Rotten Tobacco

I really wanted to write a different kind of review. I wanted to ask why we as a society don't go see concerts like we go see movies. When we buy a concert ticket, usually it's after absorbing and memorizing the band's latest album. We trust the bands we already like and rarely risk a wasted evening on a band we've barely heard. 

And yet, it can be a similar gambit. We go to movies, sight unseen, because of a good preview. Or because we trust some of the people involved: Writers, directors, actors. Or (fellow critics can always dream) because of a sterling movie review. We're risking about $12 per ticket and two hours of our time. 

Why don't we take these risks more often with concerts? Streaming tracks on an unknown artist's MySpace page are similar in nature to movie trailers. The music world is as fluid as ever, with artists collaborating and mixing styles to produce side-projects just as significant and interesting as the bands that made them famous. Ticket prices at an intimate rock club like The Echo rarely push past $12, even on the day of the show. So why don't we take more risks with our music?

This is the article I was going to write. It was going to be perfect. Tobacco, the band I'd never really heard, was an offshoot of a band I actually quite like: Black Moth Super Rainbow. I previewed a few of their tracks on MySpace and pegged their sound as the kind of electronica that RJD2 should have kept making. Seeing them live didn't seem at all risky. I invited some friends down to the Echo on Thursday, March 25th and plunked down my $12 for a ticket, full of confidence. 

Tobacco hit the stage around 10:30 PM, setting up a dual set of video projectors and space for three band members. Expecting a typical DJ set, I was already impressed. The first video projector lit the backdrop with a cheesy 1980s infomercial for Magic Eye illustrations. This show was going to be a riot; my gambit looked certain to pay off. 

The second projector lit the right side of the stage with a simple, white background and two windows of streaming video. They were running Chatroulette! The band was going to broadcast the concert online. My friend Jord turned to me and said, "It's only a matter of time before we see some guy's dick."

For those of you who haven't yet experienced Chatroulette, it's a website that does much of what its name promises: You enter into a live, streaming video chat with a random person. Every few minutes, the chat shifts to a brand-new user. The idea must have been to deliver a free concert to an unsuspecting Chatroulette user for a few minutes. But it's a testament to the dark and anonymous underbelly of the internet that roughly 25% of the users videochatting on the site at 10:30 PM are masturbating men.

It took less than five minutes for my friend to be unfortunately proved right. We were greeted with a man in a dirty, white jock strap, semi-erect penis exposed proudly. The audience laughed uncomfortably, waiting for someone to roll the roulette wheel, to replace this terrible image. But he stayed on screen for minute after agonizing minute, stroking his disgusting penis, violating the crowd. In any other context, this would have been sexual harassment, public exposure on an extremely wide scale. 

The Seven Fields of Aphelion, the laughable name of the keyboard player for both Tobacco and Black Moth Super Rainbow, glanced back from his keyboard to the Chatroulette window every few minutes. He wore a mask, a gaunt and hairy figure that protected the man underneath from owning the responsibility of the ghastly images shown on the screen behind him. Aphelion could have changed the video at any point. But he didn't. And it wasn't Aphelion's fault. It was the masked man. Real hatred started growing in the audience for this masked man. He tried to crowdsurf at one point, penis still onscreen, and many of the outstretched hands meant to prop him up took the form of closed fists, ready to make a jab. 

Mercifully, the chat time expired before the online pervert could finish his abhorrent business and we were greeted by what looked like a nice guy in a college dorm, just looking to waste time. He looked as shocked to see a crowd of dancing Angelinos as we looked relieved to see him. But then, on the first screen, the Magic Eye infomercial faded into a compilation of 1980s porn climax footage. It was just too much to take. With a stream of apologies to my friends, we left the club and walked home, happy to be anywhere but inside the club.

It's one thing for an artist to challenge the boundaries of social norms. To confront and comment on the ills that exist in our modern culture. The internet has allowed many behaviors once considered deviant to become a kind of normal, and Chatroulette is a principle example of this. It's an issue worth tackling by any artist, music or otherwise. But let's be honest: Tobacco is not The Velvet Underground. They play dance music. Their genre is practically designed to make feel comfortable. For them to so blatantly challenge this basic tenant isn't revolutionary or artistic, it's just lazy and insulting to their audience.

I wanted to say that Angelinos should get out of their shell. To take a risk and line up for an unknown band like they line up for movie screenings. But, now I can't do that in good conscience. They might just be lining up for some rotten tobacco.

The Unlikely Icon - Ira Glass

It was less than an hour until showtime on March 27th. Ira Glass sat at his desk, organizing his notes and burning audio tracks from his computer, yellow bag at his feet, ready to build another program from scratch. It looked like a day at the office, only Glass was sitting on a stage, the empty seats of UCLA's Royce Hall spreading out before him.

"This is very weird," said Glass, who was surrounded by photographers. "It's not very often you go to work and have your picture taken hundreds of times."

"Pro basketball players have to deal with it every day," I said, breaking the silence of the pack.

"You're right," Glass said, looking up from his soundboard and straight at me. For those of us jockeying for position, the validation was significant. Glass' radio program, This American Life, has been unimpeachable for over 400 episodes and 15 years now. Its host for all but one episode, Glass has researched and investigated nearly every topic under his show's broad umbrella. His breadth of expertise is impressive, enviable. It was hard to separate the reporters and photographers who crowded beneath Glass' desk from the ticket-holding fans waiting outside.

Actually, that’s an understatement. Among the members of the press who covered the event, there existed a respect for the host that borders on idolization. The older reporters dressed in serious blazers. The young reporters barely contained their nerves; the lone radio journalist, a young girl who didn't look too far out from high school, had her microphone pried out of her hand by Glass himself when she couldn't bring herself to hold it close to his mouth. His first words into her recording were, "There's nothing I hate more than bad mike placement." The host giveth, the host taketh away.

Just as nervous, I waited in the back of the stage for my turn to ask a question. "Ira," I said, "how does it feel to be an icon? How does it feel to be the Alpha of the beta males?"

