Mid-City Thieves, and the Women Who Love Them

Mid-City Thieves, I am impressed. For over two years, you have kept a watchful eye on the southern blocks of Redondo Blvd, waiting for the perfect time to strike... when the winds were in your favor for optimal glass-breaking noise reduction, when the moon was new and hid in shadow, when the landlords were on their European summer holiday... Cue slow clap.

On the morning of September 11, 2007, I found my car parked in the back of my apartment complex: the fifth (known) vehicle to be broken and entered in the past month, stereo-less and shattered. A car parked nearby appeared to be in much the same state. Startled, but not shocked, I dealt with the damage and hoped you band of Mid-City Stereo Terrorists would not grow the balls to break into my apartment next time...

My point is not, in fact, to go on forever about the recent criminal activity in my neighborhood in the normal flowery sarcasm I insist on infusing in every post. My real reason for this entry, my audience of barely five (maybe six?) readers, is to talk about the true BOON these hooligans have bestowed upon me!!

And that gift is... silence.

Mind-raping, soul-stabbing, more-numbing-than-Open-Water-and-live-golf-tournaments-playing-at-once, more-retarded-than-the-love-child-of-Bill O'Reilly-and-Lindsay-Lohan, sssssssiiiiiiiiiiilllllllllllllleeeeeeeeeeeeennnnnnnnnnnccccccccccccceeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

Sh. Shhhh. You can hear it now. That's the sound of nothing. I can recognize because I hear it everyday on my way to and from work. In my car. In my car without a stereo. In my car that won't have a stereo till I move, or get a car alarm. When it's too hot to have the windows down in the morning parking lot of the ten west. When it's too chilly at night to have the windows down, and therefore always blocking out the sound of the LA world, and leaving the remainder of me and my thoughts.

This is what I get for never becoming a member of KPCC.

I am in Day Three of Silent Driving. Day One consisted of involuntary motions to turn on the radio and looping thoughts like "Geez, what has taken me so long to turn on a cd?" and "Oh, right." Day Two was filled with boring phone calls "just saying hi..." to family and friends. Now I'm in Day Three and I have reached many sage conclusions:
1. I should take voice lessons before singing in a band again, most definitely.
2. People do not like to be looked at in traffic, because they need to:
a. pick their nose in peace
b. be creepy at every opportunity
c. drive their shit-big cars out of eye-line
3. National Public Radio is a blessing from god and should never be doubted as one of the premier achievements of man-kind. Each soul that works at this wondrous company should be given a front seat in heaven, and have first access to the glory of all the almighty power in the universe.
4. Face plate stereos are for fucking losers asking to be robbed, and I need a god damn boom box, so I can further remove myself from the status levels in society to which material possessions grant inclusion. Even dirty 1999 Honda Accords aren't safe: all cars with face plate stereos say "Fucking break the little window on the right passenger side and take everything! Go ahead do it, I'm an asshole loser!!"

Whoa.

Channing, Now and Forever

Big lips, saucer-huge eyes, a maelstrom of blond hair, a deep... raspy... meaty... mouth-full-of-used-plastic-wrap voice that any god-fearin' hobo missus would kill her last muskrat for... who else could it be?

Carol Channing was born January 31, 1921 at Seattle, Washington, the daughter of a prominent newspaper editor, who was very active in the Christian Science movement. Among many things you may not know about Ms. Channing is that her trademark, poofy blonde hair has always been achieved by the use of wigs, as she's allergic to bleach. But that's just the beginning...

She attended high school in San Francisco and later worked as a model in Los Angeles. She attended prestigious Bennington College in Vermont and majored in drama and dance and supplemented her work by taking parts in nearby Pocono Resort area. When she left home to attend Bennington College in Vermont, her mother informed her that her father, a journalist who she had believed was born in Rhode Island, was of German American and African American descent, born in Augusta, Georgia, saying that the only reason she was telling her was so she wouldn't be surprised "if she had a black baby". She kept her heritage secret so she would not be typecast on Broadway and in Hollywood, ultimately revealing it only in her autobiography, Just Lucky I Guess, published in 2002 when she was 81 years old. It should be noted, at the same time, that part of Carol's wide-eyed charm is her penchant for tall tales and exaggeration; no photographs of her father are available, and his birth certificate lost. "My mother said to me, 'You're revolting. And on top of that, you're not very feminine.' Well, that led me to the stage, which is an accepting and comfortable place. So in a way I have my mother to thank."

