Friday Night Links/P.J.'s Picks

There's a lot of talk among music critics about scenes. There was the grunge scene in Seattle, the hardcore scene in D.C., the punk scene in London, the new Pac Northwest scene that includes Death Cab for Cutie and the Decemberists. Every city seems to have had a "scene" at some point within music history. Omaha, of all places, has a scene thanks to Conor Oberst and Saddle Creek Records. Los Angeles never seems to make any of these scene lists, at least to my knowledge. The closest thing I can think of is the East Coast/West Coast rap battles of the 90's, which cooled down considerably after the murders of Biggie and Tupac as well as the incarceration of Suge Knight.


It's surprising to me that L.A. is void of a scene especially since it's described as being such a small town, socially speaking. This has a lot to do with Hollywood and the massive networking that goes within the entertainment industry. With all these people working together, how can some sort of scene or movement not exist in L.A? I think one does exist and has been around for a while. It's difficult for me to know whether this scene is currently emerging or I just think it is because I'm becoming cognizant of it.

Take, for example, Largo. (I think you will find that after a while, this article will be nothing more than a Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon like scenario which, incidentally, can be played here.) Largo is a sit down theater that is host to many actors, musicians and comedians. A quick look through their schedule shows performances by comedian Patton Oswalt and musician Jon Brion. Both work with director Paul Thomas Anderson whose movie "Magnolia" featured songs written by Aimee Mann who also performs at Largo along with Fiona Apple, who dated Paul Thomas Anderson.

If we expand the circle out a little wider, Zack Galafinakis also performs at Largo. He is friends with Patton Oswalt, who has done stand up for 826LA. 826LA is part of 826, a non-profit organization started by author Dave Eggers who wrote a movie, Away We Go, starring John Krazinski and Maya Rudolph. Maya Rudolph is going out with Paul Thomas Anderson. And this list could go on forever, circling outward into a vast orgy of Hollywood incest. All this is done to prove, however, that L.A. does a very credible arts scene that, at least according to my knowledge, has been developing since the 90's.

Much of the artistic movement of today has a lot to do with the so-called hipsters, particularly around the Echo Park and Silver Lake areas of Los Angeles. There has been a backlash against hipsterdom for a while now, primarily because of their alleged love of anything obscure, cerebral or pretentious. They're the new wave of art school prepsters pretending to barely get by on their boho chic lifestyle. Say what you will about their fashion, attitude, or gentrification of various cities, but at least they have a vested interest in the city's cultural life. I asked a friend how she liked living in Austin. She said there was a lot of plaid, so it was a pretty cool place. Plaid is shorthand for hipster fashion along with skinny jeans and funky colored sunglasses and there's plenty of that around L.A. I can only imagine what the crowd will look like at the FYF this weekend.

And what are the hipstesr listening to, what art are they promoting? They listen to, among other things, No Age, a stripped down indie outfit that often play at Family Bookstore on Fairfax. Family Bookstore, along with Stories in Echo Park and Origami Vinyl are all in the business of promoting local musicians, artists, and writers. Both Family and Stories are collaborating with 826LA on various events. For a mini documentary on Family Bookstore, check out the We Love You Blog all about Spike Jonze's new movie, Where the Wild Things Are. Oh, did I neglect to mention Spike is also a friend of 826LA? Small word, huh? No Age, in addition to playing Family Bookstore also play at a venue called The Smell. Need more like-minded, L.A. based non-profit organizations? Look no further than Machine Project, Ooga Booga, and the Silver Lake Conservatory of Music.

