The Crucible Comes To Radio

Arthur Miller's classic play The Crucible comes to the radio tonight on LA Theatre Work's The Plays The Thing.

This production features an All-star cast including Irene Aranga, Rene Auberjonois, Ed Begley Jr., Georgia Brown, Jack Coleman, Bud Cort, Richard Dreyfuss, Judyann Elder, Hector Elizondo, Fionnula Flanagan, Ann Hearne, Carol Kane, Stacy Keach, Anna Sophie Loewenberg, Marian Mercer, Franklyn Seales, Madolyn Smith, Joe Spano, and Michael York.

In the rigid theocracy of Salem, Massachusetts, rumors that women are practicing witchcraft galvanize the town. In the ruthlessness of the prosecutors and the eagerness of neighbor to testify against neighbor, The Crucible mirrors the anti-Communist hysteria in the 1950s.

Listen to The Plays The Thing on your favorite public radio station each Saturda. Or link through Bosco Radio Nostalgia and Entertainment each Saturday starting at 8 PM PST/11 PM EST. The program will be repeated at 10 PM PST.

Angels & Demons Delivers As Promised

Angels and Demons
Directed By Ron Howard
Four Scoops of Bosco

Science or religion? Wait, there's room for both.

If the world could be rendered as simple as Angels & Demons, we'd all be living in a less confusing place. Taking to heart the critics' lament that the first Dan Brown novel-to-film The Da Vinci Code was talky, static and arcane, director Ron Howard and his crew have worked hard to make Professor Robert Langdon's return a thrilling, faster-paced walk in the park.

It will be difficult for this papal mystery, beautifully shot in Rome and Rome-like locations, to gross less than its phenomenal predecessor, which topped $750 million worldwide for Sony Pictures in 2006.

Plucking the same violent, occult strings as "Da Vinci" while avoiding its leadenness, Angels keeps the action coming for the best part of 139 minutes. Scripters David Koepp and Akiva Goldsman have taken a firmer hand with Brown's material. The opening scene, for example, omits the hypersonic Vatican jet that transports crack Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) from Cambridge to Geneva in an hour, opting for more conventional means to get him to Rome and into the thick of the action.

Although this attack of realism might disappoint the book's die-hard fans, it pays off in depicting the Vatican as a fairly "normal" nation-state, and not as some all-powerful SMERSH-like nemesis. And in the end, most of those who attacked the film before seeing it on grounds of its being anti-Catholic will have to eat their words, as the warm-hearted ending casts a rosy glow around the College of Cardinals, the papacy and the faithful throngs in St. Peter's Square.

But back to the plot. The pope is dead, and the Catholic Church is preparing to elect a new one. The handsome young Camerlengo Patrick (Ewan McGregor), who was raised by the late pope, is heartbroken.

Whisked to the Vatican at the behest of Inspector Olivetti (fine Italian thesp Pierfrancesco Favino), Langdon learns that the four cardinals who are the most likely papal candidates have been kidnapped. In Vatican security, he meets scientist Vittoria Vetra (sultry Israeli actress Ayelet Zurer), privy to insider knowledge about how a cylinder of anti-matter was brutally stolen from the Cern labs in Geneva. It's child's play to put two and two together and realize that the Vatican is about to be blown up by the ticking bomb of anti-matter.

Into this futuristic world of protons and neutrons erupts the long-forgotten religious cult of the Illuminati, a group of 17th century forward thinkers who championed scientific truth and were forced underground by the Church. Now they're back, in the mysterious person of a fanatic assassin (Nikolaj Lie Kaas.)

Aided by Olivetti and the earnest young camerlengo, while hindered by deadpan Swiss Guards commander Richter (Stellan Skarsgard), Langdon goes about his semiotic business of pulling clues out of thin air.

The story line is brilliantly simplified into Langdon's search for the four cardinals, with Vetra and Olivetti as his sidekicks. His job is to find angel sculptures inside churches, which point to other churches. Black police cars race dangerously through the crowded Roman streets, always arriving five minutes too late to prevent the grisly death of an aged cardinal who has been branded with the words Earth, Air, Fire or Water. Hanks does a likable job of glossing over every implausibility, allowing the action to climax in gut-churning shots borrowed from cheap horror films.

Hanks fits more comfortably into the role of Langdon here, taking a moment to deliver some friendly one-liners. If Da Vinci was criticized for the lack of sexual chemistry between its protagonists, Angels simply refuses to suggest any kind of romance between Langdon and Vetra. Their total lack of a relationship is so stunning successful that it passes unnoticed.

This allows Koepp and Goldsman to concentrate on what the audience really wants to see: burning cardinals, spectacular explosions and incomparable studio reconstructions of Baroque Rome.

Reviewed by Deborah Young, Hollywood Reporter

Memorial Day 2009

Editor's Note: With today being Memorial Day...I thought it would be appropriate to repost this piece I wrote last year.

By Allen Bacon, Editor, The Daily Bosco

In Fullerton, California baseball is king. But in 1942 with war breaking out in Europe and our democracy being challenged, even baseball took a back seat in Fullerton to the war.

Almost forgotten that year in the events of the day, was the fact that Fullerton High School was busy working on another baseball championship and on the field was probably the best team ever assembled in Fullerton baseball history. And that's saying a lot for a town that has produced the likes of hall of famers Walter Johnson, Arky Vaughan, Gary Carter, Willard Herhberger and a guy that should be in the hall of fame...Del Crandall.

During the backdrop of the war, the boys of Fullerton rolled on to a League championship and then were taking out opponents right and left in the post season. Anchored by a tall, lanky righthander Vaughan Jones and his battery mate Kenny Sullivan the team was virtually unstoppable. Except this story takes an unexpected turn.

In 1942 two things were happening. Number one, most of the interest was going toward the war effort and not on high school sports. In the CIF (California Intersholastic Federation) that year it was not like today with multiple divisions based on high school size, etc. There was only a major winner which was San Diego that year and a minor winner which was Fullerton. Fullerton was supposed to play San Diego that year to determine on the field which was the better team. That game never happened.

That's because all the Senior boys and the popular coach of Fullerton High all went down before the season ended and enlisted in the military to serve their country. Most of those boys were in the battlefields by Summer. Most of the boys never got back home. Vaughan Jones the righthander was one of the 1942 Championship team that was killed in action that year.

Ken Sullivan, story was somewhat of a tragedy too. When you consider the fact that he was ticketed for the major leagues and could have added his name to the Hall of Famers from Fullerton. Ken took shrapnel to his leg and could barely walk. His baseball career was over. He was decorated for his service in World War II. He was a war hero.

Ken would go on to mentor the great Del Crandall as a catcher.

I met Ken six years ago while I was organizing the annual Fullerton High School Baseball Alumni Game and Reunion. He was not bitter about his life. He couldn't be...he had a great family, great friends, a wonderful career, but one thing he told me was not setting well with him all these years. The CIF never recognized the 1942 team as CIF champions. The official winner that year for baseball was San Diego. I tried to get the school to at least have a banner up with the other CIF Champions for the 1942 baseball team. They wouldn't do it.

Ken died recently. It's strange how life is sometimes. I have started a community newspaper in Fullerton and one of the first stories I wanted to do was on Ken and the 1942 FUHS baseball team. I was going to make a phone call to interview Ken but before I made that call I decided to do some preliminary background research on the team and the year 1942. That's when I ran across Ken's obituary.

