“Les Misérables” – The chorus beggars sing of a better life and revolution. Photo by Kelli Lundin

by Lisa Duckers

We have all heard of musicals whose advertising claims to “make us laugh, cry, and think.” On the contrary, “Les Misérables” is a musical known to make you cry, cry, and cry some more. At some points you may be crying from laughter, or maybe just crying because of the pure beauty of it all, but you will be crying about something.

Luckily, for the non-profit youth theater company Encore Entertainers, their second and current production of “Les Misérables” does a tremendous job in preserving the beauty of the singing and the story itself, without making one weep throughout the entire play.

For those who aren’t familiar with it, “Les Misérables,” based on the famed novel by Victor Hugo, is set in turbulent 19th century France. Jean Valjean (Slater Garcia), a convict released from prison after 19 years for stealing a loaf of bread, sets out to redeem himself after being inspired by a bishop to commit his life to doing good deeds. He is not without trouble, as he is constantly followed by Inspector Javert (Benjamin Guiry) after he breaks his parole.

There is much more going on in “Les Misérables.” The complicated plot, and the fact that almost everything is sung throughout the musical, make seeing the show a bit confusing for first time viewers. Fortunately, there is a helpful synopsis of the entire musical given in the playbill.

The young actors and actresses in this production of the famed musical should not be underestimated. Each part in the play is perfect for the actor who plays it. I cannot imagine the part of Valjean, Javert, or even the vicious inn owner Thenardier (Jacob Nye) played by anyone else.

The sets, designed and built by Marcelo Cacciagioni, are just right. The most astounding stage effect is the 12 by 28 foot barricade, which turns on a 27 foot wide turntable, custom built for this production.

Needless to say, some things in this musical are a bit overdone. The confrontation scene between Javert and Valjean is known to be full of tension, but it’s hard to take the scene seriously after Valjean picks up a chair in order to defend himself against Javert.

Also, in a scene in which one of the characters drowns himself (I won’t say who), the lighting and strobe effects are strategically made to assure that he is drowning. This seems a bit much. The scene would have been just fine had the stage lighting cut to black after the actor flew himself from the bridge and laid on stage.

The music, directed by Mike Walker, is no less than stunning. Within the first five minutes we are made to believe that there is an entire orchestra in the pit. This being “Les Misérables,” the singing is also extraordinary, especially “Who am I” and “A Little Fall of Rain”, both of which made me choke up. After the play had ended, I had the beggar song “Look Down” playing over and over again in my head nearly all night.

The iconic music, the outstanding singing, the incredible effects, and each part, even the singer with just one line, are necessary contributions in putting together an unforgettable musical event. You may be crying at a few parts throughout the play, but you will never wish you had spent your evening differently.

Les Misérables is onstage through July 31 in the auditorium at Mira Costa High School, 1401 Artesia Blvd., Manhattan Beach. Performances, Friday at 7:30, Saturday at 2. Tickets, $16 in advance or $18 at the door, and $14 for seniors over 65 and children under 12. For additional information, call (310) 896-6459 or visit encoreentertainers.org. ER

Charlie Viracola

by Andrew Wantuck

 This week I spoke with a comedian that has appeared on Conan O’Brien, Comedy Central, and Craig Ferguson. We discussed how he created his own world called Planet Charlie, creating props for Carrot Top, and a solution enabling you to never have to mow your lawn ever again.

 Andrew: How would you describe your Comedy Central special “Welcome to Planet Charlie” to somebody that has never seen you?

 Charlie: It’s a half-hour special on Comedy Central that they play at random hours. It’s me ranting about things on this planet that I don’t like and then I come up with some solutions that would hopefully help.

 Andrew: Can you give me an example of something that is different on Planet Earth versus Planet Charlie?

 Charlie: On Planet Charlie anyone who talks on their cell phone really loud in a restaurant or a public place, has to wear a phone booth on their head so we don’t have to listen to their stupid conversations. It kind of all started because, well, I live in the Southern California area which has lots of cars and traffic and stuff. I started my planet one day after I got a $490 parking ticket. I am not even joking, I really got a $490 ticket and I realized that my whole car only cost $290. So I thought, “That’s crazy!” So I started Planet Charlie and on Planet Charlie we handle parking tickets differently. Parking tickets on Planet Charlie are directly based on how much your car is worth. Like, if you drive some big rich Lexus or something, some big expensive car, and you park your car in the wrong spot, screw you, one million dollar ticket, but if you drive a piece of junk, like most of the rest of us normal people do, they would actually leave free Pizza Hut coupons.

 Andrew: How does a comedian go from being a good comic to becoming a great comic?

 Charlie: It has everything to do with who you sleep with. As a matter of fact, speaking of which, I tried that myself in Hollywood and I was hoping to get a little heat on my career, so I actually slept with Betty White. I would like to qualify that by saying, it’s not weird or creepy because I did it when she was in her 70s, not in her older age.

 Andrew: What is the first joke that you ever wrote?

 Charlie: I’m lazy; I don’t write as much as I should. I’ll tell you how lazy I actually am. I got tired of mowing my grass, so I hired a Vietnamese lady and I had my whole yard waxed. Which is kinda weird, but now I just have a thin strip of grass that leads to my front door. It’s pretty much all that’s left of my yard at this point and that’s pretty weird. It’s no wonder I don’t have a girlfriend with stupid things like that. I actually had a girlfriend but she just recently broke up with me in a text message. She sent me a text that said, “I don’t want to see you anymore because you’re cold and critical,” and so I texted her back and said, “Okay, fine, bye, and by the way you misspelled the word critical.”

 Andrew: Are you proud of the fact that you’ve written and created props for Carrot Top?

 Charlie: Yeah, I’m proud of that. Only because, for people who don’t know him, people like to give him a bad wrap. I dare anyone to go to Las Vegas and watch his live show at the Luxor, where he performs all the time. He’s got a contract for the next 20 years or something like that. I dare them to go watch that and say that he is not funny. He doesn’t deserve some of the crap he has gotten. He’s a super nice guy in real life. Okay, he’s a weirdo, I’ll give you that. Yeah, there’s pictures of him on the Internet looking like a weirdo. But, that doesn’t mean that he’s not funny. Just because he’s a strange cat. Yeah, I’m proud of that. I’ve written and built many of the props. I like to say that he and I collaborate on a lot of the stuff. We’re kind of like Elton John and Bernie Taupin, except we don’t sleep together. I tell people that the only way he screws me is financially.

