from Vanity Fair

Sue Mengers

With a client list that included Ali MacGraw, Gene Hackman, and Barbra Streisand, Sue Mengers, the first superagent, ruled 1970s Hollywood with her brash, no-nonsense style. Herewith, the expert deal-maker dishes on insects, Paris Hilton, and sleeping.

Jack Nicholson

Which living person do you most admire? 
 My plumber.

What is the trait you most deplore in yourself? 
 There’s not enough paper …

What is the trait you most deplore in others? 
 Lack of humor.

What is your greatest extravagance? 
 Grass.

What is the quality you most like in a man? 
 That he breathes.

What is the quality you most like in a woman? 
 Forgiveness.

What do you most value in your friends? 
 Utter devotion.

Who are your heroes in real life? 
 Doctors.

How would you like to die? 
 I think I already have.

What is your motto? 
 “Tomorrow may not be another day.”

[ click to read the full Proust at Vanity Fair ]

from The New York Times

How Do You Move a 340-Ton Artwork? Very Carefully

Monica Almeida/The New York Times

By ADAM NAGOURNEY
Published: October 7, 2011

RIVERSIDE, Calif. — It is just under 60 miles from the Stone Valley Quarry here — an expanse of dust, boulders, roaring bulldozers and cut granite hillsides — to the lush campus of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art on Museum Mile. Behind a pile of rocks the other afternoon, out of sight from the road, workers scurried around a 340-ton, 21-foot-high solid granite boulder, trussed with red steel girders, gleaming under the desert sun. If all goes well, this boulder will be hovering over a cut in the earth on the grounds of the museum, and be open for viewing, by the end of November.

The piece, known as “Levitated Mass,” by Michael Heizer, a California-born sculptor known for huge outdoor installations that make extensive use of earth and rock, is by any measure an ambitious and brash use of outdoor space. But more ambitious might be the logistics of moving Mr. Heizer’s rock, which was dynamited out of a hillside, from here to there. It is a trip that will take the boulder through the heart of one of the most congested urban centers in the country: nine nights at six miles an hour, through 120 miles of roads, highways, bridges, overpasses, overhead wires, alarmingly low-hanging traffic lights and sharp turns.

The effort, nearly five years in the planning (though Mr. Heizer has been making sketches of it as far back as the late 1960s), feels nothing short of a military movement: an incursion through a bewildering thicket of state, city and county regulations and a region with a notoriously difficult street grid. Even the matter of where to pull over each day is a challenge; this is not a Motel 6 kind of trip.

[ click to continue reading at NYTimes.com ]

from CBS Los Angeles

LA Porn Studio Begins Construction On ‘Post-Apocalyptic’ Underground Bunker

San Fernando Valley-based porn studio Pink Visual said the bunker is envisioned as “far more than a mere bomb shelter or subterranean survivalist enclave”, complete with a digital studio, gun racks and a rotating hydraulic stage.
(courtesy Pink Visual) 

LOS ANGELES (CBS) — A San Fernando Valley adult entertainment studio began construction this month on what it calls a “post-apocalyptic” underground bunker in anticipation of a global catastrophe rumored to take place in late 2012.A spokesman for Van Nuys-based Pink Visual said the bunker will be “far more than a mere bomb shelter or subterranean survivalist enclave” with amenities such as multiple fully-stocked bars, an enormous performing stage and a sophisticated content production studio.

“Our goal is nothing less than to survive the apocalypse to come in comfort and luxury,” said Pink Visual spokesman Quentin Boyer, “whether that catastrophe takes the form of fireballs flung earthward by an all-seeing deity, extended torrential rainfall, Biblical rapture, an earthquake-driven mega-tsunami, radioactive flesh-eating zombies, or some combination of the above.”

[ click to continue reading at CBS LA ]

from SYNCHRONICITY

ALBERT REYES: The Art of The Rattling Wall – August 13

ALBERT REYES:
The Art of The Rattling Wall

Please join PEN Center USA and Narrow Books at Synchronicity on August 13, 2011, at 7 p.m. for the opening of ALBERT REYES: THE ART OF THE RATTLING WALL. The Rattling Wall is a Los Angeles-based literary journal specializing in short fiction, travel essays, and poetry. ALBERT REYES: THE ART OF THE RATTLING WALL will feature the artwork that appears in the journal’s inaugural issue, as well as new work. The show will run from August 13-27, 2011.

