Mayor Picks Beck to Lead LAPD ... Melrose Larry Green Weighs In ... Dracula author pays tribute to his late, great brother ... Jackson Musker has Encounter at LAX ... CyberFrequencies on Life on the Web.
Charlie Beck (probably) To Lead LAPD
It would be extrordinary for the LA City Council to reject Mayor Villaraigosa's pick of Deputy Chief Charlie Beck to head the department. Here, KPCC's Frank Stoltze joins Off-Ramp host John Rabe at the official announcement. We've also included Beck's entire opening remarks as the second piece of audio.
In the slideshow below, reporters flock from far and wide to speak into KPCC's magical, mystical microphone...and to cover the LAPD Chief-in-waiting Charlie Beck's first press conference.
There's A New Chief in Town from Off Ramp on Vimeo.
LA Conservancy Tours Iconic 60s Sites, Takes us to Rarefied Heights at LAX Theme Building
This Sunday, the LA Conservancy is hosting a tour of iconic 1960s structures around the South Bay. One of the highlights is the futuristic Theme Building at LAX, which is in the final stages of a massive renovation. Tourgoers will have access to the observation deck - open to the public for the first time since 9/11. Off-Ramp contributor Jackson Musker got a sneak peak earlier this week. (Follow the link for ticket info, and a movie shot atop the observation deck.)
An important message from the Conservancy about tour tickets:
You can purchase tickets ON TOUR DAY at The Proud Bird Restaurant, 11022 S. Aviation Blvd. in Westchester. Ticketing will be closed on our website over the weekend, but you can go there for more information on the tour.
If you can't make it to the tour on Sunday, check out the view from the observation deck here. It won't be open to the general public until the Spring...
LAX THEME BUILDING SNEAK PEEK from Off Ramp on Vimeo.
RH Greene, Dracula memoirist ("Incarnadine"), pays tribute to his brother
5-1-2010 UPDATE: This is a rerun from 2009, so there's no book signing ...
RH Greene, who wrote "Incarnadine, the True Memoirs Count Dracula," tells us his own true memoir -- that his book is privately dedicated to his twin brother Tom, who RH says was the other half of his heartbeat. Greene will be at Book Soup on Sunday, November 15 at 4 PM. (8818 W Sunset Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90069-2125, (310) 659-3110.)
More on "Incarnadine," from Greene's news release:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
LOS ANGELES, CA - Roll over Edward Cullen, and tell Sookie Stackhouse the news. INCARNADINE: The True Memoirs of Count Dracula is coming to U.S. bookstores and to Amazon Kindle and Sony Reader. And despite the boom in vampire sagas, author R. H. Greene thinks he has something unique to offer.
"It's for grown-ups, for one thing," Greene says of the first installment in his two-part Dracula "memoir." "I've never read a Twilight novel or seen an episode of True Blood, but I stand in supermarket checkout lines, like everybody. It does seem like we're going through the Hannah Montana era of gothic fiction, doesn't it? I mean, there's an Edward Cullen Barbie doll coming out, you know?"
The conceit of Greene's novel is that it'sa "newly discovered Victorian artifact" once owned by Mina Murray Harker, the heroine of Bram Stoker's 1897 classic Dracula. In Greene's premise, the handwritten manuscript languished for over a century in the cornerstone of a remote Bulgarian farmhouse before being excavated by looters. Their "minor literary payload" turned out to be a first-person chronicle written by Dracula himself, covering more than three centuries of both his human and "un-dead" existence.
In the memoir, Dracula tells the story of his life before he became a vampire, and then leads the reader through his own unholy transformation and that of his three "wives." The action begins in the late Middle Ages during the last great battles of the Ottoman invasion of Eastern Europe, and ends with the first meeting between Dracula and Bram Stoker's protagonist Jonathan Harker.
The encounter with Harker sets the stage for a "very free" approach to Stoker's characters and event structure in Memoirs, Volume Two, which Greene has just completed writing. "Book two is called The Charnel House, and it's a very different piece of work, though in the same spirit as INCARNADINE."
According to Greene, the first-person voice lets the reader experience the Dracula mythos with an unusual amount of intimacy, and also allowed him to write a book in which "Dracula is the hero and God is the villain, which is the way I think a 'Prince of Darkness' would see things. We've kind of gotten away from the spiritual in vampire fiction, but it's clearly one of the core concerns in Stoker's original.
"There's also a whole wealth of detail in Slavic folklore that was unavailable to the author of Dracula, and it's been great fun researching those older traditions and trying to incorporate them into INCARNADINE in a way that feels authentic."
Interestingly, just a month after Greene's Dracula origin story goes to press, the Bram Stoker estate is coming out with Dracula The Un-Dead, an "official sequel" by Dacre Stoker and Ian Holt that Greene says "sounds like a detective novel based on the new Amazon extract."
