Art by Charles Nicholas & Vince Alascia from the story “Love Him…Love What He Does” in FIRST KISS #2, 1958.
Art by Charles Nicholas & Vince Alascia from the story "Love Him...Love What He Does" in FIRST KISS #2, 1958.
Did you check the schedule of his band? Maybe they’re doing a world tour. Or a tour of the Holiday Inn’s of Lancaster County, PA.
Latest gold bridal jewellery sets from Manepally Jewellers, Hyderabad in different designs. These 22 karat gold jewellery sets comprising a short necklace, long haram and earrings are adorned with uncut chakri diamonds, rubies and emeralds.
This start-up has a plan to sell annuities so you can build a retirement nest egg - Los Angeles Times
A new approach to deferred-income annuities tries to get people to build retirement security using a subscription service. (Jonathan Evans / Getty Images)
Matt Carey studied Arabic at the University of Pennsylvania, preparing for what he hoped would be a career at the Central Intelligence Agency. Eleven years later, he's pitching annuity contracts.
A summer job at the State Department persuaded him that government service wasn't as exciting as he first thought. So he headed to Wall Street. A stint at the advisory firm Lazard Ltd. piqued his interest in a growing threat to the national welfare that didn't involve espionage — retirement security. Or, more precisely, the lack of it across the U.S.
Carey's elevator pitch for a company now called Blueprint Income? "We are building the first digital retirement plan that guarantees you won't run out of money as long as you live."
He and two co-founders are building a way for consumers to more easily buy what has notoriously been a hard sell: annuity contracts, both those that create an immediate income stream and others that produce income years down the road. The idea was inspired in part by the research of Olivia Mitchell, a professor and retirement security expert at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
One of Blueprint's innovations involves how deferred-income annuities are sold. They typically require five- or six-digit sums in return for a future stream that, should someone die prematurely, may never be used. Carey's website spits out a quote for a contract in 60 seconds and requires an initial investment of $5,000.
The real twist is part of a trend that's swept industries from mattresses to clothing to movies: subscription-based business models. After the initial investment, buyers can increase their retirement income stream with deposits of as little as $100 a month to create what Blueprint calls "a personal pension."
Mark Iwry, a key architect of retirement policy in the Obama administration, recalled that while the two worked together at the Treasury Department, Carey was "intrigued by how that key feature of the declining defined-benefit pension plan — a stream of retirement income guaranteed to last a lifetime — could be provided by the market more simply, more cheaply and in a way that's easier for ordinary people to access and buy."
New York Life Insurance Co. and Guardian Life Insurance Co. are Blueprint's current partners in the subscription service. New York-based Blueprint, which acts as a fiduciary, gets a one-time commission of 1% to 4% of the initial investment when it sells immediate, deferred and qualified-longevity annuity contracts, or QLACs. (A QLAC is an annuity funded by money from a qualified retirement plan or an IRA.) For the subscription product, the commission is split into two payments over two years.
Blueprint just announced seed funding of $2.75 million from a group including Green Visor Capital, where former Visa Chief Executive Joseph Saunders is a general partner, and NextView Ventures, where Lee Hower, an early PayPal employee and member of the founding team at LinkedIn, is a partner. The board of advisors includes Iwry, who isn't an investor, and Jean Chatzky, personal finance editor of the "Today" show, who has invested.
"The insurance industry is far slower to adapt to newer technologies" than other parts of the financial services industry, said Michael Walsh, a general partner at Green Visor Capital. "And within insurance, annuities are by far the slowest."
Making it a subscription accomplishes the once-impossible feat of explaining annuities to the average American.
"If you break down retirement savings into a way where it's almost like a subscription for your future, it's a lot easier to think about what it means," Walsh said. "For every dollar you put in, you know how much more you will have on a monthly basis when you retire."
Blueprint's initial challenge as a business, though, is to show that consumers will buy annuities directly — by subscription. About four years into its existence, the start-up has placed $10 million to $30 million of insurance premiums across hundreds of consumers, according to Carey. The subscription product became available in beta form late last year, drawing customers ages 32 to 70.
