DON'T GET LOST, AMERICA!

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LOST AMERICA
by Troy Paiva
released: 2003
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I received Troy Paiva's LOST AMERICA this past Christmas from the Mother of a girl I went with from 1989 to 1994, and I'd like to think that this says something positive about both her Mother and myself. The book is filled with dramatic and intriguing photographs executed by a true artist. It seems that Paiva petitioned Stan Ridgway (a Rock star) to write the Forward to LOST AMERICA, but ironically - based on what I found in the book - Ridgway isn't half the writer that Troy Paiva is. (That's right - Paiva is as good a writer as he is a photographer! This guy has really been blessed with talent!) Ridgway nails it when he says, "Some people can be obsessive. Artists usually are, and the great ones are excessively so. They are driven by an inner vision."
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And the attempt to manifest this inner vision for the benefit of others can often come at a price for the artist. Paiva is a junky joint junkie: his vision is to take long exposure photographs at night of abandoned things and places. He attempts to capture the Lost and Lonely Heart of the Past (usually with a mixture of hot and cool colored lights illuminating certain areas of his subject matter).
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It is important to remember when viewing these poetic and mysterious photos, that Paiva often had to pay a price for them beyond the cost of film, developing and printing: in the course of tramping through junkyards and forlorn places at night, he has been swarmed by bats, attacked by owls, and chased back to his truck by packs of wild dogs. He's had heart-stopping encounters with angry rattlesnakes and witnessed mysterious tarantula and cricket migrations. Once, a praying mantis as big as his hand followed him around an old junkyard like a pet, for most of an evening. More than once, his hand has swollen up like a balloon from painful spider bites. So, unless the idea of being stalked by a monstrous praying mantis all evening is your idea of a fun Friday night, you shouldn't take these very cool photos for granted.
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As I said, Troy Paiva's writing impressed me as much as his photographs did, and on page 14 he writes, "The songs of old broken things are everywhere". The moment I read that, the perfect song sprang into my mind. Composed by another artist with the poetic heart of a juice joint junkie (Tom Waits) is the song, 'BROKEN BICYCLES' from the movie soundtrack for 'One From The Heart':
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"Broken bicycles, old busted chains 
With rusted handle bars, out in the rain 
Somebody must have an orphanage for 
All these things that nobody wants any more" 
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Well, there IS an orphanage for these abandoned things and it's called, "Troy Paiva's Camera". Let Tom sing the song while you explore Paiva's photos, and you will have discovered a match made in the junkyard of your dreams!
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Now, I will confess that there are a few times when I feel Paiva's lighting is detrimental to the image. Occasionally the colored lights infuse the scene with an artificiality that spoils it. Nowhere is this more evident than in 'Daggett Beams, 2000' in which an otherwise truly stunning photo is spoiled by a harsh yellow spotlight in the background. I sometimes preferred his photos with less intrusive, minimal lighting. For example: the moody blue 'Road Closed, 2001' which features two battered, old pickup trucks parked like sentinels under an unhappy Winter sky.
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But most of his photos do feature spotlighted areas of red, green, blue or yellow - this is Paiva's style - and the vast majority of the time, it works; it adds a sense of supernatural foreboding, or Little Boy Lost to his "Broken Bicycle" scenes.
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Some of the real standouts for me are 'Ludlow Cafe, 1990'; 'Concourse, 2001'; 'Salton Sea Beach Trailer, 1992' (so creepy that I could probably write an entire horror story around that one image); 'Cabover And Tires, 1992' - maybe my favorite photo in the book. Who or WHAT might live in that abandoned camper? I think I'd rather not know! And then there's 'The King, 2002', which looks like some nightmarish image from a bizarre, childlike somnambulistic landscape - Alice in Vegasland! Quickly click those heels and scream, "There's no place like home!"
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Many of Paiva's photos would make great imagination-starters for would-be writers.
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'CL, 2001' shows us the dilapidated snack bar of the abandoned Burlingame Drive-in Theatre. In the foreground is an old sign, with the only remaining letters on it being "CL." The caption states, "So far past being closed, it's only CL now." I told you this guy could write!
