Recently in Arts and Lettuce Category

This nifty piece of art by Rose Tursi was forwarded to me and presents a colorful caricature of the heart of the downtown Pomona Arts Colony. Click on the image for a much larger version. It's worth scrolling around it to look for details. (I like the skeleton in the dirt pit myself, and the Shadow in the apartment window.)

Which reminds me, Second Saturday, as the monthly Art Walk is known, is tonight. Probably the main event is the annual "Simply Red" show at the dA Center for the Arts, 252 S. Main St., in which every piece, in honor of Valentine's Day, incorporates red. There'll also be a party at the dA to mark Upland artist Dee Marcellus Cole's 80th birthday. HB, Dee!

Above, "Burning Bridges"

Three performance-art pieces by noted artists took place Jan. 21 at Pomona College. I attended the Judy Chicago and James Turrell flares-and/or-fireworks things at Merritt Field and Bridges Auditorium but skipped the John White indoor-football thing, which predictably was cited by the LA Times as the best of the three. Oh well.

You can watch 2-minute videos of the performances here.

I see more movies than the average person (21 in 2011) but not as many as some of my friends. Other than some of the superhero movies, my tastes run to the indie side, and even a lot of those pass me by.

I haven't seen most of the awards-bait films, from "Moneyball" earlier in the year to "The Artist" or "Melancholia" or "Iron Lady" or even "The Descendants," which unlike the others is actually playing in the 909. Also, you would have to pay me to see "War Horse."

Take this list, my fifth annual, as one man's moviegoing rather than some sort of comprehensive list. And what is that list?

My top 10, in roughly descending order:

The Adjustment Bureau, My Afternoons With Margueritte, Midnight in Paris, The Women on the Sixth Floor, The Hedgehog, Bill Cunningham New York, Win Win, 50/50, The King's Speech and Beginners.

(Yes, I know "The King's Speech" is technically a 2010 movie, but like most people I saw it in 2011. Also, my absolute favorite of the year wasn't a new movie but a re-release of 1984's The Green Ray ((Le Rayon Vert)), a French film by Eric Rohmer. I decided not to count that since it wasn't a new movie.)

Rounding out my year's 21 movies, my next 11 would run something like this: Captain America, Project Nim, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Jane Eyre, Point Blank, Contagion, Drive, Young Adult, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, Page One: Inside the New York Times and Thor.

I liked "Apes" but it didn't have the zest of the older ones. The last Potter movie was fine and I know a lot of people loved it, but I'm tired of the whole thing.

What were your own favorites, or stinkers, of 2011?

Chaffey High School in Ontario has been performing Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Phantom of the Opera" musical in a production that its theater department is calling "lavish" and which, based on the video, seems really to be lavish.

The show ends Sunday. Remaining performances are Thursday, Friday and Saturday, all at 7 p.m., and Sunday at 2 p.m. Admission: $13. A heckuva lot cheaper than Broadway. Performances are in Gardiner Spring Auditorium, 211 W. 5th St.

I had no idea, but Claremont McKenna College has a Claremont Shakespeare Clinic that for a quarter-century has used computers to analyze the Bard's texts and reputed texts. This may be of interest now because of the current movie "Anonymous," which promotes in the multiplex the controversial academic theory that the Earl of Oxford was really the author of Shakespeare's plays.

Says student Patrick Paterson: "The Claremont Shakespeare Clinic has been pioneering the use of computer-based stylometric analysis for almost 25 years. ... It has found far too much stylistic discrepancy between Oxford's poems and Shakespeare's for Oxford's claim to be credible."

His piece on the movie appears below. Thanks for the guest contribution, Patrick.

Photo: Will Lester

The American Museum of Ceramic Art, opened in downtown Pomona in 2004, has relocated a few blocks north to the former Pomona First Federal bank headquarters at 399 N. Garey Ave.

After a private reception Friday night, the museum opens Saturday to the public from noon to 9 p.m., part of the monthly Second Saturday Art Walk centered a couple of blocks south along Second Street. Visitor information is here.

My Friday column (read it here) is about the museum and its founder, David Armstrong. The first exhibit, "Common Ground: Ceramics in Southern California 1945-1975," is part of the Pacific Standard Time arts initiative exploring L.A.'s postwar arts legacy.

Seen above is a portion of the 77-foot-long Millard Sheets mural, "Panorama of Pomona." Here's an older view of the mural when the bank was in operation and one from last year, before the bank's renovation.

That's the name of a current exhibit at the Huntington Library in San Marino devoted to the Alta Loma woodworker, who died in 2009, and fellow Pomona Valley artists of his generation.

My Wednesday column (read it here) is about the exhibit, which opened Sept. 24 and runs through Jan. 30. Above is the chair discussed in my column; the exhibit itself encompasses several rooms and more than 100 pieces: Not just furniture but paintings, sculptures, ceramics and other forms by Maloof's fellow travelers. Well worth a visit.

The Huntington website gives more details about the exhibit and the institution's hours and pricing. Learn more here about Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945-1980, the umbrella title for a series of exhibits on L.A.-area art history, of which the Maloof exhibit is one.

Can't sleep and need an art fix? Through Nov. 6, the Pomona College Museum of Art is open 24/7. As the L.A. Times' Christopher Knight put it: "Like 7-Eleven and the drive-through at Del Taco, the Pomona College Museum of Art never closes."

It's part of a pretty cool exhibit titled "It Happened at Pomona," one of the many Pacific Standard Time exhibits celebrating the Los Angeles art scene from 1945 to 1980. (I hope to write more about the initiative in the near future.)

More about the Claremont exhibit is here, with a calendar of events.

Below is alumni Chris Burden's cube sculpture, which is installed outside the museum.

Being an early-to-bed type, I visited the museum at 6:45 p.m. on a Wednesday with friends. If you visit the museum in the middle of the night, you can always mull over the show afterward at Norms, Claremont's 24-hour diner.

More than 150 people were inside Claremont's Rhino Records on Saturday for an instore performance by the Long Beach-based band Dengue Fever, whose Cambodian singer sings mostly in Khmer. The band played for 45 minutes, which was awfully generous for a free performance, and then signed posters, CDs and vinyl.

Photo by Will Lester

Gilbert "Magu" Lujan, a groundbreaking Latino artist dating to the 1970s and a sometime Pomona resident, died Sunday at age 70 of cancer.

Magu got his nickname in childhood when his nearsightedness led friends to compare him to the cartoon character Mr. Magoo. Lujan's colorful paintings and sculptures often used cartoonish forms to explore how Mexican and American cultures overlap: lowriders, pyramids, altars. "I think humor softens people's view of my culture," he told me in 2004.

Magu represented the letter M in my "Pomona A to Z" series of columns in 2004-05. Here's a link to that piece, and here's one to the LA Times obituary.

The dA Center for the Arts in Pomona is readying a Lujan exhibit, "Cruisin' Magulandia," for Aug. 13 to 30. Friends are sharing their thoughts at the artist's website, magulandia.com.

Lujan's work can be seen in the Hollywood and Vine subway stop, which has benches with car-shaped forms and painted wall tiles with Hollywood iconography.

Let me be among the multitudes wishing Bob Dylan well on his 70th birthday today. I heard my first Dylan song on the radio in 1979 ("Gotta Serve Somebody," then brand new), having up to that point only encountered his name in print, which I had assumed was pronounced Dye-lan.