Blueprint's larger goal is to get into 401(k) plans and have employers make some, or all, of their matching contributions into annuities, just as Blueprint does. That would create a product similar to a defined-benefit plan, lessening the dilemma of how to invest a lump sum from a 401(k).
For now, Carey has no illusions about the challenge Americans face in deciding how to invest their savings so they won't die poor.
"In a world where employer pensions don't exist, you need something that does the same thing," Carey said. Otherwise, "retirement is going to become a luxury good."
John Lithgow's latest stage isn't a stage at all: How theater is moving to your phone and car - Los Angeles Times
John Lithgow in the studio recording "Stories by Heart," his one-man Broadway show. The expansion of audio productions are pushing theater outside of the theater. (Audible)
Shhhhh. John Lithgow is performing his solo show, “Stories by Heart.” The five audience members are riveted. Don’t speak, don’t fidget, and for God’s sake, don’t look at your phone. The actor appreciates your attention. He needs it. He is accustomed to performing this show for hundreds of people after a recently wrapped Broadway run.
The small Burbank recording studio he currently finds himself in is quite different. On this particular afternoon he’s acting for the audiobook and podcast company Audible, which has recently made calculated strides into the theater space by recording one-person productions.
Tall, with posture that makes him appear even taller, Lithgow cuts a familiar and somewhat formidable form sitting on a swivel chair in front of a wooden lectern with an open book — and a large microphone — in front of him.
He’s performing two stories that his late father delighted him with as a young boy: Ring Lardner’s 1925 short story “Haircut,” and P.G. Wodehouse’s “Uncle Fred Flits By.” He falls into character with ease, assuming the voices of up to five characters. His hand feigns a slight palsy while he intones the lines of an elderly man, and if the actor stumbles, he pauses, swallows and begins again as an Audible minder in the recording booth makes a slender pencil stroke in the script.
The reach of Lithgow’s critically acclaimed show had been limited to the 740 seats of the American Airlines Theatre. The recent Audible release, however, instantaneously expanded the potential audience into the millions.
Or as Audible founder and Chief Executive Don Katz says, “In a matter of seconds, more people can be listening to an Audible original than can pack a 1,000-seat theater eight times per week for half a century.”
That doesn’t mean Katz is disdainful of the live theater experience. To the contrary. As part of what Audible calls a commitment to expanding the reach, scope and impact of theater, the company has claimed the Minetta Lane Theatre in New York’s Greenwich Village as its creative home for live performances. It has also been commissioning established and emerging playwrights to write one- and two-person shows to be performed as Audible Originals.
Participants in Audible’s theater lineup say Minetta Lane is the linchpin in a program that aims to forge a wholly modern frontier for theater, pairing an age-old art form with technology in a way that not only democratizes access but also encourages artists to approach theater in new ways.
Playwright and actor David Cale’s one-man show “Harry Clarke,” starring Billy Crudup, was the first play to stage a limited run at Minetta Lane before it was recorded for digital distribution. Cale recalls a thrilling cross-pollination of forms that benefited the live show and its digital counterpart.
“Harry Clarke” not only enjoyed four weeks of rehearsal but also ran for eight weeks at Minetta Lane before Crudup went to the studio to record it with director Leigh Silverman and the production’s sound designer, Bart Fasbender. By then, Crudup was in fantastic shape for the recording.
“It was a dreamboat of an experience,” Cale says. “You just cannot get that level of detail and performance without having done a run. It was fully realized and there was no compromise.”
The closest comparison to what Audible is doing with theater in 2018 would be radio in the 1930s and ’40s. More recent correlations can be made with the late Joe Frank’s series on KCRW as well as with public radio programs like “This American Life” and “The Moth Radio Hour,” though those focus more on nonfiction storytelling.