Albert Reyes has a distinctive artistic approach inspired not only by street art, comic books, and American pop culture; but also by contemporary and classical “high art.” His drawings and illustrations incorporate everything from icons of corporate America to Hollywood stars, to mass media, to politics, to consumerism. Reyes has exhibited at the Pacific Design Center, Giant Robot (Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York), Black Market Gallery, Art Basel Miami Beach, and Shepard Fairey’s Subliminal Projects and Studio Number One galleries. His artwork has appeared in the New York Times: Year In Ideas, Swindle, Chicano Art Magazine, Giant Robot Magazine, and on “Jimmy Kimmel Live” and CNN.

The Rattling Wall, Issue 1, includes work by Tod Goldberg, Libby Flores, Tony Hoagland, Joseph Mattson, Kyle G. Dargan, Eric Layer, Stacey Waite, Neal Pollack, Lou Mathews, Don Winslow, Matthew Zapruder, Alisa Slaughter, James Greer, Eloise Klein Healy, Blake Butler, Jessica Garrison, Allison Burnett, Samantha Dunn, Brando Skyhorse, and James Frey. The Rattling Wall is edited by Michelle Meyering.

[ click to continue reading at SYNCHRONICITY ]

from the LA Times

[ click to read more at the LA Times ]

from The New York Times

Notes of a Screenwriter, Mad as Hell

United Artists

The screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky(1923-1981) won an Academy Award for his jeremiad “Network” (1976), starring Faye Dunaway.

By DAVE ITZKOFF

LAMENTING the lack of “satirical clarity” in the screenplay he was laboring on in the early 1970s, Paddy Chayefsky was mad at himself and American television viewers at large. He was seeing the venomous spirit of the era of Watergate and the Vietnam War infiltrate every program the broadcast networks offered, from their news shows to their sitcoms, and he concluded in a typewritten note to himself that the American people “don’t want jolly, happy family type shows like Eye Witness News”; no, he wrote, “the American people are angry and want angry shows.” He had set out to write a comedy, but if his film script was funny at all, he said, “the only joke we have going for us is the idea of ANGER.”

In the following months, Chayefsky channeled that fury and his intense frustration with television — the medium he described in another note as “an indestructible and terrifying giant that is stronger than the government” — into the screenplay for “Network,” his dark satire about an unstable news anchor and a broadcasting company and a viewing public all too happy to follow him over the brink of sanity.

“Network,” directed by Sidney Lumet and released in 1976, won four Academy Awards, including Oscars for Chayefsky’s script, Faye Dunaway’s performance as a cynical programming executive and Peter Finch’s frenetic portrayal of Howard Beale, the troubled “mad prophet of the airwaves.”

Thirty-five years later, “Network” remains an incendiary if influential film, and its screenplay is still admired as much for its predictive accuracy as for its vehemence: a relentless sense of purpose that is even more palpable in the files Chayefsky left behind upon his death in 1981.

[ click to continue reading at nytimes.com ]

from The LA Times

The opening celebration for ‘The Rattling Wall’

Maybe all readings should let the bar open before getting underway.

Whether it was helped by the wine and beer or not, Wednesday night’s kickoff of the new literary journal “The Rattling Wall” was a festive celebration. Held at the Hammer Museum, the room was filled to its 250-person capacity, with stylish young literati, well-heeled PEN stalwarts, and the contributors, who fell, demographically, somewhere between the two.

“The Rattling Wall” is a print literary journal published biannually, supported by PEN Center USA West, and edited by PEN’s program director Michelle Meyering. The first issue, which includes a whopping 36 contributors, features fiction by James Frey, Blake Butler and Tod Goldberg; poetry by Tony Hoagland and Matthew Zapruder; and travel essays by Samantha Dunn and Don Winslow.

Although most of Wednesday night’s readers hail from the West Coast, Meyering hinted at the magazine’s ambitions when she told the audience that she looked forward to “building a national community of readers and writers around the journal.”

[ click to continue reading at The LA Times ]

from Blogging Los Angeles

The Rattling Wall: New LA-based Literary Journal

May 3, 2011 at 11:34 am in Books, LA

I’m not one of those Angelinos who will claim that our literary culture rivals that of New York (sorry people, it just doesn’t–we can still love LA and concede secondary status on pizza and publishers). Nonetheless, we do have a pretty vibrant community of writers and readers. I’ve written about Chaparral and What Books Press here before, and I’m always happy to see news of a new journal or press.