Anyway, at 15 I was immediately intrigued by his way with words and became more fascinated after reading about his stubborn determination to go his own way as an artist even when that proved unpopular. Not a bad role model. I went on to buy all his albums, see him in concert a dozen times (including last year in Ontario) and demonstrate my fannish devotion in many other ways.

Question: What's your favorite Dylan song or album?

Mine would depend on my mood but I'll go with "Most of the Time" and "Blood on the Tracks," respectively.

This clip will give you a fair idea of what you'll get if you see the Repertory Opera Company's production of "La Boheme." I saw the May 7 show and was especially impressed by the two leads. Give 'em a listen.

The production ends this Saturday with a 2 p.m. matinee at First Christian Church, 1751 N. Park Ave., Pomona. Tickets are $30 and can be bought at the door or online.

2011 is the 50th anniversary of an early Hammer horror film, "The Curse of the Werewolf" -- who knew? -- and Pitzer College, of all places, will commemorate the achievement with a free screening Saturday at 5 p.m.

"Curse" can be seen in Avery Hall's Benson Auditorium, 1050 N. Mills Ave., Claremont. Here's a map.

Thursday brings the final movie in my "College Daze" series of campus comedies at the Ovitt Family Adjective Community Adjective Library (215 E. C St., Ontario): "A Chump at Oxford."

This 1940 Laurel and Hardy movie features the usual dimwitted behavior and slapstick antics as you'd expect as the fat-and-thin duo head off to England for a real education.

The movie starts at 6:30 p.m. on the dot. Entry is free. Hope to see some of you there.

Here's a link to the movie's Wikipedia page (the synopsis gives away the entire plot of the movie, so be careful). And below is the trailer.

Thursday's film in my "College Daze" series at the Ontario library (a.k.a. the Ovitt Family Community Whatchamacallit) sums up the series in its one-word title: "College."

This 1927 silent comedy stars Buster Keaton. The screening begins at 6:30 p.m. sharp in the community room of the library, 215 E. C St. And yes, it's free.

Keaton plays a scholarly freshman who decides to pursue sports to impress a female student. (Here's the Wikipedia entry on the movie.) A sequence in which he tries and fails at various track and field sports in succession is especially funny. Here's one example via YouTube:

Thursday night's movie in my "College Daze" series at the Ontario library is Harold Lloyd's 1925 gem, "The Freshman." Lloyd plays a naive freshman, Harold Lamb, who is pranked by his entire college into thinking he's popular. The part where he does a little dance when greeting people is a gas.

Join us for the 6:30 p.m. screening at the library, 215 E. C St. And yes, it's free.

Here's the Wikipedia page. Be careful not to read much of the plot description! Most of the YouTube clips are 10 minutes, but here's a short, charming scene.

This 1932 Marx Brothers classic is the first of my four-movie "College Daze" series at the Ontario library, 215 E. C St. We're screening it at 6:30 p.m. tonight. Learn more about the movie on its Wikipedia page.

More fun, though, is the clip below of Groucho, as Huxley College's new president, singing his anthem of negativity, "I'm Against It." (Don't mind the Spanish Portuguese subtitles; this version has better sound than the clip without them.)

On Saturday afternoon I attended "Romeo et Juliette," the Repertory Opera Company production in Pomona. (In my column item last week I referred to it by its more familiar English title so as not to scare off the Francophobes.) My count showed about 120 people in the audience.

The troupe did a nice job of it. Some of the actor-singers are better than others; Romeo was vocally underwhelming, especially compared to the powerful Juliet. Mercutio, Stephano and the Duke also impressed me.

There were technical issues: The Shakespearean dialogue projected on a screen was difficult to read (perversely, the top line was fainter than the others; I felt like I was reading an eye chart in reverse) and at the end of the first act, one of the backdrops toppled forward. Oopsie.

But those are small objections. They let me in for free, and I like them anyway, so whether the show is worth your $30 is for you to decide. Personally, I think they should charge $20 and try to fill the place instead of charging $30 and having the room half to two-thirds full, but economics and marketing aren't my specialties. (Prompting the reasonable query: What is my specialty? I have no good answer.)

The show repeats Saturday and concludes Feb. 19, both times at 2 p.m. It runs about 2 1/2 hours. The venue is First Christian Church, 1751 N. Park Ave.

If you saw it, what did you think?

Here's a video from a dress rehearsal:

Photo courtesy University of La Verne

Director John Landis spoke at a film class at the University of La Verne on Wednesday afternoon following a screening of his 1981 horror comedy "An American Werewolf in London." Teacher Scott Essman has brought a parade of makeup artists, directors, actors and effects artists to his class this month, with Landis being the biggest surprise.

You can read all about it in my Friday newspaper column.

My moviegoing comes and goes, and this year it mostly went: I saw a total of 16 new movies. (Plus some oldies, but those don't count.) Below are my 10 favorites, roughly in descending order of preference:

"Cairo Time," "Toy Story 3," "Mademoiselle Chambon," "The Kids Are All Right," "Inception," "Catfish," "127 Hours," "The Social Network," "Cyrus" and "The Secret in Their Eyes."

The other six: "True Grit," "Avatar: Special Edition," "Crazy Heart," "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1," "The Art of the Steal" and No. 16 out of 16, the closest thing to a stinker on the list, "Iron Man 2."

One or two of these may technically have come out in 2009, but I saw them in 2010, as did almost everyone else. I only saw "The Social Network" on New Year's Eve, solely to sneak it onto my 2010 list, and undoubtedly numerous other movies I didn't see were as good as anything on this list.

What were your favorites?

Here's a photo of the Nairobi Trio-themed art installation in a window on West Third Street at Main Street in downtown Pomona, discussed in an item in my Friday column. The photo comes from artist A.S. Ashley's Facebook page devoted to this piece of his, which he says will remain through Dec. 4 "due to popular demand."

(To quote the old Stan Lee quip, maybe a guy named Joe Popular demanded it.)

What's the Nairobi Trio? It was an occasional sketch on Ernie Kovacs' shows and specials of the late 1950s and early 1960s. Naturally, it has its own Wikipedia page. Just as naturally, there are examples on YouTube.

Photos by Kelly Swift/CBB Arena

Did you attend Friday's concert at Citizens Business Bank Arena by Elton John and Leon Russell? If so, what did you think? I was there and thought it was great -- and at 3 hours, 15 minutes, it was value for the dollar, too.

My column Wednesday has an account of the show. For the set list, click on the "continue reading" line below.

Above, the former Home Savings branch at Sunset and Vine, Hollywood, shot during a recent visit.

In its September issue, Westways ran a nice piece on the Home Savings bank branches designed by Millard Sheets. Who was Sheets? He was born in Pomona, later lived in Claremont, taught at Scripps College, ran the Fine Arts Exhibition at the L.A. County Fair and, as the story points out, was part of the "California school" of artists who painted native subjects in the '30s and '40s. You can read it here.

On a related note, my Sunday column is about Sheets' son, Tony, and his stewardship of the fair's Millard Sheets Center for the Arts and of his father's legacy.

The Ontario City Library will screen all three "Lord of the Rings" movies, in their director's cut versions, on three successive Thursdays. The festival is dubbed "LOTRthon 2."

(Fans should hope the sequel goes better than "LOTRthon 1," which was plagued by technical problems and, if memory serves, was unable to be completed.)

"Fellowship of the Ring" is this week, "The Two Towers" is Sept. 16 and "Return of the King" is Sept. 23. Admission is free but, since parental guidance is suggested, is limited to those 13 and up.

