Livestrong Tattoos as Reminder of Personal Connections, Not Tarnished Brand

As Jax Mariash went under the tattoo needle to have “Livestrong” emblazoned on her wrist in bold black letters, she did not think about Lance Armstrong or doping allegations, but rather the 10 people affected by cancer she wanted to commemorate in ink. It was Jan. 22, 2010, exactly a year since the disease had taken the life of her stepfather. After years of wearing yellow Livestrong wristbands, she wanted something permanent.

A lifelong runner, Mariash got the tattoo to mark her 10-10-10 goal to run the Chicago Marathon on Oct. 10, 2010, and fund-raising efforts for Livestrong. Less than three years later, antidoping officials laid out their case against Armstrong — a lengthy account of his practice of doping and bullying. He did not contest the charges and was barred for life from competing in Olympic sports.

“It’s heartbreaking,” Mariash, of Wilson, Wyo., said of the antidoping officials’ report, released in October, and Armstrong’s subsequent confession to Oprah Winfrey. “When I look at the tattoo now, I just think of living strong, and it’s more connected to the cancer fight and optimal health than Lance.”

Mariash is among those dealing with the fallout from Armstrong’s descent. She is not alone in having Livestrong permanently emblazoned on her skin.

Now the tattoos are a complicated, internationally recognized symbol of both an epic crusade against cancer and a cyclist who stood defiant in the face of accusations for years but ultimately admitted to lying.

The Internet abounds with epidermal reminders of the power of the Armstrong and Livestrong brands: the iconic yellow bracelet permanently wrapped around a wrist; block letters stretching along a rib cage; a heart on a foot bearing the word Livestrong; a mural on a back depicting Armstrong with the years of his now-stripped seven Tour de France victories and the phrase “ride with pride.”

While history has provided numerous examples of ill-fated tattoos to commemorate lovers, sports teams, gang membership and bands that break up, the Livestrong image is a complex one, said Michael Atkinson, a sociologist at the University of Toronto who has studied tattoos.

“People often regret the pop culture tattoos, the mass commodified tattoos,” said Atkinson, who has a Guns N’ Roses tattoo as a marker of his younger days. “A lot of people can’t divorce the movement from Lance Armstrong, and the Livestrong movement is a social movement. It’s very real and visceral and embodied in narrative survivorship. But we’re still not at a place where we look at a tattoo on the body and say that it’s a meaningful thing to someone.”

Geoff Livingston, a 40-year-old marketing professional in Washington, D.C., said that since Armstrong’s confession to Winfrey, he has received taunts on Twitter and inquiries at the gym regarding the yellow Livestrong armband tattoo that curls around his right bicep.

“People see it and go, ‘Wow,’ ” he said, “But I’m not going to get rid of it, and I’m not going to stop wearing short sleeves because of it. It’s about my family, not Lance Armstrong.”

Livingston got the tattoo in 2010 to commemorate his brother-in-law, who was told he had cancer and embarked on a fund-raising campaign for the charity. If he could raise $5,000, he agreed to get a tattoo. Within four days, the goal was exceeded, and Livingston went to a tattoo parlor to get his seventh tattoo.

“It’s actually grown in emotional significance for me,” Livingston said of the tattoo. “It brought me closer to my sister. It was a big statement of support.”

For Eddie Bonds, co-owner of Rabbit Bicycle in Hill City, S.D., getting a Livestrong tattoo was also a reflection of the growth of the sport of cycling. His wife, Joey, operates a tattoo parlor in front of their store, and in 2006 she designed a yellow Livestrong band that wraps around his right calf, topped off with a series of small cyclists.

“He kept breaking the Livestrong bands,” Joey Bonds said. “So it made more sense to tattoo it on him.”

“It’s about the cancer, not Lance,” Eddie Bonds said.

That was also the case for Jeremy Nienhouse, a 37-year old in Denver, Colo., who used a Livestrong tattoo to commemorate his own triumph over testicular cancer.