A good friend of Ken's, Tom Gregory, picked up the ball and ran with the CIF recoginition. Fortunately, with Tom's hard work, last year CIF, reversed their ruling and officially made Fullerton High 1942 baseball team CIF champions.

But because they were war heroes and great men, they were always our champions.

Women In Racing: What Does It Take?

By Doug Vehle
For The
Daily Bosco

The Firesign Theatre comedy group said it best, Everything You Know is WRONG. Ray Harroun won the first Indy 500, right? Only the best can make it at Indy. Anyone from Fullerton High School knows that our old dance instructor was the first woman to drive an Indy car, right? Not true, women were getting the chance to take the Indy cars on the track for more than a decade before Arlene Hiss got behind the wheel of one. And the contention she was the first woman granted a competition license by then Indy car sanctioning body USAC (United States Auto Club) is wrong, too.

Women were running the USAC road racing series nearly two decades earlier, and if not for mechanical trouble a woman would have made the first qualifying attempt for the Indy 500 in 1962. All this before the 3 woman running this years' Indy 500 were even born. But many people continue to attribute a good many 'Firsts' to Arlene Hiss that in fact she never achieved, such as being the first woman to qualify for an Indy car race. So the story you hear about the struggles women have had in racing aren't all true. Embarrassing though it is, she has to admit she never qualified for the one race she started to become the first woman to actually race in an Indy car. Thus becoming the first woman to be humiliated in one. When she got into that racecar, did she have what it takes?

The 3 woman in today's race each have a first: Sarah Fisher is the first woman to be the fastest qualifier in an indy car race as well as the first "Hardluck" woman driver, Danica Patrick the first to lead the Indy 500, and Milka Duno is the first that it's okay to call a 'Crazy woman driver.' That last is an accomplishment for all of us, in that it means nobody is threatened at the thought of a woman failing. A far cry from 1976, when affirmative action was the order of the day, and you could have found yourself in grave danger if you asked how many feminists it took to screw in a lightbulb.

It's not that Arlene Hiss wasn't a regular race driver in her day. She had been the dominant driver in Showroom Stock class racing at Riverside International Raceway, and had been racing some 14 years when she showed up at the opening race in Phoenix. She lacked the usual unknown drivers experience in sprint and midget car racing, the throwback undersized versions of the Indy racers from the 1930's, so common among a driver who wasn't coming from such other major racing classes as Formula One and NASCAR looking for their first Indy start, and there's always been some question why she would have found a car available to her.

It helped that her soon to be exhusband Mike Hiss had been the Rookie of the Year for Indy cars 4 years earlier, and she'd been spending a lot of time among the racing teams. The rumors had circulated for some time about her getting her opportunity, and it is believed that, with driver Janet Guthrie making test runs for another team, there was a rush to get the known driver on the track first. If Guthrie didn't pan out, USAC would be spared accusations of sexism once this woman everyone knew had shown them how it was done.

So concerned for getting her into the race, and so comfortable that they knew she was a 'Real' racer, she didn't have complete the full rookie testing. There was some cursory test laps, some exercises as proving she could exit the car quickly in an emergency, and she was ready to race.

Or was she? There's no official explanation for her failure to qualify for what was to be her first major race of any kind. It's possible there were weather conditions that cut the session short, only 20 cars had official times. It was to be a 24 car race, and Hiss was one of two nonqualifiers added to the field. Several drivers who had previously won races and contended for the championship were not added, possibly because of mechanical problems that couldn't be corrected in time. So when the green flag came out, you would call the driver to enter the first turn in last place the first to drive in an indy car race.

What happened from there would immediately be obscured by much opinion and spin doctoring. There is no question that Hiss was dramatically slower than every other car on the track. The arguing ensues on the subject of the significance of that fact. Consider:

1) The Eagle car Arlene Hiss drove was 3 years old. At that time there was nothing unusual about older cars continuing to race. Her husband had been rookie of the year in the Indy 500 in a two year old car that had been the fastest qualifier in two thirds of the events one year earlier. National champions were sometimes driving 1-2 year old cars. The basic design of her car was still currently the production car of Dan Gurney's All American Racers, and other 3-5 year old Eagles were in the race running faster than her.. So while some try to dismiss her car as doomed from the beginning, that just isn't a supportable position.

2) More important is the lack of RELEVANT experience Arlene Hiss had going into this race. Mario Andretti, who was away from Indy cars racing in Formula One and not at Phoenix that day, offered the opinion that any woman who wished to race Indy cars should be expected to compete in the over 600hp sprint cars he had used as a stepping stone, same as so many other men of that era. The Showroom Stock car Hiss drove to race at Riverside was the same Opel Manta Rallye she drove to work at Fullerton High School. A 4 cylinder 88hp economy car with a top speed of 85mph. Driven in a conventional upright position, the driving style bore no resemblance to the reclined position she would be in to drive a car that would accelerate to over 200mph quicker than her Manta could reach 60. Meanwhile, Hiss was a veteran road racer, and there's a long history of the difficulties that even the top Formula One road racers experiencing difficulty transitioning into the more disorienting oval track racing. Formula One cockpits were and still are rather similar to Indy Car cockpits.

3) Bobby Unser had already been divorced 3 times by 1976. Only important when you consider the shouting matches with which he confronted both Hiss and Guthrie, just the way he handled women.

There is no question that Arlene Hiss was lapping the 1 mile Phoenix oval at about 85% of the speed of the other cars. The car at times wobbled in the turns, and when she eventually spun the car at a lower speed than other drivers were successfully negotiating the turns, she was 'Black Flagged' into the pits for a consultation. A male driver might have expected to have been kept out of the race, but when she proved coherent enough to be angry with the officials she was instantly allowed back on the track. USAC wanted it said she was given every opportunity and more. The 150 mile race ended with Hiss having driven just 128 miles.

What can be questioned is the basic attitude of Arlene Hiss. Either before or especially after the Phoenix debacle, she could have arrived at Saugus or another Southern California raceway seeking a chance to race in a sprint car, and savvy promoters would have found her a ride. As an SCCA driver of Showroom Stock and other classes, she was already licensed to drive the Formula 5000 series, which was created to run old Indy cars with street car V8 engines. Again, her notoriety would have won her a ride, and her presence in the final year of the Formula 5000 may have saved that series. These could have been used as stepping stones toward her getting back into an Indy car as a driver prepared rather than scared.

Instead she accepted the opportunity to enter a NASCAR event, where women were racing in the organizations' first year in 1949, then dropped from sight. Hiss would spend the next several years venting a verbal assault over the "Unfair treatment" she claimed to have received.

It would be Janet Guthrie who would be the first woman to qualify for the Indy 500. She would finish 9th while driving her 2nd start with a broken hand, wearing the same number 51 as Arlene Hiss two years earlier. This would make Guthrie the first to qualify for an Indy car race, since Hiss never qualified. She would also run her first NASCAR race before Hiss as a publicity stunt, becoming the first woman in a "Superspeedway" race, i.e. high banked track.

In 1992 Lyn St. James would become the first woman to be named rookie of the year for the Indy 500. Like Guthrie, she would ultimately be regarded as a respectable 'Also ran,' never accorded the status of being the first female front runner. That honor would go to Sara Fisher, who has struggled as much with the business aspects of gaining sponsorship as with the racing itself.

Sponsorship hasn't been a battle for the other two women in the race. Teen go kart champion Danica Patrick ran well in the Formula Ford Festival in England, gaining her the opportunity to race a car coowned by David Letterman in the Formula Atlantic series, which has replaced sprint cars as the primary stepping stone to Indy. She also appeared in a scantily clad pictorial in 'For Him Magazine,' which many see as her biggest step forward in gaining sponsorship for the big time. She has since become the first woman to win a major professional race, coming home first in an Indy car race in 2008.