The movies screen from 4:15 to 8:45 p.m. The library advises: "Bring a pillow!" (The molded-plastic seats are not soft.)

No press credentials were issued for the Bob Dylan-John Mellencamp concert Thursday at Citizens Business Bank Arena, preventing our music writer and a photographer from attending, but as a fan I bought a ticket on my own dime and, from my seat in the third row, did the best I could with a digital camera (motion made most of my photos blurry, I'm afraid).

Dylan alternated between guitar and organ. Other band members seen in these photos are, from left, bassist Tony Garnier, guitarist Charlie Sexton and drummer George Recile. Out of camera view were rhythm guitarist Stu Kimball and multi-instrumentalist Donnie Herron, who played banjo, mandolin and pedal and lap steel.

Mellencamp had a similarly eclectic band, which included a violinist and an accordionist. He strode around the stage, which sometimes, such as at right, put him within about 20 feet of me.

Look for more about the concert in Sunday's column. Click below for Dylan's set list, taken from the excellent Bob Links website. That's where you can see Dylan's 2010 itinerary, which so far has ranged from Tokyo, Japan to Sturgis, South Dakota.

I wrote this short piece for our Inland Living Magazine and am sharing it here in advance of Bob Dylan's appearance tonight at the Ontario arena.

The phlegmy voice of a generation, Bob Dylan is making his Ontario debut Aug. 19 at Citizens Business Bank Arena.

I think this says more about us than it does about him. Where would he have performed prior to this, Gardiner Spring Auditorium? The Granada? (Not that those wouldn't be cool shows.)

At 69, Bob Dylan surely needs no introduction. Or does he? Ironically, perhaps it's the older crowd, the one that doesn't pay much attention to music anymore, that needs to be brought up to date on the Bobster's activities.

Yes, he hit his peak as a cultural force in the mid-1960s. After a resurgence in the mid-1970s, he seemed to lose his way.

But in the 1990s, his barnstorming live shows got livelier and attracted a younger crowd hungry for a Grateful Dead-type experience. This attention, and affection, seemed to rejuvenate Dylan's songwriting and free him from the shackles of audience expectation.
Three acclaimed albums in a row -- "Time Out of Mind," "Love and Theft" and "Modern Times" -- bore comparisons to his mid-'60s string, and he also released a volume of memoirs to a rapturous reception.

I've seen His Bobness a dozen times, in venues ranging from stadiums to county fairs to intimate clubs. The last time was in 2005 at the Pantages with Merle Haggard.

Driving to Hollywood in rush hour, in the rain, took 2 1/2 hours. (It was worth it.) Now it'll be nice to see Bob Dylan again -- right here at home.

Photo: Carl Schlachte

Wckr Spgt, from left: Mark Givens, Joel Huschle, Kyle Brodie, Dave Carpenter.

Sunday's column tells the story of this avant-garde local band. If you'd like to know more or listen to the music, the band's website offers its more than 500 songs for free downloads as well as a full history of the band, its members and its fellow travelers, making for a partial story of local indie rock since the 1980s. You can also peruse song titles and lyrics.

For more about the new CD "Smooth Sounds: Various Artists Play the Future Hits of Wckr Spgt," visit this page, which has funny questionnaires by each artist of their thoughts about the band.

And here's a page about the July 24 Wckr Spgt Release Party show at the dA Center for the Arts in Pomona.

Interested in that 2007 show mentioned in my column in which the band performed while a box was constructed around them? Here's a series of photos.

Oh, and since I didn't go into this in my column: What does the name Wckr Spgt mean? The short answer: Not much. The long answer can be found here.

Haaaiii-yaaah! July's movie theme at the Ontario City Library is "Martial Arts Madness." The films: "Legend of Drunken Master 2" starring Jackie Chan (Thursday), "Legend of the Black Scorpion" (July 15), "Shaolin Soccer" (July 22) and "Mortal Kombat" (July 29). Films start at 6:30 p.m. in the community room of the library, 215 E. C St., and admission is free.

Tell 'em Bruce Lee sent you.

(I can vouch for the entertainment value of "Drunken Master," whose stunts are both hilarious and astonishing.)

The first Hollywood Fringe Festival, from June 17 to 27, features theater, comedy, dance, visual arts, workshops and other events by emerging artists at a host of unusual venues. One highlight could be "52 Man Pickup," a one-woman performance piece by Desiree Burch, a Diamond Bar native who now lives in New York and has toured the U.K. Her show seems to have been well-reviewed in NYC, and Burch was named by New York Magazine as among "Ten New Comedians that Funny People Find Funny."

Her press rep contacted me and offered to set up an in-person interview, but time, and column inches, are scarce this week. Since Burch is interested in reaching the locals, however, I'm happy to give her a plug here.

You can read more about "52 Man Pickup," and watch a couple of short videos, here. The two performances are at 8 p.m. Saturday and Sunday at Fringe Central Theater of Arts, 1625 N. Las Palmas. Tickets are a mere $15.

I've been wanting to see the newly restored 1928 Riverside Fox Theater but so far nothing on the schedule has grabbed me. (Ditto with Ontario's Citizens Business Bank Arena, although I've at least toured that building.)

Well, at 7 p.m. Friday, the Riverside Fox, 3801 Mission Ave., will show the Marx Brothers classic "Duck Soup," plus Groucho impersonator Frank Ferrante live on stage doing 90 minutes of Marxism. Read about the event here. Tickets are $20 to $49.

I'll likely be there -- "Duck Soup," a farce about politics and war, is one of my favorite movies and, while I'd rather pay half the money and see only the movie, the Groucho guy might be fun. And I'm looking forward to eyeballing the "other" Fox (as opposed to Pomona's).

"Hail, hail Freedonia, land of the brave and freeeee!"

The fourth and final film in our "Down With Depression" series of 1930s Depression-themed comedies screens at 6:30 p.m. Thursday at the Ontario City Library, 215 E. C St.: "Easy Living."

This 1937 screwball comedy is among my favorite movies. Working girl Mary Smith (Jean Arthur) is riding atop a double-decker bus to work when what should land on her but a mink coat, tossed out a penthouse window by a millionaire mad at his wife's spendthrift ways. Hijinks, as they say, ensue.

Read about "Easy Living" here. And watch a 2:49 video clip below.

The third of our four-film Depression comedy series at the Ontario City Library screens tonight: Frank Capra's 1936 romantic comedy "Mr. Deeds Goes to Town."

Longfellow Deeds is a tuba-playing dreamer in tiny Mandrake Falls, Vt., who inherits $20 million and stumbles around wondering what to do with his newfound wealth. The movie stars Gary Cooper and Jean Arthur. Read more about it here.

The movie screens at 6:30 p.m. in the community room of the library, 215 E. C St. See you there?

This 1936 William Powell-Carole Lombard screwball comedy is the second movie in my "Down With Depression" series at the Ontario City Library, 215 E. C St. "Godfrey" plays Thursday at 6:30 p.m. in the community free. Admission is free.

You can read about the series in my column here. The first movie, "City Lights," drew a nice-sized crowd of old and young.

Read about "My Man Godfrey" on Wikipedia here.

And here's the first 10 minutes via YouTube:

This 1931 Charlie Chaplin classic is the first film in the "Down With Depression" series at the Ontario City Library, 215 E. C St., screening at 6:30 p.m. Thursday. I'll be there to introduce the film. You can read more about the series in last Sunday's column.

