Zoey 101, Episode 3: We continue to track Bob Tur's transformation to Zoey Tur. Marc Maron, mayor of Highland Park.
Marc Maron on gentrification, breakups and how WTF saved his life
John Rabe goes to L.A.'s Highland Park neighborhood to talk with Marc Maron about his memoir "Attempting Normal." Maron is set to release the 500th episode of his podcast WTF this week, a podcast he says kinda saved his life.
On the paperback cover of "Attempting Normal," Marc Maron's memoir of addiction, redemption, and the WTF podcast, David Sedaris blurbs, "I laughed so hard reading this book."
I want to respond, like Gene Rayburn on "Match Game": "You laughed so hard that BLANK," because the parts that make you laugh might reveal something you don't want to reveal.
Is it when Maron's physician father gives him a rectal exam? Or later, when he inserts his finger into his own father's corpse's mouth? Or was it that time with a prostitute with a breast lump? Or when Maron, suffering from sleep deprivation, almost totally loses it on an airplane? It might take a Sedaris to find "Attempting Normal" laugh-out-loud funny.
But for tough moments, written with insight and honesty, it's great. There are episodes that will stick with me forever, like the time Maron and his girlfriend Jessica are having a loud argument in their Highland Park home, and a neighbor comes to their door and pleads with them to stop.
The man starts crying and says, "I just lost my wife." What happens next turns the course of the book, the relationship, and — it seems to me — Maron's life, because he is finally able to step out of his head and stop letting his anger run him.
RELATED: Watch Marc Maron's show "Maron" on IFC
Maron has lived in the northeast L.A. neighborhood of Highland Park for about 10 years, and has seen its gentrification happen. He likes it:
"Here's how you know your neighborhood is changing, when all of a sudden storefronts kinda show up and you walk in, and you can't really understand what the store is. You walk in and you're like, there's a saddle, some records, and an old typewriter. What do you buy here? What's happening? That's the first sign. Those are the original hipster idea people. But now it's become sort of pleasant."
Maron says he's still figuring out how to mark the 500th WTF podcast, which he does out of a studio in his garage. He credits the podcast for saving him. It was something he started when he was at his lowest point, and which he had no expectations for, and it turned into his biggest success. It's a show known for honest, engaging, conversations with everyone from Conan O'Brien to RuPaul to, notably, comedians Eddie Pepitone and Louis CK.
But I ask, doesn't he worry that the success of WTF (the F stands for f--k) has neutered the F-word?
"Yeah, you know, I use it to punctuate. I have sloppy social skills because I'm a comedian and I don't live in the real world. I could probably use it less. I was using it with RuPaul, who doesn't use it, and it made me uncomfortable. Cuz then I'd say it, and I'm like, why did you say that? There's no reason to say it."
Maron has just broken up with Moon Zappa, who appeared on a WTF interview, after dating for about five months. His take today is radically different than the relationships he describes from his past:
"People were excited about the possibilities of us, and I was too. It's just interesting when you're a grown person (he's 50, she's 46) and even if it seems like it should all be right, some things aren't quite right. Your lives are not going to work out the way you want them to. And usually, I think we both would have stayed in it for years until we did some damage. But it's still sad and it's still fresh."
There's much more in the interview, which we did at the corner of York and Ave 50, and which features a surprise appearance by stand-up comedian and Off-Ramp fan Maria Bamford.
Please listen to the raw audio, which I've posted on the top lefthand side of this page.
We want our D TV! Fans to rally June 1 to tell Dodgers and TWC to cut it out
John Rabe talks with LA Times columnist Chris Erskine about the rally planned Sunday, June 1, to urge the Dodgers and Time Warner Cable to solve the TV snafu.
"More and more, this Dodgers TV fiasco is reading like a plot line that even Joseph Heller would have rejected as far too absurd — greed, smothered in shamelessness, dipped in irony." -- Chris Arskine, writing in the LA Times.
The vast majority of Dodger fans cannot watch their beloved team on TV because the team and TWC can't or won't come to an agreement with DirecTV to allow the satellite TV provider to air the games. It irks LA Times columnist Chris Erskine so much that his trim mustache bristles when he talks about the letters he gets from readers.
"First it was disbelief, then there was frustration, a sense of betrayal, now there's just anger. And people feel powerless," he said.
Silver Lining: Dodgers RADIO ratings are way up
So Erskine is helping organize a rally that will start at the old cop bar The Short Stop, near Dodger Stadium.
"I said, well let's get together and make some noise and let them know that we haven't given up!" he said. He'd like people to bring cowbells and big signs, and he even jokes that there's a sale on pitchforks at Home Depot.
(Turns out it's technically a "manure spreader," which actually fits the bill when it comes to this situation.)
