Thomas G. Arthur, 1922-2006

"When the Dodgers came to Los Angeles in 1958, they played in the Coliseum, where the food concessions were operated by Arthur's company, Arthur Food Services. Four years later, when the team moved to Dodger Stadium, Arthur wanted to add some excitement to the menu. He thought back to his Coney Island childhood when he relished eating Nathan's foot-long hot dogs and decided to borrow the idea."

The Los Angeles Times runs an obit for Thomas G. Arthur, creator of the Dodger Dog.

And Still They Come

"For all the attention focused of late on illegal immigration, California is by far the favorite destination of legal immigrants to the United States — about 200,000 in 2005 alone. Moreover, although the numbers fluctuate with the economy, the Golden State remains a powerful domestic magnet as well, with about 600,000 people from other states arriving here last year.
"No matter how taxing life sometimes seems here in the most populous state in America, newcomers still outnumber defectors, drawn by varying notions of the California dream."

The Los Angeles Times chronicles the rise in California's population.

A Peaceful Easy Feeling?

"It was a critical moment in rock history—a time when innocence and ambition collided. Not surprisingly, innocence got the fuzzy end of the lollipop. The fallout was a musical climate so perversely corrupt that punk rock had to be invented. You had drug-filled hedonism, corporatization of pop music and the unwelcome emergence of an oxymoronic genre of music dubbed 'soft rock.' L.A.'s maestros of mellow had spawned a monster."

Erik Himmelsbach reviews Barney Hoskyns's Hotel California in the Los Angeles Times.

Cisco Pike Was a Friend of Mine

"By 1958, Venice had so faded from founder Abbot Kinney's dreams of glory that Orson Welles chose it to stand in for a decrepit Mexican border town in 'Touch of Evil.' The decay intensified during the next decade, with more than 500 buildings demolished in the early 1960s alone. 'Cisco Pike' depicts the neighborhood less than a year after the first of several arson fires ravaged the Pacific Ocean Park pier (bankrupt since 1967); the script describes 'a community of the young and poor. The now generation, now wasted on reds and wine, sits beside pensioners on the boardwalk benches.'
"Cisco makes his home on Ocean Front Walk south of Ozone, near the pier's ruins, a constant reminder of what was shattered in only a few short years. What had survived through 1970 was Olivia's, the Southern food and UCLA film student hangout immortalized by the Doors' song 'Soul Kitchen,' and it's here that Cisco meets Buffalo for a plate of biscuits and chicken, or maybe to get one last look at the neighborhood."

In the Los Angeles Times' Sunday magazine, West, Sean Howe revives Cisco Pike, the 1972 movie now released for the first time on DVD.

The Cup of Life

"Taking an interest in soccer indicates a certain cosmopolitanism; the game is an international one. A rooting interest in a British club like Arsenal might indicate Anglophilia, which never hurts in polite society. Soccer-love also says—and this is perhaps most important—that you reject the overweening hype and made-for-TV packaging that surrounds American sports for something that, in theory, approaches a purer experience. 'If you're an intellectual, the kitsch that shrouds, say, football is almost intolerable,' says Franklin Foer. 'If you look at a European soccer crowd, all the shouting is coming organically from the crowd itself—that's so much more appealing.' Soccer, largely divorced from shrieking announcers and Jumbotrons, feels more like an artistic endeavor than a television show."

As the World Cup begins, Bryan Curtis in Slate wonders why American writers have taken such an interest.

Always Up to No Good

"That is a far cry from the Venice that greeted [Steve] Clare on his arrival in 1968, when oil wells dotted the peninsula and the beach, Santa Monica Bay was heavily polluted and biker gangs roared through on a regular basis.
"At that time, a small bungalow on a canal could be had for $2,000. Now a buyer in that high-end zone would be lucky to find a residence for less than $1 million; many cost $2.5 million and up.
"To people of color, in particular, the disparity has been a source of bitterness and anger. For them, Venice remains a hotbed of economic disenfranchisement, where they are squeezed out of the job market."

Following a recent shooting, the Los Angeles Times limns the Oakwood neighborhood of L.A.'s Venice.

So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright

Slate notes the architect's birthday with a photo slideshow.

The Southern Strategy

"According to Kruse, white resistance in places like Sandy Springs marked the birth of a new sort of conservatism. In the old politics of white supremacy, white Southerners battled for control of public institutions—they insisted on a 'sense of ownership on public spaces,' such as parks, restaurants, department stores, public transportation, and schools. During the 1960s Southern conservatives—having lost the legal war over segregation—abandoned public spaces rather than share them with blacks. The center of white life moved from urban neighborhoods to suburbs, from public transportation to private cars, from public parks to backyards. In the process, white conservatives articulated a new world view, which emphasized privacy, security, and lower taxes instead of overt racism. Kruse argues that 'modern conservatism'—the public philosophy of the current Republican Party—is a product of this experience."

In Boston Review, Jefferson Decker looks at two recent books on Southern conservatism. (Via Ghost in the Machine)

Every Bush His Own Historian

"Hardly a brainchild of the flower-power '60s, the concept of historical interpretation has been at the heart of our profession from the 1920s onward. Before that time, to be sure, some historians believed that they could render a purely factual and objective account of the past. But most of them had given up on what historian Charles Beard called the 'noble dream' by the interwar period, when scholars came to realize that the very selection of facts was an act of interpretation."

Jonathan Zimmerman in the Los Angeles Times schools critics of revisionist history.

Correction from the June 13, 2006, Los Angeles Times: "A June 7 article about interpreting history said Florida passed a law banning the teaching of "revisionist" and "postmodernist" history in public schools. Those words appeared in a draft of the bill, not in the final version."

The Number of the Beast

"Scholer says the current theory held by most scholars is that 666 is a cryptogram for Nero, the Roman emperor who persecuted Christians with unspeakable cruelty.
"Though Revelation is written in Greek, the cryptogram relates to Caesar Nero in Hebrew, pronounced KEser NEron. Hebrew did not have signs for numbers and instead assigned numerical values to letters in the alphabet.
"Scholer said that adding up the value of the Hebrew letters in Nero's name—100, 60, 200, 50, 200, 6 and 50—one gets 666."

The Los Angeles Times marks 6/6/06.

RFK, 1925-1968

Slate presents photographs to commemorate the life of Robert F. Kennedy, who died on this day in 1968.

MM at 80

Slate marks Marilyn Monroe's 80th birthday with a slide show of photos.

And adds more in 2007.

And still more in 2011.