From knife-wielding performance artist to creator of our Happy Place - may Chris Burden RIP. Win a chance to ride with Angelyne. And why does the sun make you sneeze?
Stephanopoulos gets an F in Journalism 101 - high school reporters really do know better
The fact that ABC News' George Stephanopoulos gave $75,000 to the Clinton Foundation would not be an ethical problem if he were a commentator like Bill O'Reilly.
But for someone who claims to be an unbiased journalist, it's a problem on many levels, and a clear violation of Journalism 101 ... which is why I called an expert in Journalism 101.
Donn Cottom is the journalism advisor for the Jaguar Times, the school paper at the Tech & Media Magnet at South East High School in South Gate.
Yes, he says, they cover this stuff in depth, and yes, this is a teachable moment.
RIP Chris Burden, beloved even by the 'victim' in 'TV Hi-Jack'
Most of the late Chris Burden's violent or physical early 1970s performance pieces were aimed at himself, sometimes literally: he locked himself in a locker, crucified himself on a VW, had someone shoot him. But in 1972, he went on his friend's weekly cable TV talk show in Irvine and threatened her with a knife for a performance piece he called "TV Hi-Jack."
It shocked many people, but that friend, Phyllis Lutjeans, now 85 and still living in Irvine, says she wasn't mad at Burden then and isn't mad at him now. She says she knew it was art, and that it fit in the context of Burden's work.
(Chris Burden holding a knife to Phyllis Lutjean in 1972 on TV. Credit: Chris Burden)
Lutjeans has been an integral part of the art scene since the 1960s. (Art critic Mat Gleason calls her a "legend.") At the time, at what was then called the Newport Harbor Art Museum (now OCMA), she was a curator of performance art and was friends with the young artist.
"Chris was at UCI," she recalls, "And he used to work at the museum, and Chris and his (then-) wife Barbara were really good friends of my husband, Alfred Lutjeans, who actually photographed the Shoot piece, and I had been doing that All About Art program for a while and had interviewed Chris one time before."
Lutjeans admits to feeling "edgy" when Burden accepted her invitation to perform a piece on her show on Irvine cable Channel 3. But she says she had no idea what he would do. Burden actually phoned her several times, she says, to confirm that she really wanted him to perform, but without specifying what he'd do.
When they all assembled on the set, "I noticed in his belt there was tucked that knife. And I said, 'Oh, Chris, are we going to have a little bloodletting today?'" He didn't answer.
"We each sat down, and I started to do a very straight interview, and all of a sudden he quietly got up, came around, and put that knife to my neck. My first thought was, 'Has he lost it?'"
"After several proposals were censored by the station or by Phyllis, I agreed to an interview situation." — Chris Burden, "Beyond the Limits," 1996
Is this claim true? Lutjeans says she knew of no such proposals, and that they don't make sense. "What would be the point of doing a performance piece to surprise people [if they were to] tell people what they're going to do?!"
And she also contradicts another of Burden's assertions — that when he was holding the knife to her neck, "I told her that I planned to make her perform obscene acts." But what Lutjeans remembers him saying is much more in character with the "gentle soul" she knew. "I remember him saying, 'Phyl, don't worry.'"
(Phyllis Lutjeans today, at 85, in her garden in Irvine. Credit: John Rabe)
So what was Burden trying to say in TV Hi-Jack? "I think that Chris maybe had an idea about freedom, and who controls the media, and the press."
"And I cannot tell you," Lutjeans says, more than 40 years after the incident. "To this day, my friends who are not in the art world say, 'Oh, Phyl! How can you be friends with him!?' And I didn't view that at all like that. I viewed it as an art work — now as a piece of his history — but at that time it was another of his quite eccentric pieces."
Listen to our bonus audio, in which I go to LACMA to talk with just a few of the hundreds of people who enjoy Burden's "Urban Light" every day, including two young dancers featured on Lifetime's Dance Moms - Candy Apples, Haley Huelsman and Ashtin Roth, along with photographer David Hoffman.
Tiki Ti to reopen after "indefinitely" turns into two weeks
UPDATE 5/22: The LA Times says the Tiki Ti is reopening today. Vicky Buhen told the paper, "We are definitely coming back Friday." I told you guys not to worry.
The owners of the Tiki Ti on Sunset say they're closing indefinitely, but will return.
So until the Buhen family can custom craft your Jet Pilot or Painkiller again, come back with us to 2007, when Off-Ramp took you inside the Tiki Ti on Sunset Boulevard and the owners made you a virtual tiki drink.
(This piece was part of a three part Off-Ramp tiki extravaganza, including a visit to the now-gone Trader Vic's and a fabulous home tiki bar.)
Louis Zamperini's son flies in an 'Unbroken' B-24 bomber
On May 27, 1943, Louis Zamperini - the Olympian and hero of the movie "Unbroken" - was flying in a B-24 bomber on a mission over the Pacific. The plane had mechanical difficulties and went down about 800 miles south of Oahu. Zamperini was adrift for almost 50 days before he made it to land, where he was captured by the Japanese and held and tortured until the end of the war.
