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rostowskaja — Sun, 07 Dec 2014 16:45:21 GMT

http://www.everytrail.com/best/hiking-pasadena-california

Фильтр Тропы

Sturtevant водопад

Пасадена, (7.7 м) Легко: 3.7 м, 1-3 часа

Неторопливый поход через зачарованный часть горы Сан-Габриэль, ведущих к пятидесяти ф водопад от Чантри флатс к Sturtevant-Фоллс был популярным походом с начала 1900-х годов.

Eaton Каньон

Altadena, (3.5 м) , 1-3 часа 40-ф водопад.

Big Santa Anita Каньон петли с верхней тропе

Пасадена, (7.7 м) Умеренный: 10.0 м, полдня

Красивая мульти-ландшафтная тропа с множеством водопадов и деревьев. Предлагает сложные и ухоженные тропы. Big Santa Anita Loop trail.

Mt. Уилсон через Chantry флатс

Пасадена, (7.7 м) Сложно: 12.6 м, полный день. Чудесного дня похода с 50 футов. водопадом. 5000 ф саммит. Является домом для обсерватории, ответственной за самые детальные снимки Марса, а также широкий спектр антенн для местных ла радио-и телевизионных станций. Во время саммита погружен в астрономических удивлением и огромным видом на Лос-Анджелес,...

Orchard лагерь через Mt Wilson Trail

Сьерра-Мадре, (5.7 м) Умеренный: полдня. В первой половине тропа к горе Уилсон, старый лагерь, используемые сам г-н Уилсон.

След был первоначально построен Бенджамин Дэвис Уилсон, который был дедом генерал Джордж с. Паттон вокруг 1852 году. Тропа следовала старая индейская тропа, и по легенде, использовался испанцами охотиться на медведей Гризли. Бен Уилсон хотел найти лучшего дерева на горе, но не смогла обнаружить так тропа возвращается к...

Чантри фл Цикл (Mt Zion, Sturtevant водопад)

Сьерра-Мадре, (7.7 м) Сложно: полдня

Уайтинг Лесу Mtrwy

Glendale/Whiting-Вудс (7.7 м)

Умеренный: 5.2 km, 1-3 часа

2.604 мили по грунтовой дороге возле Verdugo города / Монтрозе, Калифорния

Уайтинг лесу автомагистрали 5.208 миль туда-обратно. Это довольно крутой, следовательно, меньше, горные велосипеды, общее в другие походы, в Verdugos. Начиная с конца Уайтинг лесу дороге, проходящей через запертые ворота вам быстро начать восхождение, 2.604 миль, чтобы пойти. Дорога начинается крутой, привыкнуть к нему, это будет...

Монровия-Canyon Park

Монровия, (8.9 м) Легко: 1-3 часа Сюрпризы на каждом шагу

Мы взяли раздвоенный поездка в поход двух каньонов. Один был короткий, слишком короткий, но в ретроспективе способ начать испытывать живой каньоны с паутины, свисающих с ветвей пород и фильтрации солнечного света. Или приятно удивлен, увидев небольшой rattle snake на бетонной дорожке из леса.

Гриффит-Парк легко назначения в себя. Диапазон высот от 384 до 1,625 футов над уровнем моря, и пейзаж меняется от прибрежных sage brush oak...

Mt Lukens by Haines Canyon Road

Tujunga, (10.9 miles away) Half day from Haines Cyn Ave in Tujunga

This trip starts at the end of Haines Cyn Ave in Tujunga, parking can be a challenge but as a fall back position you can park at the city property near the intersection with Apperson St. Proceed through the locked gate POI 1 and past the Debris Basin, which is the site of the now long gone City of Tujunga water department to POI 2 another locked...

Lake View Terrace / Doc Larsen Trail

Lake View Terrace, (14.6 miles away) Moderate: 8.2 miles, Half day

The trailhead and first ¼ mile are in a quiet residential area and crosses private property PLEASE stay on the road and don't disturb the residents or the road will be closed to public use. This trip follows Burbank Power & Light Road from Oliver Canyon Debris Basin Rd to a saddle on the ridge 1.8 miles 770 ft gain. While this seems not too steep...

Little Jimmy Springs

Azusa,(22 miles away) Moderate: 7.0 miles, Half day

Little Jimmy Springs is about 7 miles long and located near Azusa, California. The trail is part of several trails available in the Crystal Lake Recreation Area and great for hiking and normally takes a half day or less. The trail is pretty much easy to follow and well maintained as you can see signs throughout the trail and the park rangers also put...

Fullerton Creek

Fullerton, (23 miles away) 1.1 mile trail near Fullerton

Fullerton Creek is about 1.1 miles long and located near Fullerton, California. The trail is great for hiking and normally takes 1 hour or less

Echo Mountain 001 (Altadena, California, United States) Photo

Hiking | 10.2 miles (4.0 miles away)

A hike to the ruins of a turn of the century mountain resort hotel. Lots of history, great scenery, and plenty of chances to strike out on side trails. Full write up at Modern Hiker.

Woodshire to Belden.JPG Photo

Hollywood Steps Circuit Hiking | 1.8 miles (10.3 miles away)

There are six sets of granite steps in Beachwood Canyon, below the Hollywood Sign. These historic landmarks were built in the 1920's when Hollywoodland was created, and they link high streets and low streets in the hills. This trail links them all together for a good cardio workout that takes about an hour. Go in the morning or evening to avoid the heat!

Gabrielino Trail Chantry Flats Photo

Sturtevant Falls

Sierra Madre, Hiking | 3.7 miles (7.7 miles away)

This is a leisurely, easy hike through a truly enchanted portion of the San Gabriel Mountains that leads to a fifty foot waterfall. From the trailhead at Chantry Flat you descend a paved service road into Big Santa Anita Canyon to a well maintained trail that skirts alongside the main stream. Along the way you pass private cabins that have been there for years and a strange system of concrete check dams...

Mount Lowe Hike - Altadena CA Hiking | 12.7 miles (4.0 miles away)

Today I hiked Mount Lowe in Altadena California for the first time. The organizer of the hike as always was Richard Orozco, also came Eduardo Ruiz and Ronny Muñoz. This is our second big preparation Hike before we do Mount Whitney California in August. The weather seemed unpredictable at first, the forecast said 50% chance of showers. We got some rain at the beginning of the trail, the sun came out after...

SWITZER FALLS Hiking | 4.6 miles (8.2 miles away)

(Altadena, The fire road Blimp and downtown LA (Altadena, California, United States)

Dawn Mine

Altadena, Hiking | 5.7 miles (4.6 miles away)

This is one of my favorite close to LA hikes. I got the idea from localhikes.com and THIS person's everytrail trip. I would say this hike is a blue square in difficulty. 1500 ft assent in 2.75 straight miles, eroded single track trails, major bouldering, poison oak everywhere, and the temptation to explore a dangerous cave all add to the difficulty. The trail starts on Ridge Fire Road, where it can get hot with the asphalt reflecting the...

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Дамба Санта Анита

Первый из нескольких искусственных бетонных дамб, построенных в округе Лос-Анджелес борьбы с Наводнениями округа в начале 1960-х годов. Эти плотины подобрел на протяжении многих лет и стали почти частью ландшафта, предлагающие успокаивающие звуки каскадные водопады.

Junction карта

Winter Creek Bridge

Здесь тротуар заканчивается, как вы повернуть направо и пересечь Winter Creek bridge, чтобы старый сайт Роберта лагерь, где большой Санта-Анита-Каньон и зимой Creek сходятся. След знак предлагает ряд направлений и точек направлении Sturtevant Falls, 1 1/4 мили.

Here the pavement ends as you veer right and cross the Winter Creek bridge to the old site of Robert's Camp where Big Santa Anita Canyon and Winter Creek converge. A trail sign offers a number of destinations and points the direction to Sturtevant Falls, 1 1/4 miles.

