Happy B-Day, George Takei - Actor, Activist, (Almost) City Councilman

Today is the 74th birthday of native Angeleno Geroge Takei, who is many things - actor, writer, Asian American and LGBT community activist and pop culture icon. But did you know he was almost elected to the Los Angeles City Council?

It goes like this - in 1973, after The Great Tom Bradley made history being elected as Los Angeles' first Mayor of African American descent in the May 29 General Municipal Election, he had to resign his incumbent seat as 10th District City Councilman, which he held since 1963.

With the seat vacant, a Special Election took place on September 18 of that year, which attracted around a dozen candidates for the seat. Being a Special Election filing a vacant seat, there was to be no run-off; the top vote-getter wins the office.

Takei ran for the Mid-City area council seat under the ballot description, "Television Moderator" - he was the co-host of Expression East/West, a local public affairs show that aired on KNBC at the time.

City legislative deputy David Cunningham won the election with 8,062 votes and served the seat until 1987, when he was succeeded by Nate Holden. The runner-up? Geroge Takei, with 6,387 votes - losing by a tally of only 1,675.

Had Takei been elected, he would have been the City's first Asian American on the Council, which was eventually achieved by Michael Woo, elected to the 13th District in 1985 (Takei would not have been the first openly-gay City Councilman (assuming he would have come out back then), as Joel Wachs preceded him in 1971). But he would have certainly become the first celebrity to serve in Los Angeles City office - not an unusual thing even back then, considering who was sitting in the Governor's office at the time.

Takei did have some experience in public policy; Mayor Bradley appointed him to the Board of Directors of the Southern California Rapid Transit District (the predecessor agency to today's Metro), where he served for 11 years. While filming Star Trek: The Motion Picture in 1978, he was called off the set to cast a tie-breaking vote for the RTD to create what we know now as the Metro Rail system. He was also credited with helping to create an arts program for Metro Rail, which is why nearly every Metro station is decorated with public art pieces.

Who knows what things would have been like had he been City Councilman? Mayor Sulu? Only a visit to a parallel universe through a multidimensional wormhole could tell.

George Takei campaign poster image from AngryAsianMan.com

Those Feel-Good Memories

Every once in a while, the Militant will flip radio stations, and a song from The Militant's youth will invariably cause him to stop what he's doing and evoke a memory from the past.

Perhaps the best example of such a song is Chuck Mangione's 1978 archetypal Smooth Jazz anthem, "Feels So Good." It's a familiar flugelhorn-laden melody (Fact: 94.7 The Wave is legally required to play it at least four times each day), which was recently re-introduced into pop culture as a running gag on the FOX animated TV series, King Of The Hill, but for The Militant, it has an even deeper meaning.

Every time The Militant hears this tune, he feels like a kid, riding in a car with his family, and discovering exotic new places like Downtown Los Angeles, on a warm summer Sunday evening. See, when you're a kid, your universe consists of more or less two places: home and school. Concepts like "community" or even "city" don't even register yet. So this song was basically one of the soundtracks to The Militant's proto-militant urban discoveries.

And it's no accident that this song was recorded right here in the City of Angels, at the A&M recording studios (Now the Jim Henson Studios, and formerly Charlie Chaplin's studio) on La Brea Avenue in Hollywood (most famously known for the recording of 1985's "We Are The World").

Speaking of A&M, the "A" in the name, Herb Alpert, another brass instrumentalist, also recorded a huge instrumental hit in the late '70s, called "Rise" (1979).


Like the Mangione song, it reminds The Militant of his early Angeleno discoveries, most notably going down Wilshire Blvd on a warm Summer evening (what is is about those warm Summer evenings?) with the shops and streetlights providing a visual show the young Lil'Mil had never seen before.

Dad, can we stop by Zody's and buy me a TIE Fighter? Huh? Please Dad?

Oh...sorry, The Militant got a little carried away there, heh.

There was also something about those two songs being instrumental that added to their magic. There were no lyrics or vocal tone to dictate the meaning or feeling of the songs. Just the vibe, ya dig? Perfect selections in the soundtrack to The Militant's life, and probably some of yours as well.

[begin old fogey mode]
They certainly don't make songs like those anymore...
[end old fogey mode]

Anyways, for those of you who grew up here in Los Angeles, what are the songs that instantly remind you of your youth, and associated memories of life here? Please post and share in the comments!

Go Retro: Whitney And The Robot!

Before Nickelodeon, and even before PBS, there was a time when local television stations around the country aired locally-produced children's programming.

Here in Los Angeles, locally-produced kids' shows aired largely from the 1950s to the early 1990s, stretching from Sheriff John to Hobo Kelly to That's Cat (Raise ya fist up if you remember any of those!).