Regardless, what’s old is suddenly new again, as is often true with modern technology. In this case, that technology is the smartphone, which enables listeners to put theater in their pockets while they’re driving cars, climbing mountains, biking at the beach or lying by the pool.
Audible is not alone in recording plays for mass consumption. L.A. Theatre Works has been doing just that since the mid-1980s, when a group of 35 actors including Lithgow banded together. The nonprofit’s purpose is to record the canon for entertainment as well as artistic and educational enlightenment.
LATW producing director Susan Albert Loewenberg says LATW was among the first companies to sign on with Audible. Now more than 300 of its titles are available for purchase online.
“We do full audio productions with sound effects and music and everything that’s required to make the experience really explode in your ears,” says Loewenberg, adding that audio recordings are far superior to filmed recordings of live theater, which can fall flat no matter how amazing the material or acting. “When you’re listening to a great audio recording, you should feel like you’re peeking through a keyhole at someone else’s life.”
Representatives for Audible would not reveal listener numbers for theater productions, but Loewenberg says that compared with the billion-dollar audiobook market, recorded plays are a labor of love. LATW spends between $25,000 and $60,000 to make a good recording, and the company relies on gifts and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, among others, to keep the microphones on.
Audible, which is owned by Amazon, has no such financial hurdles to overcome. It also isn’t yet producing plays on quite the scale that LATW is. The latter stages and records live performances at UCLA, sometimes featuring casts of 15 or 20, while the former is focusing on one and two-person plays.
Loewenberg feels no competition from Audible and says with a chuckle, “I’d like to think Don Katz and his company were inspired by the L.A. Theatre Works titles.”
“It expands the world of entertainment and the world of storytelling, and allows for an evolved way of listening,” says the actress, whose most recent work for Audible was Neil LaBute’s “All the Ways to Say I Love You,” which she also performed off-Broadway in 2016. “If you go back to the basics and the famous phrase, ‘Mommy, Daddy, tell me a story,’ that’s what this is about. It brings that electric, exciting, thrilling listening back into a person’s life. And suddenly we become children again.”
When you’re listening to a great audio recording, you should feel like you’re peeking through a keyhole at someone else’s life.
Theater, as anyone who has ever sat rapt before a staging of “Hamlet” or “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” can tell you, is as much about watching as it is listening. But if you close your eyes, it can come alive in your mind, Lithgow says.
When the actor stands in the recording booth at Out Loud Studios, a cup of peppermint tea beside him along with a bottle of water, some tissues and throat lozenges, he meticulously acts out every portion of his show, just as he did on Broadway.
“I recorded it doing everything, just to remind myself what the next line was,” he says. “And I did all of the sound effects I did onstage as a way of creating the story in the imagination of the audience. So the whole thing has been a great experiment.”
In this way, Audible theater productions aim to expand storytelling culture. Audible CEO Katz hopes to eventually see creators “writing to the Audible aesthetic from different walks of literary life,” much as the company now finds writers including journalist and nonfiction scribe Michael Lewis (“Moneyball,” “The Blind Side”) writing strictly with the idea of audio performances in mind.
Audible first made a real stab at cultivating this kind of crossover in February when it announced it had commissioned 15 emerging playwrights to create audio theater for one or two performers. Its advisory board is a cast of theater heavyweights including Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Lynn Nottage (“Sweat”), Tony nominee Annette Bening, Public Theater Artistic Director Oskar Eustis and playwright David Henry Hwang (“M. Butterfly”).
The young playwrights, including Leah Nanako Winkler, were effusive in their praise of the creative support and freedom they were receiving.
“For any organization, especially one like Audible, which has so many resources, to say, ‘Use our office, go to our cafeteria, we want you to succeed, we want you to be comfortable,’ really does make our work feel valuable,” she told The Times after she received the commission.
“We got to do exactly the show we wanted to do,” he says. “It’s really rare that there isn’t somebody saying, ‘Why don’t you do this?’ but it didn’t happen at all. They were just supportive and trying to make it the best run it could be.”
