Posts for Books
Posted by paulrivas on: October 28 2008
Rivas Cultural Services teamed up again with Dyrenforth Acquisitions to
take in the David Sedaris show at the Arlington Saturday night, on
account of Clare being away in Scotland visiting her grannie.
The little gay was hilarious, as he was when he was last through town a
few years ago. I haven't yet read his books, but I've been nothing
short of extremely impressed by what I've heard him read. What I enjoy
most is that his humor is never predictable. Just when you think you
know what he's gonna say next, he makes an entirely different point
that is several planes of humor higher than anything you'd thought of.
It is very hard to do this and keep people laughing at the same time.
Bill Hicks joked about "filling your empty lives with humor you
couldn't possibly think of yourselves," but in fact this is a very rare
skill. Most comedians make jokes that everyone knows already. Now,
maybe Sedaris isn't a comedian in the same sense of the word, and his
performance should be judged by different criteria, but he obviously
has the incredible ability to create material that is funny enough to
keep the smart people interested but simple enough to have mass appeal.
He's like Radiohead in this way: he provides both very high artistic
content AND very high general appeal.
And therein lay the problem with at the Arlington - the idiot fans.
Rivas Cultural Services hates book signings as a rule. We aren't flatly
against them, we just don't want any part of them. The bummer in this
case was that the book signing cut into Sedaris' time on stage.
Dyrenforth Acquisitions and I would have much preferred to have heard
Sedaris read for twice as long, rather than surrender half of the
quality time with him that we'd paid for to those enough rich enough to
buy books (from Borders!) and stand around for an hour waiting to get
them signed. His signing their books means we don't get to hear him
read more.
The other problem was the question and answer session. When will UCSB
Arts & Lectures learn that this is a bad format for paid
entertainment? I'm paying to hear Sedaris!!!! Not to hear some rich
white stooge's idea of what will inspire Sedaris to answer brilliantly.
The people asking the questions were obviously trying way too hard to
impress those sitting around them by asking things that they were
certain would drive Sedaris to launch into a super-gay rant that was
funnier than anything he'd prepared. Obviously, this didn't work, in
any instance, and Sedaris was instead forced to tactfully deflect
idiotic questions.
Dyrenforth Acquisitions regarded this as further proof that people go
to these "get-your-shot-of-culture-here" events to get laid. When
someone asked, "How's your brother?", the artist explained that his
brother as he writes about him is a much different being than his
real-life brother, and that the latter was not subject to being
talked/written about without his input. A parallel notion can be found
on a series of ESPN commercials on TV these days that shows football
commentators being approached in grocery store parking lots and
airports by fans who've see them on TV and, mistakenly interpreting
this as a two-way relationship, approach the TV personalities as if
they were their real-life friends and ask them for rides home and stuff.
"That's not how you treat an artist," Herr Dyrenforth scoffed. "What a
bunch of stupid fuckin' white people!"
(Which, I'll add, just goes to show that most crowds are full of stupid
people, be they white or brown. When Chris
Rock came to the Shoe a while back, two thirds of his performance
was dedicated to jokes everyone already knew but that the bulk of the
paying crowd - the brown trash and rich whites - absolutely loved.)
Posted by paulrivas on: March 13 2009
Rivas Cultural Services received a remarkable inquiry last week when Charles Moreno requested recommendations as to how to brush up on his Spanish in preparation for hosting two Mexican professional soccer teams. Señor Moreno is the grandson of Mexican immigrants and enjoys tequila and beer. Rivas Cultural Services is half great-grandson of Mexican immigrants and half other stuff, or only 50% as Mexican as Sr. Moreno and 50% more removed from the fatherland.
The culturist suggested Sr. Moreno incorporate the Mexican telenovela of his choosing into his weekly television regimen and loaned him the Lonely Planet guidebook series Mexican Spanish Phrasebook. The handy little paperback was donated to Rivas Cultural Services by the celebrated Mexicanist and life artist Bubba Ray Robison, a Texan.
In discussing his Spanish study, Sr. Moreno claimed to be unfamiliar with the word habitación as used in the book in reference to asking for a room and was surprised to find that the word cuarto was not used. Rivas Cultural Services assured the short and dark Sr. Moreno that the latent Spanish speaker in him must have at one time been cognizant of the words habitación (hotel room) and recámara (bedroom) as well as the more general cuarto (room). Sr. Moreno replied, "Simón, güero."
