Kris Kristofferson sings at Janis Joplin's star ... Agnes Varda at her new LACMA show ... the Hammer tries to show the arts can bring back a neighborhood ...
Amazon: Fullerton man's Holocaust memoir 'Best of 2013'
This week, Amazon chose Leon Leyson's memoir, "The Boy on the Wooden Box: How the Impossible Became Possible," one of its best books of 2013. The title refers to the fact that Leyson had to stand on a box to work the machinery in Schindler's factory.
Leyson lived in Fullerton and taught at Huntington Park High School for decades. He started telling his harrowing story later in life, over and over, to any group who asked him to speak, even though it dredged up horrible memories. He said he wanted the world to know that the Nazis didn't kill numbers; they killed real people. Leyson died in January at the age of 83.
In 2011, journalist Camille Hahn interviewed Leyson for Off-Ramp. He was her father-in-law. We've posted a condensed version of her piece.
By the way, Leon did not see the book in print. Camille tells us that Leon's wife Lis was able to tell him just before he died that an agent had taken on the memoir, and out on the day of his funeral, the family got the news that Simon&Schuster would be publishing it.
Janis Joplin finally gets her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame
"This was something patently new and spine-tingling. She was doing for women in rock what Aretha was doing for women in soul. Rewriting all the rules for what was possible and what was permissible." —Record executive Clive Davis
Legendary rock singer Janis Joplin got her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame Monday, 43 years after her death from a heroin overdose at the Landmark Motor Hotel in Hollywood.
Joplin sang solo and with Big Brother and the Holding Company and played at the Monterey Pop Festival and Woodstock.
Only five years into her career, Joplin overdosed in 1970. The next year, her version of "Me and Bobby McGee" hit number one on the Hot 100.
At Monday's ceremony, Kris Kristofferson — who wrote the song — added a couple poignant words as he performed it again for the crowd: “Feeling good was easy then when Bobby sang the blues. Buddy, that was good enough for me – and Janis – good enough for me and Bobby McGee.”
Legendary music executive Clive Davis, 81 — who later went on to sign Pink Floyd, Bruce Springsteen and Billy Joel — told the crowd at the Walk of Fame ceremony that Joplin was the first musician he signed at Columbia.
"And she embodied everything — everything — I was looking for: the innovative and the charismatic, the artist for a new generation," Davis said. "And, of course, it broke my heart when she died. I was angry because she was depriving everyone of her life force."
Joplin's star is near the corner of Hollywood and Highland, in front of the Musicians Institute.
(Listen to our audio to hear Davis talking about Joplin's offer to "seal their association in a less traditional, more physical way," and to hear Kristofferson's new version of his old song.)
'Love & Rockets' co-creator Hernandez joins forces with novelist Junot Diaz
With his brother Gilbert, Jaime Hernandez has written and drawn the alternative comic "Love and Rockets" for more than 30 years.
Jaime Hernandez, born in Oxnard, is a giant of the comics world, and is beloved by Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Junot Diaz. That's why when Diaz released a special edition of "This Is How You Lose Her," his latest collection of stories about the semi-autobiographical Yunior, he asked Jaime Hernandez to do the illustrations.
The special edition of the book is out now on Riverhead Press, and this week at KPCC's Crawford Family Forum, Hernandez talked with Off-Ramp Producer Kevin Ferguson.
The partnership between the two authors was arranged in the hallowed halls of the New Yorker magazine. An excerpt from Diaz's novel "The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao" was set to makes its New Yorker debut, and the editors needed an illustration.
"When they asked me to illustrate this story, I didn't know who Junot was," said Hernandez. "But I read the story to get the image down, and I liked it a lot. And not just because he put little 'Love and Rockets' references in the story. And I remember I liked [it] because the editors at the New Yorker go, 'Draw a really sexy girl.' And I go, 'That's the first time you ever asked me to do that!'"
A partnership was formed: Hernandez became the New Yorker's go-to illustrator for Junot Diaz stories. Hernandez said that, this time around, the work was a little more collaborative, with Diaz sending feedback to Hernandez regularly.
"One of his notes was to make her look less 'Mexican,'" said Hernandez. "But I knew exactly what he meant, and it wasn't kind of like, 'Who is this buffoon ruining my characters?' And that brings up the hardest part I had with actually illustrating the book. I was really nervous about getting the characters right. ... Because his world and my world are two separate worlds. I'm a West Coast Mexican guy, and he's an East Coast Dominican guy. I mean, I can say, 'Oh, we're all Latinos.' But when it gets more specific, you start narrowing it down."
Hernandez is no stranger to illustrating short stories — he's done dozens for hire. But the intimate, autobiographical nature of "This Is How You Lose Her" made the work particularly intimidating. "This was his baby," said Hernandez. "I mean these stories are coming from inside of him. And it's obvious when you read them. That stuff's really personal. Because when I do my own comics — this stuff comes out of my blood."