 Andrew: Can you tell me something that you’ve learned in the last year?

 Charlie: I’ve learned to stay away from pepper spray, because that really burns your eyes a lot. As a matter of fact, they have been having issues with pepper spray out here in Southern California. I just read an article where they said that the police had been using too much pepper spray and the article went on to say that Caucasian people said that it was unconstitutional, that African Americans said that it was racist, and that Mexican Americans had complained that it wasn’t hot enough. I thought that was kind of weird. Stay away from pepper spray is what I would say. I don’t mean that in any way to be racist. I am not a racist at all. As a matter of fact I used to have an Asian girlfriend. That’s true and she was sweet… and sour as it turns out.

 Andrew: Do you pen and paper all your jokes and then go on stage and tell them, or do you take a premise on stage and find your punchline there?

 Charlie: I do both. Sometimes with the suit and tie and glasses, twin brother Charles, I pen and paper it all out. The jokes are really short and they have to be really precise. Other times, especially if I am free-forming it, like if I am headlining and doing an hour, I’ll take a premise on stage with me and I’ll just see where it takes me. I’ll just say, what was I thinking about today? Like, people sending text messages, that was pissing me off one day. So, I just went on stage and thought I am just going to start talking about how I feel about it and see what comes out and if anything funny comes out on the spot, I’ll keep it. If nothing happens, that is fine too. I ended up getting some good jokes out of it doing it just off the cuff. I hate it when people send me one particular text message. The text message that says “call me,” That really pisses me off. What I have decided to do is I always call these people back and leave them a voice mail that says “text me.”

 Please visit Charlie at planetcharlie.com or see Charlie Viracola live at The Comedy & Magic Club’s 32nd Birthday as part of one of the 16 comics this Thursday, July 29 though Saturday, July 31. Reservations required (310) 372-1193 or comedyandmagicclub.com. ER

Paul Thorn plays Brixton Thursday night.

by Mark McDermott

Paul Thorn has won a few hard earned truths. And he’s here to deliver them.

Thorn, the soul-singing son of a Southern preacher, is an unlikely rising star. His self-released newest record – on his own Perpetual Obscurity label – is titled Pimps & Preachers and is #1 on the Americana charts and #88 on the Billboard charts. His is an unheralded rise for a large magnitude artist with an even larger back-story.

“That title cut, Pimps & Preachers, some folks might think there is just a catchy phrase I came up with,” said Thorn, who plays Brixton Thursday night, in an interview this week. “But it actually has real meaning in my life because my father was a Pentecostal preacher and his brother was a pimp and those two guys were my mentors when I was a kid growing up. So a lot of the way I look at the world was molded by them.”

Thorn is from Tupelo, Mississippi, home of Elvis Presley, and like Elvis, he spent his formative years both in black gospel and countrified white gospel churches. He was performing on the pulpit, tambourine in hand, by the age of 3, and started playing guitar at 12 – at the very same time his uncle, presumed dead, reappeared after a decade that had included stints a boxer, a pimp, and a stay in San Quentin.

“I lived in a small world where all I knew was the church and when my uncle came into my life he had traveled abroad and seen the broader world and he exposed me to things I never knew existed,” Thorn said. “It really helped me in life, a lot, and prepared me for going out into the broader world myself, which I inevitably did.”

Thorn likes to say there are many seasons in a life. He’s living proof.

Prior to becoming a fulltime musician somewhat later in life – he is 46 now and scored a major label record deal 13 years ago – he worked at a furniture factory and at one point became the ninth ranked middleweight prizefighter in the United States. The highlight of his boxing career – his uncle served as his trainer – came when he fought the great Roberto Duran. He lost in a sixth round TKO in an extremely bloody bout in Atlantic City in which the New York Post reported the scrappy kid from Tupelo won over the crowd and outfought the former champion.

“Paul Thorn had a rip in his forehead and his lip looked like it came out on the losing end with a street encounter with a stiletto,” the paper reported. “Duran…had a flesh wound in his scalp, a bullet hole sized cut on his left eyelid, and a bazooka hole in his reputation.”

For Thorn, boxing, like his music, was about more than the numbers or the fame.

“Man, I‘ve got a picture in my house of me and Duran fighting in the ring,” Thorn said. “I just look at it and it gives me a good feeling. Even though I was defeated, I won…It’s just another wonderful season in my life I can look back on.”

Thorn has co-written songs with his writing partner Billy Maddux since he was 17 years old, and he has produced a body of work that presents a bedraggled but oddly beautiful cast of characters who are likewise bloodied but unbowed. He may not have followed his father’s footsteps to the pulpit, but there is a deep gospel moral to many of these tales, a blend of Jesus and Hank Williams.

As he sings on “I Hope I’m Doing This Right”: “Most of my friends are from the wrong side of the track/Here’s why I do not have a problem with that/Hank Williams was in the darkness when he sang I saw the light/I believe there is good in everyone/I hope I am doing this right…”

The music has a Lowell George-era Little Feat groove (and slide), a little bit of Steve Earle growl, and a whole lot of Eddie Hinton gravel-voiced soul. But the revelation regarding Thorn is that there really aren’t adequate reference points: he’s strangely familiar but authentically original.

One of the truths he is here to deliver is about his hometown. John Lee Hooker famously sang about a great flood in Tupelo, while Van Morrison sang about Tupelo Honey. Neither existed; the flood was a tornado, and Tupelo has no honey.

“I guess God put me on Earth to straighten this mess out,” Thorn said. “Tupelo doesn’t have honey, but you can go to just about any Piggly Wiggly and get a can of Spam, fry it up, get it brown on both sides, and put it between two slices of white bread with some Miracle Whip and watch your favorite Tivo’d cartoons and you are in heaven.”

Thorn is also known as a riveting live performer.

“One of the advantages I have of being schooled by a pimp and preacher is I have a certain set of social skills,” he said. “Because a pimp and a preacher have a lot in common, actually – they both have the same wardrobe, they both promise you heaven while they dangle you over hell…and they both have the ability to talk to people. I benefited from learning from them some of them skills about how to just happily coexist with people.”

He also has a message of wrath for those who might not be able to make his show.

“Be sure to tell in this article somewhere if people read this and don’t come to the show, my Daddy told me to tell them they are going to hell,” Thorn said. “I am not telling you what to do, but that is what he said. All I can do is try to obey his will.”

