Faux band delivers genuine rock

Group shot of The Rising, a Bruce Springsteen tribute band we saw last night
 in Palmdale at the Starlight Concert series.

It wasn't really like seeing Bruce.

Of course I was sitting in a fifth row seat that cost me ten dollars, as opposed to a nosebleed arena seat that would set me back the equivalent of a week's grocery money. That was one of the biggest differences.

Palmdale's Starlight Concert Series featured The Rising — Bruce Springsteen Tribute at Marie Kerr Park, and it was a fabulous night for it. There was a nice breeze; it wasn't too hot — the perfect high desert summer evening.

Me, I wouldn't have gone on my own. My family lives down the turnpike from Asbury Park, and at one point, Bruce Springsteen was the most important musical figure in my life—why would I want to see someone imitate him? But my husband told me he "splurged" and bought $10 tickets for a free show so we didn't have to bring our own chairs.

The Rising's faux Bruce Springsteen
and Little Steven Van Zandt

And really... isn't that one of the joys of marriage? To push one another out of our comfort zone and learn how to compromise? I took him to the opera, he takes me to tiny Hollywood clubs to hear bands only a handful of people have even heard of. And to Springsteen impostors, apparently.

But I was wrong — these guys kicked ass. They have made a study of the E Street Band, all the mannerisms, on-stage clowning, voices, facial expressions — the works. For that two hours, they are the Boss and the E Street Band.

The faux Bruce bears a passing resemblance to Harvey Keitel, especially his barrel-chested body. The man has no waist. He's got the Boss' guns (you can tell he works out), and wears the painted-on black jeans, motorcycle boots and black vest with no shirt.

The physical resemblance is closer to John Mellencamp than Springsteen, but the voice he has nailed. The entire Springsteen oeuvre is there, from raspy whisper to full-throated scream. If you spent the show with your eyes closed, you wouldn't know the difference.

Little Steven has the black kerchief around his head, and the requisite pout and parade-rest stance, with wrists crossed. He is ridiculously young, but he tries. Even the heights are spot-on: Steven is shorter than Bruce, and Clarence Clemons is much taller. 

I'm not sure where they found a drummer who looks like a middle-aged certified public accountant, but Max Weinberg would not be flattered by this doppelgänger. The real Max may be bald, but he was never this unattractive. A Jeff Buckley lookalike was playing keyboards, and the bass player looks like an androgynous 12-year-old.

The Clarence Clemons character from
The Rising —
A Bruce Springsteen Tribute.

The faux Bruce did everything the real Bruce did — cover at least one rock and rock classic song, wade out into the crowd, thrilling the girls in the front section by singing to them and sitting in their laps, and introduce songs by telling stories in his gravelly voice.

A break in the middle of "Tenth Avenue Freeze Out" found "Bruce" referencing the Lockheed layoff, as he urged us to forget all that was worrying us and just let the rock and roll heal us.

Next to Bruce himself, the strongest member of the ensemble was the one playing Clarence Clemons. He was a tall black man with long braids who played straight man to Bruce's goofiness just like the real sax player. They cavorted like 5-year-olds at recess: hopping, skipping, and jumping on and off risers. When he put the sax to his lips, though, he wasn't goofing around.

I wondered if The Rising would tackle "Jungleland," and whether they would mention Clemons' death on June 19 at age 69. As it turns out, they did both. I feared the worst. Of all the songs in Springsteen's catalog, this is my favorite. 

When I first heard it in 1975, it just took the top of my head off. I was out with a friend, and he put it in his car stereo. When we got where we were going, the song hadn't ended, and I begged him not to shut it off. After it was over, we both just sat there, decompressing.

"Jungleland" was the song most associated with Clarence: the 18-bar solo that stands as the greatest sax solo of all time, as far as I'm concerned. It was the song fans played over and over on the day we found out Clemons had died from complication of a stroke.

"Bruce" and "Little Steven" 

The Rising did it justice. The solo wasn't as great as Clarence would have played it, but it was damn close. The Bruce's voice was perfect, and the rest of the players played it note for note. I was impressed. It made me sad to think I will never hear that song or that solo live again from the E Street Band.

Clarence is gone, we lost Danny Federici to cancer at age 58 back in 2008. We can never have the E Street Band back again. It reminds us that our whole generation is aging, and there's not a damn thing we can do about it.

The Starlight Series this year was all cover or tribute bands, and it was a great idea. After all, with some of those oldie bands Palmdale has been hiring, you've only got one or two original members anyway, you might as well save yourself the expense of paying for the name.

So we had a great time, and afterward had a few beers at the new Yardhouse, otherwise known as "Beer-drinkers' Paradise." It was a great evening out, and we didn't have to drive to Los Angeles.

