Wayne White gets a documentary; Jerry Gorin reports on the history of Pasadena's Doo Dah Parade and meets Roxette; the late Hal David sings his own hits, including "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head;" "The People's Guide to Los Angeles;" Bienvenu! the Super Scooper arrives in LA (from Quebec) in time for wildfire season;
Wildfire show and tell: LA County shows off water-dropping planes and choppers
With wildfires burning in the Angeles National Forest and in Northern California, Los Angeles County showed off the fire-fighting aircraft it leases at the Van Nuys Airport on Tuesday.
Two "Super Scooper" airplanes fly low and slow and dump 1,600 gallons of water at a time. Two Erickson Air-Crane helicopters drop almost 2,700 gallons of water at a time. The total cost to lease the Super Scooper planes and the Air-Crane choppers: more than $5 million a year.
L.A. County Fire Chief Daryl Osby said that the county will dispatch the aircraft on every brush fire this season.
"Both of them," he said. "The SuperScooper, the Erickson Sky Crane and our own helicopters to ensure that we can get as much water on the fire as quickly as possible to knock it down. So every time there's a fire we dispatch them; if they're not needed we send them back."
The Super Scoopers have the capacity to drop water in tandem; they have quick turnaround, Osby said. "The advantages of our helicopters over the Super Scoopers is that sometimes, when you're dropping in steep canyons and next to structures, they can slow down and have more strategic drops," he added.
Both Osby and County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky stressed that fire prevention is also vital. When you see the big planes overhead, it's often too late, and the houses that tend to be saved are the ones whose owners take the time to do the required brush clearance.
Roxette returns to LA, still has The Look
After an eight year hiatus, 80's pop sensation Roxette reunited three years ago. The duo of Marie Fredriksson and Per Gessle thought they would never play again, as Marie battled a brain tumor and Per moved on to other projects. But Fredriksson recovered, and in 2009 she joined Gessle on stage with his solo band and the wheels were set in motion for a comeback.
They released a new album, Charm School, in February of 2011, before they embarked on what they first believed would be a modest tour. Now, 19 months later, they are still on the road. In that time they've recorded another new album, Traveling, and will have played 130 shows in over 30 countries by the time they are through later this month. Their second to last stop: The Gibson Amphitheater in Los Angeles on September 15th.
Off-Ramp's Jerry Gorin spoke to Per Gessle about the band's epic tour schedule and what it's like to make a record on the road. "It's a unique situation, to be on the road for this long," said Gessle. "There's a certain camaraderie that occurs. It's great to be able to record and capture that sort of thing."
"It's Possible" is off of Roxette's latest album album, Travelling:
Damn his Eyes! Wayne White is focus of new doc, "Beauty is Embarrassing," now in LA
As if the piercing blue eyes and lanky frame weren't enough, Wayne White is also a devoted husband and father, a scarily talented sculptor, cartoonist, puppeteer, and painter ... and he can play the banjo. We profiled him on Off-Ramp back in 2008, and now he's the star of a new documentary by Neil Berkeley called "Beauty is Embarrassing."
The film highlights his work on PeeWee's Playhouse, the videos for Smashing Pumpkins and Peter Gabriel, the word paintings you can see on the wall at Fred 62 in Los Feliz (gathering grease), and the biggest George Jones puppet you'll ever see. But more than that, it's about how White has lived his art through his life -- or maybe vice-versa -- and is, THANK GOD, not another damned tortured artist. His message is a tonic to artists everywhere: do your thing.
Berkeley says, "My childhood seemed to track every professional move (White) made – from Pee-wee’s Playhouse, to Beakman’s World, to the Pumpkins and Peter Gabriel’s videos, to the commercials he made, all the way up to the word paintings. His work seemed to be right in line with whatever age I was and whatever cultural phenomena I was paying attention to."
Screenings:
Sundance Cinema Sunset – West Hollywood, CA
Opening September 7th
Sept. 7th w/Q&A with wife (and Off-Ramp commentator) Mimi Pond and producer Morgan Neville for 7:20 and 9:55 pm shows
Sept. 8th w/Q&A with Wayne White and director Neil Berkeley for 7:20 and 9:55 pm shows
Sept. 9th w/Q&A with Wayne White and director Neil Berkeley for 5:05 pm show
Laemmle Playhouse 7 – Pasadena, CA
Opening September 14th
(Ticket links below)
An Off-Rampy guidebook: UC Press' "A People's Guide to LA"
If it's about anything, Los Angeles is about friction. Creative friction, social friction, political friction in the form of riots, bombings, shootouts, protests, marches, sit in's, love-in's ... even the fight over Dodger Stadium is a microcosm of LA's history. And from this friction comes the wonderful mess that is LA.
"A People's Guide to Los Angeles" from UC Press takes visitors and residents through 115 sites where these struggles have occurred. It's a collaboration between Professors Laura Pulido, Wendy Cheng, and Laura Barraclough that maps out a Los Angeles not seen by many ... a sort of mix of Howard Zinn and California's Gold.
Off-Ramp producer Kevin Ferguson talked with author and USC Professor Laura Pulido about the book.
From the Publisher: "A People’s Guide to Los Angeles offers an assortment of eye-opening alternatives to L.A.’s usual tourist destinations. It documents 115 little-known sites in the City of Angels where struggles related to race, class, gender, and sexuality have occurred. They introduce us to people and events usually ignored by mainstream media and, in the process, create a fresh history of Los Angeles. Roughly dividing the city into six regions—North Los Angeles, the Eastside and San Gabriel Valley, South Los Angeles, Long Beach and the Harbor, the Westside, and the San Fernando Valley—this illuminating guide shows how power operates in the shaping of places, and how it remains embedded in the landscape."