He turned in his chair to face me, unsure of what to say, and called the question "clever." My heart soared. Glass fumbled a bit—this idea of celebrity was—at least apparently—new to him. To diffuse the question, he said he is married to a woman he had known for 15 years. He said he had gotten bumped from his flight earlier that day, that nobody recognizes him in airports, and that when he goes to work, it's normally in a box.

Yes, I countered, but a box connected to countless people. Here he was, at his desk, photographers capturing his every move, on a night when nearly three thousand people paid to see him do what he does—in person. If Glass wasn't comfortable with the idea of being a celebrity, I thought, he should probably start getting used to it by showtime.

As I walked off the stage, I ran into Jennifer Ferro, the new General Manager of KCRW, the station that brought Glass to Royce Hall and the second in the country to broadcast TAL. She told me that, for the first few years of the program, Glass didn't allow his photo to be taken. Working in Chicago, Glass usually wears jeans. But now that his image was on billboards and books and TV programs, he couldn't escape wearing a well-tailored suit. Ferro and I watched Glass as the reporters squeezed in their last questions and the photographers snapped their final shots. He really wasn't used to the attention.

Thirty minutes later, Glass was introduced on a dark stage. He started the show like he would start any radio program, the only stimulus being the sound coming from the speakers. He would, Glass joked, do the entire show this way if Ferro would allow it. But the house lights rose and Glass was illuminated once more, to great applause from the crowd. We could see his expressions and his perfect posture, see his hands waving like the sorcerer's apprentice, flashing through the air as he cued up interview tracks and musical accompaniment. He wasn't intimidated. He was a natural.

And the show? It was exactly what fans of the radio program have enjoyed for years. Glass was reverential of his interviewees and wry enough to bring out their (usually unintentional) humor. The live show pulled back the invisible curtain and showed how Glass matches music and narration to construct something universally American and unflinchingly poignant.

Angelinos have our routines down—and that includes knowing what we’ll say to the next hot movie starlet (or how we’ll politely ignore her) when our carts crash at Whole Foods. But Glass' celebrity comes from his intellect. How do you act when you meet that brand of icon? More importantly, how does it feel to be the Alpha Male of the Beta Males?

Ira Glass, man of many words, seemed to have left a few on this topic unsaid. Enough for a program, perhaps. Divided in three acts.




Originally in Los Angeles Magazine at: http://www.lamag.com/do/blog_post.aspx?id=24572&blogid=2160

OK Get Over It

It's 2010 and I'm left wondering about the purpose of the music video.

A friend of mine put the problem into words: "Music videos are too expensive to be commercials. They're just not effective anymore." Nowadays videos are viewed largely in a 3" x 5" screen, surrounded by ads and nonsensical commentary. They're hamstrung by connection speeds and video quality. MTV’s been dead so long it isn't worth eulogizing anymore. Where’s the audience for music videos? What’s their purpose?

In the three years they've been hosting their screening series, Flux has come to be a premiere tastemaker in Los Angeles. Their selections are neither obvious so obscure they’re inaccessible. If anyone had the answer to this music video question, surely it would be them. I attended their screening series at the Hammer Museum on Tuesday, March 23rd with eyes and ears wide open—looking for the answer to my questions.

The screening featured three abrasive films from Massive Attack that were more like short documentaries hell-bent on making some great social argument without regard for the underlying music they were supposed to accompany than music videos. Music video as propaganda for the band with an agenda.

But the screening also featured more traditional fare from bands like Monsters of Folk, where the visuals added color and form to melody, no social commentary needed. Music video as pure visualization.

Then came the last video of the night, “This Too Shall Pass,” by OK Go, the video superstars better known for their videos than their music. Their self-titled debut album shot to the top of the iTunes charts in 2006 thanks to the popularity of their first online video. "This Too Shall Pass" collected 9 million views on YouTube in one week. And, shown outside the confines of the internet and up on the big screen at the Billy Wilder Theatre Tuesday night, the video created that same excitement as their first video, the joy that comes from watching a great concept executed flawlessly.

After the screening, the crowd moved to the Hammer's courtyard for a short acoustic performance from OK Go. A large screen hung behind the trio. I expected the debut of another video. Possibly featuring roller-skates. Or monkeys (roller-skating monkeys? Ooooh…). But the screen stayed blank and the crowd remained indifferent to the music.

OK Go played on while people talked, performing a Pixies cover that went ignored. In between songs, the crowd drank casually or waited for a slice of pizza at the Hammer Café while the band complained about their former record label, Capitol/EMI (days after the release of "This Too," OK Go left EMI Records and have founded their own distribution label, Paracadute.)

In 2010, music videos must serve at the behest of the band. If a band like Massive Attack wants to make videos to promote a social agenda, then that is their greater purpose. If a band like OK Go wants to make videos just to have fun and be creative, than that is their purpose, too. And if those are the kind of videos that OK Go will keep making, then there's no need to worry about the future of OK Go. Or music videos, for that matter.

Originally in Los Angeles Magazine at: http://www.lamag.com/do/blog_post.aspx?id=24493&blogid=2160

Black and White Stripes

One of most treasured memories from my six years in Detroit came on my grandmother's 74th birthday. We piled into my grandfather's Buick and drove down to Hamtramck, once the largest community of Polish inhabitants outside Poland itself, to the Polish Village Cafe.

The Cafe is barely big enough for a small bar and a few picnic tables. Besides the authentic Polish golumpki, the real attraction of the cafe is the music. A tiny three-piece band—drums, trumpet, and piano—squeeze into the corner on weeknights and play old jazz standards so the old and faithful can dance in the narrow aisle. This is where I saw Meg White. She walked down the well-trodden staircase to the basement restaurant; I made her instantly. She was wearing a white leather jacket dyed with a black 1950s pattern and had a very tall, very attractive pre-hipster boyfriend in tow. They sat down and ordered beet soup, otherwise unnoticed. I turned to my grandmother to explain that the tall girl sitting one table over was famous. Worldwide-tour famous. Biggest-garage-rock-band-on-earth famous. My grandmother turned to me and said, "Forest, I want you to meet my friend Meg."