Hernandez also talked about punk rock, KISS and his 30+ year work on "Love and Rockets." To hear more, check out the Crawford Family Forum page for the event.
Dylan Brody: Let slip the dogs of war and cry, 'Get off my lawn!'
David Sedaris has asked Off-Ramp commentator Dylan Brody to join him on stage at the Pasadena Civic Center Nov. 15 and perform one of his stories. Dylan has accepted. And with any luck, Dylan will soon be telling "Morning Edition" listeners how he worked as an elf at Macy's. To celebrate, we present a story in which Dylan torments his innocent neighbor.
I live at the confluence of the mighty 118 and the majestic 210. It’s not a crap neighborhood, but I think of it as crap neighborhood adjacent. I own a small townhouse that I share with Sir Corwin, the Beautiful Dog-faced Dog; Lord Buckley Sweetlips, Greatest of All Dane Mutts (The Dinosaur Slaying Dog); and my lovely wife, whose name escapes me at the moment.
I walk the dogs outside the complex where my neighbors have actual houses with lawns. I’m a good guy, so I clean up after them when they relieve themselves. The dogs; not the neighbors. I’m not THAT good a guy. The house next door to our complex recently changed owners. As I walked on the lawn, the new owner stepped out and said, “That’s my lawn.”
I don’t like the passive-aggressive guess-my-intent game. Also, my dog has loved that lawn far longer than this guy has lived there, so I feel precedent has been set. We have, as it were, squatter’s rights. So I simply replied, “This is my dog.”
The man repeated his assertion. “That’s MY lawn.”
I repeated my claim. “This is MY dog.”
The man stepped forward and raised his voice, saying again, “That’s. My. Lawn.”
I considered reasserting ownership of the dog, but I was afraid he would start to think something was actually wrong with me, so I took a different tack.
(Let me say, parenthetically, that “tack” is the right word. It’s an idiomatic sailing term that refers to adjusting the position of the sail and the course of the boat relative to the wind direction. If you’ve been saying, “Take a different tact,” people like me have been judging you harshly).
In any case, I went a different way. I said, “I’m sorry. I don’t speak English.”
The man said, “You gotta be kidding me.”
I said, “No. Seriously. I don’t speak any English. At all.”
He blinked slowly and said, “You – we’re speaking English right now.”
I said, “I know it can be confusing. I’ve learned a few words phonetically, and I’m told my accent is pretty good, so it seems as though I’m conversant, fluent, even. But the fact of the matter is, I have no idea what either of has been saying throughout this entire exchange.”
While I said this, Lord Buckley Sweetlips, Greatest of All Dane Mutts (The Dinosaur-Slaying Dog), hunched up like a tiny kangaroo and relieved himself on the man’s lawn. I bent down and collected the droppings in a plastic bag because I’m a good guy. I tied off the bag and extended it toward the man, saying, “If you want this, I won’t have it bronzed.”
The man appeared appropriately baffled and gestured toward his trash cans.
I said, “I’ll just put it in the trash over there, then.”
He raised a finger at me and shouted triumphantly, as though he actually believed he had somehow won something in the interaction, “There! You see? I knew you spoke English! I knew it! I knew it! I knew it!”
I matched his tone and pointed back at him, shouting a list of English words that should be Yiddish but aren’t. I said, “Hasten facile! Fashion kettle mint! Spatula, spatula, spatula!”
I discarded the bag in the trash and went home.
Later that afternoon, Sir Corwin the Beautiful Dog-faced Dog, Brindled Beast of Sylmar, asked for a walk and led me straight to the most-favored lawn. Sir Corwin is a striking dog; we’re fairly certain that his father was a Great Dane and his mother was the world’s most satisfied pug. Seeing an unknown dog, the man emerged from his house, presumably to lay claim to the lawn. Then he realized I was the same guy. He froze in his tracks.
While he hesitated, I grinned at him and waved as if we were old friends. I pointed at Sir Corwin and said, “That’s my dog!”
The man said, “There is really something wrong with you!” and slammed back into the house, leaving me alone. So apparently, I should have just let him think that to begin with.
Editor’s note: This commentary from Dylan Brody contains material with strong similarities to a c. 1990 Kids in the Hall sketch. Dylan’s joke about not speaking English is essentially the same as the main joke in the Kids in the Hall sketch “Directions (I speak no English),” from Season 2, Episode 19. When asked about the similarity, Dylan responded, in an email, “I am … fairly confident that I never saw the sketch … as I tend to have a pretty good memory for jokes that I like and who uttered them. If I heard it and internalized it, it was wholly unintentional and unconscious.”
