Negrohead Mountain Renamed
A heightened profile for one of L.A.’s black pioneers
Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times
L.A. County officials are recommending that Negrohead Mountain be named Ballard Mountain, in honor of John Ballard, a pioneering black settler in Agoura.
Early settlers in the Agoura area named Negrohead Mountain after John Ballard, a former slave who moved there in the 1880s. Now L.A. County wants to put Ballard’s actual name on the 2,031-foot peak.
By Bob Pool
February 24, 2009
Negrohead Mountain is an unlikely memorial to a former slave who made a name for himself at the western end of Los Angeles County. More than 120 years ago, pioneers in the Santa Monica Mountains named the peak for John Ballard, the first black man to settle in the hills above Malibu.
Ballard was a former Kentucky slave who had won his freedom and come to Los Angeles in 1859. In the sleepy, emerging city, he had a successful delivery service and quickly became a landowner. Soon he was active in civic affairs: He was a founder of the city’s first African Methodist Episcopal Church.
The arrival of the railroad triggered a land boom in Los Angeles in the 1880s, boosting property values and bringing the city its first sense of class structure and the beginnings of segregation.
Ballard packed up his family and moved about 50 miles west to the snug valley in the middle of the Santa Monica range. He settled first on 160 acres — space that eventually doubled in size when one of his seven children, daughter Alice, claimed an adjoining plot.
Besides raising livestock and a few crops, Ballard collected firewood in the nearby mountains and sold it in Los Angeles.
He also worked at blacksmithing and other chores on the Russell Ranch, a sprawling cattle spread at what is now Westlake Village. He would travel by mule or buggy several miles through Triunfo Canyon to get there.
J.H. Russell, who had grown up on his family’s ranch and as a boy rode his horse to Ballard’s rickety cabin to mooch biscuits smothered with wild grapes preserved in honey by Ballard’s wife, remembered the scene well in his 1963 book, “Heads and Tails . . . and Odds and Ends.”
“The Ballard house was something to behold. It was built of willow poles, rocks, mud and Babcock Buggy signs (”Best on Earth”), Maier & Zobelein Lager Beer signs and any other kind of sign the old man picked up. Hardly a Sunday passed where there were not several buggies, spring wagons and loads of people going down the canyon to see the place,” he wrote.
Ballard was powerfully built — he could hoist 100-pound bags of barley with one hand — and traveled in a wagon pulled by five mules and “sometimes a cow or horse hitched up with the five,” Russell recounted.
[ click to continue reading at LATimes.com ]
Literary Women Belittled
Why can’t a woman write the Great American Novel?
Female authors hold their own on the bestseller lists, but Elaine Showalter’s provocative new history wonders why they get so little respect.
By Laura Miller
Feb. 24, 2009 | Every few years, someone counts up the titles covered in the New York Times Book Review and the short fiction published in the New Yorker, as well as the bylines and literary works reviewed in such highbrow journals as Harper’s and the New York Review of Books, and observes that the male names outnumber the female by about 2 to 1. This situation is lamentable, as everyone but a handful of embittered cranks seems to agree, but it’s not clear that anyone ever does anything about it. The bestseller lists, though less intellectually exalted, tend to break down more evenly along gender lines; between J.K. Rowling and Stephenie Meyer alone, the distaff side is more than holding its own in terms of revenue. But when it comes to respect, are women writers getting short shrift?
The question is horribly fraught, and has been since the 1970s. Ten years ago, in a much-argued-about essay for Harper’s, the novelist and critic Francine Prose accused the literary establishment — dispensers of prestigious prizes and reviews — of continuing to read women’s fiction with “the usual prejudices and preconceptions,” even if most of them have learned not to admit as much publicly. Two years before that, Jane Smiley, also writing in Harper’s, alleged that “Huckleberry Finn” is overvalued as a cultural monument while “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” is undervalued, largely because of the genders of the novels’ respective authors; the claim triggered a deluge of letters in protest.
Human Body Factoids
It takes your food seven seconds to get from your mouth to your stomach.
One human hair can support 3 kg (6.6 lb).
The average man’s penis is three times the length of his thumb.
Human thighbones are stronger than concrete.
A woman’s heart beats faster than a man’s.
There are about one trillion bacteria on each of your feet.
Women blink twice as often as men.
The average person’s skin weighs twice as much as the brain.
Your body uses 300 muscles to balance itself when you are standing still.
If saliva cannot dissolve something, you cannot taste it.
Women reading this will be finished now.
Men are still busy checking their thumbs.
BODY COPY by Michael Craven
Profile: Michael Craven
Crispin creative exec pens ‘Body Copy,’ a murder mystery set in the agency world
Feb 22, 2009
Michael Craven
“Ad agencies provide a good canvass for a murder mystery,” says Michael Craven, a 38-year old associate creative director at Crispin Porter + Bogusky, explaining the setting of his recently-published first novel, Body Copy. “There are a lot of smart people, attractive people, people who are semi-famous and creative people who don’t necessarily make decisions in a rational way — and then of course there is jealousy and ego sometimes. There are some nice ingredients for a crime story.”