Avoiding black slide of death

Today, I am catching up on some museum exhibits at the Getty and the Geffen Contemporary that are about to close, so I offer this column which won an award from National Newspaper News Executives in 2003 as Best Humorous Column when it appeared in the Antelope Valley Press. What could be more fitting in this 100 degree weather than going to a water park?

The Black Snake Summit at Six Flags Hurricane Harbor in Valencia,
home of the Twisted Fang slide. www.marriott.com

Just in case you are not convinced that the perfect body is nothing but the fever-dream creation of Conde Nast and Hugh Hefner, spend the afternoon at a water park.

In the nine hours I spent there, out of the thousands of people I saw, there were maybe three perfect bodies, two of them teenagers.

Even some people who look terrific with their clothes on have a few places that are dimpled and jiggly when they are walking around in a swimsuit.

I learned two things from my time spent at Hurricane Harbor — that no matter what size you are, there are plenty of people fatter than you, and some of them will be wearing bikinis.

I have battled bulges since I was 12, so I know how hard it is to lose weight, and I don't think that carrying extra pounds makes you less of a woman or less of a person.

But I also don't think it's something to be proud of and lovingly swathe in Spandex.

But that's just me.

It was entertaining, though, lying on a lounge chair by the Forgotten Sea wave pool, watching thousands of people walking around half-dressed.

The wave pool in motion looks like the last half-hour of "Titanic." The machine kicks up two foot waves and the tank is as crowded as a beach in mid-July.

Those revelers who had a few extra dollars after they got held up without a gun at the front gate are on rented rafts.

The rest of the poor suckers, like steerage passengers, are bobbing around trying simultaneously not to drown or get kicked in the head by those in the rafts.

It's interesting how the theme park experience changes with the age of your children. When they are small, we parents are the ones encouraging them to be brave and move beyond their comfort zones.

You hold their chubby little hand while they wade in the kiddie pool or dog-paddle around the shallow end. Then you wake up one day and they are saying, "C'mon Mom, doncha want to go down Venom Drop?"

No, I don't want to go down the Black Slide of Death — the one that sits at a 90-degree angle to the ground.

Now, suddenly, they are the ones dragging me to the top of something called Black Snake Summit - 75 feet in the air - encouraging me to fling my middle-aged body down twisted metal tubes that look like human Habitrails.

I braved most of the rides, although I did have a ugly claustrophobic moment as I looked into the black mouth of the Twisted Fang, an enclosed body slide.

I realized that I would be in a small, pitch-black place for the amount of time it would take for me to fall 500 feet. Thankfully, that took only a few seconds.

But, like Alice, down the rabbit hole I went; my anxiety over how I was going to manage to get off the ride with a modicum of decorum overcoming my abject terror. And then, in a twinkling, it was over.

I think that is why we have teenagers, to push us screaming out of our comfort zones, just when we think we should be sitting around in lounge chairs taking it easy.

Even though they may have taken over our confidence-building and cultural-translation roles, they still need us.

I don't know about anybody else's teens, but mine still haven't managed to figure out how to spend the day in the sun without getting horribly burned.

So they bring us along to do what we have always done — provide cash and nag them to put on their sunscreen.

Summer has been good for geeks

A screen capture of the Jackson Browne page on Spotify.com, the new free music player.

I'm not the world's biggest computer geek. I don't write code, can't read or write html, and I really could use a class in Microsoft Word. I know Word does all kinds of cool stuff I don't even know about. But I do like to keep up with the times.

My family's first computer, the Apple IIe. It didn't do much,
especially since we didn't write code.

For those of us who love the latest tech thing, it has been a good summer. My friend Ed sent me an invitation to Google +, OS Lion came out, and www.spotify went online.

Google + is a new social network that may just have the answer to handling your Aunt Helen's  wanting to be your friend on Facebook. You don't want to offend the dear old thing and you might like to share your children's Disneyland photos, but you don't want her to see pics of you and the hubby doing tequila body shots in Cancun.

With Google +, you designate people in your life to different circles, like family, friends, coworkers, acquaintances, even church friends, I suppose.

Then, each time you upload a photo, make a comment or share a link, the program asks which circle you want to share it with. So, as long as you pay attention when you post, people sitting next to you in the pew on Sunday won't see your drunken party pics.

I upgraded to OS 10 Lion the other day, which makes the trackpad on my MacBook operate like the touchscreen on a iPad (which I can't afford, but would love). To scroll up and down, you just use two fingers; and to switch between open programs, you just swipe in a sideways motion. You pinch to make things smaller, and reverse to increase the size. I've yet to master it all, but it has made my laptop way less attractive to my husband.

Charlotte Quinn, who "reads" Dr. Seuss
books on my smartphone.