Given the diagnosis in 2004, Nienhouse had three rounds of chemotherapy, which ended on March 15, 2005, the date he had tattooed on his left arm the day after his five-year anniversary of being cancer free in 2010. It reads: “3-15-05” and “LIVESTRONG” on the image of a yellow band.

Nienhouse said he had heard about Livestrong and Armstrong’s own battle with the cancer around the time he learned he had cancer, which alerted him to the fact that even though he was young and healthy, he, too, could have cancer.

“On a personal level,” Nienhouse said, “he sounds like kind of a jerk. But if he hadn’t been in the public eye, I don’t know if I would have been diagnosed when I had been.”

Nienhouse said he had no plans to have the tattoo removed.

As for Mariash, she said she read every page of the antidoping officials’ report. She soon donated her Livestrong shirts, shorts and running gear. She watched Armstrong’s confession to Winfrey and wondered if his apology was an effort to reduce his ban from the sport or a genuine appeal to those who showed their support to him and now wear a visible sign of it.

“People called me ‘Miss Livestrong,’ ” Mariash said. “It was part of my identity.”

She also said she did not plan to have her tattoo removed.

“I wanted to show it’s forever,” she said. “Cancer isn’t something that just goes away from people. I wanted to show this is permanent and keep people remembering the fight.”

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Common Sense: High Taxes Are Not a Prime Reason for Relocation, Studies Say

Pool photo by Mikhail Klimentyev

Gerard Depardieu with Vladimir Putin in January. Russia granted Mr. Depardieu a passport after his spat with France over taxes.

Last month, Vladimir V. Putin hugged his newly minted fellow Russian citizen, the actor Gerard Depardieu, posing for cameras at the Black Sea port of Sochi. “I adore your country,” Mr. Depardieu gushed — especially its 13 percent flat tax on personal income.

Sochi may not be St. Tropez, but it does have winter temperatures in the 60s and even palm trees. Mr. Putin’s deputy prime minister confidently predicted a “mass migration of wealthy Europeans to Russia.”

Here in the United States, the three-time Masters champion Phil Mickelson recently walked off the 18th hole at Humana Challenge and said he might move from California because the state increased its top income tax rate to 13.3 percent from 10.3 percent.

“Hey Phil,” Gov. Rick Perry of Texas wrote in a Twitter message, “Texas is home to liberty and low taxes ... we would love to have you as well!!” Tiger Woods later said that he had left California for Florida for just that reason years ago. Mr. Mickelson can “vote with his Gulfstream,” a Wall Street Journal editorial noted, and warned California to “expect a continued migration.”

It’s an article of faith among low-tax advocates that income tax increases aimed at the rich simply drive them away. As Stuart Varney put it on Fox News: “Look at what happened in Britain. They raised the top tax rate to 50 percent, and two-thirds of the millionaires disappeared in the next tax year. Same things are happening in France. People are leaving where the top tax rate is 75 percent. Same thing happened in Maryland a few years ago. New millionaire’s tax, the millionaires disappeared. You’ve got exactly the same thing in California.”

That, at least, is what low-tax advocates want us to think, and on its face, it seems to make sense. But it’s not the case. It turns out that a large majority of people move for far more compelling reasons, like jobs, the cost of housing, family ties or a warmer climate. At least three recent academic studies have demonstrated that the number of people who move for tax reasons is negligible, even among the wealthy.

Cristobal Young, an assistant professor of sociology at Stanford, studied the effects of recent tax increases in New Jersey and California.

“It’s very clear that, over all, modest changes in top tax rates do not affect millionaire migration,” he told me this week. “Neither tax increases nor tax cuts on the rich have affected their migration rates.”

The notion of tax flight “is almost entirely bogus — it’s a myth,” said Jon Shure, director of state fiscal studies at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a nonprofit research group in Washington. “The anecdotal coverage makes it seem like people are leaving in droves because of high taxes. They’re not. There are a lot of low-tax states, and you don’t see millionaires flocking there.”

