Special report: intersection of science fiction and science fact; Brains On and the monarch Mexico migration; Hungry, the competitive eating doc; Kenturah Davis weaves words and art
Artist Alan Wolfson's exquisite miniature towns
Off-Ramp contributor Collin Friesen reports on Alan Wolfson, who makes miniature street scenes and has a retrospective coming up in Lyon, France.
Some artists go big. Think Kent Twitchell’s huge mural of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra by the Harbor Freeway. Others shrink the world into something you can fit in a briefcase — that's L.A. artist Alan Wolfson.
(Wolfson at work in his workshop. Credit: Alan Wolfson)
At his workshop in Sunland, inside, on various benches, are what you might call the fulfillment of this 66-year-old’s childhood dream.
“When I was a kid I always built things,” says Wolfson. “Like in elementary school I’d build dioramas in shoe boxes — police stations, grocery stores, I always got off on that. My dad was an artist, so I was lucky, I was encouraged to do this. I never thought I’d be able to do this as a livelihood.”
RELATED: Collin Friesen solves the mystery of the North Hollywood mannequins
Wolfson is talking about his miniature street models. They provide extremely — and I mean extremely — detailed looks at the way cities like New York and L.A. used to be in the '70s and '80s. There’s Peepland, a gritty adult theater and sex shop that's about the size of two Kleenex boxes.
From the marquee, advertising “Hot Biker Girls,” to the burnt out bulbs on the Peepshow sign, the details are perfect. Looking at it is like entering a time machine, and it's so well done you feel like you need a shower afterward.
Bend down and look inside, past the adult magazine rack, and notice the tiny dildos on the wall.
“I focus in interiors. I like it when people walk up, glance at the whole piece, and then they realize there’s a view into that… I like it when they find the hidden details.”
I ask him if those “finds” are like Easter eggs. In a way they are, he admits, although he considers it a part of a yet unwritten narrative.
“What I’m trying to do is, I’m trying to give you scenery, lighting and enough props so you can come up with your own narrative…so you can put on your own show.”
Wolfson’s work has a post-Rapture feel. He never features people, except in the shrunken ads and movie posters. He says putting miniature humans in the scenes just advertises that they’re not real, pulling focus from the overall experience of the piece.
Each sculpture takes from three months to a year and half, and Wolfson makes everything, from the smallest brick to the theater napkin dispenser with a single napkin pulled a third of the way out, that sits next to the stack of cups leaning precariously from the counter of the concession stand. It’s art by the millimeter. Not photorealism per se, but a slightly heightened, condensed version of how things used to look and feel.
Wolfson has built more than 100 dioramas in his career. They can sell for tens of thousands of dollars, but he says that’s actually not why exhibitors need to beef up security when they show his work.
“The museum in New York had a security detail,” he laughs. “And the show I’m doing in France, they’re aware of the fact that groups of school children go through. They find it interesting and they want to stick their fingers in there.”
Nineteen of his works will be shown at his career retrospective later this month in Lyon, France at the Musée Cinéma et Miniature.
Erin Corwin's death hurt one of her last refuges: White Rock Ranch Horse Rescue
Off-Ramp contributor R.H. Greene has been spending a lot of time in the High Desert recently, where he became obsessed by a story of unsung kindness lurking behind one of last summer's grimmest tabloid headlines: The murder of Marine wife Erin Corwin.
(A photo of Erin Corwin released by the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department.)
White Rock Ranch Horse Rescue is a charity for horses, still surviving, but changed forever by a brush with evil. It’s a non-profit orphanage for unwanted horses near Yucca Valley, at the end of a long dirt road so pocked by the wind it threatens to shake a car to pieces at speeds above 10 miles per hour.
It's feeding time for the 53 horses who live here. Isabella Megli, co-founder and currently White Rock's sole proprietor, tosses armloads of hay from a golf cart, as unfettered horses canter by. Carol Davison is a weathered retiree who has worked and lived on the ranch for over six years. She hovers by Isabella's side, protectively.
RELATED: AudioVision's beautiful slideshow on horse racing
On the other side of a picket fence, a trim, middle-aged "people doctor" who won’t give her name is bandaging a horse's leg wound with practiced hands. Inside the big corral, some two dozen horses frolic and snort, attended by a pair of young-looking military wives, in for the day from the Marine base at Twentynine Palms.
Davison says most of the animals have been through some combination of abuse and loss.
