Holly Butcher

In one Los Angeles neighborhood, the holiday spirit arrived in the form of art.

This weekend marked Peach Tree Pottery's fourth annual holiday show, featuring everything from pottery to photography, handmade candles to hand-drawn sketches, homemade jewelry to crocheted and woven hats and scarves.

Linda Mechanic opened Peach Tree 10 years ago. Today it serves as a gallery and studio for both artists and aspiring talent to showcase their work. She also offers pottery lessons to students of all ages and experience levels.

"I do a lot of single lessons. That means people come one time to learn how to make a pot, glaze it and I never see them again," Mechanic said. "It's kind of like the skydiving of pottery: they make one pot and I never see them again."

But things change each December when Mechanic and friends put on their holiday art show for the community to celebrate emerging and veteran local artists.

"It attracts the local neighborhood as well as friends, so it's a way for the community to come together for the holiday season," Barbara Ryan, owner of the Boise Avenue Studio next door, said.

Art enthusiasts gather each year to look at the work, drink coffee accompanied by red velvet cookies, and mingle with featured artists.

"Linda always gets a good crowd at her shows. We always joke about how this is this magic vortex of creative energy," Christine Mason Miller, photographer and artist, said.

The show, however, is not completely for the artists. Customers have the chance to purchase original homemade gifts for the holidays.

"I think people appreciate personal work like that," Ryan said. "People are really happy to come to a pottery and a weaving studio and get handmade items."

The content and artists at each show change, but the regulars continue to appreciate gifting opportunities.

"We come here every year when she does this show right around Christmas time to look for more unique gifts," Customer Michael Masta said. 

Oftentimes these holiday shows break in new artists like Debbie Hoover.

Her exhibition this year included crocheted hats and scarves. She stayed by her table throughout Saturday's event, frantically crocheting new scarves and hats as customers depleted her original stock.

"It's been fabulous. I'm running out of product," she said about her first experience.

Across from Hoover, photographer Ann Howley displayed pictures from various trips she took this year.

Howley helped inaugurate the holiday show four years ago and enjoys participating every time and meeting emerging artists.

"What's cool is having new artists because they bring new energy to it," Howley said. "I'm really impressed how the show came together. We have four new artists this year and it's really exciting."

But apart from a revolving cast of artists, this year has seen some changes. For starters, it was only one weekend. In the past it used to occur every weekend in December leading up to Christmas.

"We've kept bringing it closer and tighter together so we could have more of an event than a whole co-op," Howley explained.

Mechanic also added two giving opportunities to the show: a toy drive for children and blanket drive for the local animal shelter.

"We wanted to do something, so we're collecting toys and giving them to families who maybe had a hard time and need an extra boost this year," Mechanic said.

For seven years Peach Tree worked with Casa Libre - a shelter for minors - providing pottery classes to children. However the organization shut down in August due to budget constraints. The toy drive at the show was Mechanic's new way to give back to the community.

Here's a video of highlights from this weekend's show. Peach Tree Pottery is open year round and, in addition to lessons, has quarterly shows of photography, paintings, pottery and handmade crafts.

He went from high school drummer to Hollywood agent. Survived the recent summer super talent agency merger between William Morris and Endeavor. And represented major sports and fashion brands in the entertainment space.

Gabe Gordon, now in his seventh year at William Morris, is not your typical agent. He works in the marketing department with brands like Rock & Republic and the NFL to create entertainment-based promotional strategies. It's a challenge, especially in this recession, but keeps him close to his passion for music and entertainment.

"I love the concept of having an area of an agency that represents brands and the ability to be diverse, creative and not stick to one genre of entertainment," Gordon said.

Gordon always knew he wanted to work in the Industry. He began playing drums at 9 years old, performing in jazz ensemble at school. There he met other musicians with similar tastes and ambitions to veer away from jazz.

They formed a rock band in eighth grade, which lasted through college, and played gigs throughout Los Angeles - ranging from a Malibu High School graduation to club venues like the Whiskey, Roxy, Troubadour and the El Rey.

"They played the scene, got around and were pretty well known in the Southern California region," Mike Hertz, Gordon's former assistant, said.

But these experiences eventually led him on a different path.