Despite the allure of low taxes, Mr. Depardieu hasn’t been seen in Russia since picking up his passport and seems to be hedging his bets by maintaining a residence in Belgium. Meanwhile, Russian billionaires are snapping up trophy properties in high-tax London, New York and Beverly Hills, Calif.

“I don’t hear about many billionaires moving to Moscow,” said Robert Tannenwald, a lecturer in economic policy at Brandeis University and former Federal Reserve economist. Along with Nicholas Johnson, he and Mr. Shure are co-authors of “Tax Flight Is a Myth,” a 2011 research paper.

Of course, some people do move for tax reasons, especially wealthy retirees, athletes and other celebrities without strong ties to high-tax locations, like jobs and families. In renouncing his French citizenship, Mr. Depardieu follows other French celebrities, the chef Alain Ducasse, the singer Johnny Hallyday and Yannick Noah, a former tennis star. Several Paris hedge fund managers have decamped to London and the fashion mogul Bernard Arnault applied for Belgian citizenship, though not, he has said, for tax reasons.

Stars like Mr. Depardieu and Mr. Mickelson certainly have incentives to move. Mr. Depardieu complained that he paid 85 percent of his income in taxes in France last year and has paid 145 million euros over 45 years. France has a top rate of 41 percent as well as a wealth tax, and the Socialist president, François Hollande, is trying to impose a temporary surcharge of 75 percent on incomes over 1 million euros. Mr. Mickelson earned more than $60 million last year, Sports Illustrated estimates, which means the three-percentage-point California tax increase could add up to an additional $1.8 million in tax.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 15, 2013

An earlier version of this column misstated Mr. Depardieu’s citizenship. He has applied for residency in Belgium; he is not a citizen of that nation. The earlier version also misidentified the golf tournament at which the golfer Phil Mickelson said he might move from California to escape its taxes. It was the Humana Challenge, not Pebble Beach.

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Former Bell official says he voted for pay raise out of fear

One of the former Bell city leaders accused of plundering the town's treasury by taking oversized salaries testified Thursday that the fat paychecks and other extraordinary benefits that came with the job were all but forced on him.

George Cole, a former steelworker, returned to the witness stand for a second day and testified that he voted for a 12% annual pay raise for a City Council board in 2008 only because he feared retribution from then-City Manager Robert Rizzo.

"He had shown himself to be very vindictive if you crossed him at that time," Cole said. "I was worried that if I didn't vote for this, if I voted against it, he would do whatever he could to destroy the work that was important to me and the community. I knew that was his character."

Cole said it was the most difficult decision he ever made while on the council but was in the best interest of Bell — a city, he said, where he had devoted decades to advocating for new schools and programs for at-risk youths and senior citizens.

Cole, along with Luis Artiga, Victor Bello, Oscar Hernandez, Teresa Jacobo and George Mirabal, is accused of drawing an inflated salary from boards and authorities that rarely met and did little work.

The pay increases for the authorities were placed on the consent calendar — a place for routine and non-controversial items that are voted on without discussion. Cole defended the practice and said the agendas, minutes and staff reports were always available to the public at City Hall and at the library.

"I never tried to hide what we were doing," Cole said.

He also testified that the minutes did not reflect work done for those authorities.

Cole justified his vote for previous City Council pay raises to allow for a more diverse pool of council candidates who could use the money. And when he voted for a council salary increase in 2005, Cole noted that Bell was in a "very strong financial position."

The 63-year-old also told jurors that when he discovered $15,500 had been deposited into a 401(k)-style account for him, he complained. Cole said Rizzo refused to remove the money.

Initially, Cole said, Rizzo was a first-rate city administrator, making improvements such as repairing and keeping streets clean and erecting a protective fence around the city's largest park.

"From the time he started, he was able to accomplish things other managers previous to him said couldn't be done or were unable to do," Cole said.