An aside: my daughter told me how disturbed she was when my two-year-old granddaughter Charlotte was handed a stack of snapshots and swiped her fingers from one side to the other trying to make the photo change, like she does on her daddy's smartphone. We are becoming technology dependent at younger and younger ages now.

But the Lion upgrade only cost $29.99, so it was a whole lot of fun for not much money. And seriously, Apple, haven't you exhausted the whole big-cat naming thing? Tiger, Panther, Leopard, Snow Leopard, now Lion. Aren't lions the kings of the jungle? What tops them?

What tops inexpensive software is free software, and Spotify is just a music-lover's dream. It is free now for unlimited streaming, but after six months, the free version will only give you a certain amount of hours before you have to pay the $5 a month charge or the premium $10, which allows you to play the songs on your iPod or smartphone.

It isn't so great for discovering new music; Pandora is still better at that. Pandora lets you pick a song or a band, then creates playlists with music that complements it using the Music Genome Project. Then it plays the list like a radio station, and you can click your "like" or "dislike" or each song and it adjusts itself by eliminating that type of song from your playlist. The pay version eliminates the ads.

With Spotify, you can pull up an artist and see practically their whole catalog and play it. It integrates your iTunes and Facebook, so you can see what your friends are listening to and send them messages and links to songs you like.

For Baby Boomers, the best part of Spotify is being able to listen to artists you loved as a teenager without having to buy yet another greatest hits CD or download. For some reason last week, I was longing to hear Jackson Browne, my favorite artist in my moody teen and early 20 years. I bought a greatest hits from iTunes and burned it so I could hear it in my car.

Before long, I realized why I haven't listened to Jackson in years: Holy Cow, is he depressing! And those songs I loved? He's singing about the apocalypse! No wonder I was unhappy all the time. If I had Spotify then, I could have gotten my nostalgia fit out of my system without spending money.

Also, I have been finding old stuff, like the Martin Denny lounge records my dad used to have. It brings the early 1960s right back. No wonder the 1990s lounge revival picked up on him. But some of it is just bad: "Hawaiian War Chant" was used in way too many Bugs Bunny cartoons to be taken seriously.

I love "Chinatown" like jazz with heavy saxophones, and was told that the Jackie Gleason Orchestra was just the ticket. I found it on Spotify, and they were right. And now I can test out old Charlie Parker and Mile Davis songs to find out what I like before I pay good money for it.

I kept testing Spotify to find old things, and I wasn't disappointed. Yes, they have "Ogden's Nut Gone Flake" by the Small Faces, and Moby Grape's first album, so go nuts. They don't have the Beatles, but don't we all own all those in multiple formats anyway?

I keep running into people who say they miss my column and didn't realize I have taken it online. And some people who say they forget to read the blog since it isn't on their breakfast table on Sunday morning. I have a wonderful suggestion: Google Reader.

If you have Google Reader, it will aggregate all the websites, blogs, newspaper sites, etc. that you read all in one place. If you stay logged into it, anytime you are on a site and see the RSS bug, merely click it and it will add it to your Reader. You can make Google News Alerts, and they will be there too.

For instance, I have one for Richard Branson, because he interests me and he does fascinating things. So every time he is mentioned on the web, the news alert finds it and emails me a list once a week. I also read Heather Armstrong's blog, and it appears in my email program under "RSS feeds."

I made a minutes-long screen capture video with Jing for a distance learning class that explains it all, so if you are interested in how to set up Google Reader, you can watch it here.

If you set up Google Reader, you should be able to subscribe on my blog site and the link will show up in your email program every Sunday as well as on your Reader page. If you go to a lot of different sites daily, it might save you some time.

Out on the streets of Los Angeles

A car painted by the late artist Keith Haring, on display at the Geffen Contemporary in Little Tokyo.

I am a child of suburbia.

I have always lived in the suburbs. I got my driver license at 16 and never looked back. I even lived in San Francisco, where parking spots are like mythical beasts, and only took public transportation during a dark period when my car was broken and I couldn't afford to fix it.

So I am unused to trains, buses, taxis, and subways. But I'm learning.

My husband, a seasoned traveler, always takes public transportation, and I have learned so much from him. The first experience was a Friday night when we were battling traffic on the 405 to get to the Wiltern Theater. He opined that it would be faster if we parked the car in Universal City and took the Metro.

Dresses by Adelle Burda, Monica Lhuillier,
and Chan Luu —all FIDM alumni —at
FIDM's Little Black Dress exhibit.

I was skeptical, but I didn't want to miss Fountains of Wayne, so we did, and it was great. No parking hassles; we just popped up out of the station across the street from the Wiltern.