The Harper novel tells the tale of a former pro surfer turned P.I. who investigates the murder of the famous creative director at Parker/Gale, a fictitious Los Angeles agency known for its award-winning work. One chief suspect is an envious, not-so-celebrated local competitor.
“I love detective novels and always wanted to write one,” says Craven, a Jacksonville, Fla., native who studied English at the University of Georgia before beginning his advertising career as an assistant at Grey Entertainment in New York in the mid-90s.
“I had a vague sense that I wanted to be a writer,” says Craven, who counts Ross Macdonald, Carl Hiaasen and friend James Frey as a few of his favorite authors. “But I didn’t know what kind of writer or really what that meant or how you made that happen.”
A friend at Simon & Schuster, where he first worked after moving to New York post-graduation in 1992, introduced him to someone at Grey and set him on a career path in advertising that took him to MTV’s in-house agency, then to TBWA\Chiat\Day in Playa del Rey, Calif., and most recently to Crispin, where he began as a senior copywriter on Burger King in 2007 and now serves as an associate creative director on the Microsoft account.
Until Next Year
Most Bananas Oscars Ever?
Getty Images
Okay, yeaaah, the Oscars! It’s going to take us at least a few more days to really be able to digest all the absolute batsh*t craziness that went down during Sunday night’s telecast. Can we all just start by agreeing that that show was truly bonkersville? We know there will be plenty of ink shed on the big winners: Kate, Sean, Penélope, Heath, Slumdog, etc., so we’ll just stick to the show itself for now.
Let’s start with the stage, with the 92,000-Swarovski-crystal curtain which looked like something that got thrown up straight from Moonstruck-era Cher’s brain - razzle dazle doesn’t begin to describe it. And then there’s Hugh Jackman. We’ve already heard a lot of dissenting chatter about the Aussie’s hosting duties, but we’re just going to come out and say it: nailed it! Because listen, that man committed. He went out there for his debut Oscar-hosting night and put on an opening number that we still actually can’t believe happened. He started, gracefully, with a self deprecating joke about his giant bomb of a film Australia and led into a song and dance number – including inspired bits encompassing the big five plus a much needed shout out to snubbed Dark Knight - that had that jaded crowd at the Kodak on their feet. Props to Anne Hathaway for a shockingly good faux impromptu assist (who knew she could sing?). But our favorite moment (not including Mr. Jackman pausing in front of Brad and Angelina and admitting, “I don’t have a joke for them, I’m just contractually obligated to mention them five times”)
Botany Bay Slab
Don’t watch to the end if you don’t like gore.
To Tame The Warring Soul
A New Role for Iraqi Militants: Patrons of the Arts
Stephen Farrell/The New York Times
An art exhibition in Baghdad was sponsored by the movement of an anti-American cleric.
BAGHDAD — Two years ago the American authorities arrested Sheik Mazin al-Saedi, a senior aide to the anti-American cleric Moktada al-Sadr, accusing him of organizing kidnappings and killings.
This week in Baghdad, the city once terrorized by those killings, Sheik Mazin mingled in a white-walled art gallery as the patron of an exhibition of paintings and sculptures that would not, exactly, be out of place in Chelsea or SoHo: abstract art, expressionist paintings and conceptual works larded with symbols of Iraq’s ancient history and today’s reality.
The goal was “to show the entire world that we are not as the media portrays us, a movement that believes only in bearing arms and knows no culture other than that of violence,” Sheik Mazin said of Mr. Sadr’s movement, which is widely blamed for its part in the violence that followed the American invasion in 2003.
“The Sadr movement,” he said, “is also one that believes in ideas and encourages and patronizes the arts.”
I Like To Ping And Pong It…
New York’s Priapic Prince of Ping-Pong
Franck Raharinosy is ready to paddle Manhattan’s smart set.
Danny Kim
Hands off, ladies! Mr. Raharinosy is engaged!
The Prince of Madagascar lives in a penthouse apartment at the National Arts Club, overlooking the barren trees and locked gates of Gramercy Park. The Prince loves Ping-Pong. His mission is to properly introduce Ping-Pong to Manhattan; he’s plotting Ping-Pong establishments all over the city.
So went the tale around a recent party at the National Arts Club for Argentine artist Rirkrit Tiravanija, whose works include a $40,000 Ping-Pong table made of mirrored glass. “Have you heard about the Prince who lives in the Penthouse? He’s about to open an exclusive Ping-Pong club.” The party featured an exhibition match between a pair of 14-year-old Nigerian-born twins and 78-year-old U.S. singles champion Marty Reisman.