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Chapter Four, titled "Salvage", contains several shots of old and weathered Las Vegas casino signs taken in the Vegas Neon Museum's "boneyard." It's interesting to note that the scene in the movie, 'One From The Heart' in which the plaintive Tom Waits song 'Broken Bicycles' plays, occurs in a Las Vegas junkyard littered with old, dismantled casino signs, and a mournful train whistling in the background. I never imagined that such a place really existed... until I got LOST AMERICA. The book is sure to appeal to every melancholy weirdo like me, and I would recommend you buy it, except for one thing: it was printed in China...
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Yes, this is the same China that embraces Communism - a failed economic / social system responsible for murdering approximately 100 million human beings worldwide, and torturing and starving many millions more. The same China that enforces its one-child family policy with forced abortions. The same China that got caught smuggling AK-47s into the U.S. to be sold to Los Angeles street gangs; threatened to nuke L.A. if the U.S. militarily defends Taiwan; kills its citizens who have the audacity to publicly request freedom; sells body parts of executed prisoners to medical facilities; enslaves political opponents & Christians for their faith, and puts them to work in forced labor camps, producing all imaginable types of goods, and printing books, all to be sold to Americans.
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Every time we purchase a Chinese-made product, we are feeding the human rights-abusing monster that has made no secret of its hatred for us - a monster that is increasing its military might at an astonishing rate and will someday overrun its neighbor, Taiwan, and declare war on the United States. Let's have a little foresight for once. Let's stop building our enemies. Let's boycott ALL Chinese products and sleep better at night.
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LOST AMERICA is a nice book, but until it is being produced in a country that values human life, it's a book that we can LIVE WITHOUT! (Of course, if you're buying a used copy, this is not an issue.) The good news, however, is that many of Troy Paiva's photos can be viewed at his lostamerica website. It may not be this book, but it's still worth a look.
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~ Stephen T. McCarthy
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"AND STILL THOSE VOICES ARE CALLING FROM FAR AWAY..."*

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SOUTHERN CALIFORNIALAND
by Charles Phoenix
2004
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[*Lyric from the song, 'HOTEL CALIFORNIA' by The Eagles.]
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I acquired SOUTHERN CALIFORNIALAND by Charles Phoenix just over a week ago in a Christmas gift exchange game. The book is a true celebration of Southern California in its glorious, paradisiacal decades of 1940 through the 1970s. Charles Phoenix who oddly became obsessed with the old 35 mm Kodachrome slides taken by strangers in memorializing their family trips, gatherings, and everyday lives, shares about 150 of his favorites with us in this absolutely charming book. His love and enthusiasm for his subject (SoCal in its glory days) just oozes from every page. Like the author, I grew up in SoCalLand in the '60s & 70s, and so I share his fascination for the magic that it once held.
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Enchanting, dreamy, nostalgic, and a tad melancholic (because the enchantment and the dream has been reduced to nostalgia) are words that best describe this picture book. But "surprising" is another word that fits, because I was surprised by the wealth of information to be found in the brief text that accompanies each photograph. Even I - who has traversed so many of these locations - learned some interesting bits of trivia.
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For example: Did you know that when Vice President Richard Nixon cut the ribbon and became the Disneyland Monorail's first official passenger, unbeknownst to that famous rider, it was the first time the unique transportation train completed a trip without catching fire? Phoenix describes Walt Disney as being very nervous. Yeah, I suppose he was! Did you know that the Luer "Quality Meat" Rocket (a forerunner to the Oscar Meyer Wienermobile) was discovered in a Prescott, Arizona junkyard in 1997, "weathered, but restorable"? (And here I always thought that I was the only good thing to wrench free from the evil clutches of Prescott! I made good my escape in early '94, also "weathered, but restorable".)