Little by little, I have ventured out alone, taking the Metrolink and the Metro to my job in downtown LA. But I decided to go all out for the mad German psychic's birthday. Barbara was feeling the need to get out of the Antelope Valley, so I planned a surprise outing.

We drove to the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising in downtown Los Angeles for our first stop, parked, and ventured the rest of the way by Metro, Dash and bus.

"LBD (Little Black Dress): An Homage to Breakfast at Tiffany's" is a great little show, with designer black dresses against a background of Tiffany blue. There are dresses from designers like Lagerfeld and Chanel, as well as contributions from FIDM alumni.

Givenchy, who dressed Audrey Hepburn for the classic film, did a line by line recreation of the iconic dress she wears while wistfully staring into Tiffany's window with a cup of coffee and a pastry in hand.

On one wall are drawings by current FIDM fashion design students, with their renderings of how they imagine the LBD for today, complete with fabric swatches. Those drawings are particularly interesting, and demonstrate the creativity of these students. Admission to the gallery is free; follow the link above for more information.

The birthday girl, wearing her new necklace from FIDM,
across the street from El Cielito Lindo, home of the killer taquito.

The museum gift shop is full of Audrey Hepburn things, as well as lots of books, jewelry, home goods, and cards. Barbara found beaded jewelry on a sale table and went wild. In fact, all day, she was buying things and putting them on, so her look had completely altered by the end of the day.

The second stop was lunch, which we reached by taking the Purple Line from 7th and Hope to Union Station. Olvera Street is right across from the beautiful train station, and at the end is El Cielto Lindo, home of the best taquitos in the world. We had two taquitos smothered in guacamole sauce, with beans and a tamale.

The transportation gods were smiling on us; we tried to board a bus going the wrong direction, but had the wits to ask, and the right bus came within minutes. Over the course of the day, we had to ask a lot of questions, but everyone was very friendly. They probably thought we were tourists.

"Help me, Boo Boo!" Outside the Geffen Contemporary.

Barbara wanted to go to the Museum of Contemporary Art, which isn't as simple as you might think. There are three locations. We were on our way to the MOCA Grand, and there is one on Melrose, and the Geffen Contemporary in Little Tokyo. The Grand Ave. location has lots of abstract expressionists: Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and Franz Kline, as well as pop artists.

If you show your Metro ticket, you get two-for-one admission, which is good for all three locations. We had a great afternoon for $10, and the exhibit is free on Thursdays from 5 to 8 p.m.

MOCA Grand is showing Andy Warhol's soup cans, which didn't thrill me, but the photography was wonderful. Robert Frank's black and whites of street life from his 1959 watershed book "The Americans," were transportive.

We really wanted to see "Art in the Streets" at the Geffen Contemporary, so we moved on. One docent told us that there was a shuttle bus that would take us, but apparently that only runs on weekends, because the Dash bus doesn't. So we had to walk to the corner and catch the "A" Dash to Little Tokyo, which cost 50 cents.

A tile piece from Invader, a French street artist.

My husband and I had just watched Exit Through the Gift Shop, about street artists like Banksy and Shepard Fairey, so it was wonderful that the first thing I recognized was a tile Space Invader from the French artist "Invader" looking over the room.

Between the restrooms, the long-legged signature character of Monsieur Andre was spray-painted in black. I highly recommend the film, by the way; it is very entertaining and thought-provoking about the business of art.

There is just so much energy radiating from this exhibit. The space is huge, and in some places carved into smaller rooms to provide more wall space.

One of the first things is a huge wall make up of doors depicting in black and white what looks like dead birds and rats, things you would see lying on a city street. But the wall is interactive and when you move the doors, the interior of the animals can be seen in color.

There is so much going on in the building, that I didn't even see it all. There are Keith Harings: a painted car as well as chalk on black construction paper. On intersecting walls are hundreds of landscape-shaped snapshots of subway cars and trains graffittied with names.

Ultima Suprema Deluxa, A 1961 Cadillac
by artist Kenny Scharf, done in 1981.

A 1961 Cadillac has been turned into a multimedia wonderland: a pink apatosaurus with radio tubes glued to his back rides proudly on the hood, while the back deck is crowded with plastic monsters, space creatures, mythical creatures, Indian teepees and more dinosaurs.

Giant gag toothbrushes are affixed to the windshield wipers, and candy-colored designs are everywhere. I could look at it for hours and feel like I didn't see all the details.

My favorite section of the exhibit recreates an urban landscape: narrow streets, a junkyard with taggers standing on top of a van, a mini-mart, do-it-yourself open-air tattoo parlor, check cashing place, and the Church of the Open Tab.

Interior of the Church of the Open Tab, where it is always 5:07 pm. 