The winner of three Tony Awards (including a lifetime achievement award), a Golden Globe and an Academy Award nominee, Channing is best remembered for two roles: Lorelei Lee in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and Dolly Gallagher Levi in Hello, Dolly!
Channing's first job on stage in New York was in Marc Blitzstein's No For an Answer, which was given two special Sunday performances starting January 5, 1941 at the Mecca Temple (later New York's City Center). Channing then moved to Broadway for Let's Face It, in which she was an understudy for Eve Arden. In 1942 Channing was cast in a supporting role in Proof Through the Night, a drama which ran only eleven performances. This play was extremely unusual: a war drama with an all-female cast. Except for one native girl, all the onstage characters are U.S. Navy nurses who have been sent to a remote location in the South Pacific. They envision a frolic on the beach with furloughed sailors, until they learn that Japanese troops are advancing in their direction. In the depressing finale, all the nurses are captured or killed by offstage Japanese. Channing's role exploited her unusually deep voice: she played a nurse with a male name and mannish traits; the script's dialogue implied that the character played by Channing in this drama was secretly a lesbian.
Channing had a featured role in a revue, Lend an Ear, where she was spotted by Anita Loos and cast in the role of Lorelei Lee, which was to bring her to prominence. (Her signature song from the production was "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend.") Channing's persona and that of the character were strikingly alike: simultaneously smart yet scattered, naïve but worldly.

Channing came to national prominence as the star of Jerry Herman's Hello, Dolly! She never missed a performance during her run, attributing her good health to her Christian Science faith. The musical won ten Tony awards in 1964, including Channing's for best actress in a comedy. Jacqueline Kennedy and her two children made their first public appearance after John F. Kennedy's death by seeing her perform in Hello Dolly and later visited her backstage.
Her performance won her the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical, in a year when her chief competition was Barbra Streisand for Funny Girl. She was deeply disappointed when Streisand, who many believed to be far too young for the role, successfully campaigned to play the role of Dolly Levi in the film, which also starred Walter Matthau and Michael Crawford.

She reprized the role of Lorelei Lee in the musical Lorelei, and appeared in two New York revivals of Hello, Dolly!, in addition to touring with it extensively throughout the United States. She also appeared in a number of movies, including the cult film Skidoo and Thoroughly Modern Millie, opposite Julie Andrews and Mary Tyler Moore. For Millie she received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, and was awarded a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress.

William Goldman, in his book The Season, refers to Channing as a classic example of a "critic's darling" -- an actress who is always praised by critics no matter the caliber of her work, chiefly because she is simply so unusual and bizarre.

She has been married four times. Her first husband, Theodore Naidish, was a writer; her second, Alexander Carson, was center for the Ottawa Rough Riders Canadian football team. They had one son, Channing Lowe, who is a Pulitzer Prize-nominated finalist cartoonist. In 1956 she married her manager and publicist, Charles Lowe. They remained married for 42 years, but she abruptly filed for divorce in 1998, alleging that she and Lowe had not had marital relations in many years and only twice in that time-span; she also alleged that Lowe was gay, but he denied her allegations. He died before the divorce was finalized.

On May 10, 2003, she married Harry Kullijian, her fourth husband and junior high school sweetheart, who reunited with her after she mentioned him fondly in her memoir. The two performed at their old junior high school, which had become Aptos Middle School, in a benefit for the school.

At Lowell High School, they renamed the school's auditorium "The Carol Channing Theatre" in her honor. The City of San Francisco, California proclaimed February 25, 2002 to be Carol Channing Day, for her advocacy of gay rights and her appearance as the celebrity host of the Gay Pride Day festivities in Hollywood.

