FIDM Museum

This year a lot of classics have been nominated for Oscars. There’s a place where you can go to see stuff that were actually in those movies. That place is the FIDM Museum.

Every year, they put on display the different costumes and items from the movies that have been nominated. This year, the tuxedo worn by Ken Watanabe in best picture nominee, “Inception” was on display, as well as over 100 other costumes from more than 20 films such as “King’s Speech”, another best picture nominee.

In the “Alice in Wonderland” exhibit you can see everything from the pins in the Mad Hatter’s hat to his bobbin-made belt. It takes quite some effort to put such a costume collection like this together.

The FIDM Museam is our chance to see the costumes the actors actually wore and feel like we’ve entered their film world. The museum will be open until April 30th so go check it out!

Street Poet Yumeshi

Yumeshi, a 26 year old street poet, has been all around Japan, Taiwan and Hawaii. Now he’s here in Los Angeles. We caught up to him at Venice Beach. Yumeshi’s special gift is to look into a person’s eyes and gather inspiration, which he then turns into poetry. So far, he has written poetry for more than 9000 people.

On the day we found him, he wrote an inspired poem for Yorucli announcer, Akiko Inoue. Listening to the same music together, he looked into her eyes, found his inspiration and started writing. When he finished, his resulting poem left a true lasting impression on Inoue.

“When I’m writing [poetry] I like to capture the smiles and happiness of the people in front of me. That’s always what I’ve tried to do,” says Yumeshi.

Yumeshi will be at Venice Beach until March 4th. After that he will be at the Santa Monica 3rd Promenade.

Hayakawa’s Dream

“Peter-chan”, a stage comedy written by Mai Hayakawa, was performed on February 20th at a special scholarship fund celebration in her name at Cal State Fullerton. Sadly, Mai was not able to see the performance.

Last August, Mai passed away at the age of 22, killed in an alcohol related accident. The car she was a passenger in, lost control and ran off the road while trying to avoid a truck. Mai was confirmed dead on the spot. Highway patrol announced that the driver of the vehicle was under the influence of alcohol.

“It’s been decided that ‘Peter-Chan’ will go into production. Everyone was looking forward to my future,” she wrote earlier. But the accident happened before that production could begin.

Everyone thought of Mai’s lost dream as the production went on, and so her friends who graduated from Cal State threw a kick-off event to celebrate the Mai Hayakawa Memorial Scholarship Fund for students of theater. Students will be flying to New York to perform during the summer break.