RE this week's show: we reconsider the Eagles' inescapable "Hotel California," rediscover Channing Peake, revisit Jeffrey Kahane at the piano, and revere Roy Orbison.
Jeanie Buss on Donald Sterling, the Lakers, love and basketball
The basketball season ended this week in Southern California. The dramatic run by the Clippers through a gantlet of controversy and the team's playoff opponents finished Thursday night, with a 104-98 loss to the Thunder.
NBA fans now look to next season and what they'd like to see change.
RELATED: LA NAACP vows to move beyond Sterling; Garcetti, Sharpton pledge support
Jeanie Buss, the president and part owner of the Los Angeles Lakers, is going through uncharted territory. Last month, the team wrapped up the worst season since the franchise was founded in 1947.
Kobe Bryant missed almost the entire season. Then this month, the NBA condemned L.A. Clippers owner Donald Sterling after a recording of racist comments made by Sterling went public; he's currently fighting to keep control of the Clippers.
Jeanie Buss agreed to talk with KPCC's Patt Morrison on Off-Ramp about the Clippers and Sterling.
Interview Highlights:
On the scandal involving Donald Sterling, owner of the L.A. Clippers:
"Whoever was speaking on those tapes made me ill. And it was offensive. And I've never heard him speak like that in person. I wouldn't have been able to tolerate being around him if he spoke like that in front of me."
On how Buss and Jackson carry on a relationship while managing rival teams:
"We have an understanding that he can't talk about the Lakers, and I can't talk about the Knicks. He could talk about the Lakers from when he was the coach and his experience, but new decisions that are made, he's not allowed to criticize or second guess. And the same thing with me about decisions that he's making. So it's kind of off the table. I wish him the best; I hope our teams play in the playoffs, because that means we're both in the finals. Of course, I want the Lakers to win."
On the Lakers' past season:
"To us, it already is next season, because we're not in the playoffs. So what we're looking forward to is on May 20, the NBA [draft] lottery will be held. What's funny is, a lot of people will say, 'Well, maybe you'll find the next Kobe Bryant.' And I say, 'We already have Kobe Bryant. We don't need to find the next one!' Kobe's still playing.
"From the players to the front office to the fans to our partners, ... it was a disappointing year. But I have to say that the players that we had on our team, there were some bright spots. There were some big wins over the Clippers and Houston. No matter how difficult it was to be near the bottom of the standings, I still think that the fans that went to the games and watched saw a group of a guys working really hard. And, hopefully, they had a good time as well."
On Kobe Bryant's return
"When you look at what happened this season, you have to go back to the previous season, because Kobe Bryant went down with an Achilles injury just before we started the playoffs then. When it happened, I had people advise me that it's going to take 12 months for him to get back. And, of course, in Kobe time, he came back in December of this season.
"He played great for six games, but then he broke his knee and was out for the rest of the season. People that know Kobe Bryant or are fans of Kobe Bryant know his will is like no other player I've ever seen. And I believe that he's going to — after missing a lot of basketball this year — come back hungry and lean and mean and kind of exciting to watch.
"He's so competitive. And when you don't have an outlet for that, it consumes you."
On Phil Jackson, her fiance, taking a job to run the New York Knicks:
"When you talk about how competitive Kobe Bryant is, I can speak of that first hand. Because I live with somebody just like that in Phil Jackson. He was spending too much time, you know, on his iPad, playing Words With Friends. It's great to see him back working again. He's got that sparkle in his eye, that hunger, to make the Knicks — which was the team that drafted him out of college at the University of North Dakota. So the Knicks really are Phil's team. People were like, 'How did you let Phil go to the Knicks?' And it's kind of like we returned him to the Knicks. That's where he started."
On running the Lakers franchise without her father, Jerry Buss:
"Fortunately my Dad had groomed me for the position that I'm in for many, many years. But nothing can prepare you for the loss of your leader and the person who inspired you. In this experience, of the last couple weeks, this was something nobody could ever anticipated — dealing with the ownership of the Clippers — and I sure would love to be able to have a conversation with my Dad. But I have to think, to remember all the lessons that he taught me, his philosophy, his outlook.