For more info and free song downloads see www.paulthorn.com. ER

Artist Frank Minuto in his studio at Angels Gate, San Pedro. The painting on the right has part of the title, "Serve Man" visible. It references the Twilight Zone episode "To Serve Man." Fans will remember the concluding line is, "It's a cookbook."

by Judith B. Herman

As you enter the Southwest terminal at LAX this summer you’ll be greeted by a throng of giant whirring, buzzing robots. Don’t worry; they’re friendly. Their lights flash, “Happy Landings!” “Love the shoes!” and other cordial messages. Anyway, they’re only made of paint — 23 paintings and drawings  — the largest measuring eight by six feet.

The wizard behind the canvases is L.A. artist Frank Minuto, a shaggy-bearded bear of a man in shorts, shades and a multicolored hand-knit cap who looks like Santa Claus on a summer cruise. Minuto was born in the wrong time and place: Casper, Wyoming, in 1947. But his art teleports him to Paris in the 1920s, ancient Egypt and the Forbidden Planet of the 1950s.

Frank was a bit in awe of his father, a World War II submariner hero who had regularly cut high school to go hunting and fishing but passed finals by cramming the night before. Frank describes him as a “John Wayne type” skilled in the manly arts like packing his own bullets. His father dragged him along on elk-hunting trips, but the only child was “a disaster in the outdoors.” Chipmunks and bugs were enough to scare young Frank.

He’d rather be in his grandmother’s warm kitchen learning to cook her favorite Sicilian dishes or huddled in a corner writing and illustrating comic books about superheroes and robots. The robots could express feelings the shy boy didn’t dare show.

“I learned that keeping my mouth shut was best,” Minuto says. “I learned from Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy.” What the ventriloquist didn’t dare say could come out of the dummy’s mouth. While Frank had to eat every pea on his plate, later his robots would burn down the pea ranch.

In the mid-‘50s a TV ad captivated him. “I am Robert the Robot the mechanical man. Drive me, steer me wherever you can.” It swung its arms as it walked; it grasped objects; its eyes lit up and it talked! It was a plastic toy just over a foot high, but on TV it looked enormous.

“It was the only thing I ever really wanted,” Minuto says, “But I never got one.” Now he realizes the robot of his imagination was far superior to the toy, which would probably have conked out after a day. Not having it, “you had to kick your head into overdrive.”

As his father took various jobs like drafting and truck driving, the family moved around the West: from Casper to Denver, Laramie and Billings. When Frank was 11 they moved to California – San Gabriel, Gardena, Hermosa and then Alhambra. Moving was monotonous, but in Frank’s head the family car was a space ship and he was venturing into the cosmos.

Fifteen-year-old Frank helped out at his father’s restaurant in Hermosa Beach. But on breaks, a nearby establishment called The Insomniac lured him in. The coffeehouse-bookstore-gallery was a gathering place for artists and other Bohemian types. There were artists’ studios in the back.

According to Minuto many of the artists were pilots, survivors of World War II and Korea. They knew that every day was a gift and they lived it as if there were no tomorrows. Their philosophy: living each day to the fullest — savoring each meal as if it were the first you ever had, declaring your love for someone without hesitation and experiencing the joy of creation – resonated with the teenager. When one of the artists showed him his studio, where he had been working on series of nude portraits, Frank found his calling. “Anywhere a man can sit around looking at naked women and make a living” is where he wanted to be.

"Robot Faces" by Frank Minuto.

 But continually changing schools was unsettling. Frank became a class clown and a rebel. Although the standard school curriculum bored him, he loved learning about art and artists. But he had no respect for teachers who couldn’t answer his questions and he was kicked out of two high school art classes — one for refusing to draw with a ruler. Finally his rebellion reached the point where he was expelled from school and had to repeat his senior year.

A year after high school he was loading trucks for a citrus company when Mike Brennan, the district manager for Sunkist approached him. “I hear you want to go to Chouinard [Art Institute],” he said. “Tell you what. You paint me a clown. If I like it, I’ll sponsor you.”

The clown portrait and his portfolio gained him entry to the prestigious art school. But the “sponsorship” was a recommendation, not monetary support, and young Frank was already married – to a woman with three children. So he got up at midnight and loaded trucks until 8 a.m., schlepped his art gear onto the bus and got to class by 8:45, stayed until 5 p.m., took the bus home, studied until 7 and went to bed. So much for la vie bohème.

But through his studies at Chouinard and later at Otis College of Art and Design and the University of London, as well as independent reading and visiting museums and galleries, Minuto gained a thorough background in art and art history. The depth of his knowledge is apparent to his students at the Palos Verdes Art Center where his classes are often wait-listed.

Although Palos Verdes is a slog from the Long Beach home he shares with his second wife Debbie, it’s worth it, Minuto says, because he enjoys teaching even more than creating his own work. “Painting is boring when done alone. And scary,” he says.

In his Painters Workshop he serves as mentor rather than instructor to artists working in every style from photorealism to complete abstraction. Joy Haselhorst, whose cartoons on wood panels satirize space-age anxieties, says Minuto, “encourages artists to think outside the box.” His nonjudgmental attitude allows artists the freedom to express their unique visions, she says.

Rosemary Bandes, whose work ranges from impressionistic landscapes to mixed-media reliefs incorporating metal hardware, says, “Frank has an incredible eye for how a painting might be improved, no matter what the style or subject. He’s also very encouraging. He always pushes me beyond what I think I can do.”

Minuto enjoys playing with the styles of favorite artists like Larry Rivers and Jasper Johns in his robot paintings. He’s also having the time of his life building sets to turn his ramshackle former-army-barracks studio at Angels Gate in San Pedro into a Paris café in the ‘20s and the dressing room of the Lido show in Las Vegas in the ‘50s.  There he photographs costumed models for multilayered shadow-box constructions as well as for paintings.

But for now he’s basking in the glow of the robots’ flashing lights. The LAX show is a hit, eliciting smiles from weary travelers and attracting thousands of viewers to his website (www.frankminuto.com), plus interested buyers, offers of more shows and universal “thumbs up” from airport employees. PEN

“Les Misérables” – Clean-cut today, tomorrow they’ll be manning the barricades. Photo by Susan Truman

by Janet Oshiro

“Marcelo! You have a girl running away with the gate! I need a bench! Any bench! Just a bench! The crate should go to the left, no – the other left.” As Summer Dey Cacciagioni quickly speaks into her headset, a crew member runs frantically around the stage, moving the aforementioned crate through a mass of bodies belting out musical numbers. He places it down at least three different times until Cacciagioni is satisfied. She takes a couple notes, pausing only briefly before communicating directions to the crew once again.