While Greene says he was unaware of the sequel's existence while working on INCARNADINE, "I wish them a lot of success. Nobody deserves to benefit from the ongoing interest in Dracula more than a writer with the last name of Stoker.
"Between their sequel and my story of how Dracula came to be, I think there's a unique opportunity for readers to re-evaluate their relationship to one of literature's most lasting works. And who knows? Maybe it's Dracula's turn to reign supreme again over the genre Bram Stoker virtually invented for him. I'm pretty sure audiences are still going to care about him long after True Blood is just a pile of discount DVDs at Costco, and Edward Cullen has crumbled into dust."
Ann Minch & her Debtor's Revolt on YouTube – Good Idea or Wack?
My Dear CyberFreaks,
There comes a time when you have to make a stand. And this week, we're making ours with Ann Minch and her Debtor's Revolt.
Last week, Pew released a study surveying the credit card policies of a dozen banks, which together control about 90 percent of credit card debt in the US. Many of these banks got our bailout money or are borrowing our money from the Feds at extremely low interest rates.
So, how are they repaying us taxpayers? They're jacking up the interest rates on our credit cards - no questions asked.
Ann Minch got the treatment from Bank of America, which notified her that they're raising her interest rate from 13 to 30%. And so she posted a video on YouTube, which she hopes will become the shot heard around the world.
Minch's solution to bring down the big banks? Take your money out of them and put them in credit unions and community banks.
We dish about Minch's ideas with Marketplace Radio's Senior Editor Paddy Hirsch. We ask Paddy, does Minch make sense or is she wack?
Go to CyberFrequencies to find out more!
Will Pasadena Keep The Fork in the Road, a Project by Pranksters?
Note from John Rabe:
The best line about the giant fork in the road in Pasadena, planted by pranksters last weekend, comes from the Pasadena Star-News. “It remains to be seen if the city will get the joke.” Yes, the thing was done illegally, but it was done well. It's witty, pays tribute to old Olde Pasadena, and -- as an Off-Ramp contributor put it, it shows Pasadena is not populated by fuddy-duddies ... unless of course they take it down.
Come inside for all the details. (By the way, I broke this story on my blog, which is a good reason to check it every day.)
Here's the John Rabe blog item posted Monday:
I got an email this weekend from occasional Off-Ramp contributor Donna Barnes-Roberts. She writes:
Dear John,
I don't know if you were in Pasadena when there was a building in Old Town with the legend:
"My People are People of the Dessert,” said T.E. Lawrence picking up his fork.
Well, some slightly wacky people up in the unincorporated township called Altadena felt a certain lack in their souls after that mural fell to progress oh so many years ago, and, Saturday morning at about 9:30, erected an 18-foot fork at the fork in the road where Pasadena Ave. divides into two one-way streets. If you go north on Pasadena Ave., from Glenarm, you will see it at the … fork in the road.
And see it before some bureaucrat takes it down -- though it is built sturdily and set in over 400 pounds of concrete. One of the participants was anticipating arrest, though he just turned 75, and didn't actually build it. However, he certainly had a twinkle in his eye when he mentioned “arrest".
The whole thing was a kind of birthday present for Pasadena. In fact, there was a party, and t-shirts were handed out.
This is officially the LARGEST fork in the road, according to one of the participants. Really.
-- Donna
UPDATE RECEIVED TUESDAY: "After doing some additional research, I now know that this is only the largest fork in the road west of the Mississippi. There is a 31-foot metal fork at a fork in the road in New York State. The pranksters are only mildly deflated. Even pranksters need an occasional reality check."
Donna Barnes-Roberts is a painter who teaches the delicate art of water color. She sent the photos above. I’ll post the video as soon as they send it to the YouTube.
UPDATE WEDNESDAY: Pasadena Star-News notices the fork, does some digging, reveals prankster.
Pasadena Mayor Bogaard to Caltrans: "Fork, yes."
KPCC's John Rabe talks with Mayor Bogaard, who likes the fork and says all good things in life don't need to be authorized. And we get him on the record promising to fight for the fork.
Berlin Wall Project At Wende Museum Marks 20 Years Since the Fall
KPCC's Shirley Jahad talks with Justinian Jampol of the Wende Museum, which is marking the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall with pieces of the old wall, and new art.
The Bill Bratton Era - A Special Report from KPCC's Frank Stoltze
KPCC's Frank Stoltze followed all seven years of former LA Police Chief Bill Bratton's career with the LAPD. This piece is the result of extensive interviews he did looking back on years that may prove to be the most important ones in the department's long and checkered history.
Melrose Larry Green backs Beck pick, volunteers for cell-phone ban duty
Melrose Larry Green, the thorn in OJ's side and a frequent guest on Howard Stern, opines on the Mayor's pick.