With that finish, she succeeded Venezuelan supermodel/navy engineer Milka Duno as the most successful woman driver. Duno, who parlayed her modeling background and 4 technical masters degrees into a racing career, had finished 2nd at the 24 Hours of LeMans, at that time the best finish by a woman in a top event. Duno, however, hasn't won the same respect as the others. In her rookie start at Indy she didn't seem to notice that an accident had slowed every other car and had to brake hard at the last moment, putting her car into the wall as she lost control She proceeded to blame the officials for having just penalized her for wreckless while driving on pit road and breaking her concentration. Wrecked racecars have become the norm for her. Patrick would question her concentration after the two tangled on the track in another race; in a high profile confrontation in front of TV cameras Patrick asked if Duno had even SEEN her on the track before hitting her.

Duno would find another critic in actress Ashley Judd, the wife of Indy 500 winner Dario Franchitti, ". . . .they've got to get the 23 car (Duno) off the track. It's very dangerous. . . She shouldn't be out there. When a car is 10 miles (an hour) off the pace. . . People's lives are at stake." And yet Duno hasn't faced the same struggles for sponsorship that the more competitive Fisher has. Like Danica Patrick, she's been able to gain favorable magazine spreads which keep the attention, and there for the financial backing, in her corner. Plain Sara's recognition as arguably the best driver of the 3 hasn't helped her overcome the lack of looks. Which has also been a problem for possibly the best woman driver of them all, Katherine Legge, the only woman to win in Formula Atlantic races after coming home first 3 times. Legge has yet to find an opportunity to compete in the Indy 500, and is at least getting to race the Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters in Europe. There's still the first of being a woman with a big buck sponsor without having been offered a center spread in 'Playboy' magazine to be achieved.

But men can have the same problems getting sponsorship. Twice, after winning NASCAR championships, David Pearson was unable to find a fulltime sponsor for the following season. Former Indy 500 winner Parnelli Jones won the TransAm championship and lost his backing at the end of the season. Nobody ever wanted to look at pictures of those two. But 'Dancing with the Stars' champion and male model type Helio Castroneves was rushed from a federal courtroom in Miami when his trial for tax evasion concluded for a spectacular helicopter landing at the Long Beach Grand Prix so he could drive, afterall. So the women really are being treated just like the men.

Duno, meanwhile, has at least been considered favorable to Arlene Hiss. It's become a racing epithet to call someone "An Arlene Hiss." An uncompetitive driver might be defended with a statement like "At least he's no Arlene Hiss." And Duno has those who remind that she indeed is no Arlene Hiss. But I guess you can say women drivers have come a long way when it's okay to say you want her off the track. Even the women are saying that about Duno. It was a touchy subject to say that about Hiss even though she'd been a far greater hazard in her race. Today it's safe for me to say the punchline to the joke about how many feminists does it take to screw in a lightbulb. But I'll let YOU do it anyway.

Hiss, now in her 70's, left Fullerton High School long ago, but with a PhD she now teaches online for the University of Phoenix. She has stated she hoped for the obscurity that might befall another unsuccessful driver, but that obscurity has never come.

And just so you understand the reference to Ray Harroun and everything you know is wrong, he is regarded by those who know racing as the 4th place finisher in the first Indy 500. The scoreboard had been showing the leader as being Ralph Mulford, racing a street car he drove to the track, and he was announced to the crowd as the winner of the race in a climatic battle to the finish. But he arrived at the winners circle to find local hero Ray Harroun already getting the trophy. There was some arguing and shouting, and then a closed door meeting. The owner of Mulford's car left the meeting smiling, even though the hard earned victory was gone. Why was he smiling?

Carl Fisher, the originator of the race, lured Harroun out of retirement to run this first of what Fisher expected to be the premiere annual event of autoracing. As Fisher wanted Indianapolis to remain the nexus of American auto manufacturing, it was clear he'd prefer the local driver and his locally built Harmon Wasp as the winner. The owner of Mulford's car was known as a man who'd sell anything---at a profit. With the overwhelming success of the first 500 mile race, Fisher was in a position to buy anything he wanted, including a local winner to his race.

The explanation was offered to the disbelieving public that the confusion had resulted from the incident when a car crashed into the scoring scaffolding, scattering the crew. Harroun had been able to take the lead shortly afterward was the story. But Harroun had been a lap down at the time of the crash. How could he have made up that lap in such a short time?

Mulford drove his street car home, eventually it was sold as an ordinary used car. In spite of his successful racing career, Mulford himself lapsed into the same obscurity as Arlene Hiss craves. Harroun's Marmon Wasp has become a racing icon known as the official winner of the first 500, as you know it would. But everything you know is wrong.

Is One Story Really Worse Than Another?

By Doug Vehle, For The Daily Bosco

You might think a recession is a journalists dream: Write the story, then go find someone to interview experiencing the actual horrors you've already written about to make it his story. Listening to the little boy on the CBS radio news tonight, I could predict his story is occurring most any day, in any city, at any time in this country. Yet suddenly it's newsworthy, and the journalists are scrambling to present his story, and go home.

You almost don't even need to be told the story. Single mother loses her job, moves with son into motel in bad part of town. The family car is gone, and the unemployment checks soon will be. And the hope is going, too, after several sound bytes that include "We're running out of food. I'm trying to save food. . . ." by not eating, the story concludes with the sound of the little boy crying. We all know this formula well, it's used regularly. And right now, I'm sure numerous would be 'Rescuers' in the Salinas area are searching frantically for the boy and his mother, in their run down motel room.

And as some journalist gets ready to sleep soundly after witnessing this episode first hand, I have to wonder; Is this story really necessary? And do you really think it's somehow more urgent that we hear about this and less urgent we learn about how this has been made unavoidable? If this reporter had foreknowledge of how you might die a horrible death on a certain day, would he report on ways to prevent it, or mark his calendar to be there to cover it?

The post office came in my neighborhood a short time ago for the annual food drive. I really don't know if they hit the whole country on the same day or if they rotate about neighborhoods throughout the year, but on that Saturday I had $100 in cans for them. On Sunday there was a pair oblivious to their timing jumping in front of people walking up to the grocery store to repeat the same emotional rhetoric about woe at each one as they force a bag into the victims' hands. We had them outnumbered, and maybe the look on my face convinced them the other person they could choose at that moment was better prey, but I walked past while they were both up in someone's face with their 'Reporting' of the current need, and I was thinking that not only is the Post Office a more reputable conduit, but I'm always leery when there's such an act to go with it. And I'm not one who believes that 'Give more, more, MORE!' is the answer. I believe it's the problem.

Years back, after the success of the 'Live Aid' concert/telethon in raising over $50 million to deal with hunger in Africa, Willie Nelson staged 'Farm Aid' to stem the foreclosure of the American farms. After it raised $12 million you would expect the farmers to be grateful, but instead came the howls and finger pointing because it wasn't $50 million. In fact somehow they justified an indictment of Willie Nelson for promoting support for solutions that wouldn't require money, alleged as an act of evil that distracted from the 'Give money, give MORE money' mantra that was supposed to work on the heels of 'Live Aid.' And where do they think people will GET more money?