Read about "City Lights" on Wikipedia here and Roger Ebert's essay on the movie here. Spoiler alerts apply in both cases, of course.

Ebert concludes, for those of you uncertain about silent films:

"Most of Chaplin's films are available on video. Children who see them at a certain age don't notice they're 'silent' but notice only that every frame speaks clearly to them, without all those mysterious words that clutter other films. Then children grow up, and forget this wisdom, but the films wait patiently and are willing to teach us again."

Here's my third annual list of my favorite movies of the year. (You can read my 2008 list here and my 2007 list here.)

In 2009 I saw 26 new movies, oddly enough the same number as in 2008 (but down from 41 in '07). Obviously there were loads of good movies I didn't see, so if your favorites aren't here, maybe I just didn't see them.

Note: A couple of these are technically 2008 movies because they came out Dec. 25 or Dec. 28 in limited release, but like most people, I saw them in 2009.

My top 10, in roughly descending order:

Gran Torino, Up, Milk, The Class, Julie and Julia, (500) Days of Summer, Me and Orson Welles, The Fantastic Mr. Fox, Food Inc., Black Dynamite.

The next 10 would be:

Summer Hours, Watchmen, The Hurt Locker, An Education, Up in the Air, Monsters vs. Aliens, I Love You Man, Gomorrah, Last Chance Harvey, The Soloist.

What did you see and like (or dislike) in 2009?

Jodie Holt of UC Riverside, a professor of plant physiology, will participate in a Q&A at the Edwards Ontario Palace 22 at Ontario Mills at 6:30 p.m. Saturday concerning James Cameron's new SF movie "Avatar." Holt provided botanical expertise for the depiction of the movie's fictional moon, Pandora, and its ecosystem.

Well, it's not like having Cameron here, but it might be fun.

We all remember Charles Phoenix, the midcentury maven and slide show entrepreneur who makes the past fun, right?

He'll give a slide show in Pomona on Saturday and lead a tour his native Ontario on Sunday. You can read more about both in Friday's column, but let me give you the appropriate linkages for tickets and more info.

He'll give his Retro Holiday Slide Show at the National Hot Rod Museum, 1101 W. McKinley Ave., Gate 1, at 8 p.m. He describes the narrated slide show as "a 1950s & 60s New Year's, Easter, 4th of July, Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas jubilee."

This is the first time he's done his holiday show in the Inland Valley; other locations on his tour are Pasadena, Hollywood, Portland and Seattle. Tickets for the Pomona show are $26.95.

Read about the Charles Phoenix Hometown Holiday Tour here, and buy tickets there if you like. Phoenix also wrote recently about one of this tour stops, Logan's Candies, an Ontario institution since 1933.

Snoop Dogg now provides driving directions on a GPS service. Listen to a sample here. How many other former Claremont residents can say the same?

Wandering the Albertsons/SavOn at Vineyard and Foothill in Rancho Cucamonga the other day, I was surprised to hear Elvis Costello's "(I Don't Want to Go to) Chelsea" on the music system.

This was not a hit. Costello didn't really have any hits outside the U.K. This was a track dropped when the album "This Year's Model" was configured for release in America, popping up only on a compilation album of stray tracks, "Taking Liberties," circa 1980. Urgent, rebellious, spiky in both lyrics and guitar attack, the song was considered New Wave, its singer a typical British Angry Young Man.

I love Costello's work from that period, although like most of his songs, it's catchy, but I have no idea what it's about. (Neither does anyone else.) One section:

Men come screaming, dressed in white coats
Shake you very gently by the throat
One's named Gus, one's named Alfie
I don't want to go to Chelsea

And now, some three decades later, this sentiment was safe enough to be played at a chain supermarket/pharmacy as shoppers loaded their carts with breakfast cereal and frozen pizza. What does this say about music? About us? What would Elvis think?

Walking toward me in the aisle was a thirtysomething hipster in a tweed jacket, beard and jagged haircut. He paused and looked up wonderingly at the ceiling, presumably as baffled as I was.

I compliment the chain's music programmers on their adventurousness, worry about the commodification of rebellion and wonder what we'll be listening to in supermarkets in 2039.

CULTURE ALERT: W.S. Merwin, one of the world's greatest living poets and a Pulitzer winner, will give a free reading at 6:45 p.m. tonight at the Claremont McKenna Athenaeum, 385 E. 8th St., Claremont.

I attended a reading by Merwin as a college student in Illinois in 1984. A classmate urged me to go but I resisted at first, still married to the idea of watching "St. Elsewhere," as I'd never missed an episode.

My friend sensibly said, c'mon, the show is on every week but Merwin will never be here again.

I went, I enjoyed it and, my streak broken, I only watched "St. Elsewhere" one or two more times before giving up on it. I hope Denzel Washington can forgive me.

Didn't care for Marilyn Manson? Pomona's Fox Theater swings to the other extreme Sunday with opera.

Donizetti's "Elixir of Love" will be featured in one performance only at 2 p.m. Sunday. The production is by the Repertory Opera Company, which is based in Pomona and performed "Don Pasquale" at a Pomona church last year.

"There is a possibility that we will do a full season at the Pomona Fox Theater, but it is contingent upon how well this show does," artistic director LizBeth Lucca says.

Put on your fur coat, screw your monocle into place and journey to downtown Pomona. If nothing else, the parking is cheaper than at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.

For anyone interested, and tying into Wednesday's column, here's the full list of songs played by Wilco at the Fox Theater on Saturday (list via the LA Times):

"Wilco (The Song)"
"I Am Trying to Break Your Heart"
"Bull Black Nova"
"You Are My Face"
"One Wing"
"A Shot in the Arm"
"Radio Cure"
"Impossible Germany"
"Deeper Down"
"Pick Up the Change"
"Can't Stand It"
"Jesus, Etc."
"Hate it Here"
"You'll Never Know"
"Theologians"
"Walken"
"I'm the Man Who Loves You"
"Hummingbird"

Encore
"Passenger Side"
"California Stars"
"Misunderstood"
"Spiders (Kidsmoke)"

Encore 2
"Happy Birthday to You"
"Kingpin"
"Monday"
"Hoodoo Voodoo"

Cavalier Motor Inn, Whittier, 1964 (courtesy Charles Phoenix)

One day before its mention in my column, here's a tip: Phoenix will be hosting one of his ultra-entertaining slide shows -- title: "Charles Phoenix's Retro Slide Show Tour of Southern California" -- at 8 p.m. Saturday at Pomona's NHRA Motorsports Museum.

Expect '50s and '60s slides celebrating car culture, space age suburbia, fast food stands, shopping centers, drive-ins, Hollywood landmarks, Knott's Berry Farm, Marineland and Disneyland, among other places.

The museum is at 1101 W. McKinley Ave. Enter at Fairplex Gate 1. Cost is $25 at www.charlesphoenix.com or, presumably, at the door.

Photo by Barbara Smith

Friday's column talks about the mural in the PFF branch at 399 N. Garey Ave. in Pomona that will close June 19. It's a hard mural to photograph because it's so long, but the above photo, sent in by reader Barbara Smith, gives you an idea. You can see an equally panoramic view (in B&W) of the mural at the Pomona Public Library's website, or a series of color images on Photobucket's website that lets you look at the whole thing in pieces.

Every year, comic book shops across America host Free Comic Book Day, an event that is almost chilling in its simplicity: Walk into a comics shop, walk out with a comic book.

