Today on the show we'll begin with an update on how the UCSB community is coping with the tragic shooting over the weekend. Then, in 'Magical Stranger', author Stephen Rodrick chases the ghost of his pilot father. Plus, Rebecca Keegan of the LA Times fills us in on all things Hollywood, SoCal vets look for burial place close to home, remembering Riverside's military heritage on Memorial Day, plus much more.
Isla Vista Massacre: UCSB student president, reporter on how community is coping
Today we're remembering the victims of Friday's nights shooting rampage near the University of California at Santa Barbara.
22-year-old Elliot Rodger opened fire on pedestrians in the Isla Vista community near the school. This, after he stabbed three men to death in his apartment. In the end, 7 people were killed, including the shooter who, Sheriffs say, likely died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. 13 more people were injured.
Among the dead was 19-year-old Veronika Weiss.
KPCC's Sharon McNary spoke with her father, Bob Weiss, about his daughter. He described how he and his wife raced to the campus in the middle of the might to find out what happened to her.
"At about 12:30 my wife and drove up to Santa Barbara. We went to the hospital first and she wasn't there or at the other hospital and it occurred to my wife that maybe someone in Veronika's condition would not be at a hospital...so then they asked us to wait around the hospital and we did that for while and then we drove to the crimes scene where we found the officers but they couldn't tell us anything. We waited in the car until about sunrise. They escorted us to a church and a couple of pastors confirmed that Veronika was one of the shooting victims...we were waiting for the official word and then we just knew. We knew what we going to hear by then."
Bob Weiss remembered Veronika's confidence as a child, and her grit.
"She was a tough little kid, when she was 14 she played pony baseball here in Westlake Village and out of 1000 kids she was the only girl. We tired to talk her out of it butbut she insisted she could do it and did it well. That independence and courage you just don't see it very often. She was a wonderful citizen of the world. And we all lost something. You did. I did. The Rodgers family did. We all lost a lot."
For an update on how the students are doing three days after the incident, we turn to Ali Guthy, student body president at the school.
Then, Marissa Wenzke, editor of the school's paper the Daily Nexus, was at a friend's house near the scene of the shooting when she heard the gunfire. She quickly went to find out what happened and began reporting the story. She joins us to talk about her experience and what she saw.
Santa Barbara chaplain struggles to help Isla Vista community wade through grief
Three days after the mass shooting in the UC Santa Barbara college town of Isla Vista, residents are still piecing together what happened. Deputies say a 22-year-old man killed six people and himself.
KPCC's Mary Plummer spoke with a first responder who worked all night after the rampage. She brings you this story of his impossible task.
'Magical Stranger': A pilot's son chases the ghost of his father
Memorial Day is a federal holiday remembering the men and women who have died while serving our country's military. Most of those men and women have families who may be observing Memorial Day in a more somber way.
The families of soldiers who don't come back alive are left holding on to memories of who they were even if sometimes those memories are not always too clear. Stephen Rodrick lost his father when he was 13. For most of his life to that point, Stephen's dad was gone 200 days of the year and his death left him with holes that would take decades to fill.
Stephen Rodrick's writes about this in his new book called "The Magical Stranger: A Son's Journey into his Father's Life."
Magical Stranger by Stephen Rodrick
On The Lot: 'X-Men', 'Ant Man', Seth MacFarlane and more
It's Monday and even though it's a holiday, we're still joined in the studio by the indefatigable Rebecca Keegan, who writes about film for the LA Times.
The weekend box office numbers won't be released just yet because of the holiday but it's looking good for the "X-Men" directed by Brian Singer, who we may remember was embroiled in a sex abuse lawsuit recently. What's going on with that case now?
Another comic book movie and another Hollywood director, Marvel is running into some problems with it's "Ant Man" movie and director Edgar Wright. What's happening there?
You had a piece over the weekend about the new film "A Million Ways to Die in the West" and you interviewed that film's director Seth McFarlane, who most people know as the creator of the "Family Guy" and host of the Oscars a couple years ago.
The air kisses have died down, the yachts have set sail, the Cannes film festival is over. Who were the winners?
Let's not forget the all-important Palm Dog award. Tell us what that is and who or what won.
We have some shocking news to discuss. Hermione Granger has graduated college, and we're not talking Hogwarts here.
