Risen Magazine

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vol 3 • iss 2 – mar -apr 06

Grant Brittain Tim McCormick Bono Anne Rice Robert Levon Been

Danny Trejo Pauley Perrette

At the crossroads with Robert Johnson

Ma r ch/A p r il 2006

22: will.i.am :: as.he.is

The funkadelic will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas spins theories on fashion, technology, and using the positive vibes of music to heal the sick.

30: Anne Rice :: The Dark Wing of Night The most well-known vampire chronicler has traded in fangs for faith. Were her sexy and spooky novels a search for the divine?

36: Robert Levon Been :: Back Porch Truth Black Rebel Motorcycle Club’s bassist and vocalist Robert Levon Been is anxious for his generation to find its voice. He’s found his.

42: Danny Trejo :: Would This Face Lie? If you think that tough guy actor Danny Trejo is a real badass, you’re right. Well, sort of.

FASHION

48: The Pauley Theory

In real life, Pauley Perrette is every bit as engaging, inquisitive, and tattoo-and-mascara attractive as her TV character Abby Sciuto on NCIS. Check her out.

EXPRESSIONS

56: Tim McCormick: Absurdly Talented Go ahead, try to figure out Tim McCormick’s art.

You’d be better off experiencing his fantastical visions. Have fun.

62: Grant Brittain: Beautiful Mayhem

Specializing on the chaotic poetry of skateboarding, Grant Brittain’s eye and camera have been snapping away from the very beginning.

68: Brit Marling and Mike Cahill: Capturing Havana

Get the scoop on their provocative and engaging indie documentary Boxers & Ballerinas about life in Cuba.

SCREEN

72: DVD Reviews

Jeffrey Overstreet recommends some of the movies that you may have overlooked and shouldn’t have.

SOUND

74: CD Reviews

RISEN lays out the low-down on a stack of new musical offerings.

76: UP TO SPEED

Those who have been featured in RISEN are on the move. Find out where they are headed.

78: END NOTE

Bono: Bleeding-Heart Rocker

march/april Contributors

sound screen sports soul

EDITORIAL EDITOR-IN-CHIEF :: Steve Beard MANAGING EDITOR :: Regina Goodman FOUNDING EDITOR :: Chris Ahrens CULTURE EDITOR :: Tyler Shields COPY EDITOR :: RaeAnne Marsh PROOFREADER :: Dane Wilkins CONTRIBUTING WRITERS :: Jeffrey Overstreet,Trish Teves, Owen Leimbach, Jared Cohen, Adam Gnade, Maya Kroth

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ART

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ART DIRECTOR :: Rob Springer PHOTO EDITOR :: Bob Stevens CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS :: Nabil, Estevan Oriol, Aaron Chang, Paul F. Ahrens, Embry Rucke PHOTO STAFF :: Blaine Franger, Lee Waters, David Choo, John Cleary, Cameron Nelson, Eric Anderson

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ILLUSTRATION :: Zela

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FASHION FASHION EDITOR :: Mona Van Cleve PUBLISHER :: Michael Sherman ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER :: Dan Alpern ACCOUNTING :: Cynthia Beth CIRCULATION:: Helen Warmath INTERNET/WEB :: Tony Crisp INTERN:: Jaclyn Burke

2 8 5 1 Estevan Oriol - Photographer Danny Trejo (page 42) Danny is one of my favorite people to shoot. We've been friends for years and the pleasure is always mine.

2 Jared Cohen - Writer CD Reviews (page 74) I'm young and naïve, and I think music can save the world. In my spare time, I make an awful lot of music over at www.conceptbravery.com 3 Trish Teves - Writer Anne Rice (page 30) Oh the horror. Me, at the beginning of my career, trying to capture a woman at the glorious end of hers. With the vampires long gone, Anne Rice is captivating. Don't forget your turtleneck.

4 Adam Gnade - Writer Tim McCormick (page 56) CD Reviews (page 74) Whenever I talk to Tim, I come away feeling like I’ve just read a great, expansive, revelatory book on the creative process.

This is good.

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5 Nabil - Photographer will.i.am (page 22) Shooting will.i.am is always interesting. There's never a point where you have to tell him what to do, you just shoot him. He's a good match for RISEN. His brain works in like alpha 5 level, up there somewhere. My goal is to reach at least alpha 3 in my life before I pass on.

6 Owen Leimbach - Writer Danny Trejo (page 42) Robert Levon Been (page 36) It was sunset, windy and super chilly. Trejo showed up in a parka, but promptly stripped down to his Dickies so we could see his tats. I was getting hypothermia just watching.

Indoor smokers are currently out of fashion in L.A., but someone forgot to tell BRMC's Peter Hayes and Michael Been. They put away a pack between them during the sound check. It was a long sound check.

7 Maya Kroth - Writer Boxers and Ballerinas (page 68) CD reviews (page 74) All I could think about while interviewing Mike and Brit was how such impossibly cute, articulate, well dressed kids ended up with so much talent. Who says God doesn't give with both hands?

8 Aaron Chang - Photographer Anne Rice (page 30) In my many years of photographing people I have seldom encountered an individual with a presence as intense as Anne Rice. Without a word she challenged me to create photos of excellence.

RISEN Magazine is a subsidiary of RISEN Media, LLC. The views expressed by the subjects interviewed in RISEN Magazine are not necessarily those shared by the staff or publishers of RISEN Media, LLC. All interviews are recorded live and exclusively for use

by RISEN Magazine. Interviews remain the sole property of RISEN Media, LLC. All rights reserved. No part of the contents of this magazine may be reproduced without the written consent of RISEN Media, LLC. PRINTED :: USA SUBSCRIPTIONS :: 858.481.5650 - risenmagazine.com $19.99 for a 1 year subscription (6 Issues) • $29.99 for a 2 year subscription. Canada and outside of the US pay $25.99 for a 1 year subscription • $41.99 for a 2 year subscription. Payment must be sent with order. Send all orders to Attn: Subscription Department. For faster service please inquire about credit card payment.

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RISEN is published 6 times a year by RISEN Media, 11772 Sorrento Valley Rd., Suite 257 San Diego CA 92121.

Periodical pending at San Diego CA and additional mailing offices.

POSTMASTER: Send address changes to RISEN Media, PO Box 469077 Escondido CA 92046-9112.

RISEN Media, LLC We apologize to Adam Gnade (writer) and Alicia Rose (photographer) for not being credited on the Pink Martini feature in our Jan/Feb issue. Also Zela for not being credited on the Cash illustration.

11772 Sorrento Valley Rd., Suite 257 San Diego, CA 92121 Tel. 858.481.5650 • Fax: 858.481.5660 info@risenmagazine.com Copyright © 2005 “RISEN” is a Trademark of RISEN Media, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Cover will.i.am: Nabil / Cover Pauley Perrette: Bob Stevens

march/april:Letter From The Editor

Despite being a monumental influence on artists such as the Grateful Dead, Eric Clapton and Cream, and even the White Stripes, it took Robert Johnson nearly 70 years to get a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Grammys.

Most people outside the small fraternity of blues aficionados have never even heard of Johnson, yet his mark on the history of rock ‘n’ roll is undeniable. “Robert Johnson is the most important blues musician who ever lived,” says Eric Clapton. “I have never found anything more deeply soulful. His music remains the most powerful cry that I think you can find in the human voice.”

Led Zeppelin, Elmore James, George Clinton, the Red Hot Chili Peppers and the Rolling Stones have all recorded his songs. “Somehow Robert Johnson really snapped something in my brain,” confesses Jack White of the White Stripes.

Robert Johnson (1911–1938) lived the blues.

He never knew his father. His birth was the result of an extramarital affair. He wandered around the South, using aliases to keep one step ahead of the law in case there were problems. When he got married as a young man, both his wife and baby died during childbirth. After that, he drank hard and chased women. In “Preaching Blues,” he sings, “The blues is a low-down achin’ heart disease/ Like consumption killing me by degrees.”

Johnson was a certifiable musical genius, able to do things with the guitar that no one else had done. Even though he only recorded 29 songs in the mid-1930s, he blew the doors off juke joints all over the South. He was an electrifying guitarist and played like a man possessed.

Because he had mastered the guitar seemingly overnight, the rumors began to whirl. It was said that he went out to the crossroads with a black cat’s bone and traded his immortal soul for the ability to shred the blues. Like a showman, Johnson never contradicted the rumors. With songs like “Me and the Devil Blues” and “Hellhound on My Trail,” as well as lyrics that dealt with damnation and salvation, he let the legend take on a life of its own.

I’ve visited the crossroads where Robert Johnson supposedly waited for his encounter with the Devil. Blues fans from all over the world travel to 16 :RISEN MAGAZINE

the intersection of Highways 49 and 61 in Clarksdale, Mississippi. On a road trip through the South, my best friend and I stayed in Clarksdale to taste the Delta blues and eat the best ribs and tamales in town at Abe’s BBQ right at the intersection.

In the South, the juke joints are packed on Saturday night and the clapboard churches are crowded on Sunday morning. It is one of the endearing and fascinating aspects of the region.

There are ample opportunities to fall into the lust of the flesh, and more than enough altars to find redemption. The Robert Johnson legend of the crossroads fits right into a vibrant worldview of angels, demons, heaven, hell, sin and atonement. At the Delta Blues Museum in Clarksdale, you can even buy a t-shirt that reads “Lord, forgive Robert Johnson.”

The metaphor of the crossroads is not reserved for yesteryear blues vagabonds looking for fame, fortune and females. Rather, it carries a universal draw to anyone looking for a second chance. The crossroads represent an opportunity to set our way straight after veering off the path, regaining our integrity and giving life another shot.

It often defines our journey.

Crossroads are of prime interest to those of us at RISEN. They are often where you find the grit, soul, and drama in someone’s life.

In his interview on page 42, actor Danny Trejo says that he faced a crossroads while he was in San Quentin. “I was in the hole, and someone had written in feces ‘God sucks’ on the wall. And I thought, ‘This is what my life has come to.’ I knew in my heart that I wasn’t a bad person, but something’s wrong here....So I remember saying, ‘God if you’re there, everything is going to be okay.

If you’re not, I’m screwed.’ That was it. That was my prayer. From that day forward, I took alcohol and drugs out of my life.”

At that moment, Trejo committed himself to being a mentor for seriously at-risk kids who desperately need to hear from someone who had entered the inferno of misery and walked out on the side.

The queen of Goth literature, Anne Rice was not serving time or strung out on drugs.

Nevertheless, the woman most closely identified

with vampire literature felt like there had to be a change in her life. In her interview on page 30, she talks about facing her crossroads: “I was sitting in church and mulling it all over. At the time I was still writing books that reflected the way I felt before I came back to church, and I couldn’t go on like that. And suddenly I knew I had to consecrate myself to Christ and he would help me....I walked out of the church a different person.”

Whether it’s in San Quentin or a stained-glass sanctuary, there seems to come a time when decisions must be made, courage must be summoned and change must occur. For some it is getting off dope, for others it is getting right with God, and still for others it is just choosing to be a decent human being.

Robert Johnson died at age 27 after three days of pain and agony. Apparently, he was given moonshine laced with strychnine by a jealous husband who believed that Johnson was messing with his wife. Even though there are three different graveyards that claim his bones, he most likely is buried in the Little Zion Missionary Baptist Church cemetery in Greenwood, Mississippi.

Etched in the granite tombstone are the words that Johnson supposedly scribbled on his death bed: “Jesus of Nazareth, King of Jerusalem, I know that my Redeemer liveth and that He will call me from the grave.”

The lines between fact, fiction and Robert Johnson are blurry at best. What we know for sure is that crossroads have always held out the offer of a shot at new hope, even as we approach the exit gate of life.

photo: Kenny Wilson

The crossroads

Steve Beard Editor in Chief

mar/apr:Letters To The Editor

I really enjoy the magazine, and think you guys do a great job of showing who these people are and what they believe. Not tearing them down or judging them for it.

— Matt B., Huntington Beach, CA

I was recently reading your Sept/Oct issue (Carlos Santana cover), when the names of Christian Hosoi and Jay Adams caught my eye. As I often do, when reading your magazine, scan anxiously for a celebrity’s response to a spiritual question. I found Jay Adams’s responses astounding and uplifting. I write to you as a show of thanks and appreciation for your ability to seek interviews with famous people and letting them explain who they truthfully are.

— Kyle C., Macomb, MI

It’s great that you feature surf and skateboard celebrities, but you should drop snow into the set-up.

— Rebecca T., Columbus, OH Great idea, Rebecca! We’ll do our best to get those interviews. Keep checkin’ out the magazine in the meantime.

Issue a magazine monthly instead of bi-monthly. I enjoy reading the magazine articles and viewing the artwork.

— Judy R., Providence, RI

I think the magazine is great. I’d especially like to see an art section devoted to original art, be it paintings, photography, digital art, or whatever.

— Cameron R., Boston, MA Hey, Cameron! Thanks for the kind words.

Check out our featured artists for this issue— Tim McCormick and Grant Brittain. And pick up our Jan/Feb issue, if you missed it, where 18 :RISEN MAGAZINE

we featured the art of Michael Cassidy and the amazing water photography of Aaron Chang.

I’d like to see you guys bring in more people to do the interviews. Don’t get me wrong, Chris Ahrens is a great writer. It’s just that it would be nice to hear other voices coming through the interviews.

her daughter and her husband. Not an easy subject to discuss, let alone bring up, we assure you. And check out our interview with Danny Trejo on page 42; talk about getting slapped in the face with a stack of lunchmeat!

Any magazine can ask about a celebrity’s current CD of choice or what they had for breakfast. But it takes a different magazine, one like RISEN, to ask the more meaningful questions.

— Samantha N., Seattle, WA

You’ll be glad to see we’ve added a few brilliant writers to this issue, Samantha. We hope you enjoy them as much as you do Chris Ahrens. Keep the feedback coming!

I’d really like to see you ask different interview questions. Nobody cares after the 10th time you’ve asked, “Where will you be in 10,000 years?” Your questions are thin and don’t “cut to the heart” at all. You gotta really talk to these people, ask them what is in their CD player; ask them about current news events; see what they ate for breakfast. You want to publish something that “serves our interest.” To hell with that!

