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Notebook on Cities and Culture S1E25: Paradise of the Ordinary with D.J. Waldie

Wednesday, June 6, 2012

Colin Marshall sits down in Lakewood City Hall with D.J. Waldie, author of books like Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir and Where We Are Now: Notes from Los Angeles, collaborator on books like Real City with photographer Marissa Roth, and a 34-year employee of the City of Lakewood as Public Information Officer and Deputy City Manager. They discuss the importance of Wallace Stevens’ “work and walking” to his own writing; his advice to the latest wave of Los Angeles newcomers looking for solutions to the problem of how to live here; what it means to lead a “redemptive” suburban life, and whether “suburban” means the same thing to every writer; Lakewood and other rapidly built postwar tract-home communities as exciting, frightening experiments in living from which new democratic vistas could well; the meaning of Lakewood’s motto that “Times Change, Values Don’t”; how considerable variation can arise from built uniformity; his premise that there are no “good” places, and his ongoing interest in the question of what would happen if you fell in love with the place where you are; how knowledge of a place, if not quite love for it, can enrich the experience of that place; how the newest Angelenos seem to long to connect to and invest in their place; and how Los Angeles’ resistance to its own history has contributed to bad choices over the years, leading to frustrations financial, racial, and otherwise.

Download the interview from Notebook on Cities and Culture’s feed here or on iTunes here.

(Photo: Tom Johnson)

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Podthoughts: The Bike Show

Sunday, June 3, 2012


Vital stats:
Format: talk about all aspects of cycling and cycling culture
Episode duration: typically ~30m, with occasional longer specials
Frequency: weekly

London’s Resonance FM broadcasts not what we would think of as straightforward talk programming, and not what we would think of as straightforward music programming, but something called “radio art.” This broad label turns out to cover a badly underutilized patch of radio’s philosophical spectrum, one safely distant from both bland jukeboxing and tiresome politicking. Eschew traditional news, sports, hits, and complaints, and you open up the creative space for shows a thinking listener might actually enjoy. This I realized when I Podthought about the podcast of every Resonance FM broadcast available in that form. I’d previously written up The Wire magazine’s Adventures in Modern Music, the most straightforward music show I’ve heard on Resonance (and The Wire has R. Stevie Moore on its cover this month). Now I’ve cycled back around, as it were, to listen hard to a program no other station has produced, or possibly could produce: The Bike Show [RSS] [iTunes].

When first I heard The Bike Show, host/producer Jack Thurston impressed me not only with his professionalism and stealthy production skill — qualities not immediately associated, alas, with freeform radio — but a dedication that had him not only chatting in the studio but recording out in the field, on long trips, and even while riding. (These signature “rolling interviews” have their own page on the show’s site.) But back then I lived in Santa Barbara, where cycling meant only an idyllic way to commute. Now that I’ve dropped myself into the vast complexity of Los Angeles with my old brown Nishiki as primary means of transport, cycling has taken a rather more essential place. An encounter with David Byrne’s Bicycle Diaries made me consciously grasp a fact my lifestyle had already incorporated: no more efficient, absorbing, and intellectually or aesthetically connected form of urban transportation exists. I had much to learn; I had to catch up on The Bike Show immediately.

Read the whole thing at Maximum Fun.

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I take on A Clockwork Orange on The Auteurcast

Friday, June 1, 2012

Rudie Obias and West Anthony invited me on their podcast The Auteurcast, a show which picks out fascinating directors and discusses all their films one-by-one. I joined them during a Stanley Kubrick cycle. They would have had no way of knowing this — except due to sheer film-geek likelihood — but Kubrick counts among the first three or four directors I actually recognized as directors. (Now that I think about it, “directors you actually recognize as directors,” makes for as concisely accurate a definition of “auteur” as I’ve heard.) Going to screening after screening of Dr. Strangelove with my dad no doubt encouraged that.

But I didn’t discuss Dr. Strangelove, my most-viewed Kubrick film, with Rudie and West. Nor did we discuss Barry Lyndon, the Kubrick film I think about most often these days. We discussed A Clockwork Orange, of which I just so happened to catch a screening with Malcolm McDowell in attendance. (To name just one of the reasons I moved to Los Angeles.) We got into the distance between the film’s reality and that of 1960s England and the surprisingly enduring impact of non-explicit violence. You can listen to the show here. I remember taking a girlfriend, at age fifteen, to a double-bill of A Clockwork Orange and The Shining at Seattle’s Varsity Theater. I wonder where she is now. Well, not really.

