Pasadena's annual Doo Dah Parade is an artsy, easygoing alternative to the Rose Parade, and our Rosalie Atkinson went to the tryouts for Doo Dah queen ... California’s coast stretches 840 miles, encompassing oil rigs and breathtaking vistas, factories, and glittering cities. It’s never been captured in one art exhibit, until now ... The LA Ladies Arm Wrestling Fall Brawl is Tuesday ... Comedian and commentator Danny Lobell tells us how a tortoise named Mr Tennebaum helped him learn to love living in Los Angeles.
How Leon Russell helped me meet my mom
Off-Ramp intern Rosalie Atkinson on the death of Leon Russell and his place in her life. Russell died Sunday at 74.
I'm a teenager. It's five o'clock and a glow from kitchen lights is spilling out the open front door, guiding my feet up the 4 stairs into my childhood home. Like most nights, I enter to find my mom, Tanya, dancing in front of the stove.
"Stranger in a strange land! Whoaaa-ooooh!" She sings at me, squinting, spinning around our kitchen.
She points at me and I join in. Together we sing, "Stranger in a strange land!" as I dip a finger into a pot of pasta sauce, a cloud of garlic and tomato sauce harmonizing alongside us.
I don't reflect on these moments much because nothing's changed: I know if I were to walk in the door somewhere around dinner time, I'd still find her singing these love songs to her pots and pans. But with the death of musician, songwriter, and fixture in our lives, Leon Russell, I'm forced to issue a letter of gratitude for what his music did to my life.
On Sunday night, in his Nashville home, Leon joined Heaven's band peacefully in his sleep. A member of session musician collective "The Wrecking Crew," Russell quietly tied together albums of the heavy-hitters in American music history: Bob Dylan, George Harrison, B.B. King, Herb Alpert, and so many more. His first commercial success came after writing "Delta Lady," popularized on Joe Cocker's 1969 self-titled album. From then, Russell's songs went on to be performed by the Carpenters, Willie Nelson, the Temptations, and Amy Winehouse.
He was a proud cornerstone of the Nashville music scene, and Leon's experiences in music transcended racial barriers. His music danced across rock, blues, country, pop, and gospel. This versatility helped him build his entirely unique sound; not afraid to bellow crushing minor notes, or screech out twangy ballads through quivering vocal chords. This is the sound wafting through the background of my childhood and memories of my mom that make those moments so important to me now.
Leon Russell was different, unclean, unencumbered by success, unlike so many highly decorated, popular artists. I can remember sitting at the dinner table, tracing the outline of his gray top hat on the cover of Leon Live, watching my mom.
Last summer, I saw Leon perform in Oakland with my mom. We squished into a tiny table at the end of his giant, white grand piano, and watched him as he used his cane to meander to his bench. Without looking at the keys, his hands found their place, his voice found amplication, and my mom and I found joy.
I can still see it today: During Leon's biggest hit "A Song for You," I turn to my mother and I mouth the words, "I love you in a place, where there's no space or time. I love you for my life, you are a friend of mine."
A Song for You (1971) by Leon Russell
After the concert, we hang around the stage door. Eventually, Russell and his entourage emerge and mingle with fans. Many drunken baby-boomer's asking him about working with Elton John, asking to try on his stark white cowboy hat, ambition strikes me and I push through them, with my ticket in one hand and my mom's hand in the other, and I manage to get some important words out:
"Leon, my mom is a huge fan and she played your music for me growing up and now I am a big fan too. Will you sign our tickets?"
Almost animatronic in his movements, he looks at me, and he looks at my mom, then says, "Well gee, I appreciate that. I'll sign 'em right now. You got a camera? Let's take a photo."
Without Leon Russell's music, I wonder if I'd ever have really met my mom.
Before my mom had my brother and me, and she got the moniker "mom," there was a woman who loved vinyl records, who loved Southern rock, and who deeply loved Leon Russell. He introduced me to her spirit and allowed me to share something meaningful with her, besides genetics. He shared with me the woman that slept dormant in her, to be awakened by the sentimentality of a certain album or vocal twang.
For these reasons and more, I will miss you, Leon Russell. But I will always thank you more.
How a tortoise's wanderlust taught a New York snob to love LA
I didn't love LA when I first came here. Moving was my wife's idea. I grew up in New York City, and I thought it was the best place on Earth. I was a typical New York snob. So I came up with a compromise: let's live in Florida for a few weeks. I figured even though LA's a step down from New York, it's a huge step up from Florida.
So off we went to Florida, where we lived south of Orlando in a town on Lake Tohopekaliga. We bought a tortoise there — not a turtle, a tortoise. We called him Mr. Tenenbaum because he looked like an old Jewish man I knew with that name.
When we got to LA, settling in was tough. The city seemed so big and spread out, and we felt very alone. Then, one day, Mr. Tenenbaum escaped.
By this point, Mr. Tenenbaum was a family member. We were devastated. For hours that day, my wife and I exhausted our eyes looking under every rock, over every fence, and in every little nook and cranny we could find until the sun went down. Then we put up fliers.
