Setting Times stories to music: From Ronettes to Joy Division
You know how some mysteries are better unsolved?
In Monday’s Great Read, Chris O’Brien had a lot of fun being Agent Mulder to the Bay Area’s own extraterrestrial: the secret Google barge. And his loopy theories -- the world’s largest Easy Bake Oven being my favorite -- were far more entertaining than the reality revealed later in the week. “An interactive space where people can learn about new technology.” Ho-hum.
It reminds me of a forlorn place I often drive by. About a year ago, someone created a beautiful balanced-stone sculpture garden amid the dirt and weeds there. But in a matter of days, someone knocked them all down, leaving the space strewn with large rocks. Then, within a few days, the standing stones were back. And the cycle repeats.
Is it performance art? Or a battle between vandals and someone’s dogged insistence on expected beauty?
I’ve thought about leaving a note, but in the end, I’d rather not hear the explanation. All I need to know is that the stones’ return makes me smile.
Anyway, in these roundups of the week gone by, I’d like to offer the first paragraphs of each Great Read (or, as they’re known in print, Column One). Maybe they’ll buy your eye and you can settle in for a good weekend read. And you’ll also get the songs that inspired me while editing the stories, or reading them later if my fellow editor Millie Quan ushered them through. A story-song combo!
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Hunting for clues about Google’s mystery barge
If it weren’t for Google trying to cover it up, the old sea-worn barge stacked four stories high with customized shipping containers may not have become an object of global fascination.
But Google being Google with all its out-there projects — many ripped from the pages of sci-fi bestsellers — the secrecy behind the barge has taken on a life of its own. Google isn’t saying anything, and having guards shoo away prying eyes has only added to the mystery.
Since the barge was discovered 10 days ago, my imagination has raced through mind-blowing possibilities. What could be next for a company funding projects to end death, build robotic cars and take the Internet to outer space? A teleportation device? A time travel machine? The world’s largest Easy Bake Oven to make 8-foot-high cupcakes?
Or perhaps it’s just an epic marketing prank to get us all talking about Google.
“This is like catnip for conspiracy theorists and nerds,” said Paul Saffo, a consulting professor of engineering at Stanford University and a Silicon Valley technology forecaster.
The barge became my Area 51, the secretive military base in Nevada that every amateur sleuth has tried to uncover. Piercing Google’s defensive shields was going to be tough, but I was undeterred. I picked up my notebook and camera and set off from my home in Oakland to find the truth.
#storysongs combo: “The Mystery Zone,” by Spoon. I always forget what perfect pop they make.
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Deaf film director can finally hear soundtracks to his films
The first thing you notice about the short film is that you never hear dialogue, only the dreamy, Daniel Lanois-type score. Instead, it’s subtitled — even though the actors appear to be speaking in English.
In the opening scenes, a young woman falls on the street, and a young man approaches to help.
“What, are you deaf?” the subtitles have her saying. “I said go away.”
“Actually, yeah, I am,” he replies.
The music swells, but the actor and director, Austin Chapman, never heard it while making “Eleven, Eleven.” The movie, which won the grand prize in Pepperdine’s student film festival in 2010, was based on Chapman’s experiences as a deaf person.
Two years later, the aspiring filmmaker’s life changed: New hearing aids let him hear a wide range of sounds for the first time. One of the first things he did was watch “Eleven, Eleven.” When it was over, the 24-year-old cried.
“It was like the first time I was kissed by a girl,” he said. “Scary, but exciting at the same time.”
Now, he knew, he would be able to choose the music for his films.
Amazed at first, he went on a musical binge, listening to everything from Mozart to Metallica, to prepare himself to choose the soundtrack for one of his shorts, about a man who loses his dog in Lake Arrowhead.
At a pivotal moment, when the man realizes his pet is missing, Chapman proposed a series of loud notes at each cut, almost like something from “Jaws.”
“It wouldn’t have worked. It would’ve totally taken viewers out of the scene,” said the composer, Max Royer. “I thought, ‘We’re going to have to work on some stuff.’”
“I didn’t know what cliche was,” Chapman said. “I still had a lot to learn.”
#storysongs combo: “I Hear Music,” by the Ronettes. Surround yourself by that wall of sound and get happy. Love the outfits in the picture.
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French fight making Wednesday a school day
If you think Wednesday’s child is full of woe, as the old nursery rhyme has it, try Wednesday’s parents.
Parents like Eric and Isabelle Nizard, who are angry over a sinister social experiment being conducted on their 9-year-old son, Sacha. It’s the latest innovation in French public education: Their child must now attend school on Wednesdays.
Beginning in September, hump day is no longer an official day off, a traditional oasis in the middle of the week for primary school students to rest from the rigors of academic pursuit. Instead, French children — who, like their parents, already enjoy longer lunch breaks and summer vacations than their counterparts in many other countries — have to show up for class Monday through Friday.
