The LA Times’ Geoff Boucher provides a nice obit for Frank Frazetta in today’s LA Times. Note the quote from Guillermo del Toro (of “Pan’s Labyrinth,” and perhaps the best two comic-book movies yet, “Hellboy” and “Hellboy 2”), who certainly knows his way around visual fantasy.
In Boucher, the Times has a pop culture critic and writer who understands and appreciates comics and all their affiliated passions, removing some of the sting from the newspaper coverage we grew up with — the “Pow! Biff! Bam!” gosh-wow features built around just what those attic treasures are worth, and the quaint profiles of elderly broken-backed artists who “still draw funnybooks” and never got to pursue serious art. When Boucher talks about Frazetta, and his impact, and elicits supporting quotes from respected sources, he lends credibility to the idea that Frazetta was our version of Norman Rockwell.
Legendary fantasy artist Frank Frazetta, he of many cherished paperback book cover paintings of my youth, has died.
Whether or not his art was “Art,” it was exciting and important to many, many of us, especially in our adolescence. The painting above gives you one sense of why.
This is tragic, because for nearly a decade, UCLA Live has consistently programmed the best performance series in town — and many of the highlights have been theatre. It’s the only place that the Berliner Ensemble played in the U.S. (in a production of “The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui” that still haunts me); it’s where I discovered The Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio and saw the astonishing “Genesi — From the Museum of Sleep,” which melded placid dream sequences with the twitching disturbances of a David Lynch or Nine Inch Nails; it’s where the Dubliners came over to play Beckett, where “Shockheaded Peter” had its American playdates, where Robert Wilson and Merce Cunningham and David Thomas did things that I’m not sure were theatre or dance or music or performance or what, but which were always mesmerizing. It’s where The National Theatre of Scotland performed their U.S. premiere of “The Black Watch.”
But no more. Dance, music and the lectures series remain intact. “What they’ve done is cut everything related to theater,” Sefton explained.
I don’t know where else in Los Angeles — in Los Angeles! — that one will be able to see this sort of work. No one else brings in shows like this, shows that require enormous theatrical training, often very specialized sets and pieces, and large budgets. At the point at which all the theatre becomes just two-character plays — or, God help us, nothing but solo shows — then there really will be no reason to leave your couch.
New York has recently seen a spate of major two-hander productions, and given the economics of producing theatre, no doubt will see many more. I’d like to see “Red” — with Alfred Molina in it, which will require a trip to New York, unless the production gets remounted here. I saw “Collected Stories” in 1999 at the Geffen Playhouse; Linda Lavin was the star (as she is in New York), and she gave an inspired performance. And it’s a terrific play. If you’re in New York, I recommend it.
Remember back here when I shared with you the trailer for the forthcoming movie “The Human Centipede”?
Well, guess what new movie is so pointless and disturbing that Roger Ebert has decided he can’t actually rate it? You guessed right. Here’s the non-rated, not-quite review.
Tonight I walked my 11-year-old daughter and her friend down to an 80’s party. My daughter had spent hours with my wife going through her collection of 80’s clothing, which still looks so very right to my eyes, but most of which my daughter steadfastly refused to wear because it looked “weird.” After the party, and after I dropped her friend off home, she told me how much fun she’d had at this party, where they played great songs that she hoped I’d heard of, like “We Got the Beat” by the Go-Go’s. Yes, I assured her, I know that one. Then we got into the time-honored discussion of “did they have this when you were young?”
“Did they have TV when you were young?”
“Yes. But we didn’t have gaming systems.”
This caught the attention of my seven-year-old son: “You mean, no (Nintendo) DS?” He sounded stricken.
“No DS, no Xbox, nothing.”
He was incredulous. “Not even a Playstation?”
“Nope. And no cable, and no DVDs, and no VHS.”
“What’s ‘VHS?'” my daughter wanted to know.
“‘VHS’ tapes. Videotapes. And no internet.”
Her voice grew hushed. “Your time was sad.”
I looked at her in the rearview mirror, my iPhone feeding songs to the car’s stereo while it scanned for email. “Somehow,” I said, “we managed.”
Laura Bush’s book gets a rave review in today’s LA Times. Tim Rutten writes that it is “beautifully written… One of Laura Bush’s best qualities as a memoirist — and she is a particularly fine, lyrical one — is her ability to speak the language of feelings without recourse to cant or contemporary psychobabble.” As though this is somehow relevant to the reason that most people will — or won’t — buy the book. Sarah Palin’s prose further damns her, but if she wrote like Flaubert, it wouldn’t exonerate her. I’m sorry, Mrs. Bush, many of us can’t set aside the knowledge of whose company you keep, and the terrible lasting impact of that.
Today I was on the phone with the city manager of Burbank and he told me there was a bomb scare at City Hall. Mind you, City Hall is pretty much across the street from my office. So to my mind, if there’s a bomb scare at City Hall, there’s a bomb scare at my office. But because he said “bomb scare” rather than just “bomb,” I felt secure in leaving out the scared part too, assuming aloud that it was a prank or a screw-up.
“No, it’s real,” he said. That caught my attention.
And indeed, it was real. Here’s what happened: a city employee who works at the jail had a World War II large-caliber ammunition round laying around and wasn’t sure if it was still armed. So here’s what he did: He drove it to the jail, which is behind City Hall, and asked others what they thought. Seeing large undetonated ammunition from the days before Eisenhower was president, they did what we all would do: freak out momentarily, then call the bomb squad. Ultimately, it was decided that the device was inert and nothing exploded, accidentally or intentionally.
Note to anyone reading this: If you have large undetonated ammunition, or mines, or grenades, really any sort of explosive device, and especially leaking sticks of dynamite, do not drive it to City Hall environs and show it around for an opinion. Leave it where it is and then call in others to consult about it right where it is.
Last weekend, my son came home from college to take his girlfriend to her senior prom. (She is just under one year younger.) He shaved his “beard” off (I apply the quotes to keep him humble), got a haircut, and got fitted for a tux. By the end stage of his makeover, I have to admit, I was impressed. While I’m admittedly biased — and not always in the favor of my children — I had to look at him, and at the photos that followed of he with his attractive girlfriend on his arm, and estimate aloud that he could be a model. (Except that he does things like read Kierkegaard. That might get in the way.)
In the last 24 hours, I got a haircut, I got my back cracked by a chiropractor, I got a dental cleaning, and tomorrow I’m entering the early stages of some cosmetic dental work. Now I feel like I’m getting ready for a prom. Except there’s no hope of being a model. Every time I buy hair product, I’m just glad there’s still hair that needs it.