That I want to tell this CBS reporter with the interview of the child, "We know, we knew long before YOU did," doesn't begin to cover it. I want to tell him that he SHOULD be telling us things we don't already know. Instead of going to a cheap motel to confirm the story he knew he could report, he should go to Sacramento and find out WHY Arnold Schwartznegger thought that, at a time like this, he could first take another $1,000 per person every year from us in new taxes and then put a series of initiatives on the ballot asking us to PLEASE give a second $1,000 a year each voluntarily. There is a story I think needs to be reported.

And when you finish with that, could you track down the architects of the George W. Bush tax subsidy to help American manufacturers lay off American workers and export the jobs to China and get them to explain WHY they kept saying 'America will benefit from this?' They never actually told us WHY it was a good thing, and we'd all like to know, now that it sure seems like a BAD thing.

And perhaps this reporter could think he's clever when he says "To know what it's like to be a child in this recession, you have to walk a mile in his size 7 shoes." That's such an incredibly foolish remark, because WE ALREADY KNOW. We never needed his performance art news report to know anything about what's happening to this or any child in a bad spot. We've seen it all before. What we need to know is, why are we doomed to repeat a past we have never forgotten?

We know 'Economic Stimulation' destroys the economy. We know 'Offshoring' destroys the economy. And we know raising taxes destroys the economy. What we don't know is why the politicians are so determined to inflict more hair of the dog that bit us when it's long proven this will only make things worse. I always thought the journalists were supposed to find that out for us.

So why don't the journalists report news? Did the reporter interview this child in 1989? 1969? It was the same story each of those decades, you probably could even find people with the same names. Yes, we know a third of the country is in trouble. Yes, we know it's getting worse. That's not news. Why do journalists think we need them to repeat themselves? If the reporter wins the award he's telling himself he should, will it be dated 1929?

If the knee jerk reaction crowd in Salinas find the mother and son to rain their rescue upon, I would expect they'll find a little different circumstance than what they were looking for. The little boy and his mother I'm sure have received food from the local foodbank, I actually wonder how much effort the reporter had to put into coaching the kid to give him the tearjerker starvation angle. That whole emotionally overwrought scene worked to death by the reporter probably isn't so desperate on any one day as he'd have us believe. And they'll be getting more now that the Post Office has collected it. No, food banks aren't the answer, but they take the bleeding edge off a crisis. It won't find them a better place to stay than that motel, or even keep them there when the unemployment check runs out. Nor will his being interviewed for CBS radio. The reporter sure didn't do anything to make his life better.

I have no idea what people trying to collect food the very next day will do with it, but the real foodbanks already knew there was a Post Office campaign that weekend. But please, no more reporting on phony charities, we've heard that before too. For once, it's time to do something that means something.

What we need to hear about is when is the leadership going to stop meeting Einstein's definition of insanity by making the same mistakes over and over again, promising us a different result this time. So instead of proving to us that Salinas really does have the same problems that we have on our own block, when will the socalled reporters of the news finally start showing us that the leadership just doesn't want to fix anything?

Or can they not figure out how to tell a story if it hasn't been told a thousand times before?

Hubble Ready To Complete Mission

After five grueling space walks, seven astronauts have the Hubble Space Telescope ready to complete its mission of looking toward the beginning of time. Tuesday, on the To the Point radio program, what questions about the universe might finally be answered? What's the future of the manned space program now?

To The Point, a national talk show hosted by Journalism veteran Warren Olney can be heard daily on your favorite public radio station. Listen online starting at 12 PM PST/3 PM EST at kcrw.com or link to the show via Bosco Radio: News and Information. The link is in our sidebar.

The Limits of Jim Jarmusch

The Limits of Control
Directed by Jim Jarmusch
Four Scoops of Bosco

The Limits of Control reveals the limits of director Jim Jarmusch, whose movies tend to be melancholy meditations on male soloism. He's explored this territory for years, from the wandering loneliness of a Manhattan hipster in 1984's Stranger Than Paradise to the wandering loneliness of a past-his-prime Don Juan in 2005's Broken Flowers. Those movies are quiet and contemplative and a bit remote, but they at least have characters who begin to feel and change and wrangle with their self-imposed isolation. The Limits of Control has no emotion, no compelling characters, no unity of effect and, consequently, no good reason to be seen.

It does have great actors slumming as vague philosophical notions, though. Bill Murray, Tilda Swinton, John Hurt and Gael García Bernal pass in front of Jarmusch's camera and say weird things: non sequiturs, platitudes, riddles. A lone man in a sharkskin suit (played by French African actor Isaach De Bankolé) encounters each of them while on an undefined criminal mission in Spain. He must rely on these strange people to lead him from clue to clue, location to location, till he arrives at his mark. It's kind of like Alice in Wonderland, but without any sense of wonder or discovery or even dread.

Case in point: About halfway through the movie, the lone man has a rendezvous with Swinton's character, who is costumed in a white wig, white cowboy hat, white trench coat, white boots and white-framed sunglasses.

They sit at a cafe. She orders a water. He orders two espressos.

"Sometimes, I like it in films when people just sit there, not saying anything," the Swinton character says.

And then they sit there, not saying anything.

Other lines are equally aggravating: "Reality is arbitrary." "The universe has no center and no edges." "Among us there are those that are not among us." And "The best films are like dreams you're never sure you really had."

And the dumbest films are like waking nightmares.

Jarmusch has taken the idea of a caper, drained it of plot and action and suspense, and set it against an absurdist background, where every symbol and person and incident should convey meaning but doesn't. He's tried to make a movie about how people create and perceive their own realities but are still subject to the controlling realities of others. But the film has no hook, no payoff and only a handful of shots and scenes that can be enjoyed for their visual beauty and composition.

Jarmusch would've been wise to pass his script to David Lynch, who is the master of stringing together bewildering images into something cogent and moving, even if we're not sure what the heck is happening on-screen.

The failure of "The Limits of Control" is not for lack of artistic inspiration. The title is borrowed from the 1975 essay by William S. Burroughs, the movie begins with a quotation from Arthur Rimbaud's 1871 poem "The Drunken Boat," and Jarmusch has said that the film draws elements from John Boorman's 1967 loner-on-a-mission film "Point Blank," which had Lee Marvin as the single-minded man on a perplexing journey. But "The Limits of Control" lacks the manic intelligence of the essay, the sensory delights of the poem and the wacky thrills of the Boorman movie.

If anything, The Limits of Control unintentionally becomes an example of a broken connection between a director and his audience. Unlike the lone man played by De Bankolé, the viewer will accept only so much flimflam in the course of a mission. The limit of Jim Jarmusch's control over the viewer is the exact point the movie starts unspooling on-screen.

By Dan Zak, Washington Post

On Farrah, Waymon, Dad and Cancer

By Allen Bacon, Editor, The Daily Bosco

I was never a big fan of Farrah Fawcett. I was probably the only teenage male in America that didn't have that sexy poster of her above my bed in the 70's. This is probably due in part to my life-long phobia and mistrust of anybody and anything blonde.

My brother is blonde...when his head isn't shaven. My first crush when I was five years old was blonde and then she broke my heart. My first girlfriend was blonde and she broke my heart. Recently I think I have made a breakthrough on this...I got a blonde dog and he hasn't broken my heart...yet. But I digress.

I became a fan of Farrah Fawcett last night when I saw her television documentary Farrah's Story on her courageous battle with cancer. I wanted to dismiss the show as somebody that was trying to soak up one last second of fame before they left us...but I came away with a totally different perspective.