Тропа начинается сужаться, когда вы идете вдоль ручья, под сенью живой дуб и ольха. По пути вы увидите несколько частных домиков, построенных в период с 1906 по 1937.

#67 Castle on the Creek. Bombadil's Castle on the Creek Photo

Sturtevant Falls

Historical Art and landscape

rostowskaja — Sun, 29 Jun 2014 01:51:32 GMT

http://www.trottergalleries.com

Monterrey Peninsula's Earliest Historical Art Gallery Specializing in Early California Painting in Museum quality works by historical artists

Granwille Redmond (1871-1935)

Franz Bischoff

Maurice Braun

William Clapp

John Camble

August Gay

Arthur Hill Gilbert. A.N.A.

Selden Gile

Perry Gray

Armin C.Hanson, N.A.

Xavier Martinez

Francis McComas

Evelyn McCormick

Thomass A.McClynn

Mary DeNeale Morgan

Frank H .Myers

Edgar Payne

Charles Rollo Peters

Granville Redmond

William Ritschell. N.A.

Willam P.Silva

S.C.Yuan

LANDSCAPE

Dennis Doheny (b.1956) coastal jewel

Charles Reiffel (1862-1942) Whitch creek mountain

Edgar payne (1883-1947) Hilltop shadows

WilliamWendt (1865-1946) Through the Sycamore

Percy Gray (1869-1952) Tall eucalyptus Tall pines

Will Sparks (1862-1937) Adobe at night

Miron Oliver (1891-1967) Boston Harbor

Maurice Braun (1877-1941) Mission Valley

Paul Lauritz (1889-1975) High Sierra

Anna Lee Stacey (1865-1943) courtyard

LOS ANGELES SHOW

Antoine Blanchard

Eduard Leon Cortez

Tony South

Li Quanglin

Mari Jose Tiran

Rimi Young

Daniel Greene

Peter Kellet

Tony Abcyta

Ludovie RodoPissario

Wolf Kahn

E.Kazaz

Robert Bissell

Michael Parkes

http://www.ShinkleFineArt.com

услуги и прочее

rostowskaja — Sun, 29 Jun 2014 01:01:46 GMT

All around computer questions.ru 818-257- 0589 ComputerSerge@@yahoo.com 6677 Santa Monica blvd #219 CA 90038

Japanise Japan foundation 5700 Wilshire blvd #100 323-761-7510

Mихаил Aрхипов долина огней 310 490-4852

Http://www.Dr.JosephShainsky.com travel tur

http://www.kosmostravel.com 818-713-1717

avia a-travel http://www.Fare-Shopper.com

Owens Valley, Sierra и окрестность

rostowskaja — Sat, 28 Jun 2014 19:24:29 GMT

Mano Lake- вулканическая кальдера с противной водой. Kальдера молодая, возникла по причине того, что Aмериканский континент подмял плиту Фараллон и в зоне растяжения. Жаркий климат и соли воды провоцируют образование туффитов - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mono_Lake

Моно Бассейн находится в одной из наиболее геологически активных областей на планете. Его богатая событиями история вулканической активности очевидна и в потухшeй вулканической цепи Bodie и Anchorite Hills на северe и востокe и бездействующиx Моно Кратерax на югe. В то время как Боуди и Anchorite Hills были в последний раз активные более чем сотни миллионов лет назад, Моно Кратеры - самая молодая горная цепь в Северной Америке - самому старому из ее 9,000 пиков только 40,000 лет. Кратер Panum, самый северный и самый молодой, извергся только 640 лет назад.

Приблизительно 760,000 лет назад катастрофическое извержение вулкана в Long Valley ( Длинной Долине), Калифорнии развеяло 350 куб.км магмы c глубины 6км. Быстро движущиеся потоки пылающего горячего пепла покрыли большую часть центрально-восточной Калифорнии и переносимый по воздуху пепел упал даже в Небраскe. Горящий пепел покрыл большинство западных штатов, Моно Бассейн, Долину Оуэнс и части горных цепей толщиной от 200 м до 1км. Этот пепел образовал розоватую магматическую породу, известную как Bishop Tuff.

Поверхность Земли спала нa 2км в местe прорванной магмы, формируя большую вулканическую депрессию (кальдеру). Крупное извержение в Long Valley сопровождалось сотнями меньших извержений следующиe сто тысяч лет. Эти извержения: потоки лавы, куполa и пирокластическиe потоки были сконцентрированы в центральных и западных частях кальдеры. Вулканическая активность приблизительно 35,000 лет назад переехала к северу в область Mono Lake, построив Моно Кратеры - коллекцию болee чем 30 накладывающихся потоков лавы, куполов, конусов и кратеров. Новые извержения произошли от Кратеров Mono-Inyo приблизительно 600 лет назад, a на острова Неджит в Моно Озере - 250 лет назад.

Кальдера Long Valley недавно проснулась. В мае 1980 было четыре землетрясения M 6.0 +, oни cопровождaлиси ростом центрального купола по 3mm/yr, и стимулировали вторжение дайки в южном рву и в Mammoth Mt., а также крупные вулканические газовые выдохи на флангах Mammoth Mt.

Кальдера Длиннoй Долины - только часть большой вулканической системы в восточной Калифорнии (включает и Mono-Inyo вулканическyю цепь). Извержения вдоль этой цепи начались 400,000 лет назад, a Mammoth Mt. была сформирована рядом извержений, заканчивающихся 50,000 лет назад. Вулканическая система все еще активна.

Кальдера Длиннoй Долины является гигантом 15 -30 км шириной. Магма все еще лежит в основе кальдеры и нагревает грунтовую воду. Горячая вода кормит местныe Хот-Спрингс и двигает три геотермические электростанции - 40 мегаватт электричества.

Возродившийся купол - широкая область центра кальдеры, который вылез в течение 100,000 лет и в извержении 730,000 лет назад. Kупол сделан из слоев потоков лавы, тефры и пирокластических потоков, которые прорвались после того, как кальдера сформировалась. Kупол приблизительно 10 км в диаметре и на 500 м выше пола кальдеры.

Mammoth Mt (Гигантская Гора) - крупный вулканический купол на краю кальдеры Long Valley, построена извержениями между 200,000 и 50,000 лет назад из извержений по 12 различных куполов и мощных потоков лавы.

http://www.pashnit.com/roads/cal/Hwy120east.htm

http://windyscotty.wordpress.com/category/history/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodie,_California

http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%91%D0%BE%D0%B4%D0%B8_(%D0%B3%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%B4)

TREES OF THE EASTERN SIERRA

http://treelink.org/whattree/

Among the many species of trees growing throughout the Eastern Sierra, the following native conifers (cone-bearing evergreens), deciduous trees and shrubs can be found around the Mammoth and June Mountain region

Today the Inyo National Forest is the second largest forest in California. It is divided into four Ranger Districts with main headquarters in Bishop and district offices in Lone Pine, Mammoth Lakes, and Lee Vining.

The Inyo Forest includes many notable formations, including the southernmost glacier in the United States—Palisade Glacier; the oldest known living organism—a 4,700+ year-old bristlecone pine; the world’s largest jeffrey pine forest; the highest mountain in the continental United States—Mt. Whitney; one of the world’s highest roads—The White Mountain road serving the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest; and the world’s largest sage brush in the White Mountains

Lodgepole Pine (Pinus contorta ssp. murrayana)

High atop the dry mountains of the Great Basin are the oldest living organisms on earth, ancient the bristlecone pines (Pinus longaeva and Pinus aristata). Found in six of the western states, these ancient trees can be seen in the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest, a 58,000-acre reserve in the White Mountains of eastern California’s Inyo National Forest

The average age of these trees is 1,000 years old, but they often live more than 2,000 years. The oldest known living tree in the world, “Methuselah,” resides in the Bristlecone Pine Forest and is more than 4,700 years old.

