1.
The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art, Culture & Industry of the Riverside Art Museum, lovingly known as The Cheech, houses the comedian’s personal art collection of work by Chicano artists, one of the largest collections in the world of its kind. According to the New York Times, The center, housed in the former Riverside public library, is possibly the first museum in the United States entirely devoted to showcasing Chicano art and culture. Marin hopes the project, a public-private partnership girded by significant municipal investment, will inspire a sort of Chicano art renaissance in the Inland Empire, once the cradle of California’s citrus production, and one of the nation’s fastest-growing and racially diverse regions.
Right now through January 22nd, 2023, you can also see the Collidoscope: de la Torre Brothers Retro-Perspective, which was the inaugural temporary exhibition that opened June 18th. If you’re not familiar with Einar and Jamex de la Torre, the de la Torre Brothers as they are known professionally, I highly recommend you explore their work online if you cannot make the exhibit.
And here in Cheech’s own words:
I was first introduced to many astonishing Hispanic artists at a show in 1989 at the LA County Museum of Art titled Hispanic Art in the United States. It was the first time I saw works by Luis Jimenez (RIP), Carlos Alfonzo, Gronk, Ibsen Espada, and many more. Frank Romero mentioned above also had work in the show. Check out these artists!
2.
And so it was that I was introduced to the music of planet earth in my tiny bedroom in small-town, Kansas, from 1966 through 1970 or so, honking and rasping from the tiny speaker in my Zephyr transistor radio. Somehow I was able to tune in 1090AM 50,000-watt station KAAY, Little Rock, Arkansas late at night. There was this strange, disembodied voice like none I’d heard before introducing me to all kinds of album cuts, from Zappa to Crimson, Guthrie to Zeppelin.
The show was Beaker Street and the DJ was Clyde Clifford (Dale Seidenschwarz). Supposedly, he changed his name as an inside joke amongst the DJs as Clyde W. Clifford was the comptroller general of LIN Broadcasting.
You can get the idea of his presentation style with this video below (the graphic is corny so just listen and shut your eyes, pretend you’re a 13-year old boy in your twin bed with the radio on the post).
Clyde’s name change reminded me of the time I attended the 1986 Telluride Film Festival (where, after viewing 4-5 films in one day, the final one was the world premiere of Blue Velvet, and, while accidentally sitting next to Laura Dern, it was so intense a blood vessel in one of my eyes somewhat popped…but that’s another story for another time) and one of the guests of honor was Chuck Jones, famous animator for Warner Brothers Cartoons from the 60s. He was incredibly funny and entertaining…he had stories galore…
…but back to the name change thing to rib on one of the higher-ups, I was reminded that Jones told the story of how the voice of Daffy Duck (Mel Blanc, of course) was taken directly from the voice of the show’s main producer, Leon Schlesinger. Here’s the story, plus more cartoon history, from an interview with Jones:
"The difference between Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny is very simple. Bugs is a comic hero. Daffy is a comic loser. And if you'll think about the history of all comics, you find that most of them fall into the latter category." — Chuck Jones
For more of this interview, visit the Television Academy Site.
3.
Man, the Zelensky haters sure swarmed out of the closet this week. Cathy Young, writing for the Bulwark, wrote There’s a nineteenth-century Russian fable called “The Elephant and the Pug” in which a pug yaps furiously at an elephant to get attention and show off how tough it is, while the elephant simply ignores it. Zelensky would obviously be the elephant in this scenario; but that would make the Zelensky haters the pugs—and that’s frankly a hideous insult to pugs. She also writes The question of why the Trumpian populist right is so consumed with hatred for Ukraine—a hatred that clearly goes beyond concerns about U.S. spending, a very small portion of our military budget, or about the nonexistent involvement of American troops—doesn’t have a simple answer. Partly, it’s simply partisanship: If the libs are for it, we’re against it, and the more offensively the better. (And if the pre-Trump Republican establishment is also for it, then we’re even more against it.) Partly, it’s the belief that Ukrainian democracy is a Biden/Obama/Hillary Clinton/”Deep State” project, all the more suspect because it’s related to Trump’s first impeachment.