What makes all these people an organizations more than just businesses? The difference is that they are integrally related to the neighborhoods in which they stand. They don't just sell things to the community, but welcome the people in to be participants in conversation. Not just literal conversation, but to be a dynamic force both in the L.A. art world and the immediate neighborhood. There is a reciprocal relationship between the establishments and residents. And not only do the businesses provide workshops, classes, music, art, books, meeting spaces to their customers, but to other business as well. They work together for the betterment of everyone. As mentioned above, 826LA has worked with both Stories and Family Bookstores. It has worked with Maya Rudolph and Spike Jonze and Patton Oswalt and Largo. There are artists, musicians, and actors in Los Angeles who, without trying to, are part of a burgeoning group of people keeping the interest and promotion of art alive in Los Angeles. And that's more than can be said for LACMA who just recently had to cancel its weekend film series. And UCLA narrowly escaped having to close down its arts library. With major artistic institutions falling by the economic wayside, it's comforting to find people willing to make a scene. An L.A. scene at that.


Random Links:

L.A. FreeBee

Sartorialist

Look Book

NPR Story about the comedy scene in L.A. during the 1970's.

Two Martin Short interviews on Letterman that, although about 15 years apart, are eerily similar and equally hilarious.

Interview I
Interview II

Friday Night Links/P.J.'s Picks

Friday Night Links/ P.J.'s Picks:


I'm one essay away from finishing Consider the Lobster and I just picked up George Saunders' CivilWarLand in Bad Decline and Sarah Vowell's Assassination Vacation. Reading wise, things are going pretty well. And for those who don't read, well, you're probably not reading this either so nevermind...I've been pretty hungry this past week and have been relying heavily on cold cereal for sustenance. Never underestimate the power of shredded wheat. When not eating nine bowls a day I look to a couple L.A. food blogs for restaurant tips:

Eater L.A.

Eating L.A.

The sites are pretty similar in their content; restaurant reviews, events, and gossip, but I always find myself looking at both. They help fill in the gaps of the other. They both have a slight crackberry.com feel in that they both giddily slip out rumors and discuss the possibilities of soon to open restaurants. Gossip includes the hiring of new chefs, changes in menus, the addition/removal of valet service, and new desserts rumored to be in the works. Both sites also keep track of restaurants that have a BYOB policy, which is always an enjoyable find.

L.A. Weekly's Jonathan Gold recently released his 99 Essential L.A. Restaurants. Did your favorite hot spots make the list? There's only one way to find out.


If you're a lover of local newscasts like I am you'll be thrilled to know that long time Fox 11 news anchor John Beard, who has been off the air due to Fox's decision not to renew his contract, is alive and well and (like everyone else in the world) has a Twitter. If you're tired of getting news feeds from The Man and would prefer getting your news from a man, follow his Twitter. For those of you who don't know who John Beard is, I really shouldn't be talking to your because your ignorance saddens me. However, I will tell you he is semi-famous outside of the L.A. region due to several cameos on Arrested Development.


Pitchfork is known for giving practically every album a rating of four or lower. It's like they're not even aware that there are numbers higher than five. Sometimes they come off elitist and unabashed lovers of all things obscure/indie. Haven't heard of Florence and the Machine, Mungolian Jet Set, or Nisennenmondai? Too bad. Pitchfork has and they love them more than a new pair of skinny jeans.

Those who bash Pitchfork never seem to mention that it's more than just a site for album reviews. It's full name is Pitchfork Media. As such, they have lots of exclusive video footage, interviews and cultural essays. A few of the more enlightening articles include:
The Social History of the Mp3
The Decade in Pop
Twee as Fuck: The History of Indie Pop


For the burgeoning writers of L.A., I present to you UCLA's annual Writer's Faire. It takes place on August 30 from 11-3. The full schedule can be found here and a UCLA campus map here.


And, if you enjoy vintage diners but not the high cholesterol meals they serve, come on out to DRKRM Gallery, which is hosting a photo exhibit of lost L.A. diners. It's a Googie lovers dream come true with half the fat and none of the guilt!

Inception

As reported by A.V. Club, the trailer for Christopher Nolan's new movie "Inception" made its debut at many of the Inglorious Basterd screenings around the country. The teaser trailer can also be seen here. It stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Ken Watanabe, Jospeh-Gordon Levitt, Marion Cotillard, Ellen Page, Cillian Murphy and Michael Caine. The cast alone gives me very high hopes, especially with Joseph Godon-Levitt on board. The guy can do no wrong. And I'm curious to see if Ellen Page can move beyond her ironic detachment phase and do some legit acting.