Odd Hollywood Jobs: Military liaison
This is one in a series on Odd Hollywood Jobs — not acting or directing, but rather the tasks you haven't heard of. You can read other segments in this series at the links below the story.
When he joined the Army 18 years ago, Lt. Col. Steven Cole never thought he would be working in Hollywood. After a long career with the Army that has sent him around the world, he now serves as a liaison between the Army and the entertainment industry.
"The army has an entertainment liaison office out here in Los Angeles that basically serves as a conduit between production companies for film and television, studios or individual production companies, and the army," said Cole on Take Two. "We help translate army into production company and production company back into army."
As part of our series on little-known Hollywood jobs, Cole joins the whow to talk about how he got into this line of work, what he does and how he balances the real with the fictional.
Interview Highlights:
On what his day to day is like:
"Who we deal with on a day to day basis are the people that roll through on the credits. I see productions as army units, so director is the commander, the talent are the soldiers, and then the producers and all those that make the movie or TV show run, those are the people that I deal with."
On the Army's longstanding relationship with Hollywood:
"I think one of the most interesting things about the job is that the very first Academy Award-winning Best Picture in 1927 was a movie called "Wings," a silent movie. The army provided an aircraft for it. In a lot of ways the army has been involved in Hollywood as long as there has been a Hollywood. There's times where we do more and there's times where we do less just based on viewer appetites for films that depict the army."
On why its important for the Army have a relationship with Hollywood:
"We don't work for Army recruiting, but one of the biggest barriers to military service in general and the Army in particular is just familiarity with the service. I happen to come from a family that has a long military history, but if you don't know anything about the Army, all you know is what you see on television. So outdated depictions of the army may be all that you know. So what we try to do is depict the Army as realistically as possible so that future soldiers come in with their eyes wide open about what it is they're joining up to do."
On how he became a military liaison:
"The golden path to this job, I was commissioned out of West Point in 1995, that was about eight years of my career, spent in what conventional Army units. Then the military academy asked me to go back to graduate school, then I went back to teach at the military academy for three years in the history department. From there I became a public affairs officer and then deployed to Afghanistan to be part of the international security assistance force NATO staff there. Coming back from that assignment went to work at FleishmanHillard, which is a corporate global communications firm, to try to understand how big business uses communication to explain what it is they do. Took that experience and I'm not really applying those lessons to explain what the Army is all about."
On toeing the line between real and fiction:
I think there's a fine line between exciting and reality, so sometimes you want sexy. The lone wolf character, or whatever, and we say look the Army is a team sport. This isn't how it would be. Most people that work with us understand that and that's why they ask us to participate. The DOD instruction that we follow provides for those things that don't exist, but in a world where they did exist how would the Army react to them? The U.S. Army having Superman's back is probably what we would do, in defending the country and supporting the Constitution of the United States, that's our job. So would we do that in these make-believe worlds? Sure. If we were doing that how would be act? That's how we have to think about our roles in these films.
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Inside the 'pick-up artist' online community that IV shooter frequented
Prior to Elliot Rodger's attack on Isla Vista last Friday, Rodger emailed a 137-page manifesto to several people detailing his plan, calling it, "The Day of Retribution" and "My War on Women."
What also emerged was his involvement in the culture of pick-up artists. He subscribed to several YouTube channels made by members in that community and that dialogue may have influenced him.
Joining us is Amanda Marcotte, writer for the American Prospect. She's also the author of, "It's A Jungle Out There: The Feminist Survival Guide to Politically Inhospitable Environments."
Why Elliot Rodger's red flags weren't enough to prompt intervention
In the wake of Elliot Rodger's killing spree, many people have looked to law enforcement and the mental health system, wondering what — if anything — could have been done to avert this tragedy.
Rodger had several run-ins with the local sheriffs department prior to Friday's rampage. His mother had even alerted authorities after she saw disturbing videos he posted online. But these red flags were not enough to prompt a serious intervention.
For more we're joined by Dr. George Woods. He's a forensic psychiatrist in San Francisco and the Vice President of the International Academy of Law and Mental Health.
Remembering Riverside's military heritage on Memorial Day
Thousands of people will visit Riverside National Cemetery today for Memorial Day. They will lay flowers at gravesides, and honor military veterans. The cemetery is among the places depicted in "Wild Blue Yonder," a photo and oral history project from Riverside novelist Susan Straight.