RELATED: Group fighting for ban on some exotic pets
There's Gemeni, a pharmaceutical industry castoff, nameless when she arrived except for the large inventory number "605" branded onto her side. There's Mystic, a quarterhorse, with a raw and permanent knee injury on her right hind-leg, and a rigid leg muscle that dangles in the wrong place. She was lamed by "horse-tripping," an antique roping practice still popular at rodeos and Mexican charreadas.
And then there's Cassy, the horse I came to see. Lexie Marks, one of the visiting Marine wives, is "sponsoring" Cassy, a big step on the road to adopting her. But there are complications, "because her owner recently died." Cassy is skittish and has trust issues. And no wonder — the horse’s story is almost entirely about loss.
Isabella told me Cassy came to the ranch from an abusive household, run by a hoarder. For months, she was too skittish to make a friend. Then a shy 19-year-old newlywed named Erin Corwin relocated to Twentynine Palms with her Marine corporal husband and visited the White Rock ranch. The bond between Erin Corwin and Cassy was instant and profound.
Isabel said, "Erin picked her out of 30 (horses). I don't know why or how, and she says, 'I want this one.' But she walked in and caught her. She rode her bareback without a bit, and those two were just one."
Later, when the microphone has been turned off, Isabella broke down talking about Erin, and blamed herself for all the signs of trouble she did and didn't see. But as we spoke of Erin and stared at the horse she once loved, the 19 year old girl seems present… maybe like the wind in the distance.
With the negative publicity surrounding Erin Corwin's murder, White Rock ranch, a 501(c)(3) relying heavily on charitable contributions, has taken a major financial hit. Volunteers have been harder to come by, and donations are down.
Right now, she says they're trying to raise money to dig a well, because every one of the dozens of horses there needs to drink 62 gallons of water a day. Then, she turns briskly to attend to the myriad chores she has left to do — and as magnets go to pull us through our days, it's enough.
LA Heat Wave: We're collecting 'It's So Hot ... ' jokes
There's not much you can do about the current heat wave but grin and bear it, with the accent on the grin. To that end, we're collecting "It's So Hot ..." jokes.
Like: It's so hot that a hipster in Highland Park shaved off his beard.
RELATED: The time Rabe tried to fry an egg on the sidewalk during a heat wave
Or, It's so hot that over at the Huntington, they've taken the cactus plants inside!
(Image: The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens)
I put out the call on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter and Steve Weintz came though for us:
, the Tar Pits boiled off & the fossils crawled out & over to the LACMA garage.
— Steve Weintz (@Moe_Delaun)
@KPCCofframp @KPCC #ItsSoHot, the Tar Pits boiled off & the fossils crawled out & over to the LACMA garage.
— Steve Weintz (@Moe_Delaun) September 15, 2014
But we need more.
If you've got an "It's So Hot" joke for us to help us deal with the heat wave, please leave it in the comments section below or post it on our social media feeds with the hashtag #ItsSoHot, and thanks!
UPDATE TUESDAY:
KPCC's Morning Edition host, Steve Julian, e-mailed these to me, "from a friend," which means "the Internet: "
How hot is it?
The cows are giving evaporated milk.
The chickens are laying hard-boiled eggs
I saw a dog chasing a cat and they were both walkin'
The birds have to use potholders to pull worms out of the ground.
The potatoes cook underground, and all you have to do to have lunch is to pull one out and add butter, salt and pepper.
The trees are whistling for the dogs.
You start putting ice cubes in your water bed.
You can make instant sun tea.
Your car overheats before you drive it.
A merry stroll through the 'new' Sherwood Forest 'hood in Northridge
The L.A. City Council voted unanimously last Friday to officially name a neighborhood in Northridge "Sherwood Forest." It's a little trapezoid just southeast of Cal State Northridge, bounded by Nordhoff on the north, Balboa on the east, the Southern Pacific railroad tracks on the south, and Lindley on the west.
John Rabe met up with Northridge-native Kevin Roderick, creator of LA Observed and author of "The San Fernando Valley: America's Suburb," at Louise and Nordhoff in the so-called Sherwood Forest to talk about the new designation ... and, on one of the hottest days of the year, to try frying an egg on the sidewalk.