Friday Night Links/P.J.'s Picks

I picked up yet another David Foster Wallace book. This time it's Consider the Lobster, his second collection of essays. I'm not done with it and am right in the middle of an essay on lexicography and English usage in America. The essays are crammed with facts and wit and make for easy and enjoyable reading. I find the book especially refreshing after trudging through the highly neurotic and cerebral stories of Brief Interviews with Hideous Men. The essays in Consider the Lobster lack the excessive introspection and self-doubt and as a result are more accessible and easier to read.



It's not entirely fair to compare his short stories and essays because they each strive to do something entirely different. It's like the old cliche of comparing apples to oranges; you just can't do it. Be that as it may, I have compared the two and decided essays win out at the end. I'll be back with a more in depth look at the essays when I'm done with the book. In the mean time, here are my links:


A whole article dedicated to the history of Webster's Third Dictionary often touted as, "The Most Controversial Dictionary in the English Language."

My old buddy Logan Esdale has a brief but insightful primer on the work of Gertrude Stein.

The blog of New York based writer Molly Young. It's not often that I come across a writer's blog that actually has meaningful content.



In an effort to be topical, here are several links relating to our bum economic times.

"Atlantic" essay on health care

Having trouble finding cheap eats in L.A.? LAist's ongoing blog, Recession Obsession will help you find the goods (but not the droids) you're looking for.

Two part article on organic produce. It really helps demystify and clarify what all the labels mean and brings some balance to the whole organic vs. corporate farming debate.

Part I

Part II


Do you enjoy low cost Swedish furniture of dubious quality? Then check out Ikea Hacker, a blog dedicated to the tweaking and improving of the hard to pronounce, yet easy to love furniture of Ikea.

Carver's Beginnings

Later this month a new Raymond Carver collection will be published and will include unedited versions of the stories from What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. The compilation has been in the works for several years with much of the spearheading done by Carver's widow, Tess Gallagher. Her belief, which is shared by others, is that Carver's editor, Gordon Lish, trimmed the stories down almost to the point of suffocating them and changed their meaning entirely.

Carver: Collected Stories is intended to show Carver without the restraints of his editor and how his earlier work was just as detailed and nuanced as his late period stories such as the ones found in Cathedral. Lish, in Gallagher's eyes, did not sculpt her late husband's work so much as distort it into something entirely different. These new unedited stories are titled Beginners and are the original drafts of what became Carver's breakthrough collection, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. As a London Times article notes, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love consists of 103 pages, while Carver's original manuscript was 204. Nearly half of the stories' contents were cut; on average it was about 70% per story.

Such judicious editing and reshaping of work begs the question of who was really behind the genius of Carver's writing. Which set of stories is the "real" Carver? Knopf, Carver's original publishers and part of the group who initially resisted the publication of the new stories, argues that,

What We Talk About requires no explanation. It is what it is – it is not standing in for some other “pure” text unsullied by messy editorial fingerprints. Every notable book...is the product of a collaboration between author and publisher, and while What We Talk About may exist at the extreme edge of editing, it is not unique.

This posthumous publishing of an author's work is nothing new. Also released this year, Hemingway's unfinished novel, A Moveable Feast, Nabakov's incomplete novella The Original of Laura, and Graham Greene's series of stories, The Empty Chair. Other unpublished works or personal documents made public include the journals and letters of Sylvia Plath, the letters of John Keats, the letters of Truman Capote etc. etc. The list goes on and on. What ends up happening, though, is these fabled pieces of work get published and then, inevitably, get reviewed as being mediocre at best and not nearly as revelatory as they had been hyped to be. Such is the nature of unpublished work. It wasn't published for a reason; because it wasn't very good.