That was 2005. The White Stripes have come a long way since then and a long way from Detroit. Jack White now resides in Nashville, Tennessee. I've heard that Meg spends some of her time in Silver Lake. They've been a band for more than ten years. Jack’s more willing than ever to hang up the red-and-white outfit to play with other bands: First the Raconteurs with Brendan Benson and more recently with The Dead Weather and Alison Moshart. Reportedly, his favorite quote about The White Stripes is about how they are simultaneously the most fake band and most real band in the world.

But that’s always been the case. From the beginning, it's been easy to predict the demise of The White Stripes. Their tenth anniversary tour, for instance, was primed for overreaching; there were shows in each of Canada's 10 provinces and 3 territories, shows booked in towns smaller than the capacity of Madison Square Garden, and free concerts given for early bird fans.

Thank goodness Emmett Malloy was there to document everything in his new tour film Under Great White Northern Lights, which came out on DVD on Tuesday, March 16th. Flux screened the film screened at the Egyptian Theatre on Monday.

Malloy's technique (filming most of the tour in grainy, black-and-white reversal film) deftly handles one of the band’s detractors’ most persistent criticisms: That the Stripes more concerned with image than importance. Malloy's footage grounds their image in realism. That's not to say that Malloy's journey with the band doesn't dip into the surreal—scenes too strange to be fake appear throughout. Witness Jack and Meg, exhausted but smiling after a show, walking through the backstage door at midnight to see that the Yukon sun is still shining. Witness the Stripes' "One Note Show" (a free concert where the duo appear on stage, play a very spirited F-note, and then walk offstage to chants of, "One more note!"). These moments (and there are many others too good to spoil) were Malloy's focus and the reason why White Lights doesn't move like a typical concert film. There are few full-length songs; Malloy only has time for the breakdown of "I'm Slowly Turning Into You" or the guitar solo from "Icky Thump." He would rather point his lens back on the tour itself. And yes, Malloy captures the heat that the pair still pack, ten years later. Meg, when pointedly asked to explain the popularity of the band by a Canadian truck driver, gets to the heart of it: "We make a lot of noise."

In White Lights, the Stripes songs you love are dragged out on stage, drenched in napalm, and set afire. Leading the attack is Jack White, who has kept things authentic with that ethereal scream, those deafening guitar chords, that midwestern (dare I say "Detroit") work ethic. Malloy captures all of it. Every note. My grandmother would be proud.

Originally in Los Angeles Magazine at: http://www.lamag.com/do/blog_post.aspx?id=24290&blogid=2160

A Day In Traffic Court

To start: I was guilty. And as far as I could tell, the people sitting around me in traffic court—the old man sitting next to me with his snapshot photo evidence, the penitent son with his reproving father, the young thug with a face that had been terribly burned, scarred, and reconstituted—before the Great Seal of California, all of us in the Beverly Hills Traffic Court, sat guilty. I would make a rather biased judge.

The court clerk turned to the bailiff and whispered, "Is she even in chambers yet?" The official clock was nudging past 9:00 AM for a session that should have commenced thirty minutes earlier. "Fridays," the bailiff said and returned to her phone call. While we sat contemplating our pleas, the bailiff was trying to quietly book a reservation at a shooting range.

Five months prior, I was pulled over for the kind of routine traffic stop that you just know is going to be costly. Thirty minutes and a short stint in the backseat of a cop car later, I had a ticket and a court date. My crimes were procedural: I'd lived in California longer than the 30 days required to head down to the DMV and apply for a CA Driver's License. And my registration wasn't up-to-date. These were not crimes inspired to draw out the sympathy of the officer who pulled me over. Actually, I was lucky he didn't impound my car on the spot. All I could do was to hope the cop would grant me one additional favor and sleep through the court date, or that the judge was more lenient than I would be.

But I had a plan designed to warm even the most wary of temperaments. "I'm not here to give you any excuses," I would tell the judge. I would say that she's heard too many sob stories and that I didn't want to waste her time. She would interrupt me to compliment my black two-piece suit and question me about the identity of my tailor. I had it all planned out.

Actually, choosing the suit was about as far as I had gotten in the planning process. For all the hundred or so episodes of Law and Order I've seen over the years, I quickly realized how lost I was when it came to actual court proceedings. The court date I booked months prior turned out to only be an arraignment, one of those familiar words I couldn't actually define.

The judge, a woman who like all female judges of a certain age, resembled Judge Judy, thankfully arrived to clear things up. "Of all the people gathered today in the courtroom, I can bet that I am the only one glad to be here," she said, starting a breathless half-hour lecture on the fundamentals of traffic court. I liked her right away.

The arraignment, I learned, was a preliminary session just for the purpose of taking down pleas—“guilty,” “not guilty,” or “no contest.” Our pleas would be heard and recorded in rapid succession, after which we'd all shuffle next door to the clerk's office to pay the court a fine for our guilt or to post bond in hopes of our innocence.

This was another thing I never fully understood: Regardless of my plea, I'd have to pay the full price of the ticket. If I admitted guilt, I'd pay on the spot. If I wanted a fair trial, I'd still have to pay the full amount in hopes it would be refunded to me if I won my case. It didn't matter that the cop who pulled me over didn't show up in court for the arraignment—he would only be summoned if I pled “not guilty” and went to trial.

The judge continued: Though we were sitting in a courthouse in one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the state, court fines are set by the lawmakers in Sacramento. Once a defendant was charged, the judge couldn't do anything to ameliorate the fines. The fines themselves stopped at a maximum of $100, which sounded deceptively reasonable. What made them so much more expensive was the buffet of service charges and penalties added on top of the fine—sometimes seven times the cost of the original fine. The cheapest ticket came in at $20, which topped out at $141 with all of the additional fees. Ouch.

