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Posted: |
Jun 17, 2009 - 11:55 AM
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By: |
Howard L
(Member)
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With a little over a fortnight--as well as the worst of my cold--having passed, the mind is regaining FSSharpness and the event at Dark Delicasies a bit more focus.
It's kinda funny, the images certain names and places conjure up. I mean for years you hear Johnny talking about NBC and beautiful downtown Burbank and you can't help but envision something along the lines of the citified studios over in Queens on Astoria Blvd. or wherever. Burbank Blvd. turned out to be anything but citified. In fact, I parked nearby on a residential, tree-lined street that had 'burb written all over it.
Somebody in a flick once referred to those "sinister little bookstores" in Greenwich Village. Dark Delicasies in Burbank Village is anything-but-sinister store-front on the outside while containing everything sinister inside. One macbre book after another. Ghostly knickknacks. Genre CDs, new and used.
I got there a tad early and this afforded me the opportunity to bypass the ticketed-for-autographs queue and just step in off the street like any other customer. This day, however, I was not even a customer. There would be no CDs to buy and get signed. No. Like Jay Gatsby, I was there not to attend 'my' party so much as to stand alone on the marble steps and look from one group to another...with approving eyes.
Things, I thought, had come full circle with the FSMeeting at Private Trax the day before; "full circle" in the sense of years of isolated love having finally given way to an entire gathering of outgoing lovers and other strangers. A film music priesthood convocation. But there was something about the event at Dark Del that had more the stamp of an epic journey’s end.
That something had to do with the great crowd of enthusiasts mingling with a wholehearted cadre of today’s mostly up-and-coming composers, intermixed with a few veterans (director included) and industry types. The place was bursting at the seams with good people, good talk, good cheer and a heckuva lot of non-stop activity at the cash register.
And I was there to drink...it...all...in.
I did not have to hear the conversations to experience the joys of thanking and you’re welcome-ing and sharing and reminiscing and celebrating that was going on. Unceasingly. The energy in the place was positively infectious. Gotta tip m’hat to the girls for keeping things in order, even if it meant 'suggesting' that those of us playing Gatsby kindly step outside in order that the overstuffed building, as well as ourselves, might take a breather.
Breather, what breather: the beautiful, breezy, sunny California day right out of It’s A Mad…World was made even more beautiful and breezier by the sight of so many folks still standing around and holding onto their deli tickets while waiting to join in on the party. It gave me a chance to mingle with some of the few, who like myself, were at Private Trax yesterday. You see, the attendees, by and large, were non-FSFolksandBlokes. Don’t know why this took me off guard. But oh, I just had to make talk with a guy who had brought an LP with him. An LP! Can’t recall the title but it may have been How I Won The War. Do recall, however, waxing poetic over the joys of waxed sound. With a perfect stranger. By definition only.
Anyway, I went back in and finished out the day the same way it had been going all along. Per another entry above, Harry Manfredini interrupted my lurking towards the end. Seeing, talking to and hearing this guy again injected me into the proceedings whether I liked it or not. I liked it. Added a whole new dimension to the art of lurking. Just feel a little guilty for not spending anything except my time.
And this day, time talking to Lukas, Mark F, Peter (drivingmissdaisy), Midnight Mike, Morricone, Ford T, Rich H (D. Fake’s friend), Marshall H, a perfect film-music-listening stranger, et al., was time well spent.
Cheers.
Am going for a refill.
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Posted: |
Jun 20, 2009 - 6:56 PM
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By: |
Howard L
(Member)
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Howard, so glad you're finally well enough to post your Dark Delicacies thoughts, which I must say sounded a bit Ray Bradbury-like at times!
Funny you should say that; from today's (20 June) NY Times, front page:
A Literary Legend Fights for a Local Library
By JENNIFER STEINHAUER
VENTURA, Calif. — When you are pushing 90, have written scores of famous novels, short stories and screenplays, and have fulfilled the goal of taking a simulated ride to Mars, what’s left?
“Bo Derek is a really good friend of mine and I’d like to spend more time with her,” said Ray Bradbury, peering up from behind an old television tray in his den.
An unlikely answer, but Mr. Bradbury, the science fiction writer, is very specific in his eccentric list of interests, and his pursuit of them in his advancing age and state of relative immobility.