The graffiti-marked streets wind around, and above them is a profusion of signs, just like the ubiquitous billboards in poor neighborhoods. But instead of advertising Hennessy and Black Velvet, these are Day-Glo with a variety of messages, some uplifting. My favorite was " "I paid the light bill just so I could see your face." Quite romantic, no?

The Church of the Open Tab has a jukebox instead of an altar, the floor is littered with empty Tecate cans, and the clock is permanently set to 5:07 p.m. The back wall is made of stained glass.

This urban landscape is multi sensory: Banda music plays from cracked speakers tuned up so loud that they distort, just like on Broadway and 6th.

A hoodie-clad tagger prays in front
of stained glass graffiti window.

I leave it to others to discuss the importance of the show, or street art itself, for that matter. I don't think anyone still equates art with beauty. Is this show glamorizing vandalism? Maybe, but it also shows how art will out; how artistic impulse bubbles up from under poverty, grime and despair like plants forcing themselves through cracks in asphalt to make itself known.

"Art in the Streets" was wonderful, but we were getting a little worried about beating rush hour, so we abandoned a small portion of the show to get back to our car. I was already making mental plans to come back.

Outside, we realized that our middle-age bodies were done walking, and my smartphone was telling me that a bus ride back to FIDM involved changing buses, so we caught a cab. In a white shirt and tie, the man was the best dressed cabbie I'd ever seen, and Barbara was impressed that his car smelled "like candy."

So, all in all, I think I did pretty well. I didn't get us lost, and we spent the day exploring without having to worry about finding and paying for parking. It helps that Barbara is a world-traveler too, and uses transit everywhere (except LA).

Roadside attractions and other summer thrills

A view of the Reptile Gardens parking lot outside of Rapid City, S.D. in 1957,
about six years  before I went there. I was surprised to learn that this roadside attraction
has flourished and is now a respected reptile and amphibian zoo.
www.reptilegardens.com

Stepping into a blast furnace every time you open your front door. Feeling like a baked potato as you slide behind the wheel of your car. Endlessly turning your pillow over in a vain attempt to find the "cool" side.

All indicators say that summer is here — with a vengeance — and when I was a kid, that always meant "road trip." 

My dad took us to national parks all over the west, which you can read about here. My brother, sister and I saw some amazing things, developed an affinity for nature that we've never lost, and became a family. What we didn't do, because my father wouldn't allow it, was stop at roadside attractions.

A view of the Reptile Gardens today,
complete with the Sky Dome on the right.

I can't blame him— he lived through the Depression on a farm in Vermont, and had to leave school in the eight grade to work and help support his family. He wasn't a tightwad — if it was worthwhile, he spent the money — but he knew what was a waste of his hard-earned dollars.

Dad would take us to a state fair or the Ice Capades, but we avoided the Midway and weren't allowed to play games, or buy plastic gimcrack souvenirs. 

So — entrance to national parks, well worth the money; paying to see snakes in the Reptile Gardens outside of Rapid City, S. D., not so much. Dad took us to Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico, even buying us the rather pricy boxed lunches in their underground cafeteria, but our entreaties to see the Trees of Mystery near Klamath, CA fell on deaf ears.

It wasn't until I traveled alone with my grandparents — Mom-Mom and Pop-Pop— that I was able to visit  places like the Reptile Gardens, Wall Drug, and Dinosaur Park. Yep, grandparents are pushovers, and they were driving me back to California after I spent a fun-filled summer in New Jersey with them. We were in some huge early 1960s car without air-conditioning.

Pop-Pop had found some weird contraption that you filled with ice and plugged into your cigarette lighter. A little fan blew air over the ice and was supposed to keep you cool. It didn't work so well in the Badlands in August, but it tried. Those were the days when you had to plan to cross the Mojave desert at night because practically nobody's car had air.

A radiator bag common in the 1960s. You filled them with water,
saturated the bag, then hung in front of your radiator
to keep the engine cool. When the car overheated anyway,
 you used the water in the bag to replace the water. Then repeat the sequence.
http://10engines.blogspot.com/2009/05/radiator-water-bag.html

As near as I can figure, we had driven Interstate 90. It was a trip filled with Burma Shave signs, lots of stops for ice cream, and the ever-present radiator bag.

These bags hung in front of your radiator to keep it cool. They were flax or burlap-covered rubber bags filled with water that you soaked first.

They often had ads on them, which made them cheap. Yes, Jackson Browne fans, bags just like the cover of his first album, often mistakenly called "Saturate Before Using."
That was an instruction for use, not the title.

Jackson Browne's eponymous first album.

Along with radiator bags, travelers often had bumper stickers slapped onto their cars advertising whatever roadside attraction (or "tourist trap," as my father called them) they had stopped at. When you got out of your cars, workers came out and plastered your car with stickers front and back, and you were a rolling advertisement.