I stapled a piece of paper with Mr. Tenenbaum's photo to a telephone pole. It said on the bottom “Lost Tortoise.” I was worried people were going to think it was some hipster prank.
I also went door to door to ask my neighbors if they'd seen him. I thought they’d laugh in my face, but they were sympathetic.
One woman did joke with me, though in all fairness, I was asking for it. I’m a heavy guy, and she looked at me deadpan and said, “Let me guess. He outran you?”
I also found out that a lot of people in our neighborhood owned tortoises. And, they escape all the time. One tortoise owner said, “My little homie slow rolled out on me. He turned up two years later in Robertson Park.” I thought about all those police helicopters with searchlights that woke me up at 3am. Were they actually looking for tortoises?
Where did Mr. Tenenbaum go?
Was he heading to Hollywood to act? My wife said that one day we’d be driving through Bel-Air, and we’d see him walking out to his front gate in a silk robe to pick up his morning paper. Or eating breakfast at Nate & Al’s with a bunch of other tortoises, all of them in track suits.
Or maybe he was going back to Florida to rejoin his family. He couldn’t keep up with the fast pace of the big city and longed for those early bird specials at Golden Corral.
After two very long days, we got him back: a little girl two houses away found Mr. Tenenbaum munching on lettuce in her garden. Then we lost him a second time. And a third time. Once, we got a voicemail from the mail carrier. She said she saw Mr. Tenenbaum heading North. She tried to catch him, but couldn't.
See? It's harder than it looks.
The last time he escaped, it was for a week, and he was living with a guy in an apartment across the alley, who fed him Kibbles and Bits from a dog bowl.
We've gotten better since then - we put in a second gate and it’s been over a year since Mr. Tenenbaum’s last breakout.
I figured out the real reason Mr. Tenenbaum left all those times. Every time he escaped, he introduced us New Yorkers to the neighborhood that we now call home. He showed us that the people here are sweet, and kind, and eccentric. Just like in New York. It was our welcome to LA.
REVIEW: PMCA squeezes 840 miles of California's coast into one exhibit
Off-Ramp commentator Marc Haefele reviews "In the Land of Sunshine: Imaging the California Coast Culture," at the Pasadena Museum of California Art through February 19.
I don’t know about you, but it’s what brought me here from New Jersey.
Back East, you only had an Atlantic shore. But in California, you have the real Coast — beaches extending dozens of miles along the ocean they called The Peaceful, fronting the bastions of the pale young mountains rising out of the sea from Tijuana to Oregon. A coast full of flossie-tressed maidens in pink bikinis and noble surfers in blue Speedos. And plenty of fun-fun-fun.
It was a vision you could not avoid, even if you avoided the actuality. Decades of films like “Gidget,” “Pacific Vibrations,” and “The Endless Summer;” music of the Beach Boys, Dick Dale, and Glendora’s Surfaris; and episodic TV ranging from “The Rockford Files” to “Santa Barbara.” Pastel cars fabricated in chilly, soot-streaked Flint bore names like “Malibu” and “Del Rey.”
The images washed over our nation and the world like a storm surge.
So you have to ask, why did it take this long for someone to think up an art show encompassing the essentials of the entire coastal subject? It finally happened at the Pasadena Museum of California Art, and it’s worth seeing.
It’s called “In the Land of Sunshine: Imaging the California Coast Culture.” Curator Gordon T. McClelland has assembled 90 pictures spanning the past century and a half, tracing how industry and society shaped California’s people and landscape. Along with the coastal delights, there are the factories and cement mills, oil wells and canneries. So we’re way beyond Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon here, though that basic vibe is never far away.
The show’s banner piece is Dennis Hare’s “The Cove (Monterey),” a watercolor with brand-name sun tan lotion bottles and blonde, bikinied bodies … and since it’s from 1982, no tattoos. It’s a pleasing work, but it doesn’t amaze the way his newer, non-representational works do.
But McClelland has found some amazing pieces, like Hashimoto Sadahide’s 1862 wood-block triptych “Departing San Francisco.” It’s a thrashing, flashing seascape of clippers and steamers coursing San Francisco Bay in fine mid-19th century Japanese style. How did curator McClelland come up with this one, along with Raymond Yelland’s striking 1884 oil “Golden Gate from Angel Island?”
Both date to the lost decades before promoting and illustrating California became an industry in and of itself. Reaching out to the 1970s, there’s “Pacific Vibrations” a passionate conjunction of Surf and Underground symbolism by tragically short-lived Zap Comix maestro Rick Griffin. It became the film poster for a movie of the same name. The museum wall copy unsurprisingly notes “the artist quit taking psychedelic drugs shortly after the painting was completed.”
Water colorists dominated so much of California’s outdoor art over the last century that it’s no real surprise that they’re well represented in a special sanctuary at the PMCA, out of the bright lights.