Currently at Minetta Lane: Carey Mulligan in Dennis Kelly’s “Girls & Boys.” Its streaming counterpart is already available.
When Man Ray left Paris for America at the dawn of World War II, the Surrealist and Dadaist publicly declared that he was no longer going to do any fashion photography — an audacious declaration from an artist best known for just that.
He arrived in Los Angeles in 1940, however, and began making striking images of a high-fashion crowd including actresses Ava Gardner, Ruth Ford, Leslie Caron and Teresa Wright, as well as composer Igor Stravinsky and filmmaker Jean Renoir. Some of these images were commissioned by Harper’s Bazaar.
This intriguing period of Man Ray’s life is explored in a new show at Gagosian in Beverly Hills titled “Man Ray’s L.A.,” curated by Max Teicher and running through Feb. 17. The images span from 1940 to 1951, when Man Ray crafted imagery using an outsider’s view of Hollywood.
“As an artist, Man Ray is always bold,” Teicher said. “Coming to L.A. shows his sense of courage. It would have been safer to stay in New York with all of his friends.”
Although he spent the better part of the decade battling a sense that he did not receive the same respect and appreciation that he did in Paris, Man Ray still managed to do a great deal of painting, take many photos and even dabble in film, including writing for Hans Richter’s “Dreams That Money Can Buy.” During his time on the West Coast, Man Ray staged at least a dozen solo shows, Teicher says.
He also found himself in close proximity to celebrity, and through it, he left an indelible mark on the entertainment landscape. For example, the color portrait of Ava Gardner is on her character’s bedside table in the 1951 film “Pandora and the Flying Dutchman.”
“He’s framing her so she’s not looking directly into the lens,” Teicher says. “Now we take this kind of shot for granted, but in 1950 it’s striking.”
Officials in Mexico, Colombia and Los Angeles seized a total of 7,700 pounds of cocaine and other drugs worth half a billion dollars in the four-year investigation. The strangest hiding place? Frozen cubes of orange juice.
They found the cocaine in submarines, in speedboats stopped in the Pacific Ocean, in a private jet that crashed into the Caribbean Sea and, perhaps most strangely, in frozen cubes of orange juice transported in trucks.
Officials in Mexico, Colombia and Los Angeles seized a total of 7,700 pounds of cocaine and other drugs worth half a billion dollars as part of a four-year investigation into a global drug ring, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
On Friday, one of the leaders behind the drug operation was arraigned in a downtown Los Angeles courtroom after being extradited from Colombia. Victor Hugo Cuellar-Silva arrived Thursday night at Los Angeles International Airport.
According to a federal indictment, Cuellar-Silva is the head of the Colombia base for the organization and is responsible for obtaining tons of cocaine and other drugs from South American labs and coordinating their transportation for sale in the U.S. and elsewhere.
Six California residents were arrested in their homes Thursday on suspicion of operating stash houses and transporting the drugs in cars to be sold, federal prosecutor Alexander Schwab said.
Amparo Yokasta Melo Peguero, 44, was arrested as she was preparing to take an international flight from Boston.
Six additional defendants are pending extradition after they were taken into custody in Colombia and Thailand.
“What we’ve been able to accomplish is indict an international drug trafficking organization and … uproot the leadership responsible for aggregating and transporting multi-ton loads of cocaine,” federal prosecutor Benjamin Barron said. “It’s among the largest drug cases we’ve ever prosecuted out of our Los Angeles district.”
One major piece of the puzzle is missing: the Mexican kingpin running the whole ring, Angel Humberto Chavez-Gastelum, who is listed in the indictment. He is also known by aliases such as “Don Angel,” “Rolex” and “Netflix.”
Chavez-Gastelum has made millions by taking the drug operation into his own hands, Barron said, and has ordered the murders of several people who stole from him or cooperated with law enforcement officials.
The indictment includes two murders for which Chavez-Gastelum is suspected of being responsible. One victim’s torture and dismemberment was captured on a video obtained by officials.