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I loved perusing the lost details of places where I have traipsed: the famous Brown Derby restaurant and the Pan-Pacific Auditorium; White Front of Anaheim, one of the discount chain of stores fo' po' folks. (My Ma used to drag us to one as children in Orange County. I don't know how many the O.C. boasted of, but this might well be the same White Front.); the Pacific Ocean Park amusement park, which I guarded as a young Police Explorer during its demolition in the Winter of 1973-74; the L.A. International Airport Theme Building where I experienced my first Red Dog beer. The beer wasn't memorable, but the location was.
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Phoenix includes insightful and sometimes funny commentary. When he describes the cover photo (a white, 1955 Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz convertible parked near the corner of Walnut & Allen in Pasadena, with palm trees, an orange grove, and snow-capped Mt. Baldy in the background) as "a perfect Southern California shot", he's right on the money! When he writes of the 1954 Mineral Baths photo in Desert Hot Springs, "Hundreds of thousands of acres of beautiful undisturbed desert scenery and someone had to build a wall around this place and paint in [desert] scenery," it's genuinely funny.
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This book is a treasure trove for any pre-Hotel California SoCalLand lover. Where else are you going to find a photograph of a 1956 teenager with the perfect ducktail waiting to test Disneyland's Autopia track? Or a photo of President Eisenhower blowing his nose in Palm Springs? Or a photo of Lee and Katie Kellogg eating meatloaf sandwiches in 1955 Alhambra? This book is a vibrant, eye-popping gem of pop culture which I urge you not to buy.
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I'd rather you didn't purchase this fun Charles Phoenix book. Why? Because on page 144 we learn that SOUTHERN CALIFORNILAND was "Printed in China". Yes, this is the same China that embraces Communism, a failed economic/social system responsible for murdering approximately 100 million human beings worldwide, and torturing and starving many millions more. The same China that enforces its one-child family policy with forced abortions. The same China that got caught smuggling AK-47s into the U.S. to be sold to Los Angeles street gangs; threatened to nuke L.A. if the U.S. militarily defends Taiwan; kills its citizens who have the audacity to publicly request freedom; sells body parts of executed prisoners to medical facilities; enslaves political opponents and Christians for their faith, and puts them to work in forced labor camps, producing all imaginable types of goods, and printing books, all to be sold to Americans.
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Every time we purchase a Chinese-made product, we are feeding the human rights-abusing monster that has made no secret of its hatred for us - a monster that is increasing its military might at an astonishing rate and will someday overrun its neighbor, Taiwan, and declare war on the United States. Let's have a little foresight for once. Let's stop building our enemies. Let's boycott ALL Chinese products and sleep better at night. SOUTHERN CALIFORNIALAND is a nice book, but until it is being produced in a country that values human life, it's a book that we can LIVE WITHOUT! (Of course, if you're buying a used copy, this is not an issue.)
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~ Stephen T. McCarthy
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BLACK AND WHITE AND COOL

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JAMES DEAN: FIFTY YEARS AGO
by Dennis Stock
published: 2005
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My good friend Carole sent me a copy of an official publication from a JAMES DEAN fan club. Inside was a lengthy story she had written recounting the 1988 trip that she and six other “die-hard Dean fans” (including Jimmy’s boyhood friend, Bob Pulley) made to California, during which I escorted the group to several of the prominent Dean-related sites in Los Angeles. Happily reliving those days through Carole’s recollections, I was inspired to lose myself in my copy of Dennis Stock’s JAMES DEAN REVISITED. His JAMES DEAN: FIFTY YEARS AGO is essentially a special, retitled hardcover reissue with the photographs beautifully enlarged, and a few splendid ones previously unpublished now included.
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My copy of the original –- a gift from my employer in 1993 -– is inscribed, “To a fellow alien who straddles two worlds. …the art is in the living.” My magazine-publishing boss bought me the book, but being a major fan, naturally, this essential book for Dean fans was already in my bookcase. I subsequently gave away my older copy and kept his gift.
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As a wannabe actor fresh out of high school in 1977 (Santa Monica High, coincidentally also known as Dawson High in REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE), I discovered Dean at a Fox Venice Theater showing of what I consider Dean’s greatest film, EAST OF EDEN. This was before movies were available for purchase and home viewing. I was mesmerized, then knocked out of my boots; everything struck a chord of harmony within me: the sense of youthful alienation; the brooding intensity; the moodiness; the frustration; the quest for meaning. I was hooked, and James Dean became my idol.
