27 minute read
Arts & Culture
San Marino Motor Classic gives back to nonprofits
The San Marino Motor Classic is known as one of Southern California’s premier Concours d’Elegance events, but the weekend of festivities drives funds to nonprofits.
Planned and run by 200 volunteers, the festivities at Lacy Park include an art show and gala, as well as an event focused on auto-themed watches.
The San Marino Motor Classic was founded in 2011 by Aaron Weiss, Ben Reiling and Paul Colony as a successor for a previous event held in the area, the Los Angeles Concours d’Elegance.
The classic has grown from 125 cars the first year to around 480 this year.
“The whole thing is about charity,” Weiss said.
Weiss works to keep the admission price affordable so it’s accessible to people of all ages and backgrounds.
“We really wanted to have a car show that was of the people,” he said. “We want somebody to be able to come with their significant other and their kids.
“We can share the hobby with them. That’s really what it is all about. If you don’t show these old cars, they are going to become irrelevant, and then when you sell them, nobody is going to want them. I also tell people that the hobby is not about the cars but the people that you meet. It’s a social thing as well.”
The show highlights vehicles from the brass, depression and post-war eras in more than 30 classes, including the Rolls-Royce, Corvette, Mercedes-Benz, Porsche, Woodie, BMW, Ford Thunderbird, Jaguar, Japanese and Italian sports cars, Chevrolet Tri-Five, European Sedans, McLarens, Firebird Trans Am, Mustang, Camaro, Austin-Healey and Aston Martin.
The top three in each class will receive trophies in categories like Most Elegant Open PreWar Car, Best Paint and Finish, Sports Car Market Pursuit of Passion, People’s Choice, Most Elegant Post-War, Most Exotic Sports Car, HVA Preservation, and Best in Show Pre-War and Post-War awards.
The 2019 Best in Show winners were a 1910 Model M 6-40 Touring and a 1954 300SL Gullwing car.
Judges look at different components when they score. The points are added and divided by three for the score.
“Each car starts out with 100 points,” Weiss said. “There are 30 different categories of things they are looking at — the quality of the paint, the fit and finish, the authenticity, the quality of the interior, the quality of the chrome and trim, the engine compartment, the undercarriage, the top if it’s a convertible.”
This year, the show will have a 1909 De Dion Type de Course, a 1948 Tucker Model 48, a 1910 Pope-Hartford Touring car, a 1914 Packard 138, a 1914 Moline Knight SD Opera Sedan, a 1931 Duesenberg Derham Tourster, a 1936 Lincoln Model K Convertible Roadster by LeBaron, a 1934 Auburn 1250 V12 Phaeton Salon and a 1937 Delahaye 135 Torpedo Cabriolet.
During the show, select clubs hold their own events, including the Ferrari Club of America’s Concorso Ferrari, the Classic Car Club of America’s Grand Classic and Packard International’s Grand Salon.
New to the weekend is the August 21 art show presented by the Automotive Fine Arts Society, an international art organization founded in 1983. Many of the professional artists within the organization have worked as designers for major car companies.
The exhibit will showcase 10 artists working in mediums such as sculpture, oil or watercolor paint, or pencil and ink. Wine, cheese and snacks will be served.
Music plays an important role in the San Marino Motor Classic. During the Symphony of Cars Gala, 16 vehicles will be presented to orchestra music from the era in which the car was made. The gala will feature a dinner, music, valet parking and a hosted bar.
A very different type of event inspired the idea for the gala, which benefits Cancer Support Community Pasadena, Pasadena Humane and the Rotary Club of San Marino. “I came up with this idea for the Symphony of Cars after going to a debutante ball,” Weiss said.“I said let’s not present girls, let’s present cars, and we will play a piece of music paired with the year the car was made.”
The organization has raised $2.2 million for local charities.
Patricia Ostiller, executive director for Cancer Support Community Pasadena, said being able to connect with others, especially through support groups, is important to patients’ overall well-being.
Th San Marino Motor Classic will take place 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 22.
Money raised from the gala will help with program costs and computer upgrades. In 2019, the gala raised $60,000 for the nonprofit, which also hosts its own events, like Ladies’ Night Out fundraiser.