Pleased with his progress and dedicating himself anew to reacquiring his ancestral tongue, Sr. Moreno requested a soccer-specific assignment, whereupon Rivas Cultural Services advised Sr. Moreno to investigate the differences between a gol, a golazo and a golazote.
Posted by paulrivas on: March 23 2009
Cruising downtown Goleta last week, I happened into the antique store on Hollister. For sale in the display case immediately to the left of the front entrance is a copy of the 1966 local classic Goleta: The Good Land, by Walter Tompkins, in its original cellophane, for $175!
Would the Santa Barbara Man About Goleta shell out 2000 Mexican pesos for the bona fide piece of the local historical record? Or would he bid on the already-open $5.99 copy currently for sale on ebay? The answer, as regular readers will already have guessed, is none of the above. In lieu of paying anything at all, I went straight to the Goleta Library history section and checked the sucker out for three weeks, free of charge.
To show my unbridled enthusiasm for Goleta: The Good Land, which I'm only one third through yet, here are a few highlights through the 1870s:
1833 - the first baby born in Santa Barbara to American parents pops out.
1840s - Juan "Flaco" Brown, the Californian Paul Revere, covered the 630 miles from L.A. to Monterey on horseback in four (4) days to warn of an American attack on Mexican installations, a record Tompkins claims had never been equaled.
1859 - The only simoon ever recorded in North America hit Goleta, causing the temperature to rise to 133 degrees Fahrenheit and birds to drop dead in midair.
1862 - The Reverend Thomas Starr King, for whom the storied local nursery school of which the Santa Barbara Man About Goleta is a proud graduate is named, married Col. Hollister and wife Annie, for whom Glen Annie is named.
1860s - The first saloon is at Hollister and Fairview, causing this budding village to be known as Whiskey Flats, in contrast to the other budding village at Hollister and Patterson called Old Goleta, which was populated exclusively with abstainers.
And my favorite, from the 1870s - Ellwood Cooper, for whom all the many Ellwoods around town are named, was himself named after an English writer who read for the blind poet Milton. In a letter to a relative, Cooper advised:
"The people who have come here are rather above the average, and most have means. There are very few squatters. In fact, that class cannot get on here. This is no place for poor people, and I would discourage all such from coming."
Goleta has been economically out of reach of the lower classes since at least the 1870s! Talk about no nacos!
Posted by paulrivas on: April 01 2009
If you missed the first half of this discussion, here it is.
The Santa Barbara Man About Goleta believes that the familiar old “Goleta – The Good Land” license plate frames were inspired by the title of this book. The title was selected from a great many submissions in a 1965 Santa Barbara/Goleta-wide contest to name the local history, which was commissioned by the Goleta Amvets. The phrase originally appeared in a Spaniard’s 18th century assessment of the Goleta Valley, which stated, “It is all a good land.”
Having finished the book over the weekend, your Santa Barbara-born Goleta blogger has spent this week telling UCSB stus how lucky they are to live in his town and regaling them with historical anecdotes gleaned from this historic work, such as:
1870s – San Francisco streets were paved with asphalt mined on the More ranch, owned by T. Wallace More, the Scotsman for whom More Mesa is named. More’s son-in-law, C.A. Storke (the father of the publisher), said, “the three greatest men who ever lived were Jesus Christ, Abraham Lincoln and T. Wallace More.”
1870s – So many Scots emigrated to Goleta that a ginormous “Scottish-American Picnic” was held every fourth of July in Tucker’s Grove, the oldest park in Goleta. This tradition ended when World War II broke out.
1890s – The Vieux Carré in New Orleans was paved with tar from a deep shaft mine located on the present site of the UCSB Drama/Dance building.
1890s – Yaple Avenue, where my classmate Jim VanBlaricum grew up, was the site of an experimental farming project where spineless cactus were grown for use as cattle feed.
1899 – The Naples viaduct (that train bridge on Dos Pueblos Ranch) was built in five days.
1900 – The population of Goleta was 500.
February 1942 – A submarine said to be Japanese sat off the Ellwood shore and for a full 40 minutes fired 29 shots at the Ellwood oil fields. All but a few of the shells were duds, and the attack caused a total of $500 damage. An hour later, a blackout was declared from Monterey to San Diego. Two hours after than, US planes finally showed up and dropped flares. And here Tompkins makes the point that given that Goleta’s defenses were withdrawn from the Marine base just one day before the attack, and that the alleged Japanese sub was sitting in plain sight and firing away without any reciprocity by American forces, the sub was more likely American than Japanese, and the apparent incompetence of the attack was intentional in order to stir up support for the war effort.
