In Woodland Hills, a fallout shelter stocked with c1960 products ... Shambala, Tippi Hedren's big cat preserve ... Rite of Spring celebration snubs animation ... Dylan Brody on the social network: I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore.
Inside the So Cal Regionals, a competitive Video Game Tournament
People have been playing video games competitively since Pac Man. As the popularity of video games grew, so did the size of the tournaments. One tournament took place last month on the campus of UC Irvine.
Off Ramp contributor Jefferson Yen went to find out how things have changed since the arcade game's heyday.
It’s a quiet Sunday afternoon in Irvine, hundreds of people, have gathered to watch the final round of the Southern California Regionals. All eyes are trained on the main stage. The two opponents, both in their twenties, have just shaken hands and are throwing out jabs, trying to feel each other out. Eyes fixed on the scene, commentators wonder if Angeleno Kenneth Pope will take out Lee Seonwoo, a professional who flew in from Korea.
But this isn’t an underground fight club. Nobody is going to get hurt: it’s a video game competition. The largest of its kind in the So Cal. Eight hundred people will compete by playing fighting games like Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat and Tekken.
Right now, Lee and Pope are duking it out on Street Fighter 4: A demon-eyed karate master and a carefree kung fu skateboarder move like characters out of a Hong Kong action movie. The two muscle bound cartoons trade blows until Pope catches Lee off guard with a combo to end the round.
But this isn’t just about bragging rights. The winner gets to walk away with more than $2000 and perhaps, more importantly, a higher seed in the granddaddy of fighting game tournaments, the Evolution Championship Series in Las Vegas.
When you step away from the main stage and rows of people watching the action, the room looks like a huge arcade. People crowd around monitors hoping to play the next round; many even brought their own laptop sized arcade joysticks. The players, with their headphones on, are in their own world. Most are in their early twenties and male. Some are from as far away as Florida or New York.
Dana Graham traveled all the way from Salt Lake City to watch the tournament.
“A bunch of guys just packed into a car, and all came up. They were going to try their luck at Soul Calibur, Mortal Kombat, Marvel, Street Fighter, so we’re just out here rooting for them,” she said. “I remember back when Street Fighter first came out. Me and all my friends all went to this arcade and were like ‘Oh, my gosh, this game is so cool!’"
Talking to people like Dana made me realize why I used to love playing these games. Not because I was good at them but because, as an awkward teenager, it gave me something to talk about.
It was while I was thinking about this that I ran into Roger Tung, an old high school friend at the tournament. Where my enthusiasm died down, Roger’s didn’t. I asked him why he came to events like these.
“I’m not exactly sure how to respond to that. I think it’s just the socializing aspect; getting to meet people with similar interests with you” said Tung.
Kenneth Pope, the local player in the finals, pretty much said the same thing. “Back then in middle school, I was kind of shy," he said. "But I feel like when I meet the scene, I’m able to just network with anybody.”
Back to the last round of the finals: Lee, the pro from South Korea, is on the verge of winning. Pope throws his character’s signature move -- a fast succession of hits -- hoping to catch Lee off guard… only to miss. The match ends. As they unplug their joysticks, people crowd around Pope patting him on the back. Lee, who doesn’t speak English, gives Pope a hug.
While Pope lost that final match, the confidence he gained knowing that hundreds of people were rooting for him may be worth more.
Wait Wait Don't Tell Me's Peter Sagal and John Rabe raise money, hackles
Peter Sagal, host of Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, the NPR news quiz, flush from the success of WWDTM's live show at the Nokia Theatre, the biggest in the show's history, graciously agreed to cut some fundraising segments with me. Here are the results.
Please, give now so we can continue to afford to bring you Peter's fabulous show.
PHOTOS: New Woodland Hills homeowners find fully stocked fallout shelter in their backyard
A few weeks ago, my friend Chris Murray wrote:
Chris and Colleen recently closed on a Charles DuBois Ranch House and the bomb shelter is an absolute time capsule: still stocked with old magazines, bunks, sleeping bags and medications. I told them to keep it in case of imminent Zombie Apocalypse. You're more than welcome to visit...
He didn't need to ask twice. Chris and Colleen Otcasek immediately agreed to let Off-Ramp into their time capsule, or time machine, and didn't flinch when I showed up with shop lights, a 100-foot extension cord, historian Charles Phoenix, and KPCC photographer Mae Ryan. Chris and Colleen even made a relish tray and served Arnold Palmers.
It's really not a bomb shelter; it would never withstand a blast directed at the Valley's aerospace industry. It's a fallout shelter, designed to keep the radiation away for a few weeks, like in this cheery movie, which I'm sure comforted millions of Americans.
And inside we found a Kresge's worth of items: Kleenex, sanitary napkins, canned food, sleeping bags, magazines -- which delighted Med, Charles, Chris, and I ... and pills and a writing tablet hanging on the wall with a 30-year calendar, which made Chris Otcasek, the most somber of the group, ask, "What would you write on this? A suicide note? Anyone who built a shelter in their backyard would have to be pretty optimitistic."
Chris had just coincidentally seen a Twilight Zone episode in which a Cold War backyard fallout shelter doesn't do anything but drive neighbors apart when they think they're under nuclear attack.
Unlike many homeowners, Chris and Colleen don't plan to fill in their shelter. They say they'll leave it as it is, undisturbed for the next owners.