“(Aaron) has taken his love of cars and done something really valuable with it for the community,” Ostiller says.
Weekend of Events “Cars and Chronographs: An Exhibit of Exotic Cars and Auto-Themed Watches” WHEN: 1:15 to 3 p.m. Saturday, August 21 WHERE: Hing Wa Lee Jewelers, 1635 S. Del Mar Avenue, San Gabriel COST: Free; reservations appreciated
Automotive Fine Arts Society Art Expo and Sale WHEN: 4 to 6 p.m. Saturday, August 21 WHERE: Lacy Park, 1485 Virginia Road, San Marino COST: Free
Symphony of Cars Gala WHEN: 6 to 9:30 p.m. Saturday, August 21 WHERE: Lacy Park, 1485 Virginia Road, San Marino. COST: $250
San Marino Motor Classic
WHEN: 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sunday, August 22. WHERE: Lacy Park, 1485 Virginia Road, San Marino COST: $30 presale tickets; $35 at the door; free for children 12 and younger; $125 for VIP admission, which comes with a gourmet lunch. INFO: sanmarinomotorclassic.com.
Tom Nichols will livestream a discussion of his book through Vroman’s Live at 6 p.m. on Tuesday, Aug. 24.
Tom Nichols discusses civic responsibility, Jan. 6, democracy By Bliss Bowen Pasadena Weekly Contributing Writer
Political scientist Tom Nichols elaborates on themes in his book “Our Own Worst Enemy: The Assault from Within on Modern Democracy.”
“People are no longer just expressing their political views. They’re intentionally trying to draw the foul from their political opponents. You can’t function or sustain a democracy on everyone trying to (tick) everybody off all day. It comes from people being so narcissistic that the only validation they get from politics is this draining kind of emotional vampirism that says, ‘The only way I know I exist and I matter is if other people are pissed off enough to notice me.’”
The book by Nichols, author of 2017’s widely acclaimed “The Death of Expertise” and a frequent contributor to The Atlantic, USA Today and MSNBC, is out from Oxford University Press.
Throughout a spirited, 90-minute conversation, the lifelong conservative addresses voter turnout, the Constitution, the political stability of the U.S. military, the Jan. 6 insurrection and civic responsibility. The cause of our poisoned politics, he says, is not globalization, “elites” or maligned others. It is us.
“This is a fundamentally unserious political culture,” he observed while driving through his home state of Rhode Island. “We used to be very serious. Hannah Arendt said, with the exception of Scandinavia, very few people have the political seriousness of the Americans. Today, it’s completely laughable to say that.”
Arendt is one of numerous political figures, philosophers and writers cited in “Our Own Worst Enemy,” a civic tough-love mandate Nichols calls “the hardest book I ever wrote.” He’s discussing it at a Vroman’s Live Crowdcast event Tuesday, Aug. 24.
Wisecracking about his “moral scolding,” Nichols nonetheless asserts a need for public morality. Not the kind fixated on, say, abortion or sexuality, but morality that honors tolerance, respect and compromise as virtues exemplifying good citizenship and upholding what’s left of the small-“d” democratic public commons.
“It’s not so much that the public commons has been trashed — it has — but there aren’t any people in it. The public commons is like a really nice park where we all used to walk that now just has vandals and criminals in it. I know that’s depressing,” he acknowledged. “But the way that is going to come back is for people to make very small decisions, person to person, at the level of community involvement. The great enemy of that is the virtualization of everything we do.”
Constant connectivity via electronic devices and the internet is lambasted in “Our Own Worst Enemy,” though Nichols named the internet as the most effective weapon against authoritarianism and notes his regular use of Twitter, where he’s staked out a curmudgeon corner as an equal-opportunity critic.
Left-leaning voters wearing “Defund the Police” sweatshirts draw his ire as much as Trump supporters refusing COVID-19 vaccines. Likewise, he champions California’s Democratic Congresswoman Katie Porter (“She’s very good at detail and cares about actually legislating”) as well as Republican operatives who “fund, feed and water” local- and state-level “farm teams.” Agree or disagree with his scathing political critiques, but his common sense and factual analyses are refreshing.