"The Lakers represented to him something that brought the city of Los Angeles together. That it could cross all economic, demographic, generational [lines], … it brought everybody together. And he was so proud of that. And Los Angeles, even though he wasn't born here, this was his town. He would never want to see anything — especially when Magic Johnson was named specifically — and my Dad being so fond of Magic as if he was his son. Magic talks about the influence my Dad had on him as a businessman. So, you know, I miss him."
On the New York Times' recent map of basketball fan loyalty and the Lakers reach beyond Southern California:
"You could really say that the Lakers are America's team. We've taken that to heart by, during the preseason, we're allowed to take our team to territories that don't belong to other teams. We were the first team to play in Oklahoma City in that building. Way before the Thunder moved there.
"We played in Memphis before that team was there. We played in New Orleans before that team was there. We took the Lakers across America. And, of course, our home away from home is Hawaii. We love to fill in for territories that don't have an NBA team. I'm proud to know that there's so many Lakers fans out there."
EZTV: Channeling West Hollywood's artsy video history
In the early '80s, a group of experimental filmmakers and artists in West Hollywood created EZTV, a small production house and screening venue devoted entirely to video.
At the time, the collective lacked funding for film projects, and video was far cheaper to produce.
"The only way we were going to make things is if we could afford to make them ourselves," said EZTV co-founder Michael J. Masucci, who went by the name Michael Jay. "Video was the poor man's art form. Unless you had a rich uncle or a deal with Warner Bros., then video was probably the way you were going to look."
Video had some serious image issues at the time, when most Hollywood bigwigs considered it a poor substitute for film. But this didn't stop EZTV from attracting an eclectic group of collaborators and media coverage.
"Within months of EZTV opening, we started to get national attention," said Masucci. "We had the opportunity to consider work from Nigeria, from Yoko Ono, from major poets — they found out about us one way or another."
EZTV's archives — a massive collection of over 300 video tapes — seems to leave almost no genre untouched. It includes kitschy musical shorts like Sandra Lowell's "Tap Dance the News."
Then there were experimental feature-length works, like John Dorr's "Sudzall Does It All," shot entirely on a borrowed bank security camera.
Homeless until now, the entire EZTV archives has been donated to ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives. The arrival is being celebrated with an exhibition of the weird and wonderful work produced by the pioneering video collective — EZTV: Video Transfer.
ONE Curator David Frantz collaborated with EZTV co-founder Michael J. Masucci and current EZTV President Kate Johnson to create the exhibition. The result is a glimpse into the impressive range of projects to come out of the space, mostly displayed on decades-old equipment for an added sense of history.
Frantz’s selections focus on the '80s and '90s — when EZTV was based in West Hollywood — and the space’s role in a growing queer video and art scene.
"Many of the founding members of EZTV were openly gay at a time when that was still career suicide," said Masucci. "I don’t think (founder John Dorr) ever seriously considered calling EZTV 'The Gay Building,' but it was... I think part of EZTV’s legacy has to be that diversity is a reality, diversity is to be celebrated, but diversity isn’t a condition. And we were about video."
EZTV: Video Transfer will be at ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives until June 1st — don't miss the exhibition's final night of performances and projections in West Hollywood Park on May 31st.
Rediscovering artist Channing Peake—rodeo winner, rancher, and friend of Picasso
Off-Ramp commentator Marc Haefele reconsiders a forgotten master, artist Channing Peake. Channing Peake's "Santa Ynez Valley" is on display at the Elverhøj Museum in Solvang through June 8.
He was probably the only important 20th Century painter who ever won a major rodeo contest. But he was much more than that — a devoted rancher, a friend of Picasso, pupil of Diego Rivera, father to a large family and an artist whose creations’ variety still dazzles the mind.
Channing Peake died 25 years ago, and now there’s a new and rewarding show of his work in Solvang, not far from the 1,500 acre ranch that focused so much of his life. Appropriately, the focuses on his striking late works, many of which reflect the tumbling landscape of the surrounding Santa Ynez Valley that he loved for so long and so deeply. But it’s just a final segment of more than 50 years of his work — a life accomplishment that seems to beg for a long-overdue major retrospective in Southern California.
