How gays and lesbians turned to science fiction to explore themes banned on Earth; Dam Funk calls for increased fantasy; remembering artist Noah Davis and the SoCal years of Oliver Sacks
How gay rights got its start in science fiction
It sounds like a dystopian science fiction novel: Writers in crowded basements, operating under pseudonyms and code words to build networks with the like-minded without attracting the ire of a watchful government.
But it’s true – gay and lesbian writers and activists who wanted to connect with others in the LGBT community in the 1940s could only do so with pseudonyms and double entendre. And they were able to do it with the help of another burgeoning movement with roots in Los Angeles – science fiction.
Jim Kepner's "Toward Tomorrow" magazine. Courtesy ONE Archives/USC.
“Everybody in this particular time is using a pseudonym to cover for their gay activities,” says Joseph Hawkins, professor at University of Southern California and director of the ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives at USC. “So, if they openly go out and do gay activities, they get blacklisted by the American government.”
Deep within the ONE archives, Hawkins made a discovery. Jim Kepner is famous in LGBT history for co-founding the nation’s first gay magazine, as Lisa Ben (whose real name is Edythe Edye) is for founding the first lesbian magazine. But these two LGBT revolutionaries found an unlikely ally in the science fiction community, which not only allowed them to imagine a more equal future, but connect with others under their pseudonyms: Jyke (Kepner) and Tigrina the Devil Doll (Ben).
“I’ve always been completely obsessed with science fiction,” says Hawkins. “And then when I began to realize how much Kepner was and how much Lisa Ben was - they were actually using science fiction publications to figure out what they wanted to do with gay and lesbian magazines.”
Lisa Ben -- an anagram for “lesbian” -- would go on to found the nation’s first lesbian magazine, "Vice Versa," in 1947. Six years later, Jim Kepner would co-found "ONE Magazine," dubbed “the homosexual magazine,” which was in circulation for over a decade. Their revolutionary work would spur the early gay rights movement, as well as win the first Supreme Court cases for LGBT people.
A page from a science fiction fan zine from the 1940s, with Ray Bradbury and Tigrina (Lisa Ben). Courtesy ONE Archives/USC
“Each of them has these particular science fiction covers, so Lisa Ben writing as Tigrina or Kepner writing as Jyke will produce these incredible fan zines.” Hawkins said. Both Kepner and Ben were well-known science fiction writers in Los Angeles, writing in well-known magazines and members of fan clubs, along with Ray Bradbury and L. Ron Hubbard.
“This provides a sort of proving ground where they learn how to organize, how to create networks for publication,” Hawkins says. “If you think about it, Lisa Ben and "Vice Versa," and "ONE Magazine" owe, to some extent, their foundation to that early science fiction publication.”
But Ben and Kepner didn’t just save their activist writing for "Vice Versa" and "ONE." Their science fiction writing was full of their desires for a more equal world.
“It was all over the place,” Hawkins said. “Some of it is clouded, some of it’s not. Kepner and Lisa Ben weren’t just talking about gay rights, they were talking about feminism, racial equality – the thing is science fiction was a place they could do all that because they were imagining a new world.”
Courtesy ONE Archives/USC.
Kepner and Ben, as Jyke and Tigrina, were both devoted members of the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society, which met weekly in the basement of the Prince Rupert Arms near downtown Los Angeles to imagine a future of technological marvels and social equality.
The society still exists. Now in Van Nuys, it’s the oldest running science fiction society in the world, and holds members just as devoted as Kepner and Ben once were, like June Moffatt, who joined the society in August 1947 when she was a teenager. She says she “only met Tigrina once” but she knew Kepner quite well.
“He was good fun,” says Moffatt. Moffatt knew Kepner was gay and an activist, but he was still just “one of the gang. I remember once sitting down next to [Kepner] and telling him he was in danger,” Moffatt says, laughing. “I was flirting with him.”
MOCA curator on artist Noah Davis: 'A little window is closed'
The late Noah Davis' brother Kahlil Joseph told the L.A. Times Davis had his own studio when he was a teenager. "By the time he was 17, he was a full-on artist. He was making paintings by then." Later, he opened The Underground Museum.
Davis died Saturday of a rare cancer, at just 32, and MOCA's chief curator fought back tears as she talked with me about him.
Helen Molesworth says, "In losing Noah Davis at this juncture, we lose a possibility, and I think we all know that, and that's what's so devastating about the loss. We know Noah made impossible things possible, and when you lose someone like that, you know a little window has closed somewhere, a light flickers. You've lost a potential." It's much different, she says, than when an old artist with a full life and career goes gently.