On that note, The Rattling Wall is set to launch this month, and the inaugural issue looks delightful with offerings from Albert Reyes, Tony Hoagland, James Frey, and Neal Pollack, among others. They’re having a release party at the Hammer a week from tomorrow.

[ click to continue reading at blogging.la ]

from The Los Angeles Times

L.A. THEN AND NOW

Southern California’s great citrus had its crate advertising

For decades, citrus growers labeled their wooden crates with colorful brand names and images, letting consumers know that the oranges, lemons and grapefruit were something special.

The Three Star brand logo, designed in 1934 by the Carton Label Co. for the Murphy Ranch in East Whittier, reflects the “Commercial Art” era in label design. (Gordon McClelland / March 27, 2011)

By Alison Bell, Special to the Los Angeles Times

They’re bright. They’re bold. They’re eye-catching.

California orange crate labels are viewed as quaint kitchen decor today, but there was a time when the colorful logos were cutting-edge innovations in national marketing.

Packinghouses often created three different labels: one for high-grade fruit, one for mid-grade and one for the bottom of the barrel — citrus that was small, poorly textured or off-color. The fruit in this last category didn’t necessarily taste bad, but it looked bad. Growers sometimes chose scruffy dogs or ugly old ladies to represent these grades. One Villa Park brand, “Camouflage,” carried the slogan: “The Quality is Inside.” Another brand, “Mutt,” proclaimed: “Not much for looks, but ripe, sweet & juicy.”

[ click to read complete article at LATimes.com ]

from The NY Times Asked & Answered

Asked & Answered | OHWOW

By STEFFIE NELSON

photo by Curtis Buchanan - From left: Al Moran and Aaron Bondaroff.

Downtown is a state of mind for the art impresarios Aaron Bondaroff and Al Moran, whether they’re selling Statue of Liberty figurines by Kembra Pfahler at a pop-up shop in Athens, Greece, or recreating the Ludlow Street watering hole Max Fish at a bar in Miami (bar staff included). After descending upon Los Angeles last year with a one-night-only Halloween Neckface show that drew 5,000 people, this weekend the two introduced the new L.A. home of their OHWOW gallery. Opening Saturday in a 4,000-square-foot, ivy-covered former Laundromat on La Cienega Boulevard in West Hollywood, OHWOW presented “Noblesse Oblige,” the first L.A. exhibition from Scott Campbell, who is as well known for the work he’s inked into the flesh of Marc Jacobs, Terry Richardson and others as he is for the intricate 3-D pieces he cuts into sheets of United States currency. “Noblesse Oblige” — an ironic battle cry for Campbell’s backwoods Louisiana kin and a phrase he has tattooed on his neck — also finds the artist working with neon, etching onto 24-karat gold plates, and drawing on the insides of ostrich eggs. We caught up with Bondaroff and Moran in the Rafael de Cardenas-designed space to discuss the bigger picture.

[ click to continue reading at Asked & Answered ]

from The LA Times

Graffiti artist’s past is tagging behind him

Cristian Gheorghiu scrawled ragged images and his nickname, ‘Smear,’ on L.A.’s lampposts, walls and riverbeds. Now that his gallery career is taking off, an injunction is threatening to bar him from profiting from art bearing his telltale ‘tag.’

Graffiti artist Cristian Gheorghiu, emblazoned with his street nickname “Smear,” in his East Hollywood garage studio. Gheorghiu is gaining acclaim as an artist and is trying to make amends for his past mistakes. (Brian van der Brug, Los Angeles Times / February 25, 2011)

For years Cristian Gheorghiu craved the thrill of the chase. Spray-paint can in hand, he lived on the edge, always a step ahead of the law.

His canvas was L.A.’s lampposts, brick walls and concrete riverbeds where he scrawled ragged images and his own nickname, “Smear” — probably thousands of times.

The graffiti made him a subculture sensation. Fans compared his art to that of another graffiti artist, the critically acclaimedJean-Michel Basquiat.

But just as the East Hollywood graffiti artist’s career was taking off, his past has threatened to overtake him.