Chavez-Gastelum is one of the world’s 30 most-wanted drug traffickers and commands multiple top representatives of the drug organization, including Cuellar-Silva, according to a Justice Department statement.
If apprehended and convicted of participating in a continuing criminal enterprise, Chavez-Gastelum would face a mandatory life sentence because he is accused of being its leader. Cuellar-Silva and three others — including Chavez-Gastelum’s 27-year-old son, who is accused of running the criminal enterprise — would face mandatory minimum sentences of 20 years in prison if they are found guilty.
“This drug ring has spread death and misery across the Americas and to other parts of the world, which makes this case among the most significant drug trafficking cases ever brought in this district,” U.S. Atty. Nick Hanna said in a statement. “We are deeply grateful to the government of Colombia for helping us bring one of the key defendants to justice.”
Joseph Macias, a Department of Homeland Security investigator, said in a statement that the extradition is a warning to fugitives who think they can evade U.S. law enforcement by hiding out in another country.
John Guillermin, the veteran British director best known for star-laden, special effects-driven action epics — most notably "The Towering Inferno" and the 1976 remake of "King Kong"— has died at 89.
Guillermin, who made more than 30 movies during his lengthy career, died of a heart attack Sunday at his Topanga Canyon home, according to his wife, Mary.
Although not a favorite of critics, Guillermin directed many Hollywood legends over the years, including Peter Sellers, Bette Davis, Orson Welles and Fred Astaire.
"The Towering Inferno," the 1974 blockbuster about a burning skyscraper, was teeming with stars, beginning with Steve McQueen and Paul Newman. Often named one of the best disaster movies of all time, it was nominated for eight Oscars and won three, for best original song ("We May Never Love Like This Again"), cinematography and editing.
Guillermin also directed the 1976 version of "King Kong," which drew steady crowds despite critical pans. A sequel, "King Kong Lives" (1986), was his last theatrical feature.
Born in London to French parents Nov. 11, 1925, Guillermin studied at Cambridge University before joining the Royal Air Force near the end of World War II.
After the war, he began his film career in France working on documentaries and by his mid-20s was directing feature films.
His early work included the British comedies "Hi Jinks in Society" (1949) and "Miss Robin Hood" (1952), which starred Margaret Rutherford.
His first major film was "Town on Trial," a thriller starring John Mills as a police inspector investigating the murder of an attractive young woman. The victim was portrayed by Maureen Connell, whom Guillermin married. The couple later divorced.
"Waltz of the Toreadors," a 1962 comedy based on a Jean Anouilh play and starring Sellers, was one of his favorites because, he told The Times in 1978, it concerned "the irony of old age and had a light touch."
Later, he was best known for cinematic spectacle as in the raging pyrotechnics of "Towering Inferno," which featured McQueen as a heroic fire chief, Newman as the high-rise's architect, O.J. Simpson as security chief and Jennifer Jones as a wealthy maven.
"King Kong," his remake of the 1933 classic, starred Jeff Bridges, Charles Grodin and Jessica Lange and was not beloved by critics. One of the few to praise it was David Thomson, who wrote that it was "pretty, amused, touching, and very clever in seeing the love story within the famous horror."
Most of the credit for the film went to its high-powered producer, Dino de Laurentiis, leaving the director feeling unnoticed. Yet his affection for the project remained strong.
"The original 'Kong' was part of my childhood, and I loved it," he told The Times in 1977. "What I wanted to do was to re-create what I'd felt about it the first time I saw it, but still adapt the story to our own day."
Besides his wife, Guillermin, who moved from London to Los Angeles in the early 1970s, is survived by a daughter and a granddaughter.
Southern Californians Randy and Lori Frith take a selfie at the Multnomah Waterfalls in the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area. Would they have to get a permit under proposed Forest Service regulations? (Natalie Behring / Getty Images)
Early last month the U.S. Forest Service posted a proposed regulation that seemed to set the stage for government control of journalists' access to public lands, with the added insult of wanting to charge hikers for photographing or filming their experiences in public wilderness areas.