(Channing Peake in his studio with “Fiesta Mural,” now at Santa Barbara airport. Credit: Santa Barbara County Arts Commission)
The story goes that on graduating from San Fernando High School, Peake was offered a football scholarship to USC and an arts scholarship to the California School of the Arts in Oakland. He picked Oakland. There began for him a decade long freebooting odyssey of self-discovery that he liked to call “getting out of my own way.” It took him to Santa Barbara for more study ; to New York’s Art Students’ League, where he collaborated on a major post office mural; to Cambridge, Mass., where he worked on the murals in a Harvard museum; to Mexico City, where he worked for Diego Rivera on the Palacio Nacional murals; to the archeological discovery of the Xapotec capital of Monte Alban; to the American southwest, where he lived and worked among native Americans; and finally back to Santa Barbara.
He wed an heiress, acquired his ranch, raised a family and some of the nation’s finest quarter horses. His pictures were found in the collections of Hollywood’s greatest. He won a prize at LACMA and had shows in Europe. He befriended the famous — Gregory Peck, Audrey Hepburn, director William Wyler, painter Ruben Tamayo. And even, most notably, Pablo Picasso.
“I have done everything I wanted to do, and sometimes twice,” he said.
But although he was raised in the San Fernando Valley and later lived in Los Angeles and Beverly Hills, he’s now little known here. Perhaps that's because his work — particularly his later work — so strongly references the rural locale where he spent so much of his life — in the hills near Santa Ynez.
Appropriately, then, his new show is in Solvang’s lovely little Elverhøj Museum. It’s focused, but still presents a broad cross section of the artist’s work, from his singularly expressive modernist-realistic drawings of generally well-fed farm animals, their energy caged in the lines of his drawing, to his famous color-drenched abstractions based on farm machinery. Peake had a lifelong admiration for farming, and his paintings of combines and harvesters evoke his feeling for the immense labor and risk involved in wrenching food from the soil.
(This piece, "Farm Disc in Motion," was shown at LACMA in 1955. James Main Fine Art)
Peake’s widow, Cheri, the executor, great appreciator and curator at large of his work, uses the word “biomorphism” to describe the life-based abstraction of some of his last works. These include what most pleased me in the Solvang show: a series of late, local landscapes pressed into cubist form, infused with the vivid but restrained primary colors of the artist’s imagination. As you drive out of Solvang and into the surrounding landscapes, you feel you have known them forever, but in a way that’s far beyond what you see around you.
Be sure to listen to our bonus audio: Cheri Peake describing her husband's friendly drawing contests with Picasso. And here's a guide to getting acquainted with this forgotten master:
- Until June 8, an excellent and richly varied display of Channing Peake’s work will hang in Solvang’s Elverhøj (“Elves’ Hill”) Museum. (1624 Elverhoy Way, Solvang, 805-686-1211.)
- Casa del Herrero: The young Peake did a splendid ceiling painting in the library of this over-the-top Gatsby-era squillionaire’s mansion. Peake also decorated the rest of the house with fanciful paintings and made the owner a massive marquetry hardwood table. By reservation only. 1387 E. Valley Road, Montecito, 805-565-5653.
- Cava Restaurant: Seven mural studies and animal drawings, plus a study for his Don Quixote mural in the private dining room. (1212 Coast Village Road, Montecito 805-969-8500)
- Dos Carlitos Restaurant: Several fine equestrian drawings. Enchiladas Suizas also recommended. (3544 Sagunto St. Santa Ynez, 805-688-0033)
- Santa Barbara Airport: Peake’s last completed mural, a 34-foot monster that used to hang in a downtown restaurant, has found a permanent home here. It evokes Santa Barbara’s annual “Old Spanish Days” celebration. (500 Fowler Road, Goleta, 805-967-7111)
- Santa Barbara County Administration Building: A Peake painting is featured in the Board of Supervisors’ hearing room. (105 E. Anapamu St., Santa Barbara)
- Santa Barbara Public Library: Peake’s famous “Don Quixote” mural is displayed in the foyer. 40 Anapamu St., Santa Barbara
5 cool 'wearable' prototypes that might be the next Google Glass
As wearable tech goes, Google Glass is old hat. What you expect from Off-Ramp is the Next Big Thing — perhaps a hat that protects you from paparazzi and boom boxes, or a nail appliqué that doubles as a flashlight — so I spent Thursday morning at Art Center College of Design, where teams of of Media Design MFA students unveiled their wearable prototypes.
Professor Philip van Allen gave the assignment:
"The point is to explore what the potential of wearables is. Not for tomorrow but say 5-10 years from now. Where can we go, where can we develop the technology, design, and interaction to make things that are truly interesting for people?"