"I was the guy who was booking the band, calling the Roxy and saying 'my band's tour bus broke down so you need to give me a gig," Gordon said. "I was the business face of the band and really enjoyed it."

After graduating from Windward High School in Mar Vista, Gordon moved to Colorado where he majored in business marketing at the University of Denver.

"I knew I was going to come back to LA to work in entertainment and wanted to experience something different," Gordon said. "I really liked Denver, which had a big affinity for music."

Although the band disbanded, that love for music fueled his college experience. Over the summers he interned with Ronnie Lippin, former president of marketing and PR firm the Lippin Group and Interscope-Geffen-A&M.

"I remember the first assignment I had at Lippin was writing a press release for Eric Clapton's new album," he said. "It got in the New York Times, which was very rewarding."

He also became a Sony College Marketing Rep in Denver.

"It was a very cool experience," Gordon said. "I did everything from setting up CD listening parties in coffee shops to actually going to all the different shows in the area."

But after graduation Gordon wanted more. The music industry was changing, and he needed a new direction. So he returned to Los Angeles.

"I didn't want to work at a record label because that was when you could tell Internet downloads were going to kill the music industry," Gordon said.

He interviewed around town after spending his first summer as a graduate by the pool. Soon he got a job at the William Morris Agency, one of the largest talent agencies with a strong music department. 

 "I started, and it was primarily booking," Gordon said. "I wanted to be more in the marketing and shaping careers of these artists instead of just gigs."

But instead of leaving WMA, Gordon found an ideal home in the marketing department after temping one afternoon for the department head. Marketing attracted him because it stretched across all genres of entertainment, not just music.

However, because it was such a small department at the time (only 6 agents), Gordon had to wait one year for a position to open. During the wait, he worked throughout the company.

"In retrospect it was the best thing that happened to me because I was able to float around and experience every department. It was like my post-graduate education in entertainment," Gordon said.

When he finally made the move, Gordon became an assistant to newcomer Aaron Lenzini, who worked exclusively on the General Motors account.

Some of the deals they collaborated on included: the Cadillac Under 5 marketing campaign with John Travolta surrounding the "Be Cool" theatrical release; a promotional campaign featuring Jerry Bruckheimer from the CBS show "CSI Las Vegas" for GMC Truck Division; and probably most notably, the Transformers promotion where several GM vehicles actually played roles in the film as robots.

Gordon soon moved from assistant to the General Motors' account manager. In the new role, he helped facilitate a promotional partnership with Chevrolet, Lionsgate and Latin film production company Panamax Films around the release of "Ladrón que Roba a Ladrón."

He also branched out to work with different clients.

"I realized after working with General Motors I could do a lot more," he said.  "So I syndicated myself to other accounts. I've never been the one-client guy."

Now a full-fledged agent, his work continues to expand to new areas. A recent collaboration he helped create was for Bluefly.com and Touchstone Pictures surrounding the theatrical and DVD releases of "Confessions of a Shopaholic." It marked the first time a brand hosted an official movie website on their own site as a means to drive sales. 

He also strives to be a mentor for his current assistant, Steve Dutko, like Lenzini was to him.

"He's very good about getting me involved and proactive on client activations," Dutko said. "That's always nice to have in a boss - them being supportive and trying to get you to take on more responsibility."

In the meantime, Gordon is working on various promotions for the NFL, Purina, Swarovski and Bluefly.

"Gabe is a very fair and exciting person to work with," Hertz said. "He's very vibrant in the workplace and aggressive. It's fun being at the helm of what he's doing because he's always doing something."

Digital stalking is IN this season. Whether it's obsessively checking Facebook pictures of a long-lost high school friend, or googling the name of a hopeful employer, the web provides ample opportunity for amateur investigators. 

Even the professionals use the Internet's resources. When President Obama announced Sonia Sotomayor's Supreme Court nomination in May, it took minutes before media outlets including Fox News and CNN began to scrutinize the judge. They aired partial clips from speeches at Berkeley Law School in 2001 and Duke University in 2005. The problem was, the media took her statements out of context, portraying her, as The Atlantic says, "a Race Woman with an agenda." 

The point isn't the media twisting her words to make a point, but that the Internet greatly facilitates research. Fox News looked for dirt from Sotomayor's past and found the clips on an obscure conservative blog. Citizens now have the capability to research online and find just about anything.