I applaud Fawcett's courage and strength in her battle with cancer but if you want to boil the two hour show down to the basics...you have to go back to the fact that her cancer maybe could have been prevented with a routine colonoscopy. I wonder how many people got the message and are being inspired or at least having conversations to get to the Doctor's and Health care facility soon to get themselves checked out? That was the power of the show I saw last night.

The documentary showed also the effects on the family and friends. If that isn't power enough to get yourself checked to try to avoid the heartache to your loved ones...nothing will.

Then I read this morning about Waymon Tisdale who passed away from cancer. Tisdale was an outstanding College and NBA basketball player who I admired. But I really became a fan of Tisdale when he started his second life as a wonderful jazz musician.

The only way Tisdale found out he had cancer was when he broke his leg a couple years ago. That's when the Doctors discovered a cyst. Maybe...just maybe...if they caught it earlier Waymon Tisdale would still be with us.

Last year, my dad became a cancer survivor. He went in for a long overdue colonoscopy when he wasn't feeling quite right and they found a malignent tumor the Doctor called the biggest he had ever seen. Fortunately, the ensuing surgery got the tumor out. He and our family got lucky. But sometimes when you go in for a colonoscopy when you're not feeling good...then it's usually too late.

I guess the whole point of these stories is...get yourself checked and checked regularly.

I may be a little selfish. I want you around as long as possible.

Indigo Girls Mix It Up on Poseidon

Indigo Girls
Poseidon and the Bitter Bug
Self-Released
Four Scoops of Bosco

Indigo Girls Emily Saliers and Amy Ray have been playing together for 20 years, and Poseidon and the Bitter Bug is their 13th album. By now, they've learned how to anticipate each other's artistic direction and that long-nurtured synergy shows on Poseidon.

It's an interesting creative statement to record the same album twice—once with a full band and a second time where the songs are presented in their most stripped-down acoustic version. Indigo Girls started their career as an acoustic duo, so songs that focus entirely around their intricate harmonies and a slow-swelling chunky guitar strum are really their greatest strength. So, it's not surprising that the acoustic disc resonates a little more.

Ray and Saliers have, through the years, become incredibly adept at the range of sounds and emotions that can be communicated on wooden instruments, and it's impressive to hear how loud and rocking they can turn these songs on their own without electronics ("Ghost of the Gang" | purchase/download), before dropping back to a softer, more earnest near-whisper ("I'll Change" | purchase/download).

What's impressive about the Indigo Girls is that, when they add a full band and extra instrumentation, they do so tactfully without sacrificing any of the emotion or intent of the acoustic song. And yet, the full band disc leaves me wondering if it's necessary to add all those instruments when they don't really change the song that much.

Given the option, I find myself gravitating toward the acoustic album simply because the full band disc isn't different enough to give me anything I can't find on the acoustic album. Luckily, the songs on Poseidon and the Bitter Bug are so good that there's nothing about which to be truly disappointed.

On their last few records, the Indigo Girls have seemed to be a little more tucked in their differing styles: Saliers' songs are reserved and emotional ballads, while Ray's contributions rock harder. It's hard to tell whether this was the direction they were going creatively or if it's something their labels were encouraging. Poseidon and the Bitter Bug sees their collaboration back to a more balanced existence. It no longer feels like a musical tennis match and the songs benefit from the creative cohesion.

Clearly there will be a number of hard-core Indigo Girls fans who will love both the electric and acoustic versions, but most folks will gravitate toward one or the other. It's fun to hear the experimentation on tunes like "Driver Education," which Ray resurrected from her solo career to re-present here in two new ways (acoustic | electric). The good news is, whether fans gravitate to the acoustic version or the full band version, they will have an excellent collection of songs to uncover.

By Kim Ruehl, About.com

Maria Taylor Flies Solo

Maria Taylor
LadyLuck
Nettwerk Records
Four Scoops of Bosco

After a stint with popular dream-pop duo Azure Ray and a pair of well-received solo albums, indie folkstress Maria Taylor left behind the cozy confines of the Omaha, NE, music scene for the hustle and bustle of Los Angeles. A 2008 EP, “Savannah Drive,” hinted that Taylor’s music was moving in a more stripped-down, acoustic direction, but that turned about to be a red herring; her latest, LadyLuck, is full of pop swagger and ambitious arrangements.

Taylor worked with four different producers on LadyLuck —including Mike Mogis of Bright Eyes fame, L.A. singer/songwriter Nik Freitas, Now It’s Overhead’s Andy LeMaster and Lukas Burton, a former Dido producer—and the variety suits her well, allowing most of these songs to crawl out from under the warm blanket of her pretty but often drowsy vocals.

Strings buoy Taylor’s bittersweet melodies on “Time Lapse Lifeline” and the backstage romance “Broad Daylight,” while nicely layered keyboards and background vocals give “It’s Time” and “100,000 Times” just the right amount of modern pop polish. L.A. seems to suit Taylor just fine, making “LadyLuck” her most fully realized effort to date.

Taylor and LeMaster co-wrote the very R.E.M.-ish album closer “Cartoons and Forever Plans” with Michael Stipe, who also contributes background vocals.

Maria Taylor performs live on the Morning Becomes Eclectic Radio Program Tuesday morning. The show can be heard live beginning at 9AM PST/Noon EST on www.kcrw.com or in the Los Angeles area on KCRW 89.9 FM. Also link to the show via our sidebar under Bosco Radio: Music

Review By Andy Hermann, Metromix

Just Call It My TV

By Allen Bacon, Editor, The Daily Bosco

It may just be me, but have you ever noticed that the email you receive during the course of a day closely resembles programming on a television station?

During the morning and through the afternoon I get a lot of emails for business. This is like my CNBC or CNN. My business and news channel. Frequently updated, it's my lifeblood to my business. Deals are finalized, industry newsletters are received, business appointments are made.

In Primetime (after 8 PM) there is a lot of interesting Reality Email happening. Thanks to Facebook all this stuff is ending up on my email. Forget the Osbournes or the Kardashians or Dancing With the Stars. There is a lot of interesting stuff happening on my email.

Bob is up and pacing the floor about his daughter staying out too late on a school night. George is stuck in a Hotel on a business trip in Dallas and misses his wife. Cousin Erik still hates the Redwings. Andy just confirmed he is my friend.

Then there is Late Night. The best thing about late night is my friend Doug Vehle's emails. I call this Late Night With Doug Vehle. This is when Doug likes to write. Doug may be a vampire...I haven't confirmed this yet. Doug's emails are like watching a combination of Charlie Rose and Jimmy Fallon. He sends me these great articles he has written that end up here. He sends me well thought-out responses to my posts. He sends me links to these interesting articles he's seen.

Then after that emails get really weird. After 1 AM it's like a steady stream of infomercials. People are hawking everything from Erectile Dysfunction drugs to something called a Sham-wow to some guy who wants to put a million dollars into my bank account.

I better get back to the emails...another broadcast day is about to begin.

Mothers Day 2009

Before I was a Mom -
I slept as late as I wanted and never worried about how late I got into bed. I brushed my hair and my teeth everyday.

Before I was a Mom -
I cleaned my house each day. I never tripped over toys or forgot words to a lullaby. I didn't worry whether or not my plants were poisonous. I never thought about immunizations.

Before I was a Mom -
I had never been puked on - Pooped on - Spit on - Chewed on, or Peed on. I had complete control of my mind and My thoughts. I slept all night.

Before I was a Mom -
I never held down a screaming child so that doctors could do tests...or give shots. I never looked into teary eyes and cried. I never got gloriously happy over a simple grin. I never sat up late hours at night watching a baby sleep.

