Letters

—Jeff Davis
Los Angeles

Marc Cooper’s message was clear. I liked what I heard about Dotson. Helping
to create a groundswell is admirable, particularly since he does sound like
the best man for the job. Too damn bad it’s against his own wishes. Could drafting
him entice him, one wonders?

—Ms. Dale McElroy
Santa Monica

IDENTITY CRISES OF THE SMALL AND SHAPELESS

Although I groove with both “high Modernism and Tin Pan
Alley,” the synthesis that Harold Meyerson refers to in “City
Without a Story” [May 31–June 6] hasn’t defined New York for more than half
a century. In fact, the New York I remember from my stay there as far back as
1960 was more Robert Frank’s Pull My Daisy than Edmund Wilson’s I
Thought of Daisy. You guys and gals miss the point when you claim (1) that
L.A. has no history, and (2) that a cliché mythos will cure a city’s ills. Every
spot on this planet is going through an identity crisis, and has since the amoeba.

I was born in L.A. My parents moved to L.A. in the early part of the last
century, and if L.A. doesn’t have a history, then neither do I. I disagree that
spatial separation necessarily creates dysfunction. I disagree that we should
live like ants (as Mike Davis suggests) to free up the space around us. We live
on a rotating sphere; therefore “Any point is the center.” The whole is everything.
This said, breaking up the city is not the solution. The shallow motives of
the Valley secessionists suck.

—Jerry Katz
Santa Monica

REAL COMPLEXITY

Re: “The Big Rewrite” [June 7–13]. Stephen Wolfram’s
gambit is interesting, but not far from the work of Richard Feynman that became
Feynman’s legacy to physics: the investigation of quantum mechanics through
diagrammatic analysis. The difference between the two thinkers is that Feynman
remained in the complexity of science, never trying to reduce it to a systematic
approach, whereas Wolfram mistakes the tool he invents for the world he is trying
to describe.

I am afraid that Wolfram is far from the radical he imagines himself to be.
He remains on the beaten path. He should take a trip into real complexity —
look what it did for his mentor!

—Kevan Jenson
Mar Vista

PROSPECTS BRIGHT

FOR SOCCER RIOTS

I enjoyed Brendan Bernhard’s “Games
Without Frontiers” [June 7–13]. I am not a big soccer fan, but like Bernhard,
I am surprised when those around me know nothing and care less about the contest.
I compare this to my 1998 World Cup experience. I was a student in Mexico City
the day the national team upset Germany. Like everyone else at the Jesuit University,
I cut class to watch the match. (Picture chanting nuns and dancing law students.)
Afterward, my friends and I waited for hours at a bus stop while downtown fans
jubilantly tipped vehicles. I â can only imagine the bedlam in London this week
when Argentina fell.

The World Cup is supposed to give us a temporary break from our usual reality.
The workday stops, and wars are limited to a 45-minute time span. Strangers
get together and celebrate. And Brendan, somewhere on your block there is
a party going on — some Latinos are festejando the English win or, I
should say, Argentina’s loss to England. In the spirit of the World Cup,
you should knock on a door and join them.

—Michele Martínez
Alhambra

Just a brief correction on your publication’s lively, enthusiastic piece about
the World Cup. South Africa fired their Portuguese coach Carlos Queroz after
a dismal performance in the African Cup of Nations early this year, where South
Africa scored two goals in four games and were eliminated on penalties by hosts
Mali. South Africa is currently coached by the enigmatic Jomo Sono, a South
African soccer legend and former club manager cut from the same cloth as megalomaniac
Zulu chieftain Mangusuthu Buthelezi.

Thanks for the article.

—Adrian Kimble
Torrance

IVANS HYPERBOLE

Glad to see the L.A. Weekly support a small indie
film on its cover (“Three Faces of Ivan, June 7–13] rather than the latest Hollywood
blockbuster. But the subhead, “The movie that’s making the industry crazy,”
is absurd. Sorry to be cynical, but ivans xtc. opened in exactly one
theater and was greeted by a largely mixed reaction from critics (including,
ironically, Ella Taylor’s accompanying review). Hard as it is for me to admit,
the biz was driven infinitely more “crazy” by that weekend’s Spider-Man
grosses and J.Lo’s apparent divorce than by this little-seen film.

—Joe Stemme
Culver City

Re: Ella Taylor’s review of the film ivans xtc. Please know that Jay
Moloney did not commit suicide in a hotel room after being fired for cocaine
addiction. In fact, Jay lost his job several months prior — yes, due to substance
abuse problems, but substance abuse that was overshadowing his intense bipolar
disorder. He hanged himself in the shower at home; he was getting ready for
a business meeting, one of many he optimistically had scheduled. Jay was severely
manic-depressive, and it was the disease’s in-the-depths-of-hell low swing that
ultimately tore his life away from those of us who adored him. A really fucked
morning that ripped out a lot of hearts, his own and his friends’.

—Jaide
Encino

A JOB WELL DUNNE

Re: Steven Mikulan’s “Murder
at the Vanities” [May 31–June 6]. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I have
been waiting so long for someone to put that simpering, affected, celebrity-sucking
twit in his place. Righteously done!

—Michael Boerger
Madison, Wisconsin