There are fine works from the big West Coast names, like Millard Sheets, Rex Brandt, and Lee Blair, plus others less well known but well worth encountering. Their decades of watercolor experimentation in technique, style, and pigmentation in the great California Coastal art laboratory, most perfectly evoke a thousand miles of our ever-evolving seafront and its myriad lifestyles that somehow, with this show, now belong to us all.
It takes more than exposing a breast to be crowned Queen of Doodah
Typically when crowning a queen, poise and grace are considered paramount. But when crowning the queen of the Pasadena Doodah Parade- judges are looking for contestants with a certain chutzpah.
In 1978, some friends gathered in then Old Town Pasadena at local dive Chromo's and began to plan a parade in response to the Tournament of Roses. Organizer Tom Coston was among the initial founders and says the parade wasn't to mock the Tournament but rather to give a voice to the thriving artist community in Pasadena, "They wanted to go out and share their creative side and do something fun and silly, not take themselves too seriously. [We] never imagined there would be another DooDah parade. It caught fire. It got a lot of attention."
Since it's inception, Doodah has inspired dozens of sister parades across the country. Tom continues to say the parade exists to give people a break from their usual routines, "Someday called it once 'a right of reversal'. Everybody at some point in the year should do the opposite thing from what they would normally do. Like in the old days they used to say 'let your freak flag fly'."
In 1995, the Lightbringer Project inherited the parade. The nonprofit provides art classes and education for the Pasadena community, to keep the wacky alternative side of the city alive. Another popular event run by the org is the Pasadena Chalk Festival, the largest street painting festival in the world.
We attended the annual Doodah Queen Competition on October 22nd at American Legion Post 280 in Pasadena. We what discovered is there are really no rules to the competition besides the 3-minute limit to audition. Men, women, and dogs auditioned for the chance at royalty.
City council member and longtime judge of the queen tryouts Ann Erdman told us that auditions are not an opportunity to shock the audience, "The person should bring something interesting into the game other than exposing a breast- been there, done that, seen it. Just something that is unique and new that will capture the public’s heart."
A contestant by the stage name "Hillary" audition wearing a fuzzy rainbow pantsuit and Hillary Clinton mask. During their three minutes, "Hillary" danced around the stage holding up signs with politically charged messages.
This year's Doodah queen is Ruby Chard, also known as local landscaper Meg Cole. Meg was a close friend of Snotty Scotty, lead singer of the official Doodah parade band Snotty Scotty & the Hankies. Snotty Scotty, or John Scott Finnell, passed away this year and his absence was felt throughout the evening by contestants, organizers, and loyal fans.
After accepting her crown Meg tells us, "We miss Snotty Scotty. I wanted to be queen for Snotty Scotty!"
Here is a video of the latest Doodah Queen elect and Snotty Scotty outside Chromo's from 1979.
Off-Ramp encourages listeners to check out this year's Doodah parade for a much needed dose of color, music, and irreverence. And while you are there, raise a glass to art, freedom, and Snotty Scotty.
The parade steps off on November 20th, at 11am along Colorado Blvd here in Pasadena.
Song of the Week: The Regrettes 'Seashore'
More reaction to the Trump election came in this week from The Regrettes, a band from Eagle Rock with the song, "Seashore." The band is frontwoman Lydia Night, Genessa Gariano on guitar, Sage Chavis on bass, and drummer Maxx Morando.
You can hear them live Saturday during their gig at the Constellation Room in Santa Ana paired with Sleigh Bells, Tom Misch, and The Mr. T Experience.
In this chaotic arm wrestling tournament, the real winner is charity
What do a nun covered in blood, a Martian princess, and a crazy crafty cat lady have in common? They will be raising money for charity next Tuesday via one of America's most cherished past times: arm wrestling.
Next Tuesday, the Bootleg Theater will host the Los Angeles Ladies Arm Wrestling Fall Brawl. In its 4th year, the ultimate purpose of the tournament is to raise money for organizations such as Homegirl Cafe and Chicas Rockeras. Tournaments are notorious for being raucous and wild, but at a recent orientation, the mood is calm.
"We want to make sure we've got our ground rules covered so no one gets hurt and everyone has a good time," says league commissioner Amanda McRaven. McRaven says there have never been any serious injuries in the Los Angeles league, but it doesn't mean they can't happen. That's why Offramp's Taylor Orci is paying close attention. She attended orientation to learn how to referee the upcoming Fall Brawl.
"In other leagues, women have literally broken their arms," says Provvidenza Catalano, who arm wrestles as Sister Patricia Pistolwhip. She explains the ladies in this event run little risk of that happening since most of the matches are more for the theatrics than the real sport. But she reminds Orci not to be a lazy ref just because they're not wrestling to out and out win. "If I get too much blood on this thing," Pistolwhip gestures to the glittering arm wrestling table, "call time out and wipe that thing down." Later, upon further examination of the table she remarks fondly, "Aw, some of my blood from last year is still on this thing."
Need to get out a good scream? The Los Angeles Ladies Arm Wrestling Fall Brawl is Tuesday, November 15 at 7 p.m. at the Bootleg Theater. Click here for tickets.