He has several posts, the one I found most fascinating was the map of Tongva Villages overlaid onto a map of the L.A. area.  Militant Angeleno went as far as to take that map and list the villages by name and the modern city built over them.  I just wish I lived in one of those cities that had a Tongva name, I’d go as far as using it as my official city of residence instead of the current name…mail would still get to me using the zip code but how fun would that be to pay homage the natives that were here first and confusing stalkers at the same time.

Meet Evan Cook, the Monrovia Association of Fine Art’s Student Artist of the Year.  I have to admit the funnest part of being in MAFA is to find young talent and help recognize them and foster their interest in creating art.  Watching Evan grow into his art the last few years has been fun and certainly he has grown tremendously under the mentoring of his teacher at MHS, Sal Perez, and his employer Lisa Barrios of the Paint n Play Art Studio and Gallery.  At Paint n Play Evan both shows his work and gives lessons on the potters wheel and ceramics.

More about him in the Fine Art Trekkin’ Monrovia blog post by Ginger Van Hook.  (She also made this interview video with Evan).

Evan will receive his award at tonight’s Acknowledge the Arts event.  This event is MAFA’s fund raiser for the year.  Also receiving awards tonight is Clarence Shaw – Renaissance Award, Doug Gordon – Heart in the Arts Award.  Clarence is a City Council Member that supports programs that help bring art to the community and schools.  Doug Gordon receives his award for all he does to keep MAFA up and running during the course of the year, especially his long hours in keeping our web site up and running.

If you have any interest in attending you can save yourself a few bucks by purchasing your tickets in advance at the MAFA web site.  They cost $35 in advance or $50 at the door.  That includes munchies, beer, wine and “artinis”.

Details: Acknowledge the Arts, 7-10PM Krikorian Theater, 410 S Myrtle Avenue, Monrovia CA 91016

Disclosure…if you have forgotten I serve as Veep and am on the board of the Monrovia Association of Fine Arts.

Not saying “no” to Joan has worked wonders. What started out as a small effort by a local Church in 1980 has grown to a large incorporated non-profit with two service centers through the efforts of Ms Whitenack. The service centers are located in Pasadena and Monrovia. There they serve families and individuals in crisis to give them immediate aid then help them get on a path to recovery.   They even run a “pet food bank” to help them out with taking care of the pets as noted on a recent episode of the Ellen DeGeneres Show!

Aside from helping hundreds of families with their basic needs they have several special events through out the year. Among them are the
Back to School event where more than a thousand children receive hair cuts, dental exams, back-to-school supplies, clothing and even a keepsake art project.

Their mission statement says it all.

Foothill Unity Center, Inc. envisions a community where. . .

• All have their basic needs met, including the need to give
• All get the necessary support to become self-sufficient
• All are treated with love and dignity … all the time

We provide critical support, in the form of food, clothing, motel vouchers, and referrals/advocacy to our neighbors in crisis. As the need for food brings people to us, we listen to their problems and help them find solutions. We work with other agencies to provide long-term shelter, counseling, medical, educational, employment and spiritual assistance depending on the person’s needs.In this way, Foothill Unity Center helps people return self-sufficiency. All services are provided with love and dignity, regardless of race, color, sex, age, religion, national origin, citizenship, sexual orientation, physical or emotional disabilities or veteran’s status.

All this happened through the energy and vision of Ms Whitenack to be able to help those in need in the foothill communities in the San Gabriel Valley.

Monrovia Center: 415 W. Chestnut Ave., Monrovia 91016 Phone: (626) 358-3486 / Fax: (626) 358-8224 Hours: 9:00am – 5:00pm Monday through Friday
Pasadena Center: 191 N. Oak Ave., Pasadena 91107 Phone: (626) 584-7420 / Fax: (626) 584-7422 Hours: 9:00am – 5:00pm Monday through Friday
More information on how to Volunteer, donate or help however you can at the Foothill Unity Center Web site.

– Sonja Rasula, on connecting the dots from the big world of Los Angeles to your backyard

Not too toot our own horn, but there is something to the idea that grounds our little almost-didn’t-make-it blogging network known as Metblogs: that you, as a netizen, have a resource other than the big guys for information, news,  and commentary about what’s going on in your block.  Because, ultimately what goes down at your corner store is a microcosm of what goes on in your neighborhood, your side of town, your city; if you work on improving your little corner of the world, you help improve all four corners of the world.  This hyperlocality of action parallels what Sonja Rasula is doing, one event (Unique LA) and food festival (next week’s Street Food Fest) at a time.

I met Sonja for the first time at this spring’s Unique LA, an event where some 300 (mostly) local designers and crafty people brought their, yes, unique items to sell in a giant room at the California Market Center downtown.  Keeping up with Sonja is an exercise in – well, exercise.  I caught her somewhere between managing her volunteer staff of 9 and trying to get a bite to eat.  After pausing to resolve a situation with the tote bags (the $10 admission price to the event included a free tote bag designed by a local artist), we headed over to grab a bite at the Flying Pig’s stand — but not before Sonja stopped by the booth of a vendor named Homako.  Homako is a petite Japanese woman based here in LA; her Etsy store contains her mission statement:  “To create stuff to make me so Happy..  I want my friends(=my creations) to make you happy too!!!!!!!”  Aw.  She was so bubbly and excited by all the people – not just Sonja, but others as well – who ooh’ed and ah’ed at her where-did-you-get-it origami necklaces that you just couldn’t help feel peppy too.  Sonja picked up a necklace.  “If I don’t buy this now, I’m never going to get to it,” she said.