RELATED: Angels pitcher CJ Wilson says racing cars is harder than baseball
In his column, Erskine has tweaked baseball commissioner Bud Selig whose plan is to, "Aggressively stay on top of it and hope they get it settled."
"And what's really weird," Erskine said, "is that no civic leader has stood up and said what about the fans? What about the viewers? What about this land that the city of Los Angeles basically gave to the Dodgers to come out here in the first place? It's a civic treasure."
Rally Details: Sunday, June 1, 3pm. Meet at The Short Stop, 1455 Sunset Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90026.
Zoey 101: Zoey Tur asks 'Where are the transgender news anchors?'
John Rabe continues his candid interviews with Zoey Tur, the former hyper-macho helicopter pilot Bob Tur, who is now just weeks away from the final surgery and hoping to return to journalism.
If you know your recent L.A. history, you know the name Bob Tur. He* piloted the helicopter that hovered above Reginald Denny's beating during the L.A. Riots. He found O.J. Simpson during his slow-speed chase.
He was macho, depressed, and sometimes suicidal. He realized it was Gender Identity Disorder, also known as gender dysphoria, and started hormone replacement on May 6, 2013, becoming Zoey Tur. I interviewed Zoey at KPCC in June, then posted this after another interview in September:
"Today, after not seeing Zoey since our first interview, I met her in Santa Monica, and we talked about the transition (it's going well, but the drugs do much more than she expected), men (she's being relegated to the 'girls' table), dating (she and her girlfriend both decided they didn't want to date a woman, and she thinks straight men don't want to date MacGuyver), and Bradley Manning (she blames the Army as much as Manning)."
RELATED: Chuck Hagel: Military should review ban on transgender people
Zoey came back into the studio a week ago to check in, and the further changes are notable:
"I have a thinner waist, I have larger legs, I have breasts — a B-cup — and also there's been feminizing effects to the skin. So I have softer skin. I don't have any body hair ... and my (head) hair grew back! So for all the guys out there who are worried about male-pattern baldness, there's a solution (laughing)...The problem is you gotta be a woman to get your hair back."
And the laughing is important. Zoey says the dysphoria that caused depression and anger is gone, and she's now at peace inside. It makes sense: Bob's body chemistry was at war with his brain. Now, Zoey is at war with her former insurance company:
"Blue Shield of California claims that they don't have to follow California law. They don't cover transgender care, which is a violation of AB 1586, and also the Managed Care Board directive K-12. So, the state let me get a new insurance company, but they're investigating."
I asked Blue Shield to comment on Zoey Tur's allegations. It provided the following statement:
"We’ll have to decline to comment on the individual due to medical privacy laws. But generally speaking, an inadequate number of providers are able to perform these procedures, which drives up costs and hinders our ability to secure appropriate specialists. We are working with state regulators and others to address this issue."
RELATED: Transgender LA artists Drucker & Ernst debut at Whitney Biennial
Zoey says the surgery she is getting ready to undergo in late June, which will essentially change her penis into a vagina, "doesn't scare me."
"What scares me more is the loss of the male privilege and the also way transsexuals and transgender people are treated in this country. And also I'm really worried about transitioning. Will I be able to work in broadcast news again? There's not a single transgender transsexual person on the air in the United States that's open. And I don't know of anyone that's living stealth that's a broadcast reporter."
There's much more in our audio interview. Please click the "Listen Now" button on the top left.
*After consultation with Zoey: "He" refers to the pre-May 6, 2013 Bob Tur, when the hormone therapy started, and "she" refers to Zoey Tur after that date.
No. 1 on Jonathan Gold list: Providence Restaurant's Michael Cimarusti's life-changing trip to Japan
UPDATE: The LA Times Jonathan Gold has once again named Providence the best restaurant in LA. "Cimarusti may be a supremely creative chef, but his restaurant has many of the classic virtues." A few years ago, the restaurant's owner, Michael Cimarusti, took a life-changing trip to Japan, and told us about it in this Off-Ramp exclusive.
Michael Cimarusti, owner/chef of Providence, the two-star Michelin restaurant, is a damn good chef. But he's a humble one, and came back from a fellowship to Japan with a new respect for the thousands of years behind Japan's cuisine. Come inside as he gives Off-Ramp an exclusive travelogue of his trip.
The backstory: Before Thanksgiving, I interviewed a series of LA chefs about the holiday. Michael was a little sad because he'd be out of the country -- specifically, he was taking a cook's tour of Japan. It was a fellowship designed to show him the breadth and depth of Japan's traditional cuisine. When he got back, he immediately agreed to sit down and tell us all about it. I knew it'd be something special, because he was so enthusiastic.
Above, you'll see the long version of our interview. That's for sitting back and immersing yourself as one of the world's best chefs tells you what he learned on a magical trip.
