November 2009 Archives

August Coppola has died. His obituaries began, brutally, by listing his relations: Carmine Coppola (father, composer of The Godfather score), Francis Ford Coppola (director, arts entrepreneur). Talia Shire (sister, actor), Nicholas Cage (son, actor), Christopher Coppola (son, director, producer), Roman Coppola (nephew, director), and Sofia Coppola (nice, director, actor, writer). In his obituaries, August recedes in this crowd of celebrities and the nearly famous. The implication is that he never was as notable as they are,

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I didn’t walk or take a bus to the 18th Street Arts Center on Wednesday evening to participate with other carless Angeleños in presentations connected to Diane Meyer’s photo exhibit: Without a Car in the World: 100 Car-less Angelinos Tell Stories of Living in Los Angeles.

I didn’t have to. Diane Meyer had arranged my ride to Santa Monica. She brought me back to Lakewood.

It would have been possible to walk-bus-train- bus to the art gallery, but the 34-mile trip from my office would have taken me almost two-and-a-half hours. There isn’t any easy way back at the hour the panel discussion ended.

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Those madcap jokesters – Anthony R. Lovett and Matt Maranian – have updated their bestselling L.A. Bizzaro for the new millennium. It’s the “All-New Insider's Guide to the Obscure, the Absurd, and the Perverse in Los Angeles,” and it’s now in color.

The 1997 edition delivered all the L.A. weirdness the lurid green cover promised. In a review in the Times, I said that “L.A. Bizzaro continues the tradition of seeing Los Angeles as a toxic playground, best observed slightly unconscious. The book is largely about body parts, cracks (wise and otherwise) and drinks. L.A. Bizzaro! approves of consuming them all.”

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The Ferrari California convertible test driven by Jerry Garrett of the New York Times was red – Corsa red, the red of a bad girl’s lipstick or a bankrupt’s bottom line. Based priced at less than $200,000, this Ferrari is the least expensive model from a very expensive maker. Even with extras – including handstiched leather rear seating and a computer-controlled suspension – the California is almost an economy car.

That makes the California a dilemma for Ferrari, the same dilemma every luxury brand faces: either democratize to improve profitability and dilute the brand’s exclusivity or ratchet up the mystique of the brand and achieve near unobtainability. Either can turn out to be a trap. Open any edition of Vogue and you can see luxury brands lurching to one pole or the other and without any guarantee of making the right choice in today’s woozy economy.

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