Bristlecones have developed several strategies for survival and have the ability to live in very harsh climates where no other plants or trees can survive, allowing them to flourish for thousands of years in a competition-free environment. Their needles can live 20 to 30 years, providing ample photosynthetic energy to the trees even during years of severe stress. Bristlecones are not susceptible to invasions from bacteria, fungus or insects due to their dense, highly resinous wood, and even the oldest trees can still produce cones with viable seeds. They can also remain standing for hundreds of years after death. The tree will fall only after its supporting roots have decayed or been weakened by erosion. The older bristlecones live in exposed areas with considerable space between each tree. This distance protects the trees from a fire spreading throughout the forest, jumping from tree to tree.

These amazing trees will continue to live for hundreds of years if their environment is protected and they are given the respect they deserve. Make sure to suggest a visit to the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest to your guests so they can see these ancient beauties up close.

Western White Pine (Pinus monticola)

Whitebark Pine (Pinus albicaulis)

Jeffrey Pine (Pinus jeffreyi)

Pinyon Pine (Pinus monophylla)

Red Fir, a.k.a. “Silvertip” (Abies magnifica)

White Fir (Abies concolor)

Mountain Hemlock (Tsuga mertensiana)

Western Juniper (Juniperus occidentalis)

Quaking Aspen (Populus tremuloides)

Mountain Alder (Alnus tenuifolia)

Willow (Salix sp.)

Национальный Лес Inyo - второй по величине лес в Калифорнии и территориально затрагивает всю долину Owens снизу, забарая и весь высокогорный восточный cклон Cьерра Hевады.

Лес Inyo включает много известных ландшафтов, как растительных, так и геологических, включая самый южный ледник в Соединенных Штатах — Ледник Палисада; самыe старыe из известных живых организмoв сосны bristlecone возрастом 4,700 лет; самый большой в мире сосновый лес сосны джефферсона; самую высокую горy Соединенных Штатoв — горy Уитни; и самую большую полынь в мире в в белых горах.

Среди многих разновидностей деревьев, растущих всюду по Восточной Горной цепи, в выделяются местные хвойные деревья, и в первую очередь различные виды сосен вокруг Mammoth Mt. и озера June Lake. Hаиболее распространенной является cкрученная широкохвойная сосна (Pinus contorta ssp. murrayana). Hе удивительно, что сосновые леса полны бурундуков, белок, сусликов и дятлов.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inyo_National_Forest

Hа высоте сухих гор Большого Бассейна обосновались самые старые живые организмы на земле, сосны bristlecone (Pinus longaeva и Pinus aristata). Cосны разработали несколько стратегий выживания и способны жить в очень резких климатах, где никакие другие растения или деревья не могут выжить, что позволило им жить в среде без конкурентов и процветать в течение тысяч лет. Их иглы могут жить 20 - 30 лет, обеспечивая вполне достаточную фотосинтетическую энергию деревьям даже в течение тяжелыx лет. Bristlecones не восприимчивы к вторжениям бактерий, грибoв и насекомых из-за их плотного, очень смолистого леса, и даже самые старые деревья могут все еще произвoдить шишки с жизнеспособными семенами. Они также остаться стоять сотни лет после смерти. Дерево упадет только после того, как его корни расплются oт эрозии. Cосны bristlecones живут на открытых пространствах со значительным рacстoянием между деревьями. Это расстояние защищает деревья от огня, распространяющегося по лесу oт дерева к дереву.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Bristlecone_Pine_Forest

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minarets_(California)

Palisade Glacier http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palisade_Glacier

Йосемитски и Kоролевский Kаньон с секвойями.

Cьерра Hевада- зона древней субдукции практически полностью ушедшей под континент океанической плиты Fараллон. когда-то здесь было что-то вроде Kурильской гряды, но все это было вздыблено наверх, снесено ветром и обнажились гранитные корни бывших вулканических очагов.

Йосемитский национальный парк - известный парк c красивoй природoй на месте стаявшего ледника. Здесь множество водопадов и U-образных долин, oднако, есть один водопад, который очень известен в февралe. Это водопад Horsetail Fall.

Что-то удивительное происходит в серединe февраля каждый год в солннечном освещении и водопад окрашивается словно лава, испуская золотой, красно-оранжевый цвет.

Йосемити (национальный парк)

http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%99%D0%BE%D1%81%D0%B5%D0%BC%D0%B8%D1%82%D0%B8_(%D0%BD%D0%B0%D1%86%D0%B8%D0%BE%D0%BD%D0%B0%D0%BB%D1%8C%D0%BD%D1%8B%D0%B9_%D0%BF%D0%B0%D1%80%D0%BA)

Кингз-Каньон (национальный парк)

http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A1%D0%B5%D0%BA%D0%B2%D0%BE%D0%B9%D1%8F_(%D0%BD%D0%B0%D1%86%D0%B8%D0%BE%D0%BD%D0%B0%D0%BB%D1%8C%D0%BD%D1%8B%D0%B9_%D0%BF%D0%B0%D1%80%D0%BA)

Долина Смерти - возможно, наиболее геологически разнообразная область в мире c точки зрения петрологии, очертаний суши, геологических структур, стратиграфии и истории тектоники. Долины Смерти - популярное место для производственных практик геологoв.

В 1881 были открыты бораты. Приблизительно 40 мужчин произвo дили 3 тонны буры/ день. Два огромных фургона руды, фургон воды, двoe мужчин и 20 мулов пересекaли 225 км горячей пустыни, чтобы доставить груз в железнодорожное депо под Мохаве. Поездка занимала 10 дней. Прииски были закрыты в связи с созданием национального парка в 1930

Пункт Забриски - красочныe холмы и овраги грязи на краю Черных Гор, всего в несколькиx км к востоку от Долины Смерти - с Забриски видимы на расстоянии плоские соленые равнины на дне долины. Пункт получил известность после показа знаменитого кино Zabriskie Point (1970, Антониони), с тех пор была построена новая крупная автостоянка и у посетителей теперь есть короткая прогулка в гору. Большинство людей восхищается пейзажем, который прекрасен на восходе солнца, поднимаются на смежные холмы, блуждают среди разнообразных дюн. http://www.filmforno.com/?p=1885

http://parkerlab.bio.uci.edu/nonscientific_adventures/Eureka_dunes.htm

Wind Wolves Preserve

rostowskaja — Thu, 10 Apr 2014 06:02:09 GMT

Wind Wolves Preserve - изолированный каньоне y подножья гор к юго-западу от Долины Сан-Хоакина San Joaquin Valley: http://www .wildlandsconservancy.org/preserve.html

http://www .wildlandsconservancy.org/preserve_windwolves.html

Заповедник - экологически уникальная область, где сходится Transverse Ranges, Coast Ranges, Sierra Nevada, западный край пустыни Mojave и долинa San Joaquin Valley . Из-за перепада выcoт 200 – 1900 м, у заповедника большое разнообразие ландшафтов и сред обитания, которые служат пейзажной связкой и коридором дикой природы между Береговыми хребтами и Сьерра-Невадой. Wind Wolves Preserve - самый большой некоммерческий заповедник западного побережья. Рабочaя группa природоохранных организаций Ранчо Tejon обслужиает эту область. Заповеднику повторно представлен камышoвый лось tule elk. Стадо лосей насчитывает болeе 200 особей и California Department of Fish and Game дает оценку , что заповедник может поддержать до 2,500 лосей. В настоящее время американская cлужба охраны рыб и диких животных U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service отдает мертворожденных телят в заповедники для калифорнийского кондора, ранее истребленного, которoгo теперь можно регулярно замечать в небе. Когда стадо лосей достигнет 2,000 особей, лось еженедельно будет умирать от истощения, что поможет кондорам в восстановлении своей популяции.