Our family made many trips across country, and over the years some states must have made this practice illegal, because the attractions started wiring them on so they could be easily removed, should you care to.

You would see roadside signs starting about 100 miles away, and then you'd notice the bumper stickers. That's when you starting begging, even though it knew it wouldn't do you any good. Out family sometimes got to stop at Howard Johnson's for lunch, but never a Stuckey's, that home of the Pecan Log Roll.

So the trip with the grandparents was great. I got them to stop for lunch at Wall Drug, in Wall, S. D. still in business today. According to their website, the owner were devout Catholics who moved their business to Wall because from a smaller town because they wanted to go to Mass every day. They hit on the idea of luring people off the interstate with offers of free ice water.

It grew into a tacky tourist spot of epic proportions, with signs starting about 500 miles out, and the bumper sticker brigade not missing a car with their "Where the heck is Wall Drug?" stickers. The place has a stunning collection of jackalopes, as you can see on the site, as well as a giant one you can take your picture riding. During lunch, I hid my retainer under a napkin, so it wouldn't gross out fellow diners. Fifty miles down the road, I realized that I had left it behind, and we had to return for my expensive dental device.

I was not my grandparents' favorite grandchild that day.

A snake show in 1949 before the concrete snake pit got put in.

We went to Mt. Rushmore, and the Reptile Gardens. At that time, it was a small set of cinderblock buildings. On one side, giant tortoises roamed among agates and other rocks strewn about a stretch of desert you could walk through and take home, for a small price.

Inside the reptile house, you could look down into a huge cement square hole in the ground. Inside  was a platform where a man stood with scores of snakes crawling all over him and the enclosure.

The man had a shepherd's crook, and when the snakes crawled too high up the wall, he would use the hook, and flick them off. It was a little disconcerting to see venomous snakes hightailing it up the wall towards you. In a photo on their website from 1949 shows the same idea: a square of people with snakes in the middle.

By the 1960s, they had made it a little safer, probably at the request of their insurance company. I'm not sure what it looks like today. I hadn't thought about the place in years, and was rather shocked to see how it had grown. I'm sure there are parts of the trip I've forgotten, but rattlesnakes climbing a wall is indelibly etched into my memory.

I learned plenty of things from my father, but not stopping at tourist traps is not one of them. I lived in Simi Valley and used to ride my bike to spend time with Grandma Prisbrey at Bottle Village. I loved that place like no other, and was thrilled that it was right in the closest thing I have to a hometown.

And just like my grandparents, I have little resistance when it comes to my granddaughter Charlotte. If she wants to stop to see giant gunnite dinosaurs or the world's biggest ball of string, I'm going to stop the car.

Sunset Blvd.—Campy or tragic?

The poster for the 1950 film "Sunset Boulevard," recently screened at the 100th anniversary of the Palace Theater.

I don't remember what movie it was, but I recently saw a scene with a bunch of guys having "Gay Movie Night," watching Sunset Boulevard and laughing. They got a chuckle out of Gloria Swanson's scenery chewing as the faded movie star Norma Desmond.

I know how gays love camp, in fact essayist Susan Sontag said they practically invented it, but I can't find anything to laugh at in Norma. In fact, I find her so ineffably sad that I want to cry. Yes, the performance is over the top, but that's how silent movie stars emoted in the days before sound.

The official photo of Cinespia. The bright area is where the movies
 are projected on the side of a Hollywood Forever mausoleum,
and movie-goers relax on blankets spread on a lawn in front of it.

Each generation of actors get more naturalistic; I think that's why today's kids find movies we adore hysterically funny. I have seen Sunset Boulevard twice with an audience, and the differences were telling. Once, it was at Cinespia, in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery with a sea of mostly young, ironic hipsters on blankets, many of them in the movie business, sipping wine and cocktails alfresco.

The other time was last week at the 100th anniversary of the Palace Theatre, presented by the Los Angeles Conservancy, of which we are members. Like most organizations dedicated to preserving history, the members are predominantly older. There was a sea of white hair and canes. The man in front of us joked that he and his wife weren't sitting in the balcony because she wasn't interested in going up there with her husband.

So my husband and I are somewhere in between: we are too old to be hipsters, but definitely don't have memories of making out in balconies (although it's a fine idea). While the first crowd had respect for Sunset Boulevard's gimlet-eyed look at show business and jokes about the plight of the Hollywood writer, they often found Norma's antics too funny not to laugh.

William Holden and Gloria Swanson
 in Norma Desmond's living room/screening room.

The Palace crowd could see the pathos of the former movie star's condition: perhaps they too had been forced out of their job by technology and innovation, or perhaps they had fallen in love with the wrong person at the wrong time. Whatever the reason, they laughed at the funny parts (of which there are many), and cried at the sad parts (oh, that was only me?).

