Culture in LA

At the recital tonight on Walt Disney Symphony Hall's gorgeous, modern pipe organ, as usual for any classical music performance in Los Angeles, the audience was comprised of young Asians and white, white-haired senior citizens.  The perfect acoustics of the hall damped any potential echoes or reverberations.  It was fun to see the huge panel shutters open and close as the organist controlled the dynamics.  The performance -- well, the organist has a reputation as a great technician, so maybe I don't know anything, but this performance sounded to me consistently uneven in the tempo and muddy in the runs; however, there were two interesting pieces, one all footwork and the other by Philip Glass, the latter making fine use of diverse tones of the organ (botched by the organist's uneven tempos).
     As the attendants quickly locked the place down, we exited the magnificent building in a hurry to the desolation of Grand Avenue.  The most vibrant spot of life below the sweeping curves of Frank Gehry was a tour bus to fetch the senior citizens away.

East-West

On the West Coast, the  bright, young, artsy filmmaker guys find their groove in things Japanese:  Manga comics, anime, Hayao Miyazaki, Japanese pop, and, of course, the Japanese girlfriend.  At least, now I've encountered at three instances of this in LA.

On the East Coast, Lincoln Center is enthralled by things Chinese:  Yo-Yo Ma's Silk Road project, Placido Domingo playing The First Emperor of China in Tan Dun's epic opera, the Film Society's  3-week retrospective on 100 years of cinema in China, and there's actually a New York Chinese Opera Society.

I suppose I'm comparing apples and oranges, and the young hipster guys on the Lower East Side probably also have Japanese girlfriends.  Also, to be fair, if there's a society for some esoteric art form, it'll be in New York, and I'm sure there's an ukiyo-e society, too.

It does rather seem like things Japanese lend themselves to the compact and popular, whereas things Chinese lend themselves to the grandiose (and rather less popular).  So, I'm doomed.

Green Links

This post will be my repository for links to green networking, activism, and tech news, etc.
I guess these are *new* organizations that are starting up or that most people would not know about (so I'm leaving out the big established ones like Sierra Club, Environmental Defense, etc.)
Work in progress...

National

Social and Networking

http://www.greendrinks.org/
http://www.ypenergy.org/

Activism
http://cleaneconomynetwork.org
http://t4america.org


Los Angeles/SoCal

Social and Networking
http://lagreendrinks.blogspot.com/
http://greenbusinessnetworking.com
http://ocrenewables.org/

Activism
http://faith2green.com
http://www.thetransitcoalition.us
http://healthebay.org/


Clearinghouses/Newsletters

Everything
http://www.theultimategreenlist.com

Technology
http://RenewableEnergyWorld.com
http://pv-tech.org

Jobs
http://greenjobs.com

Lifestyle
http://happycow.net

Livity LA Green Drinks

Hipsters, burned-out entertainment execs, and aerospace techies mingled amid cool organic hats, organic green tea, organic vodka, organic liqueur, organic wine, and the organic biodiesel-/solar-powered Green Truck, to the sounds of an organic band (sorry, my pop culture knowledge fails me here;  the band provided a very nice ambiance of Simon & Garfunkel and other congenial tunes), in the lofty, rugged Livity space on Lincoln at Cedar.  Met a young solar power engineer, full of zest for his burgeoning field, caveats for standalone capability and rebates aside, the wave of the future. Got the low-down on the efficiency of colored PVs, the lame permitting process of the LADWP that takes 6 months to turn on a residential system (compared to the much more stream-lined inspection protocol of PG&E and SoCal Edison), the range in payback time depending on installation peculiarities of a residence (as short as 5-7 years!!!), the beauty of contributing to the grid and not needing self-storage, the domestic makers of PVs.  That's the second person working for a solar system company I've met who is so ebullient about his expanding business and fervent vision, yay!  Met two different sets of environmental-consciousness educators, one bringing water purifiers to Haiti, the other teaching teens to be green.  Met a personal organic chef who only deigns to take serious customers.  Met a young physics grad who is working for the Science Channel on a fun how-to show (how to make less work for yourself with simple tools).  Also met a minister for a Jewish-buddhist interfaith church down on Ocean Park Blvd.  Caught up with organizers Dan, Lia, Elizabeth, and tried on hats with Alex and Gilbert.

Virgin Hair

At the salon in Studio City the other day, heavy metal in the air, where all the clientele were replete with piercings, studs, and foreign colorings on skin and head, my hairdresser gushed as she massaged my scalp, "Ooh, virgin hair, it isn't often that  I get to feel virgin hair!"  She was not referring to a filamentous change of state with a loss of innocence but to the phenomenon of  black being my hair's natural color, my cuticles unclogged by dyes.  Ah, I learned something.  She did a fantastic job with the cut for a mere $30.  I'd driven all the way from the West Side, just for her.  As she was recommended to me, I, too, highly recommend Apollonia at Floyd's Barber Shop, what a deal.

Thus my first blog entry, on a self-indulgent venture tempered by restraint (with the hope at least of doing someone some good).  Indicative.  Let's see how things grow out.  Happy 2011!