But although Davis died too young, he had already accomplished more than many artists who live and work much longer. "When I look at the output of paintings," says Molesworth, "I always forget that he's 32. That's on par with someone in their mid-50's. and by that I mean both the quantity and also the complexity. Noah had a preternatural talent and sensibility."
Davis opened The Underground Museum in L.A.'s Arlington Heights neighborhood to bring the arts to a sort of arts desert, and Molesworth says when he couldn't get major institutions to lend him art, he made his own imitations of famous works, including Marcel Duchamp, On Kawara, and Jeff Koons.
This became his "Imitation of Wealth" exhibit at the Underground Museum, now recreated on MOCA's plaza. "This is a show about desire and what you can't have," she says. "And 'Imitation of Wealth' is of course an allusion to Douglas Sirk's movie 'Imitation of Life,' in which the protagonist is a young woman who leaves her African-American family to go into the white world."
Songwriter and producer Dam Funk: 'I stayed with the funk,' straight through his new album
Dam Funk is a songwriter, singer and producer who’s paid his dues. Born Damon Riddick in Pasadena, Dam Funk’s music elevated and celebrated funk at a time when it wasn’t fashionable, uploading songs to Myspace and celebrating when they got 13 plays.
Now, fans listen to his music worldwide. He's been signed to Los Angeles' Stones Throw Records since 2008 and he collaborated on a full album with Snoop Dogg in 2013.
Then all of a sudden, funk became fashionable again — Mark Ronson’s “Uptown Funk” stayed at Billboard's number one spot for 14 weeks last year, while its video took Best Male Video and was nominated for Video of the Year at Sunday's MTV Video Music Awards. One of the biggest albums of the year, Kendrick Lamar’s "To Pimp a Butterfly," samples several hit funk songs and features appearances by George Clinton and Ron Isley of the Isley Brothers.
Dam Funk’s newest album came out this week — it’s called “Invite the Light.” Off-Ramp producer Kevin Ferguson met Riddick at his home to talk the new album and funk’s newfound place in the spotlight.
On collaborating with Snoop Dogg for "7 Days of Funk":
It was a pleasure to work with Snoop. Just like it was a pleasure to work with Steve [Arrington, of the funk group Slave], and anybody I've collaborated with. All the people I've collaborated with, it's been an organic vibe. It wasn't something the label chose, or something like that.
Me and Snoop have been knowing each other for a minute. You know, back and forth, seeing each other at different places, and we have a similar background. He was born the same year as me, right across the freeway from each other — him in Long Beach, me in Pasadena.
We should've been friends before. But sometimes things in the game are different. I was always on my own in the musical world of L.A. I didn't come up in the same circles as a lot of the cats in the scene that I'm from. And I think Snoop recognized that, I think, it was unique and refreshing, that he was able to work with someone that didn't come up in those same circles.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEu_ARi0Fc8
On the renaissance of funk music:
At one point, when I was being very musical and letting people know about funk, boogie and even disco, this city was so focused on beats — they had a whole blips and bleeps thing. I love everything that new generations come up with and the kids experiment with, but there's something timeless about funk, rock, jazz, the biggies. It's not for an unknown reason: they're great songwriters, they're great musicians.
And I'm glad that I'm affiliated and aligned with that type of history, because I understand what you're saying, that people are catching up. But at one point it was almost like I was a laughing stock in L.A. The boogie, the disco funk... it's like now, you look up five years later, and of course that album [Kendrick Lamar's "To Pimp a Butterfly"] has all those elements now. The demographic of people that are into that record were not into [this] style literally five years ago.
There's no complaints, I'm not bitter. I stayed with the funk. And now people are realizing that it's a viable music that they can respect and not just write off as like some Dave Chappelle, Rick James joke.
On calling funk and heavy metal "the dirty lost cousins of rock and soul"
I just feel like heavy metal, and metal, if you will, we're the people who were able to take things further. A louder distortion pedal in metal, or a crazier synthesizer solo in funk. Whereas the other genres that are related to our genres are a little bit confined into a capsule, or cubicle if you will, of the way that it's expected to be heard.
And also, even the dress codes. If you look at the metalers back in the day, they were like louder than the regular rockers with just jeans and a T-shirt. And then funk, look at P-Funk. They looked different than some of the soul singers.
But then again, what I've been trying to do is shake that image. If people could see how I am right now, it's like, funk can be made by people who don't have platform shoes on.
