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Burbank - A City Built by People, Pride, and Progress

Posted by Eric Brightwell, July 22, 2010 08:20pm | Comments (7)

This blog entry is about the Los Angeles County community of Burbank. To vote for other communities, click here. To vote for Los Angeles neighborhoods, click here. To vote for Orange County communities, click here.

Burbank from the Verdugos

For this episode, I was accompanied in the CARDIS by frequent traveling companion, Shimbles. We were originally to be accompanied by Matt Masocco, but he was called into Amoeba to work at the last minute. It was a hot, muggy day in Los Angeles.

Pendersleigh & Sons' Official Map of the San Fernando Valley

Anyway, Burbank is located in the San Fernando Valley and can be divided into two distinct areas, one nestled on the slopes and foothills of the Verdugo Mountains, and one in the western portion in the southeastern end of the San Fernando Valley. Burbank is surrounded by Tujunga and Sunland to the northeast, Shadow Hills to the north, Sun Valley to the northwest, North Hollywood to the west, Toluca Lake and Universal City to the southwest, Griffith Park to the south, and Glendale to the east.

Pendersleigh & Sons' Official Map of Burbank

Being its own city, it's made up of several of its own neighborhoods, including happening Downtown (with the Mall District, The Civic Center and Burbank Village), noisy Burbank Junction, hilly Burbank North Estates, chill Chandler Park, Hillside, edgy Magnolia Park, the bustling Burbank Media Center, McNeil, the Northwest District, and the horse-friendly Rancho Adjacent and the Rancho Equestrian Districts. Dr. Burbank

Sherman Oaks

Posted by Eric Brightwell, July 16, 2010 05:13pm | Post a Comment

Sherman Oaks from Mulholland

This blog is about the Los Angeles neighborhood of Sherman Oaks. To vote for other Los Angeles neighborhoods (as many as you'd like) to be the subject of future entries, click here. To vote for Los Angeles County communities (again, as many as you'd like), vote here. Should you also like to see blog entries about Orange County communities, click here.

Pendersleigh & Sons' Official Maps of the San Fernando Valley and Sherman Oaks

Sherman Oaks is a neighborhood located in the southern portion of the San Fernando Valley, surrounded by Van Nuys and Valley Glen to the north, Valley Village to the northeast, Studio City to the east, West Hollywood to the southeast, Beverly Crest and Bel-Air to the south, Brentwood to the southwest, Encino to the west, and the Sepulveda Basin Wildlife Reserve to the northwest. For this episode I was joined by frequent traveling companion, Shimbles. It was a hot day, yet, for unknown reasons, he kept rolling up the windows so that he could listen to and sing along with the hits of Sugar Ray, Smashmouth and Collective Soul videos on his iPhone.

Happy نوروز (Nowruz)

Posted by Eric Brightwell, March 20, 2009 08:26am | Post a Comment

Happy New Year!

Today, for most observers (but tomorrow for others), is Persian New Year, variously and roughly anglicized as Navrus (Tajikistan), Nawroz (Afghanistan), Nevruz Day (Albania), Nooruz (Iran), Nov Ruz Bairam (Kyrgyzstan), Nauryz Meyrami (Kazakhstan) and Novruz Bayram (Azerbaijan). As with the Lunar New Year, which is often referred to in the media as the "Chinese New Year" (marginalizing Koreans, Taiwanese and Vietnamese), Nowroz is often referred to as "the Iranian New Year." In President Obama's Nowruz address, he didn't make that mistake, although he did turn it into a fairly contrived address to the Islamic Republic.

Maz Jorbani on Axis of Evil Comedy Tour

Iran vs. Persia
Iran, though related to Persia, is not the same thing. The word Iran comes from Aryānām, literally, "Land of the Aryans." Other Aryan people (who also celebrate Nowruz) include Baloch, Kurds, Lurs, Ossettians, Pashtuns and Zazas. Thus, Nowruz is widely celebrated (in addition to the places already named) in Balochistan, Bosnia, the Caucasus, the Crimea, Iraq, Kashmir, Kosovo, Kuwait, Lebanon, Macedonia, Syria, Turkey, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. The term "Iranian," in contrast to "Persian," includes all people descended from Iran who are just as fully Iranian (at least on paper, though not necessarily in practice) such as Arabs, Armenians, Georgians, Jews and Kazakhs, who are probably less likely to celebrate Nowruz. Though most of Nowruz's celebrants practice Islam, its origins go back much further and the day is especially important to Zoroastrians, as well as Alawites, Alevis, Ismailis, and other Central Asian-descended people of various faiths.

Spotlite™ on Paul Anderson

Posted by Eric Brightwell, June 27, 2008 09:04pm | Comments (2)

Background

Paul Anderson is a prolific Generation X filmmaker with a trademark style and five Academy Awards under his belt. He's also made music videos for everyone who's performed at Largo. In addition to his film-making, he's dated models turned singers, singers turned models, daughters of singers and models who only sing in the shower.

Style

Paul Anderson's films are notable for their flashy style and complicated, interweaving story lines. As one of the video store generation of filmmakers, he employs a large bag of cinematic tricks, including quick cuts, constant camera movement, stunning scenery, dutch tilts, low angles, high angles and revolving pullback shots-- tricks gleaned from growing up with a VCR rather than film school learning. He frequently employs female-led ensemble casts drawn from a stock of trusted actors. Making up that group are such players as Julianne Moore, Sean Pertwee, John C. Reilly, Colin Salmon, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Jeremy Bolt, Melora Walters, Jason Isaacs, and Luiz Guzman, to name a few.

Themes

Anderson's ostentatious style is frequently used to elevate the seemingly mundane to epic proportions. Sometimes the point of this ostentatious streak seems merely like showing-off, perhaps an effect of Anderson's high level of film exposure but probable lack of theory. He frequently revels in the seedy underside of outwardly blissful environs. Other frequently recurring themes include constructions and examinations of makeshift families, the role of media, divine acts, secret governmental organizations and the unintended consequences of technology run amok.

Films

He made his first film while still in High School. It was The Dirk Diggler Story. It was a short mockumentary inspired by the teenage Anderson's voracious appetite for porn.

Granada Hills

Posted by Eric Brightwell, October 30, 2007 06:05pm | Comments (2)

Today's Los Angeles neighborhood blog is about Granada Hills. To vote for another Los Angeles neighborhood, vote here. To vote for a Los Angeles County Community, vote here. To vote for Orange County neighborhoods, vote here.

I drove to Granada Hills today to buy a rug for Lush Floral Design head-honcho, Ngoc Nguyen. To get there I used the Ronald Reagan Freeway, named after an actor from Illinois who made some films which are widely regarded as being universally unmemorable. The ex-actor, after retiring from Hollywood, went on to sell weapons to the Iranian dictatorship using the profits to arm death squads in Central America. He also used funds designated for cleaning up toxic waste to fund instead the campaigns of sympathetic politicians and he closed institutions for the mentally ill, which flooded the street with hundreds of thousands of crazy new homeless people that now fill our jails, sidewalks and parks.