Cheech Marin's "Born in East LA" cult fave turns 25
The iconic cult classic Born in East LA turns 25 this year. This film brought issues of Latino identity and immigration to the big screen with a sense of humor. Nadia Reiman explores the movie’s impact.
(Our piece originated on Latino USA, for which Nadia Reiman is a producer. You can hear Latino USA Sunday nights at 10 on 89.3-KPCC.)
89-year old Hal David sings his songwriting hits at the Grammy Museum
UPDATE: Hal David died Saturday, September 1, 2012. He was 91.
A few weeks ago, the Grammy Museum at LA Live unveiled its new Songwriters Hall of Fame gallery, which celebrates the men and women who wrote the soundtrack of our lives. To mark the occasion, they brought in some of the most famous living songwriters to sing and explain their hits. The event was MC'd by songwriter Paul Williams.
Through a special collaboration with the Grammy Museum, Off-Ramp presents excerpts from that concert, starting with the dean of American pop songwriters, Hal David, Burt Bacharach's longtime collaborator on hits like "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head" and "I'll Never Fall in Love Again."
The legendary team, in younger years. Bacharach (L) is now 82, and David is 89.
Denise Hamilton does "Damage Control" in new novel
Eve Diamond is not dead, she's just taking a breather while author Denise Hamilton explores the world of PR firms that mop up messes (and the politicians who need them) in "Damage Control." Off-Ramp host John Rabe talks with Hamilton about the new book.
Denise Hamilton is appearing at Vromans in Pasadena at 7pm on Wednesday, Sept 21, and at Book 'Em in South Pasadena at 2pm on Sunday, Sept 25.
Doo Dah: An essential history of a non-essential parade
The Pasadena Rose Parade has a rule: never on a Sunday. Back in 1893, organizers worried that horses tethered outside all the local churches would freak out and wreak havoc. But in 1978 - when January 1st fell on a Sunday – some misfits at a Pasadena bar looked around and realized that there weren't any more horses, and they didn't want to let the day go to waste.
According to legend, a group of guys at a now defunct bar called Chromos were standing around jokingly lamenting that there was no Rose Parade that day. Meanwhile, they looked to the street and saw all the fans getting ready to camp out for the following day, and they decided they should have their own parade. And that was the beginning of Doo Dah.
"That Sunday there were about 125 people on the street," says Tom Coston, one of the few original Doo Dah parade marchers. "We were in front of a bunch of out-of-towners who thought, 'What in the hell is this? This isn't the Rose Parade. We came for this?' And if you had to describe it in today's terms, it was kind of a Dada event -as much as a Doo Dah event - so a guy like me decides it's really funny to walk down the street playing Jimi Hendrix on an accordion wearing a cowboy hat. It made perfect sense to me back then."
After almost 35 years, the Doo Dah parade continues to make a lot of sense in the Pasadena community. That's why Coston, who's actually been organizing the event for the last 18 years, has put together a new exhibit chronicling the parade's history. It's mostly a bunch of silliness - crazy costumes and funny routines - but Coston says the parade gives people a venue for personal expression that's often missing in their lives.
"There was actually a cultural anthropologist who wrote a paper about the Doo Dah parade, and she said everybody has their right of reversal. Everybody has one day to escape all the trappings of their day-to-day regiment and let their alter-egos rule for that day. I think that's what Doo Dah is there for."
Among the parade's classic entries are the BBQ and Hibachi Grill Team, and the Lounge Lizards, who are reptiles clad in evening wear who roll a piano down the street and sing Frank Sinatra. Even Off-Ramp once ventured into the fray with the The Ineffable Off-Ramp Mysterions, which featured John Rabe pulling a float with a little girl having a tea party on it, and writer and artist Mimi Pond dressed as a giant radio tower.
One of Coston's all time favorites is the Synchronized Marching Briefcase Drill Team.
"They were investment bankers, literally, who went to the John Bolt pub about a week before the event. They went in with their 3 piece, pinstripe suits and the guy who owned the bar asked if they were going to be in the parade. And they said, ‘Why don't we be in the parade?’ And they had these funny, marching-in-straight-line routines, and they were making fun of their day-to-day starchy button down jobs, and it was kind of genius, the whole thing. If you think about the right of reversal concept, that's exactly what they were doing."
Coston's non-profit organization, The Light Bringer Project, bought the parade for a nominal two-dollar fee in 1994 when its organizers were struggling with the bigger and increasingly unruly crowds. Coston wanted to return the parade to its homespun, wacky roots, so he added a Queen competition. It was an instant hit, according to reporter Michelle Mills, who for many years danced with swords and sang opera before the short, zaftig Star-News reporter was finally anointed Doo Dah Queen in 2007.
"That other parade (the Rose parade), I'll admit I am a fan," says Mills. "I love to watch it, and I'd give anything to be a part of it. But very few get that opportunity. It's very selective. Look at the Queen audition - all the queens have to be young and from certain schools in a certain area. With Doo Dah most of us are mature women that have had some life and have life experience to share."
In 2009, Coston began worrying that the parade was again becoming a big entertainment vehicle instead of a loose, participatory event. So he moved it away from Old Town to a part of East Pasadena that reminded him of Old Town circa 1978. He hoped it would give a whole new generation of Doo Dahs a voice.
The new exhibit is up at the Pasadena Museum of History through January.