Digital Ink Los Angeles

For most L.A. Westsiders, the 25th Annual Abbot Kinney Festival happening this weekend in Venice, California, is like a little New Orleans Mardi Gras mixed with Austin’s South-by-Southwest Music Festival.

Abbot Kinney was a visionary and a conservationist, but he was also a businessman. More than likely he would be proud of the current gentrified state of affairs on the street named after him — Abbot Kinney Boulevard.

Abbot Kinney’s dream of a “Venice USA” beach recreation development opened on July 4, 1905.

Though Abbot Kinney tried to create a bohemian mecca for arts and culture, the residents were more inclined for social parlors and sports activities. Even with some of the most astute lecturers and performers of this era providing a cultural beacon, Kinney’s artistic endeavor was a financial loser.

According to Westland.net, “By December 1905, Kinney knew his dream of creating a great cultural Mecca had failed and, ever the astute businessman, he turned his attention to accommodating the wishes of the public. The character of Venice succumbed to the beach goers and summer holiday guests who frequented the community’s many amusement attractions and Venice came to be known as the ‘Coney Island of the Pacific.’”

“By mid-January 1906, an area was built along the edge of the Grand Lagoon that was patterned after the amusement thoroughfares of the great 19th and 20th century expositions. It featured foreign exhibits, amusements, and freak shows. Trolley service was available from downtown and nearby Santa Monica.”

“Visitors were dazzled by the system of canals complete with gondolas and gondoliers brought in from Venice, Italy. There were ornate Venetian-style businesses and a full sized amusement pier. Around the entire park was a miniature steam railroad along a 2 1/2 mile track. Kinney and some of the nearby residents were aghast at some of the low-class shows that Venice began to offer, but it was considered the best congregation of amusement devices on the Pacific Coast, and it made a handsome profit.“

Eventually Kinney gained control of city politics and had the name changed from Ocean Park to Venice in 1911.

Today, Abbot Kinney Boulevard has replaced the beach boardwalk as the center of arts and culture in this seaside community. The 25th Annual Abbot Kinney Festival is a celebration of the man from New Jersey and his dream for a Utopian arts and culture mecca.

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Administrator 21st Century Culture, Stylio, The Good Life Abbot Kinney, artists, arts, California, celebration, cutlure, festival, fun, GOOD, Los Angeles, social, Venice

Los Angeles’ Topanga Canyon has a special venue for theater with
Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum.

Thanks to FlavorPill’s Tanja Laden for the info:

In the ’50s, blacklisted actor Will Geer opened a theater on his Topanga property for fellow performers ostracized during the McCarthy Era. After landing the role of Grandpa Walton in the ’70s, Geer officially opened the nonprofit Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum, which remains one of LA’s most beloved professional repertory theatres.

This summer, in addition to a trio of plays by Shakespeare and The Miser by Molière, the outdoor theater stages a clever retelling of The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov. Adapted by Heidi Helen Davis and the play’s leading lady, Geer’s daughter Ellen, the play is reset from turn-of-the-century Russia to the heels of the Civil Rights Movement in 1970s Virginia, highlighting the timelessness of Chekhov’s last play.
–- Tanja Laden

Theater’s cool. And socially responsible.

But not socialism. Just social. Societal GOODness.

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Administrator 21st Century Culture, Social Responsibility, Stylio, The Good Life, writing acting, art, artisan, artists, arts, California, Chekhov, Los Angeles, plays, social, society, theater, Topanga, writing

That’s Entertainment! The “circus” is a round, multi-tiered arena built for the display or exhibition of animal sports and spectacles.

In Rome times, the Circus Maximus was an arena for the exhibition of chariot races, equestrian shows, staged battles, trained animals, jugglers and acrobats.

This Roman circus is thought to have been influenced by the Greeks, with chariot racing and the exhibition of animals as traditional entertainment.

The Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus is in Los Angeles this weekend. Support your local elephants and tigers.

Administrator 21st Century Culture, Athletes as Artists, The Good Life animals, arts, circus, entertainment, GOOD, joy, Los Angeles, popular, social, sublime

In around 1956, Bruce Lee entered St. Francis Xavier’s College (high school) in Hong Kong, where he was mentored by Brother Edward — a Catholic monk originally from Germany who spent his entire adult life in China and Hong Kong — as a teacher and coach of the school boxing team. Bruce Lee was drawn to the man and his teaching of the art of the fists. It could be said that Brother Edward is the “Man Behind the Man,” as mentor and guide of a willful and brute adolescent with both aristocratic and gymnastic roots.

In the spring of 1959, Lee got into yet another street fight and the police were called. Confirming the police’s fear that Bruce Lee’s fighting opponent this time had organized crime background and a possible contract was out for his life, in April 1959 his parents decided to send him to the United States to meet up with his older sister Agnes, who was already living with family friends in San Francisco. And the rest is history.

After moving to Seattle, Bruce worked for three years toward his degree at the University of Washington, but quit to move to Oakland. He was in pursuit of his own degree — black belt and global domination in the burgeoning martial arts industry. Surprisingly, Bruce struggled initially to gain prominence, as his fighting style and lack of self-discipline created error-prone matches filled with frustrating results. Gaining entrance as a guest at 1964 Long Beach International Karate Championships, Bruce Lee’s name as an otherworldly physical creature began to take prominence in and out of the martial arts arena — two-finger pushups, one-inch punches, speed displays, and strength demonstrations stunned and wowed the crowds of onlookers. The legend of the Dragon had begun.