Give us what we need, not want. Slap us in the face with a raw stack of lunchmeat.

Tear the crust from our eyes and let us know the only way we can stop licking butter bread is to pick up RISEN magazine and cram our nose in it. Best of luck.

I’ve been waiting for a magazine like this for a long time! Every issue seems to be getting better than the last.

— Malcolm W., Merced, CA

As we prepare each issue, it’s with the hope that readers like you will enjoy it as much as, if not more than, the previous issue. And to hear compliments like yours, Malcolm, means a great deal. Thank you.

— Frank B., Charlottesville, VA

First, thanks so much for your letter, Frank.

You seem like the kind of guy who never settles for less—don’t ever change that. As for your suggestions, we don’t think our questions are thin. If anything, they’re quite the opposite. In this issue, for instance, we asked Anne Rice about the tragic deaths of

Sound Off! Letters to the Editor RISEN Magazine 11772 Sorrento Valley Rd. Suite 257 San Diego, CA 92121 letters@risenmagazine.com

Writer: Chris Ahrens Photographer: Nabil Stylist: Lor-e Phillips

I haven’t behaved like a groupie in at least two decades, but realizing I may never get another chance; I broke professional ranks and asked the one and only will.i.am. of Black Eyed Peas fame to do my phone message. So now, when you call my number you hear, “Hey, what’s up? This is will.i.am chillin’ with Chris and Tracy; why don’t you leave a message?” Problem is everyone thinks it’s fake. Come on, will.i.am hangin’ with a dude like me? It’s so unexpected, but after this interview, which was my second sitting with him in two years, I have learned to expect the unexpected from him.

I detect few walls blocking will’s thinking. Maybe because he grew up in the Projects of East LA, escaped poverty and went on to become one of the most recognized pop stars in the world. Maybe because 2005 led him to six Grammy Award nominations, work with Stevie Wonder, Carlos Santana, Diddy, Justin Timberlake—with whom he formed the promising new production company, the Jawbreakers (Justin and Will). Maybe because he launched i.am clothing and produced Timeless, the decades overdue revival of Sergio Mendes on Concord Records/Starbucks Hear Music. Maybe it’s because will.i.am contemplates ideas that never cross lesser brains, like music someday being used to heal, yes, literally heal people from diseases like cancer.

Maybe it’s because there is nobody like him, never has been and never will be.

Of course he would humbly say the same about you, apparently never trippin’ for a moment that he might somehow be above anybody else. And that’s why that hour, 17 minutes and 26 seconds with him composed the most electrified moments of the launching of 2006.

This was better…well, maybe not better, but different as he is different, different than anyone I’ve ever met, yeah, like they broke the stupid box

cliché lovers insist they think outside of along with the proverbial mold, before they poured this one. will.i.am. looks kinda like a darkskinned cherub might look, something complemented by a honey-baked, soothing, nearly hypnotic speaking voice.

There is no trace of malice in him, nor is there anything resembling egomania, something that seems improbable, given his omnipresence in the world of pop. His words, while soft often to the point of a whisper, are, nonetheless, delivered with authoritative weight. His clothing is not like anyone else’s clothing and his thoughts are not like anyone else’s thoughts.

Interviewed exclusively for RISEN Magazine in Los Angeles.

RISEN Magazine: How did you escape poverty? will.i.am: I grew up surrounded by people that were poor. I wasn’t given a handbook on how to be successful.

RM: What did you think you would do when you were in eighth grade? will.i.am.: I wanted to do music.

RM: Why do you think people will spend $10,000 on a painting to hang on their wall and less than $100 for something to hang on their body? will.i.am: Fashion is art. I’d spend $2,000 on a jacket I liked.

The reason we spend more on pictures for our walls is that the wall won’t grow. [Laughter] RM: Were you the type of kid that would cut up and redesign his school clothes? will.i.am: Not my school clothes, my mom would kill me, but yeah, I did that. When she gave me the freedom to dress like I wanted, I ran with it. That MARCH /APRIL 2006 - Feature: 23

was ninth grade, when I had my freedom of expression.

RM: Where would you go if you could go anywhere you wanted for a day? will.i.am: I would fly to Geneva and take a tour of Cern Laboratories, where the top scientists in the world conduct their experiments.

RM: Are you interested in science? will.i.am: Physics, quantum physics, yeah. I went to a science magnet school, ever since I was little.

RM: If you could make one law, what would it be? will.i.am: A law? That’s a waste of power to make laws.

RM: What about "love thy neighbor as yourself"? will.i.am: If you find knowledge itself you won’t do wrong to others.

RM: Where do you see technology going? will.i.am: I think it will someday be applied to our bodies, where you get a chip planted in your ear.

RM: When did you come up with the name will.i.am? will.i.am: My mom named me William and I separated it. A Dutch friend of mine said that William in Dutch means one who is strong willed.

RM: Does that scare you at all? will.i.am: No, I think technology is a wheelchair for something we should be able to do on our own. If we knew how to use more of our minds, we would be able to do that without a chip.

RM: Are you strong willed? will.i.am: Yeah, but I try not to put my will on things that are a waste of will.

I apply it to my work ethic, but I’m very indecisive about things other than my goals. It’s hard for me even to decide what I want to eat. If someone comes into the room with a menu, I’ll probably put the menu down because there are so many things on it. But if you come into the room with some spaghetti, I’ll probably eat half of it, when I could have sat down and ordered spaghetti. [Laughs]

RM: What makes you think so? will.i.am: Okay, what do you think about this? You have a cell phone, right? That cell phone has a send number. I could dial you from the other side of the planet and that antenna would pick up that frequency. Here we are human beings, we have a send number, that’s our DNA code, and we have receptors. There are frequencies that pass before us that we’re not aware of. Certain frequencies hit us and make us feel a certain way that we can’t explain. That being said, we know more about gadgets and technology and neglect our own gadgets, our bodies. We don’t know our capabilities for picking up other frequencies.

RM: Have you ever communicated like that? will.i.am: With my mom when I was in her stomach.

RM: What? will.i.am: All I know is I ate when I was hungry. [Laughter] RM: Have you ever had out-of-body experiences? will.i.am: I’ve had those, yeah.

RM: Have you talked to anyone who’s communicated telepathically? will.i.am: Yeah, my grandma. I don’t know if she would define it that way.

She would define it as Jesus, that’s the way she describes it, but it’s beyond what we think of as spirituality.

RM: Did you grow up in the church? will.i.am: Yeah, that’s a scary conversation, talking about church.

RM: What do you mean?

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will.i.am: They tell you to praise someone else’s achievements, without giving you the tools other than praise. I like the idea of church uniting people and honoring other people’s achievements, but it says [in the Bible] that you will do greater things than these. I don’t know any church that teaches those teachings.

RM: You grew up as a battle rapper; when was the last time you did that? will.i.am: Two months ago. I didn’t battle a particular person. The whole time on stage was a battle. People look at the Black Eyed Peas, they look at us as ah, those n—s can’t rap. So, here we are back in the community where the Black Eyed Peas spawned from, which is underground LA MC’s like Freestyle Fellowship, Jurassic Five and all that LA cool—Supernatural, Evidence. I told somebody I wanted to do it and they said, “Nah, they’re just gonna hate.” A couple people are like, “Black Eyed Peas, what’s up?” Then you get the governors of the underground community. The guy from Freestyle Fellowship, Aceylone, said about that song, “My Humps”, “I gotta give you credit for that. It was like LA swap meet hip hop.” Right as they say that, they announce it’s open mic. I was like, Wow, I wanna go rap, but I thought, they’re just gonna hate. Something kept pulling me back to go on stage. If there’s anytime I should show, it’s right now, to show I still have those capabilities. Charlie Tuna don’t hate. I was battling the way people view where we’re at, cuz of how much play we get on the radio. I ripped that. They wrote it up in all the underground magazines and websites. That felt good, better than a Grammy performance. That night was dope.

RM: Do you think you get ideas for songs from within yourself or that ideas are floating through the universe and you catch them? will.i.am: I feel like a net. Look at it like this. All the molecules in your body and atoms moving so fast, but you can’t hear ’em. Your whole body is all harmonics and sounds that complement each other. Your body does music at a complex level every day. It’s no different than an orchestra and it has to

complement each other. If one thing is out of tune in a band, either that guy gets kicked out of the band or he ----- up the band. No different than an organ going out on your body. It either ----- up the body or you get it replaced, or you decease.

RM: What do you think you’re on earth to do? will.i.am: I don’t know.

RM: Do you ever see a time when you’re not producing music? will.i.am: Nah, but I’d like to learn to use music for healing purposes, literally healing. If cancer’s nothing but bad frequencies, I want to make a sound to cancel out that frequency. Not like, check it out, this Bob Marley song is very healing and soothing. Yeah, it is, but I’m talking about literally canceling out bad frequencies.

RM: Has music healed you? will.i.am: It’s opened my mind and taken me all over the world. It’s healed me.

RM: Have you gone beyond what you dreamed you would be as a kid from East LA? will.i.am: No, I don’t think I’m there yet.

RM: Where do you think you’ll arrive musically, spiritually, etcetera? will.i.am: There’s a deep way of answering that and that is I’m always growing. After the destination, there’s another one. That’s a deep answer to answer a deep question.

RM: Are you happy with who you are? will.i.am: Yeah, but I don’t think I’ve used my potential to its fullest.

RM: Were you good in school? will.i.am: I had ADD. They wanted to put me on Ritalin, but my mom didn’t have the money. She said, “I want you to learn how to make it work for you.”

We grew up in East LA; she didn’t have a car, so she bused us out to Pacific Palisades.

fear ourselves. If we fear ourselves, we’re gonna fear God. God fearing. Black is every frequency, every color put into one.

White is the absence of frequency. So, why is something so unifying, negative? Our understanding of the color black is the reason there’s no unity, cuz black is uniting every single frequency there is. When you look at red, you’re not seeing the color red, but the frequency it’s lacking. Start a farm with no dirt.

Dirt, black, very powerful words.

RM: Do you think people should embrace fear? will.i.am: No, people need to realize that fear is a distortion of the love frequency. Hate is distortion.

RM: Do you think we’ve outlived religion? will.i.am: Hell yeah. [Laughs] RM: It seems that knowledge of God should expand your life, but it so often makes it narrower. will.i.am: People should realize that every person is a God-being. Water is going back to the ocean, whether it’s in your body, or in a crack and it evaporates, turns into a cloud and rains back down and goes to the ocean. Water knows where it’s going, we’re human and we need the map back home.

RM: Where do you see yourself in 10,000 years? will.i.am: [Chuckles] 10,000 years from now, I’m still here, cuz what’s in me is beyond time. When you read a book, 100 pages from where you are is all there, you just haven’t read it yet. The story is there; it’s in me.

RM: Some people think ADD is just another way to think, not a wrong way to think. It seems though, that the public is about conformity, to me. will.i.am: It’s like consciousness. The church can be that way too, having fear of death, fear of God. That’s weird, God fearing. But that’s all based on the understanding of the word, black. It all boils down to your understanding of that word.

RM: What do you mean? will.i.am: This has nothing to do with race; it’s just frequency. You put a black car in the sun and a white car in the sun. The black car’s going to absorb light. Light’s gonna bounce right off the white car. That being said, if your understanding of the word black is negative, then the way you translate light is gonna be negative as well. Things like black cats and soil. How can something like soil be negative? Why is dark bad? Why is it that when a child learns the definition of words, it becomes afraid of the dark? Much of the time we’re alive, we’re in the dark. If we fear dark and black, we’re gonna

will.i.am continues to work with the Black Eyed Peas, as well as working solo and collaborating and producing other musicians.

He also designs clothing for his i.am fashion line.

MARCH /APRIL 2006 - Feature: 27

Anne Rice

The Dark Wing of Night Writer: Trish Teves Photographer: Aaron Chang

“The vampires are always there. They never leave me.”

People come and people go. Then there are individuals who affect us so deeply they burn a brand on our hearts forever.

Upon getting news of this interview with Anne Rice—author of the best-selling book Interview With The Vampire—I immediately felt dread. About what? I don’t know. Maybe it was the vampires.

Maybe it was the fact I actually had to meet the Queen of Goth. Or maybe it was simply that I am scared of anything that oozes blood. In my naiveté I believed Ms. Rice was part of a dark underworld. My conservative roots trained me to think that evil festered in the Goth culture Rice created, and that bias was too strong to shake upon studying for our interview.

Inching up the hill to her house, I was tingling with anxiety. What would she be like? Would her house be filled with coffins and fake teeth? Once I arrived, I half expected Rice to float down the staircase, black cape flowing behind her, an oversized crucifix around her neck.

After waiting for what seemed like a bite of eternity, Rice tiptoed up behind me almost unnoticed. Standing just under five feet tall, hair perfectly groomed in a modern bob, wearing black—and white—she was nothing like I had imagined her to be.

And that was the premise of our encounter. I walked in feeling nervous, but walked out feeling uplifted and, pardon my simplicity, changed.

My mind couldn’t grip the profundity of the person I had just met. How could I possibly describe this experience? The power of language eludes me as Rice so eloquently puts into words a message many have struggled for centuries to convey.

This was not just another interview. It was an encounter, specifically designed to peek at a life so affected by grief and despair, yet overflowing with the crystal waters of redemption.

A diva of duality, she spoke of the true message in her vampire books, of why she doesn’t speak about the erotica novels she wrote under a fictitious name, of her 40-year marriage that ended in tragedy, and her latest book, Christ the Lord, which she feels answers the question of redemption she once posed in The Vampire Chronicles.

But most of all we talked about her recent journey back to the faith of her childhood. A profession turned into a calling. Rice vows she will never write dark fiction again. So how will her fans react? By the looks of the latest best-seller charts, they have embraced her new subject. And if she pays her penance with Jesus books, herein lies a momentous question: Is it too late for salvation?

Interviewed exclusively for RISEN Magazine in La Jolla, California.

