If the prospect of three years of construction on the 405 Freeway has you concerned, curious, or both, here’s a chance to get some answers about the project directly from the man in charge.

Metro’s Mike Barbour, who’s heading up the effort to build a 10-mile northbound carpool lane through the Sepulveda Pass, will be answering questions during an online chat on Wednesday, May 26 from noon to 1 p.m.

The session is called “Living with the I-405 Sepulveda Pass Widening Project.” Metro asks that you submit your questions in advance, and says queries under 300 characters will get priority during the session.

Full information on the session is here, along with a project overview in which Barbour says that widening and improving the freeway—one of the nation’s busiest—is as “challenging as performing heart surgery on a patient while she runs a marathon.” The job’s expected to be completed by 2013.

Posted 5-17-10

Merce Cunningham was internationally recognized as one of the greatest choreographers who ever lived, an artistic force in the dance world for more than seven decades. His passing last year at the age of 90 left a void that won’t easily be filled, particularly since the troupe he founded, the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, has announced that after embarking on a two-year Legacy Tour in their founder’s honor, they will officially disband.

But as dance aficionados are mourning his loss, they will also be celebrating his achievements when the Music Center presents on the Walt Disney Concert Hall stage the world premiere of the reconstructed piece ROARATORIO, specially commissioned by the Music Center, Festival Montpellier Danse 2010, and Théâtre de la Ville/Festival d’Automne à Paris. Accompanying the three performances will be the music of modernist composer John Cage. Also taking place will be a number of related events, including discussions, lectures, art exhibits and interactive workshops.

Single tickets are still available for the June 2-4 performances at Walt Disney Concert Hall; for an appreciation of Cunningham’s artistic contributions, check out local visual and performing arts blog artsmeme.

Posted 5-13-10

Shortly after its 1927 premiere in Weimar Germany, Fritz Lang’s dense but visionary science-fiction fable “Metropolis” was drastically cut by roughly 40% of its running time in an effort to broaden its audience appeal and earn back the cost of what at the time was the most expensive movie Germany had ever produced.

But over the years, so much additional footage was lost, damaged or recut and mutilated that a bitter and despairing Lang declared that his most famous film “had ceased to exist.” Film scholars dismissed periodic attempts at restoration as only partially successful at best, and “Metropolis” gradually became better known to the general movie-going public as a ghostly legend, embellished with a few striking production photos, more than a vibrant “moving picture” theatrical experience.

But then–astoundingly–in early 2008, a virtually complete 16mm print was discovered languishing in an Argentinian film archive. For less than the cost of an average TV series episode, German film technicians repaired and restored the elements as best they could, recording a new soundtrack of the original symphonic score composed especially for the film.

The full-length “Metropolis” had its long-overdue return engagement at a handful of sold-out film festival screenings, including one earlier this year in Los Angeles. But now the rest of LA’s filmgoing community will have its chance to see the film that influenced “Blade Runner” and countless other science-fiction classics when “Metropolis” opens on Friday, May 14 at the Laemmle Royal Theatre in West Los Angeles.

Silent movie and science-fiction buffs will need no further prompting to start queuing up for tickets. But for the rest of us, visit the Kino International website for the full background of this fascinating film and the torturous path its history has taken. And if you need any additional encouragement, check out the Metropolis trailer.

Posted 5-13-10

Southern California’s balmy weather may be a dream for visitors, but for those sensitive to the sun, it can be a nightmare.

So just in time for the summer, let Kaiser Woodland Hills Medical Center show you how to co-exist with the sun without sacrificing your health. Continuing the Women’s Health Series that began in February—open to the general public—join the upcoming session devoted to “Taking Care of Your Skin,” conducted by Kaiser dermatologist Dr. Chi Rosenberg.

Here are the particulars:

Tuesday, June 1, 2010
5 – 6 p.m.
Kaiser Woodland Hills
5601 De Soto Ave.
Woodland Hills
Entrance 5, 1st Floor in Auditoriums B and C.

Attendees can enjoy light refreshments and compete for door prizes and opportunity drawings. Reserve your spot today by calling (818) 719-2448. And mark your calendar for future sessions on “Healthy Eating, Active Living Strategies for Busy Families” with Dr. Patricia De La Riva (September), and “Reducing Your Risk of Cancer” with Dr. Gary Schwartz (November).

Posted 5-13-10

Getting the mumps was once a childhood rite of passage. But it’s rare in modern-day Los Angeles County, where the vast majority of young children are vaccinated against it, along with measles and rubella.

So with nine cases so far this year—six confirmed and four of those in the past two months—the Public Health department isn’t taking any chances. Mindful of an outbreak that started last year in Orthodox and Hasidic Jewish communities in New York and New Jersey, the department is putting out the word that mumps is communicable, potentially dangerous—and preventable.

The county had just seven confirmed cases in all of 2009, the same number in 2008 and only five in 2007, according to Dr. Jonathan E. Fielding, the county’s director of public health. In a public health advisory issued Tuesday, May 11, Fielding said symptoms include “swelling of salivary glands, fever and inflammation of the testes in teenage and adult males.”