Onstage, actors ages 11 to 19 sing with all their might, and in the audience, parent volunteers and even offstage actors are rushing through the seats with props, stopping frequently to talk to Cacciagioni. Amidst this organized chaos, there is a musical.

“This is our second time doing ‘Les Misérables,’” says Cacciagioni, “It’s pretty huge.”

Cacciagioni runs a local youth theater company called Encore Entertainers that performs most of the time in the Mira Costa High School auditorium. With degrees from both El Camino College and Chapman University, Cacciagioni is no stranger to theater.

Theater in her blood 

“I’ve been doing theater my whole life and I’ve performed in over 100 shows,” Cacciagioni says. “When I was 16 I had to write a paper about a job I liked. So I interviewed my director and I wrote that I wanted to grow up producer and director my own theater company.” 

She was finally able to do so three years ago, when she formed Encore Entertainers with her husband, Marcelo. 

“I worked for everybody in the business for about 15 years,” Cacciagioni says, “and then my husband and I decided, ‘You know, it’s time for us to go out and do our own thing.’” 

The theater company is essentially a day-traveling theater troupe. With no one venue to call home; Cacciagioni and her students rehearse wherever they can. Often, she finds a way to frequent Coast Christian School, the Hermosa Community Center, the Rolling Hills Covenant Community Center, and many other locations. 

“We never rehearse [in the Mira Costa auditorium]; we just do our shows here,” she says. “We’ve also done performances at El Camino College and the Hermosa Beach Playhouse – wherever we can get space.” 

As for why she picked Mira Costa as her venue of choice, Cacciagioni says, “Marcelo graduated from Mira Costa. When we were looking to start something up, we thought, ‘Let’s go back to our roots!’” 

Encore Entertainers have performed everything from “Peter Pan” to “Grease.” But “Les Misérables” is by far the most popular and Cacciagioni’s favorite – she likes it so much, she’s directed it twice in the three years she’s been running the company. 

“We’ve done it once before,” she says; “it was the second show we produced after forming Encore Entertainers.” 

This production of “Les Misérables” is Cacciagioni’s way of honoring the one musical that has inspired her the most. Encore Entertainers is a company that was born from her love for theater, which in turn was nourished by the musical “Les Misérables.” 

“‘Les Misérables’ is the earliest professional production I can remember seeing,” Cacciagioni says. “A friend of mine was cast in the L.A. production as Gavroche. It was also the first time I got to see somebody I knew in a professional show – it was really neat. And I was hooked.” 

“Les Misérables” has also led Cacciagioni to embrace her current position as producer and director of this show. 

“It was always my dream to play Eponine, but I never dreamed I could actually grow up and direct it. Being able to direct it has ended up being cooler than being in it. When you direct, it’s almost like you get to play all the roles.” 

In the round 

Perhaps the one thing that sets Cacciagioni’s “Les Misérables” apart from other productions is the massive turntable built from scratch that adorns the stage. Although it is not immediately visible to the eye, it takes up most of the stage and is used in almost every scene. The addition of the turntable adds another dimension to the environment and experience of this production, allowing the illusion of a more spacious stage. Cacciagioni and her husband co-designed and built the turntable together. 

“We have a shop in Torrance where we build everything,” she says. “We’re also able to paint it, which is nice because usually we’re unable to paint the actual stage.” 

All of the costumes and makeup are prepared by parent volunteers, led by Cheryl Oritz. And although the designs for the costumes range from show to show, Oritz is adamant that the costumes of “Les Misérables” are designed to copy those seen on Broadway. 

Cacciagioni has mainly relied on word of mouth to advertise her theater company. Maura Chen, a violinist in the orchestra, says that she “heard about the musical through friends who were also interested in playing in the pit orchestra.” 

There was no audition process for Chen and the other orchestra members, and this is a trait that usually applies to the productions of Encore Entertainers. However, the acting of “Les Misérables” demands auditions. Cacciagioni says that “it depends on the show. Sometimes it’s first come first serve. For this show you had to audition to get in. We don’t take everybody.” 

There is also a participation fee that varies from $295 to $450, depending on which show is being performed. 

The cast of “Les Misérables” worked all summer to perfect this particular production. They rehearsed on Saturdays for a couple of months and have spent the last three weeks working out technical kinks and problems. While it is obvious that Cacciagioni has dedicated herself to this production, the passion of her actors and actresses is also apparent through their stunningly clear and in-tune vocals. Like their director, the performers have an emotional investment not only in “Les Misérables,” but also Encore Entertainers. 

“This will be my ninth production with Encore Entertainers,” states Alison Schiller, who plays the role of Eponine. “If I could pick anything I wanted to do, this would be it.” 

Cacciagioni has truly found a way to blend her past and the present together in this dynamic show. It is her hope that the musical will strike the hearts of not only her audience, but also her students, and inspire them the same way “Les Misérables” inspired her when she was younger. 

Les Misérables, presented by Encore Entertainers, is being performed tomorrow and Saturday, as well as Friday, July 30, at 7:30 p.m., with matinees at 2 p.m. on Sunday and next Saturday, July 31, in the Mira Costa High School Auditorium, 1401 Artesia Blvd., Manhattan Beach. Tickets, $18 at the door. For more information, or to become involved with future productions of the company, visit encoreentertainers.org. ER 

Ryan Stout, who performs at The Comedy & Magic Club Thursday through Saturday this week.

by Andrew Wantuck

If you appreciate well crafted jokes that on the surface seem dark, then you may appreciate Ryan Stout’s perspective on the world around us. Stout has a style that recalls comics of an era that’s passed us by. He digs one level deeper than some comics who hold the microphone, and his jokes always have a point of view. Yet Stout isn’t preaching from a pulpit because he is too busy crafting jokes that are respectful to the art form. They are innovative in the manner of George Carlin, Mort Sahl, Bill Hicks, and even Jonathan Swift. If you pay attention to the world, can read polysyllabic words, and are sick of the dumbed-down, pop culture sludge that we are fed on “Access Hollywood,” Ryan Stout’s your man.

Andrew: You have explained your comedy as “where logic and morals collide;” can you expand on that please?