Democracy, he wrote, “relies as much on reflection as it does on civic interaction,” and while the republic’s founders could not foresee an America whose citizens continually compare themselves to each other in a virtual world and “performative culture” that eats up time for reflection, they did understand “the existential link between virtue and democracy.”
He assails escalating resentments expressed by mostly white Americans and skewers their argument that screwups by “elites” prove democracy’s failure by demonstrating how they are bad policy — and policy, like citizenship, is something many Americans don’t address seriously unless it hurts people they want to see hurt.
This willfully uninformed civic narcissism, he writes, constitutes an existential threat “deadly to the social trust that allows democracy to endure in hard times. By definition, a democracy is a community. By definition, a narcissist is incapable of holding or granting membership in a community. … No society can maintain a good democracy — one that respects human rights and puts the needs of the individual over the interests of the state — if it must rely on a population of bad citizens.”
In conversation, he shoots down the suggestion that more stringent education in history, civics and media consumption could produce more discerning citizens. The problem of people insisting on their own facts and digging into isolated, ideological foxholes will only be fixed, he says, by demographic change: “America’s going to get younger, browner, more diverse. … I’m never going to say less education. I’m never going to say less civic virtue. But some of the least civic people in this movement of seditionists and insurrectionists are middle-aged, well-off, perfectly well-educated white guys.”
Self-identified as “an old-school, conservative federalist,” Nichols is known for upbraiding millennials and Gen Z followers on Twitter but believes “the kids are alright. I think they have good hearts.” But he worries about their lack of resilience: “When people think that life is constantly letting them down, that’s when they develop resentments that tell them, ‘It’s not just life letting me down, it’s democracy, and somewhere there’s a big daddy who’s going to solve all my problems
and punish the people who hurt me.’ Everyone is vulnerable to that if they don’t have a certain amount of stoicism and maturity.”
That maturity entails understanding that citizens have not just a role but a responsibility. From Nichols’ tough-love perspective, that means shaming friends who don’t vote. It means speaking frankly with loved ones with opposite politics to identify common ground.
A longtime professor of national security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College, Nichols said his work supplies “comparative context.” “Years of studying the Soviet Union, I’m sorry to say, helped me with this. When I taught comparative authoritarian systems at Dartmouth, I would give very confident lectures and say, ‘This is why they don’t exist in Britain and the United States,’ or why France came out of it, or Greece, etc. Now I feel like an oncologist who is recognizing something uncomfortable in my own blood tests.”
In his closing chapter he writes, “Democracy, in the end, is an act of will, a continual reaffirmation of faith in a system of government that enshrines and protects our rights and the rights of our fellow citizens.” That faith has been profoundly tested by the Jan. 6 attack on America’s constitutional system, and “detailed fixes” he intended to include in the book won’t work without a civil society.
Tom Nichols’ livestream discussion of “Our Own Worst Enemy: The Assault from Within on Modern Democracy”
WHEN: 6 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 24 WHERE: Vroman’s Live: crowdcast.io/e/w96oq60q COST: Free; register in advance INFO: vromansbookstore.com
Marco Neves, creative director, and Jessica Hardin, festival director, attend a previous year’s Pasadena International Film Festival. This September will mark the in-person return of the event, which was canceled and forced to move online during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
Pasadena film festival looking to make September return
By Connor Dziawura Pasadena Weekly Staff Writer
After a “nightmare” 2020, the Pasadena International Film Festival is looking to get back into the swing of things as the summer winds down.
Jessica Hardin, festival director, describes the COVID-19 pandemic as creating a snowball effect of closures and cancellations in March 2020, leading up to the Pasadena festival becoming yet another casualty.
From that point on, the past year and a half turned into a waiting game — first waiting for it to be safe to reschedule and finish the 2020 event in person, something that never came, then waiting for the right time to set up this year’s festival.
Normally a springtime event, the annual Pasadena International Film Festival has found the time from Sept. 9 to Sept. 16. Once again slated for the Playhouse Village, the festival is expected to show more than 130 films from 15 countries. Submissions were accepted through Aug. 13.