First came jail and a whopping fine. Now, City Atty. Carmen Trutanich is seeking a one-of-a-kind court injunction to bar Gheorghiu from profiting from art bearing his telltale “tag.”

[ click to continue reading at LATimes.com ]

from The Washington Post

John Hughes and the art his movies inspired

By Jen Chaney

Yesterday was a day of great significance for anyone who ever admired Andie Walsh, reviled Steff and wanted to hang out at Traxx.

Feb. 28, 2011 marked the 25th anniversary of the release of “Pretty in Pink,” the teen classic written by John Hughes about a thrift-store-chic girl (Molly Ringwald), a pastel-preppy guy (Andrew McCarthy) and the pompadoured geek (Jon Cryer) who wants to drive them apart.

In honor of that anniversary, as well as the genius of John Hughes in general, I recently visited to Gallery 1988, a Santa Monica, Calif., art gallery currently hosting the exhibit “The Road to Shermer: A Tribute to John Hughes.” The exhibit features paintings, posters, drawings and mixed media creations inspired by Hughes’s films, from “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” to “The Breakfast Club” to “Planes, Trains and Automobiles.” And yes, “Pretty in Pink” is well-represented, too.

[ click to continue reading at The Washington Post ]

from The LA Times

Bookstore of the week: Small World Books in Venice

Mary Goodfader moved her bookstore to the Venice Boardwalk in 1976 after seven years in Marina del Rey. When she and her husband Robert found the space that now holds Small World Books and the Sidewalk Cafe, the building was empty, she says, covered with graffiti like “stop bombing in Cambodia.” They bought the building and divided responsibilities: She ran the bookstore and Robert ran the cafe along the boardwalk, which faces the sea. The restaurant is “pretty much the reason the bookstore can exist,” Goodfader says. “As long as people want to buy hamburgers, I’ll keep it going.”

Venice Beach is home to some famous characters, apart from those available on the postcards for sale. Those who’ve stopped in at the store include actors John Cleese and Paul Giamatti, filmmaker Tony Bill, musician Andy Summers and artists Ed Ruscha and Robert Graham. Writer James Frey was “a great friend of the store,” says Mary Goodfader. “We liked him a lot.” He did two signings there; these days, the store rarely hosts book signings.

[ click to read full piece at The LA Times ]

from The LA Times

Los Angeles to become home to Robert Mapplethorpe work and archive [Updated]

As of this summer, Los Angeles will become the leading destination for anyone interested in artist Robert Mapplethorpe, thanks to a joint acquisition just finalized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the J. Paul Getty Trust.

The acquisition includes more than 2,000 works by the artist, “including a print of virtually every photograph he editioned in silver gelatin,” according to the museums. Silver gelatin is the process by which he made his most widely known work, black and white photographs.

It also includes the Mapplethorpe archive, featuring one-of-a-kind silver gelatin prints, thousands of Polaroid studies for his work, personal correspondence to intimates such as Patti Smith, and documentation of the 1990 obscenity trial in Cincinnati that made Mapplethorpe a central figure in that decade’s culture wars.

[ click to continue reading at LATimes.com ]

from The Hollywood Reporter

HBO eyes show on L.A. porn business

Mark Wahlberg, Steve Levinson developing the project

Aug 19, 2010, 07:28 AM ET

HBO is working on a hour-long drama series about the porn business that will use actors and adult performers.

The New York Post reported Thursday that “Entourage” and “Boardwalk Empire” executive producers Mark Wahlberg and Steve Levinson are working on the project with controversial writer James Frey who is penning the pilot.

“The plot will focus on a giant video company under siege from Internet competitors and a girl from the Midwest whose boyfriend convinces her to move to Los Angeles to become a star,” the Post wrote.

“We’re going to make a sprawling epic about the porn business in LA,” Frey told the paper.” We’re going to tell the type of stories no one else has told before, and go places no one has gone before.”

[ click to read at The Hollywood Reporter ]

[ click to read at New York Magazine ]

[ click to read on Page Six ]

[ click to read at The LA Times ]

from LA Weekly

Selling the Treasures of Book Soup’s Late Owner

By Gendy Alimurung Thursday, Aug 19 2010

 Much as he might have wanted to, when Book Soup owner Glenn Goldman died of pancreatic cancer last year, he couldn’t take his impressive 20th-century literature collection with him. Parts of it are being auctioned off as we speak.

