In the muddy flow
The dazed fish cannot perceive
The clouds part above
We received this letter from a “Mr. Ed” on the subject of the the Muckenthaler Cultural Center:
The Fullerton City Council will hold their final meetings on the fiscal year 2011 budget on June 1 & 2. I am aware of one contentious item on the agenda: elimination of the $80,000 annual cash grant to the Muckenthaler Center Cultural Foundation (MCCF). It should be noted the $80,000 cash grant is part of the City’s support which totals about $200,000 a year.
At the first budget meeting in March the Parks & Recreation Department proposed cuts to all groups under its jurisdiction, i.e., youth sports programs (Little League, Pop Warner, Rangers Soccer, etc.), Senior Citizens Center, Fullerton Museum Center, and MCCF, to name a few. The MCCF was the only group that objected, claiming they were being unfairly singled out. All other groups realized the magnitude of the situation the City was facing and accepted what was being proposed.
At the March meetings councilwomen Quirk and Keller were supportive of the cut for the MCCF: Quirk for the full $80,000 being proposed by Parks & Recreation and Keller for a $40,000 reduction. Councilmen Bankhead and Jones were against any cuts but seemed to indicate they could go along with a $20,000 reduction. Councilman Nelson suggested exploring some alternatives for privatizing the Senior Center and the City’s cultural programs.
Privatization is not the answer. The MCCF was privatized 16 years ago. In 1994 Fullerton ceded control of the facility to the MCCF. The City retained ownership and maintenance responsibility of the grounds and building. At that time the MCCF stated they could run the facility more cheaply and efficiently if the City was not involved. All they needed was three years of financial support from the City and after that they would be on their own.
Sixteen years later the MCCF is still on the dole to the extent of about $200,000 per year. The city has spent over $3,000,000 in support over the past 16 years with no discernible benefit to the taxpaying citizens of Fullerton.
Councilmen Bankhead and Jones felt the MCCF was not on firm financial footing and needed continued assistance from the City. The director of the MCCF was and is pleading for the public to “Save the Muck”.
The Muckenthaler does not need saving!
The last published financial statement shows the MCCF has cash and investments of $590,000 and total revenues of about $650,000. It also shows the MCCF realized a surplus of $99,000 for the fiscal year ending June 2009. Of the $650,000 in total revenues approximately $250,000 is attributable to wedding receptions Colette’s Catering, a private company, holds on the grounds of this publicly owned facility.
The current arrangement has the taxpayers subsidizing two private entities: the MCCF and Colette’s Catering. We can no longer allow this waste of taxpayers’ money to continue.
Rather than continuing the current arrangement with the MCCF a powerful case can be made that the facility should be placed back under the city’s management. This option would allow the citizens of Fullerton to benefit from the facility rental income. Another option would be for the MCCF to reimburse the City annually for the $200,000 that Fullerton spends to maintain the building and grounds. Both cases would be a net saving to the city of about $200,000 per year. This would go a long way in helping alleviate the budgetary problems we are facing.
A hot wind blasts forth
Dust clouds swirl through the dull sky
A blue rivulet
Last week, before all of the excitement about Coyote Hills and the one term history of Pam Keller, the Fullerton City Council approved the conceptual plan for a new community center. This eighth wonder of the world is to be built right across the street from city hall and the main library. The existing Boys and Girls Club and the Senior Center will be demolished to make room for it.
This $23 million mostly redevelopment funded project is supposed to be necessary because half of the city’s Parks and Rec programs are farmed out to other cities, and it would be so much nicer to have them under one new roof right downtown, near the new lingerie shop. The fifty plus year old B & G Club is considered to be beyond repair and the senior center, which isn’t really that old in the grand scheme of things is somehow inadequate. OK, so neither is an architectural masterpiece, but is it really necessary to tear them both down for this new combined community center?
The idea seems to have been to somehow “activate” the corner of Commonwealth and Highland, making it more a part of the library/city hall/police station/baseball field district. To that end, the architect has included one of those pretty, and pretty useless medians down the center of Commonwealth, and a little welcoming plaza on the north side. Placing the huge double gymnasium right up against Commonwealth doesn’t do much to activate the corner, however.
The kids, seniors and everyone in between can all interact as part of one big happy community, except that they still have their own buildings, just closer together than the current ones are, for more togetherness, I guess. There is a third building they do get to share, just to teach them all a lesson. You see, it’s a “multigenerational facility”, except that not everyone wants to be so together.