And lee Papa wrote that Here's the thing: I've been watching the United States fund bullshit fascists and totalitarians my entire fucking life. In Latin America, in Africa, in the Middle East, this country has provided arms and money to the worst goddamn people and the most worthless causes. We've funded mercenaries and weapons manufacturers. We've funded crazed terrorists by calling them "insurgents" and funded evil militaries crushing freedom-fighting insurgents. God, the madness this nation has helped unleash on other nations. I've watched Democratic and Republican presidents justify all of this under some vague and incoherent notion of "national security" or whatever other serious-sounding nonsense they want to use to coerce us into buying into savagery. And I heard nary a peep from conservatives about virtually any of it. But now with Ukraine they decided to take a stand? Go fuck yourselves bloody.
Couldn’t have penned a better wrap-up: That's why the conservatives who dangle from Putin's taint hair went crazy. It's because they say constantly that the United States is the greatest country in the history of everything. They say all the time that we are something special. And we're saying, and Zelensky is imploring, that we fucking well act like it once in a while. Sometimes even a superpower has to put the fuck up or shut the fuck up.
4.
One tries to be environmentally conscious, using cotton bags for groceries instead of the plastic bags many stores provide. Man, am I helping the environment, or what? Good citizen here! Well, hold your horses, as they say in Kansas, it might not be quite the friendly solution we think. According to study made by the Ministry of Environment and Food of Denmark in 2018 (!), a cotton bag should be used at least 7,100 times to make it a truly environmentally friendly alternative to a conventional plastic bag.
Say what?!?
The report went on to say that if that cotton is organic, the figure is an eye-popping 20,000 times, with the report assuming a lower yield but the same input of raw materials. Krist-on-a-stik, what’s a leftie to do?
According to a CNN report, When it comes to assessing the environmental impact of a bag over its life span, there are many different things to take into account: the material, its weight, the manufacturing process and how it’s disposed of. A heavy-duty plastic shopping bag made with the same material as classic single-use plastic bag but double the weight has double the environmental impact, unless it is reused more times, which is why a thin single-use plastic bag can appear a benign choice based on its climate impact. The key for heavy-duty plastic bags is to faithfully reuse them and dispose of them carefully so they don’t end up as plastic pollution.
Right now in Tucson one is able to recycle all their plastic waste until the end of the year, thanks to a pilot program I wrote about in August. I’m hoping it continues as the giant bin at Tucson City Council member Steve Kozachik’s office fills up faster than an Oath Keeper buys a new gun. Carlos De La Torre, director of Tucson’s Environmental and General Services Department, said his department will be looking closely at the pilot project but is skeptical of its impact on furthering Tucson’s zero waste goals. “In terms of the overall waste composition, it’s not a significant amount of waste by ton of what we’re trying to do,” he said. “So I’m not saying that’s not important, I’m just saying if our goal is really to maximize and really divert as much waste as possible, those types of products or utensils, straws and stuff like that, really don’t represent a significant percentage of the waste diversion goal.”
5.
My favorite version of Must Be Santa by the one and only Brave Combo from the 2009 Soulard Oktoberfest in St. Louis, Missouri.
6.
I forgot to mention in Tuesday’s ART & MUSIC post that this Sunday’s Borderlands gig on Christmas Day will also be a drive for the Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona. Items accepted/needed are canned soup, canned fruit, canned vegetables, canned stew, canned fish, canned beans, pasta, rice, and peanut butter.
And two more dates happening before 2023 are Don Armstrong’s last Wednesday-o-the-month at Monterey Court December 28 and the Morpholinos last Thursday-o-the-month also at Monterey Court December 29. Both shows start at 6:30.
And now…
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In my teens I listened to KAAY nearly every night from rural MO. We lived about 75 miles north of St. Louis. KAAY was a music lifeline for me.
Love Brave Combo, thanks for posting that! I saw them for the first time in San Antonio with my cousins. What stands out in my memory is their medley of Purple Haze and Take Five, segueing into a klezmer number where they went acoustic and led the audience in a parade out the doors and across the grounds, including up and over every picnic table. What a blast.