L.A. Stories / The Roving Eye
Return of the Halo
With the baseball season starting this week, the Anaheim Angels have tapped a local boutique agency to help boost the team’s less than top-flight attendance.
Three-year-old Ballpark Advertising Agency of Los Angeles has produced four whimsical 30-second spots for the Angels based on the theme “The halos are back” (The Walt Disney Co.-owned team reintroduced the halo over the “A” on their new uniforms this year).
One of the ads features gritty Angel outfielder Darin Erstad washing his uniform in a laundromat between games of a doubleheader. Another shows Bengie Molina and Benji Gil grooving their swings while breaking a pi & #324;ata for a group of children.
“The idea is to bring back the halo and connect that with the players. It’s a traditional part of the franchise that fans have missed,” said Ron Luscinski, principal and creative director of Ballpark.
Sweet Gesture
As the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Subcommittee on Terrorism and Homeland Security, U.S. Rep. Jane Harman seems to be covering all the bases.
She is sponsoring legislation to vest Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge with the budgetary and statutory authority to make his office a cabinet post as well as a bill to establish a terrorism-related information network among various agencies.
But her efforts do not stop there.
The South Bay congresswoman recently helped Girl Scout Troop 826 of Torrance load a truck full of 612 boxes of cookies that will be sent to U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
“Girl Scout cookies are a time-honored tradition,” said Philippe Reines, Harman’s communications director. “The Girl Scouts and Congresswoman Harman thought it would be nice to send a little bit of home.”
Developer’s Drive
Every new real estate development worth its salt has a few aptly-named thoroughfares, and Rick Caruso’s The Grove at Farmers Market is no exception.
There are, of course, the obligatory Grove Drive (nee Stanley Avenue) at the east end of the project, and Gilmore Lane, which enters the old Farmers Market from Fairfax.
But tucked at the back end of the project, on the way out of the parking garage is the new Caruso Drive, a stubby little out-of- the-way bit of tarmac.
“I thought it was a nod to Rick,” said a spokeswoman, who added she wasn’t even aware of the street until a week after the project opened.
Ron on a Roll
It was a big week for director Ron Howard. There was that Oscar thing and then this: Howard’s “Apollo 13” will be the first non-animated feature converted into IMAX format.
Through a partnership of Universal Pictures, Imagine Entertainment and IMAX, “Apollo 13” will be remastered from 35 millimeter to IMAX through a new patent-pending technology developed by the Toronto-based film company. The eight story high, 120-foot wide version of “Apollo 13” is scheduled to be in IMAX theaters late this summer.
“Its combination of science and entertainment made (‘Apollo 13’) the perfect fit,” said Universal senior publicist Amanda Scholer.
And Howard’s Oscar buzz won’t hurt. “It’s good timing, but the movie stands on its own,” she said. “Ron deserved the Academy Award for ‘Apollo 13’ when it came out.”
Banned
And the Europeans say we’re prudish.
Entrepreneur Marc Weinberg has run into trouble exporting his cursing teddy bear, Ballsy Bear. Authorities in Luxembourg told a Ballsy buyer that the bear would not be allowed into the country. According to the buyer, officials told him the bear was lacking a European certificate insuring the product is safe for children.
As reported in the Business Journal, Ballsy belts out various expletives when squeezed. The buyer claims to have told officials the product wasn’t intended for children, which the customs agents promptly said was their second reason for not letting in the bear.
“It’s certainly funny,” said Weinberg. “I’m sure they let pornography in.”
The Roving Eye
Big Brother
If you believe the sales numbers, folk music is about as popular in this country as Gregorian chants.
Well, don’t believe the numbers.
The success of the “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” soundtrack the album won four Grammy awards including Album of the Year has prompted a 29-city national tour starting in June.
That follows a smaller tour, before the Grammys, in which every date was sold out and a live album, “Down From the Mountain,” was produced. More than five million copies have sold of the original soundtrack album on Lost Highway Records.
“It’s very unusual, in that you don’t often have a soundtrack that taps into the collective consciousness of the public like this,” said Janet Billig of Immortal Entertainment, the Santa Monica-based tour promoter. “It’s really a celebration of American history as much as it is an album.”
Album producer T Bone Burnett and filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen compiled the music for the album months before shooting began and wrote much of the movie around the songs. “Their vision was much bigger than just finding 12 songs for 12 different scenes,” Billig said.
Besides Immortal, other local companies involved in the tour include United Talent Agency, which is booking the talent, and House of Blues, which is jointly producing the shows.
“We happened to have good music and we were in the right place at the right time,” said Kevin Lane of Lost Highway Records, a subsidiary of Nashville-based Mercury Records, which is part of the Universal Music Group. “The fact that we put on a sold-out concert months before the music came out made us think we needed to take it out on the road.”
Darrell Satzman