Films will vary between feature and short lengths, live action and animated, whether fiction or documentary. Music videos and web series are even anticipated. There will also be moderated Q&As and free panels.
“We do not discriminate,” Hardin said. “We want everything, because we figured — I don’t know how niche festivals do it — the more open our selection, the better quality that we’ll get. And it’s also we get really unique things, too, and that’s just my own personal taste. … We had a silent film that was really cool. People get really creative and inventive.
“We try to create a diverse panoply of product. So, if we get 100 vampire movies and they’re all fantastic, then that’s tough because you’re all vampire movies. We want to celebrate diversity, and not necessarily in a racial way, but literally the meaning of ‘diverse’ where we have a wide variety of all different sorts of films. We have shorts, features, documentaries, music videos, webisodes. So, I mean, the only thing we’re really looking for is quality.”
As to much of the specifics on this year’s festival, however, the details are still being worked out.
What has been confirmed, however, is that screenings will once again take place at the Laemmle Playhouse 7, while the Lyd & Mo Photography Studio down the road will transform into the Passholders Lounge with an open bar. And at 7 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 16, nearby cocktail lounge The Speakeasy will host the Great Gatsby Gala and Award Ceremony, a 1920s-themed, black-tie-optional closing celebration for guests ages 21 and older.
“We try to utilize as many businesses as possible in the city to bring a lot of tourism and revenue to the city,” Hardin said.
As it stands, Hardin said an online component isn’t planned for this September. When organizers were unable to reschedule the canceled festival in person some other time last year, they turned to hosting screenings and other events online in the fall. But Hardin admitted the virtual festival didn’t resonate with audiences as strongly as had been hoped, and she said the standard in-person format is better for industry networking anyway.
“I’ve debated that since we started, because I always felt for people who say they have a grandma or somebody that can’t travel, that can’t get on a plane or even drive or something like that, and it’s a great way for somebody who may have missed your screening to see it online; but we got such little response and it was so much work, it didn’t really seem worth it to me,” Hardin explained, clarifying that depending on demand, it’s not entirely off the table.
As to how the new dates will affect the future of the festival, Hardin said it’s a possibility that it returns to an earlier setting in the spring. That also has yet to be seen, though.
Pasadena International Film Festival WHEN: Thursday, Sept. 9, to Thursday, Sept. 16
WHERE: Laemmle Playhouse 7, 673 E. Colorado Boulevard; Lyd & Mo Photography Studio, 27 N. Mentor Avenue; The Speakeasy, 25 N. Raymond Avenue; other venues TBD
COST: $30 for the day pass; $50 for the Great Gatsby Gala and Award Ceremony; $120 for the screenings, panels and parties pass; and $180 for the all-access pass INFO: pasadenafilmfestival.org
David Duchovny’s third full-length album, “Gestureland,” comes out Aug. 20.
Singing is a surprise to David Duchovny
By Christina Fuoco-Karasinski Pasadena Weekly Executive Editor
Multihyphenate entertainer David Duchovny calls his latest single, “Nights are Harder These Days,” a “rocker.” He even sneaks in a few listens while driving.
“Nights are Harder These Days” appears on his third full-length album, “Gestureland,” which will be available on Aug. 20. The follow-up to 2018’s “Every Third Thought,” “Gestureland” represents three years of songwriting that strengthened the band’s relationship.
“At first, we were thrown together to make the first album,” he said. “They are a good bit younger than me, and they were very conscious of trying to do what they thought I wanted to do, when, in fact, I really didn’t know what the hell I was doing.
The band he’s referring to is keyboardist Colin Lee, guitarist/synths Pat McCusker, bassist Mitchell Stewart, guitarist Keenan O’Meara and drummer Davis Rowan.
“They’re really great musicians,” he said. “I feel like I’m fairly limited in what I can do and what I can come up with. I certainly, in the first album, I made what you call ‘musical mistakes.’