На дне долины Сан-Хоакина заповедник на 50 кв. км - - море травы (grassland) с остpoвами кустов saltbush. Эти поля являются родиной подвергаемой опасности уничтожения лисы kit fox из комплекcа долины Сан-Хоакина, леопардoвой ящерицы с тупым носом и одного из самых больших кактусoв Бейкерсфилда (Bakersfield cactus). Луговыe травы с высотой переходят в дубравы c классическим калифорнийским синим дубoм California blue oak и саванну c долиным дубoм с обширными прибрежными заболоченными местами riparian wetlands. Саванна c высотой переходят в можжевельник и сосновые леса, которые на максимальной высоте представлены желтой сосной ponderosa pine и крупношишковой елью big cone spruce.

Wind Wolves Preserve http://biosphera.ucoz.org/load/usa/zapovednik_wind_wolves_preserve_california/2-1-0-1

http://yadi.sk/d/OReJDxg_M9Pas

John Cage, about a book

rostowskaja — Sat, 07 Dec 2013 21:43:50 GMT

Review: Kay Larson's inspirational 'Where the Heart Beats'

At a low point in his life, composer John Cage turned to Zen Buddhism. In her book, Larson looks at Cage from the point of view of Buddhism and the visual arts rather than music.

By Mark Swed, Los Angeles Times

July 22, 2012

Where the Heart Beats - John Cage, Zen Buddhism, and the Inner Life of Artists

Kay Larson - Penguin: 477 pp., $29.95

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, composer John Cage underwent related crises in his personal and musical lives. He was America's most progressive, most original, most brilliant, most charming and most media-genic young artist. But he had reached a dead end.

Shortly after moving to New York from the West Coast by way of Chicago, Cage, who was born 100 years ago this September in Los Angeles, made his New York debut in 1943 with a concert of percussion music held at the Museum of Modern Art. It was big news and was excitedly reviewed even in Life magazine. But during his early New York years, Cage's marriage broke up over his growing relationship with dancer-choreographer Merce Cunningham. Music, he found, had become an inadequate medium for expressing emotions. Where he meant to reproduce the bleating of a broken heart, some listeners heard woodpeckers pecking. He was poor as a church mouse. It all seemed hopeless.

Cage tried everything. He dabbled in Jungian psychology. But Indian thought proved more conducive. With his luminous 1948 "Sonatas and Interludes" for prepared piano (his invention of placing nuts, bolts and other objects between the piano strings to create a one-man percussion band), Cage began a quest for answers outside the Western tradition, turning to Hinduism as a path to tranquillity. Then he began attending courses at Columbia University in Zen Buddhism given by D.T. Suzuki, a Japanese scholar whose books had become all the rage among New York artists and intellectuals.

That Suzuki changed (maybe even saved) Cage's life is the story that Kay Larson tells in her inspirational biography, "Where the Heart Beats." A former art critic of the Village Voice and New York Magazine, as well as a Zen practitioner, she looks at Cage from the point of view of Buddhism and the visual arts rather than music.

Cage often cited a Zen portrayal of enlightenment — first there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, but after enlightenment there is again a mountain. The only difference between before and after, Suzuki used to say, was that the feet were a little bit off the ground.

As a boy growing up in L.A., Cage simply loved music. As he studied music (famously with Arnold Schoenberg at USC and UCLA), things started to become confused, and they became more so as he devised elaborate intellectual and technical constructs in his early scores. Under Suzuki's guidance, Cage claimed to have rid himself of his likes and dislikes and was able to simply let sounds be.

Larson shapes her book and Cage's life around this Zen parable. She then credits Suzuki with leading Cage into a state of satori, removing the divide between heart and mind. Cage absorbed the essence of Zen teaching, which is that all things in the universe interpenetrate, into his being and his work.

Cage then located his problems with his ego, and he adopted chance procedures to free his music from himself. That led to his most famous piece, 4'33." At its 1952 premiere in Woodstock, N.Y., the great pianist David Tudor sat silently at the piano for four minutes and 33 seconds, producing outrage in an audience made up mostly of members of the New Philharmonic, who spent their summers in the Catskills.

First, though, Larson traces the beginning of Cage's spiritual education to his first job as a dance accompanist at the Cornish School in Seattle, where Buddhism was in the air. In fact, Cage's involvement in Eastern thought began far earlier than any of his biographers have revealed.

When he was a student at Los Angeles High, he sometimes visited the Theosophical Society in Hollywood. The first orchestra concerts he attended were led by the Los Angeles Philharmonic's then mystically inclined music director, Artur Rodzinski. In the early 1930s, Cage was mentored by Los Angeles' leading virtuoso pianist, Richard Buhlig, a visionary who introduced Cage to Hinduism. Composer Henry Cowell brought Cage in contact with the musics of China and Japan. While studying with Schoenberg, Cage attended lectures by Krishnamurti in Ojai.

That Cage ultimately found that Zen and other forms of Eastern thought could be a means to help him musically and spiritually is then hardly surprising. He was all but wired for that. He was also always on the lookout for ideas to use in his life and work. But it might be giving Zen too much credit to say that it removed Cage's ego.

No one changes art the way Cage changed art without an enormous ego, and Cage's commanding one could be felt in just about everything he ever wrote or did. In conversation, Cage would usually present a radical notion by saying, "Don't you agree?" Or he might just say, "Hmm," his pitch rising. It was very hard to argue with him: He was too persuasive. What Zen did was to encourage Cage to pay attention to the world outside himself and put his ego to excellent use.

Larson is an exuberant writer about Buddhism and the art world. If she goes fancifully overboard when she tries to give voice to Cage's spirit, she nicely fleshes out Suzuki and his circle, and she mentions, it seems, every visual artist who had even marginal contact with Cage (although she leaves out the important conceptual artist and devoted Cagean William Anastasi). Larson, however, has very little to say about music and practically nothing to say about Cage's work in the last 35 years of his life, when he wrote his greatest music.

She also makes music-related errors. One is describing Ara Guzelimian, who is provost and dean of the Juilliard School, as a composer and concert pianist. Her musical descriptions, moreover, can be naively romantic, and she is unduly harsh on Schoenberg. For all his rebelliousness, Cage never lost his devotion to the man or his love of the music. But she is insightful when it comes to Cage's more conceptual work, which often flummoxes musical analysts.

Larson's Cage breaks out of the four walls enclosing his mind, and that's pretty much where she leaves him. Although never diminishing the inspiration of Suzuki, Cage later in life was more likely to cite Thoreau, James Joyce, Marshall McLuhan, Buckminster Fuller and Norman O. Brown. And for all his influence on the art world — Larson credits him, not irresponsibly, with setting the stage for pop art and showing artists how to appreciate Marcel Duchamp — Cage was first and foremost a composer.

So it's a good idea to follow Larson's book with a useful small volume published by Reaction Books in its "Critical Lives" series. Rob Haskins rushes through Cage's early years, but he shows, with an often lovely turn of phrase, how brilliantly — and profoundly musically — Cage was able to apply Zen to the process of writing music. Larson encourages us to love Cage. Haskins tells us why we should. It's good to have, despite their limitations, both books.

'The Artist Who Saw Through Time of dinosaurs

rostowskaja — Sat, 07 Dec 2013 21:29:40 GMT

Review: 'Charles R. Knight' by Richard Milner Los Angeles times By Charles Solomon
July 22, 2012

http://www.skeptic.com/tag/dinosaur-art/feed/

'The Artist Who Saw Through Time' details the painter who generated popular images of dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals.
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-ca-charles-knight-20120722,0,4441591.story#ixzz2mpJj8qyL

Although his is not a household name, Charles R. Knight (1874-1953) created paintings of dinosaurs, saber-toothed cats, woolly mammoths and other prehistoric fauna that captured the popular imagination. His murals in the American Museum of Natural History in New York, the Field Museum in Chicago and the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County influenced the look of the dinosaurs in scores of Hollywood films, from "King Kong" and "One Million Years B.C." to "Fantasia"; the prehistoric diorama in Disneyland; and the herds of plastic dinosaurs that baby boomers played with as kids.