This is a lucky thing for the Ventura County Public Libraries — because among Mr. Bradbury’s passions, none burn quite as hot as his lifelong enthusiasm for halls of books. His most famous novel, “Fahrenheit 451,” which concerns book burning, was written on a pay typewriter in the basement of the University of California, Los Angeles, library; his novel “Something Wicked This Way Comes” contains a seminal library scene.
Mr. Bradbury frequently speaks at libraries across the state, and on Saturday he will make his way here for a benefit for the H. P. Wright Library, which like many others in the state’s public system is in danger of shutting its doors because of budget cuts.
“Libraries raised me,” Mr. Bradbury said. “I don’t believe in colleges and universities. I believe in libraries because most students don’t have any money. When I graduated from high school, it was during the Depression and we had no money. I couldn’t go to college, so I went to the library three days a week for 10 years.”
Property tax dollars, which provide most of the financing for libraries in Ventura County, have fallen precipitously, putting the library system roughly $650,000 in the hole. Almost half of that amount is attributed to the H. P. Wright Library, which serves roughly two-thirds of this coastal city about 50 miles northwest of Los Angeles.
In January the branch was told that unless it came up with $280,000 it would close. The branch’s private fund-raising group, San Buenaventura Friends of the Library, has until March to reach its goal; so far it has raised $80,000.
Enter Mr. Bradbury. While at a meeting concerning the library, Berta Steele, vice president of the friends group, ran into Michael Kelly, a local artist who runs the Ray Bradbury Theater and Film Foundation, a group dedicated to arts and literacy advocacy. Mr. Kelly told Ms. Steele that he could get Mr. Bradbury up to Ventura to help the library’s cause.
On Saturday, the two organizations will host a $25-a-head discussion with Mr. Bradbury and present a screening of “The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit,” a film based on his short story of the same name.
The fund-raiser’s financial goal is not a long-term fix. That would come only if property taxes crawl back up or voters approve a proposed half-cent increase in the local sales tax in November, some of which would go to libraries.
Fiscal threats to libraries deeply unnerve Mr. Bradbury, who spends as much time as he can talking to children in libraries and encouraging them to read.
The Internet? Don’t get him started. “The Internet is a big distraction,” Mr. Bradbury barked from his perch in his house in Los Angeles, which is jammed with enormous stuffed animals, videos, DVDs, wooden toys, photographs and books, with things like the National Medal of Arts sort of tossed on a table.
“Yahoo called me eight weeks ago,” he said, voice rising. “They wanted to put a book of mine on Yahoo! You know what I told them? ‘To hell with you. To hell with you and to hell with the Internet.’
“It’s distracting,” he continued. “It’s meaningless; it’s not real. It’s in the air somewhere.”
A Yahoo spokeswoman said it was impossible to verify Mr. Bradbury’s account without more details.
Mr. Bradbury has long been known for his clear memory of some of life’s events, and that remains the case, he said. “I have total recall,” he said. “I remember being born. I remember being in the womb, I remember being inside. Coming out was great.”
He also recalled watching the film “Pumping Iron,” which features Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in his body-building days, and how his personal recommendation of the film for an Academy Award helped spark Mr. Schwarzenegger’s Hollywood career. He remembers lining his four daughters’ cribs with Golden Books when they were tiny. And he remembers meeting Ms. Derek on a train in France years ago.
“She said, ‘Mr. Bradbury.’ I said, ‘Yes.’ She said: ‘I love you! My name is Bo Derek.’ ”
Ms. Derek’s spokeswoman, Rona Menashe, said the story was true. She said her client would like to see some more of Mr. Bradbury, too.
Mr. Bradbury’s wife, Maggie, to whom he was married for over five decades, died in 2003. He turns 89 in August.
When he is not raising money for libraries, Mr. Bradbury still writes for a few hours every morning (“I can’t tell you,” is the answer to any questions on his latest book); reads George Bernard Shaw; receives visitors including reporters, filmmakers, friends and children of friends; and watches movies on his giant flat-screen television.
He can still be found regularly at the Los Angeles Public Library branch in Koreatown, which he visited often as a teenager.
“The children ask me, ‘How can I live forever, too?’ ” he said. “I tell them do what you love and love what you do. That’s the story on my life.”
“I don’t believe in colleges and universities,” Ray Bradbury, 88, said. “I believe in libraries.
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