Sonja, sporting Homako's origami necklace, talks to Joe Kim of the Flying Pig truck. The Flying Pig's "tacos" are wrapped in a steamed bao bun - delicious.

Unique LA is a now bi-annual event, one in the spring and one in the winter, right before Christmas.  For the $10 admission fee, participants got free booze, the nifty tote bag designed especially for the event, and the opportunity to shop at the vendors handpicked, by Sonja, to set up temporary shop at Unique LA.  For those of you (me) who hate shopping precisely because your taste is buds only with food and not style, Sonja did the legwork for you.  It’s easy to take it from here.

Saba Horuni is super excited about the dinosaur purse she picked up at Unique LA. If anyone knows who made the purse, email me so I can give them proper credit!

“Buy local” is a such an oft-repeated mantra that it almost – almost – is devoid of the reasons behind the thought.  The only remnant of the phrase left is the connotation of expense – that, because of the economies of scale, buying locally-produced products is generally more expensive than, say, going to Target.  Nonetheless, over 12,000 people attended Unique LA; in total, Sonja estimated that $500,000 was injected into the local economy as a byproduct of the two-day event.  (Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, for all his pride about various national events held in LA and contributing to the local economy, remained conspicuously silent – guess he can’t catch every half million dollar event that happens under his nose.).

The sight of Angelenos – me, you, our neighbors, their mothers- paying the admission price and buying at Unique LA, in a recession no less, was a bit of surprise to me.

Not entirely for Sonja.  “The challenge, actually, is getting more people to come” to Unique LA and to “understand why you should buy local,” she said.  She credits her “incredible” street team and certain wry social media strategies for the turnout at Unique LA (but otherwise stayed mum on the specifics of her techniques – the details are Coca-Cola-trade-secret tight), but notes that she still “wants to reach beyond the hipsters and young people.”  Sonja appreciates good design, wants others to appreciate it as well and not settle for less – even if it means paying a little more.

In addition to shopping, Unique LA offered everyone the chance to learn a thing or two about the lost art of sewing.

She hopes that once we recognize that local artists produce unique things that you can not find at your neighborhood Third Street Promenade, a change in mindset from a passive to more active buyer will naturally follow.  She raised the fact that guests often visit LA and end up at Third Street.  “That’s so funny,” she said.  “You can find most of those stores anywhere.”  Instead, “I want to have a mall comprised of local vendors” so that the visiting New Yorker can have something a little more LA than shirt from BCBG.  And vice versa – Sonja has planned a Unique event for NYC (and Atlanta), so if we happen to visit the Big Apple during Unique NYC, we can take home something a little more New York than a “I Heart NYC” mug created specifically to boost tourism.

It’s easy to write off Unique LA as a cute two-day affair for hipsters, and nothing more.  It’s more thought provoking – and a little scary for corporations, and the publications and governments they sponsor – to take it seriously as a step towards modifying our shopping habits (again, all of our shopping habits, not just those of 20somethings with Clark Kent glasses and skinny jeans) that travels beyond the walls of the California Market Center.  Now, instead of only Target and Wal-Mart on our list of places to go for, say, stationary, we’ll consider Rock Scissor Paper as well.  Shopping with that mentality of choice is the first step towards fully taking advantage of the wonders of capitalism.

In this market of choice, price is only a factor.  Sonja is convinced that once people attend Unique LA, they will appreciate the quality and uniqueness of our locally made products and have little qualms about shelling out a little extra for the cost of ownership.  In turn, the dollars, earned and spent at the local level, will help support local infrastructures, like schools and public parks.  Seeing the state of these infrastructures will motivate us to do things like vote in local elections; after all, as Sonja pointed out, we are most directly and immediately affected by the problems and solutions addressed in the local elections.  This is the urban circle of life.  It is this circle that is the reason why buying local is so important as to almost be a political act itself.  If Simba figured out how to fulfill his role in the jungle, so can we.

Good luck finding this tote at your local Wal-Mart.

That we include the local designers on our shortlist of places to buy is the least we can do.  After all, their designs are lifted, sometimes blatantly, from the big guys.  Urban Outfitters, for example, strains very hard to duplicate and commoditize a certain street look, popularized by designers actually living in those streets.  Indeed, at least one blog tracks instances where retailers brazenly rip off other designers’ work.  Supporting your local designer, in a way, helps support your local Urban as well.  Irony, she’s rich.  Almost as rich as Urban.

Sonja is clear about not hating (too much) on the big guys, however.  There should be room for everyone: “Sometimes, you just really need a plain black leotard from the Gap,” she laughs.  At some point, she would like to help retailers enlist local designers and launch local lines within their brands.  With supermarkets of all places now heralding locally-sourced fruits and veggies, it is not at all unfathomable that the Gap or J Crew’s Madewell would roll out a line from (and appropriately credited to) a local designer.

All politics is local (RIP Tip O’Neill). The urban circle of life is something Sonja has been contemplating for quite some time.  Having spent a significant amount of time in Canada, “making sure your neighbors are taken care of” simply was part of the community mindset.  Taking that ethos with her when she moved to LA, she became heavily involved in the Youth Progressive Majority, encouraging young voters to learn the issues and, um, vote.