Cole said the two would sometimes meet for breakfast to discuss city matters. "It was business," he said. "It wasn't two chums getting together."

But when Cole decided to give up his salary during his last year in office, he said it fractured his relationship with Rizzo. When he learned about Rizzo's near-$800,000 salary from a story published in The Times in 2010, he said he felt sick.

"I just felt like the dumbest person in the world that this guy had just pulled one of the biggest cons I've ever seen on, not just me, but on the city of Bell," Cole testified.

Rizzo faces 69 felony corruption charges. He and his former assistant, Angela Spaccia, are expected to go on trial later this year.

Cole's top annual salary was $67,000, his attorney said. At the time, he was earning nearly $95,000 a year as chief executive of the Steelworkers Old Timers Foundation.

In 2004, the city paid the state pension system $36,648 to buy Cole an additional five years of service time. Cole was one of 11 Bell administrators for whom the city bought service time.

CalPERS — the state's largest public pension program — has disallowed the service time the city bought, saying the buy-ins were not council-approved and that a municipality cannot pay for them.

Cole also was among the 40 or so Bell employees who were scheduled to receive additional payments through Bell's own supplemental retirement plan, established in 2003. In combination with the CalPERS pension, the payout was among the best retirement plans for non-safety employees in the state. The council never approved the plan.

jeff.gottlieb@latimes.com

corina.knoll@latimes.com

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Where Will All the Female <em>Star Wars</em> Characters Go?

Yes, Princess Leia was a smart, resourceful woman who had action hero chops of her own. She wasn’t just a princess waiting around in a castle for men to save her — despite the infamous scene where she ended up in a metal bikini as a sexy slave to a giant space slug.

But the fact remains: If you count up all the significant female characters who appear in the original Star Wars trilogy, the list reads as follows … Princess Leia. The only other two women with names and speaking parts in all three movies are Aunt Beru, and that Rebel Alliance representative at the end (who no one remembers until they’re forced to come up with more women).

As great a character as Leia was, however, she was functionally the lone representative of the female gender in a larger Star Wars universe where every other character moving the plot forward was a man. It’s even sadder when you consider that the dearth of women who play important roles (or any role at all) in the classic George Lucas films from the late ’70s and early ’80s echoes a problem we still have today: Women are dramatically under-represented in films and media.

And they’re even more poorly represented in roles where they are driving forces, not just ancillary characters or love interests for male heroes.

If you’ve never really noticed the absence of women in Star Wars (or movies at large), consider yourself living proof of how the limiting narratives of culture and media can warp our expectations. To the point where the presence of one woman in a cast of dozens of memorable male characters can seem like perfect equality.

Women accounted for a mere 33 percent of the roles in the top 100 Hollywood films in 2011, according to a study commissioned by the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film. When it came to the leading characters, women were even more dramatically under-represented, comprising only 11 percent of identifiable protagonists.

It gets even worse when you look at all-ages entertainment. Women — who, by the way, make up half the human population — comprised only 28 percent of speaking roles in top-grossing family films last year. And when women did appear, they were far less likely to hold roles of power or influence: making up only 3 percent of executive portrayals, for example, compared to 25 percent in real life.

Consider also how many Hollywood films — including the original Star Wars trilogy — fail the Bechdel Test, which asks only that a film contain two women who talk to each other at some point about something besides a man.

While not necessarily an indicator of quality, the Bechdel Test recognizes another uncomfortable truth: that women are most often portrayed in media primarily in terms of how they relate to men. I doubt the people who made these movies don’t believe they don’t value women as discrete human beings independent of men. But it’s the story the media shows if not tells.

It’s the narrative we’re all exposed to, over and over, whether we realize it or not.

Just look at the formidable female character Amidala, portrayed by Natalie Portman in the Star Wars prequel trilogy. She takes the throne of Naboo as queen at the age of 14, knows her way around a blaster to lead and win a war, and later steps into the role of a wise and far-seeing senator.