He urged those with symptoms to stay out of group settings and see a doctor. And he noted that the best protection against the virus is the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine.

While the vaccine is most commonly given to children, medical officials say adults who have not been vaccinated should also do so.

“A few of the cases seem to have some relationship with the outbreak in the Hasidic community in New York,” Fielding said Thursday. But piecing it all together is a complicated matter of medical investigation. “Somebody came through South Africa,” Fielding said.

Dr. Nelson El Amin, medical director of the county’s immunization program, said there was evidence that some of the L.A. cases “may be related to travel related to Passover.”

“Not all are among the Hasidic population. Some are,” El Amin said.

He declined to be more specific, other than to say the L.A. patients ranged in age from infancy to adulthood and were from the northern and “Metro West” areas of the county.
“I can tell you that the majority of those who got it have not been immunized. I don’t believe any of them have been immunized as kids.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have been tracking the New York area cases as well as an outbreak at a small college in Iowa and among “a bunch of guys in Omaha” who went to a reunion basketball game and came down with the mumps, among other cases, spokesman Jeff Dimond said. The agency has posted on its website a mumps Q & A and “fast facts” on symptoms.

While the Los Angeles numbers may be small, the level of concern is not.

“We’ve been on heightened alert,” El Amin said. “Our job is to jump on things when there might be a trend.”

Posted 4-13-10

If you had any doubt that bicycle culture is on a major roll in Los Angeles, just check out the lineup for Bike Week 2010.

Among the attractions next week are prizes and giveaways, Tuesday’s annual nondenominational Blessing of the Bicycles outside Good Samaritan Hospital, a Downtown LA Bike Ride starting and ending at Olivera Street on Wednesday and free transit rides for cyclists on Bike to Work Day Thursday.

If that’s not enough, you also can pick up (or download) a copy of a brand new Metro map showing more than1,200 miles of local bikeways.

“Combining bus or rail with bicycling trips helps to further reduce carbon emissions and promotes a greener, better LA, “ according to Cosette Stark, Metro’s director of regional communication programs.

Metro’s blog The Source has a good rundown of the festivities here.

Posted 5-13-10

In February, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art hosted a rare appearance by Clint Eastwood.

The packed, invitation-only event—featuring a screening of an Eastwood documentary, followed by a question-and-answer session with the actor/director—was a coup for the museum.

But LACMA Director Michael Govan claims no credit for the Eastwood “get.”

“There’s no way in the world I could have gotten Clint Eastwood to come on my own,” says Govan. Instead, he’s quick to give top billing to the museum’s board—specifically, co-chair Terry Semel. The former Warner Bros. chief has enjoyed a two-decade friendship with Eastwood, releasing 20 of the actor’s films at the studio.

Beyond the evening’s glitz, the Eastwood event was a stunning illustration of a new L.A. story unfolding at LACMA. The county’s premier art museum is tapping the town’s most famous hometown industry by increasingly casting Hollywood luminaries for its board of trustees.

Given its home in the entertainment capital, Semel says, LACMA embraces film as a “serious art, a real art,” one that, along with photography, should play an increasingly important role in the museum’s identity. That, he says, “is critical.”

The hope, of course, is also that the tighter ties between LACMA and the entertainment industry will lead not only to a new burst of creative energy but also to a new pool of donors beyond the traditional worlds of real estate and finance. LACMA board members each commit to raising or giving $100,000 per year.

Besides Semel, who also formerly headed Yahoo!, the 59-member board of trustees includes singer Barbra Streisand, producers Brian Grazer and Steve Tisch, Sony Pictures

Chairman Michael Lynton and songwriter Carole Bayer Sager, as well as other top-drawer execs in the worlds of media, sports marketing and video games.

“You put a few major entertainment figures on the board and your Rolodex is just so rich,” says Bayer Sager of the benefits to LACMA. “It’s useful in getting dynamic people who care about the arts.”

Bayer Sager, who joined the board last November and is married to Semel’s former Warner Bros. partner, Bob Daly, says she recently began developing a series of possible public service spots aimed at boosting LACMA attendance, especially among the hard-to-reach younger crowd.

Still in the design phase, she says the first installment—“Have You Seen the Lights at LACMA?”—would feature the iconic “Urban Lights” streetlamp installation along Wilshire Boulevard.

Although the marriage of Hollywood and LACMA seems like a natural fit, the county’s museum hierarchy failed for years to reach out to the entertainment community.

“My New York friends were wondering how come we had so few people on the board from Hollywood and the entertainment industry,” recalls Govan, who took over in 2006.

Although efforts had begun before his arrival to build a better roster of industry powerhouses, Govan says he too wondered why more weren’t being enlisted. He said he was determined to bring more diversity and youth to the board.

