MONDAY, JUNE 25, 2012
Volume 11 Issue 192
Santa Monica Daily Press
‘BRAVE’ SHOWING SEE PAGE 3
We have you covered
THE SUMMER HAS ARRIVED ISSUE
Poll: Quarter of voters still not picking favorite for president JENNIFER AGIESTA LAURIE KELLMAN Associated Press
It was a fateful choice. “I decided to devote my life to using film and entertainment to inspire people, to transform their view of the world especially around alternative fuels, renewable, replacement fuels,” Harrell Tickell said. Though the “Veggie Van” was an effective marketing tool for biodiesel, Tickell got sick of giving the same speech to a new audience at every stop. Film represented a way to condense that information into a slick 90-minute package so the background information was out of the way, and the viewer can move straight to action. “When you’re watching a movie, your
WASHINGTON They shrug at President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney. They’re in no hurry to decide which one to support in the White House race. And they’ll have a big say in determining who wins the White House. One-quarter of U.S. voters are persuadable, according to an Associated Press-GfK poll, and both Obama and Romney will spend the next four months trying to convince these fickle, hard-to-reach individuals that only he has what it takes to fix an ailing nation. It’s a delicate task. These voters also hate pandering. “I don’t believe in nothing they say,” says Carol Barber of Ashland, Ky., among the 27 percent of the electorate that hasn’t determined whom to back or that doesn’t have a strong preference about a candidate. Like many uncommitted voters, the 66year-old Barber isn’t really paying attention to politics these days. She’s largely focused on her husband, who just had a liver transplant, and the fact that she had to refinance her home to pay much of his health bill. “I just can’t concentrate on it now,” she says before adding, “If there were somebody running who knows what it’s like to struggle, that would be different.” John Robinson, a 49-year-old general contractor from Santa Cruz, Calif., is paying a bit more attention, but is just as turned off by both candidates. “I’m just bitter about everybody. They just keep talking and wavering,” said Robinson, a conservative who backed the GOP nominee in 2008, Arizona Sen. John McCain, but is undecided between Obama and Romney. “There’s nothing I can really say that’s appealing about either one of them.” To be sure, many of the 1-in-4 voters
SEE CP PAGE 3
SEE POLL PAGE 11
MOVING IT
Ryan Melideo news@smdp.com
The crowd sways to the music Sunday during the latest edition of the Summer SOULstice event on Main Street.
COMMUNITYPROFILES GREEN PLANET PRODUCTIONS
Husband-wife team take on Big Oil BY ASHLEY ARCHIBALD Daily Press Staff Writer
MAIN STREET Tucked away in an office that caps O’Brien’s Irish Pub & Restaurant, a green revolution is fomenting. It’s led by husband-wife filmmaking team Josh Tickell and Rebecca Harrell Tickell, a couple which mixes thorough research with daring investigation to create documentaries that explore the relationship between Americans and what they believe is one of our biggest addictions — fossil fuels. Perhaps it’s fitting then that they met over a car. Tickell grew up in Louisiana, the state
that processes 60 percent of the nation’s oil. He watched friends and family become ill in “Cancer Alley,” the section of the state with the highest concentration of oil processing facilities, which spurred his interest in alternative fuels. He decided to spread the gospel of biodiesel using a car called the “Veggie Van,” which he drove across the nation, teaching people how to make the switch and even produce their own biodiesel. A decade before they met in person, Harrell Tickell saw the “Veggie Van” on one of its stops. Life led both of them to Southern California, where she saw the van parked in a driveway and decided to introduce herself.
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