Sonja mindfully uses her events to “give back” to local non-profits.  Some proceeds from the spring Unique LA event, for example, were donated to Greenwish (which helps raise funds and awareness for green businesses), and a portion of each ticket sold for the upcoming LA Street Food Fest will benefit St. Vincent Meals on Wheels and Woolly School Gardens.

Supporting your local artist is less of a problem, it seems, when your local artist happens to be creating food. The last five years or so has seen this city come to its own in terms of food.  Among other causes, blame/credit gentrification, the rise of celebrity chefs, and a young demographic with an appetite for taste beyond the scene.  Late last year, just as the whole food truck thing was reaching its pinnacle, Sonja organized the city’s first major gathering of food trucks downtown.

By most accounts – including Sonja’s – the February event did not go well.  Scheduled to start at 10am, the fire marshal’s inspection caused undue delay.  Meanwhile, countless people descended upon the lot; pretty soon, the line (and the parking) snaked so far down 6th street that it was reminiscent of the early, two-hour-in-line days of the Kogi truck.  When the festival finally did open, the grounds quickly became overcrowded.  The lines at each food truck were enormous, hours-long even.  Hungry masses went crankily from one line to another.

Tickets to July 24th's Street Food Festival are pre-sale only, so that this ^^^ doesn't happen again.

Sonja strikes me as the type of person who, if she arrived 15 minutes late one day, would show up 15 minutes early the next.  And so, after apologizing in the face of the backlash and anger over the event, she and Shawna Dawson organized a second LA Street Food Fest, slated for next Saturday evening, July 24th, at the Rose Bowl.  There is a little hesitation about the second go-around of the food fest, given the problems of the first (indeed, a few food vendors told me they declined to participate precisely because of how the first was executed).

Crossing my fingers that Antojitos Carmen will have quesadillas. Above, a quesadilla de flor de calabaza - quesadilla stuffed to the gills with squash blossoms - on a recent trip to the storefront in Boyle Heights

Yet, to give them both credit, Sonja and Shawna learned a-plenty from their first go and upgraded accordingly.  Unlike version 1.0, there will be no giant lines spilling over into the huge parking lot that subs as a flea market every month.  Rather, version 2.0 caps the capacity, and makes tickets available only via pre-sale.  In addition, the pay-as-you-go format has been dropped in favor of a one-time admission fee of $45.  This seems a little steep at first, but you do get your money’s worth: liberty to sample all you can sample at each of the 60 participating food vendors and to drink all you can imbibe.  Just remember that no one likes an overly drunken foodie (no one).

The little boy, and little girl in me, watched eagerly as batter is poured for Fry Girl's Metblogs award-winning mini-donuts.

In addition, the event will bring together both new skool (i.e., Filipino food truck Manila Machine and Fry Girl, who won TWO awards at our First Annual Donut Summit last month!) and old skool (Tamales Elana from Watts and former Breed Street vendor Antojitos Carmen (<– if she has them, you absolutely must – must – pick up a few fried quesadillas)).  There also will be a cook-off, so you can watch all sorts of one-chefmanship take place.  And, finally, because eating and a competition about eating are not entertainment enough, The Deadly Syndrome and Warpaint will be jamming as the summer night falls.  All this on the grasses where Reggie Bush pushed Matt Leinart and where a stunned audience witnessed future Pro Bowler Vince Young handily hand the Trojans their asses.

Regardless of the struggles of the first food event, and how well this second improves on the first, the idea of the food truck powwow undoubtedly will endure.  America at the Brand, for example, organized two Street Feasts in March and June of this year, with stores in the outdoor mall running specials and discounts.  Similar events at other retail shopping courtyards followed.  While I’m personally happy to see local food trucks getting the business, it’s a little … disingenuous? insidious? genius? to use them as the worm to hook people in to spend at the retail mall.  Riffing from local ideas, it seems, is not limited to design (oh, right, who can forget Baja Fresh’s ridiculous attempt to put “Baja Kogi” tacos and burritos on its menu?).

Unlike other cities (Sonja points to Austin and Portland), we here in LA are still in the nascent stages of recognizing that we even have a local culture to support.  Also, we sometimes shoot ourselves in the foot: as she organized Unique LA and her food fests, Sonja learned that the climate in Los Angeles is “hyper-competitive.”  I guess the fact that a celebrity very realistically may wander into your store and pick up your ware to wear makes for a hypercompetitive market.  But that competition is giving way to mutual respect.  Sonja was pleasantly surprised when she learned that vendors picked to set up shop at Unique LA actively encouraged their patrons to attend the fair.  “[T]hese vendors were encouraging their customers to possibly shop with their competitors.  And they were ok with that.”  Similarly, participating food vendors are actively encouraging their followers to attend next week’s Food Fest.  And so, everyone wins.  See?  A little community building never hurt anyone.  We should be proud of us.

The LA Street Food Fest is on Saturday, July 24th, 5:30pm to 9:00pm, at the Rose Bowl.  General admission tickets are $45, which includes unlimited eats and drinks, parking, and entertainment by The Deadly Syndrome and Warpaint.  VIP tickets are $60, which gets your car a little closer to the stadium and you in a little earlier into the Fest. Tickets are pre-sale only, so get them while they last.  And, mark your calendars: the holiday edition of Unique LA is scheduled for December 11 and 12 at the California Market Center downtown.  Think of it as a way to avoid those nasty post-Halloween crowds.