But I like that theatrical thing, too. I think that a lot of that is missing. Kiss is one of my favorite groups — I had their posters all over my wall. That attracted me, it was fun. You ordered the belt buckles, you'd roll with the logo on [a] T-shirt. That's what's missing! A lot of the music now doesn't have that fantasy effect. Everything is real, real, real. That's what, sometimes I mess around with people on social media: I say, "Man, F keeping it real. Let's keep it fantasy!"
On his music's positive message and its impact on fans
About four weeks ago a gentleman tweeted outwardly to people, he said, "If it wasn't for you, when I met you in Houston, I would've killed myself that night."
I just didn't know what to say, but music is powerful. And also, the way you treat people.
"Invite the Light" is out now on Stones Throw Records.
RIP Oliver Sacks —His wild formative years were in Southern California
He was a big young man with big ideas when he came to live near Muscle Beach in 1962. He loved to take solo rides to the Grand Canyon on his BMW motorcycle and he surfed off Venice. He fell in with the local bodybuilders. And after he bulked up to 260 pounds, Oliver Sacks was able to squat lift 575 pounds. The locals started calling him Dr. Squat.
Oliver Sacks lived here during his residency at UCLA Medical Center. Twelve years later, he published his first bestselling book, “Awakenings.” Sacks died last Sunday after a 60-year career as doctor, pioneering researcher and a writer who turned cases of rare afflictions into chronicles of the poetry of human existence. More than a million of his books are in print. They’ve been made into famous films, plays — even an opera.
Some of Sacks’ most formative experiences took place here in the Southland of the early ‘60s. Later, explaining why he left UCLA to work in New York, he said, “Living there was too easy and too sweet — easy, sleazy. … I needed ugly and violent, ferocious and challenging.”
But reading of his life at that time in his last published book, “On the Move: A Life,” you get the idea that there was nothing in the least easy or sweet about Sacks’ L.A. years — they were filled with ferocious challenges.
(Sacks in SoCal in the 1960s. Credit: Oliver Sacks)
He had here his early struggles with his gay identity — he was celibate from his 30s until he was 75, when he met the love of his life, to whom he dedicated his last book — along with ensuing, difficult relationships. He got into a couple of biker brawls. He had a mad drive to prove himself as a body surfer in Venice (where he dislocated a shoulder and broke a few ribs) and a Muscle Beach muscle man.
The struggle to set a state record earned him a back injury he lived with for 30 years — until his sciatica took over. “I became strong, very strong, but this did nothing for my character, which remained exactly the same,’’ he wrote. “Shy and unselfconfident.”
Oliver Sacks would find his confidence not in the gym, but in his work. Particularly with patients — he once took a terminally ill woman for a last bike ride up and down Topanga Canyon Boulevard, a foreshadowing of the benign, caring human interactions in his next job that later brought him success and fame in “Awakenings” and “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat.”
But he had also acquired a dangerous amphetamine addiction, and felt he badly needed a change. When he got a job offer at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, he decided to take it. Although he returned to work briefly at the Salk Institute in San Diego many years later, the rest of his career was spent in New York.
He wrote, “I sometimes wonder why I have spent more than 50 years in New York, when it was the West — especially the Southwest — that enthralled me. I now have many ties in New York…but I have never felt it move me the way California did. I suspect my nostalgia may not only be for the place itself, but for youth, and a very different time, and for being in love, and being able to say, 'The future is before me.'”
Police commission President Steve Soboroff on rollout of LAPD body cams
Monday, LAPD officers in San Fernando Valley cities - the department's Mission Division - will start wearing body cams. Other divisions will follow, first from 860 cameras paid for with private donations, then from the 7,000 cameras authorized in the city budget over the next two years.
L.A. will become the biggest city to adopt the cameras, but how the video they collect will be used has been part of a contentious debate. I spoke at length about the issue with the President of the Police Commission, Steve Soboroff.
Click the blue player to hear what he had to say about the historic rollout.
Heino impersonator Marc Hickox highlights our SoCal Oktoberfest roundup
Friends, raise a glass to King Ludwig I, who in 1810 married Princess Therese of Saxe-Hildburghausen and started the public festival that became known as Oktoberfest. Here's the king in his traditional Oktoberfest outfit and haircut:
Despite its name, Oktoberfest starts in September. I don't know why, but does it really matter? In any case, here's just a sample of the many Oktoberfests in Southern California. If you know of another, please add it in the comments section.