You'll also see the short version if you're in a hurry ... and here are Michael's own photos of the trip in an Off-Ramp slideshow:
And on YouTube if you're using an iPhone:
Please leave comments below and let us know what you think.
Off-Ramp fave La Casita Mexicana rings Jonathan Gold's food bell, comes in at #68
UPDATE: We were delighted to see Bell's La Casita Mexicana make Jonathan Gold's list of the 101 best restaurants in Los Angeles. We'd featured the restaurant and its owners a few years ago in our EatLA segment. And now they have beer and wine!
For a really good gourmet regional Mexican meal, you can go to Rivera in downtown LA, where it's easy to drop a hundred bucks. Or, you can dine at one of a number of restaurants here that are tan auténticos y deliciosos, pero menos caros. The Eat-LA/Off-Ramp Collaboration returns this week with a visit to La Casita Mexicana in Bell, where the food is affordable, delicious, and authentic.
COME INSIDE for the full list of restaurants we talk about.
Scientist-sculptor works with plastic to highlight its impact on the environment
Off-Ramp's Alana Rinicella profiles scientist/sculptor Marcus Eriksen, whose work in plastic reflects his concern for its effect on the environment.
Apple boxes line the walls of scientist Marcus Eriksen's workshop. Inside one of them, he takes out a sculpture made of chains and bronzed animal heads.
"I've taken these casts and I’ve had them bronzed — seventeen different animals — and I've chained them together," Eriksen says. "Kind of an art piece to talk about how even animals in captivity, like in zoos, as much as zoos are arcs of conservation, they're also where we display trophy animals."
During college, Eriksen started casting animal skulls that the L.A. Zoo used for its education department. In his animal death masks, you see details that normally escape you at a zoo — the markings on a spider monkey's tail, or the whiskers on a tiger's face.
VIDEO: Marcus Eriksen talks about finding random plastic on an ocean voyage
In 2009, Eriksen co-founded the 5 Gyres Institute, an organization dedicated to eliminating plastic pollution in the world's oceans. They created "Plastisphere," a traveling exhibit about the environmental impact of plastic marine debris.
"We thought, 'People aren’t gonna enjoy seeing plastic trash in buckets and boxes. It's not that interesting,'" he says. "But to find the scientists, the activists, the people who are intimately involved in plastic waste in some way, and then cast them with that plastic waste — so I can use people as a context for a conversation about waste, how waste impacts people and the environment."
One of those castings is of Anna Cummins, Eriksen's wife and a co-founder of 5 Gyres. At the time she was five months pregnant with their first child, and the couple wondered what plastic chemicals she might pass on to the baby.
They had her blood tested and found high levels of DDT, PCBs and flame-retardants.
"There was a great study done by Environmental Working Group called '10 Americans,'" Eriksen says. "Looking at the umbilical cord blood of 10 newborn babies, from day one, they found 284 different synthetic chemicals in their blood. So we have this body burden of chemistry, but the long-term effects we don't know."
The life-size, plastic version of Anna is a mosaic of colorful trash. Eriksen filled it with melted plastics they'd collected from around the world.
Right now, Eriksen is working on a casting of Minar, a young trash collector from New Delhi. He supports his family by gathering plastic bottles. Trash collectors like him are why you won't find many of those bottles littered around India.
"The river is so polluted. There are millions of plastic bags," says Eriksen. "And I asked Minar, 'Look, there are all these bags, where are the bottles?' He said, 'There are no bottles there because I pick them up.'"
As a trash collector, Minar knows which plastics are designed for recovery. In a way, that makes him the best person to ask about recycling design. The importance of his work is reflected in the casting. His jawline juts out from the mold and his closed eyes show a quiet strength.
"Making these casts gives us a broader reach, gets us in to college campuses to talk with young, passionate people who want to see a very different world than the one that they were born into," Eriksen says.
To see more pictures of Eriksen's work, visit his website. You can find updates on his plastics research at the 5 Gyres website.
Hollywood Jobs: Meet the man behind some of Hollywood’s most dangerous car stunts (video)
There’s an entire industry in Hollywood based on crashing, flipping and rolling cars and trucks, and Jim Wilkey knows all about it. He's a stunt driver who’s been behind the wheel in more than 200 action sequences in some of your favorite movies and TV shows.
Out at the Camarillo Airport, Wilkey weaves between orange cones in a black Ford Mustang along an unused portion of the runway. He makes a sharp turn, and the car drifts sideways into a slot the size of a parking space. None of the cones that marked it come close to tipping over. He's about two inches away from the nearest one.
"You could reach out and hang your hat on it," he said.
That kind of precision comes with time — and Wilkey has had a lot of it. He’s 64 years old and has worked as a professional stuntman in Hollywood for more than half his life.