That said, not many sit for portraits any more.  Instead, families, prom couples, and high school girls going for their glamor shot make a beeline to Target and Sears for their photo portraits.  They all have different motivations: to preserve a moment in time; to boast their virility; to fool others; to fool themselves. And yet, the effect of sitting for the photo is remarkably similar to sitting for a portrait: an Awkward Family Photo.  Faux austerity, grim smiles, absolutely no smizing, and a dirty, speckled blue curtain.  Perhaps now is the time to consider how the Future You would want to remember the Current You.  Perhaps with, say, a little more color?

Hello, Katherine Chiu.

Katherine is, as you can see, a portrait painter.  She happens to live in Los Angeles, and also happens to be kicking off Metblogs Locals, a series in which we feature a totally awesome [insert occupation here] and talk to them about their work.  We’ll also ask them to name a few of their favorite colleagues, sort of a “journalistic pyramid scheme,” as Kev-O so eloquently described it a few weeks ago during our impromptu Metblogs powwow.  So, altogether now, Hi, Katherine Chiu!

It’s fitting that our feature is on someone whose work features others.  But, Katherine is not just any portrait painter.  Her work is whimsy but grounded, personal but inviting. The harbinger of all things over(t)ly hip, Daily Candy, opined: “[E]ach painting captures your family dynamics in a fairy tale-esque tableau.”  In other words, this ain’t your great-great-great-great-great grandma’s watercolor portrait.

Here’s why I like Katherine Chiu’s work, and why I wanted to talk to her more: her portraits are very, very engaging.  And serene.  As if her subjects stopped for just long enough for Katherine to capture the warm glow of their essence.  I look at her work and smile and think.  It could be that I’m projecting much too much, but other portraits strike me as interesting only to the people who know the subject (if that), or the subjects are just too intimidating, staring at me with their families, their fences, their waxy fruit.  Everyone in Katherine’s work is friendly, self-assured, and, yes, a little arty.  Just like the very best parts of you.

Representing one’s subject and client accurately even as they are transformed into pieces of art must be difficult.  And yet it is this challenge of representation that appeals to Katherine.  Most art is intimidating, she points out, either because of mental class barriers that make us afraid of Things Rich People Like (to Own), or because the artist intended the work to be abstract and distant (in her words, “Fuck hipster art.”).  Portraits, on the other hand, are “relate-able, instantly accessible, more familiar.”  Plus, “People are so interesting.”  Along the lines of screwing the pretentious ungangliness that is hipster art, Katherine represents her subjects in a way that opens, not slams shut, the door to viewers.  So, while her client list includes certain unnamed directors who directed certain famous movies about certain famous bat persons, it also lists your neighbor.  She’s doing to art what Domaine547 and K&L Wine Merchants are doing with wine: de-snobbing.  I want to drink their wine; I want to meet her subjects.  Also, I want the color blocked rug in the above picture, and the kid on the left’s robot shirt.  Details, details.

Katherine’s one of those terribly lucky people who knew what she wanted to do since she was a wee toddler.  A year after the terrible twos and a year before starting kindergarten, Kathy began drawing.  Then, she didn’t stop.  While most of us high school seniors completed incredibly outdated occupational survey tests printed in Courier New  (the answer to my test was: pilot, librarian, politician.  Umm..), Katherine knew her answer in advance and went straight to the Art Center College of Design after high school.  “It was a little intimidating” both because of the caliber of her classmates and their ages: the majority were post-college graduates, attending as a sort of post-doctoral degree. But, talent knows no age.  BusinessWeek featured her student work; after graduation, she landed design and graphic art positions at Disney and Junior Drake.  She recently left the corporate world and their stuffy dress codes (oh, the bane of that world, really) to pursue her own career in art and, especially, portrait painting.

Whether the client wants to give the painting as the best present ever, or because h/she wants a unique family memento that is both practical and artful, the process of constructing a portrait is the same.  After an initial discussion about how to actualize someone’s sense of self onto a canvas, Katherine pulls out the camera.  Ironically, then, the process essentially begins with photographs.  A lot of them.  “I take 40-50 photos of the subject, then take pictures of the environment, or anything else I find interesting, and use that as inspiration for a background scene,” she explained to me.  (True to form, she ended up taking about a dozen pictures of my dog.  “That dog is so cool!”)  She then takes the photos back to her space, deconstructs and reconstructs, and produces a portrait more whimsical than any static Photoshopped 8×10, and more lively than any formal, stuffy sit-down session.  This is the 2010s, people; actually sitting for a portrait painting is so 1800s.

The most interesting portrait she was asked to do? “I had two adult clients who wanted a portrait of them as they were children,” she said.  Lacking a DeLorean outfitted with a flux capacitator, she instead analyzed photos of the two as young strapping kids.  The clients were very happy.

In addition to portraits, Katherine’s busy on another project: GlamKat.  A joint project between her and another Katherine (Wang, who does crafts worthy-of-Unique-LA), GlamKat features her not-strictly-portrait works.  As you can see, Vampire Weekend, if they’re going to do the portrait route, really should have her do their next album cover.