The problem, it turns out, has less to do with government overreach than with the amorphously worded proposed regulation, which left an effort to standardize a permitting process open to much broader interpretation, at least according to the Forest Service. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt that they didn't intend to chill investigative reporting or whistle-blowing, a potential result of the proposed regulations. But the wording needs to be clarified.
The Forest Service oversees 191 million acres of public land, including designated wilderness areas, national monuments (such as the one being considered for the San Gabriel Mountains), recreation areas and scenic sites. These lands are separate from the acreage under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Land Management and the National Park Service. Part of the Forest Service's mandate is to regulate commercial exploitation of federal lands it controls, so it has a process for handling requests for film shoots and other commercial videotaping projects.
The proposed regulations would make permanent a provisional set of rules that have been on the books for four years, but the updated proposal includes some changes in the granting of permits that have deservedly prompted outrage from 1st Amendment advocates. Among other things, the rules say the Forest Service must consider whether the project "has a primary objective of dissemination of information about the use and enjoyment of wilderness" or about such features as its ecology and geology.
Note that it says "and," not "or," which suggests that if the point of the filming has a negative impact, then the Forest Service can reject the permit. The regulations do make room for journalists covering breaking news, but in a strict reading could leave investigative projects, feature stories or interviews with whistle-blowers that involve photos or videos subject to obtaining a permit - which the Forest Service really has no right to demand in the first place. This is a prescription for public relations, not journalism.
Some of the initial reporting on the proposed regulation was a bit off the mark, as Gabe Rottman of the ACLU points out. Initial reports that individual hikers might need an expensive permit to snap souvenir shots doesn't seem to be the case. And the Forest Service says initial reports that it wants to set the highest fee at $1,500 a day isn't part of their proposal, but is in a separate proposal by the Department of the Interior (the Forest Service is part of the Department of Agriculture) to standardize commercial filming permits across federal properties. The Forest Service also supports that other proposed regulation, so it's really just a degree of separation.
So what would be affected by the Forest Service's proposed regulation? Rottman matches it against the Forest Service's handbook at the ACLU's Free Future blog:
"According to the handbook, permits are required for two types of activities. You need a permit for 'commercial filming,' regardless of where it occurs. And you need a permit for 'still photography' that requires props, sets, or models; could impose administrative costs on the Forest Service; or takes place at a location where the public is normally not allowed.
"Commercial filming is defined broadly as any moving image or sound recording that could generate income. The only carve-out is for 'breaking news,' which is defined as an 'event or incident that arises suddenly, evolves quickly, and rapidly ceases to be newsworthy.' Still photography is defined circularly as any photography that takes place in a non-public part of the forest, uses props etc., or could impose administrative costs on the service."
In the face of the backlash, the Forest Service has extended the comment period a month until Dec. 3, and said it is taking seriously the critiques of potential 1st Amendment conflicts. That's heartening, though the proof will be in the final details.
As Rottman argues, there is a "foundational flaw in the regulation—it needlessly picks on photography." If the intent is to preserve the federal lands, then craft a regulation that "imposes rational limits on commercial activity in places where it could harm the forests," and leave the photographers and videographers alone – unless their project would leave a mark.
More broadly, the Forest Service also should not make itself the arbiter of content, which it would implicitly be able to do under the regulation that requires the service to consider a request within the framework of whether it "has a primary objective of dissemination of information about the use and enjoyment of wilderness." That kind of censorship lies far outside the Forest Service's mission as protector of the land and, for that matter, far outside the scope of the federal government in general. In fact, it's hard to see how the regulation would survive a constitutional challenge.
Even though the Forest Service says it doesn't intend to play the role of censor, fixing the proposed regulations so the agency doesn't grant itself that authority is the best reassurance it can give us.
The Dodgers have added another checkpoint for Clayton Kershaw to clear on his return from the 10-day disabled list. Kershaw will pitch in a minor league rehabilitation game on Saturday for triple-A Oklahoma City, rather than start in New York against the Mets.