By the end of the judge's lesson, I knew how I would plead. Unlike a speeding ticket, my charge didn't involve a subjective opinion or questionable equipment. I hadn't taken care of the details; a trial wouldn't last long if the cop showed up. The last thing I wanted was to prolong this tortuous process, only to be justly defeated in the end.

I didn't have much more time to consider it. The speech was over; the hearing had begun. All twenty of us were called to the stand at once, lined up—a row of suspects in front of the judge. The first name on her list was leaning against the podium in a gray hooded sweatshirt, an obvious veteran of the court.

His charge was the most serious given in traffic court—driving without insurance—compounded by the hefty fine for skipping a previous trial. He was looking at bail money in upwards of a thousand dollars. He took this news with an air of indifference and requested an extension on his court date and then an extension on his bail payment. The judge, not even taking the time to look at the defendant, said, "You're wasting my time with these shenanigans. You didn't listen to my speech," and before the man could respond, she sent him down to the clerk to pay for his “not guilty” plea.

I didn't have much time to mourn: I was next. The judge was quick: "Forest Casey. Do you have a current driver's license in the state of California?" I dug my wallet out of my suitcoat and fumbled around with the license before handing it to the bailiff, "Here. Yes, I do."

"And do you have a valid car registration from the state of California?" Shit. My registration was back at home. All I had was an incomplete application and the proof of insurance that made it a valid registration, but—"Where are you trying to go with this?" The judge cut me off. I stammered while she clarified: "What are you trying to plead?"

"Umm, guilty. Guilty, your honor." She was filling out some paperwork on her desk and spoke between her notes. "I'm going to drop the first charge, Driving Without a Valid License, but you'll have to pay for the second, Driving With Expired Registration. The fine of the ticket is $50. Total price: $280. Go see the clerk."

I barely had time to register what happened; in under a minute, my arraignment was over. I walked out of the courtroom trying to put the pieces together. Though the service charges for my ticket were piled on like a Thanksgiving plate, I'd been spared the worst of it. I was expecting to pay double what I did.

So, ten minutes later, with my debit card swiped and my signature on a short receipt, I walked out of court guilty, though forgiven. It was 11:00 AM. Time to go find a beer.

Originally in SpliceToday at: http://www.splicetoday.com/writing/i-d-like-to-meet-his-tailor

The Finnish Prince Of Bel-Air - Michael Monroe

I’m not shocked anymore when people say that rock ‘n’ roll is dead. I’ve moved on to pinpointing the time of death: Did rock ‘n’ roll die when The Clash licensed "London Calling" for a Jaguar ad? Did it die with the extended, improbable, and increasingly sad life of Johnny Rotten? Did it die with the fall of Kurt Cobain or the rise of Fred Durst?

This past Wednesday, I saw a middle-aged man in leather pants play rock ‘n’ roll at a dinner party at the Finnish Consul General's mansion in Bel Air. Is that the final clarion call? Rock paired with finger foods and white wine? There was a heated pool, but no Rolls Royce floating near the bottom.

Although it’s not well known, the man, Michael Monroe, is Finnish (he was born Michael Fagerholm) and he’s still got that Arctic blonde hair. It’s the kind of hair that separates lead vocalists from bass players, the kind of hair for which hair metal was named. In fact, in the early 1980's, Monroe’s band Hanoi Rocks paved the way for bands like Mötley Crüe and Guns and Roses. Only the death of their drummer, Nicholas Dingley, in 1985 that prevented Hanoi Rocks from joining the superstars of Sunset Strip.

Twenty-five years later, Monroe still has fans in Los Angeles willing to put on their leather jackets and studs and drive to Bel Air for a night of glam metal revival. Their rock ‘n’ roll regalia gave the evening a bit of a mischievous air. Knee-high motorcycle boots circled the grand dining table, stopping briefly for their tattooed-and-pierced owners to nibble on chocolate-covered strawberries and sweet dates wrapped in blue cheese and bacon. Under the eye of Consul General Kirsti Westphalen, dressed smartly in a black pantsuit, the wolves had snuck into the henhouse. And nobody looked more pleased than the leader of the pack, Michael Monroe. After a brief introduction by the Consul General on the grand staircase, Monroe leapt to the front of the stage and did everything in his power to bring rock ‘n’ roll back to life. He kicked high and shouted, did a full split on the stage before whipping his microphone around his neck. Twice, Monroe jumped up to the top of the Consul General's (thankfully empty) mantel and belted out a few lines from on high. The crowd, which had pulled digital cameras out of those leather jacket pockets to capture Monroe's theatrics, went wild.

In the half-dozen new and classic songs I heard in Bel Air, Monroe did something that I haven't seen at a rock concert in what feels like years: He worked for, and earned, an encore. Talking with his manager after the show, I remarked what a young band they were (the Bel Air show was their first live performance). She thought I was making a joke on account of Monroe's age, but in truth they played harder and louder than any buzz band-of-the-week from Brooklyn.

Maybe the current incarnation of rock—indie’s bookish stars and their cool fans—has dealt rock its final fatal blow. Or maybe rock just needs a bit of that old '80s enthusiasm. Michael Monroe wouldn't be a bad teacher. Rock ‘n’ roll is dead, but rock ‘n’ roll is forever.

Originally in Los Angeles Magazine at: http://www.lamag.com/do/blog_post.aspx?id=24178&blogid=2160

Part-Time Paparazzi 2: Awards Season

At about 4:15 on a Friday afternoon, well before the arrival of any meaningful celebrities, I came to a new conclusion about my profession. The "Working Press Photographers," as we're sometimes charitably called, leaned against a steel barricade at the Independent Spirit Awards in two cluttered rows. Next to me, a woman of some vague European origin who would later shout at the foreign independent filmmakers in German, Spanish and French, turned to me with the same conclusion: "We are fucking freaks," she said.