Other recent press and guest appearances:

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Notebook on Cities and Culture S1E24: Japanese International Style with Todd Shimoda

Thursday, May 31, 2012

Colin Marshall sits down in Little Tokyo with novelist Todd Shimoda, author, in collaboration with visual artist L.J.C. Shimoda, of “philosophical mystery” novels with science, engineering, Japanese and Japanese-American themes. His latest, Subduction, follows a disgraced young physician into his four-year exile on a tiny, earthquake-prone, mythology-freighted island off the Japanese coast. They discuss Japan’s very real earthquakes in Kobe and Fukushima; the book’s obsessed characters, whether obsessed with seismology, documentation, or simply staying on the island; the question of how much scientific data he can safely include in a novel, and if this age of Wikipedia changes that; the “four-dimensional” Japanese cultural co-existence of mythology and science, and its blurred boundary between practice and belief; writing a novel of Japan without writing a novel of Japanese-ness, and avoiding other problems that befall Westerners’ writing about the East; Haruki Murakami, Kobo Abe, and the Japanese International Style; his risk of real-life island despair while living on Kauai, and his regular, pendulum-like moves between the urban, suburban, and rural worlds; how to use the cultures that converge in Los Angeles to write a novel of Los Angeles, where the appearance of no neighborhoods becomes the reality of too many; the city’s actual earthquake of the previous evening; Chin Music Press’ sense of geographic place; and the availability of a constant stream of Western fascination with Japan for a novelist to tap into.

Download the interview from Notebook on Cities and Culture’s feed here or on iTunes here.

(Photo: Mike Mazzoli)

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I’m live-interviewing “philosophical mystery” novelist Todd Shimoda this Thursday at Diesel

Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Angelenos, you can catch me live-interviewing Todd Shimoda, author of Japanese- and Japanese-Amercan-themed “philosophical mysteries,” at Diesel, A Bookstore in Brentwood this Thursday, May 31st. You may remember my first interview with Todd on The Marketplace of Ideas, when I talked to him about reading Kobo Abe, integrating art with text, and writing his novel Oh!: Mystery of Mono no Aware. The Diesel event will launch his new, equally philosophical, mysterious, and visual book, Subduction.

Diesel’s blurb for the party:

Diesel, A Bookstore in Brentwood welcomes acclaimed author-artist couple Todd and Linda Shimoda to the store to celebrate the publication of their new book, Subduction, on Thursday, May 31st at 7pm. Colin Marshall, host and producer of the podcast Notebook on Cities and Culture, will join Todd and Linda for an informal Q&A and discussion.

Subduction is a seductive mystery set on a tiny, earthquake-plagued island. Endo, a young physician unjustly charged with a patient’s death, is banished to the island to care for the few remaining elderly residents. After a mysterious death, he discovers why the islanders don’t wish to leave: years ago, jealousies, lust, and violence ripped apart their lives, and the wounds haven’t healed. Exquisitely designed with L.J.C. Shimoda’s artwork throughout, Subduction also features a sixteen-page illustrated retelling of the myth of Kashima, the god who controls a giant, thrashing catfish that causes earthquakes.

“Sake, snacks, and art too,” says Todd. Come one, come all.

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Podthoughts: The Truth

Monday, May 28, 2012

Vital stats:
Format: sound-oriented radio fictions
Episode duration: 9-18m
Frequency: 2-3 per month

“I thought there would be a revival of fiction and theater on the radio,” says science-fiction author Terry Bisson, “and I’ve been very disappointed that it hasn’t, kind of, worked out that way.” You and me both, brother. I say this as someone who, in childhood, obsessively collected bootleg tapes of old-time radio shows like Amos & Andy and X Minus One and had the newer, more internationalist productions of the ZBS Foundation playing on infinite loop. I dreamed of re-introducing “movies for your mind,” in the words of one radio-drama survivor whose tapings I attended as a kid, to the dead airwaves of my benighted time. Bisson made his lament to producer Jonathan Mitchell on an episode of Mitchell’s podcast The Truth [RSS] [iTunes] which adapts Bisson’s story “They’re Made Out of Meat” [MP3]. I bet Mitchell went through similar youthful befuddlement, wondering what made all those cool old shows go away and hoping — knowing, in some quasi-messianic sense — that they would return. It hasn’t, kind of, worked out that way.

