Half an hour before the hands of the large clock kissed, signifying high noon, the typically dense crowd milling around the indoor patio at singularly popular Titos Tacos was too consumed with lunch-ly pangs to notice they were going to be featured on television. Clearly, meal time is sacred for the masses. Scores of ravished Culver City diners made the Westsides most famous tacos disappear faster than a rabbit-wielding magician. Hardly anyone looked up as a camera/interview crew from Rachael Rays Tasty Travels show on the Food Network threaded through the throng. For nearly 90 minutes, the crew talked to regulars which is nearly every customer and others about the astounding appeal of a specially prepared taco from Titos. The segment filmed last Thursday will not be shown for about 90 days on the Food Network, around late January. Well-fed customers will have to wait to find out if they made the cut. Created in 1959, Titos has been known both as Culver Citys most popular and its oldest restaurant, distinctions that do not always converge. You dont even have to taste a taco from Titos to know how staggeringly popular the Mexican restaurant is. Seven days a week, drive by. You will see lines, long lines that move pretty fast. Millions of hungry people cant be in error, can they? The crowds are so long at Titos they sometimes resemble a marching band at a college football game getting ready to sway into a clever formation.
Weekend: A High School Kirtan and a Ballona Creek Nudge
If there is an opening on your weekend calendar, two pretty interesting events are being offered. For those with imagination, Saturday evenings entertainment is for your heart and Sunday afternoons program as we are reminded by the Ballona Creek Renaissance is for your mind.
Saturday
If you are looking for an enriching experience that also is inexpensive, the innovative people who run the Academy of Visual and Performing Arts at Culver City High School have found a cure. To raise funds for the dance department of the very active arts program, they are presenting an Eastern-sounding musical, cultural evening of high but channeled energy , called a Kirtan, on Saturday at 7 at the Robert Frost Auditorium, 4401 Elenda Ave. A Kirtan is defined by the high school as an ancient participatory music experience that uses the chanting of traditional Sanskrit mantras synergized with dynamic melodies. Now that is a characterization that should float the boat of many in Culver City. The person who wrote the copy for Saturday evening at the Frost is nearly as impressive as the performers themselves. With singers forming the backdrop, the roundup of musicians will include not only guitarists and drummers but also a harmonium player, a definition of which will have to wait until after the performance. Dancers will be there, too, and they will congregate in a jam circle. If you can picture the vastness of the auditorium layout and the ominous shadows flitting across the Frost Auditorium, it is easy to see how promoters can say that participants will be sending out messages of unity and timelessness to their audience.
Difference between the Reel West and the Real West
In the classic John Ford Western, “Stagecoach,” aptly dubbed “Grand Hotel on Wheels,” the Apache Indians are riding hard in pursuit of the stage across a dry lake bed. Seeing that they are about to overtake it, a Cavalry unit rides to the rescue. Ford later admitted that the often imitated chase sequence never would have happened in the real world. “The Indians would have shot the lead horse, and the chase would have been over,” Ford dryly observed in an interview years later. In “The Searchers,” the Indians pursue John Wayne, Ward Bond and company across a river bed. Wayne and the beleaguered Texas Rangers take cover behind a cluster of rocks at the river’s edge. Soon they start firing at the Commanches who are mowed down while crossing the river.
Never a Foggy Day in This London’s Town
Gallery Opening: S.B. London, 3740 Sunset Blvd., Silver Lake. Telephone for appointments: 323.668.0734. Reception on Saturday, 6 p.m. to 10 p.m.
From the glassed-in northeast corner of her sparkling new second-story gallery overlooking Hollywood, S.B. London, formerly of Culver City, can survey much of the civilized world that she has been conquering one career at a time. Coming from a theatrical background, she turned to industrial design, found it insufficiently stimulating, teamed with her architect husband in a design-and-build enterprise, and now is on to her premier professional love, art and craftsmanship. She has done ceramics, dance and oil painting. You probably would need to visit with Ms. London for 30 minutes to enumerate the eclectic span of interests she has doggedly pursued in her still young years. The relentless innermost churnings of her never-idle mind must feel like rush hour on the 405 all of her waking hours. Cerebral traffic constantly criss-crosses. Peace, however, is about to break out. The artistry, the power, and the simplicity of nature first name, Mother have brought her home, she says. Philosophically, Ms. London believes that studying the natural world allows one to understand universal truths with a pristine clarity unavailable elsewhere. On Saturday evening at 6, this most unusual young woman with a masters degree in industrial design, will unveil her first exhibit, which is as distinctive as the artist herself. A sally into this gallery should be equally appealing to intellectuals and to aesthetes because the artist dipped her brush into her mind and her heart.