Before I was a Mom -
I never held a sleeping baby just because I didn't want to put it down. I never felt my heart break into a million pieces when I couldn't stop the hurt. I never knew that something so small could affect my life so much. I never knew that I could love someone so much. I never knew I would love being a Mom.

Before I was a Mom -
I didn't know the feeling of having my heart outside my body. I didn't know how special it could feel to feed a hungry baby. I didn't know that bond between a mother and her child. I didn't know that something so small could make me feel so important.

Before I was a Mom -
I had never gotten up in the middle of the night every 10 minutes to make sure all was okay. I had never known The warmth, The joy, The love, The heartache, The wonderment or the satisfaction of being a Mom. I didn't know I was capable of feeling so much before I was a Mom.

Anonymous

Boldly Going Where Others Have Gone Before

Star Trek
Directed By JJ Abrams
Four Scoops of Bosco

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then J.J. Abrams' reboot (and reinvigoration) of the Star Trek series can be looked at as both a big sloppy wet kiss to the late Gene Roddenberry, or a sneering middle finger flashed in the direction of the sci-fi impresario.

On the one hand, Abrams lovingly recreates the universe conceived by Roddenberry, with so many nods to tradition, and Trekkie-centric in-jokes that you'll need a scorecard to keep up. On the other, Abrams starts the movie with a history-altering time-travel event that essentially allows him to rewrite the entire Star Trek mythology from scratch. Yes, this is a prequel, and the events of the television series and the ad nauseum pileup of subsequent films haven't happened yet. But Abrams goes a step farther and says that most of these things are never going to happen.

In the film's first sequence, the newborn James T. Kirk's father is killed in the act of saving baby Kirk and his mother from time traveling Romulans from the future, and this act has a ripple effect that changes the fortunes of every character in the series.

It's a neat trick, and it's going to piss off the convention-going, pointy prosthetic-eared crowd to no end. But in terms of finding fresh life in a universe that long ago went stale, it's a stroke of genius. Let's face it, Star Trek movies stopped pretending they were for anyone but die hard fans a good while back, a fact to which their modest budgets and increasingly modest box office success attested. Once they completely jumped the humpback whale shark in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, general audiences could be excused for caring less and less. And as good as Wrath of Khan is, it still feels like medium-budget soundstage science fiction.

Its worlds rarely feel bigger than a studio backlot. The underrated Star Trek: The Motion Picture, unfairly maligned for having the temerity to try out a more thoughtful, less action-oriented tone than the TV series, is really the only entry in the entire series that had a broad sense of scope, that paints to the edges of the canvas. Until now.

The look of the film is the first thing that Abrams does right. Star Trek is a visual marvel. And it ought to be: the movie's budget is roughly equal to the last three films in the franchise combined. But more importantly, Abrams uses all that cash wisely; one need only look at the lackluster Wolverine to know that throwing $150 million at a movie is no guarantee of satisfying eye candy.

Here, space looks infinite and majestic. The Enterprise looks like a complex, real piece of technology. In fact, once you get down within the guts of the ship, it's all miles and miles of industrial piping, lacking any futuristic gloss at all, which seems far more likely than some of the previous visions of 23rd century engineering in the series. And the impressive action sequences have an epic sweep that blow away anything in the previous films.

Abrams is a natural movie director who has made his mark in television, unlike previous Trek directors like Leonard Nimoy and Jonathan Frakes, who are TV guys making an often shaky leap to the larger world of film. And Abrams' greater facility with the medium comes through at every turn.

More importantly, Abrams is a franchise-minded entertainer, which is why he's done so well on television, and why Roddenberry would probably grudgingly adore what he's done here, even if Abrams does so with such a blatant disregard for the starship that Gene built. But where Roddenberry was all about message, Abrams — as any Lost fan will tell you — is all about character.

Not content to just make this the Spock and Kirk show, with supporting players largely reduced to broad strokes, Abrams makes it clear that he's interested in Star Trek as an ongoing ensemble piece. He's aided by the fact that in making this an origin story, he's expected to flesh out these characters' histories. But he goes farther than that, making many of these characters richer in these two hours than they ever were in the past. Chief among these improvements is the increased role given to Uhura, who is no longer relegated to being a glorified switchboard operator: she's now an expert linguist, more adept with languages straight out of Starfleet Academy than the Communications Officer she replaces on the Enterprise.

Scotty, on the other hand, is still mostly here for comic relief, and still somewhat underused, (particularly taking into account the considerable comedic talents Simon Pegg brings to the role and the obvious glee he takes in it), but his character is set up for a much larger role in future sequels. And you can bet Abrams is planning on spinning this story out in multiple sequels.

Thing is, you actually want to see what happens next to this crew. A big part of that are the uniformly strong performances. Karl Urban is particularly engaging as McCoy, perfectly imitating the Doctor's Mississippi drawl without ever descending into caricature. And Chris Pine goes the opposite direction with Kirk, avoiding Shatner-esque dramatic pauses entirely, wisely not delivering even a hint of the most mocked speech pattern in pop culture. These performances, and the great character drama that they're engaged in, is in fact so thoroughly entertaining that the climax of this film is a slight let down.

Not only is it disappointing to have to leave this crew, but it feels perfunctory and nearly an afterthought, driven mainly by the need to tie up the story. Here's where Abrams' TV pedigree shows: he's just not used to having to wrap up a story in two hours. Luckily, Star Trek is good enough that this doesn't have to be the end of the story. And for those of us who aren't dogmatic fans of the franchise, there's a reason to actually be interested again.

By Ian Buckwalter, DCist

Chris Isaak Gets Lucky

Chris Isaak
Mr. Lucky
Reprise
Four Scoops of Bosco

Nobody cries like dreamboat crooner Chris Isaak does. In fact, he's got a song on his new album called "You Don't Cry Like I Do." The man has either had the worst run of bad relationships ever or just wisely recognizes that the hitch in his throat and his butter-melting falsetto work best when he's pining, lamenting, beseeching, or otherwise bringing the high, Orbison-ian drama.

Either way, he continues to deliver the goods on "Lucky" by singing about the unlucky. Among the cast of lonely hearts are the bitterly betrayed man doing the slow burn on "Cheater's Town" and the remorseful heartbreaker who knows "it's easy to say what you want to believe" on the lovely, melancholy "We Let Her Down."

Even the happy shouter of the rollicking "Mr. Lonely Man" is wondering how he can dry his tears and get the girl back. A couple of gifted ladies - Trisha Yearwood and Michelle Branch - show up to offer sweet harmonies and more Kleenex.

Isaak's effervescent side pokes through as well from the swaggering galoot taking a bite out of the "Big Wide Wonderful World" to the optimist ambling through the New Orleans-flavored jaunt "We've Got Tomorrow." Broken or healed, Isaak, doesn't need luck - he's got talent.

Sarah Rodman, Boston Globe

Indy's "30 Days In May" Starts Today

By Doug Vehle, For The Daily Bosco

"He was all speed. I don't believe he ever thought in terms of money. He made millions, but they were incidental. He often said, 'I just like to see the dirt fly.'"
Jane Fisher, Ex Wife of Carl Fisher

They used to call it '30 Days in May,' words that always gave me the same sense of anticipation as our Editor in Chief gets from 'Pitchers and catchers REPORT.' But with raceday scheduled for May 24th, the track officially opening today demonstrates that, no matter how much more goes into today's cars than in the past, the technology has also advanced to make them less tempermental. Auto racing continues to play its' role of sharpening the cutting edge of the development of the automobile, in this 100th year since the opening of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

2009 is proving a success through the concept of addition by subtraction. NASCAR has faced huge cuts in financial support to the teams, who have adapted well and performed at a much lower cost without a hiccup in the performance. Several forms of racing are giving up petroleum power and developing alternative fuels made from things like switchback grass. And even in failure, Formula One racing has provided a valuable service in the attempt to develop the KERS (Kinetic Energy Recovery System) technology this year.