One note of sadness in the Bruce Lee legend is the initial cold-shoulder Bruce Lee received from Hollywood power-brokers in his efforts to gain work as an action star. According to statements made by Bruce Lee — and also by his wife, Linda Lee Cadwell after Bruce’s death — in 1971 Bruce pitched a television series of his own tentatively titled “The Warrior.” According to Cadwell, Lee’s concept was retooled and renamed Kung Fu, but Warner Brothers Studios gave Lee no credit. Instead, the role of the Shaolin monk in the Wild West, was awarded to then non-martial artist David Carradine because of the studio’s fears that a Chinese leading man would not be embraced by the public. Books and documentaries about the show Kung Fu dispute Cadwell’s version. According to these sources, the show was created by two writers and producers, Ed Spielman and Howard Friedlander, and the reason Lee was not cast was in part because of his ethnicity but more so because he had a thick accent.

Bruce Kicking Seven-Foot Kareem.

Regardless, for his efforts as a Chinese-American to establish his race and ethnicity in the New America, and his incredible courage and spirit, Bruce Lee is a hero. He was described by Governor Arnold Schwarznegger — then Mr. Olympia — as the “most physically fit man I’ve ever seen, with the lowest body-fat percentage of any athlete I know.” The following quote is taken from the famous Bruce Lee documentary, Bruce Lee: A Warrior’s Journey (2000):

“Be formless… shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle; it becomes the bottle. You put it into a teapot; it becomes the teapot. Water can flow, or it can crash. Be water, my friend…“

Bruce Lee — badass hero. View the Official Bruce Lee Website.

Administrator 1%, Athletes as Artists, Heroes, Movies and Cinema, New America, The Good Life, boxing arts, boxing, China, courage, culture, entertainment, fighter, film, GOOD, hero, Hollywood, movies, New America, spirit

A new film from the writer-director team who brought us Half Nelson (2006), Ryan Fleck and Anna Bolden, speaks to the baseball soul of the Americas — specifically the Dominican Republic “baseball farm,” and its cadre of dreamers and schemers who seek to immigrate to the United States on the merit of their fastball or other baseball talents.

This is a “feel-good” film in the classic Hollywood sense, and it plays with our sense of hope and desire for the longshot, the underdog, the quixotic — think Rocky, The Wrestler, and The Natural — to make it to the BIG TIME.

You can view a trailer for the film here: SUGAR MOVIE TRAILER

Sugar is currently in limited release, but expect it to gain momentum as the 2009 Major League Baseball Season gets under way.

This is film you can take your kids to, but it’s much more than a sappy Disney family film.  Play Ball!

Administrator Athletes as Artists, Movies and Cinema, New America, The Good Life arts, baseball, entertainment, hero, movies, sports

Born:
Denver
April 8, 1909

Died:
Los Angeles
May 8, 1983

Ask The Dust (1939)
“Los Angeles, give me some of you! Los Angeles come to me the way I came to you, my feet over your streets, you pretty town I loved you so much, you sad flower in the sand, you pretty town!“

John Fante wrote a book to the spirit of baseball that pulls at your heart strings — Wait Until Spring, Bandini.  It’s about many things, but it serves to announce the maturity of a young man in an adult world, with a King Solomon-like pronouncement of “This, too, shall pass.”  The young man exorcises his demons by praying to the gods of baseball, anticipating the leathered gloves, tarred wooden bats, sprouting grass and tilled dirt will revive his dimmed spirit.

His second novel, Ask The Dust, is an ode to Los Angeles — old, pre-war Los Angeles, with its desert winds and immigrant menagerie.  It’s an anecdotal tale, and it speaks to the desire to struggle with your dreams, to embrace your existential world, and to persevere.  It’s a novel of heartbreak, but also of swelling hope.

John Fante was born 100 years ago today.  Steinbeck befriended him and Bukowski brought his books back to life.  He was a great writer, not for his turn of phrase or elegant sentences, but because he called upon his common man to see the world he inhabits as a world of unlimited possibilities in the midst of poetic suffering.

Happy 100th, You Sad Flower in the Sand!

Administrator The Good Life, writing arts, author, birthday, John Fante, literature, Los Angeles, writer, writing

Maybe I got your attention with the headline, as is the rule with Journalism — grab their attention.

This is the rub, to tangle my metaphors.  Pornography is the bain for some and the boon for others.

We all have sex, indeed, we all came from the same natural function of our genetic sources, but we don’t all film it.  At least, we don’t film it for sharing with strangers.

Though, there’s a virtual plethora of “amateur” YouTube-like porno sites that get more of an audience than one might imagine.  And, even in tough economic times, pornography persists.

In the 2.28.09 issue of the NY Times, Jesse McKinley wrote a piece about the Washington State Legislature’s introduction of legislation to discuss a legitimate, above-the-line taxation of pornography.

The 3.25.09 issue of the LA Times has an article in its “World” section, written by Borzou Daragahi, which discusses “The Porno Identity” exhibit currently attracting hundreds of visitors in Vienna.

Since Louise Achille’s 2003 Film, “Naked Feminist,” there has been a real consideration of pornography as an empowerment movement with women, instead of a degradation phenomena.  Not too sure about the strength of either argument.

Sure, we know the bad elements associated with this industry, but do we also recognize the absurd denial of its existence — indeed, its proliferation?  Well, evidently the State of Washington is seeking to open the doors and let the money flow in.

Next chapter for this New America and its New Economy?  What was Geronimo smoking in that pipe, and how does the U.S. benefit from Marijuana regulation?

Administrator New America arts, exhibitionism, New America, performance, pornography, revenue, taxation, Vienna, voyeurism