New documentary "Dear Mr. Watterson" ... Roz Wyman remembers plotting a JFK fundraiser that had Sinatra singing on the diving board ... Mark Twain is getting much better at writing his memoirs
'Dear Mr. Watterson,' we miss Calvin and Hobbes!
"Coming at a new work requires a certain amount of patience and energy, and there’s always the risk of disappointment. You can’t really blame people for preferring more of what they already know and like. The trade-off, of course, is that predictability is boring. Repetition is the death of magic." -- Bill Watterson in Mental Floss on why he killed "Calvin and Hobbes"
Like a sped-up flower in a nature film, "Calvin and Hobbes" appeared, blossomed, and ended in just over ten years: from November 1985 to December 1995. In the final strip, Calvin looked at the newly fallen snow and declared, “It’s a magical world, Hobbes, ol’ buddy.” But since “Calvin and Hobbes” left the comics page, readers have had to find that magic somewhere else.
Joel Allen Schroeder’s documentary “Dear Mr. Watterson” explores how "Calvin and Hobbes" continues to influence comic strip artists and comic strip fans almost two decades after the duo tobogganed out of our lives.
It was the most popular and highly praised comic strip to appear in the newspapers since "Peanuts" debuted in 1950. It ran in more than 2,400 papers and collections of the strip have sold over 30-million copies. The National Cartoonists' Society gave Watterson its Reuben Award for outstanding cartoonist of the year twice. Watterson left an enormous hole in the comics page when he retired, a hole no strip has filled.
Schroeder grew up with “Calvin and Hobbes,” and has clearly never gotten over the loss.
("Dear Mr. Watterson" filmmaker Joel Schroeder in his Kickstarter campaign video)
Schroeder visits Watterson’s home town and the archives at Ohio State University, where the original strips are preserved—an experience comparable to one of the faithful making a pilgrimage to see a sacred relic.
In “Dear Mr. Watterson,” Schroeder talks with fans, experts, and some of today’s top cartoonists: Berkeley Breathed, Stephan Pastis, Jef Mallett, Bill Amend, and Hilary Price.
Absent from the film is Watterson himself, who is the J.D. Salinger of the comics, refusing to make public appearances or give interviews — behavior that seemed eccentric, if not downright un-American in the era of the Kardashians.
At a time when merchandising and hype often count for more than substance, "Calvin and Hobbes" achieved its popularity solely through the printed page. Watterson refuses to license his characters for films, T-shirts, stuffed toys or other products, turning down literally tens of millions of dollars.
Some good strips have appeared in recent years, notably “Zits,” “Mutts,” “Get Fuzzy,” and "Frazz." But too many artists have concentrated on political screeds, niche marketing, recycled gags and licensing, rather than good drawing, originality and accurate reflections of life in 21st century America. Perhaps it was inevitable that “Calvin and Hobbes,” like Arthur’s Camelot, could exist for only a brief time.
“Dear Mr. Watterson” is Schroeder’s first film, so it’s not surprising it has its weak spots. It’s a little long, and it suffers from multiple endings—a problem that vexes many experienced filmmakers these days. But it’s a loving tribute to the lost land of magic that existed in the imaginations of an 8-year-old boy and singularly talented cartoonist.
After watching the film, viewers will go home, thumb through their old copies of “Something Under the Bed is Drooling” or “Yukon Ho,” and continue sharing Schroeder’s reverie on that lost magic.
Full disclosure: The expert in "Dear Mr. Watterson" who talks about Watterson’s influence and complains about Garfield products becoming a "national blight" is Off-Ramp commentator Charles Solomon. Joel Schroeder is married to Lynne Slattery, KPCC Major Gifts Manager.
(Note from Off-Ramp host John Rabe: I've replaced the audio that accompanies this story. I mistakenly recorded the cuts from the documentary out-of-phase, so if you were wondering where the sound went, that was it. Sorry for the inconvenience.)
LA Kitchen's job training for ex-cons, foster kids
Robert Egger calls it "Homeboy Industries meets the Food Bank."
For decades, Egger ran DC Central Kitchen in Washington, a job training program that used donated food from food service companies and farms. Now, he's bringing the concept to Los Angeles and calling it L.A. Kitchen.
"This time, we're going to offer young men and women aging out of foster care, and older men and women coming back from prison, the chance to work side by side, in kind of an inter-generational, peer-mentoring job training program," Egger said.