MARCH /APRIL 2006 - Feature: 31

lot of my writing is an attempt to tame Adown something and make it understandable.

RISEN Magazine: What were you like as a child?

Anne Rice: I was very talkative and extroverted. I was a very slow reader. I didn’t read for pleasure because it was so hard for me. I wasn’t a very good student and had poor concentration.

But I wrote very early. I wrote short stories for fun and passed them around class. My older sister Alice was a big fan of my writing and she always laughed at my jokes. She was one of the main reasons I continued to write.

RM: How does a young Catholic girl go from writing humorous short stories for friends to the dark world of vampires?

AR: I didn’t write Interview with the Vampire until I was 34. I was at Berkeley and by that time I had been married for a year, I had lost a daughter and was finishing my master’s degree.

Interview was similar to my early writing in that it was speculative. It was about imaginative characters that didn’t exist…vampires. It was a book in which people talked about their inner feelings. It was a book that reflected my inner feelings. It was just an accident that I hit on the vampires. It was a sheer accident that they worked in my stories.

RM: You say you lost a daughter?

AR: My daughter Michelle died when she was 6. She died after two years of having an adult form of leukemia.

RM: How did your writing process change after she died?

AR: I was busy writing,working on various things. I was working on a novel that was meant to be my master’s thesis in creative writing and English. But afterwards, Interview poured out and reflected the grief and the loss and despair. That’s what fueled my writing.

RM: Did that help you recover?

AR: Definitely. I didn’t have anything to do once she died. I had finished school and I didn’t have anything. Writing was the only hope of doing something meaningful with my life.

RM: Wasn’t Interview with the Vampire one of your first books?

AR: It was the first.

RM: And it became one of the best-selling books of all time. It’s almost like you were put on earth to write.

AR: I hope so…it’s the only thing I know how to do…(laughs) RM: You said the Vampire books were reflections of yourself and your search for God, but what about the erotica books? Where did those come from?

AR: Well, I don’t talk about those because I would never write them now and I don’t want to sell them. They are in my past. But they were an honest attempt to domesticate pornography and to make it safe for people to have fantasies. It was the idea that women in particular had a right to their fantasies. It was the idea 32 :RISEN MAGAZINE

that I could create a safe theme park of erotica.

A lot of my writing is an attempt to tame down something and make it understandable. I hope to move toward understanding and build bridges rather than write from anger and criticism. I mean, many good writers write from anger. They write critically, satirically or cynically. That’s where they see themselves.

But I am the opposite; I want to understand.

RM: You wrote the erotica books under a pseudonym, right?

AR: I did that because my father was alive and I didn’t want him to know.

RM: Do you have regrets about writing The Vampire Chronicles now?

AR: I don’t have regrets about those books. They reveal a journey to God. They reveal a spiritual search for meaning. They reflect great anxiety and great unhappiness and the dark night of being away from God. But they are about the struggle and the refusal of the characters to despair. They come near to despair but they never give up trying to save their souls, even though they are told they are cursed. And it reflects the way I felt when I lost my faith.

I thought I would never find faith again, and that there was no God. So I felt the way the characters in the book felt. I sought meaning in art, in the beauty of the natural world. Like the characters, the search [was] to try to make something meaningful in spite of the way they feel. They are very peculiar, very eccentric books. But they were never demonic. That was a misperception by the people that read them. They are really about God. RM: Are you optimistic about your fans picking up your new book?

AR: I want very much to get the book into their hands. And many of them are very receptive. But not all of them are. However, I would also like to get it to new readers.

RM: In the past, you had been quoted as saying “The vampires are always there, they never leave me.” Are they still there?

AR: No. They are gone.

RM: You’ve said your husband, Stan, was your inspiration for Lestat—the main character of your Vampire series. Tell us about that.

AR: Actually, I based Lestat physically on Stan. Long blond hair, six feet tall, with feline grace. All that was Stan, plus Lestat’s strength and his ability to take charge. I was Louis in the first book. I was the passive one. It was a mirror of our relationship.

RM: How did his death in 2002 affect your writing?

AR: I don’t think the process changed so much. I had committed to writing the book Christ the Lord prior to his illness and I think it carried me through Stan’s illness. It gave me strength to keep going. Everything you go through as a writer ultimately helps you as a writer.

T

he truth is crucial, and yet you have to negotiate it with other people because it’s the only way we can live together.

RM: Of the writers that most influenced you, do you feel they wrote out of grief or happiness?

AR: That’s an interesting question. I immediately think of Hemingway, Virginia Woolf, Shakespeare, and Dickens. I think they all experienced much of both. I sought writers who had a balance.

Take Virginia Woolf for instance. She suffered terrible grief and fear of madness. All of that is apparent in her work, and yet there’s this wonderful happiness and celebration of life that comes through.

RM: From vampires to Christ—that's quite a switch.

AR: There’s been a huge transformation in me. I simply don’t suffer from that fear and desperation that I felt for all those years.

It’s gone. I may suffer other things, like grief, sorrow and remorse, but not things from before. Not that terror.

However, I’ve had a taste of it, when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans and all those people were suffering and we needed to send help. I was frightened for them. I felt the dark wing of fear touch me, but I prayed. I said my rosary at night. I lay in bed saying it and I fell asleep.

RM: Did you have a fear of madness?

AR: Yes, I did. Many times I wondered if I wasn’t one drop of chemical away from being crazy. But, that has passed. I’ve lived through it.

RM: Readers will notice that blood seems to be a central theme in your past books and now in Christ the Lord. What is it about blood?

AR: The blood is the life. That’s why you can’t drink it. You have to dash it on the altar. It belongs to the Lord. It’s such a potent image. It runs all through life. It runs through our language and through our way of looking at the world. There is a central obsession with blood. It’s something to be profoundly respected.

RM: What did you love most about Stan?

AR: His combination of warmth and strength. The warmth and intimacy we shared throughout our love affair. He was such a strong person, such a truth-teller. We had a love affair that lasted for over 40 years. It was simple really.

RM: How did you make a marriage of 40 years work?

AR: Commitment. I watched a lot of my friends get married and divorced, have boyfriends, live-in lovers, different fathers for their children. I ended up a conservative after watching all of that.

RM: Do you think you’ll see Stan in heaven?

AR: Absolutely.

RM: Did he have a conversion experience as well?

AR: No, not that I know of. But he was so good, loving and compassionate. When he was a young boy he had been a Methodist and he did have an experience. He was baptized in the church. But when someone is that loving and that considerate of other people you know the Lord is working in that person and giving that person the opportunity. It was a lesson for me. We don’t realize the lengths the Lord will go to, to give people a change to know him and recognize him.

RM: Was your conversion a slow process or a “burning bush” experience?

AR: It was a slow process. My return to faith and the Catholic church was in 1998. But when I really committed myself to Christ in 2000 and got the vision for Christ the Lord, that was a burning bush experience.

I was sitting in church and mulling it all over. At the time I was still writing books that reflected the way I felt before I came back to the Church, and I couldn’t go on like that. And suddenly I knew I had to consecrate myself to Christ and he would help me. I needed to give him everything. I walked out of the church a different person.

34 :RISEN MAGAZINE

RM: But it seems blood is mostly associated with evil.

AR: Yes, the violence on television is incredible. The morbid fascination of torturing children in prime time is just sickening.

RM: What attracted you to Jesus Christ?

AR: How can I put it into words? He’s the savior of the world. He offers the message that can save the world. It’s to love and to serve. To love everybody with your whole heart.

RM: What mattered to you before that doesn’t matter now?

AR: The fact that the truth is not relative. The truth is crucial, and yet you have to negotiate it with other people because it’s the only way we can live together. If we don’t love other people we will destroy ourselves. I can see that now more vividly than before.

Faith is such a gift. I wish I could share that with everyone in the room. I wish I could get rid of people’s suspicion of religion and people’s fear of religion—that we, the religious people are bad. We’ve lost the credibility in America. We’re associated too much with intolerance and persecution. We have to get that credibility back.

RM: Do you feel the church has embraced you back or been more skeptical of your return?

AR: They have embraced me completely. It’s been absolutely wonderful. Beyond what I ever dreamed.

RM: What do you want people to remember about you?

AR: That I was a good writer.

Anne Rice’s new novel, Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt, is published

by Knopf.

he back porch truth of

Writer: Owen Leimbach Photographer: Bob Stevens

If you find it difficult to pry yourself away from VH1’s I Love The 80s reruns, as I do, you may be able to recall the bearded visage of The Call’s frontman Michael Been belting out ‘80s radio favorites like “Everywhere I Go” or “Let the Day Begin.” The only guy more put together back then was George Michael.

So imagine my surprise as I step into the Hotel Café in Los Angeles for my interview with Black Rebel Motorcycle Club to discover a post-svelte, fully gray and moderately disheveled Been hunkered over a soundboard at the back of the room working with BRMC multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Peter Hayes to get the amplification straight for the half dozen acoustic guitars littered about the stage.

Turns out Been is the band’s tour manager of sorts, and his son, Robert Levon Been, shares songwriting/vocal/guitar responsibilities with Hayes while Brit ex-pat Nick Jago rounds out the trio on drums and other percussive things.

And while past sound checks for BRMC probably haven’t been too difficult—plug it in, turn it up—this one is turning into a nightmare.

BRMC has ditched the rowdy Brit-pop of its earlier two albums for the band’s latest release, Howl, which sounds like it was born after two years in a muddy Memphis Americana boot camp where the band members put down their electric guitars and picked up south-of-the-Mason-Dixon staples: harmonicas, slide guitars and the autoharp. And currently, it’s figuring out how to mic all of these music makers that is giving Hayes and Been Sr. all sorts of fits.

Forty-five minutes into the affair, Robert Been joins Hayes on the 10foot-square stage and they pick through a few of their tunes. Been Sr. is happy enough with the sound, and I finally get to that interview.

Interviewed exclusively for RISEN Magazine in Los Angeles.

MARCH /APRIL 2006 - Feature: 37

BRMC from left to right: Nick Jago, Robert Levon Been and Peter Hayes

This generation hasn’t found its own voice yet. I think we’re just cycling off the old and for some reason people just seem content.

38 :RISEN MAGAZINE

RISEN Magazine: You grew up with a dad who was a famous rock musician. Did you get mixed up in that stuff early? Did you go on the road with him?

Robert Levon Been: Yeah. As a kid, I wasn’t too much into sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll. Not the sex and drugs when I was 7, anyway. I got to go kick around the hotels and [being] backstage at clubs is really cool when you’re a kid. You have an all-access pass and you feel like you’re 10 feet tall. When you’re a kid you can never go anywhere where adults can’t go, and [when you get to go backstage] it was reversed and you’re feeling like the top man.

That was fun; I liked that.

RM: When Noel Gallagher called you guys one of his favorite new bands, did you get that same sort of feeling?

RLB: No, that was just kind of waiting for the other shoe to drop.

I think I was smart enough by that point to know that the British audience and the British media steamroll through things. It’s all about the new, and it doesn’t really matter if it’s that good or not.

If it’s new, it’s cool.

RM: Isn’t it the same in America?

RLB: No, not really. New and old stuff [here] is pretty terrible.

[Laughs] That’s America for you. But, no. There was a massive sort of spawning of energy [in Britain around the first two records] and it’s still there, but it sorta felt like the first time you fall in love.

Everyone keeps falling in love for the first time and becomes caught up in [the emotion of it] and then it just becomes something else. But that’s Britain.

RM: Sounds like a pretty hard relationship.

RLB: Turns out to be typical. [Laughs] RM: But the new record is a lot different from those first two records. Is it a change of direction or is it the next step? Is it stuff you’ve had around forever or is it new things you’re feeling and want to try?

RLB: It’s all of those things. We had an idea of what we wanted to do; we had some old songs that me and Peter had been writing since high school. We got really into the idea of doing a record like this and when we got into the studio, new songs started coming in that same vein. We started picking up different instruments and started writing songs on piano and really simple slide-bluesy songs.

It was all kind of in that spirit—kind of a rootsy-er, back porch sound. We really love that kind of music: early Dylan, Johnny Cash, gospel records, soul records, Staple Singers. It’s something our hearts are in and it was fun to make a record like that. I don’t know if we’re going to do that again or every time. I like not knowing.

RM: Do you want the lyrics of this record to be heard more than those of your previous records? Do they mean more to this kind of music?

RLB: I want them heard on every record, but there’s just a way of

speaking to someone [in different situations] and that’s what it gets down to, I think. These songs aren’t meant to be shouted in your ear, but that doesn’t mean they’re not as angry; it only means that the truth can be in a whisper as much as anything else. So maybe we’re trying to get through the door first, before it’s slammed in our face. The best way to do that is just to talk to someone, just like anyone else.

RM: The record is named after the Allen Ginsberg poem “Howl,” which is a pretty intense account of the ’60s counterculture. Do you relate to some of those things? Is this a protest record?

RLB: I wish I didn’t identify with that poem, but I guess the more things change, the more they stay the same. That poem came from a time when I think people were trying to find their own words for a new generation and they didn’t want to use words from the past and they wanted something to call their own. I think it came out of a lot of frustration in trying to define yourself—not wanting to be your parents or who came before you, or the writers that came before you or the ideas.

The only thing is, I don’t think we’ve gotten there yet. This generation hasn’t found its own voice yet. I think we’re just cycling off the old and for some reason people just seem content. I don’t know why. But it’s unfortunate because there’s a lot to be pissed off about—a lot to talk about that people aren’t talking about.

RM: What do you wish people were talking about?

RLB: I don’t ever remember it being taboo to just talk about religion or governments and sex and war and censorship on TV and film.

And all of a sudden just talking or singing about it seems to be something that people get really uncomfortable with. People are starting to divide and show themselves for what they really feel.

And that might be a good thing actually, if you think that’s the way people really feel inside and they’re just afraid to show it because of what society might think of them. Then maybe it’s best that it gets out and people pick sides rather than this nebulous middle ground where no one actually feels anything.

RM: What is counterculture these days?

RLB: We find ourselves trying to figure out where there is a counterculture at all. I don’t really see one. Maybe it’s scattered ideas and scattered people that haven’t at all come together yet.