The Nizards complain that Sacha has lost his bearings, and that their leisurely Tuesday evenings, when the family could go out to dinner or Sacha could watch TV without worrying about class the next morning, have been sabotaged. His guitar lessons, formerly on Wednesdays, are now sandwiched into his Friday lunch period.
“We weren’t asked for our opinion. This was imposed upon us,” said Isabelle Nizard, 41, a dark-haired woman full of indignation and expressive gestures. “They changed the course of our life without asking us for our opinion!”
The new schedule has unleashed protests from teachers and petitions from parents. Caught flat-footed, the deeply unpopular government of President Francois Hollande, who pledged the reform during his election campaign last year, is struggling to defend it.
#storysongs combo: “Another Brick in the Wall,” by Pink Floyd. Perhaps obvious, but I’ll never tire of hearing those kids sing, “Hey, teacher, leave those kids alone!” (In the movie, also loved the screaming
Scottish teacher, but the kids’ masks gave me nightmares.)
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Anthony Quinn library holds trove of film history
In the front of the cinder-block library on Cesar Chavez Avenue in East Los Angeles, near a building supplies warehouse and an auto parts shop, a rainbow-colored mural shows children reading books beneath lush trees. Around the corner, a squat beige drop box awaits returned books and videos.
Only the name, the Anthony Quinn Public Library, gives a clue that this isn’t your normal neighborhood branch of the Los Angeles County library system.
Inside, an oil portrait of the late actor smiles down on middle school students doing homework in the reading room. A suit of armor stands guard in a Plexiglass case, a gift to Quinn from his mentor, John Barrymore, who had worn it in a stage production of “Richard III.” Zorba the Greek’s hat, a memento of Quinn’s signature role, is embossed in bronze in another case.
Locked up in the community room’s cabinet, an estimated 100 cardboard boxes hold a personal archive of the first Mexican American actor to win an Academy Award. Scrapbooks of clippings go back to a 1939 ad for his film “Island of Lost Men,” with ticket prices at 10 cents. A pile of photos shows life on the set of “Lawrence of Arabia.” A loose-leaf phone book contains numbers for Bill Cosby and Liza Minnelli, along with dentists and limo drivers.
Built on the site of the home where Quinn grew up, the library is an unlikely repository of movie star glamour. But it also offers a glimpse of how Hollywood treated ethnic minorities.
“It has incredible value for writing the history of Latinos in the U.S. film industry,” said USC film school professor Laura Serna, an expert on Latino cinema. She considers the Mexican-born Quinn one of the greatest Latino stars, even if his surname came from an Irish grandfather and his roles included Italians, Arabs, Native Americans and, most famously, Greeks.
Even through such mundane objects as expense accounts and contracts, Serna said, the collection can provide details about how actors “negotiated the ethnic and class divides in an arena in which Mexican Americans were generally marginalized —- except, of course, as a possible market for the industry’s wares.”
#storysongs combo: “I Love You, You Love Me,” by Anthony Quinn. Yes, Quinn pulls a Shatner, with the spoken-word-over-cheesy-music thing. But his voice is sexier, so you laugh but keep listening because you want to hear him speak.
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From prison isolation to a sense of doom
He’s the older guy in class. Old enough for you to notice. But he notices you, too, like he notices everyone else — your face, your gestures, where you sit, your race.
It’s only after he’s taken this unconscious roll-call that Steven Czifra turns his attention to Irish poet William Butler Yeats, yearning for the Lake Isle of Innisfree.
“And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow…”
Czifra is 38. He has spent more time in prison than the typical undergraduate of English 45C has spent in school. He was in juvenile hall before many of his fellow students were born.
It’s likely he’s read more books than they have, savoring each word, terrified the pages would run out during the 22 1/2 hours a day he spent locked in a pen one-tenth the size of the lecture hall at UC Berkeley.
A little more than a decade ago, Czifra was dubbed “the worst of the worst,” a moniker reserved for the 1,200 or so inmates isolated in the Security Housing Unit of Pelican Bay State Prison, a concrete and wire compound in the redwood forests near the Oregon border.
Today, he carries anxiety, fear and vigilance into the lecture halls of UC Berkeley.
“I was aware of everybody that was sitting around me and all of their facial features,” Czifra said as he strolled off campus after class. “I know that nothing bad is going to happen … but I still feel like there is an imminent threat to my safety and security.”
Even on a campus noted for its tolerance and tranquility, Czifra can’t bridle a sense of doom: He will lose his scholarship, jeopardize his partner and their 5-year-old son, lapse from sobriety. Sometimes, his heart races and he is sure he’s going to die. Right here. Right now.
#storysongs combo: “Isolation,” by Joy Division. Truth be told, I might prefer the live version by New Order playing at Bestival, but have to go with the original.
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If you have ideas for story-song pairings of your own, tweet the title and artist to @karihow or @LATgreatreads with the hashtag #storysongs.
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