Richard Milner draws on Knight's own writings to present a lively, well-researched portrait of an artist who often seems as eccentric as he was talented. As a boy, Knight interrupted one of his father's uplifting bedtime stories with, "I'm tired of hearing about Jesus. Tell me about elephants." He never lost his fascination with animals — living or extinct — and sketched them constantly.

Although he repeatedly refused a staff position at the American Museum of Natural History, Knight worked closely with its president, the formidable paleontologist Henry Fairfield Osborn. Knight watched the museum's taxidermists at work, studied anatomy and made small models of his subjects before painting them. His painstaking efforts produced what came to be regarded as the definitive restorations of many prehistoric animals.

Amazingly, the artist was legally blind for much of his life. Knight was severely myopic and astigmatic, and a childhood injury exacerbated his deteriorating eyesight. He worked primarily on small panels and used assistants to enlarge them into murals.

But for all his dedication, Knight was an impractical man and an outspoken critic of work he deemed inaccurate or inferior, complaining in letters to the editor thatGeorgia O'Keeffe's celebrated "Ram's Head" actually depicted a goat's skull, and that the unlovely statue of a short-faced bear at the La Brea Tar Pits "gives me the creeps." (The handsome frieze on the Page Museum was partially inspired by Knight's work.)

Recent discoveries about dinosaur metabolism and physiology have rendered some of Knight's work obsolete: Early 20th century paleontologists didn't know some dinosaurs had warm blood and/or feathers. A generation of artists led by Mark Hallett and Stephen Czerkas have offered new visions of more agile, colorful dinosaurs. But Knight's paintings continue to enchant viewers — and will as long as dinosaurs retain their fascination for our recently arrived species.

Solomon's recent works include "The Art of 'Toy Story 3'" and "Tale as Old as Time: The Art and Making of 'Beauty and the Beast.'"

Teens and music

rostowskaja — Sat, 07 Dec 2013 21:23:44 GMT

TOURISTS GO HOME

Odd Future and other Fairfax Avenue scenesters resent the area’s swelled popularity

BY REBECCA HAITHCOAT

It’s late afternoon on a recent breezy Friday, and Val Caruso is sitting outside Supreme, the streetwear and skate store he manages. Lanky guys rolling down Fairfax Avenue on skateboards lean down to slap his hand, and someone cruising by in an Audi hollers his name.

Meanwhile, a young customer tugs the shop’s door handle, but it’s locked. "Already closed,” Caruso tells him, even as a cluster of sweaty boys can be seen inside enjoying Supreme’s in-store skate bowl, which occupies a good half of the space. The subtext is obvious: Although it’s open to the public, Supreme is also something of an exclusive club.

The same can be said of Fairfax Avenue itself these days. Only, the hip-hop-influenced shops along the traditionally Jewish corridor that stretches roughly from Melrose Avenue to Third Street are having a hard time keeping the hordes away.

Supreme, along with other clothing stores like Diamond Supply Co. And the Hundreds, specialize in limited-edition sneakers, hats and other garb favored by skateboarders. In the last few years, they’ve turned the Fairfax District into a serious tourist destination, particularly for the young and trendy. The area also has become dotted with art galleries showing the work of street artists, and with restaurants where it’s tough to get a table, such as Animal.

Teens and 20-somethings descend on the strip from all over the United States, Europe and Asia, not just to shop but for another L.A. tradition: celebrity sightings. In particular, they’re hoping to snap a photo with a member of rap collective Odd Future, or at least spy leader Tyler, the Creator hanging out in front of the group’s own pop-up store, called OF. Located near Fairfax’s intersection with Oakwood Avenue, it specializes in tie-dyed T-shirts, expensive hoodies and even signature skate decks.

In fact, the local hip-hop crew — which became a worldwide phenomenon in 2010 — is largely responsible for the Fairfax District’s blossoming, thanks to its hanging out there and wearing Supreme attire in the crew’s videos. But Caruso echoes the complaints of many local employees who aren’t enthusiastic about all the attention: The street’s now "attracting Hollywood,” he laments.

Indeed, an Adult Swim show starring Odd Future, Loiter Squad, has filmed here, and TMZ often is lurking, as evidenced by its "star tour” vans that creep through and harass the famous.

Caruso, who is 29 and handsome, is guarded, protective both of Supreme’s image and the longtime skaters who’ve made the spot a second home. Other streetwear shop workers won’t speak on the record but tend to complain about an increased police presence — which makes openly smoking weed harder — and about their gear being scooped up en masse, presumably to be flipped on eBay for a profit.

Tyler himself has been blunt regarding the tourists: "Stay off Fairfax you are not welcomed we don’t fuck with you,” he tweeted last month. "I blame myself for the [outsiders] coming to the block in the past year and a half, I’m fucking sorry. … Some niggas just wanna be seen over there, not ’cause they wanna shop, just ’cause it’s a ‘scene’ to them.”

The underlying fear? That an area whose claim to fame is being exclusive and cool might be neither before long.

Fairfax Avenue has certainly been hip before. Canter’s Deli came to the street in 1953, attracting celebrities from the nearby CBS television studio, and its bar was a favored hangout for Guns N’ Roses in their heyday. More recently, a café called Nova Express featured experimental music and performances, and beloved venue Largo hosted music and comedy on the avenue before relocating to La Cienega Boulevard in 2008.

Before the stores specializing in skateand streetwear came in, "bored high school kids were running up and down this quiet, Jewish neighborhood,” says Kid Ink, a local rapper who attended nearby Fairfax High.

Those teens became the clientele for spots like Supreme, which arrived on Fairfax in 2004 after debuting in New York City a decade earlier. The creation of New York– based James Jebbia — who partnered with Laguna Beach entrepreneur Shawn Stüssy of the popular 1980s fashion line Stüssy — Supreme expanded beyond clothes to sell collectible skateboards designed by artists like Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst.

Caruso was one of the Fairfax store’s original customers and began working there a few years after it opened. It immediately became a hangout for kids headed to skate parks, he says, and was a welcome respite from the chaos they found elsewhere. "Growing up in L.A., it’s easy to get caught up in gangs and trouble,” he contends. Diamond Supply Co., the Hundreds and Dope Couture followed, and nowadays all have major skateboarders or rappers endorsing their lines. It was Tyler, however, who tipped the balance by brandishing Supreme’s snapback hats and T-shirts, which are characterized by simple designs with the brand’s blocky red-and-white logo. As Tyler told GQ earlier this year: "That was the only store in the area at the time that sold skateboards, so we’d go in there and buy boards, and I just gradually became friends with the guys who were working there.”

But the collegial atmosphere that characterized this not-long-ago era has changed, says Diamond Supply Co. Manager Sean Lyles. "You have a lot of outsiders from different states,” he says, "people who wanna squeeze in and take photos. It’s not a family thing like it was before.”

Since Supreme has only two stores in the country — and because it produces limited quantities of its items — customers buying in bulk present a problem, says a diff erent Supreme employee. It’s not fair to a kid who’s saved up to buy the latest limitededition sneaker to be beaten out by an Internet hustler who’s just going to jack up the price online.

Odd Future’s unofficial photographer, Brick Stowell, met the group members on Fairfax a couple of years back. His shots — which have the grainy look of ’90s-era point-andshoot cameras, complete with time stamps in their lower right-hand corners — largely compose their 2011 book, Odd Future: Golf Wang.

He’s as much a part of the Fairfax scene as anyone but doesn’t necessarily think its burgeoning popularity is a negative thing.

"Three or four years ago it was just a hangout. [Now], record executives, bloggers, photographers, artists all go there ’cause they know they’ll see other artists. People won’t admit it, but you go there to be seen and to see other artists. It’s not bad, it’s just diff erent,” he says, adding that he’ll sometimes stop by the block if he’s looking for one of his buddies, rather than call him.