Ryan: If you follow a strain of logic out to its furthest point it becomes illogical. People have said that before. Usually, if you take a moral stance on something and then follow it logically all the way, you realize that there is a lot of grey area in there. It comes down to you can know something is right, but feel like it’s still wrong. It is what your mind thinks versus what your heart feels kind of thing. It is certainly not very nice to laugh at somebody falling down the stairs, but if they fall down the stairs at the battered women’s shelter, now you have all sorts of logical contexts and cultural cues involved that turn it into a joke, and now you are laughing, but you know you shouldn’t because of the conflict involved.

Andrew: It’s a joke because there are so many bad things happening at once that it is not even possible?

Ryan: Well, almost. It is actually totally in the realm of what’s possible, so sometimes people think I am the bad guy for bringing it up, but I am just pointing out that it is possible.

Andrew:  After a show, have people come up to you like you were the bad guy?

Ryan: People continually come up to me and say, “I really like the politically incorrect stuff,” and then I say, “What did I possibly say that was politically incorrect?” I just asked questions on stage; that is all I really did.

Andrew:  How has Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” influenced you?

Ryan:  When I first read that paper in high school, I actually heard George Carlin’s voice in my head reading along with the words. That is a prime example of what we are talking about. Swift was saying, If I can humbly suggest a logical way to solve this hunger problem in Ireland it would be for us to eat babies, but hear me out. It was one of the first satires that was a perfectly logical solution and yet, morally, it was one of the worst possible ideas you could come up with. But the fact that it works is where the humor comes in.

Andrew: You always wear a suit and tie on stage; what is your reasoning behind the wardrobe choice?

Ryan: Early on, when I first started doing standup, I looked like a college kid and I would talk about these logical situations that seemed seedy, dark, immoral; and the audience would sit there and say, “Why is this nice young boy talking this way?”

Andrew: [laughs]

Ryan: Then I had the idea to give the audience the impression of what the show was going to be like as soon as they saw me. What I wanted that impression to be is that, “okay, this has been thought out; he has created something to give to us. It is something that has been worked on, crafted, honed and now it’s going to be in front of us.” When they see me in a suit and tie for the first time they don’t think, “Oh, this is a guy that is going to be doing cart wheels.” Instead, they think that this guy is going to stand there and talk. It’s almost an unconscious authoritative figure type situation. I think they listen because, “Look at him; he must know what he is talking about.”

Andrew: What is something that you have learned in the last year?

Ryan: I learned to follow my own advice. A comedian that I do not know sent me this joke and asked what I think about it. The joke was something about things they sell at the dollar store, and my initial advice was like, “Well, it has been done before; you are not really breaking new ground.” He emailed me back and asked if I had any suggestions on how to make the joke better. So I gave him some decent advice, asking, How do you feel about the subject matter? Don’t just make an observation; get in there and learn how you feel about it and figure out where the joke comes next. Feel, think, comment. Then I thought, wow, if I could put as much work in my own material as I can when people ask me for advice I could be really good at this.

Andrew:  Do you ever just take a premise on stage and then find a punch line, or do you always have your punch line in advance?

Ryan: I truly wish I could just go onstage with a premise and just be funny, but it just doesn’t work that way for me. I have tried it and it never works out well. It is one of those things that I admire most about guys like Louie CK, who gets on stage and says, “Let’s talk about this thing,” and it ends up amazing. So much of my material is trying to put a new idea in someone’s head, like I am not trying to play on old clichés that people will willingly nod their heads at in agreement. I am trying to create something that you have never thought of before, and I am trying to create something I have never thought of before. My goal when I sit down to write is to come up with something so obvious, but has just never come through my head. I know that this is something that takes work. Though, I have noticed that when I am on stage, and I’m having fun with something I wrote, that the tags do come. I do improvise things that become mainstays with the joke. Performance does add to the piece.

Andrew: Can you compare The Comedy & Magic Club to other clubs in the country?

Ryan: The good thing about The Comedy & Magic Club is that I don’t know if I’ve ever seen anyone in the crowd who wants to disrupt the show. That isn’t something that happens everywhere. I have been to shows where the audience came in because it was $10 for all the beer they could drink and that is indicative of how the show went because they are not there to be entertained. I think that The Comedy & Magic Club has almost trained its audiences to be some of the best in the country. It’s like if somebody yells out or is too drunk they get thrown out, and the person is like, “We are never coming here again!” And the club goes, “That’s perfect; we don’t want you here or people like you, so please don’t send anyone you know or your relatives.”

Ryan Stout is performing during the Comedy & Magic Club’s “32nd Birthday Bash; 16 Comics for  $16,” tonight through Saturday; as well as Thursday, July 29, Friday, July 30, and Saturday, July 31. Reservations required. (310) 372-1193, or go to comedyandmagicclub.com. ER

Thelonious Monk and the Town Hall band in rehearsal, February 1959. Hal Overton, in coat and tie, is standing by the door.

by Bondo Wyszpolski

This alluring and well-illustrated book is relevant now in light of the Getty Center’s newest exhibition, “Engaged Observers: Documentary Photography since the Sixties,” because it highlights W. Eugene Smith (1918-1978) in collaboration with his second wife, Aileen M. Smith, and their in-depth photographic essay on the mercury poisoning at Minamata Bay in Japan. Although the iconic image, “Tomoko and Mother in the Bath” (1972), is no longer licensed for publication (you’ll find it on the internet anyway), other riveting images from the series are on view through November 14, as well as stunning work by eight more photographers ranging from Leonard Freed to Sebastião Salgado.

The Jazz Loft Project is an entirely different animal. In 1957, Smith left his wife and four children and moved to 821 Sixth Avenue, in the wholesale flower district of New York City. For the next eight years he documented nearly everything that went on there. From inside and outside his fourth floor apartment window he shot a thousand rolls of film (40,000 exposures). And, having wired much of the building, he recorded 1,740 reels of audio tape.

Twenty years after Smith’s death, Sam Stephenson says that he “picked through all 1,740 of Smith’s reels of tape and I noted 129 names of jazz musicians chicken-scratched by Smith on the labels. I was hooked.”

The tapes (later converted to CDs), plus photographs and other archival material, had been shipped to the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona from New York a few months before Smith’s death, from a stroke, at age 59.

How he’d got there

Jazz musican Zoot Sims (c.1957-1964)

In the 1940s and ‘50s, Smith had been a notable and respected photographer for Life and other major picture-oriented publications. He’d been in Okinawa during World War II, was wounded and carried off the battlefield on a stretcher, but he developed a lifelong interest in Japanese culture. His fussy perfectionism is actually reminiscent of the novelist Yuko Mishima, of whom we’ll say more in just a moment.