As Joe Gillis, the young hack screenwriter who stumbles into Norma's Miss Havisham world she has created for herself, William Holden gets all the snarky lines that comment on how far gone the aging beauty really is. He says, "There's nothing tragic about being 50; not unless you try to be 25."

Gloria Swanson was exactly fifty when making this movie, and in today's world that's not considered old. We've got actresses older than 50 taking their tops off in movies. She looks great; in fact, when they tried to age her for the role with makeup to accentuate the age difference, she suggested that they use makeup to make Holden younger. Swanson argued that a woman of Norma's means and vanity wouldn't look her age. She got her way.

Gloria Swanson looking her age.

I winced when the young crowd laughed at Norma and her desperate attempt to hold on to Joe by buying him expensive gifts and plotting ridiculous schemes to reenergize her career (Playing Salome at her age? Only opera singers get away with that). Although many things have changed since the 50s, discarding women who are past their prime hasn't. Ask any longtime wife who has been replaced by their husband's 20-something secretary or coworker.

One of the best lines in Sunset Boulevard is Norma's declaration that her life is "Just us, the cameras, and those wonderful people out there in the dark." That shared experience of being one of those people in the dark, is what keeps some of us returning to the movies time after time. Not even a home theater like Tony Soprano's, complete with popcorn machine, can beat a night out. For better or for worse, there's nothing like hearing the reactions of the people around you.

Of course, there is a lot of incivility among moviegoers, although not at conservancy screenings, or many of the theaters in Hollywood and L.A. Most of those people take their movies seriously. The conservancy puts on their Last Remaining Seats program each year and gives us an opportunity to see inside some of the glorious theaters still in existence in downtown L.A.

The interior of the Palace,
from the LA Conservancy website.

I've seen the Palace, which began its life as an Orpheum vaudeville theater, and the Million Dollar Theater.
I'm dying to get into the Los Angeles Theater, which looks like a French baroque candy box. Tickets go very fast, as you can imagine, but LA Conservancy members get to buy tickets first, making it well worth the money.

The downside for desert dwellers is that these screenings are usually on Wednesday nights, which makes getting down there after work a problem. Last year we went to see Alfred Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train, one of my favorite movies of his, and it was well worth the effort.

Often, the studios will strike a new print just for the showing, as they did for Sunset Blvd. It was stunning. It was very cool to be at the Palace 100 years to the day after it opened, and the Delijani family who own it have done a fabulous job of restoration.

The Delijani family immigrated here from Iran after the shah fell in the 1970s, and saved the Palace from being destroyed back in the 1980s, according to a Los Angeles Times story. In addition to the Palace, they own the Los Angeles, State and Tower theaters and have plans to restore them all.

It's hard to imagine that there was once hundreds of theaters in LA's Broadway theater district. We should really try to preserve the handful we have left.

Spanish, robots and Bela Lugosi....

The cover of the reissue of "Music for Robots." The 1961 original album cover was in black and white.

I was sitting in Mr. Richard Sheffield's 8th grade Spanish class at Valley View Junior High in Simi Valley about 1968. He was going on about the lecture that Ray Bradbury had given at Moorpark College the previous evening that he had encouraged us to attend.

Suddenly he wheeled around and pointed at me. "And you! With your talent, you really should have been there!" My classmates all turned around to look at me, wondering what talent I had and how he knew about it.

They didn't know that this teacher and I had history. Sheffield probably had more influence on me than any other educator.

I was in fourth grade at Knolls Elementary when I first met Mr. Sheffield. I opened the door to my classroom expecting Mrs. Mahnken, a lovely, nurturing elementary teacher straight out of Central Casting — grey hair and all. She had previously worked for Disney's art department.

What I saw filled me with indignation. A man with a small black mustache, and black frame glasses wearing a beret, a red plaid vest, black pants and suit jacket was leaning back in my teacher's chair with his feet on the desk and his fingers interlaced over a quite chubby belly. I was incensed that his black dress ankle boots were defiling my sweet teacher's desk.

How dare he?

I had no idea then how much this man who infuriated me would change my life.

I don't remember what all we did in class that day, but in the afternoon, he pulled a vinyl album titled "Music for Robots" out of his briefcase (I had never seen a teacher with a attache case before) and put it on the classroom's portable record player, which was roughly the size of a Buick.

An ad for "Music for Robots"
 in "Famous Monsters of Filmland."

One side of this record was Forrest J. Ackerman talking about famous robots, and the other was all experimental music. I want to say it was a Moog synthesizer, but I can't swear to it. Mr. Sheffield played us the music side, gave us crayons and paper and told us to draw what the music made us see.