A couple dozen special comics are published just for this giveaway, from Archie, Disney/Pixar's Cars and Nancy to Love and Rockets, Star Wars and Wolverine. You can read more at www.freecomicbookday.com.

4 Color Fantasies in Rancho Cucamonga draws hundreds of fans to its event, with a line out the door and more activity in the parking lot.

Here's the addresses of all the local stores participating. With Claremont's Comic Bookie out of business, it's an even shorter list than usual:

* FUNNY BUSINESS, 896 N. Garey, Pomona, (909) 868-1974

* 4 COLOR FANTASIES, 7172 Archibald Ave., Rancho Cucamonga, (909) 563-8751

* J P M COMICS & GAMES, 1000 E. Route 66 Suite G, Glendora, (626) 857-0718

* COMIC MADNESS, 12345 Mountain Ave. #J, Chino, (909) 590-5949

A comic book store has rented the IMAX theater at the Edwards 22 Ontario Mills for a midnight screening on Thursday (or, technically, very early Friday) of the next "X-Men" movie.

Personally, by midnight I'll be at home on my second or third dream, but if you're interested in seeing the movie in a room full of fans before its official release at a normal-person time Friday, contact 4 Color Fantasies, which is sponsoring the event and cleverly calling it "Geek Night Out."

Get tickets at the store, 7172 Archibald Ave. (above Base Line), Rancho Cucamonga. The $19 price includes a commemorative T-shirt -- one hesitates to ask what it says -- and a swag bag of goodies. Or call the store for details at (909) 563-8751.

Tell 'em the David Allen Blog sent you. You won't get anything special, but they'll understand instantly that you're a discriminating consumer.

The Fox Theater's first event for the general public is the annual Smogdance Film Festival, which takes place Friday through Sunday at the newly restored Pomona theater.

Granted, it's not exactly a singalong "Sound of Music" in the mainstream-appeal sweepstakes, but Smogdance is usually diverting, and the setting is worth the $10 admission all by itself.

You can read more about the festival in today's column and by going to the festival website: www.smogdance.com.

Indie music stores are banding together for the second annual Record Store Day, a national sales promotion and celebration of why we love record shops. (Assuming we do love them. But we do, don't we?)

Claremont's Rhino Records is participating and the store has plenty of fun stuff planned for the event this Saturday.

Singer-songwrriter Frank Fairfield and tongue-in-cheek band The Eagles of Death Metal will perform live in the store. Lots of special new releases, including vinyl LPs and 45s by Cold War Kids, Iron & Wine, Flight of the Conchords, Jenny Lewis, Springsteen and other acts, and a new 45 by Jack White's new band Dread Weather, will be available.

And the store will give you 10 percent off on all purchases that day.

Rhino is at 235 Yale Ave., Claremont. Visit its website for a rundown on the special releases and other goodies.

Also participating is Dr. Strange Records in Alta Loma (their website doesn't offer details), Mad Platter in Riverside and Groovetime Music Brokers in San Bernardino.

Want more info? Visit the Record Store Day website.

The Claremont Laemmle 5 this week has "The Class," an Oscar-nominated French film about a good teacher in a difficult classroom. I saw this at the ArcLight a few weeks back, assuming Claremont wouldn't get it. Highly recommended.

I saw it with a friend who's an LAUSD teacher and she said, despite it taking place in another country, the film felt very real to her. Educators in particular will like this film.

The Laemmle also is featuring "Che Part One" and "Che Part Two," Steven Soderbergh's extremely long Che Guevara biopic. And "Two Lovers," the Joaquin Phoenix/Gwyneth Paltrow drama, is in its second week.

As if all this weren't enough to keep cineastes busy, Claremont's Tournees Film Festival concludes tonight.

The series ends with a screening of "Persepolis" at 6:30 p.m. at Pomona College. This 2008 animated film from France about a young woman growing up in Iran during the Revolution was likewise nominated for an Oscar. I can also recommend it. (The creator, graphic novelist Marjane Satrapi, appeared at the Claremont Athenaeum a couple of years ago.)

See it at the Rose Hills Theater in the Smith Campus Center, 170 E. 6th St.

A friend was asking me my top movies of the year -- I think his favorite was "Batman: The Dark Knight" -- and that prompted me to go back to my records to remember what all I'd seen and liked. Then I remembered I presented a similar list here a year ago.

So, I'll share this year's list with you.

These are movies I saw in a theater in 2008. A couple were released at the very end of 2007, but I'm just going with what I saw in the calendar year. I watched 26 movies, way down from 41 in '07, and certainly missed some good ones.

In roughly descending order, here's my Top 10:

Wall-E, Frost/Nixon, The Visitor, Anita O'Day: The Life of a Jazz Singer, Trouble the Water, Persepolis, The Band's Visit, Slumdog Millionaire, Batman: The Dark Knight, The Counterfeiters.

The next 10:

Taxi to the Dark Side, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, Iron Man, There Will Be Blood, Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, Smart People, 4 Years 3 Months and 2 Days, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, The Changeling, A Girl Cut in Two.

So far in 2009, I've seen and really liked "Milk" and "Gran Torino," both of which are likely to make my Top 10 list.

Have opinions on any of these, or want to come up with your own Top 10 list for 2008?

Those mockers at The Onion offer this report on two topics of local, but little crossover, interest:

"LOUDON, NH -- Shock, grief, and the overwhelming sense of loss that has swept the stock car racing community following the death by apparent suicide of writer David Foster Wallace has moved NASCAR to cancel the remainder of its 2008 season in respect for the acclaimed but troubled author of Infinite Jest, A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, and Brief Interviews With Hideous Men."

Luxuriate in irony here.

I went to the Claremont Museum of Art on Saturday evening for the opening reception for "The Passerby Museum" exhibit, in which objects that could fit into a sandwich bag were collected from passersby in the Village and at Pitzer College. The collection was a recent column topic.

Among the items added since I'd written about it:

* An extinguished cigarette and handwritten note reading "Hope it's my last."

* An apple core, beginning to brown.

* A Costco shopping list that included this item: "TP (?)." I wonder what the deciding factor was.

* An Aug. 24 Angels vs. Twins ticket.

The community-driven exhibit is "an intriguing way to get people into the museum who might not otherwise come," executive director William Moreno told me.

In the first gallery space, the walls are covered floor to ceiling with pinned-up Passerby Museum sandwich bags, not just the nearly 300 from Claremont but hundreds from previous stops in Cuba, Spain, Canada and New York City, each city identified near the ceiling in bold letters.

Now that its name is alongside Havana, Mexico City and New York City, has obscure Claremont suddenly vaulted among the great cities of the world?

Well, Kitchener, Ontario, Canada isn't all that well known either, and it's represented, co-curator Nicolas Dumit Estevez pointed out when I brought it up. But he saw my point and thought that when the "Claremont, California" items are shown in other cities -- San Antonio, Texas, is the likely next stop, sometime next year -- the unfamiliar name might spark curiosity.

"When people see 'Claremont,' I think they'll want to look it up on a map, don't you?" Estevez said.

I do.

In the meantime, see the exhibit at the museum through Dec. 28. The first Friday of the month, admission is free.

Today's column is about the Laemmle movie theater in Claremont. Scroll down on this blog a bit for Thursday's Laemmle post and click on "comments" -- they're all over the map and all the more fascinating for it. Feel free to add on there, especially after reading the column.

In recent years, numerous attempts at showing so-called art movies in the Inland Valley have been made. Circa 1997, there was a short-lived effort at the AMC 30 Ontario Mills. It had a name but I can't recall it: Cinema something-or-other? AMC Cinematheque?

