Halloween in LA. All photos by Brian Donnelly.
Halloween is Cancelled — Kinda Sorta
LA County has put some measures in place to keep everyone safe and sane this Halloween season. Carnivals, Community Haunted Houses and Parties are banned for 2020. Even if they are held outdoors. Trick-or-treating and the newish fad, “trunk-or-treating” are highly discouraged. Here at The LA Beat, we LOVE Halloween! So we would not leave you high and dry. Decorate your house, organize drive-by parades (New Orleans always does this on bicycles), and create special family feasts. We will be here for you with listings of drive-up experiences, drive-in movies, themed recipes, costume ideas, and, as always, Paul’s excellent streaming movie recommendations. -Elise Thompson
RIP Diana Rigg
Dame Diana Rigg died on Thursday, September 10, at the age of 82. She is best remembered as Mrs. Peel, the object of fervent ardor and admiration for many young men and women, on the UK TV series “The Avengers.” But at various times during her long career, she was asked to share the screen or stage with a formidable crew that included James Bond, Oliver Reed, Cersei Lannister, Doctor Who, Vincent Price, Tim Curry, Charlton Heston, George C. Scott, and the Muppets, and interpret the words of Shakespeare, Ibsen, Euripides, Moliere and Paddy Chayefsky. In every case (even the Muppets), she held her own, and our attention, with a combination of effortless class, boundless cool, and remarkable strength. She spoke Hindi, fought for equal pay for actresses, took her revenge on mean-spirited theater critics by compiling a collection of their nastiest reviews, and reportedly never watched “Game of Thrones.” If the day wears you down, it might help to consider how Rigg might handle the current situation: wry smile, karate chop, stiff drink, pure aplomb. – Paul Gaita
Dame Diana Rigg was an accomplished actress–star of stage and screens big and small alike– and one of the most beautiful women to ever grace the planet. Long before the sobriquet ‘Badass’ was routinely applied to women, Ms. Rigg filled those boots with charm and insouciance as Emma Peel on the Avengers, alongside James Bond in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service and on Broadway as the OG maneater, Medea. The long time host of PBS’s Mystery, she was introduced to a new generation on Game of Thrones, bringing brass to the brilliantly cast role of Oleanna Tyrell, whose fictional daughter Margery, portrayed by Natalie Dormer, bore a striking resemblance to Rigg in her Emma Peel days. Dame Rigg was 82 when she passed on September 10th. – Ted Kane
2020 LA Times Festival of Books to Go on as Planned
Despite COVID-19’s indefinite cancellation of live events, The Los Angeles Times and the University of Southern California will push forward with the LA Times Festival of Books beginning October 18th. In honor of the festival’s 25th anniversary, organizers have arranged 25 individual virtual events featuring an assortment of writers, poets, artists, filmmakers, musicians and emerging storytellers to span the course of four weeks. The full schedule will be announced on September 24th – check back with The LA Beat at that time for a detailed rundown of events. Facebook. – Casey Lewis
Mysterious Boulders Placed under a Westside Overpass to Keep Out the Homeless?
Hostile architecture has been adding triangular bricks atop walls and arm rests along park benches in public and private areas to keep homeless people from being able to sleep or congregate there for sometime. Now it seems to have gone DIY. Dozens of massive boulders have been placed on a West LA sidewalk that runs beneath an overpass for the 10 freeway, one of the few places homeless people can escape from the scorching sun and pouring rain. Boulders range from 200 to 500 pounds, requiring heavy equipment to move. The South Robertson Neighborhood Council has denied any involvement. According to ABC7, the city councilman for the district, Herb Wesson. issued a statement:
“This is wrong on so many levels. My team and I are working on getting these removed ASAP.” – Elise Thompson
RIP Simeon Coxe
This week, we lost Simeon Coxe, the visionary electronic musician who led the Silver Apples from 1968-70. Before virtually anyone on the planet, Coxe was producing futuristic yet deeply beautiful, haunting and hypnotic sounds on his own homemade instrument, a mess of oscillators each one of which produced a single unwavering tone, connected to telegraph keys to turn them on. This other-wordly tone combined with the singular drumming of Danny Taylor, who built patterns across multiple tuned toms. Both the albums they produced for Kapp/MCA in 1968-69 are essential listening, some of the most truly psychedelic music ever made. When I met Simeon during the Apples’ resurgence as a live act in 1998, minus Taylor, he told me that they declined an invitation to appear at Woodstock in favor of playing for their hometown crowd in NYC, where people would lie on the floor and attempt to levitate. Try it for yourself. – Bob Lee