Behind the barricade, we were a split-level freak show on display for a small list of well-dressed clientele who strolled along a powder blue carpet and gazed at the oddities. There was the Ferrari Guy, who distilled the mid-life crisis down to its essence with his bald head and soul patch. He wore a Corsa red Ferrari jacket and covered his three Nikon cameras with matching red electrical tape. There was Kathy, obese and well-past middle age, with a voice as loud as a carnival barker, who between 3:00 and 4:15 managed to switch her assigned spot four times and break a colleague's stool under her weight. There was an older man, a Jeffrey Tambour look-alike, who told, and re-told, the same joke for four hours—variations on a theme of "I need a whiskey."

The broken stool belonged to this last photog, Jeffrey Tambour, and just before 4:15, he and Kathy began a shouting match through a crowd of a dozen photographers about whether or not, in fact, Kathy had engaged a locking clasp on the now-useless stool. Kathy's position in the debate was that she didn't give a fuck and that the stool was a piece of shit anyways and that Jeffrey Tambour shouldn't have lent it out in the first place.

So, at 4:15, the revelation: We were freaks. Fucking freaks. That much is obvious to anyone who has caught an episode of TMZ. Dressed in a black suit and tie, I realized I had become one of them, another oddity, the Amazingly Well-Dressed Kid. I had gone from part- to full-time. I wanted a whiskey, too.

This was high season among the freaks. The Oscars were two nights away and with them the promise of the pre- and after-parties that made awards season so profitable. The chatter behind my assigned spot circled around the Vanity Fair wrap party—who had gotten in, who didn't. General consensus among those left off the list of 40 photographers allowed inside was that Vanity Fair was too late and too much work and they'd rather be at home, in bed, sleeping. They were jealous. I was, too.

Forty-five minutes remained until the first of the celebrities hit the carpet. The punctual ones were never very lucrative; tabloid magazines were uninterested in celebs with open schedules. To my right, a New York-based paparazzo was cropping the real thing, photos of Halle Berry and her young child playing in a sunlit park. The European woman told me a story about tackling 400 lb. Armenian taxi driver after he snuck into an awards show and tried to steal her camera.

I hoped that all of us were nervous in those long moments of tedium before the moments of terror were to come. Indeed, this was the closest to combat that LA had seen in a decade, and soon there was to be a beach landing with publicists dragging their non-combatant celebrity clients wounded and smiling down 200 yards of trenches to be shot repeatedly by the photogs now waiting crouched behind their barricade. You had to be nervous at a time like that.

At 5:00, the limos unloaded their celebrity cargo. Soon, it was impossible to hear over the yelling of my fellow celebrity journalists.

I saw Laura Dern, Amy Ryan, Ethan Hawke, Vera Farmiga, Ed Helms, Robert Duvall, Andy Garcia, David Spade, Mariah Carey, Matt Dillon, Mo'nique, Maggie Gyllenhaal, John Waters, Helen Mirren, Jeff Bridges, and Colin Firth walk between a steady stream of no-names who we photographed just the same in hopes they someday acquired names of their own.

The whole process is more than just a bit inhumane. We are baseball collectors in search of a mint-condition rookie season card, an object to sell and trade for profit. We were no more photographers than they were our subjects. And the more we shouted instructions, the better we could feel; the more we thought that the freaks were actually on the other side of the barricade.

It was so impersonal that I didn't know what to say afterwards. Could I claim to have "seen" Dave Grohl with the stars of my favorite film of '09, the Canadian metal band Anvil? Tom Ford stood five feet from me, methodically looking down all of our camera barrels one-by-one, giving the same practiced look to every photog. But I couldn't say that he "saw" me (or my suit).

And then, jolting me from my self-pity, a photog a few spots over said, "Oh, my god. That's Roger Ebert." I'd watched the same elderly man, walking down the carpet with his wife in tow, pointing at random photographers as if he recognized them. From 30 yards out, I could see that he was disfigured by some unfortunate combination of cancer and surgery. But it wasn't until the man with the permanent grin stopped and held one thumb way up that it hit me—this was Roger Ebert, a man who inarguably influenced cinema far more than any of the other attendees at the awards ceremony. Even the seasoned pros near me lowered their cameras. Nobody shouted. He maneuvered past us, thumb still up, politely refusing to pose.

Originally in SpliceToday at: http://www.splicetoday.com/pop-culture/part-time-paparazzi-part-2-awards-season

Cat Lady - Tipi Hedren

In the Founder's Room beneath the Magic Castle in Hollywood, an exclusive club inside an already exclusive club, Tippi Hedren was taking a short break from raising money for her cats to watch some sleight-of-hand at the bar.

It was the The Birds star’s 80th birthday, but Hedren declined cake and any celbratory to-do. Instead, she kept the focus on her cats. Photographs of the lions and leopards of Shambala, the wildlife preserve she founded, lined the walls of the room, leading guests to a table where the actress, back with a calligraphy pen in hand, waited to sign prints for hundreds of dollars a pop. It takes one million dollars a year to keep preserve running, to provide the 400-500 pounds of meat the hungry animals eat daily, to clean them and care for them and keep them on the minds of caring people.

Hedren isn’t your average celeb with a bleeding heart. It’s been said (incorrectly) that Alfred Hitchcok plucked her out of a small town in Minnesota to star in her first film; that her short and strange relationship with the noted, reportedly celibate director ended when Hedren criticized the horror master’s weight (this, after Hitchcock allegedly built a ramp between his trailer and hers and once mailed Hedren's daughter a miniature likeness of her mother lying in a tiny coffin). Marnie, the second film they made together, stalled first on set and then at the box office, effectively ending her career in film.

The actual details of Hedren's tete-a-tete with Hitchcock's Hollywood aren't certain because of years of polite "no comments." I’m re-telling these myths because they are precisely what Hedren has fought to eclipse with her Shambala foundation. Hedren didn't have the career in cinema that she was promised, but the career she found along the way was no less meaningful. Regardless of the path that led her to animal activism, Hedren has committed herself to it fully for almost thirty years. Some give up their passions when they become actors. Hedren seems to have used acting to find hers. Currently she’s working to help pass a congressional bill that would prevent the breeding of wild cats as pets, a surprising immediate and modern problem: The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service lists the exotic cat trade as a business "just under illegal drugs."