And, because we want to spread the love here at Metblogs, I asked Katherine to name 5 (or 6, as it turned out) local artists she respects and admires.  She happily obliged, with the caveat that some of these are her friends.  It’s nice to have friends you respect and admire, isn’t it?

• Adam Alaniz “paints creatures and ethereal worlds.  He has two beautiful boys, and I think his child-like wonder and happiness really shows through in his work.”
• Jared Andrew Schorr “does these awesome intricate paper cut outs (can you imagine him sitting at his desk with an exacto-knife going half blind cutting out tiny triangles?). He is another artist who is not afraid to be happy and sweet.”
• Ken Garduno “does these ink drawings that are very psychological and humorous. His work really crosses lines, everything from comics to gallery to editorial.”
• James Jean.  “But this is too obvious. Everyone loves James Jean. CAUSE HE’S A GOD.”  [I would be dishonest if I too was all over James Jean, but, like a rerun of Friends on NBC during the summer of 1998, this is new to me.].
• Andrew Hem (his website is I Drew Him – heh).  Kathy says: “He’s really influenced by graffiti and his Cambodian background. His work is urban, dark and sweet. And his technique is off the charts. SO MUCH TALENT. I want to drink from his spoon.”
• Saelee Oh.  “Not afraid to be girly. Also does paper cut-outs and sculptures. And she seems like a dang cool chick.”

Katherine frequently exhibits her work and donates her pieces to various charity events all over the city.  She’s actually showing a piece next Friday evening, April 23rd over at Tinlark in Hollywood.  Check it out and maybe talk to her if you want to see yourself immersed in a different kind of local color.  Whatever you do, you’ll be leaving content with a smile.

When Merill Schindler announced that restaurant as one of 2010′s most anticipated foodie happenings, I knew I had to ask Eric just what was up. Here’s the info, right from the grilling-master’s mouth. Of course, details of the resto haven’t been finalized yet, but here’s what he was able to report thus far.

LMK: What is this new restaurant going to be?

EG: A quick serve restaurant. Not fast food but a real casual concept: sandwiches, soups, salads, seltser drinks. Real quick, real affordable–out the door for ten to twelve bucks. Something fun and chef driven.

LMK: And where will it be?

EG: We haven’t locked it up but we’re in the process of negotiating next door to The Foundry [on Melrose].

LMK: What made you decide, “Grilled cheese”?

EG: Since [The Foundry] opened, our grilled cheese sandwich has been a real big hit, and when we won the Grilled Cheese Invitational it got even bigger, more talked about. So obviously it made sense ‘cause it’s our most popular item in the restaurant. Also a grilled cheese is comfortable, it’s familiar, it’s quick. It’s typically not…

…fancy, which really makes it intriguing for this kinda concept. For something cheap & quick, people are looking f0or something comfortable they understand. For me it’s exciting when you go to the Grilled Cheese Invitational and you see all the different things everybody’s doing–it’s a great platform for creativity.

LMK: Any word on the menu?

EG: We’re gonna feature the champ, the one we’ve always been doing & which won the Grilled Cheese Invitational [The Foundry’s famed short-ribs-and-taleggio on raisin bread with a piquant apricot-caper schmear]. We’ve been working on one that’s a play on chicken wings, bleu cheese, celery and carrot slaw on rye bread with a spicy sauce; we’ve got a medianoche pressed sandwich with pork and Swiss cheese on French bread. We’re looking forward to playing around & altering them a lot, with a featured sandwich every month, microseasonal, and some great artisan cheeses being made in America; and a “Make Your Own” option for people who can’t decide. Like at The Foundry, it’s gonna constantly be changing. For me that’s what excites me about food: the constant ability to innovate & create.

LMK: Heidi Gibson, who’s won several Grilled Cheese Invitationals, has inked a lease and is getting ready to open her own grilled cheese restaurant in San Francisco. Would you be open to a collaboration between SoCal & Norcal? A cheese-off?

EG: I’m always down for collaboration. Some people like competition, but for me it’s not about competition; it’s about putting your best food forward. The cool thing about the GCI is the–dare I say–grilled cheese community? I would love to team up with her.

LMK: Any final words?

EG: I’m excited to do something that’s accessible, something that people can come in and eat every day. You don’t see that many fancy-schmancy chefs doing fast food stuff, but for me its exciting. Like, anything you can do with a short rib, you can do with a hamburger. It’s fun to try out something new and lend all that training & experience to something that’s quick and easy.

Of all the talks I have heard at ALOUD, I found Ansary to be the most engaged and fascinating speaker to date.Much of this appeal is personal demeanor, of course.  It was really nice to hear someone speak who spoke so authentically and directly to his audience, above and beyond Ansary’s intelligence and knowledge.  I felt compelled to buy his book after the talk, and it was nice to have the opportunity to get a copy autographed.  On intial skimming, the book also apears to have both depth and accessibility, and I recommend it as well (but you won’t get an inscription… or at least you’ll have to locate Ansary some other time).