Sketchbook: Election Night at the Avalon, Garcetti headquarters
LA sketch artist Mike Sheehan spent Election Night with the Garcetti camp at the Avalon. he writes, "Made me realize life is a never ending prom dance. Everyone shows up and breaks into their cliques. Here's some sketches."
Dylan Brody asks why social networking trumps actual, you know, talent
My father raised me to believe that talent and persistence are all you need to succeed. It turns out dad was as wrong as a Creationist explaining the fossil record.
My father isn’t an idiot. For 10 years he was the Associate Provost for the Arts at MIT, a perfect fit for him, right at the intersection of art and science. A few years ago I had the joy of traveling east to see his magnificent "Heisenberg Uncertainty Opera," an epic musicale during which it’s possible to accurately determine either the position or the momentum of the fat lady at any given time. It was a show that could not find its natural resolution if anyone was there to see it. People left the theater weeping every night, “What about the cat in the box? Was the cat in box OK?”
Dad landed the job when someone from a search committee happened to be in England at the right time to see his Cambridge University Physics Department production of "The Pirates of Penzance," starring Stephen Hawking as the Pirate King. The singing wasn’t great but the choreography was innovative. (For the record, you don’t have to be self-conscious about enjoying that joke. Professor Hawking himself has heard me tell that joke, and he says that I’m a very funny man. Although, in fairness, it is impossible to tell when he’s being sarcastic.)
I digress. My point is, from his safe vantage point in the world of academia, my father genuinely believed that talent and persistence were all I would need. He was wrong.
I was recently told that I can’t have a Comedy Central special because my Facebook page doesn’t have enough “likes.”
My novel, set in the world of stand-up comedy, rich with family drama, laughter and pathos, has advance blurbs from Carl Reiner and Paul Krassner. But publishers tell me they can’t put it on their lists until I get at least 500,000 follows on Twitter.
I am not an entirely unknown entity. On April 2, my fifth CD will drop with Stand Up! Records, and I have never repeated a joke from one CD to another. You can purchase my work on Amazon and iTunes. You can read me in Huffington Post and hear me here on KPCC. I have a body of work. I write. I perform. I persist. But apparently in today’s world the key is social networking. Although, it’s done alone at one’s desk with a computer, so it should really be called anti-social networking.
A strong education in the arts, a love of the English language, the true joy I take in performing, have left me ill-prepared for a career in a world in which “likes” and “follows” are plural nouns and “friend” is a verb.
When I tell stories on stage or speak into a microphone, I feel profoundly grateful; all I want to say is, “Thank you! Thank you all so, so much.” My manager says that’s not lucrative. I can’t say “thank you!” I have to say, “Thankyoufollow me on
. Thankyoufind me on Facebook at thedylanbrody.’”
I enjoyed it so much more when there was subtext. Now I’m expected to send out mass emails that say, “Please ‘like’ me” and then provide a handy link to make that affection convenient.
LA’s 'Rite of Spring' festival snubs animation
After so many snubs, I suppose I should be used to it. Los Angeles is staging another major cultural event, and animation is excluded, just it was from Pacific Standard Time last year.
The other day, I went to the ballet The Rite of Spring, which premiered 100 years ago, with Stravinsky’s revolutionary score. The Joffrey ballet, a recreation of Nijinsky’s choreography, was every bit as stunning as I remembered it when I first saw it in 1987.
But then I discovered the performance was part of a year-long cultural celebration of The Rite of Spring, called LA’s Rite: Stravinsky, Innovation and Dance. Musicians, dancers and scholars will be involved in symposia, performances, exhibitions and digital installations through October.
Nowhere is there a mention of Walt Disney’s use of Rite in Fantasia, which more people have seen than any and all the ballets that will be discussed. True, Stravinsky’s public statements about the film varied widely over the years, but Fantasia introduced generations of film goers to the score — which was still considered pretty shocking in 1940.
And Stravinsky has other notable ties to animation.
In 1956 NBC aired the first special animated for television; it was a 15-minute version of Stravinsky's ballet Petroushka. Stravinsky edited his score for the program, cutting it from 40 minutes to 15, and he conducted it, with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. The animated Petroushka won several international awards and screened at the Venice Film Festival.
Almost 30 years later, R.O. Blechman and Christian Blackwood directed an animated version of The Soldier’s Tale, which aired in 1984 as part of PBS’ Great Performances. This striking adaptation featured Blechman’s trademark friable lines, and Max Von Sydow as voice of the Devil.
And Disney returned to Stravinsky to animate a section of The Firebird for Fantasia 2000.
Does animation belong a discussion of dance? I, and many animation artists, argue it does. Both art forms involve choreographing movement to music, whether to present a story or as an exercise in abstract motion. No other medium conveys ballet’s vocabulary of motion as well as animation.
I can’t imagine how difficult it must be to perform the steps the Joffrey dancers execute so dramatically in The Rite of Spring, or how hard it is to play the score, which changes time signatures five times in the opening six measures. But even that must be easier than convincing LA’s cultural pooh-bahs to give animation the place among the arts it deserves ... especially in the city where so much great animation has been created.
(Charles Solomon is author of The Toy Story Films: An Animated Journey and The Art and Making of Peanuts Animation.)