I couldn't think of an octogenarian better suited for this task. Hedren’s fought Hitchcock, forty years of rumors, and Hollywood itself. Surely she can take on Washington, too.

Originally in Los Angeles Magazine

Original Sin - The Confederate Relic Room

Above the mahogany gun rack in my grandfather's house hung a shadow box with a small stack of colorful money that fanned out of a leather wallet. There were fives, tens and 20s, but the numbers printed on the bills were so far removed from any actual value that their previous owner had chosen to frame them as keepsakes. These were Confederate bills, and the South wouldn't be rising again.

The bills had found their way into my grandfather's house past inflation and eventual irrelevance at the end of the Civil War, through Reconstruction and the slow rekindling of the Southern economy. If my grandfather was to be believed, the bills belonged to his great-great-granddaddy, a man who fought for the Confederate States of America, was decorated in combat, captured and held prisoner, and then freed after the end of the war with nothing but a blanket to shelter him as he walked the long miles barefoot back to South Carolina.

This story, I've found, is a common one among many Southern families, and while I'm sure there were a few blanketed ex-Confederates straggling back home after the treaty at Appomattox, I think this story is more to make the descendants of a failed nation state feel a bit warmer toward their great-Uncle Johnny Reb.

The facts themselves are a bit tougher to swallow. South Carolina, the state in which I was raised, quite literally started the Civil War, ratifying the Articles of Secession and punctuating it with cannon fire in Charleston Harbor towards an island fort occupied by the Union. That first battle, as South Carolinians are quick to point out, resulted in only one casualty—a horse. But the implications ran deeper. Union General Sherman famously said in response, " … When I go through South Carolina it will be one of the most horrible things in the history of the world. The devil himself couldn't restrain my men in that state." Sherman eventually burned Charleston to the ground. And the havoc and destruction from that first declaration of war and rebellion crept all the way into my childhood one century later.

We took elementary-school field trips to see grown men re-enact battles on the fields outside of Middleton Plantation. We studied the relics in the medical tent and imagined life as young amputees. We wrote reports on the men encamped outside a war zone, ready to lead the charge. Fantastic words like "hard tack," "submersible," and "grape shot" invaded our vocabularies. That all of my Social Studies classes spent months on their Civil War sections made sense to me: It is a war that is still being fought.

And it's not just fought by costumed re-enactors. I'm still fighting with it, too.

My grandfather told me another story about my family's past, one that's told a lot less frequently than the Reb-in-swaddling-clothes myth, so I fear it’s true. There's no easy way to say it: My family owned slaves. Some great-Aunt far down the line kept about a dozen African slaves on her small plantation outside of Florence, South Carolina.



Much of me didn't want to know. I ran away from this truth as swiftly as I ran from the South, first to Michigan, then to California. I studied African-American history, praised Malcolm X and affirmative action, tried to deny and to forget. I called for South Carolina to remove their Dixie flag from the capitol building as swiftly as I had removed the traces of an accent from my voice, to the annoyance of my Southern family. But still the guilt remained.

Penniless after the war, my family moved inland to work on the canals cutting through the capital, Columbia. In 1949, they opened a small, open-air market near their home and began selling fireworks. Twice each year, I make the journey back to South Carolina to sell gunpowder with my family. But much of my time is spent in the fireworks store—my sight of the South was limited to trips to the import warehouses and hardware stores. This year, I was determined to stare down the South I had been ignoring, to confront the past I didn't want to acknowledge.

Seeking the source, I headed to the Confederate Relic Room in the basement of the SC State Museum. I was expecting a small room with a few glass cases, curated by an old lady wearing an antebellum dress. The receptionist, who wore a bob hairdo and a Christmas sweater behind a large desk, looked like she hadn't seen anyone remotely interested in the War in a long time. She waved me inside with a free admission.

What I got inside was more of an actual museum—filled with writing, quotes, exhibits, mannequins, artifacts and relics of all kinds. It wasn't a scattershot collection. This was how the people of South Carolina chose to officially remember the war. From the inscription at the opening of the exhibit hall:



"As the birthplace of secession in 1860, South Carolina stood as the very embodiment of Southern martial spirit, pro slavery and states' rights politics, and resistance to federal authority. Because of its leading role in forming the Confederacy, South Carolina was also a special target of vengeful Union armies, especially in 1865, leading to the dark time of the state's post-war era."



The museum had a lone display case on slavery. It was filled with paperwork, ledgers with prices listed next to names in perfect calligraphy. The display made sure to note that not all slaves worked for free, but neglected to emphasize that they didn't have much of a choice in the matter either way. Iconic photos of slaves weren't shown. The only artifacts of slave life were two bronze identification tags, listing number 231, a male, and 294, a female.

Another exhibit told stories of the revelry in Columbia that followed the signing Articles of Secession. A jubilant citizenship set off canons and made bonfires. "Firecrackers exploded in the street." I saw echoes of myself in the face of an unnamed soldier pictured next to the exhibit. I saw my family of a century earlier, shooting fireworks to celebrate a document that would unravel a nation.



And I hoped that the fires that burned Charleston and made worthless the bills above my grandfather's gun chest also cleansed me of this original sin. I prayed for it to be so, and for forgiveness.

Originally in SpliceToday at: http://www.splicetoday.com/writing/original-sin-the-confederate-relic-room

Buy This House

Let's get this out of the way: Yes, you can buy a house in Los Angeles and pay less per month than a bland two-bedroom in Culver City. But this isn't a late-night TV infomercial. There are catches. It can be excruciatingly hard work. But it is possible. I'm doing it. I'm buying a real house in Los Angeles for $164,000.

A small introduction: I've been in Los Angeles for two years. In that time, I've spent a total of $24,000 on rent on a tiny apartment, my half of a two-bed, two-bath in West Hollywood. I loved my apartment; it was home. But I was tired of scraping by. No matter how modest my lifestyle, $1000 escaped from my bank account on the fifth of every month, never to return.