Ansary’s book is about what its title says, but he relayed an amusing anecdote of how that title might be misunderstood.  Through most of its history, the Islamic world thought of itself as simply “the world.”  Although the interactions with European civilization (or European barbarity) were ongoing, those contacts were peripheral to the politics and world view of Islamic empires and states.  Ansary related how many Western readers approach him with the assumption that his book might be a history of how the Islamic world has seen the West; the answer there has mostly been that it never really noticed the West.  our Western assumption is something like, according to Ansary, a narcissist who speaks of himself for an hour, only to break by saying, “Enough about me: what do you think of me?”

As you might expect, most of the audience questions that ALOUD devotes a large part of its talks to were about current affairs: what is likely to unfold in Iran, in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Pakistan.  I should note that these audiences are really smart as a rule.  Ansary and Hussain both had interesting comments on those matters, often informed by their personal childhoods in Afghanistan and Pakistan, respectively (if I heard correctly, Ansary indicated that he was among the Farsi speakers of Afghanistan, which may or may not indicate a deeper understanding or knowledge of Iran; he is extremely knowledgeable in general, regardless of that background).  One question that one would expect to hear, and that deserves an answer, is about the prospect for women’s rights in the Muslim world.  Ansary’s comment was interesting in two elements.  On the one hand, Ansary repeated the familiar observation that in historical context of Mohammed, Islam was progressive on women’s rights; being granted testimony in court of 50% value is a move in the right direction from women being barred from testifying at all (to pick a well known example).  But Ansary discussed that what is required for equality is much more than that fixed moment got to, and that literalism about sharia is a barrier to many rights and democratic institutions.

In this question he also opened a certain doubt that this type of literalism is a deep feature of the Islamic world.  Earlier in the lecture, Ansary had mentioned his own brother, who is a religious scholar (Ansary himself is entirely secular in his beliefs), but whose research urged for what sounds like consequentialist ethics.. His hope is that a look at the spirit of intent in sharia might open way for a more liberal understanding of religion in the Islamic world. The second element was a good history lesson for us mostly non-Muslim Angelenos. In Afghanistan, between 1959 and about 1976, the royal family greatly liberalized the rights and restrictions on women. They did not do this by edict, but by going to the Imam’s and asking for religious evidence for the dress restrictions imposed on women: when this evidence was lacking, the royal family themselves adopted liberal dress habits of women wearing non-restrictive clothing, and this influenced the country (or at least the big cities) to follow.  It’s funny to think of Afghanistan as a liberal society, but comparatively it was in the 1960s and 1970s… those darn invasions!

If you are unfamiliar with this excellent series, I urge you to check it out by listening to a podcast or attending one yourself.

The central library of John Carter's Mars?

Update: It appears that Mrs. Lulu has snuck into the blog again.  The following contains her observations of a delightful lecture at L.A.’s magnificent Central Library.

Last night, Lulu and I attended one of the LA Central Library’s free lectures in their wonderful ALOUD series:  George Lakoff, “The Public Mind:  A Cognitive Scientist’s Guide to Your Brain and Its Politics, In Conversation with Ian Masters”

We were both particularly excited about this talk since we had studied Lakoff in graduate school.  For those of you who don’t know him, he’s a cognitive scientist and linguist  at UC Berkely, whose interdisciplinary work focuses on investigating the ways in which linguistic and cognitive structures (e.g., metaphors, prototypes, frames) shape perception and social life.

A central theme of last night’s discussion was the way in which the framing mechanisms of public discourse have been controlled by the Republicans [...]to the disadvantage of the Democrats.  This situation becomes especially remarkable in light of the fact that the latest cognitive science research, according to Lakoff, demonstrates a neuro-physiological basis for empathy.  Our brains are hard wired to feel the pain and pleasure of others, so it turns out that democracy has a material ground in our natural care for each other.   So why aren’t we more progressive and democratic as a society?

Here Lakoff turns to our political language. For example, the term “pro-choice” sounds frivolous next to the deeply compassionate and moral “pro-life.”  And who among us can be against  “tax relief”? Wouldn’t a “public option,” in health care strip us of our right to make private decisions in consultation with our trusted and chosen doctors?  These examples point out how language subtly directs us to the right wing position.  One of Lakoff’s own entries into the political fray, of particular interest to our state’s current budget standoff, came up against the resistance of such framing.  He had tried to get a referendum balloted stating nine simple words:  “All legislative matters shall be decided by majority vote.”  No top Democrats would back the measure because they feared the increase in taxes that would result from the repeal of Prop 13.  Thus, the simple democracy of majority rule becomes too subversive a step for the Democrats of our “golden state.” Again, as Lakoff pointed out, this fear of taxes has been inculcated by a republican framing mechanism according to which we automatically associate taxes with hardship and unfair burden, rather than with paying for social goods and services that we need and want.

One reason liberals do not do as well in framing issues, according to Lakoff, is their belief in the Enlightenment view of reason as pure of emotions or politics; thus, liberals need only to lay out the facts without attempting to persuade or influence and the rational person will come to the proper conclusion on his/her own.  Lakoff’s suggestion is that we frame the language ourselves–e.g., the use of guns could be seen as an act of cowardice rather than macho bravery (this, in response  to an excellent question by interviewer, Ian Masters, based on his own Australian upbringing that taught him that it was manly to settle differences by fisticuffs, but never with a weapon).