What to blame? Maybe the increasingly utilitarian slant of modern American radio, which either feeds listeners’ anxiety over not having the latest news and information or numbs them completely with three-minute shots of anesthetic familiarity. But I get the sense that, deep in the minds of even dedicated tuners-in, radio just isn’t for fiction. They may express great admiration for the idea of new radio drama, and they may even bemoan the past 50 years’ lack of it, but they’ll keep turning the dial if they suspect what they’re hearing isn’t true. I doubt they do it for strictly gray-flannel-suit reasons; they probably just fear that they can’t keep up with a fictional narrative on the radio, or that they’ve already missed some plot point critical to understanding what happens next, or that they’ll get where they’re going before the big twist ending when everything falls into place. Or they just assume the story won’t give them much to talk about at the water cooler.

Read the whole thing at Maximum Fun.

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Notebook on Cities and Culture S1E23: The Music Nerd Ghetto with Hollywood Steve Huey

Friday, May 25, 2012

Colin Marshall sits down in Barnsdall Art Park with Hollywood Steve Huey, writer and media personality, former critic at All Music Guide and host of the web series Yacht Rock. They discuss his introductions to the likes of Michael Jackson, Yngwie Malmsteen, and Barry Manilow; elements of his home state of Michigan, including Big Rapids (not to be confused with Grand Rapids), Ann Arbor, and the urban ruins and $5,000 mansions of Detroit; the All Music Guide’s shaping force on his musical consciousness; the lack of a genre equivalent to Yacht Rock today thanks to marketing departments’ lack of imagination; great works, like Nirvana’s Nevermind, that both found genres and dissolve them; life in the music nerd ghetto within the entertainment capital of the world at the time of bewildering musical (and cinematic and televisual) bounty; acquiring the name “Hollywood Steve” through a one-off gig on Pirates of the Caribbean; how he came to appreciate Barry Manilow, an artist known to some as a byword for bad music; and why guilty pleasures — whether musical ones in the case of Barry Manilow, or urban ones in the case of Los Angeles — are better enjoyed as regular pleasures.

Download the interview from Notebook on Cities and Culture’s feed here or on iTunes here.

(Photo: Sammy Primero)

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My recent ventures into the Korean and Korean-American media

Monday, May 21, 2012

Last month, the culture editor of the Korean daily paper 중앙일보 interviewed me, alongside a few other students of the language, about the origins of our interest in Korean culture. She then asked for our suggestions of how to popularize Korean music, films, and television in the United States, an entirely trickier question to answer. (I’ve sensed some anxiety before about the comparatively weak influence of the Korean Wave in America as opposed to in the rest of Asia.)

I mostly talked about Sangsoo Hong, as the article reveals:

I also appeared for a three-hour session on Mike Kim‘s Koreatown-based podcast, K-Town Tonight. You may remember my last sit-down on that show, when it aired on Radio Korea. This time, unbound by FCC restrictions, we get right down into it. Mike summarized the discussion thusly:

Guess what? We finally talk about K-Town… sort of. In this episode we are joined by Colin Marshall and Yuji, both former guests. Mr. Pizza, sweet potatoes, KBBQ in LA vs. Korea. Park’s BBQ.

Kyochon & OB Bear for wings. Sool-jib vs. Pocha. Café Jack and Mok Maru Jong. Indoor smoking in K-Town. Prince. Scent. Yellow House Café. Haus. See? Lots of K-Town shit. Koreatown! Tom n Toms. Hae Jang Chon’s lunch specials. Yu Ga Ne.

Keungama. Namsan Fusion Café. Mom’s House. Face soup. Guelaguetza. El Jalapeno. Honey Pig. Yelpers can suck a fat penis. “Golf Galbi-tang” at Chilbo Myunok. Menupan.com in Korea. Italian restaurants in Korea.

Mike reveals his technique to get rid of stalkers. Korean-Americans are obnoxious when they visit Korea. Tahoe Galbi now serves Brazilian BBQ. Oo-Kook. You & Me Cuisine. Conversation bar (or whatever they’re called)? Moss. Jeonju.