I can't draw to save my life, but I was loving the assignment, and created a huge eye in the center of the page with optic nerves that snaked around the corners and became other creatures. I think I impressed him, because the substitute had high praise for my creation.

I ran home eager to show it to my mother, who was less impressed than I about how the sub had spent our instruction time. I found out later that Sheffield was a good friend of Forry Ackerman, the science fiction and movie memorabilia collector. Over the years, I learned many interesting things about my teacher.

What can I say? He won me over, and I was glad when he became my math and science teacher in fifth grade. Sheffield had a huge interest in paleontology, and he took us on a field trip to a wash at the other end of the Simi Valley to hunt for fossils. It's because of him that I have the urge to look for trilobites every time I pass Red Rock Canyon.

Richard Sheffield's photo from imdb.com

Like every grade school teacher, Mr. Sheffield had to control schoolroom chatter, and his method was "hush cards." You brought in or made three cards to put on the corner of your desk (mine were Beatles trading cards), and when you got caught talking or misbehaving, you forfeited a card. When you lost the last card, you were punished, sort of "three-strikes and you're out."

He decided one day that because we were acting immature, anyone who lost all their cards that day were going to have to spend the day in kindergarten. "All except you, Kim. You'd have a good time there." How well he knew me...

In fact, he knew I was a writer before I did. At some point he was my English teacher, and I read him my crappy short story about meeting the Beatles on a train, poems about the Painted Desert and other natural wonders, and the beginning of some horrible Dickensian novel. I didn't take any of it seriously, but he told me I should.

The summer between sixth grade and junior high I went on an exchange program to Mexico, at Sheffield's urging. His wife was from Mexico, and I'm not sure how he was involved, but I spent a month down there with a family who had a girl roughly my age, then she returned with me and spent a month in California.

To prepare myself, I took Sheffield's Spanish class he taught in adult night school. I had to get permission from my school principal, and my parents drove me to Simi High where I learned alongside adults, drinking hot chocolate while they chatted over coffee when the catering truck came at break.

When I went to junior high, he stayed at Knolls for a year. I was mad because after I left, he got permission to adapt Ray Bradbury's "Martian Chronicles" for the stage, and his sixth-grade English class wrote the script and produced the play. Sheffield got Forry to loan him the original monster from "The Blob" to use in the alien scene. He was trying to convince Bradbury (also a friend) to show up for the performance.

The next year he moved to Valley View Junior High and became my Spanish teacher again. That was where I really learned about Mr. Sheffield. He is a natural raconteur, and whenever classmates hadn't done their homework, they begged me to get him off on a tangent so he would forget to collect it.

He grew up in Hollywood, and had a million fascinating stories about Tinsel Town in the 1950s. He told us he had been a pallbearer at Bela Lugosi's funeral, and that he had met Stan Laurel.

At that time Stan Laurel was in the phone book, and my teacher and his teenage buddies simply called him up and were invited over. Laurel spent the afternoon reminiscing, and taught them the lighting-your-thumb-on-fire trick. I wouldn't find out the whole truth about his connection with Lugosi for many years, until the advent of the Internet.

Bela Lugosi as his most famous character, Dracula

Apparently, the teenaged Sheffield met Lugosi in the final years of his life, and they became quite close. The aging actor was unwell, and movie roles were scarce. Bela had a stack of signed 8x10 glossies, and Sheffield asked for them. He wanted to bolster interest in the "Dracula" actor, and started a Bela Lugosi fan club, offering an autographed photo to anyone who signed up. There's a photo of the two friends here.

Sheffield co-authored a book called "Bela Lugosi: Dreams and Nightmares," and co-produced a documentary about the actor.

For years, I wondered what had become of my former teacher. I knew that at one point he was in Mexico City teaching, and I did have a letter from him a few years after junior high.

Last week, I stumbled across a YouTube video of him speaking at Monster Bash 2007 about how he cut school from Hollywood High to visit the set of "The Black Sleep" with Lugosi, Lon Chaney Jr. and John Carradine.

He was as nattily dressed as ever, sporting a black cape. Apparently, he always loved costumes, because there are photos of him dressed up as Dracula and the Werewolf of London here. I laughed when he said on the video he took his beret and cigarette holder to the set that day, because I'd seen that beret.

I don't how to contact him, but I'd love to be able to tell Sheffield that he was right all those years ago: I AM a writer, even if I tried to ignore that fact for years. I may not be a teacher because of him, but I want to be a teacher like him. Sadly, his kind wouldn't survive in today's No Child Left Behind, endless standardized testing atmosphere.

My old teacher's innovative teaching techniques designed to wake up students' intellects and make them question the world around them isn't highly prized. But I owe him a huge debt.