(The AMC Select promotion, a more recent innovation, has hung in there longer, this week giving us "Transsiberian," "Brideshead Revisited" and "Henry Poole is Here.")

The Edwards Mountain Green in Upland went all-art in the summer of (I think) 1999 for something like a week, playing "The Red Violin," then closing for good and becoming a Michaels crafts store. That'll teach 'em.

Mary Noonan of Claremont phoned Friday to say the UA Theater at Montclair Plaza had one screen of art films for a spell. I hadn't heard that. And of course, several people said in the earlier blog thread about Laemmle that the old Village Theater showed quality films.

Of course, the best purveyor of indie films in the Inland Empire is a video store: Video Paradiso in Claremont. They have all the classics, new and old: Fellini, Antonioni, Godard, etc., etc. Check it out.

Any other comments or examples?

Yes, the hot band of 2008. They're playing -- wait for it -- Pomona.

Sept. 16 at the Glass House. That's a Tuesday. Vampire Weeknight?

I saw a notice of the show in Thursday's L.A. Times Guide (the last issue, btw) as part of its list of upcoming shows at various venues. Tickets went on sale Saturday. The show precedes two dates at L.A.'s Wiltern Theater on Sept. 17-18.

On my lunch hour, I headed for Pomona's Glass House Record Store a couple of storefronts from the venue. Tickets are still available, maybe because the Inland Valley is light on Columbia grads. Picked up two tickets, $23.50 each. Two opening acts, including Abe Vigoda, a rising band from (believe it or not) Chino.

I wasn't immediately sold on Vampire Weekend. A friend had loaned me a burned copy of their debut CD early this year and a couple of spins didn't do much for me. Weeks later, I was riding in another friend's pickup and eventually noticed the catchy, vaguely familiar CD he was playing. Turned out it was Vampire Weekend. They kinda snuck up on me. Bought the CD myself and it quickly became a favorite.

"I see a mansard roof through the trees"! Bom! Bom bom!

For me, this is the biggest Glass House show since the White Stripes in 2005. Can't wait.

Rare art by Milford Zornes is on exhibit in Rancho Cucamonga, and it looks like time is running out to take a look. Reader Bob Constant saw the exhibit last Friday and says it's made up of paintings done by Zornes in World War II while stationed in China, Burma and India in 1943-44.

Says Constant: "The 86 paintings exhibited show scenes and life of the region. The battle scenes painted by Zornes were retained by the government and are not part of the exhibit, but civilian artworks were returned to the artist and are displayed. They comprise a significant historical record of life and times of that period. If you haven't seen the exhibit yet I think you would find it very interesting and informative."

And y'know, I probably would, and maybe you would too. But time's a-wastin': The museum is open Friday through Sunday and the exhibit, which began May 2, ends Sunday. Yikes! Hours are noon to 5 p.m. and admission is free (my kind of price).

The place: The Chaffey Community Art Association Museum of Art -- whew! -- in the north wing of the J. Filippi Winery, 12467 Base Line Road, Rancho Cucamonga. Phone: (909) 463-3733.

So, I saw "Iron Man" on Saturday afternoon. The B-level Marvel character made for a fun little movie, mostly due to Robert Downey Jr.'s droll acting.

Three little problems for me:

1) The allegedly tough-as-nails woman journalist from Vanity Fair asks Downey's character a few skeptical questions, then becomes so charmed she beds him. Then -- apparently regaining her skepticism after her one-night stand -- she's back covering his press conference at the end.

Yeeeeeah, that's how it works. What's a journalistic bimbo, a jimbo? She's a jimbo. One without any ethics or common sense or, apparently, a boss. C'mon, that sort of thing only happens when you work in TV and you cover the mayor of L.A.

The next two slay me:

2) In a series of realistic-looking magazine covers about Downey's character, one for Forbes (I think) has the cover line "Tony Stark Takes Reigns at 21." Uh, no, he took the reins, as in riding a horse. Sheesh.

3) Later a news crawl on a TV has the redundant phrase "$84 million dollar." That's like saying "84 million dollar-dollar."

Pretty amazing that an army of hundreds, or maybe thousands, labored over this movie, whose budget was a reported $180 million, but when it comes to spelling, they guess.

This is more egregious than in "A Scanner Darkly" when the lead character's ID spells his city of residence "Anahiem."

Other than those baffling errors, "Iron Man" isn't bad. Not great, but not bad. Most importantly on that scorching Saturday, the air conditioning at the AMC 30 gets a rave review.

Today's column is about La Verne's first poet laureate, Catherine Henley-Erickson. Her name may be familiar to Claremont readers: She reviews movies for the Claremont Courier.

The Claremont resident, a retired University of La Verne professor, has freelanced reviews for the paper since 1984.

I couldn't resist asking if she'd ever combined her two passions and reviewed a movie in verse.

"One time I reviewed one of Kenneth Branagh's Shakespeare movies, I forget which one, and I did do it in blank verse, in sentence form," Henley-Erickson told me. "Nobody picked up on it."

By my troth! And here I thought I was asking a joke question.

"She always tells me if a movie is worth seeing," her husband, Joe, chimed in. "If it is, we go together and she sits through it again."

Today's print column mentions Record Store Day, a promotional event. OK, it's a gimmick, but one I'm fine with supporting. Record stores, bookstores, comic book shops -- these are as much my home as my actual home.

The event is Saturday. You can read about it on the official site, which includes a bunch of quotes from prominent musicians and music lovers (I like the one from writer Nick Hornby) and a list of participating stores, albeit no information at all as to the whys and wherefores. We can imagine why, though: Downloading, Amazon and Best Buy are killing record shops. Thus, they're trying to promote themselves, and good for them.

Rhino Records in Claremont appears to be the only local store participating, not that there's a lot of competition, other than Dr. Strange in Rancho Cucamonga, which is punk-only, and Glass House Records and Needles and Pins, two small shops in downtown Pomona.

Anyhow, Rhino's site gives the details on its plans: live music, exclusive 7-inch and LP-only releases, giveaways and a parking lot sale, plus 10 percent off all merchandise. The store, at 225 Yale Ave., is open 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. that day.

It's billed as the "first annual" Record Store Day and one can only hope record stores exist long enough to have a few sequels.

Feel free to post comments about record stores of the present and past.

Sunday's column is about David Grossberg, an Ontario man who sent letters off to a bunch of older famous names to get their opinions on the decline of handwritten correspondence in favor of e-mail.

Snippets from their replies are in the column. Here are a few others I liked:

* Rex Reed: "What significance in a sophisticated society does a 'smiley face' have, and what in tarnation does LOL mean?"

* P.J. O'Rourke: "Rudeness and sloth in the guise of 'informality' exert their perennial appeal ... When words had to be carved in stone, we got the Ten Commandments. With the quill came William Shakespeare. The fountain pen produced Henry James. The typewriter, Jack Kerouac. And all we have to show for the computer is the blog."

Hey!

* Lee Iacocca: "Writing a personal letter to someone has always been important to me. I have the original handwritten letter I wrote to my father the day I was made president of Ford Motor Company."

* Hugh Downs: "Etiquette is after all, kindness, and it can be manifest in the terse realm of e-messages."

* Jack Kemp: "While I do email and messaging on my Blackberry, there's nothing like a written letter to convey sincerity, honesty and the integrity of meaning."