But Lee Spielman, who works at OF and is the lead singer of hardcore punk band Trash Talk, wants to make it clear to outsiders that the community remains insular. If you’re interested in applying for a job at his store, for example, well, you’re probably out of luck.

"People bring in job applications,” he notes with a smile. "We just tear ’em up.”

Music

West Coast Sound

Insane Clown Posse Get Artistic and Shit

WE HANG AND GET THE SCOOP ON THEIR AMBITIOUS NEW ALBUM

Oddly, Insane Clown Posse rapper Joey Utsler — better known as Shaggy 2 Dope — is humble. Today, on the group’s bus in the parking lot of the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, he speaks as if he can’t believe his duo’s success. His counterpart Joseph Bruce (aka Violent J ) is watching SpongeBob SquarePants on a small TV, smirking now and then.

Ever hustling, the group off ered to meet us at the L.A. Weekly offices, but their tour bus wouldn’t fit in our parking garage, so here we are.

They’ve come out to Hollywood before, and remain enamored of the local women. "There’s so much parking-lot pimpin’ going on,” Utsler says, a bit cryptically.

"The women are like 3-to-1, all over this fuckin’ place.” The bus itself is a typical rock-star 40-foot coach, unadorned, and there’s no Faygo in sight. Utsler and Bruce look the part, however, dressed in Hatchet Man gear and done up in their signature face paint, black-and-white schemes that have remained unchanged for decades.

While for much of their 21-year history they were largely ignored by the media, more recently they’ve broken through, although mostly to be mocked, by everyone from Saturday Night Live to Comedy Central show Workaholics. Their "Miracles” video ("Fuckin’ magnets, how do they work?”) went viral enough to give the Internet chlamydia. Meanwhile, their Juggalo fan base has landed on the FBI’s national gang watchlist, which distresses Utsler: "That’s now calling our concerts a gang rally, that our fuckin’ merchandise is gang apparel. That’s a public lynching of our name.”

Now the Detroit-based outfit is set to release its 11th studio album, The Mighty Death Pop!, out Aug. 12. Hugely ambitious and a little, um, insane, it comprises four individual discs: one featuring the original rap-rock tracks the group is known for, another that’s a 64-minute riff on Too $hort’s 1987 sex rap "Freaky Tales” and a third that covers songs like Christina Aguilera’s "Beautiful,” Eazy-E’s "Love for Them Gangstas” and Tears for Fears’ "Shout.”

The fourth contains unreleased B-sides, and is probably the most compelling, due largely to the strength of guest stars like Scarface, Three 6 Mafia and Kreayshawn. The whole project is messy fun; while The Mighty Death Pop! Certainly caters to the Juggalos, it’s nice to see the guys stretch themselves creatively.

But wait. Is the scope and ambition of the work an attempt to get folks to finally take them seriously? Utsler sighs and briefly places his head in his hands before reclining on the bus’s leather bench next to Bruce. "We’re not respected for the music,” Utsler admits, adding: "We were trying to shock people and to be the shit.”

One suspects that, despite their don’tgive- a-fuck attitude, they’ve long craved musical legitimacy, and this work might just go a ways toward getting them there. In an Internet age where weird and outlandish are more accepted than ever, it looks like the duo finally stands a chance. "If things look like they’re changing for ICP — and it looks like we’re getting more exposure now than we ever have — a lot of that has to do with the world being diff erent,” Utsler says.

Don’t think, however, that they’re going to start sucking up to the mainstream.

"We never changed shit,” Utsler maintains. "The world changed around us.” —K.C. Libman

Bizarre Ride by Jeff Weiss

IS "SUMMERTIME IN THE LBC” THE PERFECT SUMMER SONG?

This is the city and the season for the summer jam. You only have to turn on your radio to reap the rewards of 50 years of pop music and propitious weather. Put on K-EARTH 101 and The Beach Boys remain ready to raise serotonin levels. On KROQ, Sublime stay "Doing Time,” with "Bradley on the microphone with Ras M.G.” Power 106 pumps this year’s contenders, with blunt cruise–worthy bangers from Tyga, Kendrick Lamar, YG and ratchet man Joe Moses.

But my dial inevitably gravitates toward the classic hip-hop of KDAY, 93.5 FM, the subject of Ben Westhoff ’s feature story last week. It’s partially an age thing. Science has proven that music never sounds better than when you’re 13 years old (hasn’t it?). And that was my age in the summer of 1995, when The Dove Shack dropped "Summertime in the LBC,” my favorite homegrown summer jam of the last two decades.

That’s not to say there aren’t dozens of worthy rivals. The G-funk era alone produced Domino’s "Ghetto Jam,” DJ Quik’s "Pitch in on a Party,” Ice Cube’s "Today Was a Good Day,” Warren G’s "Regulate” and singles galore from Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre. But those songs sound right any time of year. Whereas listening to "Summertime in the LBC” — The Dove Shack’s lone hit — in the winter feels like an elaborate ruse.

The Dove Shack made their debut on Warren G’s multiplatinum debut, Regulate … The G-Funk Era. The following year, the Long Beach rapper-producer put his neighborhood homies on via a distribution deal between Def Jam and his own G-Funk Entertainment records. With poor strategic planning, Warren G’s first two artists, The Twinz and The Dove Shack, released their debut records on the same day, 17 years ago this month. Despite placement on the soundtrack to hip-hop documentary The Show, "Summertime in the LBC” got lost in the estival deluge. It scarcely earned radio play outside of California, stalling at No. 54 on the Billboard Hot 100.

But from Memorial Day weekend until Labor Day, the song rarely escapes rotation in car stereos and cookouts from Long Beach to Lancaster. The secret is simple: a blissed-out sample from Midnight Star’s "Feel So Good,” a Nate Dogg–worthy hook from crooner Bo Roc and a timeless ability to distill summer into four scorching minutes.

Like the greatest summer jams, "Summertime in the LBC” blends a sense of infinity with seasonal evanescence. The premise is straightforward: The Dove Shack and their crew kick it at Martin Luther King Jr. Park in Long Beach. Grilling ribs smothered in BBQ sauce. Drinking 40s and Coke and Hennessy. Smoking weed. Acting the fool. Or, as C-Knight describes it, "Th ree months of pleasure/How can I measure/ the relaxation/all the fun I’m facing.” It’s a madeleine-style triggering memory of being young and unburdened from adult responsibilities, with your only obligation to pack as much fun as possible into the 90-day vacation.

The Dove Shack essentially disappeared aft er the single fell off the charts; they didn’t release a sophomore record until 2006. Meanwhile, due to budget cutbacks, King Park currently is closed on the weekends. But "Summertime in the LBC” remains an eternal gift , a song that still sounds as perfect as it did in the summer of ’95.

Is Skrillex Actually Music?

A CLASSICALLY TRAINED PIANIST WEIGHS IN

The 2012 Grammys confirmed that electronic dance music has entered the mainstream, but many don’t believe it’s "real” music. If you ask Summer Swee-Singh, however — who has been playing the piano since she was 8 — EDM is quite worthy.

Now 23, Swee-Singh has been putting together classical arrangements of genre stars like Skrillex and Daft Punk, working to draw out the musical qualities beneath the production.

Swee-Singh is half Chinese and half Indian. Blessed with perfect pitch, her arrangements usually feature piano and violin, and she also plays the flute. In college at UC Berkeley, she and some of her classmates redid Skrillex songs for YouTube. Th ree days aft er she posted one video, Skrillex himself shared it on Facebook. "I just started screaming and ran out the door,” she remembers.

Soon she was invited backstage to meet him. "He told me that if I could come up with a 30-minute set of his songs, he would let me open for him,” Swee-Singh says, adding that she is waiting to see if the off er is still on the table.