Alpine Village
I have no reason to dispute Alpine Village's claim to the largest and oldest Oktoberfest in SoCal, generally running weekends from Sept. 11 to Oct. 31 in Torrance.
(Marc Hickox as Heino at Alpine Village Oktoberfest 2011. Credit: John Rabe/KPCC)
And surely the most bizarrely wonderful attraction at Alpine Village is Marc Hickox's tribute to the German phenomenon Heino, who has sold more than 50 million records, more than Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, or even David Hasselhoff. With more added reverb than an 80-year-old Frank Sinatra, Heino sings Schlager und Volksmusik, sentimental tunes about German things... like Mom.
And the Mutters sure do love him:
What is Heino, I asked my German colleague Alex Schaffert. She replied, "I can't explain it." But again, does it matter? Hickox — who is actually a brunette Canadian actor — says he plays Heino as the "international sensation that happens halfway through the night."
To be clear, Hickox calls himself Heino!, not Heino. But he says the real Heino seems to not take himself too seriously and has not tried to stop him or the other Heino impersonators.
To hear our entire conversation, click on the blue audio player that magically turns orange.
(Credit: Alpen Vagabunden)
Old World
Alpen Vagabunden is one of the featured bands at Old World in Huntington Beach, which throws its 39th annual Oktoberfest Sunday, Sept. 13 through Sunday, Nov. 1, with dachshund races, Oktoberfest babes and a $5 Kinderfest. VIP tickets (which let you skip the line), are $40 most days, but admission is only $10 at the door. Admission is free on Wednesday and Thursday, 6:30-10:30 p.m.
More celebrations
Big Bear Lake throws an Oktoberfest celebration weekends from Sept. 19 to Oct. 31. It's their 45th annual. Dana Point's runs Oct. 17 & 18, and supposedly has more German handcraft beers than any other Oktoberfest in the region.
If meat sausage isn't your thing...
...there's the Vegan Oktoberfest in downtown Los Angeles Oct. 3 & 4 at L.A. Center Studios, 450 S. Bixel Street 90017. You can dance like a chicken with a clear conscience.
For something more laid back:
The German-American League, which has its clubhouse at 1843 Lincoln Boulevard in Santa Monica, was founded in 1905 and lays claim to being "one of the oldest German-American organizations in California." Their Oktoberfest is Sunday, Sept. 6, starting at 1 p.m. The menu includes Riesenbratwurst, Gegrillte Haehnchen, Geraeucherte Forellen, Leberkaese, Sauerkraut, Kartoffelsalat mit Speck, Gulasch Suppe a la Ursel and frisches deutsches Brot. There will also be dancing.
Song of the Week: 'Girl' by the Internet
This week's Off-Ramp Song of the Week is "Girl" by the Internet.
Hailing from Los Angeles, the Internet is a soul band fronted by Syd Bennett and Matt Martin, formerly of the rap group Odd Future. “Girl” is from their new album, Ego Death, which came out in June.
Here's the song's trippy music video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmY8mG4_3j4
You can see the Internet live this Tuesday, September 8 at the El Rey Theatre before they kick off an international tour.
Salvation Mountain's history in photos in 'Where The Heaven Flowers Grow'
National Geographic photographer Aaron Huey has traveled the world to do his work: Pakistan, Afghanistan, Georgia, the Himalayas. But one of his most interesting projects focuses on a place less than 200 miles outside Los Angeles: Salvation Mountain.
Salvation Mountain is one of California's most unique and enduring landmarks. It's a work of folk art in the California desert near the Salton Sea, the quiet town of Niland and Slab City, the free-spirited art community.
The mountain's creator, Leonard Knight, worked on the project for 28 years, sleeping in a converted fire truck.
Knight died in February 2014. Salvation Mountain is now maintained by a board of locals who watch over and repaint the site. Aaron Huey visited the mountain several times towards the end of Knight's life and got to know the creator. He recently published his work in the book "Where the Heaven Flowers Grow." It includes photos of Knight and Salvation Mountain, a timeline of the landmark and a variety of writings Knight produced.
Here's what Huey had to say about what he learned:
On Leonard Knight's story
Knight showed up there because he was trying to inflate this giant balloon — that was the predecessor to the mountain. He had a vision that he needed to put the words "God is love" on a hot-air balloon. That it would travel around and people would see those words everywhere and crowd around. So he made a homemade balloon over like seven years – it never really flew because he sewed it together on a sewing machine out of balloon scraps from a hot-air balloon factory.