Are Carver's unedited stories, "lesser works"? Some of that depends on one's aesthetic taste. Some prefer the stripped down style of Carver's debut collection, Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? while others prefer the more robust stories of Cathedral. Is one style more "real" than the other? Not in my mind. I agree with Carver's publishers. A published book is a collaborative effort between author and editor, between author and friends, between the author and the world in which he lives. Authors are a product of their environment and circumstance and so is their writing. Take away any single element from any author's life and their writing will change. Writers also frequently change their style. Just look at Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey and compare it to Sense and Sensibility. The self-consciousness concerning the novel as artifice present in Northanger Abbey is completely absent from her other work. Carver, like Austen, and many other authors, changed his style as time progressed and no longer desired the minimalist writing championed by Lish.

To publish a collection of stories for the purpose of vindicating an author's talent is harmful to both the author's original work and his legacy. In the case of Carver, I think Gallagher is trying too hard to portray her husband as a victim and a gifted writer stunted by his editor. That's not to say the stories shouldn't be published, I just don't think they should be published under the pretense of revisionism. Gallegher's goal seems to be to redefine people's opinion of Carver.

Instead of reshaping opinion, the collection should be used to broaden our understanding of the author and his collaborative writing process. Story drafts are much like artist's sketches in that they provide insight into the creative process that leads to the final product. Carver's story drafts are not the master key that will allow the reader to unlock his genuis, but rather one more piece of the puzzle. Carver's legacy, like Kafka and Dickinson before him, is being controlled without his consent. Thankfully, also like Kafka and Dickinson, his work is strong enough to withstand the meddling of outsider's hands and outlast even those who outlasted him.

2+2=5

Sometimes this country's education system really boggles my mind. I know there's no easy fix and that, presumably, people are doing the best they can to make it work, but a lot of the policies seem counter-intuitive. Take my job for example. The students I tutor receive the help for free thanks to No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and increased Title I funding to the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD). In other words, the government is paying for the tutoring the children receive.
Under NCLB, each state sets their own academic standards and determines the level at which each child should perform. There is no national standard set. So far, so good. All this testing and goal setting is, of course, put in place to make the states and their districts more accountable for the help the kids get. The government wants to make sure their money gets put to good use and the students are improving at a rate that is satisfactory. Fine. That makes sense.

Where things start to break down is in the lack of leeway educators are given in choosing and creating curriculum for their students. Like everything else about the program, it is strictly regulated by LAUSD, the state government, and the federal government. It is my job, as a tutor, to assess the students' abilities against state standards, to do all I can to make sure they reach those standards and give the student a post-assessment to see if they reached their goal. The big problem here is that test assessment covers a wider range of subjects than the government sanctioned curriculum covers. It's like the government asking students to be proficient in 10 categories, but only giving them help is three and forbidding any outside assistance.

At one point my company had an account to an online service that allowed educators to access supplemental worksheets; extra lessons to be used in addition to the main curriculum. That account is no longer available because it does not fall under the category of acceptable education material set by the state. Now I have to look elsewhere and find material on my own that may or may not pertain to the sanctioned curriculum. It's not that I mind looking for the material, it's that the state is asking for higher scores in subjects they are unwilling to provide material for.

I have a student who needs help in spelling. The lesson plans in the district approved workbook I am supposed to use do not cover spelling. It is meant as a reader. I asked my boss if they had any spelling material and she said no. I can only use what's in the workbooks and maybe adapt some of the reading lessons into something for spelling. Well, my student does not need the type of help given in the workbook. He needs something far more specific.

I understand the need for quality control and assurance, but limiting the resources of the educator creates two problems: The student will receive limited help in their given subject of need and/or the educator will go out on their own and find their own material to teach, standards be damned. Either way, the students are the ones losing out. They are not getting the help they need and the post-assessment test will show that. The government will either throw more money at the problem and hope it helps or stop funding because they think the status quo is ineffective. If the government approved curriculum matched the subjects being tested a lot of the program's deficiencies would disappear. I know that's easy for me to say, I'm not the one writing and passing the legislation. But still, honestly people, it's a simple game of matching things up. Test four subjects. Give help in four subjects. It's so easy a first grader could do it.