But ultimately, her narrative arc proves far less empowering than that of her daughter’s. Where Leia at least remained the same powerful, determined woman from beginning to end — and won Han’s heart regardless — Amidala crumbled emotionally and physically in Episode 3 after the loss of Anakin. She died not because of medical complications during childbirth or Anakin’s Force-choking domestic abuse, but because (according to the droid doctor) “she lost the will to live” after Anakin turned to the Dark Side. A reason so lame that it sounds like a futuristic version of “the vapours.”

Criticisms about representations of gender (or race and other diversity) are often countered in fandom by sociological or scientific analyses attempting to explain why the inequality happens according to the internal logic of the fictional world. As though there is any real reason that anything happens in a story except that someone chose to write it that way.

Fiction is not Darwinian.

Fiction is not Darwinian: It contains no impartial process of evolution that dispassionately produces the events of a fictional universe. Fiction is miraculously, fundamentally Creationist. When we make worlds, we become gods. And gods are responsible for the things they create, particularly when they create them in their own image.

Science fiction in particular has always offered a vision of the world not myopically limited by the world as it exists, but liberated by the power of imagination. Perhaps more than any genre of storytelling, it has no excuse to exclude women for so-called practical reasons — especially when it has every reason to imagine a world where they are just as heroic, exceptional, and well-represented as men.

More than any genre of storytelling, science fiction has no excuse.

Yes, many franchises are locked into demographic and historical legacies that make it difficult to introduce new characters that develop the iconic power or fan following of characters like Superman or Spider-Man. This makes women unlikely to play big roles in the important stories, and more likely to be killed, de-powered, or demoted. But the good news for Star Wars is that while these grandfathered gender dynamics may weigh heavy on stories that are still trapped in the past, they need not hinder the future.

Close your eyes, for a moment, and imagine a version of the Star Wars universe full of rich female characters who play diverse roles ranging from Jedi warriors to military leaders to bounty hunters.

Here’s the exciting news: It already exists. It’s called the Star Wars Extended Universe, a world developed through the officially licensed novels and other media outside the feature films. And it’s rife with excellent female characters who have already been embraced by Star Wars fandom, notably: Mara Jade, who appears at different times as an assassin, smuggler, Jedi Master (and Luke Skywalker’s wife); and Jaina Solo, a Rogue Squadron fighter pilot and Jedi Knight (and, you guessed it, Leia’s daughter with Han).

With a brand new film trilogy on the way from new Lucasfilm head Kathleen Kennedy and director J.J. Abrams — famous not only for his sci-fi success with the Star Trek reboot but also female-lead TV fare like Alias — there’s no reason new Star Wars movies can’t aspire to achieve what the Extended Universe already has. A world where the other half of the human race is not only visible to movie-goers of all genders and ages, but equally capable of astonishing and inspiring feats of heroism.

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Peter Sarsgaard booked for “The Killing” season three

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Now that “The Killing” has landed a new season, the AMC drama has also added a notable new cast member.

“Kinsey” star Peter Sarsgaard has joined the series in a recurring role, a spokeswoman for the network told TheWrap on Tuesday.

Sarsgaard will play Tom Seward, a death row inmate and lifelong convict who’s been in and out of the justice system for violent crimes since he was 10. Born into poverty and crime, Seward never wants to appear weak, and views every interaction as a challenge that he must dominate.

Last month, AMC renewed the series for a third season, saying that Veena Sud would return as showrunner, writer and executive producer for the 12-episode season.

Actors Mireille Enos and Joel Kinnaman are also returning for the third season, which begins production February 25 in Vancouver.

This will mark Sarsgaard’s first recurring role on a television series.

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Well: Ask Well: Swimming to Ease Back Pain

Many people find that recreational swimming helps ease back pain, and there is research to back that up. But some strokes may be better than others.