On why the area was dubbed "Sherwood Forest:"
"A lot of subdivisions in the Valley had catchy names in the 1920s and '30s. They were just trying to bring some attention to them. This was a subdivision of large estates, ranchettes, an acre, a couple of acres of land with tall trees. The main street, Parthenia, was lined with cedar trees, and somebody just came up with the name and I guess it stuck. I grew up here and never heard the name, we never heard anything referred to as Sherwood Forest when I was living here, but later on the realtors adopted it as a name and now it's caught on."
On why the name works for this particular area:
"You go around some of these streets, Louise, Sunburst, Amestoy and Osborne. You'll see very green, lush yards with trees that have been here 40, 50 years. You go down Parthenia and you've got properties, a couple of acres, with really nice landscaping that's just lush. On a hot day like this it's a good place in the Valley to be."
On the famous names who have called Sherwood Forest home:
"We're looking into the backyard of what used to be the home of character actor Jim Davis, when I was growing up he used to be the local celebrity. A whole new generation of fans discovered him when he became Jock Ewing on the "Dallas" TV show … Richard Pryor was living on Parthenia here in 1980 when he accidentally lit his face on fire and went running down the street. A famous Hollywood animator, Abe Levitow. There have been athletes, TV actors… Walter Brennan was a 3-time Oscar winner, and he had a big chunk of land over on Parthenia. When we were growing up "The Real McCoys" was on TV at the time so he was famous for, again, a TV audience after his movie career started to slow down a little bit. That property has been subdivided into a couple of dozen homes by now."
On why names and places are so important in Los Angeles:
"I think that's the way to tell the story of Los Angeles … the names you see on the streets, especially in older parts of town, the streets are named for historical figures. And out here in the Valley, community names are important. [Residents] never say they live in Los Angeles, they might say they live in the Valley, or they might get really specific and say they live in Northridge, and the people in this neighborhood do refer to themselves as living in Sherwood Forest."
On what these names do for a community:
"Community pride is what it is and identity. Carve out your place in the larger city of Los Angeles, and you'll see it all over town, there's a lot of new blue signs popping up around town with community names that outsiders probably haven't ever heard before. I'm sure unless you've been looking for a house in this part of the Valley you've never heard of Sherwood Forest before."
The not-so-great sidewalk fried-egg experiment
As the picture in the slideshow above demonstrates, frying an egg on an 120-degree frying pan and sidewalk in Sherwood Forest didn't quite work out.
Roderick documented the whole thing on his site, you can see more pictures there.
Needless to say, the whole experiment was a failure. The egg barely changed color, both in the frying pan and directly on the sidewalk.
So what gives, is frying an egg in the sidewalk an urban legend? Have you ever successfully fried an egg on the sidewalk? Tell us your tips in the comments.
Science Fiction to Science Fact, or 'Why is Kirk still using a flip phone?'
NPR's Science Friday recently came to Pasadena for a special live event. Ira Flatow and his crew filled Caltech's Beckman Auditorium with fans and together they spent an evening exploring the science of the silver screen. For the event, KPCC's Sanden Totten did a live radio story on the ways science fiction in TV and movies has predicted technological advances in real life.
“Star Trek” science advisor Andre Bormanis had to fact check a storyline about teleporting a fetus from one womb to another in “Deep Space Nine.” Bormanis said, “I called a friend who was a pathologist, and told him the idea. After he got done laughing he said, ‘Well, there may be a way to do that.' ... 15-odd years later, there are people talking about how one could actually transplant the fetal placental complex from one woman into another. It’s a whole new level of surrogacy, but it is not medically impossible.”
RELATED: Blu Ray restoration of Star Trek: The Next Generation reveals acting
TV and movies give scientists, thinkers, and dreamers a place to ignore hard fast scientific rules and see what else is possible. And sometimes, we find out that what we once thought were scientific constraints were really just limits of our imagination.
'Hungry' filmmakers talk about the strange world of competitive eating
“Hungry” is a documentary about the strange — and sometimes nauseating — world of competitive eating. With no shortage of trash talking and contract disputes, competitive eating is starting to look like the professional sport that serious competitive eaters consider it to be.
"We’re both comedians and we met in New York City, and we were always talking about the idea of doing a film about competitive eating... We always spoke about maybe writing a script about it because we thought it was funny," says filmmaker Barry Rothbart. "It was going to be a comedy piece, but then it turned into more of this look into this strange, niche world."