Duchovny is best known as an award-winning actor, director and novelist starring in shows like “The X-Files” and “Californication,” winning a Golden Globe for both. His first novel, “Holy Cow,” was released by Farrar Straus and Giroux in February 2015 and hit the New York Times Bestsellers list.
With several books behind him, Duchovny just wrapped shooting “The Bubble,” a new Judd Apatow film, and will appear in the upcoming Netflix series “The Chair” on Aug. 27.
On the music front, Duchovny is eager to take the show on the road but is hesitant because of the Delta variant.
Duchovny said he recorded his albums the way he grew up listening to music he bought.
“If I bought an album, that was a commitment,” he said. “Once I had that album, I played that album, I looked at the lyrics and I just enjoyed it.
Singing wasn’t always Duchovny’s goal.
“That’s an understatement,” he said with a laugh. “Literally I was told to mouth the words to Christmas carols. I did not have a natural voice. Nobody would have thought I would be a singer.
“It’s been a journey of discovery for me, really discovering my voice. I knew I sounded terrible, and if you know you’re off, you can get there with practice. I’m never going to have one of those voices like Lady Gaga. I can sing in tune pretty much. I’ve worked at it, and I hope other people enjoy it.”
Submitted photo
David Duchovny davidduchovnymusic.com
Epic story retold through 3 female lenses
By Bridgette M. Redman Pasadena Weekly Contributing Writer
It can get rough being the ideal woman. It’s why sometimes her story needs to get retold so she can get a bit of her own back.
The “Ramayana” is an epic folktale and spiritual myth in the Indian and Hindu tradition. Over the centuries, it’s been told and retold in many interpretations and forms. It is one of the best-known epics, featuring the story of Ram, for whom it is named, and Sita, a celestial beauty who is born directly from the earth and who is often held up as the ideal woman and wife.
Playwright Lavina Jadhwani started writing about Sita in 2006 after realizing that the stories she was told as a child about the famous lovers only scratched the surface. Now her play, “The Sitayana (or ‘How to Make an Exit’),” will virtually premiere at East West Players Saturday, Sept. 25, to Sunday, Sept. 27.
Actually, it will get three world premieres performed by three actors at different stages of life, providing yet another layer of complexity to this Indian folk hero. East West Players is partnering with San Francisco’s EnActe Arts and New York City’s Hypokrit Productions to present the premieres.
Sita as a hero
Jadhwani stressed that while she fictionalized and extrapolated the context for Sita in her play, the events are real. It all comes from the various retellings of the epic story.
“It’s a story many of us know, but there are so many different versions that are in different regions and languages,” Jadhwani said. “I grew up with Ram and Sita and was told about Sita proving her purity, but at the time, I didn’t know what that meant.
In the traditional tale, Ram wins Sita with his “manliness” and they live in luxury in a palace until Ram’s stepmother has them exiled to the forest.
They live a simple life, having adventures until Sita is kidnapped by a demon king and held hostage for a year. Ram eventually rescues her and, even though she had turned down all the demon king’s advances and slept in his garden rather than his home, Ram rejects her, accusing her of sleeping in another man’s place.
Different tales have different versions of what happens next. Many say Sita then threw herself on a funeral pyre in anguish but was spared by the flames because she was so pure. They return home to the palace where Ram takes his rightful place as king. They are happy until Sita gets pregnant with twins and Ram overhears a launderer bad-mouthing Sita’s purity. So, he exiles Sita to the woods, where she lives for 14 years, raising her twin sons.
Eventually, Ram finds her and claims the boys. Sita has had enough of things and asks her Mother Earth to open up and swallow her.
“The story of Ram and Sita is one as old as time,” said Snehal Desai, the East West Players’ producing artistic director. “What Lavina has brilliantly done here is reframed the story through the lens of modern relationships, along the way upending stereotypes of femininity and providing a refresh to dated views of chastity, commitment and duty.”
Jadhwani said it is not her intent to offend with this play, as she was raised Hindu and still practices. But she appreciates how the deities in their religion are human and fallible.
Desai said the way the story is told feels particularly relevant to what has happened to people during the pandemic. He pointed out that Sita’s journey is one of isolation and loneliness.