“I try to limit most of my activity now to the driving stuff," he said. "I’m getting a little long in the tooth to be falling out of buildings on fire.”
Wilkey doesn't talk much about what he does for a living. But when it comes up in conversation, the first question he usually gets is, “Have you ever been hurt?”
“I've fractured my back a couple of times, got a plate in my neck, broke my arm twice, several ribs, compound fracture in my left leg,” he said. “And then little stuff: broken noses, busted knees. I mean, if you do this stuff long enough, you’re gonna get nailed.”
You’ve probably seen Wilkey drive before. His most famous stunt was five years ago in the Batman movie “The Dark Knight.” He’s the one driving the big rig when it flips end-over-end onto its back in the middle of a city street.
“Batman rides under the truck with a cable and wraps the back wheels of the tractor of the trailer with the cable, and then he wraps it around a pole, and then the cable comes tight and flips the truck end over end, and then the Joker climbs out of there, and the Joker and Batman have a face-off,” Wilkey said.
He also doubled as the Joker.
“In fact, they only had one Joker wig, so Heath Ledger and I had to keep switching the wig back and forth,” Wilkey said.
Wilkey said he actually got to flip the truck twice. They had to do test run to make sure it would work.
“That was such a unique piece of business. You know, it’d never been done before, and I just happened to be the guy that drew the straw and got to do it.”
Wilkey says he’s lucky to be one of a handful of drivers who gets the jobs involving big rigs. Like ”The Rookie” from 1990 with Clint Eastwood.
WARNING: The videos below include adult language.
In a chase scene, Wilkey drove a car carrier that landed it on its side in the middle of a freeway. He also rolled a bus down a ravine in 1993’s “The Fugitive,” with Harrison Ford.
“Die Hard,” “Inception,” “Terminator Salvation”: Jim Wilkey’s resume goes on and on. He said he taught himself how to drive for the most part. But now he teaches others how to do so – safely — at a stunt driving school at the Camarillo Airport.
Some drivers come out to learn just for fun. But some are actually trying to make it in the business, like Jessie Graff. She’s a stuntwoman who’s dabbled in driving cars and motorcycles in Hollywood productions. She came to Jim Wilkey to perfect her skills.
“My taekwondo instructor, master Simon Rhee, he saw Jim drive and jumps out of the car and goes, ‘That man has a black belt in driving!’ So, like, that’s a traditional way of measurement for me of skill level,” Graff said.
Stuntman Steven Stone says he met Jim three years ago. He helps out at the driving school from time to time.
“He’s taught me how to shuffle-steer. He’s taught me how to do 180s, reverse 180s, box 90s, flying 90s, how to drift. … How to look at focal points, where I look with my head, and the car will go,” Stone said. “Just learn how to feel the car and let the car do the work.”
Wilkey grew up as a cowboy on ranches. He was a heavy equipment operator in the Navy Seabees. Then he hauled glass in a semi truck out of Newhall. He even helped build the slopes around Magic Mountain. His first “Hollywood” gig was for westerns in the early '70s.
“I started hauling horses and wrangling and stuff out of the different barns," he said. "I’d get out on the set, and I wanted to do stunts, but I didn’t know anybody.”
Wilkey eventually married into the business. His grandfather-in-law was legendary stuntman Yakima Canutt. But he says it was his stuntman father-in-law – Tap Canutt – who gave him the best advice.
“He said, 'Listen, kid, you got to get rid of the cowboy image, because westerns are phasing out,” Wilkey said. “You need to trade in the cowboy hat and the boots for a pair of Adidas tennis shoes and a pager. Back then, everybody had pagers. This is before cell phones.”
Wilkey pulls out his cell phone. He shows off videos of a couple chase scenes he’s been working on – like jackknifing a truck trailer into a Winnebago.
“I mean, technology is getting better all the time, which I hate to see in a lot of ways, because it’s just going to eventually cost us work,” he said.
He’s talking about computer-generated imagery.
“If it’s all CGI, then it becomes a cartoon, which is I guess the younger generation don’t mind the cartoons, because they were all raised on it. Video games and all that stuff. It becomes a video game,” he said. “But I think there’s still a huge demand for ‘We want to see it real.’”
Wilkey said the “real” thing can be scary – like flipping the truck in Batman.
“It’s hours and hours of boredom interjected with a few moments of sheer terror is kinda the way we like to describe it,” he said.
Stuntmen have to retire when their bodies wear out. But at 64, Wilkey doesn’t plan to retire soon.
“It’s all fun. Where else ya gonna go act like a big kid and play cops and robbers and get paid for it?”
Wilkey has four kids, but none of them are in the business. He says he would have helped them get into stunts if they wanted to, but never pushed them, because it’s not an easy job.
So, he said, “I guess it ends with me.”