Kershaw is expected to make a four-inning, 60-pitch appearance. If he completes the assignment without incident, the team will activate him next week, manager Dave Roberts indicated.
“It’s just [giving] him the best chance for success and health,” Roberts said before the first game of Tuesday’s doubleheader at Wrigley Field. “You consider all the factors. Get a lot of thoughts and opinions from people more qualified than I am, and you make a decision.”
The process led to Kershaw pitching on Saturday in Omaha against the Storm Chasers, Kansas City’s triple-A affiliate. He faced the same organization in his lone rehab outing as he returned from a back injury last summer.
Kershaw has pitched only once since May 1. He missed a month with biceps tendinitis before suffering a recurrence of a strained muscle in his lower back on May 31. Kershaw missed five weeks with a similar injury last season.
Kershaw completed a three-inning simulated game on Monday. He had hoped to pitch in the major leagues as his next step.
“He stated his case,” Roberts said. “He made his case. As he always does. Which is great. Which is what you expect.”
SHORT HOPS: As the Dodgers activated Rich Hill from the disabled list, the team optioned utilityman Breyvic Valera to Oklahoma City. Valera has hit .172 in 20 games for the Dodgers. … The team did not activate Chase Utley (left thumb sprain) during the doubleheader. Roberts indicated the team would bring Utley off the disabled list on either Tuesday or Wednesday. … The Dodgers called up Brock Stewart from Oklahoma City to be the 26th man for Tuesday’s second game.
Sgt. 1st Class James Wood performs with the United States Army Field Band. The band, which formed in 1946, is one of 109 bands that represent the United States military.
A high school board trustee plans to give the United States Army Field Band a dressing-down after it abruptly canceled a show at Edison High School.
Bonnie Castrey, the Huntington Beach Union High School District's board clerk, said she intends to contact the band's administration about how much money and time went into planning the concert, in which students were set to perform alongside the military musicians. The band had to cancel Sunday's show as well as others when talk of a government shutdown loomed last week.
If the military band had told the district earlier that it had to cancel, teachers and students could have worked out an alternative program, Castrey said.
"Had the Army even given us a heads-up on Monday or Tuesday, we could have had our own students do performances," she said. "But to tell us on Friday morning is just despicable."
Band administrators, though, said they hadn't heard of the cancellation themselves until Friday morning and contacted district officials as soon as possible.
"We did not know we were going to have to cancel our concert," said Sgt. Michelle Laska, the band's tour coordinator. "As soon as we walked in the door that morning, we had all these e-mails stating we would have to cancel the first few days."
Band spokesman Master Sgt. David Bullman said he had heard rumblings before Friday about the possible government shutdown, which ended up being averted. He and his colleagues, though, didn't know until Friday how the shutdown would impact the band.
"That's not helping to make them feel better about the concert not happening, but this is kind of a once-in-a-decade thing that happened," he said. "It was out of our control."
Castrey said she sympathized with the band's situation but believed the government should have worked faster to give notice of the cancellation.
She and other district officials had worked hard to publicize the show, she said, even sending invitations to local politicians. When the district got word from the band Friday, it contacted as many ticket-holders as it could, but because many people had ordered the free tickets anonymously online, it was impossible to track down everyone.
Sunday, Castrey ended up going to Edison in person to let dozens of people know the concert was off, she said.
"Our teachers spent an entire year putting this together, hundreds of hours of time," she said. "Students were looking forward to it. Every one of our schools was supposed to have master classes.
Despite the show's cancellation, the district did get a partial visit from the band. Col. Thomas H. Palmatier, who was in Southern California visiting family and expected to join the rest of the band when it arrived, gave a clinic Monday at Fountain Valley High School and planned to do more Tuesday, Laska said.
Still, Alexis Booher, the former Edison parent who helped organize Sunday's show, said she wouldn't work with the band if it proposed another appearance in Huntington Beach.