I spoke with Egger at LA Kitchen's new headquarters (the old HQ was his house in Mount Washington) on West Avenue 26 in L.A.'s Lincoln Heights neighborhood. It's a huge industrial space with plenty of room for kitchens, cold storage, training and more.
Here's how it works, in a nutshell: The food comes in, much of it surplus or blemished food from farms in the Central Valley. The trainees and thousands of volunteers at L.A. Kitchen process it into meals, with the emphasis on meals for seniors. (Egger is working with what he says is the first ever $1 million grant from the AARP to help feed the growing population of seniors.)
Egger said that dedication of the program in Lincoln Heights is set for Dec. 10. The demo begins after that, with the goal of opening in time for the new school year in 2014.
JFK assassination: City archives reveal how LA coped on that day 50 years ago
Michael Holland is the Los Angeles City Archivist and a passionate historian. He was only 2 years old on Nov. 22, 1963, too young for a memory of the day. So he turned to Los Angeles' archives to see how L.A. handled and processed that weekend 50 years ago. Holland's piece first appeared in the city of L.A. employee newspaper Alive.
The City Council was in regular Friday session. They’d approved a height limit district for high-rise construction for a section of Los Feliz Boulevard when the news came in about the shooting in Dallas. According to the Council minutes “Mr. Lindsay – that’s Gilbert Lindsay – the first black councilman – moved , seconded by Mrs. Wyman – that’s Rosalind Wyman – the only woman on the Council at that time – that the Council do now adjourn.”
It is not clear where everyone went after the meeting ended, but you can bet it was any office in City Hall with a radio or TV.
Council File 11-63-38 contains some of the documents and artifacts that fill in some of the details of what happened over the next few days.
The emergency forced people to rearrange their schedules. Councilman Lindsay’s 1963 daily reminder included a 2:30 meeting in Room M-42 in City Hall Friday afternoon and a 7 p.m. event at the Ambassador Hotel with the Mexican Chamber of Commerce. Both events are crossed out with the notation “President Kennedy killed,” and the next three days on the schedule are crossed out “cancel on account of Kennedy.”
Rosalind Wyman, who had been active in the Kennedy campaign during the 1960 Democratic convention in Los Angeles, now went about coordinating a memorial observance to take place on the steps of City Hall.
Meanwhile, Council president John Gibson ordered the city clerk to send a telegram to every councilmember requesting them to attend a special session that would declare a local day of mourning for Monday, Nov. 25. Mayor Sam Yorty wrote a letter to the council pointing out he didn’t have the authority to declare a legal holiday or a day of mourning without their concurrence. The meeting took place in the Council Chamber at City Hall at 10 a.m. on Sunday, Nov. 24, the first Sunday meeting anyone could remember.
The special session lasted only 10 minutes. An official resolution was read into the record and approved by the entire council. Councilman Billy Mills read an invocation, which included the following: “Jesus Christ, Ghandi, Medgar Evers and John Fitzgerald Kennedy have given us a standard … freedom, justice, equality, righteousness, godliness, moral emancipation for all men.”
A Los Angeles Times clipping in the file recounted another bit of history taking place on that Sunday in Dallas: “The session had barely gotten underway when news of the fatal shooting of Lee Harvey Oswald was flashed. Councilmen greeted it somberly.”
The public observances began Sunday afternoon at the Sports Arena, where Kennedy had been nominated as his party’s candidate three summers earlier. The L.A. Times reported the attendance surpassing 7,000 Angelenos.
That evening, by order of the mayor, lighted windows on all four sides of City Hall formed a cross and remained lighted all night long.
Although he was not a fixture in Los Angeles, Kennedy visited several times as President – the last time in June 1963. The scrapbooks of Gilbert Lindsay and John Ferraro contain several photos of his visits. There are also several images of the memorial on the steps of City Hall.
The Los Angeles Times reported that buses and trains stopped for one minute at 9 a.m. local time that Monday to coincide with the start of the late president’s requiem mass in Washington. People gathered on the City Hall steps facing Spring Street at noon and grieved on a sunny afternoon in Los Angeles.
The next day, Tuesday, Nov. 26, 1963, the city returned to business as usual.
JFK assassination 50 years later: Ex LA Councilwoman Rosalind Wyman recalls happier times
On the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, there will be plenty of sad stories (including on Off-Ramp) about the day he was killed and the shock it gave the nation. So we thought we'd go back a few years, to a happier time, when JFK filled so many people with hope for the future.