One of the most fully developed prototypes was Sangli Li's quite fashionable hat, which uses sensors to protect the wearer from light and sound.
Watch Sangli Li's hat in action
Other projects include:
- A "Data Vaporizer," which emits a gas that erases the data on a would-be hacker's mobile devices.
- A puffy suit that mirrors the wearer's pensiveness or pomposity.
- Tiny fingernail add-ons that take the current nail sculpture concept one step further by allowing micro electronics to be attached to the surface of the nail.
Professor van Allen says, "the kinds of projects that our students are working on are probably a few years out, but we're about to go to Intel to share with their people the projects that were done here," so you might see some of these concepts put into play. So watch this space."
LA Chamber Orchestra maestro moots major/minor myth
Over the past few weeks, I've been playing you parts of my piano bench interview with Jeffrey Kahane, the maestro of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, who will step down as LACO's music director in 2017.
We've talked about Bach, the Clippers, and why it's okay to clap between movements (!) at classical concerts. This week, I ask Kahane why major keys make us happy and minor keys make us sad. It's not an accurate premise, and Kahane proves me wrong using his weapon of choice: the keyboard.
Meantime, LACO concludes its season this weekend with pianist Jeremy Denk playing Bach, Mozart, Ligeti and Beethoven. Saturday, May 17, 8 pm, at Glendale’s Alex Theatre; and Sunday, May 18, 7 pm, at UCLA’s Royce Hall.
New doc 'Mystery Girl: Unraveled' takes us behind the scenes of Roy Orbison's masterpiece
Off-Ramp host John Rabe interviews Alex Orbison, son of the late pop icon Roy Orbison, about "Mystery Girl: Unraveled," a documentary that goes behind the scenes of the recording of "Mystery Girl," Orbison's final album.
In 1988, Roy Orbison, who sang and wrote the mega hits "Only the Lonely" and "Oh, Pretty Woman," was on top of the world.
After decades of undeserved obscurity, he was a pop star again, with his operatic tenor filling the airwaves as a solo act and as a member of the supergroup The Traveling Wilburys. Then, in December, Orbison died of a heart attack at 52.
RELATED: Official trailer, "Mystery Girl: Unraveled"
Now, a quarter century later, his son Alex Orbison — who was just 13 when his dad died — directs "Mystery Girl: Unraveled." The film includes videos shot in the studio when Orbison recorded his final album, "Mystery Girl," plus new interviews with Jeff Lynne, Steve Cropper, Jim Keltner, and Tom Petty, to name a few.
(Orbison and a few lads from Liverpool.)
I asked Alex Orbison if he's finally figured out what made his father's singing so special. It's possibly the fact that Orbison was a songwriter and a singer:
"Through the songwriting, he was able to go places where he had never gotten before with the voice, and so he was able to go off the charts and just to go where it was natural for him and start where he started and end where he ended up, and through that he found that magic voice." - Alex Orbison
On May 19th, Legacy Recordings releases a special CD/DVD package that includes the 25th anniversary edition of "Mystery Girl," plus the documentary "Mystery Girl: Unraveled." On Tuesday, May 20, the documentary will be screened at a special program at The Grammy Museum at LA Live.
The Wedge: Emmy-nominated documentary chronicles the perfect point break
UPDATE 6/4/2015: "The Wedge: Dynasty, Tragedy, Legacy," was just nominated for an Emmy! Congratulations to Off-Ramp contributor R.H. Greene and the rest of the documentary crew. The doc is streaming for free now on the Emmy's website site.
In the 1920s, the Newport Harbor channel in Orange County was such an amazing surfing spot that Duke Kahanamoku — the original Big Kahuna — relocated from Hawaii so he could surf Newport daily.
But that perfect point break routinely wrecked ships and took lives. Off-Ramp contributor R.H. Greene has directed a new TV documentary called "The Wedge: Dynasty, Tragedy, Legacy." It tells the story of the Rogers, one of Newport's founding families, and the Depression-era tragedy that changed their lives and the California coastline forever.
“The Wedge: Dynasty, Tragedy, Legacy” is written, hosted and co-produced by filmmaker and family scion Bob Rogers, who joined Greene for an interview in Newport Beach.
"The Wedge: Dynasty, Tragedy, Legacy" premieres Friday, May 23, at 6:30 pm on PBS SoCal Plus.