He’d quit his high-paying job at Life in 1955 and then accepted an offer to spend three weeks in Pittsburgh, documenting the city for its bicentennial. The contract called for 100 images, but instead Smith remained for a year and took 22,000 pictures. He wanted the endeavor to include 2,000 of his negatives, but since he refused to concede editorial control to the potential buyers – Life and Look – the Pittsburgh project, as it came to be called, simply collapsed. And apparently so did Smith.

The building in which Smith ended up – 821 Sixth Avenue – was and would be the haunt of jazz musicians from 1954 until around 1964, and the roll call of names is impressive, starting with Thelonious Monk and Hal Overton, the latter’s collaborations and rehearsals with Monk forming a valuable chapter in this book. And the others? They include Miles Davis, Charles Mingus, Teddy Charles, Bill Evans, Roland Kirk, Zoot Sims, Jimmy Giuffre, Roy Haynes, Sonny Clark, Stan Getz, Jim Hall, Don Cherry, Paul Bley, Buck Clayton, Vic Dickenson, Pee Wee Russell, Ornette Coleman, Alice Coltrane, and Joe Henderson. And not just musicians. Diane Arbus, Robert Frank, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Salvador Dali, Anaïs Nin, and Norman Mailer also dropped in at one time or another.

In 1960 or thereabouts, Smith mentioned that he was “doing a book on the building itself… out the window and within the building, because it’s quite a weird, interesting story.” For us, looking back, it’s a period of time that lingers, but just barely. Some of the principal figures are still alive; many others are not.

Music, and photography

W. Eugene Smith, who’d traveled the world on assignment, didn’t seem to want to live too comfortably, and so his jazz haven – with its colorful cast of characters who could come by at almost any hour of the day or night (where the music could pick up at two, three, or four in the morning) – may have given him the creative charge that he needed.

“I’ve learned more about photography from music and literature than I have from anything else,” Smith said in 1963, “as far as the idealistic stimulation for seeing.”

In late September of 1961, Stephenson writes of Smith, “He was forty-three years old and, as usual, broke. Whatever money he had was spent on cameras and film, darkroom supplies, recording equipment, vinyl records, books, alcohol, and amphetamines.”

“Vinyl records” should be underlined. “When he died, in 1978, he had only eighteen dollars in the bank but he owned more than twenty-five thousand vinyl records, mostly classical and jazz.” Among his favorites:  Beethoven, Bartok, and Thelonious Monk (he compared his essay for the aborted Pittsburgh project to Beethoven’s late string quartets).

As for the photographs, The Jazz Loft Project contains 227 of them, and most images, whether of musicians at play or people on the street outside, receive their own page (the book also reproduces the front and back of different reel-to-reel cases, so that we can see the “chicken-scratches” for ourselves). But the thing is, they document an era and a scene, and they also evoke the passion, the energy, and the serious commitment of the musicians. Often grainy and always in black in white, they can be rough and sweet at the same time.

Naturally, the process for the photographer is highly selective: Memorable pictures rarely emerge of their own accord. As Smith said, “If you can go into the darkroom to print and… you can come out and have one good picture printed, that’s an evening. You’ve done something. You know, that’s a lot: to actually come out and make one good print.”

W. Eugene Smith (c.1957), with his cameras, at his fourth floor window, 821 Sixth Avenue.

Smith – as the Pittsburgh project revealed – was something of a control freak, in modern parlance, in search of the perfect image, or maybe even sequences of images, but he was at times unable to corral everything into a tight, cohesive whole. As someone else noted, this Doctor Johnson found his Boswell in Sam Stephenson, whose previous books, W. Eugene Smith’s Pittsburgh Project and W. Eugene Smith 55, seem to have him just warming up. Apparently he’s now at work on a major biography of the photographer.

As for the structure and narrative flow of The Jazz Loft Project, Stephenson has taken his cue from the rather chaotic nature of the times and the place itself, not to mention the music, and so the book is a kind of shuffle, drawers opened here and there, and the text is something of a collage stuffed with various snippets from the audio tapes or from the reminiscences of people Stephenson interviewed. Not everything, by any means, pertains to jazz, and yet it all feels like one big rambling but rousing jam session when you get to the end of it.

For example, Smith recorded – on May 8, 1960 – part of Edward R. Murrow’s “Small World” program on CBS. It was a discussion on art and culture and is particularly notable because it has Tennessee Williams and Yukio Mishima speaking about the brutality and elegance in works of art.

Smith recorded other literary endeavors as well – from the radio, from television, from spoken word long-playing albums. The book contains two pages excerpted from an audio tape made when James Baldwin was on TV in 1963. There’s also a transcription of a recording in which Smith is trying to reach Oona Chaplin in Switzerland by telephone. She’s not in, and so the conversation, as we have it, is simply between Smith and the overseas operator. Who can say why Smith recorded this, but these sorts of things add flavor and perhaps a jazz-like element of surprise and spontaneity into this book. It is, at times, a curious mélange, but it works, and it does what it should – which is to make us curious about learning more of this very distinctive and brilliant photographer. Fortunately, the current exhibition and its accompanying catalogue by Brett Abbott can make that happen. ER

Longtime Hermosa Beach post- punk band Trenchtown plays an acoustic set tomorrow from 4 to 6 p.m. and then from 6 to 8 p.m. they’re throwing a release party for their new CD. It all takes place at The Lighthouse Café, 30 Pier Ave., Hermosa Beach. Photo by Ashley Sallows. (310) 376-9833 or visit trenchtownmusic.com.

Friday, July 9

Colorful exuberance

“Not Actuality, Surreality,” featuring the work of Dora Perez-Meyer, opens with a reception from 5 to 9 p.m. at Ma Griffe, 3624 S. Gaffey St., San Pedro. Complimentary refreshments, handcrafted by the artist. The work is up through August 29. Call (310) 547-2154 or go to magriffegalerie.com.

Slick back your hair

The Belasco Theatre Company is presenting “Grease” tonight and tomorrow at 7:30, plus matinees at 2 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday, in the Hermosa Beach Playhouse, 710 Pier Ave., Hermosa Beach. The 1950s musical was written by Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey. Tickets, $15 general. (310) 796-7952 or go to belasco.org.

If Pericles was here…

The “South Bay Greek Festival” takes place today from 5 to 10 p.m., tomorrow from noon to 10 p.m., and Sunday from noon to 9 p.m. at 722 Knob Hill Ave., Redondo Beach. Live music, dancing, arts and crafts; not to mention Greek food and pastries. Admission, $2 general, $1 seniors, kids under 12 free. (310) 540-2434 or go to sbgreekfestival.com.