The Prince is Franck Raharinosy, a 33-year-old fledgling filmmaker and Ping-Pong impresario who last week signed a 15-year lease for the 13,000-square-foot basement of 304 Park Avenue. In the past six months, Mr. Raharinosy says, he and three business partners have raised close to $1.5 million to build Spin, a 14-table Ping-Pong social club, which will include a natty members-only lounge designed by Todd Oldham and sponsored by sportswear designer Fred Perry. They hope to open in May.
Until last spring Messrs. Raharinosy, Jonathon Bricklin and Bill Mack lived together in a Tribeca loft, which also served as offices for their film production company, Ridiculous Inc., which produces movies, music videos, celebrity events and documentaries such as The Entrepreneur, which tells the story of Mr. Bricklin’s father, Malcolm Bricklin, who founded Subaru of America when he was 28; the movie will be showing in New York later in the year. In the loft, of course, was a Ping-Pong table. The sporting fellows started throwing twice-weekly “Naked Ping-Pong” parties, sometimes featuring pro players and always featuring attractive women. There was no nudity but, according to Mr. Mack, “there was a steady flow of women in and out of Franck’s room. … He’s definitely had sex on the Ping-Pong table. His numbers are really high.”
Art Collection On Uptick
The Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens
ACQUISITION: U.S. artist Reginald Marsh’s “ Red Buttons” (1936) is among works picked up by the Huntington.
ART
L.A. museums’ collections grow despite poor economy
Philanthropists’ generosity and the hard work of museum staffs and support groups turn 2008 into a surprisingly good year for acquisitions.
As Los Angeles art museums face the future in a down economy, building their collections may not be the highest priority, but it’s a big worry.
Will art acquisition funds dwindle to nothing? Will once-dependable patrons stop writing checks when curators pass the hat for art purchases? Will potential art gifts go to market? Will more museums pool resources to make joint purchases, as the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Fowler Museum at UCLA recently did to buy a huge tapestry-like construction made by African artist El Anatsui using metal castoffs?
No one knows, and not only because it’s impossible to predict the length and force of the ongoing financial storm. Cash donations for acquisitions can be expected to plummet, but gifts of art are less predictable. In good times and bad, artworks come to museums in various ways — from friends and complete strangers.
The Next Temptation Of Marty
| Scorsese plans film on Christian persecution | |
| AFP | |
TOKYO — Oscar-winning filmmaker Martin Scorsese plans to adapt for the screen a novel on Japan’s brutal persecution of Christians during the 17th century, according to a museum.
The 1966 novel “Chinmoku” (”Silence”) by Shusaku Endo tells the story of a young idealistic Jesuit priest from Portugal who lands on the shores of Nagasaki in southern Japan — then the only region open to foreigners.
The novel depicts the severe persecution Japan then inflicted on converts to Christianity, many of whom were impoverished villagers and went into hiding.
Academy Award-winning art director Dante Ferretti, who is close to Scorsese, and producer E. Bennett Walsh this week visited the Nagasaki Museum of History and Culture to research the film.
“They are going to make a movie and so they visited to research Japanese Christian history,” museum spokesman Koichiro Nishijima said.
He said that the pair carefully studied a “fumie,” a metal plaque depicting Jesus Christ or the Virgin Mary that authorities would make people step on in order to weed out Christians.
Good For Gabriel
Gabriel pulls out of Oscars over 65-second limit
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Peter Gabriel’s minute in the Oscars spotlight will lack one important element: Peter Gabriel.
The Academy Award-nominated singer won’t perform at the Feb. 22 ceremony to protest an apparently revamped presentation of best original song contenders. Gabriel says in a video on his Web site that he objects to the songs being shortened to 65 seconds apiece and made part of a medley.
Gabriel is nominated alongside Thomas Newman for “Down To Earth” from “WALL-E.”
The British musician says he’ll still attend the Oscars, but is hoping a gospel choir will stand in for him onstage.
The Real Top Schmeer
Nutty for Nutella: spreadable joy
Robert Gauthier, Los Angeles Times
SLATHER IT ON: Homemade hazelnut-chocolate spread.
The Italian chocolate and hazelnut spread has its devoted fans.
By Amy Scattergood
February 11, 2009
Do a Google search for “Nutella,” the Italian hazelnut-chocolate spread that comes in a squat jar like peanut butter and is often found right next to it in grocery aisles, and you’ll get about 5 million results. Which is about twice what you get when you Google “chocolate chip cookies” — and several times as many as the phrase “Valentine’s Day chocolates.” You might want to remember that this weekend.
Because Nutella isn’t just junk food with a European pedigree. It can be an obsession, a habit, even a cult. If you think this is foodie hyperbole, you’re just not among the initiated.
“An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.”
Gandhi’s eyeglasses to be auctioned in NYC
NEW YORK - Mahatma Gandhi’s (Ma-hot-ma Gand-hee’s) distinctive wire-frame eyeglasses, a pair of worn leather sandals and an inexpensive pocket watch are going on the auction block in New York City.
Antiquorum Auctioneers says the auction of Gandhi’s belongings is historic because the leader of India’s independence movement didn’t have many possessions.
