — I think that's where D. Boon got his trebly guitar, too. Because it left more room for the bass. Because D. Boon — politics, right? They're not just in the words. No, this is how we're gonna put together the band. The real band he always had in his mind — he wanted a three-piece. I think that's what it was. He didn't like this idea of a four-piece.
I think when I turned him on to Cream , way back, he liked the idea of Cream. And he liked this idea, too — politically — the way you could set up the band where there's no hierarchy. And of course, the problem was the guitar. It was too big of a sound—bogarting too much. So pull a little from the R&B guys: get a little treble sound and leave more holes. Let's bring in the bass, let's bring in the drums.
'
On how they managed to shoot the record cover for "Double Nickels on the Dime" in one take:
It was Dirk Vandenberg, a good buddy of mine.
It was a total guess. We used to call that area (the 110 Freeway going through downtown Los Angeles) the four-level interchange. Anyway, so with Dirk, we're going to have to make a guess, right? There's film. I gotta go and get it developed. So let's try three shots. Now I want it to be the glue that's going to make it like a Hüsker Dü concept album. It's going to be we can drive 55 miles an hour. So Dirk, you get in the back seat here. I've seen these signs (that say "San Pedro"). In fact, those signs used to be the only thing these dudes in Hollywood knew about my town!
And it's not just 55 miles an hour. We're a trio, right? So I have to make a trifecta. I gotta have my eyes in the rear view mirror. So I'm telling Dirk this: "OK, you gotta have my eyes in the mirror, you gotta have that sign in the windshield, and you're gonna have to have that speedometer right on 55. Can you do it?"
Sketch artist Mike Sheehan discovers a magical place in the San Bernardino mountains
Sometimes when I'm in an unfamiliar area I type random words into my phone's GPS. Like "historical buildings" or "fountain pens." Don't laugh, I found the worlds greatest fountain pen store that way.
I think this is driven by childhood dreams I used to have of finding magical places in my neighborhood. Sometimes I get lucky and find a cool place to paint or sketch. A few years ago I did this in an unfamiliar area in the San Bernardino mountains. Driving around looking across the treetops, I saw what looked like a gold dome — like a glimpse of the Taj Mahal. It was tantalizing but I couldn't find access. When I got home, I looked it up.
Usually this stuff turns out to be a themed coffee shop or some other unremarkable mirage. But being in a forest this far off the the beaten path, it seemed really strange. It turned out it was the real thing, built by a Yogi from India in the twenties and thirties. In fact it was an entire camp, Camp Mozumdar, named for A.K. Mozumdar, with an amphitheater called the Pillars of God.
Everything I read about it made it sound like it was a heavily guarded, stay-away kind of place. I left it at that until a few days ago when I did some more research. This time, I found that the Universal Peace Federation, formerly known as the Unification Church (Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity) or, derogatively, the "Moonies," were reviving the property. Turns out the church has owned the property since the 1970s and were now reaching out to the local community. I called the director and pastor of the camp, Juan Morales, and asked if I could come by, and he immediately said yes.
I parked at the front gate off Mozumdar Drive and was greeted by barking dogs. Then Scott O'Brien, a member of the church, came up and we all walked down to the cabin where Juan lives. We sat down and talked for two hours or so.
Juan told me his journey to Camp Mozumdar, his trips to Israel — including one where he met Yasser Arafat, who he said cried when he heard Reverend Moon's teachings. He also pointed out the bedroom Reverend Moon stayed in when he was at the camp. Juan came to Camp Mozumdar from New York where he had a ministry.
After our talk, Scott and another Church member, Marvin, took me on a tour of the property. First we hit what they call "Holy Ground," a picturesque overlook with split log benches. It overlooks Silverwood Lake and beyond to Death Valley. We moved on to the Pillars of God, an amphitheater with twelve granite pillars representing Jesus' disciples circling out from a cross in the center.
Then we headed to the object of my desire, the "Temple of Christ." The Temple reveals itself in pretty spectacular fashion, and it looked bigger and in better shape than I'd imagined. It's really surreal in this setting. I love that what Mozumdar dreamed and built almost a hundred years ago is still here and imagined Mozumdar giving his talks in the temple all those years ago.
This was definitely satisfying my childhood "magical place" fantasy. It doesn't get much better than stumbling onto a mini golden domed Taj Mahal in the Southern California mountains.
We went back to the cabin and Juan had whipped up some pork mole and rice. We said a little prayer and ate. I went back for seconds.
I asked if I could hang out and they said sure, as long as I wanted. Scott and I went down to the Temple and I decided to do an oil sketch, a luxury since I don't usually have a stationary subject. Scott hung out and talked. He told me how he met members of the Church in Berkeley in the seventies, about a chance encounter with Bob Dylan and meeting the Reverend Moon himself.
I came back the next day and sketched the amphitheater and the Holy Ground. I was also enjoying the conversations with Scott.
The man who built all this, Akhoy Kumar Mozumdar, was born in India to a high caste family. Later in his life, his spiritual quest led him to a teacher that told him he was destined for teaching in America. He arrived in Seattle, Washington via tramp steamer in 1903. He began lecturing about what he called "Universal Truth," established his ministry in Spokane, wrote books and his message spread.
He's considered a part of the "New Thought Movement," a spiritual movement based on the teaching of Phineas Parkhurst Quimby that started in the 19th century. In 1919, he made his way to Los Angeles. From there, he bounced around the country teaching and healing. At one of these lectures someone mistakenly introduced him as "Prince Mozumdar," and it became a nickname that stuck the rest of his life.
Somewhere around this time, he purchased ten acres of land at what is now Camp Mozumdar. It eventually expanded to the over 100 acres it is today. He wanted a place where people of all faiths could come and worship. He lectured at the Pillars of God on Sunday afternoons in the summer. People came and camped and he never charged them.
As he got older people commented on how he didn't age, that he'd found his own "fountain of youth." But in 1953 time caught up with him like it does all of us. His camp was sold to the YMCA then to the Universal Peace Federation in 1977.
I found a lot of this info on a site run by David E. Howard . I contacted him about the current level of interest in Mozumdar's teachings, and he wrote back, "I wish I could tell you that interest in AKM's teachings was white hot and growing but from my perspective that's not the case. I've never followed statistics about activity on our website but I can report that occasionally a reader will write an email of appreciation or make a donation or share an experience from long ago at Camp Mozumdar.
I hope they get Mozumdar's dream back to its full glory. That it's still sitting there more than 80 years on, surviving fires or demolition by shortsighted people, is a miracle in itself. I wish I could thank him for the magical little adventure it brought me.