Saturday, July 10

The spotlight’s on him

Richard Stephens has a solo show opening tonight with a reception from 6 to 9 p.m. at Cannery Row Studios, 604 N. Francisca Ave., Redondo Beach. Gallery hours, Thursday through Sunday from noon to 6 p.m. Call (888) 366-1988 or go to canneryrowstudios.com.

Art show, part 2

There’s also a private art show in the attics of Cannery Row, 604 N. Francisca Ave., Redondo Beach, that features the work of John Cantu and Tomo Koike, with this one going from 6 to 11 p.m. Call (424) 206-3756 or go to canneryrowstudios.com.

The sound of collaboration

“Zoom 2,” featuring “Love Letters to a Surrogate,” is a one-day event of 17 ongoing performances, occurring in real time from noon to 5 p.m. throughout the Torrance Art Museum, 3320 Civic Center Drive, Torrance. Immediately after the event, at 6 p.m., there is a panel discussion with Marco Schindelmann, Robert Crouch, and Warren Neidich, the co-curators of the “Zoom 2” exhibition. Free. (310) 618-6340.

Discuss it, and hear it

The South Bay New Orleans Jazz Club, presenting Dixieland and traditional jazz in a live music format, meets from 1 to 5 p.m. at the Knights of Columbus Hall, 214 Avenue “I” in Redondo Beach. The featured band is clarinetist Jack Widmark’s So. Cal. Hot Jazz Dixie Jammers. Admission, $9 general ($7 members; free for visiting musicians who come to play). Call (310) 376-2591.

Kicking back

Upstream plays reggae from 5 to 7 p.m. at the Polliwog Park amphitheater in Manhattan Beach. Free. (310) 802-5417 or go to citymb.info.

Each day a miracle

The Wellness Community presents its 14th annual “Celebrate Wellness” event from 4 to 7 p.m. at the South Coast Botanical Gardens, 26300 Crenshaw Blvd., Palos Verdes Peninsula. Food and wine specialties from area restaurants and wineries. Also, a chance to bid on meals to bikes or a trip to Las Vegas. Tickets, $120 (have to be 21 or over). Call (310) 376-3550 or go to wellnessandcancer.org.

Cheaper than flying there

Bridge USA presents their “Japanese Summer Festival” from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. at the Cultural Arts Center, 3330 Civic Center Drive, Torrance. Over 60 booths with food, kimonos, souvenirs, plus dancers, live music, and a Mikoshi parade. Admission, $5; $3. More at bridgeusa.com.

Taking pictures

Angels Gate Cultural Center has three photography shows opening up, and there’s a reception for all of them from 2 to 5 p.m. at the center, 3601 S. Gaffey St., San Pedro. Featured: Slobodan Dimitrov: “Artist Portraits,” Camilo Cruz: “Theatre of Souls,” and Nicholas Grider: “Soldiers and a Sailor.” Through August 29. Call (310) 519-0936 or go to angelsgateart.org.

Complimentary coffee

Percussionist Andrea Centazzo and pianist Don Preston play at 6 p.m. at Alvas Showroom, 1417 W. Eighth St., San Pedro. You may remember Preston from his days with The Mothers of Invention. Suggested donation, $20. Call (800) 403-3447 or go to alvasshowroom.com.

Wednesday, July 14

A lively gathering

The Doug Webb Quartet, with Webb on sax, performs from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. at Sangria Restaurant, 68 Pier Plaza, Hermosa Beach. (310) 376-4412. ER

Punk rock meets stand-up comedy in Joe Sib’s one-man, broken word show, “California Calling,” which comes to Johnny’s Dive next Thursday. Photo by Christopher Doneez

by Andrea Ruse

Few people can pinpoint a single day that changed their lives.

Ask Joe Sib and he will tell you immediately — December 27, 1981.

He was 13 years old and living in Santa Cruz when his dad took him for the first time to the famed Winchester Skatepark in San Jose.

Sib discovered two things that day that forever altered his path: skateboarding and, perhaps more importantly, punk rock music.

The fast, hard-edged, stripped-down sounds of Sex Pistols, Descendants and The Clash came as a refreshing shock to a kid used to listening to Elton John, Ray Charles and The Eagles.

“All of a sudden at 13, I go to this skateboard park and it was like, ‘Wow. What’s this music?’” said Sib, who now lives in Glendale. “Music took over everything at that point and I wanted to find out more about it.”

While many bewildered parents espoused the supposed evils of the new genre during its emergence in the late ‘70s/early ‘80s — anarchy, sex, drugs, aggression and filthy, ripped, second-hand clothing — in punk rock Sib found his salvation.

“For me, growing up in Santa Cruz and San Jose, if I wouldn’t have discovered punk rock and wanted to be in a band, I would’ve ended up hanging at the Point smoking weed and drinking forties,” he said. “Punk gave me a purpose and a direction.”

A latch-key kid of divorced parents, Sib spent the majority of his after-school adolescence obsessing over his newfound love.

“With no parents in the house, you have lots of time to research something you’re into,” Sib said. “And all I wanted to do was skateboard and listen to punk.

But back in the pre-Google days of the ‘80s, Sib had to find creative ways to get his hands and ears on everything punk.

“I’d have to get a magazine from a kid who brought it back from vacation with his parents,” he recalled. “Sometimes by the time you got the magazine, you didn’t even know if the band you were looking for was together anymore.”

By 1985, Sib was sporting a foot-long mohawk and throwing elbows and getting to know the punk pioneers.

Over the next 30 years, Sib, 42, entrenched himself in that world, forming bands, a record label and a nationally syndicated radio show, as well as hanging and working with a slew of punk icons. In 2004, Sib was the last person to interview legend Johnny Ramone of The Ramones before he died of cancer.

At 15, Sib formed his first punk band, Frontline, of which he was the lead singer. Soon, he was casually jamming and becoming friends with some of the biggest names in the biz.

Bad Religion. Pennywise. The Adolescents. The list goes on, with tons of stories that go with it.

In 1991, Sib formed punk band Wax, best known for its song “California,” which signed with Interscope Records and later Virgin Records. Wax’s music was featured on several major films during the ‘90s, including Mallrats. In 1995, Sib and longtime friend Bill Armstrong started the record label Side-One Dummy, which has represented such artists as Suicidal Tendencies and Flogging Molly. That same year, Wax fizzled, prompting Sib to form the band 22 Jacks with an all-star cast: Steve Soto and Sandy Hansen from The Adolescents, Scott Shiflett from Face to Face and Jason Cropper from Weezer. The group officially disbanded in 2001, but still performs periodically throughout California.