The most astonishing fact of Carol Channing's life: it's not over yet! Most recently, she played herself on "Family Guy" - Celebrity Boxing (1 episode, 2006). When she's not playing herself on TV, she's doing voices for children's movies, the last of which was the Ceiling Fan in "The Brave Little Toaster Goes to Mars" in 1998.

The career of Carol Channing is varied and continuing. She performs with the gusto of a young aspiring actress. However, her heart will remain on stage even though she has recently committed her life to bring a refocus of the Arts in the public educational system of California. Scholarships, teaching and lecturing and performing, hoping to engage the public support for education in the Arts.

"I'm terribly shy, but of course no one believes me. Come to think of it, neither would I." You're right Carol, we don't believe, not for a damned second.

References:
imdb.com, wikipedia,org, and my personal fav- the Official Carol Channing Website: www.carolchanning.org. I encourage you to treat yourself to that delicious site on the world wide web.

For added fun, re-read this article aloud in your best Channing impression!

Dying at Nighttime

It was March and winter wasn’t finished with us. It wouldn’t be warm at night for a solid three months and we knew it, but everyone was tired and excited and the sense of completion made us giddy enough to turn up the music, turn down the windows, and wrap our arms around each other for warmth in the back of Ryan’s dying Volvo. Hours earlier, the car wouldn’t start in the driveway, until some force of will that charges all indie film shoots smiled on the ignition. We were riding back into Boston with our fingers crossed.

We wrapped early on the set, and I took all the credit for the tight, efficient schedule. I knew it wouldn’t take three days to shoot a script that short, and I solved the mathematics of actors, lighting set ups, and an itchy director so it equaled four meals and a late night. Assistant directing requires the skill of surprise party timing, political handshakes, and a hidden ruthlessness. You have to choose when you’ll raise your voice to make silence, and what to utter to make it last.

For all the spoils of a well-crafted shoot day, I was content to know I’d sleep in my own bed that night. Film sets always seem so much longer than real time, displacing you that much further from sleep. At the most, I hoped for a fightless night with my recent re-boyfriend. At the least, I hoped for the heat in the house to be turned on. Both were just as basic as they were unlikely. With the music and the cold surging through our rickety time-machine, I forgot even my slim hopes and drew my arm tighter around my co-producer.

From under the river, in the mouth of the tunnel, the accident was instants old. I saw this arm, a normal arm, spilled hair, small glass, too much blood. The car was still rocking on its side. The exit of the rabbit hole, every fast emerging car coming up for air would risk what this car lost. We were a mile past it before my mind saw anything and I realized we had left the scene. The music played the whole ride home, the wind slid over our patches of numb exposed skin, turning with the wheels, all things automatic now without their magic. I didn’t know what happened, and we’d never know, and they would never know. It was over and if we hadn’t seen it then, it may as well have never had happened, like any fluttering action pinned down to a strip of film.

The house was cold, and stairs creaked their goodnights as we climbed to find our patiently waiting dreams. My co-producer changed back to my roommate and into her pajamas. The blankets returned my body heat back to me twofold, but underneath them I still felt exposed. In the hallway between our rooms, the drafts of cold air carried the ghosts we believed to occupy the old house. The light gusts from under doors and windowsills lingered the whispers of shouting arguments between the lovers that came and went. It trembled with our small fears of yet another break-in, after the one our ramshackle fortress had already sustained. This the same wind that bursts from the subways and tunnels, from under the Charles, dispersed the last snowflakes of the season around the city like shattered glass around twisted metal.

And when the draft went still for a moment, I realized I must still be awake. Not a ghost, not a victim, alive in my bed. In a deep breath I fill my lungs, and let it rush out into the night.

Tsing-Loh.... Sweet..Chariot?

"Her delivery style is generally ironic and spoken very quickly."

