Joel Bellman, now an aide to L.A. County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, has penned a great piece for LAObserved about working as a clerk at Rhino Records in Claremont from 1977 to 1980.

An excerpt:

“The pay was modest – the first day, my wages included a second-hand copy of Neil Young’s ‘American Stars ‘n’ Bars’ – but I would gladly have paid them for the privilege. If there was ever a dream job, that was it.

“If you remember the film ‘High Fidelity,’ that was us. Yes, we, too used to run people out if we didn’t like their music, like the poor fellow who came in one day looking for a Village People album. ‘We don’t carry that kind of stuff,’ I sneered. ‘Why don’t you try The Wherehouse.’ And if they ever argued with us about our trade-in appraisal – they were dead. We almost bodily threw one grumbler out of the store – to the lusty cheers of the other patrons.”

Read the whole piece here.

Photo by Will Lester

Karl Benjamin in his Claremont studio in 2008

Karl Benjamin, a nationally renowned painter whose work achieved a 21st century vogue, died Thursday at age 86. He had lived in Claremont since 1952.

My Sunday column is about him. Read it here. You can also read his LA Times obituary here and visit his website here.

My friends and I have been fascinated with the fellow we call the Dancing Man ever since seeing the grayhaired Energizer Bunny dancing nonstop in the balcony at the LCD Soundsystem concert at the Fox Theater in Pomona in June 2010 and then, a month later, spotting him shaking his moneymaker at the Swell Season/She and Him/Bird and the Bee concert at the Hollywood Bowl. One friend has spotted him on three other occasions in L.A. since then, always at concerts, always dancing.

Watching “Shut Up and Play the Hits,” the LCD Soundsystem documentary, at the Claremont Laemmle 5 on Wednesday night, a friend and I were delighted to see the man onscreen for two seconds, dancing away. A half-dozen people in the row behind us gave a gasp of recognition, as if they too had seen him before. (My friend, by the way, was the same guy who told the Dancing Man to sit down at the Fox. He feels bad about it.)

I had to find out more. Turning to Google, I made the hail-Mary move of searching for “LCD Soundsystem dancing man.” Because the Internet is amazing, the second result was the above video, titled “Old guy dancing before LCD Soundsystem show at MSG.” It is, without a doubt, the Dancing Man!

The YouTube viewer comments:

“I remember this guy, and everyone loved him. let him rock, let him be.”

“i love this guy! ive seen him at the xx, local natives, and almost acoustic christmas this year. gotta give him props for having awesome taste in music and some pretty badass dance moves.”

“I FREAKIN LOVED THAT GUY!”

If anyone can identify him or put me in touch with him, I’d love to interview him. I don’t care if he lives in Santa Monica or San Bernardino, he’s a legend who deserves a newspaper column.

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.

Continue reading →

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.