The news was not all bad, however; in fact there was an upbeat mood to last night’s talk.   For example, Lakoff  frequently praised Obama as succeeding in articulating some of the truth in contradiction to the overarching right wing frame.  Even Obama’s personal style and image as a calm, intelligent, nurturing man is helping to dispel the dominant view of masculinity as violent, authoritarian and controlling.  This view and its correlative view of the patriarchal family has served in turn as a model for our vision of politics and government, again as part of the conservative frame that hinders social progress.

Although many of Lakoff’s ideas did not come across as entirely new and original (after all, many currents of 20th C thought and philosophy, from phenomenology, to structural linguistics, psychoanalytic Marxism and feminism have argued the connection between the so-called purity of reason, logic and empiricist perception and the linguistic and social constructs that unconsciously determine our views), his presentation was provocative, timely and very well received.  I have attended several of these lectures now, and have always been impressed by the quality of the audience’s questions and comments.  If you are unfamiliar with this excellent series, I urge you to check it out by listening to a podcast or attending one yourself.

Andrew Walker’s hypnotic time-lapse films of Los Angeles, which I stumbled upon recently on Youtube, provide a conflict of sorts. As the time in the frame zips by, there’s a great stillness that washes over you as you watch them. His films show images such as traffic flowing in a torrential blur like side-by-side raging rivers of white and red light, or gorgeously backlit clouds rapidly mutating behind the silhouetted towers of Downtown. You also notice other lights flickering; office lights blinking on and off, aircraft zipping by, an exterior elevator bouncing up and down like a spastic yo-yo on the side of a distant building. And yet there’s that stillness.

Walker’s company, 599 Productions, makes time-lapse films for a variety of projects– TV and indie film productions and music videos, as well as for corporate clients.

From Placerville, a small town midway between Sacramento and Lake Tahoe, Walker didn’t go the usual route, through a traditional film school, to get into The Industry. After playing around with a camcorder in high school and editing skate films together for fun, he got a job at Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank as a projectionist, which served as his on-the-job training. (Interview with Walker after the click.)

“That was kind of like my film school, except they were paying me to be there instead of me paying them. It was a great place to learn about filmmaking. Then I started working over at DreamWorks and 20th Century Fox doing the same thing,” he told me in an email.

“It was very educational in that I got to see films in the rawest form they come in, dailies. Then I would see different edits until the final film, so the process of seeing that helped me a lot.”

CP: How did you start doing time-lapse film?

AW: I originally was shown a time-lapse DVD that someone had over at 20th Century Fox. I can’t remember the name of the artist. But what really caught my attention was that the guy showing me the DVD said that it was all done with a DSLR camera. I thought to myself, “I have one of those, I wonder how hard it is?”

I started testing which methods worked well and which ones did not. I remember seeing the first time-lapse I did and thinking “Wow, I have to watch that again.” I started posting my  clips after I would process them and people seemed to really like what I was doing.

The very first time-lapse piece I did I sold to a small website to use in their logo for  $100. I started to think I might be able to make some money to at least pay for some new equipment.

I already had the base for this type of photography in my bag of skills as I had done long exposure photography while I was in high school. Of course all this was done on film and this made time-lapse the way I do it a little out of my reach. But I always liked the process of long exposures because you get to see a world that exists if you could change your perception of time and let the light that is small and faint become bright and almost overwhelming with things you didn’t see before.

What types of clients approach you for your films?

A lot of different types of people approach me about the footage my company does but  only about 20% of them are serious about paying for the clips. Most try and get them for free and that usually doesn’t work out for those people. But I have donated a DVD of my footage edited together for some churches and a non-profit organization or two.

The type of people that approach me are music video people, independent film people, people that want to use it for a business meeting and sometimes TV.

Recently I signed a deal with Getty Images to represent my time-lapse footage along with some other things that I film. I also have footage represented over at Footage Bank. All of my new footage is at Getty Images and the older footage is at Footage Bank.

Are you at liberty to say where your footage has appeared?

A couple clips made their way onto the now-cancelled show “Moonlight” [the CBS vampire series set in LA.] A couple of my time-lapse clips were in a music video for a band called The Script, in their “The Man Who Can’t Be Moved” video. Sprint used some clips for a meeting they had. Also the Public Works union of Los Angeles has used some of my time-lapse for a video they made for their members. Plus a couple short films and other smaller music videos.

Your LA time-lapse films seem to exude a love for Los Angeles, or am I projecting my own feelings upon them?

To be very honest, I’m mainly in this city for the work. There are times, when I’m driving around looking for a shot, that I’m amazed by the beauty that this city has in it. That feeling may only last a couple moments but it usually changes my day for the better. The places I go to get some of these shots are places you wouldn’t want to be late at night. Most people would just keep their heads down to avoid trouble. But in some of the dirtiest, most dangerous places the best shots can be found.

Do you have other film-related pursuits?

Of course. I write, direct, edit and DP shorts and music videos that I produce. I do work on other peoples’ projects from time to time doing all kinds of things. Some of the other things I do are work as a RED Camera provider, RED digital image techician and colorist. [RED is a digital cinema imaging system.] I also pick up a couple shifts over at the different studios around town working as a projectionist when I’m not out looking for shots.

Which filmmakers have influenced you?

Frank Darabont, Steve Soderbergh, Robert Rodriguez, Robert Zemeckis, Michael Mann, Steven Spielberg, Alex Proyas, Peter Jackson, Darren Aronofsky, Christopher Nolan, Gore Verbinski and David Fincher.