An advantage to exercising in a pool is that the buoyancy of the water takes stress off the joints. At the same time, swimming and other aquatic exercises can strengthen back and core muscles.

That said, it does not mean that everyone with a case of back pain should jump in a pool, said Dr. Scott A. Rodeo, a team physician for U.S.A. Olympic Swimming at the last three Olympic Games. Back pain can have a number of potential causes, some that require more caution than others. So the first thing to do is to get a careful evaluation and diagnosis. A doctor might recommend working with a physical therapist and starting off with standing exercises in the pool that involve bands and balls to strengthen the core and lower back muscles.

If you are cleared to swim, and just starting for the first time, pay close attention to your technique. Work with a coach or trainer if necessary. It may also be a good idea to start with the breaststroke, because the butterfly and freestyle strokes involve more trunk rotation. The backstroke is another good option, said Dr. Rodeo, who is co-chief of the sports medicine and shoulder service at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York.

“With all the other strokes, you have the potential for some spine hyperextension,” Dr. Rodeo said. “With the backstroke, being on your back, you don’t have as much hyperextension.”

Like any activity, begin gradually, swimming perhaps twice a week at first and then progressing slowly over four to six weeks, he said. In one study, Japanese researchers looked at 35 people with low back pain who were enrolled in an aquatic exercise program, which included swimming and walking in a pool. Almost all of the patients showed improvements after six months, but the researchers found that those who participated at least twice weekly showed more significant improvements than those who went only once a week. “The improvement in physical score was independent of the initial ability in swimming,” they wrote.

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It's Scotch, but the Owners Live Elsewhere

BALLINDALLOCH, SCOTLAND — George S. Grant markets malt whisky made in the shadow of the snow-capped Ben Rinnes mountains, from the same spot where, five generations ago, his family bought a distillery in 1865 for £511.

Nowadays the family’s Glenfarclas malt is produced in a modern, highly automated plant that exports it to the United States, Taiwan and other countries. But the profit returns here to the valley of the River Spey in the heart of Scotland’s whisky country. And that repatriated money is what makes Glenfarclas such a rarity.

“Within a 20-mile radius of where we are now, there are 35 distilleries,” said Mr. Grant, the director of sales at Glenfarclas. But only a handful of the operations within that 30-kilometer radius remain in Scottish hands. The rest are owned by big multinationals — most notably Diageo, based in London, and the French company Pernod Ricard — which book their profits and employ many of their staff members elsewhere.

In fact Mr. Grant, 36, says he knows of no other whisky maker apart from Glenfarclas that has its sales and marketing operation based at the distillery in this scenic part of Scotland. Though he says relations with the big non-Scottish players are good — they buy some of Glenfarclas’s output for their blended whiskies, after all — Mr. Grant notes that what sets his family’s company apart is its place in the community and the fact that “we’ve been here forever.”

To be sold as Scotch whisky, liquor must be produced in Scotland. The rest of the business can be elsewhere, though, and it often is.

Non-Scottish companies control about four-fifths of the £4.2 billion, or $5.6 billion, global market for Scotch, which is being driven by growth from emerging economies. The United States is still the biggest export market, by value, at £600 million in 2011. But Scotch whisky exports to Brazil grew 48 percent that same year, those to Taiwan 45 percent and to Venezuela 33 per cent, according to the Scotch Whisky Association.

John Kay, a prominent economist and former economic adviser to the Scottish government, says that too little of the money from those exports ends up in the Scottish economy.

He has proposed a £1 “bottle tax,” levied on all Scotch production, which would be paid by the distillers. The precise value of such a tax is hard to predict, but the Scotch Whisky Association says that about 1.3 billion bottles were exported in 2011 and it estimates that foreign sales make up 95 percent of the market.

But much of the monetary benefit goes to governments that slap duties on the product wherever it is sold.

“A lot of money is being made out of this product by foreign governments and foreign companies,” Mr. Kay said. The bottle tax, he said, would be a way to keep some of that money in Scotland.