Friday Night Links/P.J.'s Picks

After coming across a link in the blog of photographer Aaron Farley I've begun to renew my interest in photography. I've been taking photos since I was about three or four thanks to my dad, who bought me my first camera. I don't remember what kind it was, but I'm pretty sure it involved winding the film and choosing an aperture. My mom like to watch me eat Jell-O with my hands, my dad thought it was fun for a toddler to figure out how f-stops worked. Off I went, camera in hand. My photos were invariably aimed up and more than a little crooked, but sure enough, I was a four year old photographer. Over the years I continued to take photos, mostly on family vacations. Early subject matter included Coke machines and chewed gum.

At some point I was given an SLR camera and started taking photos with it. I think I was about 9 or 10. I didn't know I had an SLR or what an SLR even was, but I kept on taking photos, often imitating and trying to one better the shots my dad took, which were often of buildings. My dad, being the consummate site seer and tourist, lugged around a two ton camera with a zoom lens that doubled as a telescope. My mom always opted to wait for us in a gift shop somewhere and browse with great earnestness for a pair of earrings she thought my aunt might like.

My interest in photography began to wane when I was in high school, probably due to my intense desire to distance myself from anything remotely related to my parents. My photographs up that that point were of mostly buildings and cities, flora and fauna. People were largely absent except for the occasional tourist who wondered into my shot; fanny pack and floppy hat. The camera sat in my closet until college.

Leave it to laziness to reawaken my love of photography. The deal was, according to my school's requirements, that I either take a P.E. elective or photography. Sports is unbecoming to those of us in the geek community, so I opted for photography. It was the usual stuff; weekly photo assignments based on technique learned in lecture and the eventual printing of said assignments. My photos were middling at best. Part of the problem was my inability to load the negatives onto the reel for developing. Instead of opting for the dark room, I always chose to unload the film from my camera in one of those lightproof bags. My hands turned into sprinkler heads and I completely soaked the negative in flop sweat. Not that it hurt the negative, but it was kind of embarrassing to still be loading my film to be developed and watch classmates show off their third print of the day. Needless to say, making prints was not my thing.

Photography faded into the background again until the digital age came about and taking photos didn't involve the cost of film and making prints. I've gone the way of the maniac when it comes to digital photos; shooting indiscriminately and editing later. I've gained a lot of practice time that I wouldn't have had under the cost limitations of film. I've learned to be patient with the execution of taking photos. Tripods are now acceptable as is taking the time to frame and figure out the correct aperture. I have come to terms with photography being a process of trial and error.

Part of my initial reticence toward taking photos was the fear of making a mistake. I'd never know if I had taken a bad photo until I printed it, but the fear was still there as was the proof; that print with the blurred finger in the corner or a building out of focus. Now I can make as many mistakes as I want because it doesn't cost me anything. My photos are better now. Not great, but better. I even have a few that I think would be acceptable as a large print, 8x10 even. It's nice to know I can do decent work.

Why do I take photos, why have an interest in photography at all? A lot of photographers say they want to document their world; capture and remember events that might otherwise fade from memory if not for the photo to remind them. And while this is true, photos do capture moments, they also capture moments in other people's lives. And so the photographer is not just a documentarian, but co-opter. He is taking moments from others and using them to create/remember his own life experience.

Not all subjects want to be photographed and not all photographs are taken with permission. It requires bravery on the photographer's part to essentially steal moments away from people and make them his own. What right does a photographer have to document another person's life? What will be done with those photos? How will the people's lives be judged based on the use of the photos? A photographer has to have a certain brazenness to work against the resistance of his subjects and capture the moments he wants to; to co-opt their lives into his own.

It is a brazenness I lack and probably the reason so few of my photos include people. It seems impossible to me to make such claims, to demand such intimacy from my subjects. It is an invasion I don't feel right making. So I stand along the periphery and gaze at the world.