Several seniors have expressed concerns about having to be so close to boisterous young people while they are busy trying to relax with people of their own age group. As far as I know, no youngsters have yet complained about having to be close to old people, but who knows if anyone asked them during the long, long planning process.
Kids enter from the Commonwealth entrance while seniors use an entrance from the larger, southern parking lot adjacent to the senior center. This arrangement makes sense if no old people have to ride the bus to get there. You see, the bus stop is way out on Commonwealth, so seniors would have to walk through crowds of kids all the way down the central axis of the project, to get to the safety of the senior center, which is closest to the railroad tracks.
A seventy-five year old man at the hearing asked why the noisy gym and swimming pool weren’t placed nearest the railroad tracks instead of a facility used by the aged. The ever helpful and certainly senior Dr. Dick Jones suggested that seniors were hard of hearing anyway before voting to approve the plan. Not to be outdone, even more senior Don Bankhead addressed a concern about the new Commonwealth median restricting bicycle traffic by asserting that it is perfectly legal to ride on the sidewalk in Fullerton —presumably right through seniors exiting a bus.
Tonight we have the first of a two-meeting public hearing at City Hall to discuss West Coyote Hills. Actually, after reading tonight’s agenda, it looks like council just might clear the way for the bulldozers. If you have something to say to the council members, tonight’s your chance, just show up early.
If Councilman Shawn Nelson wins the 4th Supervisorial District race, we will have three council seats to fill in November. Tonight’s meeting could be the nail in the political coffin for some of council members no matter how they vote. West Coyote Hills isn’t new to City Hall and it has been a hot-button issue for environmentalists and residents in La Habra and Fullerton for decades. There are those who see an opportunity to generate desperately needed tax revenue while others see their open spaces shrinking and pollution growing. Whichever side of the fence you are on, I think we can all agree that this has been one political football that has been fumbled for far too long. There are pros and cons to this development just like any other.
The meeting is scheduled for 5PM in the council chambers (303 W. Commonwealth Ave.). As I mentioned, it will be a full house, standing room only, so show up early to get your chance to either support or oppose the development.
It really was sort of mesmerizing to watch the stage adaptation of John Frankenheimer’s 1962 film masterpiece “The Manchurian Candidate” at the Maverick Theater the other night. I mean the stage is so dinky; and yet somehow this production was so ingeniously staged (including a turntable built into the stage) that the whole thing seemed plausible.
I was in town for a couple days and my husband and I thought we’d give the little theater another try. Okay, Joe kicked up a little fuss, but went anyway.You have to remember, I’m not even much of a theater goer, but I enjoyed writing a review a few months ago and thought I’d give it another try.
I have to admit I wasn’t too optimistic about the play – after all the Richard Condon novel spans two continents and many years, and the Maverick Theater is what, about 25 feet wide? And the movie had left some pretty indelible character images such as Angela Landsbury’s wicked Mrs. Iselin.
The story is kind of simple. Generally loathed sergeant Raymond Shaw and his platoon are captured during the Korean War and become the brainwashed tools of commie masterminds. Later, back in the States, Shaw gets a Medal of Honor for “saving” his troops. This delights his Machiavellian monster mom and Joe McCarthy-like stepdad, Mrs. and Senator Iselin, respectively. Other platoon members including Marco Bennet are having horrible flashbacks and trying to figure them out. The suddenly and inexplicably likable Raymond Shaw is the nexus. And the Reds have something really big planned for Shaw…
As noted above the choreography of story and scene changes was tight and extremely well adapted for the (small) stage. There were even a chase scene! The use of interactive video really helped expand the scope of the mis-en-scene. Congrats to director Brian Newell – a bit of a mastermind himself.
The level of acting performances seemed varied to me. John Brennan, who previously did a boisterous turn as Randall McMurphy in Cuckoo’s Nest is back as the disturbed Marco Bennet and did pretty well, although I get the impression his personality leads him to more expansive and gregarious characters. Marco Bennet is about to really crack-up, and I didn’t quite get that sense of acutely anxious desperation that informs bad anxiety disorders.