With a referendum looming next year on Scottish independence, the idea has prompted a new debate about the country’s economic assets. It has even prompted comparisons between the North Sea natural gas and oil extracted from Scotland’s coastal waters and the Scotch spirit distilled on its heather-covered moorlands and windswept islands.

Whisky supports about 10,000 jobs in Scotland, including those of people working in bottling plants, and in total about 36,000 in Britain across the whole of the economy, including haulers and packaging companies, the Scotch Whisky Association says. But the distilleries themselves are not big job creators. Although the most modern ones operate 24 hours a day, they tend to employ no more than a dozen people.

Patrick Harvie, member of the Scottish Parliament for Glasgow responsible for enterprise for the Scottish Green party said it was “good to see others starting to question the benefits to Scotland of allowing our national assets to be controlled by global corporations.”

Mr. Harvie drew a parallel with a debate over the tax liability of corporations, including Starbucks, that use their multinational status to reduce corporate tax bills. Diageo says that it pays about 18 percent of tax on its profit on average but does not say where it does so.

“Our most famous whisky brands are registered abroad and the owners’ tax arrangements are less than clear,” Mr. Harvie said.

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Vintage piano given Valentine's Day deadline

HALF MOON BAY, Calif. — The piano was delivered to its bluff-top perch under cover of fog nearly two weeks ago. It is scheduled to leave this coastal enclave in a burst of flames on Sunday.

In between the fog and the fire, musician and sculptor Mauro Ffortissimo has been treating his neighbors to an illicit outdoor concert series grandly dubbed Sunset Piano. Chopin, Debussy, a tango or two. The performances are timed to end the moment the sun sinks below the horizon.

He plays to cyclists and dog walkers, babies in strollers, his landlady in a folding chair, the charmed, the perplexed. Every night the battered baby grand has sounded just a little bit worse as the elements erode the aging, al fresco instrument. Every night, the audience has grown.

Ffortissimo (not his real name, but you probably figured that out already) had hoped to serenade the residents of Half Moon Bay for a month. But it didn't take long for reality to intrude on the 50-year-old artist's well-laid plans.

Two days after Ffortissimo and friends rolled the piano out to a scenic spit of city land, a code enforcement officer sent a warning via email. Someone had complained.

No permit, no piano.

The 90-year-old Estey "appears to be an unauthorized encroachment onto public property," wrote Lamonte Mack. If you can't prove the installation is authorized, he told Ffortissimo, "please remove the piano — and platform — within 10 (ten) days."

That made the deadline Valentine's Day, an occasion to celebrate love, if not misplaced musical instruments.

The artist legally known as Mauro Dinucci has taken the bad news in stride. Asked about the end of the piano during Tuesday night's crowded concert, he crowed: "Woo, hoo! Valentine's Day! Bring chocolate!" and promised that "before we burn this baby, we give it one last boat ride."

Thursday will be the piano's last scheduled bluff-side concert along the Coastside Trail at the end of Kelly Avenue. Friday, Ffortissimo said, he has been invited to play the instrument at the Half Moon Bay Yacht Club.

Saturday he'll give a sunset performance on the water, a nod to the piano's earlier owners who once sent it from California to Panama and back by sea. Sunday he plans to set the piano ablaze in the flower-strewn field behind his studio.

"The idea of the burning," Ffortissimo said, "is a cremation, to liberate the piano from its physical form … I just hope it won't be a 'Spare the Air' day."

Not everyone is as happy as Ffortissimo about the piano's upcoming freedom.

Mayor Rick Kowalczyk, who has yet to hear the Sunset Piano himself, said he was trying to "see if I can't get something done in the short term to allow Mauro to stay." Kicking the Estey off of the bluff, he said, "feels a little bit like a child has a lemonade stand and the city shuts it down."