But the final kind of collapse of his balloon was out near the Salton Sea in California. And when it finally failed, he kind of made another prayer and said "what do I do now?" He got a vision that he was supposed to put this same message on a little memorial. And so the first mountain — and even the mountain as it is today — kind of looks like the shape of his balloon.
People started stopping on the side of the road and saying "this is amazing! I'll bring you some paint!" And they would leave paint, they'd come and bring a sack of cement. So he just kept pushing it up the side of the hill and building the hill bigger and bigger and bigger.
On Salvation Mountain's legacy after Leonard Knight's death:
Salvation Mountain now has a board of directors and is an official 501 (c) (3). One of the things that they do is they make sure that there is always a caretaker for the site. They they live on site to make sure that nothing is looted, or cut out, or torn out. They also make sure people don't spray paint over things, which is always a concern. And the hardest job — and what Leonard did for much of that 28 years — is just patching cracks and repainting them. So the caretakers are trying to keep the colors as similar as they can and just paint over the same areas. But at this point, I would say probably in just a few years since Leonard left the site, most of his own brush strokes have been covered in the exterior of these structures. But the mountain is preserved, there's great care put into the preservation of it.
Regardie: 2017 election turnout shaping up to be worst ever in Los Angeles
Jon Regardie is the executive editor of the Los Angeles Downtown News, where this commentary appeared in different form.
Two years ago Los Angeles was a ballot box laughingstock when only slightly more than 20 percent of eligible voters turned up for the two elections for the open mayor’s seat. But unless something incredibly unlikely occurs, 2013 is going to look like a high point on the civic roller coaster.
The 2017 citywide election could give new meaning to the phrase “civic embarrassment.” How bad? We’re talking "The Godfather III" or McCourt-era Dodgers, and the reason is Mayor Eric Garcetti.
It’s not because the L.A. Times recently gave Garcetti a C for his performance as mayor, in part because of his tendency on important matters to be quieter than a mouse wearing slippers walking on a floor made of marshmallows.
No, the election problems will come because Garcetti gets an A+ for fundraising. In just the first six months of this year, Garcetti raised $2.2 million for re-election, shattering Villaraigosa’s record.
He got money from Broad and Caruso; Spielberg, Katzenberg, and Kimmel; and Kohan and Abrams. In that trip he took to Washington right before the you-know-what, Garcetti brought in almost $22,000.
I’m not blaming Garcetti here. A big part of being a first-term mayor is raising cash so you can also be a second-term mayor. But Garcetti’s fundraising prowess decreases the chances a reputable challenger will run – someone like Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas, Rick Caruso, Council President Herb Wesson, or former Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky. They would force the mayor to defend his record. But with only token candidates, he can skate. That war chest is the political equivalent of The Wall on “Game of Thrones.”
The net result is that Angelenos will likely have little that compels them to the polls. If only 21 percent of those eligible came out in the 2013 primary when their vote actually mattered, how many can be expected to show up in 2017, when Garcetti’s re-election may be preordained?
Other factors could conspire to make 2017 the perfect storm of voter apathy.
While the 2009 mayor’s race was a snoozer, that year the race for city attorney was exciting, with a newbie named Carmen Trutanich running against Councilman Jack Weiss. Until he actually started doing the job, Trutanich was a breath of fresh air, and people felt their vote mattered. The current city attorney, Mike Feuer, might also depress voting numbers in 2017 because people like his performance ... and he’s raised $400,000.
There is the race for City Controller, but that won’t help turnout because most Angelenos have no idea what a controller is. I know I don’t. I think it’s something to do with moving sidewalks.
It’s early, but the eight city council races also look to be uninspiring. The incumbents are all men comfortably positioned for re-election, each likely to get big money from the usual suspects. Unless one of them is in a scandal involving cash, a donkey, a bathtub of Jell-O or – please, God! — all three, they will likely face only minor challengers. And minor challengers, as we have learned in class today, don’t bring out the voters.
So why am I here 18 months before the election talking with you about this? Because we have 18 months to do something to break the machine that keeps giving us insubstantial races.
One idea might be to go citywide with the voting lottery they held for an L.A. school board seat in May. Another might be putting a few hundred thousand dollars into a serious get-out-the-vote effort. Another idea: maybe Mayor Garcetti could agree to stop raising money now, allowing a second viable candidate to enter the race, giving the voters a legitimate choice in 2017. I know this sounds hopelessly stupid and naïve, but you got any better ideas?
Leave them for us on the KPCCofframp Facebook page.