Curry Hyang. Thai food in K-Town. Mike had his 31st birthday party at Hae Ha Heng. Mr. Young’s. Filipino food in or near Koreatown. Spicy Chicken Joy at Jollibee. Lots of Koreans in the Philippines. Burgos St in Makati City. Inwangsan Hotel in Manila. Aristocrat restaurant in the Philippines. Mike recommends the pork spare ribs and garlic rice.

Kimchi chigae in K-Town? Dak Galbi in K-Town. Chuncheon. Trying to date as a fat ass. Prostitution in Korea, and what happened in September 2004. Paul Pot discussion. Japanese porn discussion. Review our show on iTunes. Mike’s friends are messing with the K-Town Tonight Facebook page. Some podcasting tips from Colin. End with JYP.

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Podthoughts: The KunstlerCast

Sunday, May 20, 2012

Vital stats:
Format: interview-conversations about “the tragic comedy of suburban sprawl”
Episode duration: 12m-1h20m
Frequency: weekly

Suburbia sucks, and ever-rising energy prices will soon destroy it. There you have the collected ideas, in caricature, of self-styled public intellectual James Howard Kunstler. For twenty years, he’s worked the city-planning, architecture, transit and urbanism/New Urbanism beats, territory where self-styled public intellectuals have been known to tread. Perhaps you’ve read the work of activist-journalist Jane Jacobs, to whom Kunstler often gets compared. When her 1961 book The Death and Life of Great American Cities grew famous and influential, the caricature of her ideas developed as follows: modernist urban planning (i.e., freeways and function separation) sucks, and if you let it happen, it will soon destroy you. These caricatures fail to convey the depth and nuance of Jacobs and Kunstler’s writing, as caricatures do. Alas, it seems that public intellectuals, especially self-styled ones, pay the price of caricaturization to find purchase in the zeitgeist.

If you wish to know more about precisely why Kunstler thinks suburbia sucks, allow me to suggest The KunstlerCast [iTunes] [RSS]. Taking a more unusual form than it might at first seem, the podcast presents a weekly conversation — more formal than a two-sided gab session, but looser than an interview — between Kunstler and co-host Duncan Crary. Aside from the occasional field trip to real streets and malls and such, each episode has Crary asking Kunstler for his thoughts on a certain subject, be it a city he’s recently visited like, say, Portland [MP3]; the work of another urbanist like, say, Jane Jacobs [MP3]; or even the very definition terms as basic as “urban” [MP3]. This may sound a tad technical or academic, but Kunstler, neither an academic nor a technician, seems constitutionally unsuited to letting conversations go dry. The man comes armed with judgments, often swift and harsh, about which cities he finds livable, which cities he finds hellish, and which cities he feels certain that energy crises will simply sweep away.

Read the whole thing at Maximum Fun.

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Notebook on Cities and Culture S1E22: The Discerning Cosmopolitan Cartographer with Eric Brightwell

Saturday, May 19, 2012

Colin Marshall sits down in Silver Lake with Eric Brightwell, proprietor of both Pendersleigh & Sons Cartography, which offers hand-drawn maps of neighborhoods in Los Angeles and beyond (and posts them to Amoeba Music’s Amoeblog), and Brightwell, which offers luxury and craft items to the discerning cosmopolitan gentleman. They discuss the days when Silver Lake was Ivanhoe; the distinctively shifting and disputed nature of Los Angeles neighborhoods; the differences between neighborhood mapping by Google Maps, by Yahoo Maps, on subway station walls, and by hand; the unintended Berlin Wall effect of freeway construction; his attracting of angry, all-caps comments from the gangs of Frogtown; longtime Angelenos’ lack of awareness about the neighborhoods that surround them, and their need to believe that their own has gone to the dogs; Hollywood’s retailers of pimp-geared $169 three-suit deals; how an authenticity jones can ruin your experience of Los Angeles; his discovery of microsubcultures in unexpected places, and the larger fact that no one part of the city is more interesting than any other; Hitler’s Pacific Palisades bunker; and the advanced art of entering a neighborhood, exploring it, and documenting it without knowing anything at all going in.

Download the interview from Notebook on Cities and Culture’s feed here or on iTunes here.

(Photo: Fern)

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