When you travel to Europe [there is a misconception] that there is [only] one idea going on [in America] which is that America is just consumed with this fanatical evangelical Christian Right that’s controlling government and the majority of people, and I don’t MARCH /APRIL 2006 - Feature: 39

think that’s true. I think that most people here in America think there are definitely two sides to the discussion. But when you go outside of that, people seem to think that the majority numbers say something different.

I just don’t think people talk that much on the other end of it.

The Right is far more expressive and the Left seems to be pretty castrated with their ideas and their voice.

RM: And perhaps most people are somewhere in the middle—an ugly mix of the two?

RLB: Yeah; we’ll see.

RM: Do you think that musicians or politicians have more to do with shaping a culture—the way people view us abroad, or how we view ourselves?

RLB: It depends what kind of a musician and what kind of a politician. I think politicians are very aware of how powerful music is and they do a very good job of trying to make people think it’s not powerful. Maybe it’s not just politicians, maybe it’s the way our country and our society has let commercialism take over its art: money becoming the definition of success and what’s good. Once you do that, once you lose what separates truth—bad art and good art—and what you’d like to think are the right voices coming through, then they’ve won already.

RM: Is there anything out there that makes you want to pump your first and say “Right on! That’s righteous!”?

RLB: [long pause] RM: Been a while?

RLB: Yeah. Yeah it has. I guess it’s all going on up in here [points to head]. You know what I’ve found that’s really cool? I spent some time with my grandfather for the first time since I was really young.

He’s quite old these days and he was the most youthful person in the room. Whether with 40-year-olds, 30-year-olds, 50-year-olds, he was on his game more than anybody. It’s like age is an agile mind. I was trying to figure out what was going on and I realized he’s into so many things. He’s into reading and learning and does all these odd jobs, and he does taxes for other people in his community. He’s working his mind all the time, he’s painting and going out and traveling. I guess that’s the way you stay young. It’s like I figured out the secret of youth. The secret of eternal youth.

RM: Do you have to watch what you put into your mind? Because a lot of people learn a lot or watch the news a lot and they end up more depressed.

RLB: Watching CNN for more than 20 minutes at a time is just suicidal. That’s not information; it’s just drama and stories repeating over and over endlessly. It’s sick.

I think politicians are very aware of how powerful music is and they do a very good job of trying to make people think it’s not powerful.

It’s kind of a drag when Bob Dylan—who people would think has self-respect with art or hold it in a higher place—and those people you look to are doing a Victoria’s Secret commercial or something like that. All of a sudden you’re stripped of what you think is right and respectable, and it just becomes jingles and selling another product, and nobody really has much to hold onto and times aren’t that great.

RM: If you were homeless would you rather be in a big city or a small town?

RLB: That’s a good question. Being homeless in the city is just like being a drug addict; that’s just what you get. You get the filth and the seediness and drugs around every corner. It’d be tough to keep your head above water at all.

If you go out of the city, you’d like to think that you could survive on nuts and berries and at least be sort of in touch with nature if that’s the only thing you’ve got to keep your feet on the ground. I’d like to do that now, I think; that doesn’t seem too bad.

40 :RISEN MAGAZINE

RM: I think it was G.K. Chesterton who said a sane person is someone who can keep reality in his head and levity in his heart.

RLB: CNN isn’t reality, though; that’s the problem. Too much information; not enough reality.

RM: If you could eradicate one social ill, what would it be? Could you pick one that you think would make a difference?

RLB: Not one thing, no. I think the revolution has to come and just burn it all down. That’ll be my one thing. Then it’ll start over again. I don’t think one thing is going to matter much, not now. Far, far past that.

RM: What’s the last thing that kept you awake at night?

RLB: Construction in the apartment next door. It’s been going on for two months. Hammering, hammering in my head. Maybe it’s not really there; maybe it’s just in my head.

Black Rebel Motorcycle Club’s newest CD, Howl, is currently available online and in record stores. Visit www.blackrebelmotorcycleclub.com for tour schedule and more information.

Danny Trejo Writer: Owen Leimbach Photographer: Estevan Oriol

You know this face, but for the record, the name is Danny Trejo.

You’ve probably seen him as the bad guy (or apparent bad guy) in one of the more than 100 films he’s been in over the last three decades. And while you might think that he really is a badass, well, you’re right. Sort of.

While Hollywood’s other tough guys were honing their menacing lip curl in the mirror, Danny Trejo was in and out of the California prison system (where he was a boxing champ in San Quentin) for the better part of a decade. Those wrinkles on his face are the real deal—cut so deep and in such troubling contours that you know you probably don’t want to know where they really came from. Suffice to say, he’s been places you ain’t never been.

But that face and hard-knock life have turned out to be an asset for the full-time crook who made parole, turned it around and became a drug counselor to troubled teens. It was while aiding a counselee that he happened onto a movie set and became one of the most recognizable faces of “bad” in Hollywood.

Interviewed exclusively for RISEN Magazine in Northridge, California.

RISEN Magazine: RISEN Magazine: What was the biggest thing you dreamed of when you were a kid?

Danny Trejo: Having my own apartment. [Laughs] I never thought I’d be sitting here with you. I wasn’t really supposed to make it alive out of the '60s, so I’m pretty grateful every day.

RM: When most people talk about making it out of the '60s, they talk about surviving the hallucinogenic drugs or not drowning in the mud a Woodstock. What was going on with you during that time?

DT: I was doing armed robberies. And when you’re doing that, you don’t have a long life span one way or the other. You’re either gonna spend the rest of your life in prison or end up dead.

RM: Are any of your friends from back then still around?

DT: Yeah, there’s Charlie who I met when I was 8 years old. He was my uncle’s best friend. My uncle was my mentor. I have another friend named Charlie that we knew when we were like 13. Then there is Joey, who I knew when I was like 13 or 14 years old. Joey got married and found the Lord. Both Charlies have done a lot of time. Those are the two reasons that anybody [from back then] is still alive.

Makeup: Mona Van Cleve for Stila Hair: Clark Vincent Stylist: Yasmeen

RM: Did your uncle take you under his wing when you were a kid?

DT: Yeah, that was my uncle Gilbert. My dad was hard-working and he was a lot older. My uncle was only about six years older than me; he was my dad’s youngest brother. So instead of being my uncle, he became like my older brother. He turned me on to grass when I was about 8, gave me a fix of heroin when I was about 12 and took me on a robbery when I was about 14. He did what he knew. That’s what I did too.

RM: Do you think that kids always end up doing what they see around them, or are there other factors at play besides environment?

DT: A lot of it has to do with choices. I had another uncle named Rudy who was a college student, went into the Navy and did real well. I just chose the easy way. Doing wrong is the easy way and doing right is the hard way. The real hard stuff is going to work for eight hours and getting a paycheck and having the government take half of your money. But I figured with the robbery thing that the government wasn’t going to get anything.

That’s why kids are looking to be look-outs when they are 13.

It’s just money and we are such a money-based society. If you have money, you have stuff, and the more stuff you have, the more supposedly successful you are.

I went to prison for selling four ounces to a federal agent. And I think I had about fifteen thousand dollars stashed when I got out of prison. I’ve gotta say that one of the reasons I am here today is because I had that little nest egg and I didn’t immediately have to make some money when I got out. When you get out of doing 5 years, you have nothing. My mom didn’t even want to let me in her house. [Laughs] I think the main thing for kids is education. But we have made our education system so vast. You go to high school and you get lost. There’s no individuality in high school, junior high and elementary school. One of the best things we’ve got going is preschool because you might only have 20 kids in one class. But then you go from that to a mass school of elimination. Every kid that’s a little problem, we put them in a category. These kids here, we can’t work with them. These kids, well they’re okay so we can work with them. These kids are excellent, so we can definitely work with them.

Our prison guards earn more than our teachers. To me that sounds backwards. Our teachers should be the highest paid people

MARCH /APRIL 2006 - Feature: 43

we have because they are the ones taking care of our kids.

RM: How did you learn to do the right thing?

DT: [It] was May 5, 1968. There was a softball game going on (where one of the teams was from the outside) one day when I was in prison and a fight broke out. It was alleged that [a few other guys and I] attacked a free person, hit Lieutenant Gibbons in the head with a rock and [busted up the coach of the outside team]. Those were all three gas chamber offenses for drawing blood.

So we went to the hole. I was in the hole, and someone had written in feces “God sucks” on the wall. And I thought, “This is what

respected on a criminal level saying, “Hey wait a minute, that’s not the way to go, I’ve been there,” then those kids want to listen.

RM: So you think the institutions—like churches and schools—who try to tell kids not to be criminal have little credibility with the kids who lean that way in the first place?

DT: Absolutely. Just look at DARE. Now, that’s a wonderful program for kids that aren’t going to get into trouble anyway. Kids involved in sports, church or DARE aren’t going to get into trouble anyway. The kids that are [going to get in trouble] are the kids who aren’t involved in those things.

The biggest problem with the role models is that a lot of them are ex-convicts and citizens don’t really want to work with them. my life has come to.” I knew in my heart that I wasn’t a bad person, but something’s wrong here. I mean, “God sucks!” So I remember saying, “God if you’re there, everything is going to be okay. If you’re not, I’m screwed.” That was it. That was my prayer.

From that day forward, I took alcohol and drugs out of my life.

I think that is one of the biggest things for our youth. It’s hard to do right when you are drinking and using. If you get up in the morning and you’re planning on going over to a friend’s house and drinking, you’re already wrong. Alcohol and drugs are the biggest deterrent from doing right.

There are very few just “bad” kids. If you look at gang activity, if you look at burglary, if you look at most juvenile offenses, they are alcohol or drug related. And yet, if you look at most of our commercials for alcohol, they’re related straight to fun; straight to being cool. Straight to everything that a young person wants, even though [the alcohol companies] can say they’re not [targeting kids] because they’re using adults [in the commercials]. But what kid wouldn’t want to be on a jet ski in the Bahamas?

Hollywood glamorizes it too. Hollywood is really kind of a Babylon. We don’t really give anything back; and I don’t mean writing checks, I mean giving time. Me and my friends, we still go to juvenile halls, high schools and churches. We go anywhere where there are kids and tell them to take alcohol and drugs out of their lives or [bad things] will happen.

RM: Are there good role models out on the streets and in the neighborhoods?

DT: Yeah. The biggest problem with the role models is that a lot of them are ex-convicts and citizens don’t really want to work with them. It’s like this: if I’m a therapist and I’ve been through 15 years of college and all of a sudden some guy shows up with tattoos and the kids are like “Wait, that’s the guy I want to listen to,” well, there’s a resentment going on there. There is resentment from the professional community to the people that can work with these kids.

Now, I’m not talking about the kids that are going to be okay anyway. I mean the kids where the only thing that is going to beat them to the penitentiary are the headlights from the bus.

But if you get somebody in that neighborhood that’s well44 :RISEN MAGAZINE

RM: So Nancy Reagan wasn’t doing it for those kids?

DT: [Laughs] “Just say no” was one of the silliest things we ever heard. How are you going to just say no to a kid who is 13 and wants to be a lookout? Man are you kidding? I could make bank, I could make money.

RM: Have you started to think differently about what movie roles you take based on your work in schools or being around kids?

DT: No. Somebody once asked me how I could talk about nonviolence and anti-drug use [and play gangsters in the movies]. I told them, “Well, the bad guy always dies.” Every movie I’ve ever been in, the bad guy has always died.

If they let me deal drugs and kill people and get away with it, I wouldn’t want to do it. It’s not even real. I just finished a movie called Jack’s Law in which I’m the vigilante. I get to kill bad guys and I kinda like that role.

RM: What story would you tell if you could get any script made into a movie?

DT: I’ve actually got a story called “My Father’s Flags,” about a Vietnam vet. But it’s about a Latino family and you see it through the eyes of his boys. He has two boys, 6 and 8. They watch their dad go to war and he’s this hero bigger than life. Four years later he comes back and they’re wondering what happened because he comes back with post-traumatic stress syndrome and has to take medication and the kids in the neighborhood make fun of him. They call him “Incoming” because the kids would get behind him and yell “incoming!” and would jump and hit the dirt. The twist is that in the movie, when his platoon got slaughtered, they had said that the only way their dead could stay in heaven was if whoever lived raised a flag every morning. So every morning the kids make fun of him as he dresses in his uniform and raises the flag. And so the two boys don’t realize what it meant until they’re in Kuwait somewhere fighting and all of the sudden they realize, “Wow, we were ashamed of him and he should have been ashamed of us.” Story in a nutshell.

RM: Do you think that story is similar to that of an ex-con who comes back to his neighborhood and people have a hard time knowing how to deal with them?

DT: I went back to San Quentin to do a movie called Blood In, Blood Out,” and it was amazing. I had post-traumatic stress syndrome.

Then I went back for a documentary on my life called Champions, and when I went back into my cell in San Quentin it freaked me out.

MARCH /APRIL 2006 - Feature: 45

It was heavy. I didn’t think I was going to act like that. Usually in front of a camera I can [keep it together], but I just lost it.

RM: What was it that got you through the days before you knew you were going to get released?

DT: Prison is the only place in the world where you’re either going to be predator or prey. It’s that simple. You decide what you’re going to do. I decided I was going to be a predator and I worked really hard at it.

RM: Do you ever set goals for yourself?

DT: I think that every goal I’ve had in life has been reached other than being just a good father, because that’s an everyday job, and being a good husband and a better friend. But I mean, come on, I’m an actor, I go all over the world. If I get ungrateful, then something’s wrong.

RM: Do you think schools and churches are useful at all for the younger generation at this point?

DT: I don’t think they’re useless. I think there are a lot of kids that need the church, but I honestly believe that there are a lot of kids that the churches and the schools are missing. We’ve moved into a generation where you can get information like that [Snaps fingers].

It’s not like when I went to school, you would go to the library and look at the card file, get the card out, go to the author’s name. It’s not like that now; it’s at the touch of a button.

Yet our school systems and our churches, as far as dealing with those other types of kids, are still plodding alaong like a Clydesdale horse and the kids are running like thoroughbreds. The churches that are having really good success are the born-again Christian churches. Why? Because they have ex-convicts, they have guys that have been in trouble that find Jesus and then all of these kids who looked up to these guys anyway are all coming into these churches.

Prison is the only place in the world where you’re either going to be predator or prey It’s that simple..

RM: Is there anything that keeps you up at night?

DT: John Wayne movies—I love ’em. [Laughs] And maybe worrying about my kids and how they’re doing. I’m pretty blessed though.

My son started a band called the Dead Reagan Tour. I love it, I love that name. I said, “Where’d you get that name man?” He said, “Could you imagine being the band that toured with Reagan’s body?” [Laughs] So he started this band with his three friends and it just so happens that I did a movie with Tom Sizemore called Toxic and in it, Tom Sizemore’s daughter escapes from this mental institution and is trying to kill him. So my son wrote this song called “No More Meds” and I had the director listen to it and he said, “Perfect! We can use this when she escapes from the mental institution.” So, the Dead Reagan Tour is gonna be in a movie called Toxic and that’s pretty cool.

RM: When you got the chance to do it, how did you see to educating your kids? Did you send them back to the schools that you went to?

DT: Well, I had to pull my son out and send him to a private school in Provo Canyon, Utah. It was kind of a boarding school. He made up all the tenth grade and turned his life around. Right now he’s carrying a 4.0. It was funny because when he told me that, I didn’t know what a 4.0 was. I said, “Awe man, you should at least get a 5.0 so you can get a C.” I though the scale went to 10 you know.

He said, “Dad, that’s as high as it goes.” I told him I knew that.

And my daughter, she’s doing the best she can right now. I thought she was doing badly, but she’s got B’s and C’s. And I’m the guy who was hoping for a D. So she’s doing pretty good right now.

My whole thing is just not using drugs and don’t drink. I honestly believe that in school you’ve already learned everything by the time you get to high school. High school is just there to babysit you between the ages of 14 and 18. They took all the job training out of high school, they’ve taken all the prayer out of high school, so it’s kind of just make it if you can.

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RM: So the born-agains are the first group to sort of reconcile with people who they don’t like the looks of?

DT: Exactly. Today you can go to church in anything. I remember when a girl couldn’t wear pants in a church. In fact, four of my cousins got thrown out of church for wearing pants. They had pedal pushers and the priest wouldn’t let them go to Mass.

RM: Is it hard to be a dad?

DT: Anybody can be a father, but it’s tough to be a dad. It’s tough to be able to have your kids come to you for anything. I think you always have to be a parent, but there’s a thin line between a parent and being best pals. To my kids, I think I’m their best friend. My daughter can come to me and she has. My son has come to me when he had a drug problem and said, “Hey, what can we do?”

People are so worried about being politically correct and it’s like wait a minute, man, I’m trying to save a kid’s life. What do I care about being politically correct?

My son was smoking when he was 16. And somebody said, “You let him smoke?” And I said, “It’s not crack.” That’s just the way I felt. We’ll deal with that later. You gotta pick your battles. It’s like I said, all our commercials target our kids. Everything that we’re fighting for as parents, the tobacco and the alcohol companies are fighting against.

RM: Maybe you should get into producing commercials.

DT: [Laughs] That might be good.

Danny Trejo's autobiographical documentary, Champion, is available on DVD now.

Visit the film's website at www.championmovie.com for more information and to purchase a copy. Look for Danny to star in Frank Miller's forthcoming sequel, Sin City 2.

indness is the most beautiful thing in the world to me. And it’s exactly what should happen—it shouldn’t be an exception. It shouldn’t be anything. It should just be.

K

The

Pauley Theory The first time that Pauley Perrette excused herself from the room during our interview, she said, “The best thing to do is sit her on my chair. As long as you don’t stand up while I am gone, you’ll be fine.”

She was talking about her Chihuahua, Cece. I had been warned. When we were arranging a time and place to talk, she told me that she would be bringing her two dogs along. “One of them bites,” she said. “I just wanted to let you know.”

Thankfully, Pauley is passionate about rescuing Chihuahuas, not Rottweilers. When she excused herself from the room, she looked in my direction and gently whispered in Cece’s ear, “Friend, friend.” While she was gone from the room, I even found myself sheepishly repeating the refrain.

I survived. At one point later on, Cece even sat next to me on the couch. After three and a half hours, I was on Cece’s VIP list. Well, that may be a stretch, but at least there were no flesh wounds.

Pauley goes everywhere with her dogs. Our time together was spent in a bungalow at the Chateau Marmont, the Sunset Strip hideaway in Hollywood where Jim Morrison lived temporarily and John Belushi died tragically.

Despite her Goth-babe character on the mega-hit NCIS, Pauley is not attracted to a place like this because of morbid Hollywood lore. No, she digs it because the bungalows are dog-friendly— complete with little doggie snack bags for the canine visitors.

She’s red-hot passionate about animal rescue.

Several years ago, she read a story about a puppybreeding ranch that was abusing dogs. When the authorities moved in, it was suggested that the dogs be euthanized. Animal rescuers tried to find good homes for the abused pups. Pauley got on the organization’s website and read about their efforts, and ended up having a dream about a white-faced dog named Joker. That next weekend, she was volunteering for the cause.

Writer: Steve Beard Photographer: Bob Stevens Hair/Makeup: Tony Cupstid Stylist: April Steiner

The aforementioned Cece is a rescued dog. It explains her skittishness around strangers, and it goes a long way in explaining the compassion of Pauley Perrette.

In real life, Pauley is every bit as engaging, inquisitive, and tattoo-and-mascara attractive as her character Abby Sciuto on NCIS. I never told her this, but I watch the show just to see her banter with Mark Harmon, work her techno crime-solving mojo, and pace around with her lab coat and school girl miniskirt. I am probably not the only one.

CBS bags more than 17 million viewers every Tuesday with NCIS—a certifiable top-l0 show.

She didn’t start off in show business. Her journey in front of the camera began when she dropped out of grad school while pursuing a degree in criminology. She fled to New York city and found herself wearing a sandwich board on roller skates in the Diamond District of Manhattan passing out fliers and bartending at night. When she heard she could make good money making commercials, she went for it to pay the rent. Since that time, she has appeared on Frasier, The Drew Carey Show and CSI: before finding a niche at NCIS. When she is not filming for TV, she works on independent film projects.

Goth purists may be disappointed that she was not bedecked with fetish boots, black lipstick or skulls and crossbones. Instead, she was kicking back in old jeans, a white tank and tennis shoes.

She is far more a very cool grad student than my generation’s Elvira. Truth be told, she’s a party girl with a brain. Her mind grapples with the big questions of life at a frenetic pace, producing both theories and uncertainties about life. In the midst of the swirling notions, she still has faith that one day she will understand the pain and joy of humanity’s existence.

Interviewed exclusively for RISEN Magazine in Hollywood, California.

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RISEN Magazine: Do you ever feel like you are the pinup girl for science nerds?

Pauley Perrette: Abby is.

RM: Yes, Abby is. Are crime-fighting techies—the forensic experts—the new superheroes?

PP: Maybe in real life. No actor should be considered a superhero.

But the people that we portray—I could tell you about a real person who trained me—those people really are making a difference by solving crimes. When I was taking forensics in school, no one even knew what that word meant.

RM: You went to grad school for criminology. What was the attraction?

S

“

example, what the hell are we doing here?—you can go through it a million nights and some nights you come up with the same answer. You go, “You know what, I don’t know, so we might as well entertain ourselves.” I think that the crime thing has more to do with mystery solving.

I love John Walsh. That is someone who is actually trying to solve crimes. That show started for a reason. People’s fascination with it may be that they are really fascinated by crime. Could be. But I think that most people find mysteries interesting.

RM: You internalize your character to a certain degree. What factors of your own personality do you bring to that role?

PP: I can’t lie. I don’t know. I didn’t go to acting school. At the end of the day, I still think that the greatest thing you can learn is empathy, which you learn by talking to people. Leave your acting class, walk up the street, and go sit at a bar. Care about people’s days. Care about what they feel. I love people.

Right now my character’s name is Abby. And when I have had a crappy day, Abby didn’t. None of that crap happened to her that day. She’s absolutely fine. She’s got her own problems, but I don’t have to figure them out because our writers do that.

ome of the nicest people I have ever met were in bars and absolutely some of the meanest people I have ever met were in church. That’s sad. But then again, I don’t understand church. I’m into God.” PP: I always say, “I have a theory on that.” I have a theory on crime and it goes a little something like this. I don’t know what we are doing here. It’s a weird planet. It’s all f—ked up. But things happen to all of us that suck—like cancer and AIDS and awful things and car accidents and all this crap that no one planned for and nobody wants. And no one is immune from it. I cannot understand why someone, on purpose, would rob your house and steal your stuff or rape your daughter. We are all just trying to survive on planet earth. I don’t understand it. Maybe there is a humanity thing there that is a missing link. Don’t you understand about how tough this life is already? It is hard.

There are fleeting moments of joy and happiness and fun. They are hard to come by, and they are so awesome. A lot of the rest of the stuff that we have to go through sucks. So someone makes a decision—on purpose—to steal somebody’s wallet. Why would you f—k it up even more? It is hard enough. That’s kind of what it was about. It’s not crime, it’s just people being awful to each other.

RM: Are crime-solving television shows a reflection of an innate sense of justice that we want to see things corrected, or is that something that is tutored in us?

PP: I don’t know. I think it is completely different. I have a theory on this. I think that it is just the mystery. Because there are not a lot of mysteries for us to figure out. People don’t usually sit around and try to figure out mysteries. Sure, some try to figure out how they build those little ships in the glass bottles, but that lasts for only a few moments. If you are going to solve a mystery, you only have so many options through stories to do that. You have ghosts, or aliens, or coincidences, and then you have crime—which is a big one.

I remember reading a book when I was younger about entertaining ourselves to death. Sometimes I think that being able to entertain ourselves is the kindest thing that God has ever given us the ability to do. If you look at the big questions, at the big mysteries—For

50 :RISEN MAGAZINE

RM: What kind of mail do you receive because of your character?

PP: I get letters every single day. Every kid in the world wants to be a forensic scientist. Girls getting into science is great. I am incredibly proud of being an independent female. I like to be proud of what I can do. I am so glad that the letters that I get from young girls don't ask “How do I meet a rich guy?”

RM: Those kinds of letters are going to a different show, like Desperate Housewives.

PP: Those kinds of letters are for a different time—like the 1800s?

C’mon. The deal with this weird business is that there are not very many Abbys. I think Abby is an incredible role model. Me? Not so much. Everybody has great days but others totally suck. I’m alright, but Abby is great. She is a superhero. I portray a scientific superhero. I am just a real weirdo who has a great job. A lot of people get confused. It’s hard for some to separate me from my character.

RM: Is that the number one drawback from being in the public’s spotlight?

PP: I can’t figure out why anyone would want to be famous. There is not one positive aspect to it, whatsoever. None. It is terrifying. It is something that I don’t understand. I think the biggest drawback— the awful, awful thing—is that your life becomes far too important to people for all the wrong reasons. If I accidentally bump into somebody with my cart at the supermarket, when I was 15 it would be like, “Whatever.” But now, it’s like, “That girl from that show bumped into me with her cart.” It becomes way too important.

ho on earth has ever called somebody else ugly? I think about W that four-letter word all the time.

Who would say that to somebody else?

It’s not true. Nobody’s ugly. When you find out about somebody’s soul, or soullessness, they can become ugly immediately, but no one is physically ugly. Not one person.

a great job that I love, but you know what? It is no more interesting than Ihavehave anyone else’s job or their life. I have had a pretty interesting life because I gone everywhere and done everything and I have never stopped. I can’t stop.

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RM: As your career moved into television, did you ever worry that you might be changing because of fame?

PP: I talk about my job just like when I used to work on a car lot. Or when I worked as a hostess at some chain restaurant. I still don’t consider myself part of the Hollywood community.

RM: Do you find being in acting and entertainment a form of escapism?

PP: It is. It is exactly why I do what I do. There is no drug anywhere that can solve what ails you like spending a majority of your life being someone else. I don’t have to think, I don’t have to decide what to say— somebody wrote it. I don’t have to do anything. I don’t have to figure out what I am going to wear.

God? What? I don’t understand that. The most mind-blowing thing about God is science. Wow! No human being can create a body.

You can take everything apart and put it back together, but you can’t give it life. Because that’s not us—that’s God. Science is one of the most “stand up and applaud” things about God. People put those things up against each other? Are you kidding me?

RM: Did you grow up in church?

PP: I grew up in the church and what it made me do was fanatically examine and think about all faiths. God, religion and faith—which

I

“ t took me a long time to figure out — and I did figure it out — that it certainly is easier to be a more effective human being if you are not doing drugs. That was great reality.”

RM: What do you do to relax?

PP: I write and I read, read, read, read. I read the news every morning and every night. I read books. I read everything. I am a news junkie.

RM: Do you process through your writing?

PP: Yes. Sometimes you have to get on the other side of something to write about it. I think that we are vessels for art in every form. I don’t think that we come up with anything that spectacular. We are just people who are vessels for our work. I think art is connected to God and all that is good.

RM: Jack White said that once he realized he could not create like God, it was both humbling and freeing to pursue his work with the White Stripes.

PP: Exactly. That is exactly it. It’s an astounding thing to really understand, and realize, and appreciate, and be so grateful and happy about the fact that there really is nothing that spectacular about any of us. I think that we should be very aware of what our contribution is. I don’t know anyone who just sits down and says, “I am going to write this incredible piece of poetry.” That’s not how it works. You are cooking brisket and all of a sudden you say, whoa!

And you write stuff on napkins and paper towels and the countertop and the walls until you can transcribe it somewhere else.

are completely different. Faith is what people are talking about when they use the word religion. Religion is horizontal and faith is vertical.

I have this theory on horizontal life and vertical life. I read a book about it one time. It is long and hard to explain, but fascinating. It deals with the church. The problem with the church is that it tries to take your vertical life and turn it into your horizontal life. And that is how people get confused. I think that we are all going on a journey and no one can explain it to you. If they tell you they can, they’re lying.

Right now it is a weird time, although I am sure that everyone thought that their time was weird. But I think this time is really weird.

People say, “Jesus says...” “God says…” They have turned God into this creepy, awful, mean, terrible thing. Can you tell that I have thought about it way too much? I talk too much about all that. That’s all I do. I sit around and talk about it. Think about it.

RM: What percentage of your heart and soul is poetic and what percent is scientific?

PP: It’s the same thing. One hundred percent. Both.

RM: Do you ever look up and ask, “Why?” PP: For the first time in my life—this last year has been a weird year —I came to a point where I was yelling at God, “Why is this happening to me?” I mean, I don’t understand. But you know what, tribulation and adversity let you know immediately who your friends are. I went through a lot of crap in the last year that was of biblical proportions. I lost everything in my life to a really good con artist.

What is going on? The sky is falling.

I got really confused for a while about why. Look, I never talked back to my parents. I make mistakes all the time but I have never been intentionally cruel to anyone in my entire life. Ever. I was left asking why. But then I thought, no one is immune to this. You are not immune to it. You just have to roll with the punches and go. I am not supposed to understand it. But I think that I will. Eventually, you’ll go, “Oh, alright.”

RM: Some people would say that poetry and faith are on one side of the spectrum, while reason and science are on the other.

PP: That’s bulls–t. I would disagree with that. I would always be like, Huh? Are you kidding me? I think that is the same thing. Science vs.

Pauley Perrette can be seen every Tuesday night on the CBS drama NCIS (check your local listings for air time). In addition to her work on NCIS(CBS) Pauley produces independent films, her latest documentary is on Mark Lane.

RM: Your creative process works like that? So you don’t go away in order to get the juices flowing.

PP: Oh, hell no. I never wanted to write anything. Ever. I never meant to. It is like a sickness. There really is nothing beautiful about it sometimes. It just hurts until you get rid of it.

MARCH /APRIL 2006 - Feature: 53

hen you stand in reflection of God, I think W that God is love and we are a portion of love, each one of us. But I think about this all the time. That is what we’re supposed to be. I cannot understand one person saying something mean or cruel to another person for whatever reason—because they’re mad, because they’re drunk, because whatever.

feel like I’m terminally bored and terminally overly stimulated at the same time. Every single life is fascinating, and every single one is different.

And that’s from someone who doesn’t know why the hell we’re here anyway.

I

dept:Expressions

Tim McCormick - Absurdly Talented

photo: Paul F. Ahrens

Writer: Adam Gnade

I call Tim McCormick America’s most important artist because I believe in the man. I have been following Tim’s painting for years as he’s gone from an absurdly talented, hard-working, budding art-star to taking on the international scene with the grace, confidence, and courage of a bullfighter.

Tim’s art is vivid and emotional and funny and original and painful.

Trees tangle like claws in ghosted glens while young girls with dog snarls stare out from baby pink dream-spaces. And there are words. Words you can’t quite make out. Sometimes they’re scribbled over. Sometimes they’re faded behind cottony clouds of paint.

It’s nothing you’ve seen before. There are no hackneyed lines, nothing faked or phoned-in or cribbed from someone else. It’s Tim’s world, a soft, alluring, and sometimes harrowing place.

Lately Tim has been doing massive wall-size pieces, but he began, years ago, on small canvases and things that weren’t canvases at all: skateboards, surfboards, a practical kind of art for a kid who grew up surfing the beaches of San Diego’s North County.

“I was into painting skateboards for the act of painting, for the practice, honing my craft,” says Tim in a mellow-timbred California drawl.

“I’ve done about a thousand surfboards that I painted individually. That’s how I taught myself how to paint—on surfboards and skateboards.”

But that’s a moot point now. Tim’s recent pieces are big bruisers, the kind that need trucks to move them. And these are not prints. He doesn’t do them. Never has. With Tim, art is about the process; once that’s over, there’s no need to reproduce it—or even keep it around.

“I’m really involved when I’m doing it,” he says. “I put everything in my mind, body, and soul into the painting while I’m working on it, but as soon as it’s finished, that part of it is over; so the actual results, that object I’ve created, doesn’t mean that much to me. It’s more the process or the act that means something to me. When I do a big painting, I like to spend a

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Beautiful Day

Love Letters

MARCH /APRIL 2006 - Department: 57

day or two defragging my mind and looking at it...re-assessing what I did, and how I did it. Once that’s done, I’m over it. It’s about the act of painting, not the results. I’m not too attached to the work.”

But a lot of people are. Recently he began showing full-time with Lineage Gallery in Philadelphia. “They’re showing a lot of really good artists. I’m with them year-round and I’ll probably be working with those guys for the next 20 years.”

Multiply 20 years by the rigorous work schedule Tim keeps, his grueling 14-hour days, and you’ll get an impressive number. Tim eases into the heavy days, preparing himself like a boxer would before a big bout— chilling out, centering himself.

“I definitely have a ritual, especially if I’m working on a big painting that might take me a month or two. It usually starts with me going out of the house. I might go walk on the beach or get coffee—just to start my day off and get moving. Then I’ll go home, sit in my studio a while, watch TV, maybe play some video games, and then I’ll start painting. Once I start, that’s the rest of my day. Everything is done in the early morning, errands to run, go to the store; I do all that in the daytime. Then I’ll come home and start painting and I just paint until I pass out at night.”

See more at www.timmccormickart.com and www.lineagegallery.com.

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Pitfalls

Love Joust

MARCH /APRIL 2006 - Department: 59

photo: Embry Rucker

dept:Expressions

Beautiful Mayhem Grant Brittain turned 50 years old with the satisfying knowledge that he had spent exactly half his years shooting skateboarders.

The result, while gratifying to Grant personally, is even more so for skateboarders internationally. It is well known that Grant’s gift has been to reveal skateboarding as fine art and skateboarders as the artists they always have been. Anyone who has skateboarded for a while will recognize that the following photos could come from only one person.

Grant’s arc in the skate world began on a Christmas morning when he and his brother found BB guns, walkie-talkies, and devices that would redirect young Grant’s life forever: skateboards. A series of jobs led him to the famed Del Mar Skate Ranch where he eventually became manager, a position that offered him a full-access pass to the best in the sport. Grant’s initial efforts with a borrowed camera were rewarded by publication in magazines like Skateboarder, where skate photo pioneers Warren Bolster and James Cassimus served as mentors.

“Sometimes Bolster and Cassimus or Glen Friedman would show up at the park and I would look over their shoulders, too shy at the time to ask them how they were doing what they were doing,” Grant recalls. Then came 20 years of steady employment on staff with TransWorld Skateboarding. It was there, at TransWorld, that Grant combined the beautiful mayhem and chaotic ballet known as skateboarding in a way matched by nobody before or since.

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Writer: Chris Ahrens Photographer: Grant Brittain

Those who have never rolled inches above the earth on laminated wood may have judged skateboarding as nothing more than punks entertaining themselves with spinning wheels. They may be surprised to find a new world here; an extremely difficult discipline, an unparalleled athletic endeavor, and a high art frozen for a 500th of a second. There is also lifestyle, capturing young, reckless skaters in the act of living the life of a rock star—rolling, strutting, and spending their way through their teens like those years would never end.

A courageous move on par with Bob Hurley cutting his well-watered roots and establishing his own company was the wellpublished exodus that Grant and much of the staff made from TransWorld. Basically the disagreement was focused on ethical concerns, when an advertisement that ends with the slogan “Because you’re worth it” replaced punk rock ideals and the camel crumbled beneath the collective weight.

The result of Brittain and company moving on is known as The Skateboard Mag, a high-quality, glossy collection of photos and stories beautifully chronicling the lives and times of the world’s best skateboarders.

Grant Brittain lives and works in Del Mar, California, where he runs The Skateboard Mag. Learn more by visiting www.theskateboardmag.com.

• Gator, Baldy Layback

Grant Brittain

• Jaya Bonderov

• Karl and Elan Watson 64 :RISEN MAGAZINE

• Pierre Andre, Japan

• Tony Hawk - Del Mar MARCH /APRIL 2006 - Department: 65

• Bob Burnquist

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• Miller Baldy - FS Air

• Steve Caballero, Fish Banks, San Jose

• Tony Hawk - 24 ft. Gap, Murrieta MARCH /APRIL 2006 - Department: 67

Writer: Maya Kroth Photographer: Bob Stevens Hair/Makeup: Mona Van Cleve using Stila & Bumble and bumble Stylist: Carey Hendricks

dept:Expressions

Brit Marling and Mike Cahill:

Capturing Havana “I’m dropping out of college” isn’t high on any parent’s wish list of phrases to hear from their daughter. “I’m dropping out of college to make a provocative movie about Cuba” might be worse.

But that’s essentially what Brit Marling’s mom heard when she answered the phone one historic day in 2003.

“There was this long period of silence on the phone,” Brit recalls over coffee the morning after screening her engaging, filmed-in-Cuba documentary Boxers and Ballerinas for a sold-out crowd in San Diego. Stylish and slim, Brit is strikingly pretty with a long blonde mane and a complexion worthy of a Neutrogena ad, her jeans trendily tucked into black boots. Across the table, her directing partner Mike Cahill wears a boyish grin, sport coat and pink baseball cap, his fiveo’clock shadow clocking in closer to midnight.

Together, they look more like Calvin Klein models than award-winning documentarians. But once they open their mouths, their breezy eloquence makes it easy to forget Marling and Cahill are just 22 and 26, respectively.

As an economics major at Georgetown a few years back, Marling was poised to follow in the footsteps of her investment-banker mother when she realized the Wall Street life wasn’t her calling.

“If I’m going to dedicate the kind of hours you do to investment banking,” she says, “it has to be something that [I] roll out of bed in the morning and [am] passionate about.”

In free-thinking Cahill, a fellow econ student and upstart producer for National Geographic, Marling found a simpatico spirit. Then just 20 and 24, the two took an interest in Cuba when a photographer friend showed them photos he’d taken of 6- and 7-year-old boxers in Havana.

Marling, who grew up in Florida, always had a fascination with the forbidden island 90 miles away. In school, she remembers learning “all these loaded code words—‘Communism’ and ‘Castro’ and ‘red’—that conjure a very negative picture.”

Inspired by the photos of the young scrappers, Marling decided she had to investigate Castro’s country for herself—so she bailed on college to make a movie, despite having no formal filmmaking training. The result was Boxers and Ballerinas, a documentary about four young people about to make their first life-altering decisions. In the process, Marling was making the choices that would come to define her own life.

After a year of shooting, the stories that would form the basis of Boxers and Ballerinas began to take shape. The documentary centers on four athletes. In Cuba we encounter 19-yearold Annia, a ballerina, and 17-year-old Yordenis, the country’s No. 1 junior boxer. On the other side of the Florida Straights we find 21-year-old Paula, a dancer whose prima-ballerina mother defected from Cuba in 1995, and 20-year-old Sergio, an aspiring boxer doing chin-ups in the back room of a muffler shop in Miami’s Hialeah

neighborhood, training in hopes of turning pro.

Artful editing and carefully chosen voiceovers from news reports tell us that Cuba is losing much of its artistic and athletic talent to defections; the promise of a bigger paycheck in the Land of the Free has led increasing numbers of Cubans to escape Castro’s nation at the first opportunity—usually during state-sanctioned travel abroad, like the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, during which several Cuban boxers sought asylum status in the States. When Annia learns her dance company has been approved to tour to Mexico, the question looms large: Will she leave everything she knows and loves—family, boyfriend, friends—for a chance at freedom?

Similarly, when Yordenis gets his shot at the Olympics, will he defect like so many before him?

Meanwhile, in Miami, Annia’s and Yordenis’s counterparts fight their own battles. Paula is torn between her desire to pursue college and her obligation to help her mother keep their struggling studio afloat. Sergio—who Marling says, “basically had to join a gang to survive in Hialeah”—learns that his father has just lost his job, making the need for some professionalboxing dollars even more pressing.

The tension in the film is palpable—surprising, since the documentary form isn’t exactly known as cinema’s most thrilling genre. “We wanted to use an aesthetic that appears more like fiction, because fiction filmmaking is such a powerful MARCH /APRIL 2006 - Department: 69

photo: Courtesy Rolling Shin Inc.

photo: Courtesy Rolling Shin Inc.

photo: Courtesy Rolling Shin Inc.

70 :RISEN MAGAZINE

dept:Expressions

thing,” Marling explains. One audience member at the San Diego screening even seemed fooled, asking during the Q&A how the filmmakers chose their “actors.”

While it’s easy to confuse these relatable true stories with fiction, the issues explored in the film are also very real. Repeated poetic shots of birds in flight facilitate a complex meditation on what it means to be free. Living in the U.S., are Paula and Sergio really any freer than their Cuban counterparts, or is freedom just a state of mind?

But in many ways Boxers is less about freedom or U.S./Cuban relations and more a coming-of-age story about four people about to make the first big decisions of their adult lives. For Annia and Yordenis, the question is, “To defect or not to defect?” Paula and Sergio, meanwhile, experience growing pains as each begins to shoulder more financial responsibility for their respective family. In their own way, all four are slowly casting off childhood and growing up.

“Here [in the States] it’s so obvious,” Marling says with her faint mid-Atlantic drawl. “You become an adult when you get accepted to an undergrad university and you’re away from your family for the first time.”

Cahill pipes up from behind his aviators. “It’s like…the modulation of generations. There’s this funny Far Side (cartoon) where you see this kid sneaking out of this big circus tent at nighttime, and he’s got a suit on, like Barnum and Bailey’s son left the circus life to join corporate America.

That’s what you do when you forge your identity; you do the opposite.”

Marling’s first step toward forging an identity came with that fateful call to the folks. “They were terrified at first,” Marling says. “More afraid than I was. My mom thought I would be thrown in a Cuban jail. She was constantly sending me rightwing articles about people who had their heads blown off.”

The reality of filming in Cuba wasn’t all that dramatic, though the young directors had some close calls. They smuggled controversial footage out of the country on iPods and tucked sensitive tapes into socks. Two government press attachés followed them everywhere. People warned them that their cell phones, car and

apartment were tapped; “You’re being watched,” they’d say. In the movie, two of Yordenis’s friends appear with faces blurred out, consenting to speak about Cuban living conditions only if the cameras were turned off.

While dodging government spies, Marling and Cahill also faced the challenge of filming everything themselves. “On the festival circuit, people would [ask], ‘Who was your first AD (assistant director)?’ There was no first AD. ‘Who was your sound guy?’ There was no sound guy. It was just two of us down there with cameras and these kids,” Marling says. “But the film was really created out of the editing process. We came back from Cuba with 400 hours of footage, all unlabeled tapes. I can’t even explain to you the paralysis upon seeing all these things. We would have insane arguments, because we were both so passionate about what should be in and what should be out.”

Despite the red tape, lack of resources and endless hours of editing, the duo’s biggest obstacle may have been self-doubt.

“Occasionally,” Marling explains, “there were moments where we thought, ‘Did we get it? Do we have something? Is nothing of this experience—the sweat and the way Havana smells, the piss in the streets—is none of this going to translate?’”

“It would be dishonest to say that you’re never afraid,” she continues. “Especially when everyone is telling you that you can’t.”

Surmounting those fears paid off, and Boxers and Ballerinas premiered to a sold-out crowd at the Havana Film Festival. “There were 500 people crammed into this 300-capacity theater, people sitting on one another’s laps to see this film,” Marling remembers. “When the ending credits came, the gates just broke open. We had expected this thing to be shut down in the middle, some guy in a khaki military uniform would cut the projection, but it played through in dead silence, and at the end…”

“They were singing to the last song and dancing,” Cahill interrupts. “We couldn’t get out of the place because everyone was hugging us and crying. It was so surreal.”

“I think Cubans in Cuba felt like it offered a

hope and appreciation for their lives there,” Marling reflects. “It wasn’t an outright condemnation or an outright propaganda piece. It just offered something up to be examined.”

Since its Havana premiere, Boxers has collected awards at film festivals and gotten good ink from Billboard, The Washington Post, Variety and Newsweek—not too shabby for a couple of kids hardly old enough to rent a car. With the film finally done, Marling relocated to Los Angeles, but not before returning to Georgetown to finish what she started. In 2004, she graduated first in her class with a double major in Economics and Studio Art, taking home not only a diploma but also the Leonardo da Vinci medal, Georgetown’s highest artistic honor.

Marling’s and Cahill’s future looks bright indeed. They were recently at the Sundance Film Festival supporting their latest project, a Leonard Cohen documentary featuring appearances by Nick Cave and U2’s Bono.

Marling doesn’t regret her decision to trade Wall Street for Hollywood. “I have a lot of friends who stuck with the investment banking route, and they’re pretty unhappy. Life lacks that palpable energy of feeling like whatever’s inside you just needs to get out into the world. Being in a cubicle and being a master of Excel kind of works against that.”

She pauses, thoughtful. “Ultimately I’m responsible for my happiness,” she affirms. “So I’m going make that decision and not let everyone else make it for me based on what is the most traveled road.”

For more information about Boxers and Ballerinas, visit the film's website at www.boxersandballerinas.com MARCH /APRIL 2006 - Department: 71

dept:Screen

MILLIONS (2005, available on DVD)

NOBODY KNOWS

UNBREAKABLE

(2004, available on DVD)

(2000, available on DVD)

Remember Trainspotting, Danny Boyle’s mind-

Hirokazu Koreeda’s film Nobody Knows feels so

boggling trip into the heads of Edinburgh heroin

real, it’s disturbing. He captures the story of four

addicts? Did you see 28 Days Later, that

children abandoned by thier mother and left to

nightmare-inducing zombie flick with Cillian

fight for survival in a Tokyo apartment. Seeing the

Murphy? Don’t let the PG rating fool you—Boyle’s

world through the eyes of young Akira (Yûya

latest film, Millions, is just as wild a trip! It’s a

Yagira), we experience the increasing dread that

must-see for serious moviegoers.

someone might discover them and evict them

When young Damien (Alex Etel) discovers a

from their home. But at the same time, we

suitcase full of cash, he and his big brother

become increasingly afraid that nobody is going

Anthony (Lewis Owen McGibbon) must decide

to discover them in time to help them. How can

what to do with it. Alex sees a future full of

it be that in a city so vast, nobody knows what’s

popularity, power and girls. Damien thinks bigger:

happening here? Sadly, Nobody Knows is based

he wants to save the world. But there’s a

on a true story.

problem—it’s difficult to get rid of millions of

The

plight

of

the

children’s

slow

dollars without attracting attention. Especially

disintegration could make for an unbearable

when you’re surrounded by people who think

moviegoing experience. But because they’re still

they need it. And worse, there’s a creepy guy in a

so young and naïve, the children continue to

stocking cap lurking around the railroad where

experience their surroundings with awe, wonder

Damien found the money. What will he do to get

and delight, and that makes for memorable movie

that sack full of cash out of Damien’s room?

moments. The camera reminds us of what it was

Inspired by visions of saints who counsel

like to live in a world where everything is strange,

and caution him, Damien makes his way through

new and bright. Akira’s ventures from the

the maze of the adult world, trying to do the right

apartment building into the city are suspenseful

thing, and wondering if his mother, who died

and unpredictable, and we root for him to

when he was younger, might have become a

maintain his sense of right and wrong as his

saint herself. His unrelenting optimism and his

family’s situation becomes more desperate.

ability to believe in God's benevolence despite

Even though we know it’s important that these

disappointments, are truly inspiring in a cynical

children eat, we also want to see them hold on

age. It’s fast, funny, colorful, well-acted, full of

to innocence.

surprises and the unexpected blastoff at the end is 2005’s most exhilarating big screen finale.

While actors like Philip Seymour Hoffman, Joaquin Phoenix and Heath Ledger received a lot of attention for their 2005 performances, you may decide it was Yûya Yagira who deserved the Best Actor Oscar after all. In fact, he won that very honor at Cannes when Nobody Knows played there in 2004.

72 :RISEN MAGAZINE

As a filmmaker, M. Night Shyamalan is most famous for the shocking conclusion of The Sixth Sense. The twist ending for his second box office success, Unbreakable, was a letdown by comparison. But Unbreakable was never meant to be The Sixth Sense 2. Instead, it’s an unconventional superhero story.

David Dunn (Bruce Willis) is not like Clark Kent or Peter Parker. He’s a despondent middleaged man, a failure to his faithful wife (Robin Wright Penn) and his worried young son (Spencer Treat Clark). But when he survives a catastrophic train wreck, he begins to wrestle with troubling questions: Why is he here? What is he supposed to do?

Just

in

time,

a

mysterious

stranger

recognizes the potential in Dunn to become something extraordinary. Meet Mr. Glass (Samuel L. Jackson), a man who talks like a preacher and loves comic books. Glass suffers from a prohibitive disease that makes his life a living hell; he can hardly manage to climb stairs without injury. Drawn to the idea of invincibility, Glass is the perfect person to give Dunn perspective and a chance to be all that he can be.

Willis is fantastic as the angst-burdened Dunne, and Jackson is weird and wild as the fragile Mr. Glass. But the real star is Shyamalan, who orchestrates nerve-wracking suspense and quiet moments of revelation. In doing so, he reminds us that the world is full of darkness, and the struggle to make a difference can be a lonely path up a steep incline. But Dunn’s journey of self-realization is an exciting process, and the way his discovery changes his relationships is a remarkable redemption story.

dept:Screen

MURDERBALL (2005, available on DVD)

PERSONAL VELOCITY: THREE PORTRAITS

A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS

(2002, available on DVD)

(1966, available on DVD)

They’re fast. They’re smart. They’re determined.

Rebecca Miller, daughter of the playwright Arthur

There are many great films about brave men who

And they don’t wear helmets.

Miller and director of The Ballad of Jack and

stood alone against their enemies and triumphed.

Remember that mad zeal in the eyes of

Rose, released this collection of three short New

But few have the overwhelming inspirational

those dangerous combatants in Road Warrior?

York stories in 2002. Personal Velocity is based

power of the 1966 film A Man for All Seasons,

You’ll see that look in the eyes of the warriors on

on her book of the same name (which contained

which stars the great Paul Scofield in his most

wheels in Murderball. No, they’re not trying to

nine stories), and it gives three great actresses a

important role.

kill each other. They’re after a trophy, and

chance to shine—Kyra Sedgwick, Parker Posey

more—they’re after the respect they deserve.

and Fairuza Balk.

Scofield plays Sir Thomas More, Lord Chancellor of England, a man who stands by his

Overcoming obstacles and challenges that’ll

Delia (Sedgwick) is an escapee from an

convictions and refuses to play along while King

make most of us feel like lazy bums, they’re

abusive marriage who takes her kids and tries to

Henry VIII tries to change God’s law to suit

fighting for Olympic glory.

make a new start. But the only skill she seems to

himself. Henry, desiring to divorce his wife

MTV’s documentary on the rivalry between

know is sexual manipulation, and that has left her

Catherine and marry Anne Boleyn, sees that he’ll

the American and Canadian quadriplegic rugby

hollowed out with shame. Can she learn from the

never get the church to approve of this. So he

teams will knock the remote out of your hand and

mistakes of her reckless youth and build a better

makes a bold move—he declares himself the

pound you around the room. The high-velocity,

future? Or is she a prisoner to her weaknesses?

head of the church. While other church leaders

metal-bending, head-smashing style of these

Compared to Delia, Greta (Posey) has a lot

follow along in fear, More acts out of conscience

extreme sports will change the way you think

going for her. She has a decent marriage (or at

and removes himself from the picture. He gives

about wheelchairs. The way these guys drive

least, she thinks so) and she’s a talented editor.

up his wealth and his fame, his power and

them, they’re weapons, they’re rockets, they’re

Growing up in the shadow of a famous

influence. He steps out of the spotlight.

chariots of fire.

politician—her father—she also has a powerful

But that doesn’t last long. His quiet protest

You may venture a guess as to what’s

desire to escape it and blaze her own trail. So

makes him all the more famous, and soon King

involved in quadriplegic rugby, but forget about

when she stumbles into an opportunity to make a

Henry cannot tolerate the existence of such

the rugby for a moment—you’re about to learn a

name for herself, it’s alarming how much

virtue. In one of the most riveting showdowns

thing or two about overcoming the odds. From

confidence and ambition surges to the surface. Is

ever filmed, More must put his life on the line for

the routines of their rehabilitation to their lively sex

her ambition a threat to her integrity?

the sake of what he believes is right.

lives, these survivors are full of surprises. Each

Finally, Paula (Balk) is pregnant and running

competitor has a remarkable story about lessons

from her boyfriend when she encounters a

learned the hard way, but the film focuses

teenage hitchhiker in need of more than a ride.

primarily on the triumphs of two champions: Mark

Her desperate reaction changes the course of

Zupan, a red-bearded dynamo who survived a

her life.

devastating accident, and Joe Soares, a

Trapped in these complicated dilemmas, all

temperamental competitor who leads the

three arrive at decisions that reveal a great deal

Canadian team against the U.S. team that gave

about their characters. Clearly, our mistakes are

him the boot. From the 2002 World Wheelchair

often influenced by the things we have suffered in

Rugby Championships in Sweden to the 2004

the past. But there’s always the possibility of

International Paralympic Games in Athens, their

grace, which can only be received when we

journeys of friendship, faith and fearless

surrender our own control and our selfish desires.

athleticism are unforgettable.

Jeffrey Overstreet’s reviews and interviews have appeared in Paste and other publications. His book about finding meaning at the movies, Through a Screen Darkly, will be out next year, as well as the first novel in his fantasy series, Auralia’s Colors, in 2007.

MARCH /APRIL 2006 - Department: 73

dept:Sound

Artist: The Appleseed Cast Album: Peregrine Label: The Militia Group Release: March 21, 2006 The wait is over, and The Appleseed Cast have returned after almost 3 years of silence to release their seventh full-length record. The quartet from Lawrence, Kansas has finally found time between their side projects (the Casket Lottery, Old Canes, Chin Up Chin Up) to record a new album, and they haven’t lost a step. This release brings the group one step closer to perfecting a sound they’ve been cultivating since 1998. Driven by lush guitars and timely gentle vocals, The Appleseed Cast create a thick wall of sound which grabs hold of the listener.

There is no escape; there is nothing to do but listen. 2003’s Two Conversations saw The Appleseed Cast reform their sound into something more dynamic and erratic than their previous recordings, and Peregrine serves as an extension of this newer sound. This album will carry you off to a land where music is everything, rocking you all the while. Sit back and enjoy the ride.

– Jared Cohen

definitely on the same track as their previous releases, there is some departure from their typical formula. On “Fraud In The '80s,” a nod to the music of the 80’s, the Mates’ ubiquitous organ tones are traded at certain points in favor of classic synthesizers. On tracks such as “Like U Crazy” and the beautifully tranquil “Nature and the Wreck,” the organ is pushed aside once again, but in favor of a piano. It is nice to see the duo rely on their old sound, which has led to their (mostly underground) success, while not being afraid to experiment with alterations to their sound.

– Jared Cohen

Artist: White Rainbow Album: Zome Label: States Rights Records Release: August 20, 2005 White Rainbow is Adam Forkner and Adam Forkner is the guy behind Yume Bitsu (oft labeled the future of “space rock”). Nowadays he’s on some wild, happy, hyper-creative, positive vibes trip. Combining ambient new age, post-rock, Santana aesthetic, and the all-holy delay pedal, Zome is a mellow, soaring, gorgeous, shimmering wash of sun rays, organic noise, and guitars sweet and life-giving as fresh squeezed orange juice.

Shrug off your too-cool artists-must-be-tortured bias, get this CD, and join the light show crowd.

– Adam Gnade

Artist: Mates of State Album: Bring it Back Label: Barsuk/Polyvinyl Release: March 21, 2006 Husband-and-wife duo Kori Gardner and Jason Hammel return to offer their fourth full-length release with the same spastic energy found in the last three. Most of the songs are a familiar combination of bass-heavy organ, simple-butdriving drumming, and lead vocals from both Gardner and Hammel. While Bring it Back is 74 :RISEN MAGAZINE

earlier recordings. Listeners are quickly reunited with Rocky's sometimes-raspy, but always sensitive, vocal style in the first track, "White Daisy Passing". Rocky's vocal harmonies and lightlystrummed guitar seem effortless from the album's onset. On "Tennessee Train Tracks," the regular acoustic guitar/vocal combination is abandoned in favor of a full band, which invokes memories of Rocky's time with his former band, Waxwing. The title track, which is is the last on the record, opens with the lines, "Death keeps calling me, she's gonna set me free / No more sunshine sidewalk streets or misery." The song is a thoughtful, somber, and appropriate end to what is a phenomenally cohesive piece of work, where all of Rocky's talents, both lyrical and musical, are displayed in their best form to date. While his lyrics may be dark at times, Rocky closes out the album with his ever-present candor, "We're all headed for the same sweet darkness."

– Jared Cohen

Artist: Rocky Votolato Album: Makers Label: Barsuk/Second Nature Recordings Release: January 24, 2006 Rocky Votolato's fifth full-length record opens with the same beauty and delicacy introduced in his

Artist: South Album: Adventures in the Underground Journey to the Stars Label: Young American Recordings Release: April 4, 2006 South’s third album begins with almost a full minute of soft ambient noise: car traffic, then the clomping of increasingly echoing footsteps, as if one was descending into a subway station, running to catch a train. When the drums begin punching their way into the opening track (“Shallow”), it already feels like this Britpop trio is leading the listener on an expedition to destinations unknown and, yet, still quite pleasant.

“Adventures” sounds the way an underground journey to the stars might feel: alternately speedy and subdued, sporadically dark but ultimately triumphant, with wispy little curiosities interspersed along the way, in the form of short sketches of sound surreptitiously slipped between tracks. The band’s new, more up-tempo vibe has been compared to New Order at its height, but the album’s occasional boy/girl vocals and quirky instrumentation (a xylophone here, a banjo there)

dept:Sound would also make “Adventures” a great companion for a band like Montreal’s Stars. Stellar indeed.

– Maya Kroth

donated to Rukha, a non-profit devoted to improving the living conditions of street kids). As if that’s not reason enough to buy the disc, the cocktail-party-perfect tunes—which combine electronica beats with the sexy melodies made famous by Astrud, Joao and other superstars of the ‘60s and ‘70s –make this release irresistible.

Standouts include cuts from Bebel Gilberto, newcomer Luca Mundaca and Seu Jorge, who so memorably provided the Bowie-goes-bossa-nova soundtrack to “The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.”

– Maya Kroth

Artist: Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti Album: House Arrest Label: Paw Tracks Release: January 24, 2006 House Arrest sounds like cassette tapes from the ‘70s that are now warped to the point of unlistenableness by too many years in hot glove compartments next to that melting candy bar and that flashlight that never worked, anyhow. Only this is listenable; it’s warbly and distorted, but that’s all on purpose. Purposefully to do what? To remake, redo, then redefine pop music. Drums become beat-boxed mouth percussion, ‘70s AM radio sunniness gets made over as psychedelic 2000specific noise. LA’s Ariel Pink (aka Ariel Rosenburg) is a weird cat, but so is Brian Wilson and Phil Spector. Weird is good. Stay weird.

– Adam Gnade

Artist: Half-Handed Cloud Album: Halos and Lassos Label: Asthmatic Kitty Release: March 7, 2006 Everything’s a little skewed. Songs are more like fragments than structured, complete, versechorus-verse-bridge stuff. Lyrics are more prose poem retellings of Bible stories than anything.

Music is still music and it runs rampant between blurping Atari beat jams, campfire folk outs, and joyful, mousy, deconstructed pop. I saw HHC a few weeks ago and he (one guy, John Ringhofer) played, like, 80 songs in half that many minutes and acted out one of ‘em with a plastic, wind-up toy sheep. Beautifully, perfectly damaged and abnormal. A+++ – Adam Gnade

Artist: Putumayo Presents Album: Brazilian Lounge Label: The Militia Group Release: February 21, 2006 When you think of Brazil, you might imagine cavorting at Carnaval, exotic cocktails, scandalous bikinis, and Gisele Bundchen. You probably don’t think about the gritty realities underlying the glitz and glamour of the third-world country, whose streets are home to an estimated 8 million or more homeless children. Putumayo’s latest chill-out disc, “Brazilian Lounge,” offers a chance to appreciate Brazil’s inimitable culture while helping address the poverty issue (a portion of sales are

release, is also the soundtrack to the upcoming film, Curious George. The disc features 11 brand new Johnson songs, as well as a cover of the White Stripes’ “We’re Going to Be Friends.” This soundtrack is a surprisingly beautiful compilation of songs aimed at the ears of children and adults alike. Johnson does an amazing job of presenting the sentiments we all feel, regardless of age. One of the most evident features of this release is that nothing feels forced, that is to say, everything flows smoothly. The songs just make sense, and everything is a logical progression. There are no surprises, which isn’t a bad thing in this case.

Listeners know where they want the music to go, and that’s exactly where Johnson takes them. He doesn’t do it alone either; Johnson gets some well-blended help from friends Ben Harper, Matt Costa, and G. Love.

– Jared Cohen

Artist: Jack Johnson and Friends Album: Sing-a-Longs and Lullabies for the

Artist: Plants Album: The Mind is a Bird in the Hand Label: Audio Dregs Release: March 7, 2006 Plants’ (Portland-bred) is an epic piece of moaning, sighing, dew-wet psychedelia. It’s a big organic forest hike through buzzing drones and quivering strings and acoustic guitars straight out Renaissance music’s moody instrumental tone poems. Singer Joshua Blanchard sails somewhere between Sunshine Superman-era Donovan and Marc Bolan’s (T-Rex) most ethereal and fantasytinged. Together with his sweetheart, the elegantlooking Molly Griffin, he builds a sturdy nest of gorgeous, simmering, bubbling, Middle Earth music. The Pacific Northwest has its share of psychedelic bands but, with The Mind, Plants look to be moving towards the higher ranks. If all goes as it has been, their future is nowhere but tasting thin, pale air at the very top of it all.

– Adam Gnade

Film Curious George

Label: Brushfire Records Release: February 7, 2006 This album, while being Jack Johnson’s latest

MARCH /APRIL 2006 - Department: 75

dept:Up to Speed Switchfoot

RISEN Magazine: What does “Nothing is Sound” mean?

Jon Foreman: It’s the idea that this world is completely upside down. We’re walking around

on our hands and putting shoes on our heads. The things we chase after we know won’t fill us up. The things we spend money on, all these contradictions that we live with every day in a post-modern world.

RM: Other than musically, what are the goals of Switchfoot?

Tim Foreman: One of our biggest goals as a band is to get people to ask big questions.

Those are the ones that are dangerous, and those are the ones a lot of parents are afraid to have asked. They’d rather their kids be spoon-fed than exploring the depths of what life is.

Up to Speed: One month after the release of Nothing is Sound, Switchfoot’s fifth full-length

album, it went gold. Now, coming off the high of their sold-out fall tour, the band is preparing for their spring tour. Dubbed the “Nothing is Sound Tour,” it will feature guest U.K. band Athlete. The tour kicks off March 16 in Bakersfield, California.

For the complete tour schedule and to purchase tickets, visit Switchfoot’s website at www.switchfoot.com.

Amber Tamblyn

RISEN Magazine: How would you react to a friend who told you they were hearing from

God?

Amber Tamblyn: I don’t think I would ever judge anybody. One of my friends, Breanne,

she goes to church all the time and is always saying, “If only more people could find Jesus.”

To each their own. I have friends that are complete and utter atheists, and I respect all of their views. Something I start to realize as I get older is that there is no one truth. There will always be mystery, and that’s why you can never close yourself off to any ideas or other experiences, because you’re closing yourself off to the universe.

Up to Speed: Since ending her critically acclaimed television drama, Joan of Arcadia, Amber Tamblyn is staying busy. She costarred in last summer’s teen drama/comedy The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, based on the best-selling book by Ann Brashares. Amber's role in the film as Tibby garnered her a 2005 Teen Choice Award nomination. Amber also released a book of poetry titled Free Stallion (Simon & Schuster), with critics heralding her expressive use of language. Currently, Amber is filming The Grudge 2, playing the role of Sarah Michelle Gellar’s younger sister.

Special Recognition...Shaun White We’re sure our readers join us in congratulating snowboarder Shaun White on being the first U.S. Olympian in the 2006 winter games to win a gold medal, scoring 46.8 in the men’s halfpipe finals. “I’m a little overwhelmed right now. I can’t explain it,” said Shaun at the bottom of the hill, celebrating with his parents. Additional congratulations go to teammate Danny Kass who took home the silver medal.

See Shaun’s ad for Burton in the Jan/Feb issue of RISEN Magazine.

photo: Courtesy nbcolympics.com photo: Courtesy nbcolympics.com

76 :RISEN MAGAZINE

Writer: Steve Beard Illustration: Zela

His dad called him Paul, the White House refers to

done more single-handedly to relieve Third-World

economic and health-related studies and is

him affectionately as The Pest, and the rest of the

debt than all the Armani-clad finance ministers that

capable of speaking coherently on the way that

globe simply refers to him as Bono. Back on the

could be packed into a United Nations conference

Africa is going to hell in a handbasket. This is an

Rattle and Hum album 18 years ago, Bono

room. He has a mysterious charisma, an

entire continent consumed by war, starvation,

launched into an anti-Apartheid sermonette and

unpretentious grace that affords him the ability to

disease and poverty. For example, 26 million men,

then asked, “Am I bugging you? I don’t mean to

be the only one wearing sunglasses indoors

bug you.” Well, we all knew he was lying.

without coming off as a megalomaniac.

women and children in sub-Saharan Africa are

Throughout his career, Bono has used his global

Only days before U2 nabbed all five Grammy

stage to pester and prod us—politically, lyrically,

Awards for which it was nominated, Bono was in

poetically and spiritually.

Washington to speak to preachers, kings,

living with HIV—the equivalent of the populations of Florida and Michigan combined.

A few years ago, I asked Bono about his motivation. “Well, you know, I am not a very good

He remains the most significant and

presidents and priests at the National Prayer

provocative celebrity on the planet. He was

Breakfast. “If you’re wondering what I’m doing

endorsed by The Los Angeles Times to head the

here, at a prayer breakfast, well, so am I. I’m

World Bank, nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize

certainly not here as a man of the cloth, unless that

and launched a conscience-raising line of clothing

cloth is leather. It’s certainly not because I’m a rock

called Edun. His concerts attract everyone from

star. Which leaves one possible explanation: I’m

Jesus Christ only speaks of judgment once. It is

United Nations leader Kofi Annan to conservative

here because I’ve got a messianic complex.”

not all about the things that the church bangs on

advertisement for God. So I generally don’t wear that badge on my lapel,” he said. “But it is certainly written on the inside. I am a believer. There are 2,103 verses of Scripture pertaining to the poor.

talk show host Bill O’Reilly. He hangs out with the

As he points out, that is hardly a revelation.

about. It is not about sexual immorality, and it is

Kennedy clan and knows his way around the Bush

Jaundiced rock journalists have been grousing

not about megalomania, or vanity,” he said as he

White House.

about his bleeding heart for years.

ran his fingers dramatically through his hair.

“Well, I’m the first to admit that there’s

Bono is a tippy-toe talker. You can see his

something unnatural…something unseemly…about

dander and passion brew even when he tries to be

Nevertheless, Bono has the reputation as

rock stars mounting the pulpit and preaching at

sedate. “It is about the poor. ‘I was naked and you

rock ‘n’ roll’s most effective and enigmatic spiritual

presidents, and then disappearing to their villas in

clothed me. I was a stranger and you let me in.’

provocateur—rattling the souls of fans all over the

the South of France,” Bono went on to say. “Talk

globe. “I sometimes think I have a kind of

about a fish out of water. It was weird enough

This is at the heart of the gospel,” he said. “Why is

Tourette’s syndrome where if you’re not supposed

when Jesse Helms showed up at a U2

to say something, it becomes very attractive to do

concert…but this is really weird, isn’t it?”

Oh yeah, he also got chastised by the FCC for using the f-word on television.

so,” he once confessed to Rolling Stone. “You’re in a rock band—what can’t you talk about? God? Ok, here we go. You’re supposed to write songs about sex and drugs. Well, no I won’t.”

Yes, Bono, it is really weird—but I think we are getting used to it.

I have seen him up close prancing around the stage waving the Irish flag singing “Sunday Bloody

it that we have seemed to have forgotten this?”

You don’t need to be a Bible-thumper with a diamond-encrusted cross dangling around your neck to know that’s some damn good preaching.

It is a scandalous commentary on our social culture when it takes a rock star to prod politicians and preachers to grapple with the vast travesty

Most of the world is tired of being berated

Sunday,” preaching in a church about compassion

and tutored about social issues by spoiled and

for those with AIDS, and threatening world

over-paid rock stars, yet we still give an audience

politicians from the stage of a soccer arena in

ridiculous,” Bono told French journalist Michka

to Bono whose heart bleeds with the best of them.

Edinburgh, Scotland, during the G-8 Economic

Assayas. “It’s silly, but it’s a kind of currency, and

Pope John Paul II wanted to wear his sunglasses

Summit last July. He is a political and prophetic

you have to spend it wisely.…I can use this

when they met. Arch-conservative Senator Jesse

pop star.

ridiculous thing called celebrity to the advantage of

taking place in Africa. “You know, celebrity is

Helms cried when he heard Bono describe the

For the past 20 years, Bono has immersed

these issues. That’s the only qualification I need. I’m

plight of hungry children in Africa. The singer has

himself into the minutia of mind-numbing

there, I have the loud-hailer and I’m gonna use it.”

78 :RISEN MAGAZINE