Didnt They Leave Something Out?
In the film “The Science of Sleep,” Stéphane, played with great gusto and pathos by Gael Garcia Bernal, is a young man for whom dreams and reality have a habit of blurring together. He’s creative, certainly. But a boring, non-artistic job at a calendar company is a major source of frustration. He’s also reeling from the death of his father, which contributes to a tortured psyche for which dreaming serves as a release.
Captivating Charlotte Gainsbourg plays Stéphanie, the girl next door who is as confused as she is confusing, and who torments as much as she is tormented. Also creative, she forms a relationship with Stéphane that is defined by paradox. A romance between the two seems like the most natural thing in the world, yet it is also clear that both suffer from some sort of existential condition that prevents them, however unintentionally, from achieving any meaningful human connection.
Ready, Set, Fiesta for Three Days
Between continuous live music and a stream of celebrities poised to tumble into the dunk tank on Saturday and Sunday, there will be an attraction for every taste when the three-day entertainment portion of the 55-year-old Fiesta La Ballona launches today at 6 p.m. all the way around Vets Park. Fiesta Chair Tom Camarella guaranteed this week-long community party celebrating the historic Hispanic heritage of this section of West Los Angeles will be the best one yet designed. Even if only 27 percent of Culver City is Hispanic today, on this weekend, every participant in Fiesta becomes honorarily Hispanic. Fiesta Friday, from 6 to 10 p.m., heavily will be devoted to carnival rides and socializing around the Beer and Wine Garden, which is open for two and a half hours, from 6 until 8:30. Saturday and Sunday will spotlight a series of live musical performances from lunchtime until the dinner hour.
Time Out, on Stage of All Places, for Modesty
Modesty is the most rarely displayed moral value in these exhibitionist times. My wife and I caught a fast-moving glimpse of modesty at the end of yesterday afternoon, following the final performance of “Fiddler on the Roof” by the extraordinary Children’s Civic Light Opera cast at Hamilton High School. At the conclusion, the anxious, proud, thoroughly involved audience was asked to remain seated, no cinch to happen given the heat of their enthusiasm. Flowers and tributes would be distributed to the sung and publicly unsung. This is a sacred tradition for stage productions not to mention summer camps. After watching them — and their personalities — in rehearsal and now in production, I can say without fear of rebuttal that these 40 students between the ages of 7 and 17 represent the closest you can come to perfect children without converting them into mindless puppets.
Make Mine Gypsy Jazz in the Courtyard
Jazz is on the menu. The John Jorgenson Quintet will present hot gypsy jazz music on Thursday evening at 7 as this week’s headliner in the Summer Sunset Music Festival concert series in the Courtyard of City Hall. Mr. Jorgenson, the featured guitarist, was a founding member of the Desert Rose Band and the Hellecasters. For six years he was a member of Elton John’s band. Singers ranging from Barbra Streisand to Bonnie Raitt to Earl Scruggs have sought out Mr. Jorgenson’s guitar work.
Ghosts In My Life
If you didn’t get my drift from the title, then you might get my drift knowing that:
NBC’s “Medium” is one of my favorite TV shows (the other is “House, M.D.”). [The juxtaposition of these two shows — the spiritual and the earthy — may represent the true conflict of life.]
I enjoy locating ancestors via census, passenger and other records.
I speak to my deceased father from time to time.
I really don’t like to gossip about people.
"The Day the Earth Stood Still" is my favorite reality flick.
Have I ever seen a ghost? No.
[I wrote the headline for fun. Sorry.]
Have I ever heard ghostly noises? No.
Do I KNOW that ghosts exist? No.
So, what DO I believe?
Family Shows for Culver City
As a special summertime treat for the family, every Friday and Saturday morning throughout August, Culver City’s resident theater company, The Actors’ Gang, will present an original family show, Pericles on the High Seas, in the great outdoors. Beginning on Friday, Aug. 4, performances, at 11 a.m., will be staged in Media Park, directly in front of the Ivy Station, 9070 Venice Blvd., which has served as the popular indoor home of The Actors’ Gang ever since the company moved to Culver City last year. In an attempt to attract every resident who is even vaguely interested, The Actors’ Gang is re-introducing its popular Pay-What-You-Can policy.