* Andy Rooney, who wrote a column about Grossberg's letter, also sent him a typed reply. Referring to Grossberg's insurance office address in downtown Ontario, the letter's last line grouses: "'211 West 'B' St' is one of the most characterless addresses I ever wrote and if I lived there I'd move."

Until the downtown redevelopment project forced him to move his office, Grossberg had an address on Euclid Avenue, a name Rooney would probably like. Grossberg got a kick out of Rooney's column and letter and plans to frame them and hang them prominently in his office.

Look for my column in the paper or online on Sunday.

A line wrapped around Rhino Records on Sunday of people waiting to see singer-songwriter Kimya Dawson, whose songs were featured in the movie “Juno.”

At the head of the line was a high school sophomore named Melanie, who brought a stuffed panda as a gift for Dawson’s daughter, Panda. Melanie told me she discovered Dawson from “Juno” and instantly felt simpatico: “It’s like she pulled these songs from my brain. It’s kind of creepy.”

The store was cleared of customers before some 400 fans, many of them under 30, were allowed inside for the free show. It was said to be the best-attended in-store performance in Rhino's 34-year history. Most of the audience hung on Dawson’s every utterance and seemed thrilled to be there.

In a rarity for an in-store show, Dawson was onstage for a full 90 minutes, performing 18 tunes in her sing-song, stream-of-consciousness style.

And that’s even though she said she was suffering from a cold and got only an hour’s sleep the previous night because of attending the indie-film Spirit Awards ceremony. Her band members took over in the middle of the Rhino show, performing eight more songs, to give her a rest break.

Strumming a guitar, Dawson sang songs from previous albums, the soundtrack and a just-recorded children's album.

“Sorry if you just came today out of curiosity, and then there’s all this,” Dawson remarked toward the end. “But all my shows are like this.”

On my way out I ran into an unexpected fan: developer Randall Lewis. He said he’d enjoyed himself. Who knew he had such out-there taste?

I don’t think he’s going to give Dawson a free house, though.

Today's print column is about watching the Top 100 U.S. movies as chosen by the American Film Institute in 1998. The list was revised in mid-2007, but by that point I just stuck to the original list. I'll get to the "new" movies on the revised list sometime.

As promised, here are links to see the two Top 100 lists. From there you can get to the AFI's plethora of other lists. You can visit the AFI and see the lists there, although you have to register.

For the sake of comparison, here are two other best-American-movie lists: a Chicago critic's Alternative Top 100 and GreatestFilms.Org's Top 100.

And, to broaden the base beyond American movies, here are the National Film Critics Essential 100 and the British Film Institute's Top 100.

Happy reading, and happy viewing.

I was stunned this morning to learn that singer-songwriter John Stewart, whom I interviewed in November for a column, had died unexpectedly of a massive stroke.

You can read about John on his website or in this obituary. I just wrote an obituary for us.

Too bad. I enjoyed speaking with him about "Daydream Believer," the purpose of our phone chat. I told him I'd like to talk to him again at county fair time about his song "Back in Pomona," as it's about his experiences helping his dad, a horse trainer. He said that would be fine. He also said that next time he was in the area, he'd call me to get together for coffee.

Oh well. My condolences to his family and to his fans.

By no means do I see every good movie out there, but when most American adults average something like five movies a year in theaters, clearly my 41 movies seen in 2007 puts me far above the norm.

So here's my top 10 list for '07. One or two of these were actually released around Christmas 2006, and are thus considered 2006 movies. But since probably 95 percent of their eventual audience saw them after Dec. 31 of '06, I'm calling them '07 movies. Look, it's my blog so I make the rules, not the members of the Academy.

In roughly descending order:

Children of Men, Juno, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Letters From Iwo Jima, The Darjeeling Limited, The Namesake, The Lives of Others, My Best Friend, In the Shadow of the Moon, No End in Sight.

Give me another 10 and you'd get Dan in Real Life, The Savages, After the Wedding, Charlie Wilson's War, 1408, Music and Lyrics, The Bourne Ultimatum, Once, Venus and Ratatouille.

The fake trailers and ads between features in Grindhouse would make my top 20 (the two features themselves, however, were awful, aside from the turbodriven chase sequence in Tarantino's segment) and if Blade Runner: The Final Cut counts as an '07 release, it would be No. 1.

Back in October, a photographer set up a portable photo booth outside the Claremont Library and took photos of anyone willing to step inside.

The result is 214 photos, blown up and displayed in an unlikely place: outside a parking garage.

The 72-foot long installation faces a plaza leading into the Claremont Packinghouse. The B&W images show people against a white backdrop. Every person who stepped into the booth is represented.

Some smile, some look serious. Some clown. One covers his face with his hands. There are individuals, couples, whole families. One woman holds a bakery bag. A man, apparently a parking enforcement officer, clutches a ticket book.

I happened upon the exhibit as it was being installed and returned Monday for a look at the whole thing.

One element that struck me is how diverse the people are. Diverse in ages, from infants to seniors, and diverse in ethnicity, moreso than one might expect in Claremont.

Spend a few minutes taking in the photos and you can’t help but be fascinated, and moved, by the humanity on display. I'm not sure I can explain why, but I get misty-eyed when I saw the portraits, and whenever I think of them too. There's just a vulnerability, a playfulness, a serenity to the people in these candid photos, and seeing so many of them in one place has a powerful, humbling impact.

I think the photos are worthwhile even if you don't live in Claremont, but living there does add a new element. These are our friends and neighbors, and you’re bound to see someone you know represented, even if it’s just someone you’ve seen around the Village but can’t place.

One familiar face is the white-bearded Ray Collins, a founding member of the Mothers of Invention, who can often be seen wandering the Village. (Collins has declined my interview requests, by the way, but we’ve had many friendly chats on various streetcorners.)

The photographer was Christopher Irion and his installation was commissioned by the Claremont Museum of Art, which is inside the Packinghouse.

“We want to bring the museum out of these four walls. We want to put art where the people are,” William Moreno, the executive director, told me.

The display will be up at least until Jan. 1. Highly recommended.

Not really apropos of anything 909, but over the weekend I watched "Giant," the enormously long 1956 movie that's one of only three with James Dean. He plays a Texas ranch hand who ends up a rich oilman and, by contrast to his "you're tearing me apart" angst in "Rebel Without a Cause," gives what I would call a comic performance.

He wears a cowboy hat tilted forward at a 90-degree angle, walks funny, mumbles, plays with a length of rope, drops a waterbag for no particular reason while hanging it on a nail and crosses his legs with deliberation. Making tea for Elizabeth Taylor, he puts down her saucer, then his, then her cup, then his, then adjusts the placement of her cup, pauses, almost adjusts it again, then withdraws.

It's a mannered, attention-getting performance, but it's hysterical. Dean reminded me of Johnny Depp as Jack Sparrow, who steals every scene he's in. Depp's mannerisms defied you not to watch his every move, and so did Dean's in "Giant."

"Giant" could have used Jim Backus in an apron, though.

On Friday I conducted a phone interview with singer/songwriter John Stewart for an upcoming column. Stewart attended Pomona Catholic High School in the 1950s, joined the Kingston Trio and for the past 40 years has had a moderately successful career as a folk singer.

I'll share one bit from the interview that may not make it into print. I brought up "The Daily Show's" Jon Stewart. John Stewart mock-groused: "I've got people coming to shows thinking I'm him. They leave after four songs, disappointed. His real name isn't even Jon Stewart. I had the name first!" (It's true, Jon Stewart was born Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz.) Stewart added: "I think he's hysterical."