SoCal vets look for burial place close to home
A bill is moving forward in the legislature to create the first state-run veterans cemetery in Southern California. It would occupy a section of the former El Toro Marine Air Base in Orange County.
Reporter Ed Joyce says the closure of the Los Angeles National Cemetery has forced southland vets and their families to find burial plots far from home.
Fly fishing as a meditative, healing process for veterans
For some soldiers, learning to live with physical injuries or post-deployment stress in a clinical setting is a less than conducive atmosphere for making progress.
Rivers of Recovery, a Minnesota based nonprofit group, uses a different approach: They take soldiers out into the woods and teach them to fly fish. The aim is to provide counseling, camaraderie and self-care tools that soldiers can build on.
Sergeant Kurt Erickson is an infantrymen serving in the second Stryker brigade at Washington’s Joint Base Lewis McChord. He deployed to Afghanistan for nine months in 2012. Since his return, Erickson has become active with the Rivers of Recovery.
As Erickson was headed out on his second trip with the group, KUOW reporter Patricia Murphy asked him to record an audio diary of the experience.
In 'Carter Girl,' Johnny Cash's stepdaughter pays tribute to her musical family
As the daughter of country legend June Carter Cash and the stepdaughter of Johnny Cash, it's as if Carlene Carter was destined to make music.
She started singing with the Carter Family when she was just 17 years old and she hasn't stopped since. Her newest album, "Carter Girl," features some great country classics:
Give Me The Roses (While I Live)
But this is the first album that Carlene's put out since 1978 that's had her family's name in the title. She recently answered why that was when she spoke with Take Two's Alex Cohen on KPCC.
"Thing was that I always knew I would make a record to honor my family's musical legacy and it was never the right time. And then right after mama passed, I felt that was too soon. But, after a nice 10 year gap I decided that it was the right time to make this record. It took a little while to make it in the sense that I had to do a lot of research.
I thought I knew a lot about the Carter family and the music, but as I got into it I realized that there were like 450 songs. So, I took the song book "In The Shadow of Clinch Mountain"... And I brought that out and I started to go through songs that I had never heard."
"Black Jack David" was one of the first songs that Carlene's grandmother taught her.
"...it took me back to a time when I was learning how to play a guitar and grandma was teaching me that little number and aunt Helen, she taught me a lot about playing the guitar."
Creating this album dredged up tons of beautiful memories for Carlene. But growing up with such a musically gifted family was anything but normal compared to what other kids grew up with.
"...I noticed that parents, actually, the daddy came home from work and they had dinner at 5 o'clock kind of stuff, and that wasn't the way it was at our house. Nobody's mom went on the road to go work. And nobody's mom was on the Grand Ole Opry. Nobody that I knew. I could say that I did used to sit at their feet and watch them practice and stand in the wings...and go I want to do that when I grow up."
Much of this album is about Carlene coming to terms with her family legacy and remembering the family that she had. Nnothing demonstrates that more than the song "Lonesome Valley 2003."
She remembers the time when she lost her mother, stepfather and sister within a very short period of time.
She explained why it took her so long to sing about it:
"It was just, my heart hurt. It was just a normal grieving for me. And I also had the added factor that everywhere I went I heard them. Mainly I'd hear John a lot. And everywhere I looked there was a video of him singing "Hurt." And my mom's in that and that would just tear me up. And you know I remember when John died I was on my way from California to his bedside and didn't make it. And I heard that he passed while I was in the airport in Salt Lake City."
But while she still misses her family, Carlene was able to perform a song with them in a way. They took old recordings of June, Johnny and her aunts, and Carlene sang with them on the track, "I Ain't Gonna Work Tomorrow."
"I just remember how my aunt Helen was just smilin' every time she was playing. And my aunt Anita just singing like a bell. And mama just gettin' down in there, you know? But we recorded these songs when I was a full fledged member of the carter family and it was one of my favorite ones that I used to perform with them because it was kind of up and it had a...everybody sang a verse.
"And of course any time we were recording, John had to be there. He couldn't stand it. He just needed to be in it. So, we took it an we kept... all the voices as if they were there... I was just pretending that they were in the other room singing on a different mic. And this is how it came out, you know?"
At the end of the chat with Alex Cohen, Carlene performed two songs in studio, "Tall Lover Man" and "Gold Watch and Chain."