Stupid Cat Tricks

If you can stand just one more letter on the influence of “Beavis and Butt-head” on youngsters (“Just Boys or Civilization Destroyers?” Sept. 12, and Letters, Sept. 26):

A couple of letter writers cited a story of two children blowing up a cat after Beavis and Butt-head were seen discussing such an act in a recent episode. I, of course, as the owner of two cats, am sickened by the behavior. I have been sickened many times in my life by acts of cruelty toward cats, and Beavis and Butt-head aside, there is nothing new about cats being blown up. I have been hearing stories like that since I was in kindergarten.

Cruelty and stupidity are nothing new. Beavis and Butt-head are a mirror, not icons. People who inflict pain and suffering on others are too mired in their own sickness to see the difference, and will use any influence to validate it, whether it is “B&B;” or the Roadrunner cartoons or what have you.

In the land of the First Amendment, social conscience and responsibility start at home.

ANNE CREELY CHRISTENSEN

Irvine

“Beavis and Butt-head” is the most moronic thing on TV today. To compare these characters to past comic fools like Abbott & Costello, Maynard G. Krebs or even the Three Stooges is not only inaccurate but misses the point entirely.

Maynard G. Krebs never blew up cats, and to my knowledge Abbott & Costello never inhaled paint thinner. It’s true that the Three Stooges were rather idiotic and didn’t have a wide vocabulary, but at least their conversational parameters went beyond “cool” and “huh-huh.”

“Beavis and Butt-head” may appeal to adolescent boys still searching for their role models, but in my opinion, it’s just a dumb show that sucks !

PAMELA MARSH

Walnut

You Call This Art?

Regarding “The Art of the Dealer,” Hunter Drohojowska-Philp’s profile of gallery owner Rosamund Felsen (Sept. 12):

I confess now to being old within my time. For this constant glorification in Los Angeles of Mike Kelley’s art is beyond my reach, beyond my scope, of what art is, if art is to be prescriptive of doctrine prior to being descriptive of nature, if the beating heart is emblematic of the pacing liturgical seasons, and if the artistic eye opens with delight each sunrise and closes each sunset to renew itself with dreamscapes.

I am not shocked that as an artist Kelley makes art from garbage. For I am too bored by that precept to be shocked. But I do become quite excited when thinking of the tormented John Ruskin, who in unpredictable moments of sanity often pondered what the implications are for himself, for humankind, for all the light of the world, that God liturgically creates life out of dust.

Therefore I am appalled when the sanctity and humbleness of this dear and attribute dust is so-called artistically elevated to the status of garbage--i.e., mere byproduct is equal to roots and that effect is greater than cause, as a basis from which art is to be fashioned, taste formed, standards of truth realized and generational art legacies shadow-cast and justified.

Collector Barry Sloane comments that in a year Rosamund Felsen taught him “everything that had gone on in the last 30 years of California art.” What can it mean, other than that Los Angeles has finally reached a state of art affairs when its early artists like Guy Rose and William Wendt, its early Modernists like Macdonald-Wright, Nick Brigante and Lorser Feitelson are closer to Duccio and Fra Angelico, to John Donne and Milton, to Courbet, Cezanne and Coomaraswampy than they are to contemporary L.A. artists.

And that L.A. curators and art dealers find careers of glory in this!

JOHN ALAN WALKER

Big Pine

“Twin stuffed skunk toys, sporting rubber dildos, pseudo-religious shrouds simulating the sacred cloth of Turin some with the sweat stains of Elvis, effusive displays of sex organs. . . .” This is cutting-edge art?

Why not save the trip to the gallery and instead pick up a copy of the National Enquirer or watch “Hard Copy” on television? Oh, I know, because exploitation for shock value in galleries is for intellectuals and the National Enquirer is for everyone else.

P.S. The L.A. Times functions much like the federal government: The art critics are the equivalent of politicians who pander to special interests. Time to reinvent the L.A. Times.

KATHY McGUIRE

Ventura

Time magazine’s Robert Hughes caught the essence of much artwork in his review of the exhibition “Helter Skelter,” in which Felsen’s artists figure so prominently. Hughes wrote:

“But adolescence is the key here. America invented it, Los Angeles glorifies it, and for the moment, MOCA is its Louvre.”

PATRICK PERCY

West Hollywood

Sunday Night Flight

Once again, the networks are scheduling their best programs opposite each other, and I am becoming tired of it (“The Sunday Night Fights,” by Daniel Cerone, Sept. 12).

A few years ago, a time slot opposite both “Miami Vice” and “Dallas” destroyed the chances of the brilliant network satire “Max Headroom.” Now, the likable and clever “Lois & Clark” could suffer the same sad fate because of competition from “Murder, She Wrote” and “seaQuest DSV.”

Maybe networks don’t want audiences to see series on competing outlets, but this cutthroat tactic destroys worthy programs and alienates viewers.

I have seen lots of cult programs destroyed in recent years and then viewers launch huge campaigns to bring them back. The campaigns invariably fail, resulting in a lot of bitterness and resentment that causes viewers to depart the networks. So instead of succeeding with this tactic, the networks are losing audiences because of it.

ABC needs to stop this ridiculousness and move “Lois & Clark” to a less competitive time slot. Otherwise, the show will end up like “Max Headroom,” a promising series left to the scrap heap of history by the inept and frustrating network “system.”

TAMMY SMITH

Santee

Thank you for Cerone’s enlightening article. To read about TV execs fondly reminiscing about “Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea,” and deem innovative a new series wherein Superman’s mother sews his outfit, certainly explains the erosion of network viewership.

Switching back and forth between the leaden “seaQuest” and the overhyped “Lois & Clark” finally pushed me to doing something I’ve been putting off for a long time.

I ordered cable.

ANDREW CANNAVA

North Hollywood

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