And it wasn't like I thought buying a house was a possibility. The cute bungalows one on my street started at $870,000. I began to accept the possibility I would be living in an apartment well into old age; the only home in my future would be a retirement home.

Then this global financial meltdown happened and everything changed. I admit, it's a lot easier to be flippant when I have nothing at stake, no home equity worth half what I paid. But even those hit hardest by this bursting bubble can admit that the market was overvalued. When you're buying a house, you have to keep these people in mind. Your gain comes from their loss.

My goal was to find a house where the monthly payments would leave my roommate and me paying no more than half of what I was paying before. $500 a month to own your own home is possible. Here's what you need:

First, a willingness to leave the Westside. If you're hoping to pay about $500 a month to own your own home, there are some places you just won't be able to live. Forget West Hollywood, Santa Monica, Venice Beach, Echo Park, and Silver Lake. Forget Culver City, and Koreatown too.

To find the real deals, you're going to have to go to the South or the East. Explore West Adams, Crenshaw, Westmont, Florence-Graham. Drive out to East L.A. on Cesar Chavez and wonder why you've never explored Boyle Heights, City Terrace or Monterey Park.

There are good blocks and bad blocks of each of these. Some that wind up on the news and some that rival the most pristine the Westside has to offer. With all of the foreclosures in these areas, young, motivated people like you are ready to move in. Remember, Echo Park and Silver Lake were once considered "rough."

My advice is to look for a house in East L.A. The Metro Transit Authority gave the people East of downtown a golden present in November: a brand new subway line. The Metro Gold Line connects East L.A. directly to Union Station and runs throughout the city. Taking the subway to work every day? Count me in.

Find a relative with better credit than you. Unless you've paid off your car and student loans and kept a credit card paid off throughout college, your credit is probably undeveloped. You might have to have a co-signer to apply for the home loan with you. They won't have to front the money for the down payment or help pay for the loan, just vouch that you can make monthly payments. Maybe reserve this one for mom and dad. They trust you.

Find another relative with some cash to spare. You've already asked enough of this first family member. All you need for the down payment on a loan from the Federal Housing Administration is 3.5 percent down. This works out to be about $5000. I know this seems like a lot, but keep in mind that most people save for years for a down payment. All you need is just one favor from a wealthy uncle.

Even better, you can pay him back quickly. Because this is probably your first house, you'll qualify for the first-time homebuyer credit. This is an $8000 credit added to your 2010 taxes. Whatever you don't owe the U.S. government in April, you get to keep. Pay your uncle back over the summer and put the rest towards fixing up the house. Or, if you're feeling generous, give him some interest on his loan.

All you need to do is submit a copy of the HUD-1 statement from your closing. It needs to be in your name (not your co-signer's). You need to have a binding contract in by May 1, 2010 and have closed on the house by the first of July. Plenty of time.

Choose a bank, get pre-qualified. This takes about 15 minutes, and can be done over the phone. The pre-qualification is a bit of an estimation given your yearly income, credit score, rough savings and down payment amount. This isn't an actual pre-approval for a loan—to get one of those, you have to go through an underwriting process which, to the credit of banks everywhere, is a tougher process than it was a year ago (you have to submit two years of tax forms and prove your income).

But a pre-qualification is still important. With any luck, you'll get the paperwork started for a low-interest Federal Housing loan that'll stay at a fixed rate for the life of the loan (usually 30 years). Once you have a pre-qual, you'll have an idea of how much you can spend. The fun part is coming up …

Start searching for houses! A realtor can help with this, but if you just want to check out the repossessed homes on the market in L.A., try this tip: You can see all of the properties that Bank of America now owns. You can use this tool to research listings, get a sense of prices around a specific area, and (perhaps the best tool at your disposal) check Google Street View. Go to www.bankofamerica.com and click on "Mortgage." In the top, right-hand corner, there should be a search bar. Type in "REO" and hit "Search." After you input your state, search by “County” and set your results per page to around 100. This brings up a list of all of the repossessed homes owned by Bank of America. Find the list of homes in L.A. County and you've got a great head start in your search.

Also, you'll want to consider getting a buyer's realtor. These guys are different than the ones who rep houses (usually called "listing agents"). They'll work with you to find the house you want in the area you want, usually with more sophisticated search tools than you'll be able to find on public house listing websites. Watch out for realtors who seem too pushy or too eager to get you into the first house you find. The good thing is that you'll see many more houses this way.

Here's what to look for: First, interior photos of the house. If there aren't any, there's a chance that the house isn't vacant—it's been foreclosed on by the bank and the original occupants are still inside. This makes it impossible to get a loan on the house; the occupants won't allow an appraiser inside, so the bank won't lend.

Second, check the neighborhood on Google Street View. Pay close attention to the homes nearby. Look for graffiti. Check if there are any schools or parks nearby.

Third, if you're really interested, drive by the house yourself. After you get a feel for the neighborhood, take a trip to the local police station. As a matter of public record, the officers have to disclose if there were any recent crimes in the area. Don't be scared off by petty theft (I had $5000 of camera equipment stolen out of a locked garage in West Hollywood, of all places). But there's no need to be too cavalier, either.

Here's what you need: Once you've found a house, it's time to call everyone together and put in a bid. To bid on a house in California, you need a few more things. First, with every bid, you need to put a small amount of money down to prove that you're serious about the full bid. This is called an Earnest Money Deposit or EMD. Usually, it's between $500 and $1000 in a check made out to "Escrow."

Next, you need a copy of a bank statement showing you (or your uncle or whomever) can cover the down payment and the closing costs. These can include a home inspection, property taxes, and the fees for your realtor. Then, you'll need that pre-approval from your mortgage broker. Expect this one to be a bit more thorough than your pre-qual.

You'll need some luck, too. But keep in mind, no matter how much pressure you feel from your realtor, this is still a buyer's market—especially in the sub-$200k listings. If you miss out on one home, there will be another. Just keep trying.