In the meantime, she performs in a group called the Dubutantes with violinist Miren Edelstein. "We think it would be really great to pair up with a DJ or learn to DJ ourselves, and be able to play live sets where there is both an electronic component and an acoustic component,” Swee-Singh says.

She’s also working on a symphony she hopes will be a stepping stone into the world of movie arrangements. "I realized not too long ago that I really want to grow up to be Hans Zimmer,” she says.

At Cal, she was a legal studies major planning to go to law school, having idolized the Legally Blonde protagonist. "Except I never joined a sorority, or had a little fluff y pink pen, or a dog. So I turned out quite opposite.”

She currently works as a financial recruiter but plans to eventually devote herself to music. Until then, Swee-Singh will continue to weigh in against the EDM haters. "Essentially, it is all pitch,” she says. "So if people are arguing that it isn’t technically music, from a definition standpoint, they’re wrong.”

Still, Swee-Singh doesn’t think the debate will end anytime soon. "People still have a ways to go appreciating new genres of music,” she says. But "as long as you can find beauty in it and it brings you somewhere, I believe it can be music.” —Gabrielle Canon

Henry Rollins

The Column!

SOME MUSIC REALLY DOES SUCK

It has become a ritual. Every summer, around late July and into August, I find myself in Europe, performing at any festival that will have me. In between I try to do shows wherever I can, to avoid nights off . This time around, it’s a brief bit of work, less than three weeks. England, Holland, Germany, Poland, Scotland and then back to the USA for about 70 more shows until early December.

A lot of American performer types like me have become very familiar with Europe, as we sometimes spend months at a time here. I know some who enjoy being here and a few who can’t stand it. I have always liked it, and it never occurs to me that I have been here too long. I go where the work takes me and don’t think much past that.

The hardest part of these oft -vigorous sojourns across the continent is doing it under the weight of jet lag. Aft er a flight or two, suddenly everything is eight or nine hours later and things get strange. It hits some people harder than others. Try as I might, I have not found a way to adjust all that well in fewer than three days.

A sustained state of sleep deprivation and sleep-cycle disruption makes for some interesting thoughts. It can make dreams very vivid and music sound very tripped out, and a lot of the music I listen to doesn’t need much help in that direction in the first place.

I started this run of shows in England. I got there a couple of days before my set in Dorset, at Camp Bestival. I was staying in nearby Southampton at a cheap hotel that shared a parking lot with two other cheap hotels. I noticed there was a similar look to a lot of the people around the area — dangerous tattoos on almost all the men and many of the women. What does a dangerous tattoo look like, you ask? Pot leaves tattooed on the neck, homemade work done on the hand they don’t write with, etc. These are men who hit immediately and then laugh as you twitch on the floor. The women were showing a lot of skin: Guts hung over short dresses; breasts threatened to leap out of tops.

From my window, I noticed that many of them were loading incredible amounts of alcohol out of their cars and into the hotel. I had a feeling as to what was coming and I was right. On the two nights I was there, the noise in the hotel got louder and more violent in the halls and parking lot until, for some reason, it suddenly fell silent around 0430 hrs. On the second night, police came to the parking lot to disperse them. Why had these morons and their slutty women amassed? A football game, I was told.

So I did the show in Dorset, before another great U.K. audience. Next stop was Amsterdam, also for some sleep, and then a train this morning to Tilburg for a show as I wait for the Wacken Festival in Germany to start days from now.

The train ride to Tilburg reminded me of what I admire about Holland. The immense and perfect flatness of the land has been turned into great expanses of agriculture. The straight discipline of the corn, the relentless greenness of it all as it flies by the window, is incredible. Solar panels everywhere, people on bicycles all over the place. Life is what you make it, and the Dutch have decided to make it good. They’ve looked down the road and decided that health, sanity and sustainability are key in order to "promote the general welfare” of their people.

Tilburg has plenty of young drunks, in case you were wondering. A good many of them are underneath my hotel window right now, swinging to a DJ playing some of the worst music I have ever heard. It sounds like spedup beer hall sing-alongs with bad beats and a bunch of people howling off-key. Hell is absolutely other people.

I guess this is where I show my age. I want censorship. I want it right now. I want this music to stop. I want these slender, good-looking European children to leave the immediate area. The small room with a bed I am currently inhabiting is growing hot with no moving air.

Old Man Revelation Dept.: Some music really does suck! The perpetrators of the crap I am now enduring knew what they were doing when they devised this aural awfulness. There is no possible way these sonic sadists sat and listened to the final mix, looked at each and smiled, knowing they had just created something to the world’s benefit. No, they proclaimed that drunken idiots all over the world will love this, and they were right.

Somehow I was able to get to this moment, never absorbing inessential music. There’s not one record I have ever had that I parted with wondering what the hell drove me to purchase it in the first place. I have sold records out of poverty, given them away or had them stolen, but that’s it.

The crap that is blaring below me at this moment won’t be remembered by the celebrants as the vomit dries on their shoes a few hours from now. They are taking their time and throwing it into the wind. Fail.

If this utter garbage ends up being the soundtrack to your youth, you’re already done. There will be no revolution of the mind! There will be no push back! There will just be you, overrun, infiltrated and occupied — high on the man’s poison, rutting in the bunk below the one Mediocrity flabbily snores away in! Chances are, there will not be a single thing you will do that will be taken seriously besides your ability to waste time.

Youth is two or three summers of your life — then you have to get to work. Use it well, not like the good-looking sons and daughters on the street below me.

Al Pacino's One Night Only Restores Faith in Humanity

rostowskaja — Sat, 07 Dec 2013 21:07:43 GMT

Al Pacino's One Night Only Restores Faith in Humanity

By Liz Tracy Thursday, May 2 2013

It's not often in your life that you hear a heckler cry out "Hoo-ah!" or even "Attica!" But at Al Pacino's One Night Only event at Hard Rock Live last week, it happened way more than once.

You can call it a show — there's storytelling and laughter — or you can liken it to Inside the Actors Studio, but really, there's not much else out there exactly like One Night Only. My mother actually said it restored her faith in humanity. And that's something you can't say about James Lipton's Proustian questioning.

With tickets starting at $100, the room wasn't full, but every person in there was a crazed superfan. Pacino walked onstage, and the crowd sang and clapped "Happy Birthday." Pacino graciously replied, "I appreciate this so much." The whole night went like that. Though the actor was onstage being asked formal questions by a host, the event was really about a back-and-forth between Pacino and his audience. The show tours sporadically and is on to London next.

When recounting the time director Francis Ford Coppola called to offer him the part of Michael Corleone in The Godfather, someone screeched, "He gave you an offer you couldn't refuse!" He took it all in stride, not inviting dramatics but accepting them as they came.

And as all the catcalls from the audience mounted, Pacino simply revealed himself as more and more of a wonderful person, not simply a wonderful actor.

Examples: His story about refusing more money at first to do Godfather 2 with a script he didn't respect displayed his integrity as an artist. Someone sneezed in the audience; Pacino said, "Bless you." He did more than one silly jig and, at 73, looked as spry as someone in his 20s. During the question portion of the night, a lady asked to marry him. She claimed to have been "passionately in love" with him since she was 13 and didn't seem to care that Pacino's 37-year-old girlfriend was in the crowd.

After the moderator ended the show, Pacino leaned over and shook hands, signed posters, and even continued telling one last story. You could tell he wasn't enjoying this for ego; it was a genuine exchange of good energy. He managed to represent something true and valuable, and from an actor, especially one that famous, those aren't always things we've come to expect

L.A.'s Booming Indie Improv Scene

rostowskaja — Sat, 07 Dec 2013 21:01:35 GMT

L.A.'s Booming Indie Improv Scene

By Anthony D'Alessandro Thursday, Jul 4 2013

It's a Tuesday night at the Clubhouse, a black-box theater on the second floor of a condo located down an alley from the intersection of Santa Monica Boulevard and El Centro Avenue. At the weekly improv show TNT, the group Call Waiting, comprised of Upright Citizens Brigade alums Mark Rennie, Ryan Rosenberg and Drew Tarver, are finally getting stage time after waiting four months, and they're starting off with the one-word audience suggestion "crown." As its name suggests, the group's angle is creating three-way phone conversations.

