From "I'll be your Huckleberry" to Huck Finn, it's Mark Twain by Val Kilmer ... Valitar, epic show becomes epic fail ... if you think your life is hard, try being gay and undocumented ... put on your traveling face ...
Writer and 'Crawdaddy!' magazine founder Paul Williams dies at 64
Music writer Paul Williams died Wednesday of complications from a 1995 bicycle crash. Williams was 64 years old and died among family in Encinitas. Williams wrote for Rolling Stone, published dozens of books... but most importantly Williams was the founder of Crawdaddy! -- a vanguard rock music magazine that predated Rolling Stone by nearly 2 years.
Chris Ziegler is co-founder of L.A. Record, the award winning Los Angeles music magazine. For him, Paul Williams was a role model. He even interviewed Williams twice, as he told Off-Ramp producer Kevin Ferguson.
The Boston born Williams was just 17 years old when he founded Crawdaddy!, he wrote the magazine out of his Philadelphia dorm room. "I don't know if he invented, but he really put out there this sort of impressionistic but also very serious, artistic rock writing," said Ziegler. "When you see a really heartfelt, considered, serious reaction to a piece of popular music, that's probably coming from what Paul Williams started."
Among the myriad books penned to Williams' names were four volumes of works about Bob Dylan, and an essay called "Understanding Dylan." Ziegler argues the essay is probably the William's greatest work. Here's an excerpt:
Perhaps the favorite indoor sport in America today is discussing, worshiping, disparaging and above all interpreting Bob Dylan. According to legend, young Zimmerman came out of the West, grabbed a guitar, changed his name and decided to be Woody Guthrie. Five years later he had somehow become Elvis Presley (or maybe William Shakespeare); he had sold out, plugged in his feet and was rumored to live in a perpetual high (achieved be smoking rolled-up pages of Newsweek magazine). Today, we stand of the eve of his first published book (Tarantula) and the morning after his most recent and fully realized LP (Blonde on Blonde), there is but one question remaining to fog our freshly minted minds: what in hell is really going on here?
I have gone into this background only because there continues to be so much useless misunderstanding, so much talk about "folk-rock," so much discussion of the "old Dylan" and the "new Dylan." Util you, as a listener, can hear music instead of categories, you cannot appreciate what you are hearing. As long as people persist in believing that Dylan would be playing his new songs on a folk guitar instead of with a band, except that recording with a band brings him more money, they will fail to realize that his a creator, not a puppet, and a creator who now reached musical maturity. Dylan is doing his songs now the way he wants to do them. He is a bard who has found his lyre, no more, no less; and if you're interested in what he's saying, you mus listen to him on his own terms.
Williams was known for more than rock writing though--he sang on the recording session for John Lennon's "Give Peace a Chance" and was an early champion of novelist Phillip K. Dick. In Rolling Stone, Williams penned a 1975 profile on the author. "He basically says [Phillip K. Dick] is the most consistently brilliant science fiction writers of his time," said Ziegler. "But he was saying it to an audience that wasn't necessarily a science fiction audience." He'd later become Dick's literary executor.
Paul William's wife, musician Cindy Lee Berryhill, stated on Facebook that Williams died with his son by his side. "It was a gentle and peaceful passing," she said.
Coming out twice: a gay, undocumented Mexican goes to DC for the Prop 8 hearing
A gay, undocumented activist from Southern California was among the people who traveled to Washington DC this week for the Supreme Court hearing on gay marriage rights.
Jorge Gutierrez says the coming out process came twice for him. "One, I came out as gay to my mother when I was 15 years and had an amazing and beautiful experience with her and my family being very loving and accepting of me. And then coming out as undocumented during my senior year in high school, and that was more painful and difficult for me."
More painful, he says, because he knew many more doors would close to someone who’s undocumented, compared to someone who is gay.
Gutierrez is 28, lives in LA, and he’s an activist with United We Dream, which persuaded President Obama to offer temporary legal status to some undocumented students. Gutierrez runs a project at United We Dream that builds bridges between the immigrant rights community and the lesbian gay bisexual and transgender community. "That creates a lot of interesting dynamics, to say the least," he says.