About 19,000 B-24s were built, but only one -- owned by the Collings Foundation -- is still flying, and it's in Southern California as part of the foundation's Wings of Freedom tour. It flew from Santa Barbara to the Western Museum of Flight in Torrance yesterday, with Louie's son Luke Zamperini - and Off-Ramp - aboard.
It was Luke Zamperini's second trip. "I only saw one once before," about 3 years ago, he said. "I took my dad for a visit and he crawled inside the plane and got in the bombardier's seat, and then I followed him through the plane as he starting reliving the battle above Nauru. By the time we got to the back of the airplane, he was exhausted, and he said to me, 'I tell you. In my memory, the plane was larger.'"
(B-24 above Nauru, April 1943. Office of Chief of Military History)
The plane is built for war, not comfort. Equipment is packed into every available space. The windows are tiny, and the gun ports are huge. Oxygen comes from big yellow tanks. The plane's skinny ribs and thin shell are clear to see. "You get in there," Zamperini says." It starts to taxi and you get the idea that you're kind of in this flying jalopy. You just have this wind blowing through the plane, and I suddenly realized what kind of men that generation was to get inside something like this and fly eight or ten hours over the ocean. There's nothing in between you and a bullet except a little tiny bit of aluminum."
The Collings Foundation spent years renovating the plane, now flown by Jim "Pappy" Goolsby, a retired airline pilot who was looking for something to do to keep him busy after he retired. He knows he has a plum job. There aren't many openings to fly B-24s. Of course not; he flies the only one left.
The plane is also the one used by the sound geniuses who worked on "Unbroken" for their Oscar-nominated sound effects. We talked with them on Off-Ramp at Oscar time.
The B-24, as well as a B-17 Flying Fortress, a B-25, and a P-51 Mustang, are all at the Western Museum of Flight in Torrance until Wednesday at noon for tours and rides. The rides are expensive - from $400-$450 per person - but you'll never forget it. "What a gas it was," said Zamperini when we arrived at Zamperini Field in Torrance, named for his dad. "I coulda stayed another couple hours in that thing."
'Don't Think I've Forgotten' opens in Los Angeles, tells story of lost Cambodian rock music
For almost 25 years, Cambodia and its capital, Phnom Penh were a hub for one of the most vibrant and progressive music scenes in the world. Prolific bands and singers made hundreds of records, fusing rock and roll, folk, psychedelic, Afro–Cuban and traditional Cambodian music into a compelling and vivid new genre.
It all came crashing down in 1975, when the Khmer Rouge took over Phnom Penh. Record collections were burned, clubs were shut down, and the famous faces and voices of Cambodian pop music were silenced — some killed, others vanished.
The documentary Don’t Think I’ve Forgotten looks at the rise and fall of Cambodia’s music scene. It’s open now in Los Angeles, and Off-Ramp producer Kevin Ferguson talked with the film’s director, John Pirozzi.
“Don’t Think I’ve Forgotten” is playing until May 21 at the Laemmle theater in North Hollywood.
The story behind Chris Burden's 'Shoot'
Chris Burden, who died this week, grew up in Massachusetts, but he came of age as an artist in Southern California. Some of his most well-known performances were staged here. He lived inside a locker for five days. He hid himself behind a parked car, lying down. He crucified himself to a Volkswagen Beetle.
And in 1971, at the F-Space gallery in Santa Ana, Burden performed “Shoot,” where a friend and collaborator shot him in the arm with a .22 caliber rifle. The piece would define his career for years to come.
Barbara T. Smith is a performance artist and Burden's friend. She remembers the night "Shoot" happened — she even recorded the audio.
At the time, Smith was attending the University of California, and she and Burden were going through the school's Master of Fine Arts program. The two, along with other students in the MFA program, opened a gallery in an industrial part of Santa Ana to show and perform work they couldn't put on at UCI. They called it called "F-Space."
On the night Burden performed "Shoot," Smith brought a polaroid camera and a reel-to-reel tape recorder. Once all of the observers had arrived, Smith said, Burden locked the doors to the gallery. The performance began.
The plan was for Burden's friend and fellow artist, Bruce Dunlap, to fire the rifle at Burden's arm. Burden stood against the wall.
"And then, there were these very tense seconds of time where, I think you hear him cocking the gun. I'm not quite sure about that. And then — pow! — he shoots," Smith said. You can see a video of the performance — it's only about 8 seconds long:
"And Chris sort of falls forward, and holds his arm. And then I think I remember him saying 'I'm shot!'" Smith said. "Everyone then had to deal with the reality that he had, in fact, just been shot."
Burden and his colleagues went to the hospital after the performance. "But then they had the problem of a gunshot wound — how do you explain that?" Smith asked. "They stood around and concocted a story about what happened and the hospital believed it!"
Smith said she never asked Burden about why he did the piece, adding that Burden was generally reluctant to explain the motivation behind his works. Asked to speculate, Smith said the piece reflects the "singularity of the body experience." In other words:
The fundamental reality of life, our own bodies. If one of us had tried to interfere in any way, he could've been killed. It would've startled Bruce and he wouldn't have aimed correctly. We were actually, physiologically almost, connected to everyone in the room. Everyone just held still to not interfere in any way. It was like we held his life in our hands.