In 1960, LA City Councilwoman Rosalind Wyman was not yet 30. She'd already helped bring the Dodgers to L.A. and convinced the Kennedy campaign to let JFK give his acceptance speech, as the Democratic nominee for President, at the Los Angeles Coliseum.
JFK at the 1960 Democratic National Convention
Now, another daunting task: convincing a Republican to let her ruin his back yard for a JFK fundraiser.
I sat with Wyman, now 83, at her home in Bel Air as she told a story that touched on pretty much every aspect of life in L.A.: money, politics, Hollywood, unions ... even parking.
In September of 1960, after Kennedy had been nominated at the Democratic National Convention, Wyman says she and her fellow Democratic leaders were worried that California might still favor Adlai Stevenson.
"We decided that we ought to find out if anybody likes him, and if we could raise some money," she recalls. The answer: Hold a fundraiser. "So I went to my dear friends, Janet Leigh and Tony Curtis, who were the darlings of Hollywood at that point."
Janet Leigh and Tony Curtis, seen here with Mrs. and Mr. Jerry Lewis in 1952, were one of the most glamorous couples in Hollywood. (LAPL Herald-Examiner Collection)
Wyman told Leigh that maybe 150 people would attend, and that they would mostly be confined to the couple's back yard. But soon, Wyman had good news and bad news. The good news was that Kennedy seemed to have a lot of support in L.A. The bad news was the RSVPs for the fundraiser were pouring in: 100, 200, 300, 400, 500. They'd need more space.
So Wyman met with the actors' next door neighbor, Jo Van Runkle, and asked if they could use his yard. "I told him what the event was, it was for John Kennedy's campaign, and he said, 'Are you kidding? I'm a Republican!' ... And I said, 'I'll overlook that.'"
Van Runkle agreed on the condition he got to meet his neighbors, a get-together at which, Wyman says, the Leigh-Curtises charmed Van Runkle.
RELATED: JFK assassination: City archives reveal how L.A. coped on that day 50 years ago
Kennedy's popularity (and maybe the fact that Frank Sinatra was going to sing?) brought fresh trouble. The RSVPs grew to 1,500. So, Wyman says, she got some flowers and some candy and made one more visit to Mr. Van Runkle. Listen to our interview to find out what she asked, where Sinatra perched when he crooned to the crowd, and how the bricklayers union was involved.
After wrapping up her story, Wyman, sitting on a low chair in the living room/screening room of her home, inevitably fast-forwards a thousand days or so to Nov. 22, 1963. This is the house in which Sen. Hubert Humphrey chose to stay. The house in which photos of Wyman and a "Who's Who" of American politics cover the walls.
"You wonder, " she says quietly. "If he'd lived, what would be? What would he have done? Would we be on a different parade these many years? You just wonder."
Volume 2 of Mark Twain 'Autobiography' a rewarding read
"There is one thing which fills me with wonder and reverence every time I think of it-and that is the confident and splendid fight for supremacy which the house-fly makes against the human being. Man, by his inventive ingenuity, has in the course of the ages, by help of diligence and determination, found ways to acquire and establish his mastery over every living creature under the vault of heaven-except the house-fly. With the house-fly he has always failed. The house-fly is as independent of him to-day as he was when Adam made his first grab for one and didn't get him. The house-fly defies all man's inventions for his subjugation or destruction. No creature was ever yet devised that could meet man on his own level and laugh at him and defy him, except the house-fly."
-- "The Supremacy of the House-Fly" from "Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 2"
When’s the last time anyone told you: “I am saying this as a dead person”?
Well, Mark Twain told us that three years ago, when he posthumously permitted the University of California Press to publish Volume 1 of his prodigiously informative and frustrating so-called “Autobiography.” Touted by dozens of favorable reviews, widely publicized as a publishing coup, the book was a top seller for weeks.
But by then there was some buyer’s remorse. The chunky Volume 1 contained just 250 pages of actual Twain, entombed among many more pages of notes, introductions, etc. It was like the heart of an artichoke, surrounded by hundreds of gnarly leaves.
Also, much of what there was of Twain himself was not just rambling, but often random—much as you’d expect of the ruminations of a 70ish sage, self-consciously trying to recall his complex life into the ear of a patient stenographer.
But now we have Volume 2 of what looks to be a 3-volume UC Press project. Happily, it comes minus its predecessor’s surplus hoopla. It’s not likely to sell nearly as well, but it's a far more rewarding book.