The film spends the most time on Takeru Kobayashi — who took competitive eating by storm in 2001 when he doubled the Nathan's Coney Island hot dog eating record as a newcomer — and his legal battle with the organizers of the famous eating contest, Major League Eating, or MLE. Kobayashi won the Nathan's competition for six years in a row, until being defeated by the current champion, Joey Chestnut.
"Hungry" also follows two other competitive eaters: Brad “The Lunatic” Sciullo and Dave Goldstein, who goes by the nickname “U.S. Male.”
"They’re very different. Kobayashi’s a celebrity and he’s very famous. And Brad’s this... kind of a young crazy guy. And then 'U.S. Male' is just a family guy who’s in his early fifties who just enjoys doing it," says filmmaker Jeff Cerulli. "So you get the three different characters who are all at different stages of their career in competitive eating."
Some scenes in “Hungry” are a little hard to watch because competitive eating can be...hard to watch. Part of Brad Sciullo’s training regimen involves chugging gallons of water to stretch his stomach. Other eaters will consume huge amounts of low calorie foods like lettuce in preparation for a contest.
The filmmakers also confessed that throwing up seems like the only logical thing to do after an eating competition, but the competitive eaters featured in "Hungry" weren't so open when it came to this subject.
"They don’t talk about it," says Barry. "We really wanted to find that out. It’s a pride thing. It’s very strange how they don’t want to talk about it, but they have to."
"There’s a lot of sports that are more dangerous than this, but I think the reason people have such a visceral reaction is because everyone knows what it’s like to overeat. No one knows what it’s like to be punched in the face by a boxer or to fall off a surfboard or to be in an MMA fight, but people know what it’s like to overeat, so there’s more physical empathy," says Barry.
Barry and Jeff say they entered a handful of competitions themselves while making the documentary, and found out just how difficult competitive eating is.
"You’d be surprised how boring it is to watch two amateur... competitive eaters try to competitive eat. It’s basically watching someone eat a meal for ten minutes. There’s nothing more boring than that," says Barry. "So, I think we decided it didn’t work for the film, but we definitely learned how hard it is. It’s very hard."
Kobayashi is credited by many as being the first to treat competitive eating as a serious sport and many have followed his lead, but the outside world's view hasn't changed much. Competitive eaters say they struggle with a public that doesn’t take them seriously and doesn’t consider what they do to be a real sport.
"I think a lot of people talk about it like, this is gross, and this is something that’s wrong and that this is something that’s like freaks trying to get attention. So I think that that was what we assumed the majority of people thought about it, which was what we thought about it for a while," says Barry. "And then I think as we dug more into it, we realized that these are actual normal people that take this very seriously as their fifteen minutes of fame."
To learn more about the documentary and find out how you can rent it online, visit the film's website.
Once a year, West Adams' Angelus Rosedale Cemetery comes to life
The Angelus Rosedale cemetery in West Adams has buried more history buried underground than probably any place in Los Angeles. Some of Southern California's founding fathers are buried there. Movie stars. Tycoons. Civil War veterans. This year it celebrates its 130th birthday.
On Saturday, Sept. 27 the West Adams Heritage Association will host its annual Living History Tour of the cemetery.
When Angelus Rosedale was founded in 1884, it was home to Los Angeles' early mayors, business people and even a former governor. As time went on actors and film industry professionals made Angelus Rosedale their final resting place – though it wasn't often by choice.
"One of the things they seemed to have in common – those who landed here – they were very famous. They made a lot of money, and they spent their money on alcohol," said Meyers. "Eventually, they landed here."
One of the cemetery's most famous residents is Hattie McDaniel. McDaniel played Mammy in "Gone With the Wind" – a role which made her the first African-American to win an Academy Award.
"When she died, she had asked to be buried at a different cemetery, but because she's African-American they had discriminatory rules at the time, and she wasn't welcome," said Meyers. "Instead, she's buried here."
Angelus Rosedale is also home to dozens of bodies who were buried decades before the cemetery's 1884 founding – transported to West Adams after Los Angeles' original graveyards had been neglected and stood in the way of a quickly developing downtown.
For their tour this year, the West Adams Heritage Association plans to highlight Angelus Rosedale's connection to the Civil War. The bodies of dozens of union and confederate soldiers rest inside the cemetery's walls, along with the cousins of Abraham Lincoln and Confederate president Jefferson Davis.