Journalist and autism watchdog Robert Moran, working at ABC with Asperger's
One of the most consistently sharp and intriguing accounts in my Twitter feed is
, who works at ABC News in L.A.
Along with the day's hard and soft news, Moran Tweets about the cognitive dissonance we all experience:
I am never going to understand drivers who get into the carpool lane and drive slow.
— Robert Moran (@Journautism) May 2, 2015
But often it's more personal.
Sometimes I wish I didn't have autism.
— Robert Moran (@Journautism) May 3, 2015
Moran has Asperger's syndrome, and he's one of the few journalists who've "come out" about their autism. So when he sees the media making false statements or assumptions about people with autism or mental illness in general, it bothers him.
When the media covered the Newtown shooting and kept connecting autism to violence, he says among autistics, "It was like, 'Arrrgh. Why are you doing this!?'" Moran and others called them out on it, and he was overjoyed when Sanjay Gupta did an Autism 101 on CNN, and pointed out that autistics are not prone to violence.
After many dead ends and wrong treatment, Moran was diagnosed with Asperger's, which he says, in short, affects how he interacts with others. "I don't make eye contact. I struggle with satire and understanding sarcasm. Sometimes I'll interrupt because I don't know when to read the pauses." And his routine is extremely important to him. When he makes a plan, he gets very upset when he has to break it."
In truth, during our interview over lunch at LeRoy's in Monrovia, he made eye contact, shook my hand, laughed at my jokes, and didn't freak out when his bus made him late. How much of an effort this cost him, I don't know, but years of therapy have helped him deal better with these manifestations of Asperger's.
I put to Moran that people on the whole seem to know how to think about kids with autism, but we don't know what to do with adults, which is borne out in employment stats showing young people with autism have the highest rates of unemployment of all people with mental disability.
Moran said, "Absolutely. All of the focus, all of the research, all of the treatment, all of the therapies, and all of the programs are designed for kids. Twenty-two is the cutoff date in most states for services, so it's literally like after the age of 22, you're no longer autistic, which is complete boloney. It's a lifelong disorder."
Moran is an exception. At ABC News (the network, not ABC7), where he works two days a week as a digital news associate, he says he was upfront about his autism. He says his ability to focus on detail (an Asperger's trait) is helpful, because he's thorough. "But that can also be hurtful because if you're working in television news, it's a team effort. So if you're tunnel vision, you may forget the social niceties."
One of the most eye-opening things Moran Tweets about is having to adapt to living with people who don't have autism, or "neurotypicals."
I know a lot of autistics who feel disenfranchised from the neurotypicals and their world. It is your world. We just live in it.
— Robert Moran (@Journautism) April 30, 2015
"We spend a lot of our time trying to understand neurotypicals and why neurotypicals do certain things, or at least try to mimic neurotypical behavior," Moran says. "Yet, neurotypicals do almost absolutely nothing to try to understand us."
So, for a start, you could follow him on Twitter to start listening to the other side of the conversation.
Note: The tweets included above have been deleted.
Temple Grandin: Don't shelter autistic children, limit video games
"I'm seeing too many kids that in the 1950s, they just called them geeks and nerds, and today they own businesses." — Temple Grandin
According to a survey by the Institute for Community Inclusion and the University of Massachusetts, only a third of people aged 22-30 with any mental disability have a job ... less than half the rate for people with no disability, and young people with autism fared worst of all, according to a study by the A.J. Drexel Autism Institute.
Reversing that trend is the goal of an event on May 20th at Club Nokia. It's called "Temple Grandin and Friends," and features the animal behavioralist who is the face of autism for many of us, American Idol's James Durbin, and others.
In a phone interview, Temple Grandin told us overprotective parenting is one part of the problem.
"Let's say you go to a restaurant, the parents order the meal for them, instead of having the child order the meal. They do not know how to shake hands with people. Kids used to have paper routes in my generation, and I know those are all gone, but we need to figure out paper route substitutes for middle school kids — like at a church or a community center. They could be ushers, they could set up chairs, they could help with the food ... volunteer at animal shelters ... as long as it's outside the home and it's on a schedule." — Temple Grandin
Grandin says parents also need to help their kids find comfortable niches — away from video games. "I am hearing too often," she says, "'He's 21 and I can't get him out the basement.'" She recalls that in "high school I was teased horribly and bullied, and the only place I was not teased was shared interests like horseback riding, electronics, and model rockets ... That's where I got peers."
Grandin, a subject of neurologist and author Oliver Sacks' "An Anthropologist on Mars," says that all she wants is "to see kids like me be successful ... stay out of trouble with the law, go out and get a career and a job that you're really gonna like."
Song of the week: 'I'm History' by Van Dyke Parks
This weekend, songwriter, composer, singer, legendary producer and Off-Ramp favorite Van Dyke Parks performs what he says will be his last ever shows behind a piano. To mark it, we're featuring his newest song — "I'm history" — as this week's Off-Ramp song of the week.
Tickets to both shows are sold out, but there might be a few available at the box office the night of. You never know!
Here's a video of Van Dyke performing the song in Atlanta in 2012: