A flashback to March 2010 when LA Friday Coffee visited the Griffith Observatory, Griffith Park, Los Angeles.
We are planning on taking this trip with Friends of the Island Fox, a group I have worked with on social media and podcasting for a number of years. We have always planned to take a trip to the Channel Islands, but never seemed to make it. This event sounds like the perfect excuse. Sign up soon to reserve your space! — Douglas
A Trip to Prisoner’s Harbor - Santa Cruz Island
Saturday, April 6, 2013
That’s right, this spring Friends of the Island Fox educators are leading a day-long adventure to look for both the island fox AND the island scrub-jay.
As the population of Santa Cruz Island foxes reaches recovery it is possible to observe them at more locations across the island. Santa Cruz is also the only home of the rare island scrub-jay. With its newly restored wetland area, Prisoner’s Harbor is one of the prime locations to encounter this unique bird as well as many other species.
On the trip over to Prisoner’s Harbor (about 1 and a half hours) there is the possibility of seeing many marine species as well.
Tickets will be $65.00 per person. A percentage of the fee will go to support island fox recovery efforts.
Read more about this trip on the Friends of the Island Fox web site
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A short glimpse into our Christmas home (2 min)
Can’t see the video able? Watch “A Welch Family Christmas” on YouTube
Music: “Dance of the Sugarplum Fairies”, Kevin MacLeod, http://incompetech.com. Under Creative Commons Attribution License
My wife, Rosanne Welch, is a television writer, film historian and a Doctor of History. She uses a lot of books in her classes and her own research. Here are her Top 5 Books for Film Buffs. Perhaps these might make an excellent gift if you have a film but in your family.
Here are Rosanne’s Top 5 picks for the best books for film buffs.
Dunne, John Gregory. Monster: Living Off the Big Screen. New York: Random House, 1997.
Even though it’s about a film made in 1996 that even die hard Robert Redford fans have not likely seen (Up Close and Personal), this book about writing a blockbuster film by John Gregory Dunne discusses Hollywood honestly – especially as it deals with married screenwriters like he and his wife Joan Didion.
Harmetz, Aljean . The Making of Casablanca: Bogart, Bergman, and World War II. Hyperion, 2002.
You don’t need to love the film to like this book about how a classic came together. I like the way Harmetz gives backgrounds on all the supporting characters and we learn how many were refugees from Nazi regimes.
McGillligan has 4 more books in this series – each one containing long, interesting interviews with screenwriters from a particular era from the 1920s to the 1990s. And as we all know, writers are highly entertaining conversationalists!
What’s to say except this is a great book if you love The Godfather – but even if you don’t it is a good reminder of how certain movies become entrenched in our national culture – and can do things like make us more comfortable with minorities so that they soon become majorities.
Norman, Marc. What Happens Next: A History of American Screenwriting. New York: Harmony Books, 2007.
This is the history of how screenwriters got screwed out of being considered the legal ‘authors’ of the works they write!
More 2012 Gift Guide Items:
Since I am an avid reader, I have lots of friends and family who are also avid reader. This often leads us to recommend books to one another. Here are two books that were recommended to me recently.
I I was able to get the eBook on loan from the LA Public Library. The eBook availability isn’t always the greatest, but I got lucky in this case. Here is the description from Amazon.com. I read it in about 2 hours on this Thanksgiving Eve, taking a break from other tasks and simply luxuriating in the process of reading a book.
I would describe this as a “pre-bbok” if there is such a beast in literature. By reading this short treatise, you are being prepared for the larger task of facing “The White Whale” which could describe the book itself as well as its namesake. Moby-Dick has defeated many readers, but perhaps with this introduction others might attempt it again, or for the first time, and discover some of the magic it has to offer.
The New York Times bestselling author of seagoing epics now celebrates an American classic.
Moby-Dick is perhaps the greatest of the Great American Novels, yet its length and esoteric subject matter create an aura of difficulty that too often keeps readers at bay. Fortunately, one unabashed fan wants passionately to give Melville’s masterpiece the broad contemporary audience it deserves. In his National Book Award- winning bestseller, In the Heart of the Sea, Nathaniel Philbrick captivatingly unpacked the story of the wreck of the whaleship Essex, the real-life incident that inspired Melville to write Moby- Dick. Now, he sets his sights on the fiction itself, offering a cabin master’s tour of a spellbinding novel rich with adventure and history.
Philbrick skillfully navigates Melville’s world and illuminates the book’s humor and unforgettable characters-finding the thread that binds Ishmael and Ahab to our own time and, indeed, to all times. A perfect match between author and subject, Why Read Moby-Dick? gives us a renewed appreciation of both Melville and the proud seaman’s town of Nantucket that Philbrick himself calls home. Like Alain de Botton’s How Proust Can Change Your Life, this remarkable little book will start conversations, inspire arguments, and, best of all, bring a new wave of readers to a classic tale waiting to be discovered anew.
In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex
This is the true story that partially inspired Melville to write his epic novel.
From Amazon.com…
The ordeal of the whaleship Essex was an event as mythic in the nineteenth century as the sinking of the Titanic was in the twentieth. In 1819, the Essex left Nantucket for the South Pacific with twenty crew members aboard. In the middle of the South Pacific the ship was rammed and sunk by an angry sperm whale. The crew drifted for more than ninety days in three tiny whaleboats, succumbing to weather, hunger, disease, and ultimately turning to drastic measures in the fight for survival. Nathaniel Philbrick uses little-known documents-including a long-lost account written by the ship’s cabin boy-and penetrating details about whaling and the Nantucket community to reveal the chilling events surrounding this epic maritime disaster. An intense and mesmerizing read, In the Heart of the Sea is a monumental work of history forever placing the Essex tragedy in the American historical canon.
I am a big fan of mysteries, so when our friend Lisa Seidman came out with her first book (Killer Ratings) I knew I had to take a look. I am just starting to read it now, but I wanted to share it with you. Lisa is a longtime television writer and a great one at that, so I expect the best from Killer Ratings and look forward to new episodes in the series.
You can buy the book directly from the Amazon Kindle store, for the Nook Reader at Barnes and Noble and via Apple’s iBooks store. From the Amazon Kindle store you can download a free sample or give the book as a gift to your favorite mystery lover.
Remember, you can read Kindle books on any computer or smartphone using the free Kindle Reader software or just your web browser.
You can find out more about Lisa Seidman at her personal web site. Look for updates on the Killer Ratings web site and also Like Killer Ratings on the Facebook page.
Here is some more information about Killer Ratings…
Description:
Killer Ratings by Lisa Seidman
Los Angeles is no stranger to glamour, celebrity . . . and murder. When Susan Kaplan moves to L.A. to become a TV writer, she’s thrilled to be hired as a writers’ assistant on the well-regarded but low-rated TV series Babbitt & Brooks. The last thing she expects, however, is that she’d find herself working for the beautiful yet seriously neurotic Rebecca Saunders, the show’s less-than-competent associate producer who may or may not have gotten the job by sleeping with Babbitt & Brooks’ demanding creator and executive producer, Ray Goldfarb.
And Susan definitely doesn’t expect to find murdered Rebecca’s body in her office at the studio early one morning. When the police learn that Rebecca torpedoed Susan’s writing career shortly before her death, Susan becomes their number one suspect. Determined to prove her innocence and find the murderer, Susan discovers that all her colleagues have secrets they would kill to protect.
From producers to writers to stars, it seems that the hopes and dreams of nearly everyone associated with the show were being threatened by Rebecca.
Despite the danger to her own life, Susan remains determined to find Rebecca’s killer and in the process unmasks the dirty little secrets behind the making of a primetime television series. She learns that real life behind the camera is far more dramatic than the fictional one in front of it.
Lisa Seidman draws on her thirty years of experience as a successful television writer to take the reader behind the scenes and show how the struggle to achieve high ratings truly can lead to murder.
What people are saying about Killer Ratings…
“A delightful expose of what goes on behind the glamor, the perfect smiles and the adoring fans. Lisa Seidman’s KILLER RATINGS tells it all. Be prepared to be entertained, thrilled and chilled as Susan realizes her dream to work in a TV production company. It is a dream that soon becomes a nightmare.” – Novelist Claire McNab
“Lisa Seidman weaves together vivid characters, delightful mystery, and the wry wit of a true TV insider to create a delicious tale of reckless ambition and literal and figurative backstabbing that will not only entertain you, but change your relationship with your television forever.” Sheryl J. Anderson, Killer Heels
“Fascinating. Fast-paced. Fun. Emmy winning scriptwriter Lisa Seidman’s debut mystery goes backstage at a TV production company where pride, passion, and peril lead to Killer Ratings. A Killer Mystery.” Carolyn Hart, author of the Death on Demand series
“Take an edgy TV production team, add a sprinkling of fierce ambition and finish off with a large handful of paranoia and you have the perfect setting for murder. TV writer Lisa Seidman, who’s been on that set, skillfully does it all in Killer Ratings. Annette Meyers, author of the Death on Demand series
“In Killer Ratings, Lisa Seidman, a television writer herself, provides a thrill ride through the ambition-ridden and ego saturated world of TV production, where there is more death and drama behind the camera than in front of it.” Sue Ann Jaffarian, author of the Odelia Grey mysteries and the Ghost of Granny Apples mysteries.
More 2012 Gift Guide Items:
Jason Tucker and Megan Enloe (@podcastjunky) at BarCampLA 6 four years ago
L-R: Deborah Shadovitz, Joe Crawford, Steve Riekeberg, Jason Cosper
Our friend, Art Benjamin, performs some Mathemagic and then discusses how we can all be more proficient at math in this presentation from the National Academy of Science’s Distinctive Voices series.
Can’t see the video above? Watch it directly on Youtube.
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