“When you get a call about books, you hope to hear two things,” says Catherine Williamson, director of fine books and manuscripts at Bonhams & Butterfields, the house that is running the sale. “That the collection belonged to someone who follows the rare-book trade, or that it belonged to someone well-connected. Glenn was both.”

Known for high-profile signings that wrapped crowds around the block of its Sunset Boulevard digs, Goldman turned Book Soup into a model of a modern, major independent bookstore. Literary (and actual) rock stars sign there, as do artists, politicians, actors and porn stars.

While he certainly had a soft spot for the flashy guest author, Goldman did not mess around when it came to collecting. There are first editions, and then there are first editions. He owned, for instance, a first edition of James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. It went up for auction in New York last month along with the choicest bits from his collection, including a first edition, first issue of Steinbeck’s first book, Cup of Gold.

The single most coveted book in the July L.A. sale was a signed copy of photographer Richard Avedon’s Observations, with commentary by Truman Capote. Williamson believes it will attract more interest than even the signed, first edition copy of Raymond Carver’s What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.

[ click to continue reading at LAWeekly.com ]

from LA Weekly

CONFIRMED: Historic L.A. Punk Venue Madame Wong’s to Close for Good in August

By Chris Martins

​This just in: West Coast Sound has learned that the historic Chinatown punk venue, Madame Wong’s, will be closing for good on August 14.

“It’ll probably never be a music venue again,” said Aquarium Drunkard’s Justin Gage, who broke the news via a Twitter post this afternoon. “So anyone that wants to get a sense of that old L.A. punk rock culture, get in while the getting’s good.”

This was actually the space’s second run as an intimate host to some rather high profile performances. Founded in the early ’70s, Madame Wong’s was originally a Chinese restaurant with a Polynesian dance floorshow.

Co-owner Esther Wong was eventually convinced to become a punk promoter as a way to drum up customers, and wound up playing host to shows by an incredible spate of performers, from the Ramones and Black Flag to the Police and Guns N’ Roses.

The restaurant was closed in 1985 after a fire, and the so-called “Godmother of Punk” passed away in 2005 due to lung disease.

[ click to continue reading at LAWeekly.com ]

from the LA Times

Citing security concerns, HARD L.A. canceled

July 12, 2010

In the wake of a teenager’s death at the Electric Daisy Carnival last month, the electronic-centric HARD L.A. concert at downtown’s Los Angeles State Historic Park has been canceled due to security concerns.

James Valdez, a state park ranger and the lead coordinator for events in the Los Angeles sector who was overseeing Hard L.A., confirmed that the July 17 date is no longer happening. Valdez said the Aug. 7 Hard event, also set for the park, was still planned as of this morning. “From what I hear, yes,” Valdez said when asked if the Aug. 7 was scheduled to go off.

Valdez said he received an e-mail from Gary Richards, the festival’s promoter, that stated the July 17 date was “postponed,” but he had no further information.

Documents from sources connected to a number of the acts scheduled to perform at the July 17 concert indicate that the promoters behind HARD L.A. have canceled the show in light of the new scrutiny and logistics demanded of large-scale electronic music concerts in Los Angeles.

The annual festival this year was to feature acts including M.I.A., Die Antwoord, Flying Lotus, Sleigh Bells and others.

[ click to continue reading at The LA Times ]

Go Buy Some Books @ Skylight

from The LA Times

Wily dodges point to single culprit in high-profile Los Angeles heists

Thefts that depend on role playing and charm point to a single burglar being the likely suspect in heists of jewelry and cash from sports teams, a salsa band and a sugar baron in town for the Oscars.

By Andrew Blankstein and Richard Winton

For the “Rico Suave” bandit, the weapons of choice are charm, disguise and the power of persuasion.

In August, the man slicked back his hair and pretended to be a member of a salsa band playing the Greek Theatre. He talked a clerk at the Wilshire Grand hotel into giving him the keys to the band’s room and made off with $9,000. On his way out, he gave the clerk the band’s CD.

A few weeks later, he donned a Chivas soccer jersey and hugged members of the Mexican team as they left another downtown L.A. hotel, the Marriott, on a team bus. Then, posing as a member of the team’s entourage, he persuaded a hotel clerk to give him the team’s room keys, making off with $10,000.