On Tuesday evening, more than 100 music lovers gathered round as the sun — and the temperature — dropped. Two women danced together on the grass. Wine was sipped and beer chugged. Children ate cold pizza. Shorebirds glided by.

Far away from Half Moon Bay, President Obama was preparing to give his State of the Union address. Christopher Dorner was thought to be shooting it out with police.

But here on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean, Susan Swanson of Redwood City poured white wine from a blue metal flask as Ffortissimo played Albinoni's "Adagio in G Minor." She'd read about the piano performance in the local newspaper, she said, "and it's the kind of news I like to read — good news.

"This to me is everything," said the trying-to-retire office manager. "It's a perfect moment. Once in a lifetime maybe. It's so odd, isn't it?"

maria.laganga@latimes.com

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<cite>The Monitor</cite> Heads to a Galaxy Far, Far Away

Not sure if you noticed, but it’s Star Wars Week on Wired. We’ve already dealt with the old movies and what the new movies will need, but it’s time to leave the big screen and get a handle on the best of the ancillary Star Wars products out there. To that end, we’ve got a new comic book that takes place between installments of the Original Trilogy, and two analog (or at least analog-inspired) games to take you back to your childhood. Beware, because we are descending to levels of Deep Nerd heretofore unplumbed.

Tasting notes for this week’s show:

• Brian Wood, the writer of Dark Horse’s new Star Wars ongoing comic, is also the man behind The Massive — the trade paperback of which is coming out next month. Highly recommended.


• Game publisher Fantasy Flight, maker of X-Wing Miniatures, also has a card game that’s pretty great. It’s a “living” card game rather than a conventional collectible game, meaning that you don’t have to pay through the nose chasing the best cards (though expansion packs are released periodically).


• A minute isn’t really enough to get across a full description of all the tables in Zen Studios’ new Star Wars Pinball, so here’s a deeper rundown.

Working on the Play section and editing features, Peter handles Wired magazine‘s pop culture and entertainment coverage: movies, TV, music, videogames, comic books and anything else that is absolutely integral to the survival of our species.

Read more by Peter Rubin

Follow @provenself on Twitter.

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Music kingpin Jimmy Iovine: “Most tech companies are culturally inept”

NEW YORK (TheWrap.com) – Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre will launch a new paid subscription music service this summer branded under the successful Beats headphone brand, Iovine said on Tuesday.

Speaking at AllThingsD’s conference in Laguna Beach, the chairman of Interscope-Geffen-A&M sought to explain why his service will be better than the ones currently available. One reason? It’s being designed by creative people instead of geeks.

“Most technology companies are culturally inept,” Iovine said. “The way content companies never get tech right, never get culture right. They can hire anyone they want to sing in front of advertisements, but they never get curation right.”

Iovine then said that everyone offers the same service except for Apple, for which he reserved high praise. Steve Jobs was able to create a great service because he mirrored the current generation, boasting a background in both culture and technology.

However, this new Beats service will be “completely different” from iTunes, focusing on curating playlists for its users. Iovine spent a lot of time talking about how the order of songs matters, how Bruce Springsteen spent six months determining the eight-song order of “Born to Run.”

The Beats service customize what songs plays next for each user, relying on tastemakers like Nine Inch Nails leader turned composer Trent Reznor.

“My daughter plays Patsy Cline and Beyonce on the same playlist,” Iovine said. “We can’t just give them albums. They are telling us now. How loud do they have to scream it?”

Iovine, who helped launch both Eminem and Lady Gaga, has a vested interest in helping artists profit, too. While he seemed to praise Spotify, many musicians have complained that they do not get enough money from the service. Iovine said his service would enable artists to see who was listening to their music so they could get a better sense of their fan base.

Members of the audience thought that might raise privacy issues, but Iovine just flashed his smile and said he remained optimistic.

Beats bought music service MOG last summer and revealed in January that it is planning a new subscription service. Ian Rogers, former CEO of Topspin Media, will run the new service, code-named Daisy.

Music News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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