Homophobia is not uncommon in immigrant communities. Some gays and lesbians harbor anti-immigrant sentiments. In Washington DC, Gutierrez, who remains an undocumented immigrant until the government approves his application for deferred action, waved an American flag outside the nation’s highest court. And he met with gay and lesbian leaders to explain the importance of supporting undocumented gays and lesbians.
"For example," he says, "You could have where there’s two folks of the same sex where they’re in love with each other but both of these folks are undocumented. So we could pass marriage equality but if these folks are not given a pathway to citizenship, then marriage equality doesn’t really benefit them."
The common interest, from Gutierrez’ point of view, is social justice for everyone, and he should know. "I got an email once that said go back to Mexico because you’re gay and a wetback. Those two identities being used against me. It's not the first time I've gotten something like that. It just tells me I’m dong the work I'm supposed to do."
It’s work Gutierrez refuses to give up, until he can live legally in the country he’s called home since he was ten years old, and can marry the person he loves.
Dylan Brody: Fight the malaise and turn your life around with a 'travel face'
My wife and I don’t like to travel. She hates flying. I hate being away from my desk. Also, frequently when we travel, it involves seeing our families and that’s no fun for anyone.
A few years ago when we had to go east for the holidays it dawned on us that almost everybody we encountered was in much the same state of disoriented discomfort. Airports are really just food courts full of the under slept and the disgruntled.
So we made it our mission to be better natured, more patient, more charming and more generally cheerful than any luggage-dragging, flight-delayed traveler has any right to be. When we travel, we strive to project a sense of joy and ease so that we do not add to the general level of stressed negativity in the world around us.
We call this "wearing our travel faces," and the moment we adopted the habit, traveling became significantly less miserable, our families significantly less intolerable, and the moving walkways more like a goofy amusement park ride than a series of conveyor belts for dazed humanity gliding passively through the shopping mall of the damned.
Recently a paycheck I had been eagerly awaiting came with a note suggesting that I wait 10 days before depositing it … on the same day that loud renters moved into the condo next door to our home. On my way home from a gig at which the producer had asked me if I could cut my prepared story from 12 minutes down to seven — and then five — I sent my wife a text from the shoulder of the 405. “Triple A is coming to help me with a flat tire,” I typed with my thumbs.
She responded, “Call me when you’re rolling again. The garage door opener burned out, so I’ll come open it by hand.”
I thought about how much garage door repair was likely to cost. I thought about the check I couldn’t deposit for a week and a half. I put my hands in my pockets against a chill, freewayside drizzle. My phone made its little “You’ve got a text” noise, and I pulled it out to look at it. My wife had typed at me, “Breathe and smile when the tire guy gets there. Travel faces for everyone.” I thought about the guy who had to drive around in the rain all night changing other people’s tires and how amazing my wife is to think of such things when she’d just learned that, while I waited for the repair truck, she would be covering all the dog-walking responsibilities. Alone. In the rain.
The Auto Club covered the cost of the service, so I tipped the guy 20 bucks, and he smiled in a way that made me think he had not felt valued and appreciated in quite a while.
People talk a lot about how life is a journey, not a destination, as though that holds the key to happiness. I don’t think that’s really it at all. I don’t think it’s about the journey or the destination. I think it’s all about the travelers. It’s easy to let ourselves turn into angry passengers, helpless in a world of air currents and weather patterns, moving sidewalks and unmoving doors. But with just a little bit of conscious effort, we can smile, laugh at the delays, and make sure that through the vagaries of the voyage we remain, all of us, good traveling companions.
Dylan Brody's new album, Writ Large, comes out April 2 on iTunes.
Epic fail: Valitar horse show plays out disastrously in San Diego
In UT-San Diego, reporter Peter Rowe writes:
Valitar, set in a fantasy kingdom of sleek stallions and acrobatic equestrians, was touted as a matchless spectacle. Even before the Nov. 16 “world premiere” at the Del Mar Fairgrounds, the Rancho Santa Fe producers were planning a U.S. tour. “It’s like Cirque du Soleil with horses,” co-producer Tatyana Remley told a television reporter, “but it’s its own type of show.” What type of show was it? A disaster.