As ten separate teams with their own technological approach struggled to put the tantalizing prospect of regenerative braking to use in converting the energy lost in slowing the car into electricity to accelerate again, they proved that current technology is currently too heavy to build an effective system. Even with some of the greatest automotive developers in the world bringing multimillion dollar budgets to previously under funded study groups that had worked on the problem for decades, only the mechanical flywheel system of the Williams team has showed promise. And yet we can expect the photostatic and thermostatic technology to just keep getting lighter, as time goes on. The Formula One approach of giving the teams regular engineering questions to solve in building each years' car will continue to provide answers, though not always the answers we were hoping for.

So Indy has completed rookie/refresher testing and advances to practice at large with the darkest of the looming economic storm clouds hanging over the American automotive industry. 'Americans just can't build cars like the foreigners can.' Any idle tongue wagger can tell you that. 'It's only a matter of time before the overseas automakers push the U.S. out of the market completely.'

But as the saying goes, the more things change, the more they stay the same. That's exactly what the wags were saying in 1909 when the Indianapolis Motor Speedway held its' first race. That's the reason the track was even built. The American automotive industry may owe its' salvation to the same man who brought us 'The Greatest Spectacle in Racing.'

Carl Fisher made his place in competition and in racing at a very young age. His success in bike racing on the old board tracks, the forerunner to the Velodrome, gave him the opportunity to open his own bicycle shop at the age of 17. At that time, the bicycle craze was sweeping the nation, and who better to buy your bike from than the local reigning champion? This was a time when your bicycle was bound to have been built by the shop itself. And Fisher was promoting the new 'Safety bike' design, the front wheel smaller and the rear wheel larger than the old style bicycle that people were falling off of. Fisher quickly became a wealthy young man.

A trip to France found Fisher a new passion, as he brought home a French made car. He may well have become the first 'Car Guy,' as he immediately contracted the construction of his own 'Hot Rod' for show as well as for racing. He did open what is believed to be the first automotive dealership in the United States, located in Indianapolis, Indiana. To promote the Stoddard Dayton car built by John Stoddard in Dayton, Ohio, Fisher would push a full size car off the roof of an 8 story building in front of a gaping crowd, who watched the car bounce and come to rest right side up. Fisher then came down to the car and started it up, hoping to drive for the crowd but in fact being trapped as they clustered about. You had to feel safe in this car, was the message Fisher was getting across.

Later, Fisher told the public that he'd be flying his Stoddard Dayton overhead with a balloon for a great distance, then would drive the car back into town, with the folded balloon tucked into the back. Indeed, the people of Indianapolis looked up to see Fisher waving from his car, suspended from a hot air balloon. As he drove into town, he told the gathering throngs that he in fact had to drive back in a different car, it had been necessary to remove the engine to make it light enough to be lifted. The advertising message became "The first car to fly over Indianapolis should be YOUR first car."

Fisher's automotive success was moving far faster than the bicycle industry ever had. With his bike racing friend James Allison, he founded Presto-Lite, the first automotive headlight system you would see on all cars with headlights before World War I, the tank on the front of such a car providing the acetylene gas for the lamps. When he sold the company (For $9 million) to Union Carbide, he then accidentally drove them from the automotive business (They still exist in the welding industry) by developing an electrical system for automobiles to enable the use of a starter motor, thus making possible a less dangerous headlamp that didn't need to be refueled. He would eventually help set up an engine company with Allison at the helm to provide service at the racetrack. This being the Allison Engine division of General Motors.

For all his own success, Fisher was well aware the automotive industry wasn't taking hold in the United States. The average family could never hope to afford the 3 years income it would take to buy a Stoddard Dayton or similar car. By the time he left on a trip thru Europe in 1907, the most common motorized transportation in America was an old buckboard wagon with a less than one horsepower engine fitted by "Friction drive" to one wheel, and a steering arm attached to the yoke where the horses were supposed to pull. Briggs and Stratton had responded by offering the "Power wheel," a fifth wheel much like an outboard motor for the back of a wagon, and the "June Bug," a small cart with a steering wheel driven by the power wheel. Motored transportation in America was remaining as primitive as the horse drawn wagon, which was still prevalent.

After marveling at the overseas cars that could "Go uphill faster than ours can go downhill," at a price the less than wealthy could afford, he had the chance to tour several test tracks, used as automotive proving grounds. While American autos had gone racing on the same short circles used for horses, turning left for a mile or less to determine a winner, the Europeans were accustomed to "Steeple Chases," horse and rider enduring an obstacle course at a greater distance. This gave birth to the traditions of Americans racing ovals and Europeans on road courses, but also provided a sterner test for European racers. And the Europeans had indeed built proving ground tracks, some over 3 miles over the closed course. Fisher would return home not only to see that increasing numbers were having foreign cars shipped to America, as he'd done 4 years earlier, but that Ford's answer had been the Model T, an inexpensive car that is regarded, all aspects of the era considered, the worst mass produced car ever made throughout history.

Fisher was a man like many Americans: Just couldn't stand the thought of another country beating us at ANYTHING, especially something that we created. And the man who was deciding to tackle this problem had overcome near blindness as a child to become one of the great bicycle racers of his era. Possibly the rigorous life he had overtaken caused the inexplicable improvement in his vision, or perhaps it was just his sheer determination to see things clearly. So now he had found his next mountaintop to look to: He was going to save the American auto industry.

Indianapolis, at the time, was the epicenter their manufacture in 1908. So it made sense to Fisher that his proving ground should be right there. And it should be bigger and better than anything the Europeans had, so he wanted a 5 mile track. But where could he find enough land, in one parcel, for his facility?

He would have to settle for a 2.5 mile oval track. Along with Allison, he enlisted Arthur Newby of the Indianapolis based National Motor Vehicle Company and Frank Wheeler of the Wheeler-Schebler Carburetor Company to build what amounted to a board track like none other seen. This accomplishment alone would make it possible four years later for Fisher to build the Lincoln Highway from New York to San Francisco, paid for solely by donations from auto makers and former Presidents of the United States.

But there would be a rough four years in-between. Being first to build the track meant being the first to learn the dangers. A crumbling track surface and other vulnerable aspects led to injuries and deaths to both the participants and spectators of that first race in 1909. Fisher had already suffered numerous injuries during exhibitions of his cars, and was already a champion for developing safety. The track was resurfaced with 3.2 million bricks, creating the still surviving nickname, 'The Brickyard.' Fisher personally began to drive a "Safety Car," which would take to the track to lead the other cars through the wreckage if there was an accident.

Racing cars, bicycles, motorcycles, and even balloons for paying audiences was supposed to pay for the operation of the track, as automotive testing would never be profitable. But grand as the new track was, it wasn't capturing the imagination of the public. Of course that would take time, but time was money, and they were running out of both. Yet the foundation was there. As new as auto racing was, what would be the true spirit of it was still to be discovered. But the Memorial Day weekend crowd in 1910 might be witness to history in seeing the sort of drama that most stirs racing fans to this day. On Saturday, a car tumbled ominously to a stop in front of a silent crowd, who cheered when local driver Ray Harroun stepped out of the wreck without serious injuries. His weekend seemed to be over.