In 2004, Sib started hosting Complete Control Radio, a late night punk rock radio show that was originally broadcast on L.A.’s now extinct Indie 103.1 FM station. The show now airs on 98.7 FM from 10 p.m. to midnight every Saturday and is syndicated throughout California, Austin, Denver, Portland and Phoenix.

“I have no method to the show except a cup of coffee and trying to play as much music as I can in two hours,” Sib said on Complete Control’s website.

Listeners tune in to hear old and new school punk, as well as interviews with big name bands, including NOFX, Rancid, X, Bouncing Souls, Bad Religion and Tiger Army.

As Sib started sharing stories from the punk archives of his own life, the show started to also take on a personal flavor.

“I would tell lots of stories when people would come in to the studio,” he said. “This one band that was touring said they wished they could leave with my stories.”

The request prompted Sib to make a rough CD with him recounting 30 years worth of stories on discovering punk, the characters he’s met and how music saved his life. The CD was casually handed out to friends, concert goers and people who passed through Complete Control’s studio.

“Everybody loved it,” Sib said. “So last summer, I started writing it down.”

By last October, Sib, along with actress/director Sydney Walsh,  had fleshed out the stories into a one-man, broken word performance called “California Calling,” which comes to Johnny’s Dive in Redondo Beach next Thursday.

Think stand-up comedy meets punk rock.

“I call it ‘broken word’ because ‘spoken word’ sounds way too serious,” Sib said.

The one-hour show features Sib recounting tales of growing up punk, accompanied by 45 photos and, of course, lots of music.

“The whole show centers around one day,” Sib said. “The day that shaped me and put me on course for the rest of my life.”

With a mix of poignancy and humor, Sib also explains how music pulled him through the rough years of adolescence. In one story, he talks about his fears of buying his first Sex Pistols album.

“God was a factor in my life,” he said. “I didn’t want to do anything to piss him off. I thought, ‘I hope he’s cool with this.’”

Sib started performing the show in October twice a month all over the U.S., including L.A., New York, San Francisco, Seattle and Portland. Earlier this year, he opened for Bad Religion at the Hollywood House of Blues with a 20 minute version of his set in front of 1,500 people.

“I didn’t know if the younger kids would like it, but they loved it,” Sib said. “These are the bands they grew up listening to too and connect with.”

Sib also did an interview on a London radio station and the promoter invited him to bring his act to Britain, the birthplace of punk rock.

“It’s a fun show,” he said. “Not too heavy and with lots of music. And it’s different every time.”

In September, Sib will release an album version of California Calling entitled “True Stories and Bad Ideas,” produced by Side-One Dummy Records.

“Every time I do the show, so many people say, ‘Your story is exactly like mine except with a different band or type of music.’” Sib said. “It’s really about how music in general is such an important force in people’s lives. I really didn’t know it would be something that connects so much with people.”

Joe Sib will perform California Calling at Johnny’s Dive in Redondo Beach at 7 p.m. on Thursday, July 15. Doors open at 6 p.m. For more information, visit www.californiacalling.net. ER

At the cast party of “Toy Story 3” – (l-r), Aliens, Jessie, Bullseye, Rex, Mr. Potato Head, Woody, Mrs. Potato Head, Slinky Dog, Hamm, and Barbie. ©Disney/Pixar

by Keith Robinson

When his son was four, my friend Chris explained the appeal the purple dinosaur Barney has to children. “When Disney or the Muppets make a film,” he said, “they always put something in it to entertain adults, too, so you don’t kill yourself when you have to watch it with your kid. And the kid knows there’s stuff in there that’s going over his head. But Barney – there’s nothing in there that appeals to adults. The kids know that show is 100% for them. That’s why they dig it.”

Watching Pixar’s “Toy Story 3,” I thought of Chris’s theory. But here, Pixar hasn’t just made a kids’ movie that has some moments for adults, “Toy Story 3” is a movie for adults, specifically baby-boomer adults. And a terrific, hilarious movie it is. If kids find something they like in it, too, that’s just a bonus.

The characters are based on baby-boomer toys. The plot references old prison films, horror films, and even throws in a nod to one of the first Pixar short films, “Tin Toy.” There are jokes at the expense of Barbie’s “friend” Ken. And the motivations come out of a longing to still be useful – and to be wanted – as one gets older. Not a lot here aimed specifically at the sandbox crowd.

Sure, there is some silliness that appeals to all ages. When Mr. Potato Head has to become Mr. Tostada Head, for instance, or the moves spaceman Buzz Lightyear makes when he’s switched to Spanish. And the gangly, flailing way cowboy Woody runs brings out the inner seven-year-old in me; I want to go out on the playground to imitate it, as I’m sure is happening right now on playgrounds across America.

But even though there were plenty of kids at the screening I attended, I didn’t hear the maniacal, choking laughter of children I recall from when I saw the original “Toy Story” 15 years ago. What laughter there was from the children was drowned out by the laughter from the adults. After the film was over, I asked a woman accompanied by two small children how she liked the film. She beamed; “Loved it!” What about the kids? “Oh, they loved it, too,” then her voice dropped to a whisper, “but it was a bit too scary at times.”

Indeed, some of the movie does get pretty intense. I attended the screening with a 35-year-old woman who shuddered at one point and muttered, “Ew, that’s creepy!” Some of the toys’ adventures are terrifying. Others soar with excitement. The opening minutes, a sequence in which the toys live out a fantasy from their owner’s imagination, is pure joy.

Despite the IMAX and 3D and state-of-the-art computer generated imagery, “Toy Story 3” is an old-fashioned film about old-fashioned values, derived from a carefully crafted, literate script. It’s not giving anything away to say that Pixar wants you to leave the theater wiping a tear from your eye; it’s what they do. Lots of so-called children’s films follow this formula today: 90 minutes of fast-paced gags capped with a bittersweet moment to make you cry. But the “Toy Story” cast and crew put in enough emotion throughout the movie, to make the motivations of the characters real no matter how outrageous the action becomes, that the touching moments at the end of the film feel sincere, not tacked on.

Yes, you’ll laugh, you’ll cry. The kids can have Barney. We grown-ups will hang with our buddies Buzz and Woody. ER