599 Productions’ site has a time-lapse reel where some of Walker’s work can be viewed. Be prepared to be mesmerized.

Photo by flickr user nancy- under a CC license

In California I dream of snow
And all the places we used to go
With the night falling down
With the night falling down
Now I’m living in Korea Town
Waking to the sound of car alarms

Neko Case didn’t write this song, although I first heard this melancholic track off her album Canadian Amp while virtually thumbing through iTunes’ Neko collection. Philistine that I was, for years I believed it to have been penned by the Western-noir fox confessor of Americana herself. Instead, it was actually written by a woman named Lisa Marr, who fronted a band called Cub, and who played off and on with Neko in the 90s.

Was “In California” autobiographical? Or was it, as it is with many songwriters, a case of a musician crafting a narrative around an imaginary life?

So while this post was originally supposed to be about a song and a city, I now find myself drawn into a search for a woman, and her story…

I remember your face when I showed you the ticket
Said you were happy for me, your heart wasn’t in it
Just a phone call away
Now there’s nothing to say
As the days roll by, disconnected

In the land where the sun is always shining on
Crying alone, palm tress are laughing at me
Another fool playing songs that don’t matter
For people who chatter endlessly

Another suicide on the 405
The Black Dahlia she smiles and smiles
It’s the same old town that bled her dry
One more starlet one more time
Bound to make it do or die
Talk a walk to Bonnie Brae
Try to wash these dreams away
They try to tell me L.A is beautiful when it rains

I think it’s important to note the disappointment, the sense of anti-climax, dreams dying on the vine. And it’s also important to note that those things happen a lot in Los Angeles. Relentless booster of LA that I am, even I have to admit that at times the golden sunshine seems to burn the life out of everything, the endless urban grid an arid cage for pacing.

The Chili Peppers’ “At least I have her, though–the city, she loves me” seems for the most part like a lucky one-off; LA doesn’t love anyone very often. Lately even I’ve been occasionally feeling as if I’ve seen every street, smelled every bacon-wrapped dog, and the most exquisite of jasmine-perfumed breezy evenings seems melancholic. Too many ghosts and memories crowd every drive along Sunset.

To really love this city–to find your home here, truly and deeply–requires an initial surrender of all those early visions of what you thought Los Angeles would be, or of what it would give you. Until you can let go of those images you superimposed, with great hope, over LA, you can’t really get in. You’re locked out, lonely.

For me, maybe that vision was simply that LA could be all things for me, for all time.

The final line, “They try to tell me LA is beautiful when it rains,” evinces the presence of friends & acquaintances — maybe even an LA fan like myself — who encourage our protagonist to discover, for herself, the better parts of this city; but implied is the fact that is has not rained since she has arrived in this impersonal, harsh town, and the sensation is one of suffocating drought, dying of thirst. If love & dreams are like water, so ubiquitous in Vancouver & Washington State (where both Marr & Case hail from), then LA seems a desert.

In analyzing this song, I decided it’s got siblings out there. I suggest you also listen to Neko Case’s “Thrice All American,” an unabashed, through-it-all love letter to rusty Northwest port town Tacoma, which could be a genuine literary foil to “In California”…:

Well I don’t make it home much, I sadly neglect you
But that’s how you like it–away from the world
God bless California, make way for the Wal-Mart
I hope they don’t find you, Tacoma

and the Twilight Singers’ “Bonnie Brae,” whose dark take on East Hollywood/K-Town’s street named, in old Gaelic, “pleasant hill,” shows just how lost you really can get in this city (the street crops up occasionally throughout a number of songs by local songwriters)…:

There was a rapture, so I can never see you anymore
nightmares believable, walking into sweet oblivion
i’m not saying it’s easy, to feel it all or not at all…
‘cuz when you play with fire, take your fate, it’s not going away
situation dire, on bonnie brae, on bonnie brae…

Lisa Marr’s name sounded familiar when it cropped up during my research. Maybe it just had a familiar ring; maybe I’d heard it before. Marr appeared to still be in Los Angeles, and still playing music–despite the disenchantment of “In California,” she must have settled in ok (if indeed the song was autobiographical in the first place)–so I sent a mass email out to everyone I knew, asking if anyone could introduce us.

I abruptly felt like a damned idiot when I realized that the Lisa Marr I was looking for was the Lisa Marr I’d interviewed some time ago when writing a story on the Echo Park Film Center. Along with Paolo Davanzo, she co-directs the amazing community resource that is the EPFC. Marr herself, a slight, dark-haired woman who had that dewy look of someone who does yoga every day, had presented me with a membership pin a few years back.

The pin’s lived on my everyday jacket–a lightweight Army-green thing spiked with close to a dozen pins–even since then. Who knew that all the last few years I was listening to this song, the woman who’d written it had also punched out the little badge affixed to my lapel.

I emailed the EPFC right away, only to find Marr was leaving in the next few hours for two weeks in Japan, on an EPFC-related trip, presumably with much film in tow.

So this post, here, will have a post-script, when I interview Marr after her return to Los Angeles. As with the song, I suspect a new story will begin where the final line ends.

For the initial Songs About LA post & the collection of published posts on the topic, go to Julia’s introduction here.

Photo courtesy nancy- at flickr via a creative commons license.