For Meyers, one of the most notable residents of Angelus Rosedale is Allen Allensworth – the first African-American to reach the rank of lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army. Allensworth was born into slavery in Louisville, Kentucky and escaped during the civil war to fight for the Union.
After the war ended, Allensworth became a Baptist minister. He kept close to the military and was appointed chaplain to the Buffalo Soldier regiment in the late 1800s. Allensworth also founded a city: Allensworth, California was a planned community for African-Americans started in the early 20th century.
Allensworth retired in Southern California and died in Monrovia on Sept. 14, 1914 after being hit by a motorcycle. He's buried at Angelus Rosedale among dozens of other Union soldiers.
Spots for the Angelus Rosedale Living History Tour on Sept. 27 are available at this link.
You: 'I am SO over it.' Dylan Brody: 'No, you're not.'
Off-Ramp commentator Dylan Brody is the author of the Modern Depression Guidebook, the opposite of the self-help book, now in its second edition.
The sentence, “I am SO completely over it,” is almost always uttered by someone about something over which they are very much not. This sentence comes so laden with frustration and anger, so saturated with emotional content that the subtext comes through loudly, clearly, trumpetingly. “I am SO over it” almost always means, “I am reviewing these recent events in my head constantly and expect never to be free of this internal cycle of rage and recrimination.”
I don’t have any real objection to internal cycles of rage and recrimination. Hell, I have some recurring fantasies of vengeance I might take on my perceived social enemies that, were they expressed in the wrong setting, might land me on a 72-hour hold for observation. I just think it’s healthier to be honest with ourselves and those around us lest we say “I am SO over it” and cause some mildly autistic, subtext-challenged friend to mistakenly believe the words and thus trigger an outburst by treating the “it” over which we have claimed to be as an “it” over which we actually are.
Similarly, I’ve realized that the people who behave oddly and say, “I really don’t care what anybody thinks of me,” actually care a great deal about what other people think of them. I think it’s better to be honest about these things. My physical comfort is not the reason I put on a suit and glue gears and chain-fasteners to my phone to make it a steampunk pocket watch.
We all care about how we appear to others. That’s why, when you start walking away from the car and then remember that you’ve left something you need in the trunk, you don’t just turn around and go back. First you slap your forehead or raise a finger as though you’ve made a significant scientific discovery or perform some other absurd little mime that says to the world, “I have forgotten something and must now go back for it!” The world doesn’t care. Nobody else on the sidewalk would be likely to see a person walk a few steps in one direction, turn around and go back the other way and think, “How odd. That guy must have one of those doggy perimeter collars that prevents him from going beyond the end of the block.”
Nobody would assume, because of a single abrupt change in direction, that madness has taken over, that a demon has abruptly possessed a fellow pedestrian causing her to spin in place. Still, we all feel compelled to utilize the “I have forgotten an item and must return for it” gesture from Edmund Keane’s "Catalogue of Old-Timey Indicative Acting Postures & Poses."
(Edmund Keane as Hamlet, 1814)
Several years ago my psychiatrist suggested that I wean myself off anti-depressants. I cut back from a pill a night to three-quarters of a pill a night. About three days into that minor down-step in my Paxil level I drove to a meeting and on the way there I found myself planning all the things I’d be angry about when I arrived.
I wasn’t running late, I had left plenty of time to get there, but I imagined griping about the traffic as I walked through the door. I wondered if I would have to pay for parking and I rehearsed an argument with a receptionist about validation. A car tailgated me for a while and then pulled into the next lane and sped past. I imagined chasing him, cutting him off and then slowing way down. I reviewed a conversation I had had with my wife days earlier, finding ways that I could prove that I had been right and she wrong through clever dialectic despite the firm knowledge that in fact she had been right and I entirely wrong.
I called my shrink from the car, sitting in a metered parking space right outside the building. I said, “Look, is it possible that after cutting back by a quarter pill I can feel the darkness crawling toward me from the all corners of the world, climbing my spinal column and creeping into the creases in my brain?”
He said, “Huh. I suppose it’s possible. This is your first bout of depression that we’re treating?”
I said, “What? No. I’ve had depression on and off since I was a teenager.”
He said, “Oh! Then stay on the medication. It seems as though we found the right one and as though you’re exquisitely attuned to it.”
I re-upped to a full pill a night and everything balanced right back out. Apparently if it’s a first time thing, sometimes the meds help you fix the chemicals and you get back on track. If it’s been a lifelong thing, you need to keep dosing yourself just to perceive the world the way normal human beings do.