Twain’s finally learned to dictate pretty much as he wrote—in elegant paragraphs that tend to evolve from wild assertions to sly punch lines. The narration still wanders, but it’s now more rambling than random.
Most importantly, this book contains far more — 450 pages — of the essential Twain, a broad, human landscape between the horizons of utter sentimentality and a profound, deeply earned bitterness.
Here are his strongest opinions, on the U.S. Congress (no better then than our own), on his older brother Orion — whose career descended from acting Governor of Nevada to Iowa chicken farmer — of publishers in general (very low; but, in fairness to them, Twain cut himself some terrific royalties).
And of God and Christianity, both of which he utterly despised. He called the Bible “The most damnatory biography that exists in print everywhere,” and said said God “makes Nero an angel of light.”
From time to time, he calls down himself. A man who never figured out how to read a contract or pick a sound investment, he plunged his family repeatedly into bankruptcy until he was finally rescued by his fabulously wealthy Gilded Age Godfather, Henry Rogers. Twain’s constant cussing out of the rich and mighty of his time contrasts vividly with his occasional fawning dependence on them.
Much of this has been told before, but never as well as he tells it himself. Particularly when it comes to his glancing depictions of his mounting family tragedy, which sundered his lifetime with the deaths of three out his four children and his beloved wife Livy.
Underlining the sadness is the book’s frequent quotation from the first-ever Twain biography, begun by daughter Suzy as a schoolchild, left unfinished at her death by meningitis at 24.
(Mark Twain's daughter Suzy Twain. (The Mark Twain House and Museum)
With Volume 2, the loud and lofty promise of the original UC Twain project finally starts to fulfill itself — we’ve not just shreds and shards of a self-told life, but a unique and goodly part of the entire man in full.
There may be more accessible biographies than this one, but there is no better avenue to understanding the exultant and terrible life of the greatest humorist in English since Shakespeare.
3 reasons you should dry brine your turkey this Thanksgiving
With Thanksgiving on the horizon, Turkey is on the mind of thousands of Angelenos: where to buy it, how to prepare it and what, if anything, you can do with your bird to keep it from being nasty and dry.
Russ Parsons, the food editor for the Los Angeles Times, champions an uncommon method that's getting more and more acceptance: Dry brining.
Recently, Parsons says, the culinary magazine Bon Appétit embraced the concept of dry brining: In essence, a rub that you apply to a turkey about three days before cooking it. The rub can contain salt, pepper, herbs or any other aromatics in your kitchen.
Here are three reasons dry brining is the way to go, Parsons says:
1. It tastes better
"You know how turkey, even if it's just the slightest bit overcooked, the breast just turns to sawdust? That's why people only eat turkey once a year," Parsons says.
With dry brining, the salt draws moisture out of the bird, flavors it, and the turkey soaks it back in, taking in the essence of the seasonings with it.
"The flavor is amazing," says Parsons. "Because the turkey gets seasoned all the way through. And the color, it browns up really well because it pulls proteins to the surface."
With wet brining, on the other hand, Parson says the texture is problematic. "[It's] a little mushy. It absorbs too much water. The meat gets kind of spongy. When you dry brine, the meat stays really firm, but it still holds moisture ... when you cook it."
2. It's easy to do
Imagine you have a 15 pound turkey in your house. Want to do a wet brine? Find a bucket in your house big enough and clean enough to hold a bird and the water to brine it in. That's just the beginning of your challenges.
"A lot of people have been using wet brining for a long time," says Parsons. "And I've been doing that, too. But that involves, like, sticking the turkey in a big bucket of salty water. And you got to find some place to store that. I mean, it's just a mess."
3. Chefs have been dry brining for years
Ask any San Francisco chef or foodie about roast chicken, and and they'll inevitably bring up Zuni Cafe. "The dry brine is not something that I invented," Parsons says. "Judy Rogers, from Zuni Cafe in San Francisco — she's built an empire on roast chicken. And this is the technique she uses for the roast chicken. I simply adapted it and used it for a turkey."
The transition to turkey is natural. And, at just a tablespoon of salt per five pounds of turkey, you end up using less salt than a wet brine. Compared to a roast chicken, says Parsons, "It's a just a bigger bird."
Want to know more? The L.A. Times has launched a brand new database of searchable holiday recipes, including several dry brines. Take a look!