“She gets outcast and lives in the world, she’s kidnapped and has to live in seclusion in that way,” Desai said. “There was just a resonance of this woman who for so many periods of her life is just alone and how she reconciles that—it felt very resonant to where we are today and all that is going on in the world.”
Jadhwani said this is the first play she wrote just out of grad school in 2015. However, it was put aside after she was diagnosed with breast cancer. It took the pandemic to pick it up again.
She said it was important to investigate Sita as an ideal woman and perfect wife. The more she learned the story, the more it appealed to her. She pointed out that the
“ideal woman” raised her children in the forest and then said, “Naw, Ram, we’re done,” when he shows up again, making a dramatic exit.
It wasn’t about changing the story, Jadhwani said, but reframing it.
One of the major reframings is that her play is a solo show. Most of the productions she had experienced involved a huge cast with masks and a major emphasis on the battle.
Premiere casts three actors of different ages
Director Reena Dutt came up with the concept of having three actors and three designs for the premiere of “The Sitayana.” Jadhwani has been thrilled with the outcome.
“At the core of this story is the idea of empowering more female south Asian storytellers,” Jadhwani said.
As the show is being produced virtually, audiences can choose the version they want to see or purchase access to all three.
One version takes place with a teenage Sita in her childhood bedroom. Another is rooted in the comic book aesthetic, which is how many Indians Jadhwani’s age grew up reading the stories. Another is an abstract one using henna art.
Desai said the first takes place in a teenager’s bedroom with an interpretation he describes as being “down and dirty.” She makes figurines, posters and shadow puppets to evoke the world of the story. It features Nikita Chaudhry as Sita and is called “Sita’s Slumber Party.”
The second features Sheetal Gandhi as Sita, and it is called “Sita’s Mehndi Party.”
It focuses on her marriage and invites the audience to be a wedding guest at a party that melds traditional henna art with epic festivities. Mehndi is a form of temporary body art and skin decoration using a paste created from the powdered dry leaves of the henna plant — called henna in the West. The 4,000-year-old body art is popular among Indian women.
The third uses comic book silhouettes. Sita is not animated, but she is a figure in her own graphic novel. Minita Gandhi plays Sita, and it is called “Amar Chitra Sita.” Amar Chitra Katha is a publisher of Indian comics and graphic novels, mostly based on religious legends and epics or folktales and cultural stories.
Because the shows are virtual, East West can present it in a couple ways. It will be available on demand until Oct. 17, but there will also be several livestreamed performances. Those attending get to vote on the version they want to watch.
The curtain time is at 8 p.m., and the show will be followed with a talkback tied to a scene from the play. Topics will range from cultural adaptations of classical stories, “Brown girls do it well,” and one where an Asian female artist shares her experiences.
Desai said each show is a different immersive experience, even though it uses the same script for each one.
“There are three different worlds, but the text is recognizable,” Desai said. “You see how different things get accentuated or different details emerge that you didn’t see the first time. It is the same story that you watch in these different ways. There is amazing theatricality in the piece. … You see the particular ways that artists interpret stories.”
He said it was meaningful to him as a man to help understand what it is like to be a woman and what the gaze is on femininity in South Asian culture.
Jadhwani, who sat in on the rehearsals remotely, said it is a tremendous honor for her that the East West Players, EnActe Arts and Hypokrit Productions are performing them.
“Not only one but, in fact, three Asian American companies from both ends of the country are producing this thing. That’s phenomenal,” Jadhwani said.
She hopes that such a collaboration will help reach the people of the next generation who are just learning the story of Sita and Ram.
“I think a lot about how I grew up with this story missing certain information,” Jadhwani said. “It was as unfair to me as it was to Sita. I don’t want to change the story. I love the story. But we know that how we center and who we center in stories informs how we view the world, so I wanted to open up our world a little more.”
“The Sitayana (or ‘How to Make an Exit’)" by Lavina Jadhwani WHERE: East West Players virtual season
WHEN: Sept. 25 to Sept. 27, Oct. 5 to 7 and Oct. 15 to 17 and on-demand through Oct. 17 COST: $7.99 INFO: https://sforce.co/3m9BCgX