The column may run this week, or possibly the next.

I wrote in my column Friday about a young Frank Zappa's appearance in 1963 on "The Steve Allen Show," in which Zappa, who then lived on Ontario's G Street, and Allen play a pair of bicycles as if they were musical instruments. A real pop-culture treasure. I noted that I'd seen the video clip on YouTube but that it had been removed before I could get the column into print.

This prompted notes from two readers who offer links to other sites where you can watch the video. First, here's Dawayne Bailey:

"I used to live in Alta Loma, CA in 1987 when I first joined the band Chicago as their new guitarist at the time. I lived near Carnelian Street. I'm also a huge Zappa fan/collector and have written songs with Jimmy Carl Black from The Mothers.

"Enjoy!!"

That link takes you to the full video. And I also got a note from Dominick, who sent me a link to the first half of the video, which you can view below:

"As a Zappa fan, I love it whenever you write about him in your column -- it makes my day.

"One little piece of Zappa/Ontario history I found interesting is in the book Zappa by Barry Miles. In one chapter he explains a time where he stole a Christmas tree from 'The Sav-ons around the corner.' This is when he lived in Ontario on G street, so I'm guessing it's referring to what is now the Rite-Aid near Euclid. I also wonder if he had to do anything with Ontario Music as I'm pretty sure it was around in the mid '60s. Just some random thoughts."

Dom, I've heard tales he used to buy guitar strings at Ontario Music, but that may just be local lore.

Thanks for the links, guys. The video has to be seen to be believed.

I like Wes Anderson's movies ("Rushmore," "The Royal Tenenbaums") but haven't really been entranced by them, and the last one, "The Life Aquatic," was a mess. Happily, his new one, "The Darjeeling Limited," now playing at the Claremont Laemmle, is pretty good stuff and one of the better movies I've seen in 2007.

To get in the spirit of the movie, which is set in India, my friends and I first ate at the nearby Delhi Palace Expresss. The buffet fare was only so-so, but with mango lassi and chicken tikka masala still perfuming our breath, we were primed for "Darjeeling."

It's probably Anderson's funniest movie to date, and his most colorful, literally. The inclusion of three melancholy songs by the Kinks, my favorite band, certainly didn't hurt its standing with me. Watching Adrien Brody run for the train in the beginning in slow motion will make you want to run in slow motion too.

Sunday evening I ventured to the Claremont Laemmle to see the new Ang Lee movie, "Lust, Caution." This is the first NC-17 movie to play Claremont and the first such movie produced in several years. It got the rating for its sexual content.

Slightly furtively, a friend and I bought tickets, gave them to the ticket-tearer and took our seats. The theater was two-thirds full with people of all ages. I think I saw a former councilwoman but under the circumstances decided not to make direct eye contact.

The story is set in China in the 1940s when Japan controlled the country. A Chinese collaborator with the Japanese regime is targeted by a group of amateur patriots from a drama troupe. A woman from their group manages to get close to him. Very close. NC-17 close.

Honestly, this was a classy movie and the two or three sex scenes were uncomfortable to watch (on purpose) but not especially long -- at least not relative to a movie that lasts 2:48. I doubt it was as shocking as the torture-porn of the "Saw" and "Hostel" movies that somehow get R ratings.

While I liked "Lust, Caution," it moves at, shall we say, a stately pace, and I don't see myself watching it again. It's very well made, and worth watching, but perhaps more to be admired than loved. In its final week, it's playing just one show a day, at 5 p.m., and ends Thursday. So if you're motivated to see it, this is no time for caution.

Unwittingly I participated in Lights Out LA, in which many county residents were encouraged to turn off at least one bulb between 8 and 9 p.m. Saturday, by going to the Claremont Forum from 8 to 10:30 p.m. for its first concert in its new home in the Packinghouse.

John York and Patrick Brayer, two Claremont fixtures, have performed together off and on for a decade. The duo shut down the Forum's longtime home on College Avenue a few months ago with a concert. (Because it was lightly attended, they did a second one.) Now they opened the new Forum musically.

Some 60 of us in folding chairs packed the place. York and Brayer performed in a portion of the room decorated with two floor lamps and a rug for a homey feel, York playing acoustic guitar, Brayer alternating between acoustic guitar, mandolin, violin and pedal steel.

They traded off lead vocal duties. Brayer did originals like "Freedumb" and "She's Pretty as Alcohol"; York covered "Walk Away, Renee" and "Highway 61 Revisited" and sang a few originals, including "The Earth is Getting Warmer," which he co-wrote with rock oddball Kim Fowley. He quipped that Fowley has a reputation as "the Darth Vader of rock."

The patter was friendly and warm, the musicianship sharp.

"We know there's other things you could be doing, so it's really cool that you're here," York said shortly before the final encore, a cover of "Go Now" (pertinent lyric: "We've already said goodbye...").

All in all, a fun evening, and one of those small-scale community events that makes you feel plugged in. Even when the lights are supposed to be off.

Claremont painter Karl Benjamin is suddenly ubiquitous (look it up), and that's a good thing. The New York Times had a piece on him Sunday (read it here), with an online slideshow to boot (view it here).

And the L.A. Times today notes he has work in a midcentury show at the Orange County Museum of Art (read that here). The LAT says the work of Benjamin and other "hard edge" painters "is about egalitarian perceptual liberation." I have no idea what this means. But I do know that I really dug Benjamin's show at the Claremont Museum of Art this summer.

As it happens, I got a very nice letter -- not an e-mail, a letter -- from Karl the other day. Among other topics, he touted the brand-new dba 256 wine bar/art gallery in Pomona, at 256 S. Main at Third Street (read about them here). I visited there on Wednesday and will have an item in Friday's column.

Saw "In the Shadow of the Moon" on Sunday, a documentary on the moon landings that interviews all the surviving astronauts except Neil Armstrong. Terrific stuff; the men, all or most in their 70s, are candid, funny and humble about their experience. I watched the moon landings on TV as a youngster, read space books and played with Major Matt Mason astronaut toys, so this documentary was right up my alley. It does a good job of recreating the period and the sense of wonder.

I saw the movie at the Claremont Laemmle, where it's playing through Thursday. Recommended.

Oh, and the Laemmle now has a marquee, on Indian Hill Boulevard, a feature that seems to have sprung up on Friday or Saturday as more green construction fencing came down. A welcome touch.

I dropped in Sunday at Scripps College's Ruth Williamson Gallery to see the Millard Sheets art exhibit.

Sheets was a titan in the Inland Valley's art scene, a watercolorist and muralist who taught art at Scripps from 1932 to 1955 and assembled exhibitions at the Fine Arts Building at the L.A. County Fair, giving the masses sometimes their first exposure to art. He also designed more than 40 mosaics for Home Savings bank branches.

The Williamson Gallery has some nice paintings of his on display through Oct. 14, from rural scenes -- including 1930s Claremont, Chino, Carbon Canyon and the Chino Hills -- to the California coast, urban L.A., Mexico, New Mexico and Hawaii. There's a second Sheets exhibit, at the county fair, that I hope to catch this week.

The Williamson Gallery show is at my kinda price -- free -- and you can find it at 11th Street and Columbia Avenue, open from 1 to 5 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday.

As I left the gallery, two middle-aged men passed me on the sidewalk, walking together and chatting. One was walking a small dog. The other was pushing a baby stroller. It carried two small dogs. In Claremont, the free entertainment never stops!