In years past, LACMA’s relationship with Hollywood seemed not to be particularly strategic. Suspense actor Vincent Price, a collector, was a trustee in the early 1960s before

LACMA moved to its present campus. Steve Martin joined the board in the late 1980s. That may be why the comedian and art collector, who continues to support the museum, was able to roller skate through LACMA galleries and past a pair of David Hockney paintings in the 1991 film “L.A. Story.”

The new infusion of Hollywood players may prove especially useful as LACMA tries to heal wounds that developed last year when Govan announced that the museum was planning to end its screenings of foreign and domestic films, after a 40-year run for the program. Audiences and revenues were dwindling, he said.
The ensuing outcry—including an open letter from director Martin Scorsese—put Govan on the defensive. The Hollywood Foreign Press Association and Time Warner Cable stepped up to sponsor this year’s film series.

Govan has said that the museum would like to raise at least $5 million to make the program sustainable long-term, and Semel has vowed to do his best to make that happen. Last fall, producer Irwin Winkler hosted what Govan calls a “friend-raising”—rather than fundraising—event at which the museum director sought ideas about how to improve the film program from industry veterans.

And then there’s Semel’s pal, Eastwood. On the night of LACMA’s event in his honor, Eastwood vowed that he’d “reach into [his] pocket, too.” And that’s the kind of role modeling LACMA undoubtedly is happy to see.

Posted 5-13-10

Workers on the Orange Line Extension project are getting the lead out. And the asbestos, too.

Over the course of the next month or so, workers will be removing the substances from 18 buildings among the 45 to be demolished as part of the project to extend the popular rapid transit busway northward. Starting today, May 12, the work will be occurring in the busway’s right-of-way–slightly east of Canoga Avenue between Vanowen Street in Canoga Park and Lassen Street in Chatsworth—between 6 a.m. and 4 p.m. on weekdays.

“There’s no risk to the public because the contractor will have 100% containment,” says Scott McConnell, Metro senior construction manager on the project. All work will take place indoors, with continual air monitoring to make sure no toxics escape.

He says next steps include the actual demolition of the buildings, clean-up of drums of oil and paint cans left behind by several of the relocated businesses and excavating and removing contaminated soil along the one-time railroad line.

When the entire project is finished in the summer of 2012, the Orange Line Extension will extend the bus line four miles northward from Warner Center to its final destination between Devonshire and Lassen streets in Chatsworth. The line averages about 22,000 boardings each weekday now and is expected to reach 45,000 a day by 2030.

Car and foot traffic along Canoga Avenue will not be affected by the current abatement work. And there won’t be much to see.

McConnell says Metro asked the contractor: “Are there going to be guys in moon suits walking around with instruments?”

The answer was no.

Posted 5-11-10

This is one kind of bookkeeping that the Los Angeles County Public Library does not relish.

Library executives, like their counterparts in other departments, are being called on to help the county close a $500-million budget deficit for the coming fiscal year. For the library, this means reducing hours at some branches and ending its long-running Adult Literacy Program—a move that would seem, on the surface, to run counter to a library’s calling.

In reality, however, the elimination of the literacy program was overdue, according to County Librarian Margaret Donnellan Todd.

“I’m not happy to make any cuts,” Todd said Wednesday as the Board of Supervisors began hearings on the proposed 2010-2011 budget. “But this one, I think, was best for taxpayers.”

The program, which served between 200 and 250 participants, cost the library $555,000 a year. That price was hard to justify, Todd said, because the program was based on an outdated state model from the 1980s that emphasized one-on-one tutoring and failed to incorporate advances in technology and teaching.

During the past two decades, the participants also changed dramatically, a change that Todd said was not reflected in the program’s approach. In earlier years, she said, most people seeking adult literacy services simply had not learned to read. Today, most participants want assistance in improving their skills in English as a second language. “That’s a huge change from the ‘80s,” she said.

Complicating matters, some participants also had “significant learning disabilities” and were referred to the library’s literacy program from adult schools and other outside agencies, Todd explained, adding that the library staff does not have the necessary skill set for that kind of challenge.

“We can’t give false expectations,” she said. “We need to be more honest. We’re not the right place for these people.”

Todd said that, beginning with the new fiscal year in July, the nine staffers assigned to the adult literacy program will be transferred to other areas of the library system. The program’s participants will be referred to private agencies, said Todd’s chief deputy, Terri Maguire. The library also will continue to offer literacy services on its computers.

In the longer term, Todd said she and her staff will take a year to reevaluate how it confronts literacy issues in ways that are cost effective and programmatically successful.

A key component of that effort will likely be to identify the best practices of online adult literacy instruction and implement it throughout the county library system so it can be accessed at home and at individual branches. Todd said the library also might consider partnering with longstanding literacy programs or holding larger classes, rather than the old, costly model of individual tutoring.

Given its costs and shortcomings, why wasn’t the literacy program eliminated sooner?

“Sometimes people think with their heart rather than the hard data,” Todd said. “They want to help. But now’s the time to think with our heads.”

For a more comprehensive look at the library’s literacy plans, as described in a letter to L.A. County CEO William T Fujioka, click here.

Posted 5-12-10