The Militant did some reminiscing as well. When the Militant was young (a.k.a. Lil' Mil), he watched a show from the late '70s called Whitney and the Robot which aired on - and was produced by - KNBC 4.

The show featured an unabashedly blatant R2D2 knockoff robot named 4U2, who came from a planet named Zeda and was sent to the planet Earth to learn more about it, under the care of a whimsical taxi cab driver (not a very busy or lucrative profession in Los Angeles) named Whitney. Whitney's good pal, the red-headed Corky, would join them on their various adventures, and would frequently break out in song.

So what's so militant about this? Well, each episode featured a different locale, filmed around the Los Angeles area, where the child-like robot would learn about things or experience them, from visiting the city dump to learn about recycling and where your garbage goes (the one episode most people seem to recall) or taking a train ride at Union Station or learning about horses at a ranch (filmed at the Old Rex Allen Ranch in Calabasas). Did this show fuel Lil' Mil's budding Angeleno knowledge? It may or may not have...but he tends to think it did.

The show was created by its (human) actors, Whitney Rydbeck, a local actor with a mime background (having performed in the Richmond Shepard mime troupe in Los Angeles in the 1960s), and Robert V. "Corky" Greene, another local actor with a musical background. Both have done bit parts in television and movies since Whitney and the Robot - (Whitney even sealed his place in Star Trek lore), and Rydbeck currently works as a performing arts professor at Pasadena City College. Greene, a Van Nuys High alum, got into directing and producing and seems to be enjoying grandfatherhood these days. He's been known to lurk on teh Interwebz so he might very well stumble upon this here blog post! (Whatup, Corky?!)

Anyway, here's what the show's opening looked like (rather long by today's standards...):



You can watch one of the episodes here - if you were a kid in the late '70s, it may or may not take you back!

There were only 14 episodes made, from late 1978 to 1979. KNBC aired the show on Saturday and/or Sunday mornings up until the mid-1980s, but the show was also syndicated to other cities and aired at one time or another on television up until 1990.

For the Militant, and those around his age who remember this show, it was a way to learn about things and places and present Los Angeles as a familiar place, free from the usual cliches and stereotypes one would eventually pick up later on in life. It's a crying shame the kids of today have no equivalent.

Go Retro: Pup 'N' Taco!

The Militant may or may not have dressed just like (and had the same hairstyle as) the kid in the commercial back then.

It's been a long-ass time since the Militant told you to "Go Retro." Well, here he is, bringin' the old series back. This time, the Militant takes you to an era, way before you loved Tito's too, when cars, collars and the bottom openings of your pants were much bigger...and you had a Pup 'N Taco.

There was once a Pup 'N' Taco in the Militant's neighborhood and the building still stands today, architecture mostly intact, as an unspecified ethnic eatery, but apparently there were quite a few of them in SoCal, as well as in the US Southwest. The Long Beach-based chain eventually got assimilated into the Taco Bell borg in 1984, but up until just a few years ago there were a few remaining vestiges of the PNT brand - namely one sign standing along Glendale Avenue in its eponymous city.

Go Retro: Universal Studios

Today's "Go Retro" is Universal Studios. No, not today's Universal Studios Hollywood, but just plain Universal Studios (complete with groovy-looking purple sign in fancy script, pictured right), back when it was a one-of-a-kind theme park and studio. Designed to wow overseas as well as backwater American tourists who have never seen this "movie magic" thing before, the Militant found enjoyment in the park not at the tour, but at the tourist's reactions to the tour (i.e. people screaming at the latex Jaws head mounted on a track under the man-made lake).

Like many things, the rides and attractions have changed over the years. Gone are the vocoder-speaking OG Cylon Centurions who stand guard in front of the old Battlestar Galactica attraction, for example. More recently, the Back to the Future Ride has used up its last jigowatt, to be replaced by The Simpsons Ride by next Spring.

But back in the 70s, long before there was a CityWalk or an Amphitheater or even a Cineplex, it was just a studio and a theme park, damnit. Back then, during the midway point in your tour, the buses would make a pitstop and visitors could order overpriced food at a concession stand and pose for pictures by some oversized props to pay homage to the Studios' '50s-era film The Incredible Shrinking Man. Tourgoers once posed by a much-larger-than-life-sized telephone, camera, park bench, human hand holding lipstick (or was it a bullet ?) and a shelf of books, just like a where a young Militant (pictured left) once did.

Which brings to mind a closing thought -- are the attractions in Universal Studios (Hollywood, Florida, Japan, Uzbekistan, Antarctica or elsewhere) meant to celebrate and honor the Studios' work and legacy, or reflect (aside from a token Frankenstein or Feivel The Mouse walking around) the current pop culture?