I care desperately about what other people think of me. I want to be liked. I want to be perceived as someone who is not a crazy person, not possessed by demons or troubled by bouts of madness, but I also think it’s important to be honest about what’s going on, to keep the text in alignment as close as possible to the subtext. I want to be admired in my sartorial splendor and to be able to show up places cheerful and present.
For the most part, with the help of modern pharmaceuticals, I keep the depression at bay. But make no mistake: don’t think for a moment that I am completely over it.
Kenturah Davis weaves words into art in Leimert Park
Off-Ramp host John Rabe talks with LA artist Kenturah Davis about her exhibit of drawings, "Narratives and Meditations," at Papillion Art in Leimert Park in South LA.
A lot of artists incorporate words into their art. Only a few succeed. A painter like Wayne White can plaster cartoony block letters across a thrift store landscape and somehow make it feel right. Kenturah Davis, who has a new show at Papillion Art in Leimert Park, takes the opposite approach, subtly integrating repeated phrases into her huge pencil portraits of African-Americans.
She starts by writing the phrase over and over to form the background of a given drawing, then adds layers of the phrase — perhaps dozens for dark places on the paper, perhaps only one of two more layers for lighter areas. Here's a time-lapse video that shows her process:
Watch her work: Kenturah Davis Draws Troy Davis: "Terminated with Extreme Prejudice"
Davis, 33, told me that she was born and raised in Altadena, "a quiet little neighborhood that's still accessible to the rest of L.A., and a good place to come from." She's the daughter of two accomplished artists: Her father is a portraitist and was an artist for the studios ("Tron" is among his credits) and her mother is a quilter, among other things. Kenturah studied painting at Occidental. ("Go Tigers!")
But Davis came to realize painting was wrong for her, and after quitting all art for a couple years, she began to write and draw in her sketchbooks. One day, she had an epiphany. "Language is so integral to who we are, and experimenting with language and words led me to making drawings a different way." Hence the drawings that seamlessly interweave image and language.
RELATED: Another artist making her own way against type: actor/comedian Charlyne Yi
Her subjects gaze straight at the camera with neutral expressions that let you imagine what they're thinking. They're a mix of men and women, and almost all are African-Americans.
"I start with what I know, and I feel that part of my responsibility as a black artist is to put forth better images of black people, at a time when media doesn't always portray black people in a good light," she said.
What she winds up with are honest, compelling, intriguing portraits of... people.
Mike Sheehan's sketchbook: Elvis Costello at the Hollywood Bowl
Artist Mike Sheehan has been sketching for Off-Ramp for a couple years now and has taken us across Southern California, from the Murrieta immigration protests to a gangster's hideout in Lake Arrowhead to Mayor Garcetti's inauguration. This time, it's a summer night at the Bowl.
Last Saturday I went to the Hollywood Bowl to see Elvis Costello and Ben Folds.
Symphony orchestras have a tradition of hosting rock musicians. Sometimes this isn't such a great idea. Metallica anyone? But sometimes the right rock musicians collide with the L.A. Phil, and it makes sense.
I've been a fan of Elvis Costello for a long time and been fascinated by his career. He seems fearless in exploring disparate musical styles and working with musicians and songwriters across genres. And he's a real practitioner of song-craft and ornate wordplay.
Saturday, it was rock's former "angry young man" turned gracious host and storyteller — kind of a study in how to age gracefully and stay relevant by constantly pushing yourself into new territory. And, judging by Saturday night, just having fun and enjoying what you do. I always imagine that it must be great to be free to explore more complex or new arrangements of your work with such a world-class group of musicians.
Costello and Folds both brought a sense of humor to the evening. But at the Bowl, it's just as much about the experience. I love the Bowl in the summer. Half the fun is getting there early, enjoying the wine, food, conversation and weather. When all the elements come together, it's amazing — one of those things I can always count on.
I did forget my usual dimmer book light for sketching, so I MacGyver'd a little button light with a paper napkin over it to dim it (didn't want to bother other listeners), cupped it in one hand, and hoped I got a few drawings.
I realized that I tend to hit the Bowl in late August or early September. It's this and not Labor Day that signals that my summer is coming to a close. I know Southern California has a kind of year-round summer, but I still always hate to let go of it.
