Jervey Tervalon

M.J.

Fabulously, Fucking Weird: Michael Jackson as Video Game Zombie

Jervey Tervalon
The day before Michael Jackson died, my daughters and I played Plants vs. Zombies, a lighthearted video game about the eternal conflict between heroic plants and goofy zombies. Suddenly, a tiny Michael Jackson Thriller zombie whirled about to our delight. We were happy to whack him with butternut squash and frozen green......

LA People 2009: Hula Hoop Love — Tisha Marina

Jervey Tervalon
Sometimes being a community activist, teacher or just a concerned citizen can weary the best-intentioned of us. I taught school in inner-city Los Angeles and after five years I knew I’d given all I could give. But there are those among us who not only find joy working under difficult......

South L.A. Serial Killer: If a Body Falls in an Alley …

Jervey Tervalon
Last week, as I flipped through my starving-artist-thin daily newspaper, I saw the photo of Barbara Ware, a victim of the elusive South Los Angeles serial killer (or, as Christine Pelisek, the L.A. Weekly reporter who broke the story, tagged him, the Grim Sleeper), who seemingly has returned to killing......

Obama's Inauguration Through the Post-Race Eyes of Clarence Thomas

Jervey Tervalon
I’ll be watching Barack Obama’s swearing in as our 44th president among family and friends, enjoying the sweet taste of triumph and heartfelt relief. But the Inauguration party I’d like to crash is at Clarence Thomas’ house. Maybe Ward Connerly would get an invite too, though I suspect Clarence couldn’t......
Credit: Kevin Scanlon

L.A. People: Phil LaMarr, the Voice

Jervey Tervalon
It took me a while, but I eventually discovered that many of the voices insinuating themselves into my head from obsessive Cartoon Network viewing belong to Phil LaMarr. While LaMarr has a successful acting career, including a pivotal and strangely humorous decapitation scene in Pulp Fiction, and many years on......

Prop 8: Blacks and Gay Marriage — The Wrong Kind of Unity

Jervey Tervalon
Some years ago, at one of Pasadena’s largest African-American churches with my daughters, I was in a pleasant, meditative state, anticipating a relatively quick end to the service once the sermon concluded. So I hardly stirred when the guest minister introduced herself and began to work her way through an......
Credit: Kevin Scanlon

Martin Kersels

Jervey Tervalon
Martin Kersels’ art, no matter the medium — whether it’s video, dance, performance, sculpture, oils or photography — is an extension of his unrestrained exuberance and the division between his work and how he moves in the world, which he describes as being either thunderous or ephemeral, a thin membrane......