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In September of 1980, I took my first extensive solo trip, flying into Indianapolis and then driving to Dean’s hometown, Fairmount, for the festival honoring the 25th anniversary of his death.
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Through happenstance (?), I met Carole and her friend Russ (both would remain my very good friends). I’d heard that Martin Sheen was to attend the festival, and when Russ asked if I wanted to accompany them to the Indianapolis airport to pick up “Martin”, I said, “Sure” –- assuming that the “first name only” implied that this Martin was famous and a last name was unnecessary.
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It turned out to be Martin, hard-core fan flying in from England. (I’m still in touch with this non-Sheen “Martin”, too.) Well, in the days that followed, my disappointment from the “Martin Mix-up” turned to elation when I discovered how well-connected my new friends were, and I found myself meeting Adeline Nall, Jimmy’s high school drama teacher, and then getting a private tour of his boyhood farmhouse conducted by the aunt who raised him, Ortense Dean Winslow. I saw his motorcycle and leather motorcycle jacket, his bongo drum sitting quietly in the corner, and his childhood artwork hanging on his old bedroom walls. Very heady stuff for a young fan! (I’ve experienced so many strange “coincidences” in my 47 years [*now 57 years*] that I’m not at all convinced this life is “real.”)
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Well, as the years wore on, I surprisingly lost interest in acting, and a series of Spiritual episodes completely changed me and my world-view. I no longer idolize human beings, but I still recognize that James Dean was (and remains) the most imaginative, most innately gifted American actor. The direction hinted at in GIANT gives an indication of where he was pointed as an artist, and ultimately he would have emerged as a “giant” of a film director. He may have started life as a hayseed, ending it with a Turnupseed and with life’s promising highway left unexplored before him, but JAMES DEAN LIVES, both in his three films and in these beautiful black and white photographs by the fine lensman, Dennis Stock.
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Do you wish to see why the name James Dean turns up in the songs of Rock stars? (David Essex, Lou Reed, John Mellencamp, Ian Hunter, and The Eagles, to name but five.) Want to see why all the boys wanted to BE him, and all the girls wanted to BE WITH him? (As a female friend recently wrote regarding his performance in East Of Eden: “I think Dean also aroused a lot of maternal feelings with that performance. You're attracted to him, but you also want to mother him. What's a girl to do?”) Well, it’s all in these pages:
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The Offbeat Humor: Encircled by calves and pigs, Jim sits with his bongo drum on a patch of ground on the family’s farm and bangs out a “rhythm to moo and oink to.”
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The Bizarre Morbidity: Jimmy posing in a coffin at a Fairmount funeral home just 7 months before his corpse would be taken there.
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More Bizarre Morbidity: Jim examining the chicken head held by a small, joyful girl loitering on a New York sidewalk, while the girl’s older sister holds onto the leash of their disinterested dog.
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The Eerily Mysterious: He sits dressed in coat and tie, reading a book in the farm’s hayloft while light filtering in reveals him to be surrounded by spider web-sealed old trunks. (A dynamite piece of photography! Absolutely first-rate.)
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The Classic Cool: James Dean marches through the city streets, cigarette dangling and shoulders hunched in his overcoat against a Times Square rain.
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The Ultimate Rebellion: An edgy Dean holding a gun point-blank on future president Ronald Reagan on the Hollywood set of the television play THE DARK, DARK HOUSE.
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These and so many more stellar shots -- some posed and some candid -- await the James Dean fan on these pages. The decades have whittled down my once massive Dean collection to just a few portrait reproduction post cards sent to me by the late artist Kenneth Kendall, who sculpted the actor’s bust on display at The Griffith Park Observatory in L.A., and to the book of 1955 photographs by Dennis Stock. This should tell you plenty about the quality of these photos.
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Come and “see” the original Voice of teen angst, the red-jacketed rebel "In Glorious Black & White".
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~ Stephen T. McCarthy
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