World War II – Bill Hollister keeps 300 Nazi prisoners of war on the Archie Edwards ranch beyond Dos Pueblos. The Nazis were put to work harvesting crops, and the old POW camp fences were still visible when Tompkins wrote the book.
1948 – The population of Goleta was 1500.
1952 – Tomás Ygnacio de Aquino, the last full-blooded Canaliño (Chumash) Indian of the 12,000 living in Goleta when the Spanish arrived in 1769, dies penniless in the hospital.
1962 – The General Plan for the Goleta Valley called for rapid transit on the existing train tracks or a monorail running parallel to Highway 101 in order to alleviate traffic.
That was 1962, and we still aren’t even close to having anything like that anywhere between L.A. and San Francisco!
That’s it for Goleta: The Good Land. The Santa Barbara Man About Goleta hopes you’ve enjoyed these historical bits, and gives the book his highest recommendation.
Rivas Cultural Services associate and Goleta hero Mike Fitzgerald, himself a descendant of the famous Sexton and Doty families mentioned several times in Goleta: The Good Land, recommends Fourteen at the Table, another Tompkins classic.
Posted by paulrivas on: May 06 2009
Here are the 10 pieces of advice (paraphrased) that Bill Bryson shared with all those suckered by UCSB Arts & Lectures into paying $20 to hear a writer tell a couple stories and hear a bunch of superfans ask a lot of stupid questions. Bryson said the items were adapted for an American audience from a commencement speech he'd given in England a couple years ago. Bill Bryson's a nice guy, and Rivas Cultural Services enjoys his books, but the lecture circuit is patently not his forte. This closing advice was the highlight of the evening.
1. Take a moment to remember you are alive.
2. There are 6 billion other people out there. Don't think yourself special.
3. Kill people who don't say thanks to those who hold doors open for them.
4. Be good and say thank you.
5. Try stuff.
6. Don't surprise someone from behind.
7. Be modest.
8. Always buy all my books in hardback.
9. Stop complaining.
10. Never go on too long.
Posted by paulrivas on: July 13 2009
On Argentine Independence Day, 2009, in Santa Barbara, California, the Rivas Cultural Services history of the gaucho as UCSB mascot and South American cowboy was published on the cover of The Santa Barbara Independent. The story features photos of Argentine gauchos by Clare Nisbet and will be on newsstands through Wednesday. It's also available online, but this is a Santa Barbara Man About Goleta joint best enjoyed in print.
(Photo by Clare Nisbet)
Posted by paulrivas on: October 08 2009
Lou Dillon was a horse, and Lou Dillon Lane marks the pasture his owner purchased for him to hang out on. I read it in Pathways to Pavements: The History and Romance of Santa Barbara Spanish Street Names, published in 1950, by Rosario Curletti.
The book was a birthday gift from my friend since the third grade, R. Efrén Hernández, Undercover Mexican. (Some may know Hernández as The Artist Formerly Known As Ryan Hernandez, which is how his name appears in the files of the local surveillance contractor and authority on weirdness, Dyrenforth Acquisitions.)
So if Lou Dillon was a horse, who were Anapamu and Yanonali? Indian chiefs, of course! What about Haley? Well, Haley surveyed Santa Barbara’s first streets in 1851. And Robbins? Robbins was the only American barbareño to have one of the original 51 SB streets named after him (near Harding School), which makes him Santa Barbara’s original loc.
Santa Barbara’s original resident mystic was Valerio, a troglodyte who stocked medicinal herbs and chingaderas. According to Curletti in Pathways to Pavements, in the early 1950s there were still old-time Santa Barbara residents who would refer to a child’s messy room as a “cueva de Valerio”.
State, Bath and Garden were originally named Estado, Baños and Jardines. Of these three, Estado is the only name that Rivas Cultural Services currently hears local Mexicans say in Spanish. Speaking of Spanish, consider Calle Cita, behind Monte Vista school. Calle Cita means Appointment Street, but Curletti says it was probably intended as Callecita, or Little Street.
Santa Barbara Man About Goleta celebrates local color with bilingual humor and California style. Rivas Cultural Services are international advisers expert in Latin America and budget travel.
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