Now, detectives are investigating whether the bandit has made his biggest score yet, at the Four Seasons Hotel on Oscar weekend.

[ click to continue reading at The LA Times ]

from The Wrap

Variety Drops Chief Film and Theater Critics

Updated: Todd McCarthy and David Rooney are cut as the trade moves to trim costs

By Daniel Frankel and Sharon Waxman

The evisceration of Variety continues.

On Monday, the trade let go chief film critic Todd McCarthy and chief theater critic David Rooney. Longtime film critic Derek Elley also was cut, as was features editor/indie film reporter Sharon Swart, along with several copy and design desk employees.

In a memo to Variety staff, the trade’s group editor, Tim Gray, said all three critics have been asked to work as freelancers for the moribund trade.

However, McCarthy told TheWrap he has made no such arrangement, at least not yet.

“It’s sad,” McCarthy said. “It’s the end of something. You can say it’s the end, or you can say it’s the end of the way it’s always been done.”

Reaction from the film community was characterized by shock and dismay, with Roger Ebert tweeting, “Variety fires Todd McCarthy and I cancel my subscription. He was my reason to read the paper. RIP, schmucks.”

Still, in his memo, Gray insisted, “Today’s changes won’t be noticed by readers. Our goal is the same: To maintain, or improve, our quality coverage.

[ click to continue reading at The Wrap ]

from The Los Angeles Times

Art is the message on these billboards

The works by several visual artists will appear in an area bounded by the 405 freeway and downtown L.A.

James Welling, the creator of the blue diagonal piece billboard is a professor at UCLA. His art will appear in as part of a project by 22 visual artists.

By Scarlet Cheng, February 20, 2010

A grid of blue diagonals, the profiles of two men confronting each other, a series of colorful vertical stripes with an embedded phrase — these will be some of the enigmatic images flashing through our peripheral vision while driving in L.A. over the next six weeks.

They are three of the 21 visual artists’ billboards that have been going up in some of the most trafficked corridors of Los Angeles, part of a long percolating idea of Kimberli Meyer, director of the MAK Center for Art and Architecture at the Schindler House.

“How Many Billboards?” will be sited in the central part of the city, bounded on the west by the 405 freeway and on the east by downtown. (Maps are available at the Schindler House as well as posted on www.howmanybill boards.org.)

They were designed by 22 artists — one is a collaboration between the mother-son team of Martha Rosler and Josh Neufeld — most of them based in the Los Angeles area. Only a handful had done billboards before, but all were chosen by Meyer and co-curators Lisa Henry, Nizan Shaked and Gloria Sutton on their potential to realize outsized presentations.

The artists include James Welling, creator of the blue diagonal piece and a professor at UCLA; Jennifer Bornstein, subject of a MOCA Focus show in 2005; and Kori Newkirk, who was in the 2006 Whitney Biennial.

Several are known for their work in experimental film — Kenneth Anger, David Lamelas, Kerry Tribe and Yvonne Rainer, who is also a dancer-choreographer.

[ click to continue reading at the LA Times ]

from MediaBistro’s Fishbowl LA

‘Father of Rock Criticism’ Paul Williams Stricken with Early Onset Dementia

By Matthew Fleischer on Feb 16, 2010 09:20 AM

 

An interesting story in the San Diego CityBeat profiles legendary rock critic Paul Williams, who, after a serious bike accident in 1995, suffers from dementia. His condition has degraded in recent years, to the point where he now needs round-the-clock care.

Williams founded the legendary music magazine “Crawdaddy” in 1966, when he was only 17. CityBeat writer Sarah Nardi credits Crawdaddy as “the first publication to treat rock as a serious subject (paving the way for future mags like Rolling Stone), and Williams was the first to realize that the music was less a generational byproduct than a cultural catalyst.”

More on Williams from Nardi:

“He smoked his first joint with Brian Wilson while listening to the masters of what would become SMILE; he counseled a struggling Springsteen on musical direction (just before The Boss finally broke through with Born To Run); he and pal Timothy Leary spent a night with John and Yoko during the Toronto Bed-In-For-Peace, and Williams later rejoined the couple to sing on “Give Peace a Chance.” He bitched out Jim Morrison for leaving a book Williams lent him behind on a plane; he hitched a ride to Woodstock in a limo with The Grateful Dead; and all the while, Williams was writing–refracting the pure creative energy around him through a powerful critical lens.

