photo by Hugh Stegman
BAD WEEK FOR SPORTS EDITORS AND OTHER NEWSPAPER FOLK SUDDENLY OUT OF JOBSThe OC Register laid off 80-90 people on Monday. According to this OC Weekly blog post, Sports Editor Greg Gibson and Travel Editor Steve Plesa are among those leaving.
Up at the Santa Barbara News Press, Sports Editor Barry Punzal and Life section Editor Mindy Spar were canned along with around 15 others yesterday, according to this CraigSmithBlog post.
LOOKING FOR SOMETHING REALLY GREAT TO DO THIS WEEKEND?
Check out the John Malkovich-Musica Angelica Baroque Orchestra collaboration, described in this LA Times feature.
NEW VENICE MAGAZINE CALENDAR SUBMISSIONS EMAIL ADDRESS
Thanks so much to Lucy Pollak for letting us know the new Venice Magazine email for calendar submissions: venicemagcal at gmail, and of course, dot com
JIM FARBER'S SECRET PAST. WHO KNEW?
The long-ago photographs of Daily Breeze arts writer (and all around nice guy) Jim Farber are featured in a show at the Torrance Art Museum. Check out this story, with some excerpts here:
Long ago, we're talking 1964 here, with another war raging and discontent boiling over, [Jim] left the home of his watercolorist mom in L.A. for the San Francisco Art Institute and a job as a still photographer for KQED, the PBS station. There, nearly everything that would happen during the next decade was just beginning to take shape, with the North Beach Beats giving way to the earliest of early hippies. With Farber right there snapping pictures and living a life that brought him into contact with era giants like Janis Joplin, Ken Kesey (novelist and Merry Prankster) and Peter Green, the phenomenal guitarist for the original Fleetwood Mac. Then there were the concerts at the Fillmore West (where a ticket to see Jefferson Airplane cost $2.50) and Farber, after hearing Joplin's first gig with Big Brother and the Holding Company, telling impresario Bill Graham, "I don't get it."Sounds fascinating. Go!
OK, so he wasn't always right. But you can actually see him in the movie documentary on the 1967 Monterey Pop Music Festival.
Later, he was present at the Altamont Music Festival, the disastrous anti-Woodstock featuring the Rolling Stones where the Hells Angels were brought in for security and murdered a concertgoer on film.
But to give you some idea of where he was in the genesis of a movement that would sweep the world, by the time the media descended on San Francisco in 1967 for the infamous Summer of Love, the cool people in Haight-Ashbury had already staged a mock funeral for "The Hippie." In fact, it was so crazy that summer, Farber took off for London where the movement was just then taking hold.
As it turned out, most of America and the world would have their 1960s' experience in the early 1970s. Which gave Farber a ground-floor view of the unfolding insanity versus sanity in San Francisco. So what else could a photographer do but photograph what he saw?
Some of those photos figure prominently in the TAM (www.torranceartmuseum.com) show, which is free, open from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily except Sunday and on display until May 31.
LA TIMES' BILL LOBDELL RETURNS TO RUN A NEW "PEOPLE" BEAT
I seem to have had a brain fade, and I forgot where I got this information, so apologies to the source from which I quote:
"Bill Lobdell has returned [to the LA Times] from a four-month book leave ("Losing My Religion: How I Lost My Faith While Covering Religion in America") to work a newly created "people" beat. Bill will produce profiles large and small of Southland residents. These people will be famous and obscure, and some will be once-familiar figures with whom we will be catching up. Bill will continue to be based in Orange County, but his profile subjects will be from throughout Southern California."
WHEW!If Vin Scully is music to your ears as he is to mine, read this. And I'll just add that I'm already DVRing baseball games to watch/listen to after the dreadful day when he really does retire. At that point, we can also comfort ourselves with this web page.