Here's the Catch. As you'd imagine, all of this stuff is much easier said than done. The more people you involve, the more people you'll have to corral (and argue with) when it comes time to close on your new home. A small list of the people that you'll need to add to the favorites on your cell phone: Your mortgage broker, your co-signer parents, your wealthy uncle, your new roommate, your realtor, your accountant…

The final word. This is a lot of work. But you can do it. And there's some more good news—even besides the $8000 tax credit and all the money you'll save on rent. Banks have a policy of not foreclosing on families over the holidays. In 2010, a wave of newly-repossessed homes are going to come on the market. So start hunting!

Originally in SpliceToday at: http://www.splicetoday.com/consume/buy-this-house

We Got It For Cheap - The 99 Cent Only Store

On February 7, 2007, Andreas Gursky's 99 Cent II Diptychon became the most expensive photograph ever sold, fetching $3.3 million at auction. Reporters delighted in the irony of this news—the cathedral of high art illuminating the bargain basement of shopping.

True to its price, the photograph is enormous: shoppers wade through a red sea of product labels and ads across two enlarged frames, displayed vertically (creating a Diptychon). Gursky, famous for taming compositions most photographers would consider too busy, captured cleanly the endless repetition that can overwhelm those seeing the 99¢ Only Store for the first time.

And yet, Gursky's focus on the waves of uniformity from the packaging in the snack aisles caused him to overlook the store's most natural and unwieldy department—the produce section.

East Coast readers familiar with the Family Dollar and Dollar Tree chains may have a hard time believing this, but California residents can pick up groceries in their neighborhood dollar store. Now, I'm not talking about freeze-dried, knock-off snack sticks (though these are readily available). I mean produce: Spinach and Romaine hearts, broccoli and snap peas, eggplant and red peppers, cartons of raspberries and Portobello mushrooms, kiwis (six for a dollar) and tiny avocados (three for a dollar). My crowning achievement was a full Dole pineapple, bought stem and all for only 99 cents.

Newcomers, most of them expecting single-ply toilet paper and cheap, plastic toys, tend to approach the groceries with outward hesitation.

In a recent trip to the store, I watched one of these newcomers observe a regular customer casually add a bag of nectarines to her shopping basket. The newcomer, a young woman who moved with the lethargic speed of someone who had been living on Ramen, slowly made her way towards the produce section. She paused, perhaps asking herself the same tough questions that I had on my first visit: Where does all of this food come from? How can it be sold for one third of the price of a supermarket super sale? Is there some kind of fell-off-the-truck hucksterism going on?

At first, everyone wants to know the answers. A good friend of mine, Food Network blogger Eric Kahn Gale, was skeptical when I first introduced him to the store. He told me he was expecting "a lot of crap in there, stuff you have very little interest in buying," but the price slowly won Eric over. His disbelief turned into a nervous sort of joy as he filled his shopping basket, the total only coming to $12.

But the questions remain: how do they sell all that produce for only 99 cents? With all honesty, I can say this: I don't want to know the truth. Chalk it up to this annoying, child-like gullibility I can't seem to shake. Looks too good to be true? Looks pretty good to me. And yet, this time, I feel like I haven't been duped. This time, my confidence is grounded in fact. Kind of.

First, it's a matter of grading. The produce at every supermarket in America has been graded by the USDA. These grades are pretty comprehensive and wide-ranging (the latest proposed rules cover Beet Greens). Right now, I'm reading the1954 document titled "United States Standards for Grades of Carrots with Short Trimmed Tops." It covers firmness, color, leaf-stem quality, and size down to an eighth of an inch. Fascinating.

Chances are, you've never had to think about the grading of your veggies because most all of the food in major grocery chains is graded U.S. No. 1. Stock boys take great pride in their perfect produce pyramids, and a lot of that perfection is down to unblemished uniformity. The buyers charged with choosing inventory simply won't settle for anything less than the highest grade.

So the farmers with completely edible (though not quite so glamorous) Grade 2 vegetables and fruit are left with truckloads of unsellable goods. Their avocados might be a bit smaller, their oranges might have one too many navels, and their potatoes might not be perfectly ovoid. But the only major-market buyer who will consider them is the 99¢ Only Store.

These major-chain supermarket buyers also have to shop for consistency. What happens if your neighborhood grocery store runs out of milk? Or eggs? Each grocery store recruits a vigilant team to ensure that they never have to find out the answer to that question. And yet a trip to the 99¢ Only Store is more of a grab bag; you never know what's going to be in stock. You could come home with pasta, fruit, bread, and milk, though it's best not to plan a recipe around any specific ingredient.

But what if you don't care about recipes? What if you don't care if your carrots aren't a shocking shade of orange? Or if your bell peppers aren't the size of votive candles? Well, then, welcome to the faithful flock of the 99¢ Only Store. You too can focus on the ripe and overlook the spoiled.

So the kiwis may be prime to eat only for a few days after purchase. Or they may not be prime for weeks. Sure, some of the name-brand salad dressing may be three months away from expiration. But, whether bought from a farmer or snuck from a salad bar, lettuce inevitably browns. Potato chips turn stale. I'm willing to make concessions.

But what about those unanswered questions? As my girlfriend reminds me, I'm willfully ignorant because I'm unwillingly poor.

A few months ago, in commemoration of their near-namesake date, 9/9/09, the 99¢ Only Store gave away nine weddings for the low, low price of, yes, 99 cents.

The wedding ceremonies took place in aisle 9 of their Hollywood store on Sunset Blvd. from 8:09 to 9:09 AM. Looking at photos  from the event, the brides look somewhat shocked, all of them standing in a single row, all of them wearing gowns crafted from items sold at the store.

I highly doubt that any of them, in their childhood dreams of marriage, would have pictured exchanging their vows next to eight couples, stuck in a discount store. But I'd also bet that some of their surprise came from a different place, of living in a moment that's far too good to be true.

Originally in SpliceToday at: http://www.splicetoday.com/consume/we-got-it-for-cheap