Oh, Kai.. Corey.. Terry.. Larry, dear Larry Mantle... Ira, Garrison, Steve! Some close friends and business associates might label me as unhealthily obsessed with the hosts and personalities of National Public Radio, 89.3 KPCC. It's true I listen to KPCC more often than not in my car- in the spirit-crushing traffic of Los Angeles, these programs (with the occasional voyage to 89.9's Morning Becomes Eclectic) keep me focused on the issues as they spin and collect in the radio waves around me.

But I don't just listen... I invest myself personally with the voices, creating faces and lives behind the names that bring me the news. Recently, when assuming the myspace identity of Marketplace's Kai Ryssdal, I did some basic research on his background. I immediately ceased and desisted this myspace joke, as I became slightly bummed at knowing anything remotely true about this person's life. It's far more fun to imagine!

All of my beloved NPR hosts, like so many puppets at my disposal. And the very bottom of that puppet pile is Tsing-Loh.

Sandra Tsing-Loh. You might not know her by name, but if you tune in casually to any NPR station, you may recognize her blip-reports like "The Loh Life" or "The Loh Down on Science". If you are a more dedicated listener, perhaps her inexplicable pronunciation and intonation haunt you long after the segment is completed. Sandra gives a snipet of something slightly more interesting than the Middle East or the stock market (sorry, Kai), but you realize when it's over you've haven't retained a notion of her speech, for the sake of her ABSOLUTELY INCOMPREHENSIBLE mode of speaking.

What does it take to get a radio journalist to that point, and still have a career? I have nightmares about seeing her speak in person, watching that mouth contort in ways I thought impossible to the human anatomy. I only wish my nightmares, and daymares, and trafficmares, stopped with her bizarre emphasis...

Tsing-Loh is a humorist, based in Los Angeles, who writes about her experiences living in the Valley. Her completely SoCal-centric novels handle her musings, her motherhood, and her middle-aged adventures in possibly the most boring neighborhoods of LA.

And yet, hearing her speak on a panel, I agreed with a lot of her ideas and politics, however pronounced. She's had an interesting career, and fashioned a market for herself...

I truly enjoy "musing" literature, like the work of Chuck Klosterman, and various other magazine journalist/novelists that seek merely to tell you what they think and make you chuckle....

I actually write a blog... uhm, this one... about my relatively young and somewhat unemployed perspective of living in Los Angeles... gulp.

Christ. What if I'm just one full-mouth gnashing mis-emphasized self-obsessed step away from Tsing-Loh?

Tales from the Cinespia Crypt

During the first summer I lived in Los Angeles, I heard of the night-time outdoor films that screen every Saturday night in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery. Despite the ultimate perfection and absolute enticement of that description, I never went. Two summers slipped by, and finally, after I could successfully spell "cemetery" without spell-check, I decided it was time to join in the fun. (Hint: all e's! I know it looks weird, but basically every other letter is an "e", till the end!)

Three weeks ago, I saw Vertigo in the graveyard, amid roughly 300 of Hollywood's most attractive living specimens. Some are professionals, bringing low chairs, candles, and real glasses for their cocktails. For newbies, we did okay, with enough blankets and substances to keep warm and enough snacks to call it dinner. All these small comforts are simply that when the sun goes down, and then it's just you, the screen, and that lone palm tree under the stars.

It seems utterly obvious to praise such a long standing summer tradition in Los Angeles, but it's so unique, it's worth a brief post. Where else do people happily wait in line for 2 hours, only to be let in the gates and wait another 2 hours for the sun to go all the way down, and contentedly and respectfully watch classic cinema? Where else can you, for 10 easy smackers, enjoy a whole night with friends, eating and drinking and smoking in a huge crowd?

This week at Harold & Maude, it sure did get me teary-eyed in the peaceful dead air, to hear so many people singing quietly along to Cat Stevens and celebrating the type of film that, in theory, most of us are here to create. And we were wiser: increasing our rations, bringing a makeshift table, and getting there early enough to get a good parking spot around the block. Next week, I'm bringing a tarp to offset the odd dampness, a few more friends and a few more bottles of wine.

And I swear I'll find more reasons like this to bear this ghost town.