Image credit, via CityBeat: “A portrait of Paul Williams painted by Drew Snyder, rendered from a photo taken by R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe.”

[ click to continue reading at MediaBistro ]

from NBC Los Angeles

Group to Rename Iconic Hollywood Sign — For a Day

Conservationist group near deal to buy land, replace sign

By JONATHAN LLOYD

The Hollywood sign might look different Thursday — as in, completely covered.

Trust For Public Lands, a nature conservation group, said it has reached a deal that would protect a huge swath of land above the  Hollywood sign from being developed into luxury homes. The group’s president, Will Rogers, said Monday that the Trust secured an option to buy the rugged 138-acre parcel for about $12 million from Chicago-based Fox River Financial Resources.

As part of its initiative to save land near the sign from development, Trust for Public Lands wants to cover the sign with a shroud that reads, “Save the Peak.”

The LAPD sent out a community alert to Hollywood residents — possibly because it might alarm people to find one of LA’s most recognized 450-foot-long landmark wrapped in a giant blanket. Tim Ahern, a spokesman for the Trust, said the group is still waiting for permission from the city and the Hollywood Sign Trust.

[ click to continue reading at NBC LA]

from The LA Times

Cruise night returns to Van Nuys Boulevard

After a 28-year break, car lovers meet once a month on Wednesday nights to show off their souped-up muscle cars, restored classics and lowriders in a scene familiar a generation ago.

A 1962 Chrysler Newport makes its way down Van Nuys Boulevard during Van Nuys Cruise Night. After 28 long years, cruising has returned to Van Nuys Boulevard. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

As the souped-up muscle cars, restored classics and lowriders cruise through the old Rydell Chevrolet lot on Van Nuys Boulevard, Reid Stolz takes stock of a scene that was familiar to anyone growing up in the San Fernando Valley a generation ago.

“Remember when we were young and the cops were old?” said Stolz, 51, watching an LAPD patrol car glide by. “Now the cops are young and we’re old.”

After a 28-year break, Stolz and other car lovers have brought cruising back to “The Boulevard,” though the drivers are now more likely to be middle-aged guys with graying hair and grandkids, driven by nostalgia rather than teenage vanity.

The cruising scene on Van Nuys Boulevard once was so popular and rowdy that it all but paralyzed the area and was seen as a menace by merchants and local residents. Police shut it down when turf wars and illegal races got out of hand.

[ click to continue reading at The LA Times ]

from The LA Weekly

Bodhi Tree Bookstore Is Closing: Bad News for Buddhists

By Gendy Alimurung

Bad news for Buddhists and others seeking enlightenment: the Bodhi Tree Bookstore is closing. Owners Phil Thompson and Stan Madson informed their staff last Wednesday that the cozy Melrose Avenue shop, a nationally renowned and much beloved spiritual center, will be shutting its doors in a year’s time.

After some eight months of discussion, Thompson and Madson decided to sell the property to a local business owner who leases space to several other nearby retailers. The Bodhi Tree opened in 1970. Land values in the area have risen dramatically since then. Meanwhile, the business of selling print books has been on a steady decline. For years, real estate agents had been circling the Bodhi Tree like vultures. In the end, selling the property became a much more profitable option than continuing to sell books.

Thompson and Madson started the bookstore when they were in their 30’s. They are now both in their early 70’s. They were aerospace engineers who left a life of science for one of contemplation and meditation.

“Twenty years ago we felt like it was an expanding situation,” says Madson. “We were concerned the store was getting too big. We had a staff of 100. Publishing was expanding. Spirituality was expanding. But what changed was that the market became widely dispersed.”

Books on Wicca and Astrology and Native American shamanism used to be tough to find. But now every Borders and Barnes & Noble carries a significant selection of religious, spiritual and New Age literature. And what can’t be bought at a bricks and mortar shop can undoubtedly be found online at Amazon. For cheap.