What does a defunct amusement park sound like? The lost sounds of Pacific Ocean Park
Gary Nissley works at Poo-Bah Records in Pasadena. He's also a former DJ with KPCC when the station played music out of the Pasadena City College basement.
Nissley has been collecting music his entire life, and among the thousands of records he owns is a collection of sounds made for Santa Monica's Pacific Ocean Park — the now defunct seaside amusement park.
Built in 1958, Pacific Ocean Park was a recreation destination until it shut down for repairs in 1967, never to reopen.
Writers Christopher Merritt and Domenic Priore give a beautiful account of the park's rise and fall in "Pacific Ocean Park: The Rise and Fall of Los Angeles' Space-Age Nautical Pleasure Pier," incorporating photos, concept drawings and first person accounts of the amusement park.
Nissley's sounds don't just show what the park sounded like, but also how technicians with limited access to technology made amazing innovations with sound.
Nissley was working at Holmquist Sound at the time, a company that made sound effects and narration tapes for amusement parks. Pacific Ocean Park had been their main client.
In the early 1980s, after Holmquist was bought out and their offices moved from Arcadia to Santa Ana, Nissley discovered a box of reel-to-reel tape with the name and address of Pacific Ocean Park. Holmquist had recorded the sounds on acetate — one of the cheapest materials available at the time.
The tapes were already decaying badly. Nissley got to work digitizing them right away
"When I would copy them off, the tape was brown," said Nissley. "As you saw it come off the capstan, what was going up was clear. And there was a little puddle of dust."
The brown dust was the backing falling off the tape — rendering it unplayable.
Nissley recovered dozens of sounds from the tapes. You hear ride safety warnings, sound effects and the goony bird — a fan favorite from the park's glory days. The bird awaited visitors at the end of the park's Banana Boat ride.
"It was a ride at the very end of the pier — kind of like you were almost going through a jungle," said Nissley. "And when the ride's over, everybody that I talked about this — they said I remember the goony bird!"
The goony bird bid farewell to riders, laughing maniacally and saying "thank you for riding with us!"
Nissley has the sounds digitized. You can hear them by clicking the play button on the left and listening to Gary's interview with KPCC. Also, come Halloween, you'll hear some of the spookier Pacific Ocean Park sounds on Nissley's podcast, which is produced by Poo-Bah Records in Pasadena.
Gerald Wilson, El Chicano, and 'Viva Tirado'
LA and the jazz world are mourning Gerald Wilson, a worldwide jazz giant who lived in LA and who died Monday at the age of 96. Gerald Wilson was a jazz trumpeter who played in the big bands, he was a bandleader, and he was a venerated teacher.
RELATED: Gerald Wilson's son talks about his dad on KPCC's Airtalk.
But Wilson was also a composer, and he wrote the song "Viva Tirado," which became a huge hit for a band out of East LA called El Chicano, and was later sampled by Kid Frost. As Oliver Wang wrote a few years ago on his blog:
"Viva Tirado" is at the center of a rather remarkable, multi-generational conversation between L.A.'s Black and Brown communities. After all, here's a song, originally written by a Black composer in honor of a Mexican bullfighter, covered by a Chicano band steeped in Black R&B and jazz, then sampled by the first major Chicano rap artist. It seems no matter where the song goes, it's always a bridge between cultures. -- Oliver Wang
Just how big Gerald Wilson's composition (he always called them "numbers") was comes through loud and clear in this 2009 Off-Ramp interview between Jesus Velo of the band Los Illegals, and one of his heroes: the late Bobby Espinosa of the band El Chicano, who remembered when "Viva Tirado" hit it big in 1970.
Watch El Chicano perform "Viva Tirado" live in 1971
Actress/musician/comedian Charlyne Yi takes risks, goes her own way
Off-Ramp contributor Chris Greenspon profiles comedian and actor Charlyne Yi. Some of the language in this piece is a little strong.
Maybe you’ve seen ex-stand-up-comedienne Charlyne Yi as the dorky Dr. Park on "House," or as one of Seth Rogen's stoned roommates in "Knocked Up."
These small roles might be her best known work, but Yi became a performer to take risks, not to get famous.
Charlyne Yi's humor has always made people uneasy. Besides being recognized as "the awkward character" from "House," Yi has always tested her audience: by getting her head shaved onstage at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre while singing a Sinead O' Connor song, announcing her boyfriend dumped her on "Late Night with Conan O'Brien" or making audience members play the dating game in a comedy club. However uncomfortable or emotional one of her appearances is, she doesn't do things half-heartedly.