I look at photos by Diane Arbus and wonder how she got so many people to let her photograph them, how such relationships came into place, and how fortunate it was for both of them that such a relationship existed. Not just for the sake of the photo, but for each other, for the tremendous freedom and relaxation that I fantasize must exist between the subject and the photographer. It all comes down to intimacy and closeness and people letting their lives mingle together for just a moment and to share something together. They are creating a memento and a secret shared by only themselves.

As a spectator, I enjoy imagining that closeness, that feeling that each person (both photographer and subject) is a part of. As a photographer, it is a challenge for me, on a personal level, to break through my shyness and forge those relationships and catch something between me and my subject. The photo that results is largely, in my mind, a happy by-product of the relationship; it is secondary and merely a reminder of something far greater than what the photograph can show. Maybe such relationships don't exist, maybe I have romanticized delusions about how photography works, but I think I am allowed such delusions, as every photographer is. If nothing else, what is photography, but the framing of the world through one person's eyes. And through their photographs we are allowed to see their reality, however unreal it may seem.


FRIDAY NIGHT LINKS:

American Suburbs X: A collection of photos, movies, and essays by and about some of America's greatest contemporary photographers.

I Heart Photography: A photography blog that gets updated daily with photographs from around the world.

Gary Leonard: L.A. based photographer who has a gallery open downtown. The current exhibit shows photos of billboards around Los Angeles in the 1960's.

Robert Adams: A photographer whose career was largely focused on the American West particularly California, Colorado, and Oregon. One of his more famous photo collections, "The New West," came out in 1970.

William Eggleston: Another photographer greatly interested in the American suburban landscape who rose to prominence in the mid 1970's.

Bill Owens: Yet another chronicler of suburban lifestyle.

I'm greatly attracted to suburbia for a couple reasons. First of all, it's a fairly recent development that really came about during the Post-War boom years. The 50's were a time of economic prosperity for a lot of Americans, or at least it was important to project an image of prosperity. We were beginning the Cold War and domestic perfection had to be maintained at any cost. Although the above photographers took their photos in the late 1960's and 1970's, there's still a pervasive image of optimism mixed with the mundane( i.e. watering the lawn or feeding a baby). It's kind of like watching residents of OZ doing their laundry. It's the breakdown of the American ideal into its very real and often uninteresting parts. Life is no better in the 'burbs than it is anywhere else. It just happens to be shiny and new.

Also, I think suburban life is largely overlooked because it has been documented by every family and their point and shoot camera. It is a pedestrian photography subject that is of little interest to the art community. What these photographer have done is explore the dynamics of suburban life and bring to light the complexities and yes, trivialities, of that lifestyle. Suburbanites are people too and are fraught with the same dilemmas as everyone else.

The interest in suburban life has seen a resurgence as of late thanks to movies like "American Beauty" and "Revolutionary Road." Of course, not all of suburbia is as dysfunctional as those films portray. The above photographers, I feel, strike a delicate balance between showing the dysfunction and the everyday.

Jonathan Harris has a couple cool sites that track what is talked about on the Internet.

One is called, We Feel Fine. It searches through websites and blogs throughout the world and picks out sentences with the phrase, "I feel..." It then saves those sentences and records it based on emotion listed (i.e. love, lame, scared, grumpy, busy...) The sentence is then cross-referenced on the site according to emotion expressed, location, age, gender, and weather forecast at time of posting. It then turns all these emotions into colored dots floating across the screen for you to click on. It's actually a lot more fun an interactive than I am describing. Check it out.

The other site is called Universe and it tracks any subject and the articles/bits of information that mention or pertain to that subject. It is similar in scope to We Feel Fine. Again, it is something better experienced than described.

Some miscellaneous links:

Interactive map of farmers markets in L.A. and OC

Good Magazine's three-part series on conserving water.

A highly unauthenticated Wikipedia article about the California Water Wars. Think "Chinatown," but without the incest sub-plot and oddly amusing cameo by Polanski.