[ click to continue reading at LA Weekly ]

visit the Bodhi Tree website

from Deadline Hollywood

R.I.P. Army Archerd

By NIKKI FINKE

Longtime Variety columnist Army Archerd died this afternoon at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center of a rare form of cancer. He was posting on his online column as recently as July 27th. But he was best known for his “Just for Variety” column in the print edition of Daily Variety from 1953 to 2005. And, long before Ryan Seacrest even held a microphone, Army was a fixture on the Red Carpet at the Academy Awards as the interviewer of record. Conventional wisdom had it that an Oscar campaign wouldn’t be successful without multiple mentions in Archerd’s column. Among his countless news exclusives was the tragic 1985 news that Rock Hudson had the AIDS virus. This, like everything showbiz, Army handled without sensation. Though Hudson’s publicist Dale Olson had tried to cover up Rock’s illness, Archerd learned of Hudson’s hospitalization in Paris and “wrote one of the most carefully written pieces I have ever seen,” Olson recalled to Variety when Army retired his print column. “That’s one of the secrets of Army’s success. He would do a story, even if it was a difficult personal story, and not write it like gossip. The message was there, but it was gentle. His column will really be missed. There is no way to replace Army Archerd.” I, too, thought Archerd one of the last true gentleman journalists working in Hollywood, and one of the most accurate. He was always sweet and supportive towards me. My condolences go out to his wife of many years, Selma.

Press-shy celebrities from Marlon Brando to Johnny Carson always sought out Archerd. According to a 2005 tribute to the journalist written when he retired as a print columnist, when Carson was about to celebrate his 25th anniversary on NBC in 1987, he told his publicist: “I’m not doing any interviews, because if I do one, I’ll have to do them all. But if Army calls, I’ll speak to him.”

[ click to continue reading at Deadline.com ]

from The Los Angeles Times

from The LA Times

Mt. Wilson’s famous, and besieged, observatory

Man once viewed the heavens by flickering firelight; now a raging blaze threatens a site where stargazing history was made.

Tim Rutten, September 2, 2009

There has been tragedy and loss aplenty in the fire ravaging the Angeles National Forest, but it has been particularly poignant — and, somehow, humblingly circular — to watch what’s probably the first natural element man subdued to his purpose threatening one of the great monuments of modern science.

The 101-year-old observatory at the top of Mt. Wilson houses some of the most productive scientific instruments of the 20th century, and it continues to play a cutting-edge role in various branches of astronomy, though the ambient nighttime light rising from the metropolis that now sprawls up its foothills makes deep space observation too difficult. Paradoxically, it was the Los Angeles Basin’s inversion layer — and the “stable air” it created — that originally made the mountain a perfect site for the great telescopes that revolutionized mankind’s notion of its place in the universe.

Beginning in 1919, the astronomer Edwin Hubble used the Mt. Wilson Observatory’s famous 100-inch Hooker telescope to prove that our Milky Way was but one galaxy among billions of stellar aggregations coming to life and dying across the universe. It was through his observations on the mountain that Hubble also realized that creation’s most primal impulse, the force of that singular event we now call the Big Bang, continues to echo through our universe, creating new distances where none had existed just a moment before.

[ click to continue reading at LATimes.com ]

from Lee Bailey’s EUR WEB

HERBIE HANCOCK JOINS L.A. PHILHARMONIC:

Jazz great named creative chair; begins two-year tenure in 2010.

The Los Angeles Philharmonic has tapped Herbie Hancock as its new creative chair for jazz, a post that oversees jazz programming at the Walt Disney Concert Hall and the Hollywood Bowl.

 

According to Variety, the Grammy winner is scheduled to begin a two-year tenure starting with the 2010 season. He will succeed Christian McBride, who has held the post since 2006.

[ click to read at eurweb.com ]

from FishbowlLA @ MediaBistro

Emmy Format Shift Angers Writers

The Emmy awards announced Thursday plans for a change in the format of the ceremony. Eight of the 28 Emmy categories will be pre-taped, in order to shave minutes off the lengthy program time. Two of the categories excluded from the ceremony are for writing, and given that there are only four writing categories in the Emmys to start with, There’s understandably some resentment. More than 100 television writers have signed a letter protesting the changes. James Hibberd at The Hollywood Reporterhas the letter, and further details:

We, the undersigned showrunners and executive producers of television’s current line-up of programs, oppose the Academy of Television Arts and Science’s decision to remove writing awards from the live telecast. This decision conveys a fundamental understatement of the importance of writers in the creation of television programming and a symbolic attack on the primacy of writing in our industry.

[ click to read full post at MediaBistro ]