The Remleys closed Valitar after just five performances, leaving employees and vendors in the lurch, and the lawsuits have begun.
As Rowe told me in our interview, millions of dollars are still owed. "They promised this was going to be a spectacle beyond the likes of anything we'd ever seen in San Diego," Rowe said, "And in a certain tragic sense, they redeemed that promise. We've never seen anything quite like the disaster that was Valitar."
In this case, Yelp! contributors seem to have gotten it right:
- Ok, so I was comped several tickets, but getting comped doesn't mean I'll get back 2 hours of my life.
- ...i guess you have to be a horse person to "get" the nuances of what the horses were doing, because to me I really thought they were just walking around.
- It was "Cirque" lite.
- Sadly there were others sitting around me and my friends that were audibly laughing at how nonsensical it was or making snide comments to their friends about how bad it was.
- I have bought VIP tickets for 3p show tomorrow November 24th for my 94 year old mother and my son and I === they say it is canceled!!! How do I reach someone for a refund?
Rowe says the Remley's refused repeated interview requests.
If you want to see a real horse show, try Odysseo, the Cavalia spinoff, in Burbank through April.
Val Kilmer becomes Mark Twain in 'Citizen Twain'
UPDATE: Val Kilmer brings Citizen Twain to the Kirk Douglas Theatre in Culver City June 28 through July 28. Tickets on sale here.
When Val Kilmer does Mark Twain in his one-man show Citizen Twain, there's a good part of the performance in which Twain is a stand-up comedian. Now, I don't know if Twain, for instance, ever asked "Why don't they make mouse-flavored cat food?" But Twain could have just as easily said that as, say, Steven Wright.
Twain, Kilmer says, may have been the first stand-up comedian because he "was the first person who talked the way we do." Kilmer says he used his own voice, unlike the other public speakers of his time, who affected an unnatural cadence and tone. "He told stories like the was in his dressing room, or standing in a bar, or hanging out on a street corner. He smoked all his life, so he just walked onstage with a cigar, and if he was drinking that night, he had a glass of whiskey."
Val Kilmer, who played Jim Morrison in The Doors, Doc Holliday in Tombstone, Batman in Batman Forever, and Nick Rivers in Top Secret! - brings Citizen Twain to the Valley Performing Arts Center in Northridge April 6.
In Citizen Twain, Kilmer becomes the famous author onstage ...
... and then, after the show, he peels off the makeup and takes questions from the audience.
Kilmer says he's read everything available about Twain and by Twain, and has spoken with many scholars about the man, and the most satisfying thing about Twain is "his love of humanity, specifically Americans. He says why do the Europeans get all the recognition just they've been there (so long). We're great. How we talk is great. It doesn't matter if it's a lowly river rat, or a slave, or Huck Finn himself."
And yes, has consulted with Hal Holbrook, who has been doing Twain onstage for 60 years now.
But isn't Val Kilmer doing Twain, a role Holbrook owns, a little like Gary Oldman playing the role of George Smiley in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, when even John Le Carre acknowledges Alec Guinness was so perfect for the part that his portrayal interfered with subsequent novels?
Kilmer says his portrayal is different from Holbrook's. He avoids content Holbrook uses, and doesn't limit himself to Twain's spoken and written words, as Holbrook does, which allows Kilmer to comment on current events.
Plus, Kilmer's goal is different. He told me he hit on doing Twain when he started looking for a directing project, and came up with Twain's "obsession" with Mary Baker Eddy, the famous Christian Scientist with whom Twain had a complicated relationship. Kilmer says Twain admired Eddy for imagining a benevolent God, but was jealous of her success, and more than a little skeptical of a person who became a millionaire writing about God.
Kilmer plans a movie about the two, but in the meantime, is taking Citizen Twain on the road across America and maybe the world. It's helping him develop the Twain character for the movie, and is -- by the way -- not just a labor of love. Kilmer says the one-man show - which comes to Culver City in June for a month at the Kirk Douglas Theatre -- is doing very well financially.
(Photo: Val Kilmer as Mark Twain in Citizen Twain, courtesy Val Kilmer.)