Yet his car, built by local manufacturer Marmon, benefited from the closeness of the factory in being rebuilt over night and won the main event, the Wheeler-Schebler Trophy Race that was the first Memorial Day event the track would hold. 1910 would be his biggest year of racing, and while the American Auto Club was struggling with devising a method for picking a National Champion it would come as no surprise when the formula was settled years later that he'd be granted the title for that year. Auto racing was still just a hobby at the time, and Harroun would decide after 1910 to focus on his engineering career and leave the racing to others.

Carl Fisher would have other plans for Harroun, recognizing that a hero driver in a local car would go a long way in bringing fans to his envisioned automotive capital of the world, to see what he intended to be the Greatest Spectacle in Racing.
-

"If you look at Fisher's entire life, it's a marathon. It's a race. It was a race to achieve the top of whatever field he was in at the time. Everything he did he went into it with his heart, his soul, his money, and he would not stop until he reached the end. He wanted to be there the quickest and first..."
-Historian Howard Kleinburg

Gomez Carries On

Gomez
A New Tide
ATO Records
Four Scoops of Bosco

Being a Gomez fan can be lonely. It can also be confounding. The British quintet has never broken through in the States, despite making hooky, dynamic rock music that splits the difference between Britpop and American roots, and boasts one of the best singers in the biz in Ben Ottewell.

His otherworldly voice is husky yet warm, coming at the listener in stacked textures. The perfect delivery system for emotion. To the band’s credit - or detriment, depending on how you see it - Ottewell splits lead vocal duties with Ian Ball, an appealing singer but one with a more conventional tenor.

A New Tide, the band’s sixth studio album since breaking onto the English scene in 1998, sort of carries on, offering neither revelation nor disappointment. But the sorry state of ProTools rock that rules the airwaves these days makes A New Tide sound pretty damn good.

As is the Gomez custom, many of these songs start out airily, with a few verses delivered over lilting acoustic guitar arpeggios, which then give way to more energetic and dense segments. While the band arguably overuses the technique, it consistently works. On some songs better than others: “Win Park Slope” begins with an ominous, bluesy slide guitar slithering around a low cello part; at about the halfway point the drums kick in harder, the vocals thicken and the whole thing builds to a luscious crescendo.

If anything, A New Tide suffers a bit from a lack of true rocking segments, but that also leaves room for some fetching sonic detail: hard-plucked standup bass; a mandolin standing in for acoustic guitar; raiding Brian Wilson’s junk drawer and including the deep wheeze of a bass harmonica.

In the final analysis, A New Tide is a merely good album by a really good band. You could do far, far worse than that.

By Eric Snider, Creativeloafing.com

Feeling The Blues With Paging Beto

Paging Beto (Blues Band)
Next Show: Sat. May 9, 2009
The Vibe, Riverside, CA
Five Scoops of Bosco

By Allen Bacon, Editor, The Daily Bosco

A few months back I really got into the film and accompanying albums based on the story of the legendary Chess Records out of Chicago. The movie, Cadillac Records, really captured my imagination because of the legendary blues artists that were portrayed. Folks like Little Walter, Muddy Waters, and Howlin' Wolf. It made me wish that I could somehow go back in time and actually be sitting there in those smoky clubs where these legends got their start..experiencing the blues first hand.

Imagine my delight when I heard about this new band, Paging Beto, that is basically a throwback with deep roots to those legendary blues performers. The group has just finished an exciting two month residency at the Redwood Club in Los Angeles and will be performing next Saturday night (9 PM) at the Vibe in Riverside, CA.

The only way to experience Paging Beto is to see them live. Not only because of the effect that you feel from hearing authentic powerful live blues up close and personal but because save for five tracks on their My Space page they haven't released anything recorded yet.

The music of Paging Beto comes at you in waves of sound. It's great to just let those waves wash over you and feel the music...and feel the power of the blues. But then you realize the incredible craftsmanship of the members of the band. These guys were born for the Blues and they seem to be channeling the aforementioned legends.

It starts with the incredible bass rifts of the Mighty Gil "T" who also is the vocalist and instantly makes you want to draw comparisons to Big Sandy or John Popper. But Gil stands on his own and carries his own weight as an authentic bluesman. It continues on to the skillful drumming of Bill "Buster" Bateman and the wicked harmonica playing and vocals of Pat "Frenchie" French (who can go toe to toe with the likes of Little Walter) and the lead guitar work of Jonny Wickersham and the rhythm guitar work of Justin "The Killer" Slater.

If those names sound familiar to you...It's because these five gentlemen are legends in their own right going back to the late 70's in the Southern California music scene. Bateman is from the Blasters. French comes over from among other groups The Joneses. Wickersham is the lead guitarist for Social Distortion. Gil "T" is from Top Jimmy and Ryhthm Pigs. The members have also been in and out of bands the Cramps, Thelonious Monster, the Red Devils, D.I., Cadillac Tramps, Youth Brigade, U.S. Bombs and so many other legendary So Cal bands it would be hard to fit in this space.

The only member not from Southern California is rhythm guitarist Justin "The Killer" Slater. "Have you seen this guy?", Frenchie French laughs, "I mean his name says it all - Killer. We don't know where he actually comes from. I heard Northern California. He doesn't say much. He's kind of scary. But he plays a mean guitar. We don't ask any questions."

“There are a lot of good bands in Los Angeles,” says Bateman, “But I feel that we fit right in with the top elite blues bands that are currently playing, recording and making a living.”

Says French, “We’ve played everything from punk and rockabilly, to swampy blues and it was time to put all that energy into one place. We’ve got more fire and brimstone than you’ll hear anywhere.”

Beto debuted at Dave Alvin’s “Dog and Pony” benefit show for Chris Gaffney in September 2008. According to co-vocalists French and Gil “T,” their love of music allowed the longtime friends and collaborators to start the band. It actually started with French and what would become the other members of Paging Beto just listening to old Blues records at French's home and absorbing the legendary blues music. But French's love affair with the blues goes back to his teenage years when he actually would hang in blues clubs and absorb what would eventually become his life's passion.

”I’ve wanted to play with these guys for a long time,” says Wickersham, “And I’m very honored to have the chance to do so.” Wickersham is such a great guitarist but as a member of Social D he played a different style. So naturally I wanted to know how he was making the adjustment. "I'm trying to just stay up...but I love this music (the blues) so much..I think I am picking it up fast."

French gives Wickersham very high marks for his guitar work. "Jonny is great. He's such a student of blues and music in general. He's doing a great job and he's made the transition very well."

“We are old dogs with even older tricks,” says The Mighty Gil “T,” “And everybody knows, old guys don’t fight fair.”

The band plays a lot of covers including "I'm a Hog for you Baby," by the Coasters and "She's Tuff" by the Fabulous Thunderbirds. They're also playing music by Little Walter, Sonny Boy Williamson and for good measure a little Muddy Waters as well.

French says they are working on some original music and there is probably going to be an album coming in the near future. But for now they love playing the originals.

"It's like if you go see a symphony," Wickersham says. "You just wanna see them do the piece the way it was written and revisit it."

And that's good because a whole new generation is being exposed to this wonderful music. There have been a lot of young people...in their early 20's at the show.

Paging Beto next plays at the Vibe in Riverside, CA at 9 PM on Sat. May 9