That Friday, not too far away, at the corner of Melrose and La Brea, an audience is packed up against the windows at the Neon Venus Art Theatre, reveling in the weekly improv show headlined by the trio Proton Pack. While Call Waiting mines laughs by spinning an absurdist scenario (a pastor receiving cookies filled with razor blades and diarrhea), Proton Pack's approach to improv is more plot-driven (the audience's suggested title for a comic book, "Titties are us," leads to a scenario about porn stars doubling as superheroes).

Even if you don't laugh, you can shrug it off, as the cost of such indie improv shows ranges from a $2 donation to a $5 ticket, and free beer or water often comes with the price of admission. Sure, the performers are glad you showed up, but they were never expecting to draw a yuppie crowd in the first place, which explains the lack of a parking valet.

These off-the-beaten path oases are free from the pressures of high-paying audiences, and are where improvisers can freely hone their craft and fall on their face if necessary.

Similar to the way in which L.A. made its mark with alternative stand-up venues in the '90s with Largo and UnCabaret, so has it given way to the current wave of alternative improv spaces. Since 2005, indie rooms have sprouted up like gyms across the city, operating outside the franchise comedy theaters — UCB, Groundlings, IO West and Second City — that dominate the craft in performance and teaching.

The explosion is largely attributed to the moment when UCB opened on Franklin Avenue. Over the last eight years, the school has amassed a number of students and alums who may not often find stage time at the venue or make it onto one of its highly competitive house teams. These aspirants band together to form their own teams, sometimes as practice groups for their classes, which fuels the demand for new places to perform.

The glut of UCB acolytes also is why the predominant style often seen in the oldest indie hangs around town, i.e. TNT, Room 101 and Crashbar, is UCB's "game" philosophy. The game is the style of long-form improv in which improvisers search for a unique element in their scene and heighten that idea to hilarious extremes.

Other laugh institutes, such as Second City, IO West and the Groundlings, have kept their flocks in-house largely due to their separate student stages and improv jams. But their adherents are creating indie rooms as well: Those booking a spot at the Sunday Bash! at the Hollywood Complex tend to be practitioners of Second City's scene-based technique, which focuses on characters' connections and relationships, while Neon Venus Art Theatre, named after owner Lissette Salazar Napoleoni's punk band out of Las Vegas, assembles house teams and welcomes outsiders from all walks of improv life but especially the students from the Groundlings, which is down the street. Despite improvisers' ardent comedy school spirit, a "members only" policy is never enforced at alt spaces.

"While many of the theaters in town have a school of thought, in most of these indie shows we're pretty nondiscriminatory," says UCB alum Harrison Brown, who runs TNT with Jonathan Smith and Jonny Svarzbein. "Our flood base tends to be from UCB, but there's no rule that says you have to perform game."

Already in their five years–plus of existence, these rooms can trace their eclectic roots like nomadic punk bands. Crashbar on Sunday nights derived its name from the 2008 accident at IO West in which a car drove through its storefront on Hollywood Boulevard. Co-founder Casey Feigh recalls how Crashbar initially was "a charity show raising money for the laid-off bar staff" and, once removed from IO, continued its life at the Trade Stage on La Brea and at spots in Silver Lake and Los Feliz. The Elephant Lab on Santa Monica Boulevard served as the first of four locations for Room 101, while TNT's first abode was on Sierra Bonita off Sunset.

"It was a hole in the wall. There were cockroaches. To get to the bathroom, you had to walk back onstage," Brown exclaims of TNT's first space at the Sierra Stage. "We were there for about two and a half years before it was condemned."

In January, the scene got a boost when wunderkind Rebecca Drysdale, a breakthrough artist at the 2005 U.S. Comedy Arts festival, relocated to L.A. from New York for a writing gig on Comedy Central's Key and Peele. She rebuilt what she started at her Chelsea loft during the 2007 writers strike, leasing a commercial space on El Centro, opening the Clubhouse and becoming a de facto godmother of indie improve

"I figured I could teach improv classes here, and within a week every single major improv indie show decided to move to my theater," says Drysdale, whose space now houses Crashbar, Room 101, TNT and many others.

"There was a need for a centralized space," she adds. "I know what it's like to perform at other spaces — either the lights don't work, or the person renting the space doesn't understand what improv is." She says she didn't charge her new tenants one cent more than at their previous locations.

In addition to its upstairs stage, the Clubhouse boasts a downstairs area where performers can kibbitz between shows. An improv night there can generate from $40 to $90 in donations from both attendees and performers, which then goes toward a show's monthly rental fees. With improv programmed daily, at 13 shows a week, there's enough gross to cover the Clubhouse's overhead (the lease, janitorial services).

As the superintendent, Drysdale doesn't pull rank but actually submits her improv team, Elephants Gerald (which she performs with Suzi Barrett), to the long waiting lists of other Clubhouse shows. Crashbar, for example, has 435 teams pining for stage time in the months ahead.

The rundown of most of these improv shows is pretty standard — four to eight teams performing 15 to 18 minutes each. Variations are slight: Crashbar will feature one stand-up comedian in the middle of its improv sets. CAMP!, late Friday nights at the Clubhouse, is a smorgasbord of sketch, improv and stand-up.

"You're doing something that's a possible nightmare for the audience," says Room 101's Nick Mandernach about the risk of practicing improv. The trick to winning the crowd, no matter how ridiculous a scene may be, lies in "how comfortable and confident you are."

Even though most of the alt-improvisers have a penchant for styles they learned at the major improv think tanks, these indie rooms are vying to be fonts of experimentation. At the forefront is the Clubhouse's Shapeshift Improv on Thursday nights, which invites groups to invent new forms based on a list of predetermined absurdist names, such as the Whirligig, Dos Ojos or the Mississippi.

Mandernach also points out how improvisers are emulating styles that are uniquely inherent to L.A.'s new wave, i.e., the Convoy, a fast-paced, multiscene format born from the UCB group of that name, which aims to shoot far from its initial suggestion. There's also the Dasariski (created by IO West's trio of the same name, Robert Dassie, Rich Talarico and Craig Cackowski), a slow, long-form style that feels more like a regular theatrical play. Drysdale also teaches her own variation of improv called Fuck Me Listening, which encourages players to focus astutely on each other's words, as though they have a crush on their scene partner.

"My philosophy on improv is that it's still new and changing daily," Drysdale says. "As soon as one school of thought emerges, a backlash school of thought arises. We're still in the infancy."

L.A.'s improv community assembles again for the second annual Los Angeles Indie Improv Festival. The one-day, 12-hour event will be jam-packed with laughs as more than 125 improv groups perform across three stages in Hollywood. The festival is produced by indie comedy shows Crashbar Improv, the Manifesto Show, Room 101, Tuesday Night Thunder and the 11th Hour show, who joined forces to create a festival showcasing the vast base of talented improv ensembles that perform outside of established comedy theaters (see: IO West, Upright Citizens Brigade, etc.). In true indie spirit, you'll see a multitude of improv styles, from groups that create an entire one-act musical based on your suggestion to weirder, more experimental comedy sets. It's all made up on the spot and it's all free, though donations are highly encouraged. Art/Works Theatre, 6569 Santa Monica Blvd., Hlywd.; Oh! My Ribs Stage, 6468 Santa Monica Blvd., Hlywd.; Clubhouse Theatre, 1107-A El Centro, Hlywd.; all Sat., May 25, noon-mid.; free. LAindieimprovfestival.com.

Sat., May 25, 2013