Hammer Museum's new pop-up village re-invents Westwood
Despite being situated on the doorstep of UCLA and near a host of beautiful, affluent neighborhoods, Westwood Village has sort of gone by the wayside in recent years.
Its vintage movie theaters have failed to attract visitors, its restaurants are big and corporate, and many of its storefronts have sat vacant for over a decade. The Hammer Museum has long been trying to court art galleries and other eclectic fare to the neighborhood, but landowners haven't been particularly interested. Until now.
Last year the Goldhirsh Foundation offered its LA2050 prizes to organizations with various ideas about how to shape the future of Los Angeles, and the Hammer pursued and won one of the prizes. Their idea was to build a pop-up village, filled with artists and designers and all kinds of local craftspeople.
"I think it's very clear that one more tanning salon or one more chain store is not going to save this neighborhood," says Ann Philbin, director of the Hammer Museum. She says the neighborhood is surrounded by many wealthy people, but that the village itself is very unhealthy. "You can't have this many storefronts empty for this many years."
The pop-up village is called Arts ReStore, and includes 18 different vendors spread out in various temporarily re-claimed storefronts, including Iko Iko, Loyal Dean, and Iron Curtain Press. The three-week event also includes a series of workshops and performances.
"I'm excited about the idea of picking Westwood up," says Bridgid Coulter, a UCLA graduate whose Santa Monica based design company is showcasing at the event. "It's been sort of desolate for a while. I like that they're bringing the energy in and I'm happy to be participating."
Visit Arts ReStore on Thursdays through Sundays through November 24th. More information at www.artsrestore.la
Martin Mull paints dreams of suburbia 'you didn't know you had' (photos)
Martin Mull's new collection, Martin Mull State of the Union, is on display at Samuel Freeman Gallery (2639 S. La Cienega Blvd LA 90034) through December 14.
Seth Green, Steve Martin, Bob Odenkirk, Eric Idle, Eugene Levy, Martin Short, David Steinberg ... they all hang around with actor Martin Mull because he can ... paint. But you knew that if you listened to Off-Ramp three years ago when Mull explained that he started painting twenty years before he started acting.
From Off-Ramp's interview with Mull in 2010:
Mull has two art degrees, both earned years before he started painting. He says he chose his brand of photo-realism because the viewer trusts a photo, and will start to go into it. Then, Mull says, "I hope they hear the door slam behind them."
His new show continues in the same vein. The big paintings and small pencil drawings at first look like slightly hazy photos of suburbia. But look closer and the quintessential Valley dad has a grimacing clown's face, nudes saunter around fetchingly and acrobats appear out of nowhere.
While comedian and director David Steinberg admits that they're "dark," he won't agree with "unsettling."
"Nothing that doesn't move is unsettling," he says. But writer Allen Rucker says they "read like Raymond Carver stories, so sad, so defeated, so despairing."
And actor Bob Odenkirk says they're "stunning, moving, and strange, and it makes you feel like you're watching a dream." "Your dream," I ask? "It's a dream you didn't know you had."
New LACMA exhibit reveals French filmmaker Agnès Varda in 1968 LA
The installation "Agnès Varda in Californialand" is on view through June 22 at the Broad Contemporary Art Museum at LACMA and is part of LACMA’s Art+Film initiative, which considers "the place of film within a museum context."
When filmmaker Agnès Varda accompanied her husband, director Jacques Demy ("the wonderful Jacques Demy," she calls him), to Los Angeles in the late 1960s, she didn't realize she'd miss Paris' most turbulent time since the Revolution.
So Varda she missed the 1968 Paris student protests. "You cannot get everything," she says with a shrug. But it was a fair trade-off.
"The minute I came to Los Angeles, I liked it very much. The space. The way it is constructed. The palm trees, the ocean and downtown. I liked it very much, and I noticed in the '60s how different it was. What was happening here in '67 was incredible, with Peace and Love, the Vietnam war, marijuana, everybody naked. ... All this was very strong and different from what I knew."
So instead of filming the unrest that brought down French President Charles de Gaulle, she made a groundbreaking film here about the Black Panthers and captured much of the rest of our turbulent '60s.
http://www.youtube.com/embed/HiJ2xpWmmZI
Except for the raccoon-striped hairdo, Varda's appearance is disarming. She looks like a little French grandma, but, at 85, her voice is strong and her memory acute. Yes, that's Varda with the camera on her shoulder, nonplussed, shooting a menage-a-trois back in the day.
We came with our French classical tune, you know, and we got totally overwhelmed by surprise, pleasure, understanding.
Her photos and quotes fill the walls, and in the middle of "Agnès Varda in Californialand" stands a little metal frame house whose walls and ceiling are strips of 35mm film, a positive print of Varda's film "Lions Love" (1969).
"I have the idea that you have to recycle things. If you look at it through it, you have to look at 24 images to get one second, so it's a deconstruction of time."