Raymond Shaw was played by William Marty in a really hard part. Marty’s Shaw seemed sort of uneven to me: sometimes convincing, other times less so. I would have liked to have seen a more developed early profile of the SOB he was supposed to be. Part of the problem may have been that the script didn’t permit a little more attention to Shaw in Korea, as did the film. His Shaw under the influence was convincing. And of course he did get the best line of the script: “It’s a terrible thing to hate your mother. But I didn’t always hate her. When I was a child, I only kind of disliked her.” BTW, William – remember to work the diaphram!
The other main character, Mrs. Iselin, was played to menacing perfection by Veda Franklin who brought to her role a consistently calm and calculating Lady McBethesque evil that really filled the bill. The touching transient moment between Iselin and her son near the end of the play was deftly and quickly turned to pathological hatred toward her manipulators. Brava to her.
Of the other performances I noted Percival Arcibal’s Dr. Yen Lo, turned with the required nuance of humor, and with a good line about yak dung cigarettes; and Robert Craig did an okay, although sometimes stiff presentation of the dim-witted, red-baiting Senator Iselin. Kelsie Blackwell injected some bouncing feminine effervescence with her portrayal of Jocie Jordan, Shaw’s girlfriend.
Overall, I’d like to see the Maverick casts become more relaxed and convincing with both their hand work and incidental interaction with props, something I’ve always thought was the mark of the best actors. But what do I know?
Anyway, that’s the summation of The Manchurian Candidate at the Maverick Theater by me, The Fullerton Shadow – amateur critic. As before, take it for what it’s worth. And go see the show. It runs through June 5th. It’s entertaining and at times startling. You’ll have fun.
Back in town for a few days from wrangling wild horses outside Pioche, Nevada, I decided to traipse around downtown Fullerton last night to check out the new Fullerton “Art Walk.” I dragged along my husband Joe who has never gone to an art gallery without the kicking and the screaming.
The idea seems like a good one: walk around and see what local artists are doing, and by doing so help inspire and cultivate art. I didn’t take any notes so my comments are just impressions – and you can feel free to take them for what they’re worth.
While we didn’t get to all the places on the map, I think we stopped at enough places to get a sense of what was happening. The Fullerton “art scene,” if such a term can be used, (and I devoutly hope it can’t) seems to be dominated by the usual avant-garde collage/mixed-media, assemblage creep art that is supposed to be either thought provoking, or unsettling, but that almost always seems to be humorless, self-important and always makes me wonder if the perpetrators can even draw. The target for such stuff is invariably younger people, which is good, but there remains the now-hackneyed Tim Burton-esque mindset behind this stuff that really makes me wonder if 20-somethings even appreciate traditional artitistic expression. The Hibbleton Gallery on Wilshire seems to have staked out this territory, especially.
The Violet Hour on Santa Fe is a pretty interesting place – an old industrial space converted into a performance art studio/gallery – and while going for a hard-core non-traditional ambiance included some interesting photography of a place called Zyzzx.
I have to note one exception to this avant-garde trend is evident at the Village Art Center (we didn’t make it that far north last night) where the gallery is full of simply stunning pastels by Brad Faerge and oils by John Hunzicker; plus paintings and even sculpture from some other really exquisitely talented artists. Philistines like me know it’s good when we couldn’t possibly conceive of doing it ourselves.
We also stopped by a place called the Graves Gallery on Amerige, of which I had some hope; alas, much of it was dedicated to some truly awful acrylic paintings. This is really too bad since this place was by far the best space for exhibiting art.
And I have to mention another stop: the Fullerton Museum Center where a woman named Lora Lingl had a couple of “kinetic” sculpture pieces made out of wood on display. One was an interactive hammer/metal plate device operated by a crank and gears; the other was a motor driven contraption that manipulated leaves on tree branches via monofilament fishing line. This piece had a strange, mesmerizing effect as it juxtaposed the mechanical and the natural. Watching this piece was really engaging.
The highlight of the evening may have been a stop at an office suite over on Malden where they had put up a bunch of paintings some guy had collected over the years from garage sales. It actually made a pretty ironic and persuasive statement about the world of local art galleries.
Next time I hope to stop in at some of the other venues to see what direction they are going in. Overall, the idea is good one and I congratulate and encourage the organizers.
My two-cents worth is that a lot more attention needs to be dedicated to finding and presenting the work of first-rate artists. They are out there, all over the place, in fact – professionals and amateurs alike.