November, 4, 2005 archives

culture clash, an “infamous chicano performance group,” will be at the central library as part of the zócalo series on december 14. you might think i’m mentioning this early, but someone beat me to it a long time ago. you can actually make (free) reservations now.

the zócalo event earlier this week at the national center for the preservation of democracy in little tokyo, with los angeles times editor dean baquet and moderated by l.a. observed’s kevin roderick, didn’t really light any fires. but baquet did make it pretty clear that he was concerned about making sure the times reclaims more of a los angeles voice.

something i don’t think i’ve seen noted anywhere else is that the new blogs from the times, like gold derby and the movable buffet, are being hosted by typepad. and they’ve got rss feeds. now if only the actually news site did.

spartan is a david mamet film starring val kilmer as a special ops officer trying to track down the daughter of a high-ranking government official. (it’s sort of implied it is the president.) it’s not at all flashy, but i think it also fails to spark. the dialogue is classic mamet, of course.

i stumbled in getting discs in the mail the last few days, so now my flow of movies to/from netflix is all screwed up, and i’ve got one movie to last through the weekend. (i only have one book from the library, too.)

when the tom bradley wing was added to the los angeles central library, the entrance to what was the children’s department was moved to become the entrance to the mark taper auditorium, and the children’s court was was also relocated, including the sculptures by lee lawrie. it is generally closed to the public now, but i was able to get in while observing a tour and grabbed snapshots of all of the panel carvings and the lotus shaft fountain. the fountain isn’t actually functioning — i’m not even sure if it is hooked up to anything now.

today i finally made it over to see “not a cornfield” from the ground instead of from a gold line train. it’s a strange experience standing in the middle of a cornfield within sight of downtown.

there were no activities going on while i was there, and only a few people around. walking down the path through the middle of the field is very isolating, because the corn is tall enough to block out most of the surrounding area and muffle the sound.

on the way back home, i grabbed a french dipped sandwich at philippe the original.