Charlyne Yi shaves her head onstage
Yi's stand-up career began at 18, when she sneaked into UC Riverside classes that she couldn't afford. She decided then that she would move to Los Angeles and pursue comedy. It was a rough start at first. Audiences were often hostile to her during performances, which sometimes consisted of her lip-syncing to her own voice. However, she was determined to be her own kind of performer, or nothing else.
"One of my best friends from childhood was like, 'Isn't that a little irrational, you're gonna go do comedy? What's your back up plan?'" recalls Yi, "And I was like, 'I don't know about that! Isn't it more irrational to fight for something that you hate, than that you love?'"
In 2007, she briefly appeared in the Judd Apatow film "Knocked Up." She co-wrote and starred in the mockumentary "Paper Hearts" in 2009, and was cast as Chi Park in 2011 for the final season of the medical drama "House."
Her art took a definitive curve after the season finale of "House" in 2012. Yi volunteered at an orphanage in Sri Lanka, and while there she collaborated with a group of orphans on a short album called "Mr. Sunset."
Charlyne Yi's Sri Lanka highlight video
Since then, passion and introspection have been a mainstay of Yi's work. She's moved away from television and stand-up and has focused more on producing short films, is on her way to becoming a published poet (with a book on the way through Harper Collins) and has curated memorable concerts like the series "Let's Get Emotional" at the Steve Allen Theatre.
Now, after years of trying her hand in different mediums, Yi has found her place in L.A.'s art and music scene. She still acts in comedy shorts from time to time with other aspiring performers, as well as headliners like Fred Armisen and Channing Tatum.
Currently, her primary outlet is songwriting. She just recorded an album titled "Reincarnation," and she's due to tour the Midwest in late September.
Listen to Chris' piece for much more, including Yi's story of an exchange with her sister that taught her the true power of words, and for her impressions of working with Hugh Laurie as an actor and director.
LA historian discovers treasure trove of historic photos, now online
Off-Ramp host John Rabe talked with Anna Sklar about the 8,000 rare historical images of Los Angeles she found, hundreds of which are now online.
When Anna Sklar digs into history, she really digs. A few years ago, it was a book about L.A.'s sewers, and she took Off-Ramp into a sewer to talk about it ...
(Sklar in 2010 with Off-Ramp in an L.A. sewer. Image: John Rabe)
Now, she's working on a project that charts many of the big digs in Los Angeles dating back to the 1890s. Sklar discovered an archive of thousands of photos taken by the city engineer's office and has put hundreds of them online in a searchable database at the Los Angeles City Historical Society's website.
"I accidentally found them when I was doing my research on the sewer book. An engineer had given me four CDs, with some .jpegs, and I was looking for sewage photos. But then last December I got a little bored, and I picked up one of the CDs, and I'm looking at them, and I'm thinking, 'Oh. My. Goodness. These are amazing! This is a project that really needs to be put online so people can see these images that have never been seen before.'"
RELATED: LA City Archivist Michael Holland on LA's prep for nuclear attack
And with the L.A. City Historical Society, the L.A. City Archive and the Haynes Foundation, she did just that, and you can browse them or hit the "random search" and let the website give you a tour of historical L.A.
(Historian Anna Sklar at the Baldwin Hills Rec Center, site of a years-long peat bog fire. Image: John Rabe)
The photos were all taken either by or for L.A.'s City Engineer to document work it was doing, like sewers, bridges and road improvements, as well as to illustrate engineering problems, like congestion, safety issues, floods, fires and landslides.
As you can see in our slideshow, the photos incidentally wind up telling the history of L.A.'s places and people. One such person was one of the most powerful in the city's history, but you probably wouldn't know his name: Lloyd Aldrich, the city's engineer for an unsurpassed 22 years.
(A tribute photo to Lloyd Aldrich on the LADWP website.)
Aldrich wielded enormous power because he had a pipeline to some $55 million in WPA funds, which is something like $960 million today (using 1935 as a nominal date in the Bureau of Labor Statistics online calculator). For instance, he got the Slauson Avenue storm drain built from Crenshaw to Ballona Creek. "Daily," Sklar says, "they had 5,700 men digging by hand, because that was the purpose of the WPA, to put men to work."
(Los Angeles City Archives Public Works Department Bureau of Engineering)