I decided to experiment and see what I could discover about one of my favorite music columnists, Ann Powers.

First, I googled her name and found her Wikipedia page. Powers, born Feb. 4, 1964, began writing at music tabloid, The Rocket, in her hometown of Seattle. From there she moved to New York and briefly worked at the NY Times, then as a Village Voice editor for three years. In 1997, she went back to the Times as a pop critic. Four years later, she returned to Seattle where she served as senior curator at the Experience Music Project museum.  In 2006 she took over for Robert Hilburn at the LA Times as chief pop-music critic, where she currently works. 

Wikipedia also mentions one of her books: a collaboration with musician Tori Amos entitled Piece by Piece, released in 2005.

The last fact Wikipedia reveals about Powers is that she's married to rock critic Eric Weisbard and has one daughter named Rebecca Brooklyn. A short entry, but it provides insight on Ann Powers' career. It did not mention her recent move to Alabama that was published in LA Weekly, LA Observed and The Daily Swarm. I decided to keep digging to see if I could find out anything more on her education, family history or personal life.

Her Facebook page shows pictures of her family, lists her husband, date of birth, education info (she graduated from San Francisco State University in '89 and Bishop Blanchet high school in '81), and lists her as a fan of several musicians and the Pacific Northwest. It also states her employer as the LA Times.

Google search provided several links to her professional works, including many LA Times links; her blog, which she "shut down" on July 22, 2008; a link on the Daily Swarm to her LA Times story about Taylor Swift and the VMAs; and a mention on the Norman Lear Center website about the Popular Music Project: 2008.

The google pages mainly comprised her professional work. There were two results for different Ann Powers - a Facebook profile for Carol Ann Powers and a LinkedIn site for Ann Powers Reilly. On the third page, there were still links to her professional works (RottenTomatoes, IMDb, Random House), but more Ann Powers listings emerged, such as Twitter user girlonthebrink - a single mom who chronicles her "day-to-day existence in the brave, new bushwhacked recession since becoming unemployed."  

Things got more personal on the fourth google page with an LA Observed post from July 9 about the move to Tuscaloosa, Al.

I next googled Ann Powers Tuscaloosa, where I found links to LA Weekly about her filing the first story from Alabama. Powers did not give away her new zip code, and much of the search included links to her professional work.

My hour and a half of googling and Facebook stalking warranted a decent account of Powers. Her digital footprint mainly consists of professional links, but the archives go pretty far back. I also conducted searches on Yahoo and Ask Jeeves, mainly finding the same information as Google.

The moral of my investigation and the Sotomayor story really is that privacy doesn't exist. In the era of YouTube and Facebook, unknown people publicly share information about themselves, their family and their jobs. Reporters are both vulnerable and benefiting from this Internet revolution because the only tool needed for a decent search is a connection. People can dig up obscure footage of an interview or that first story published in a college newspaper. What goes online stays online.     

Celebrities die in threes. Or at least they do in tabloid urban legends and on Twitter. 

In 1959, Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper started this supposed trend after a plane crash, sometimes referred to as the day the music died. Fast-forward to January 2008, when Heath Ledger, Suzanne Pleshette and Brad Renfro all died within one week. Then again, this summer we saw in two days the passing of Michael Jackson, Farah Fawcett and Ed McMahon.

The most recent casualties in the rule-of-three fable happened this past week, and people are talking. 

I found out via Twitter on Monday that one of my favorite writers, Jim Carroll, died last Friday. After reading a post that said R.I.P. Jim Carroll, I immediately checked the New York Times. Unfortunately, it was true. Word spreads fast on Twitter, especially when the news is hidden in the obituary section of the LA Times.

Then, within a half an hour of discovering Carroll's death, I received a Levine Breaking News update on gmail that Patrick Swayze died. Celebrity death number two. By the time I logged onto Twitter, everyone had started paying their respects with R.I.P. messages, tributes, and links to articles or YouTube videos. 

Even a week later, users continue to update about his legacy and exchange jokes about Kanye West interrupting his funeral to inform everyone that Michael Jackson's was better: 

News of another death this week also came to me through Twitter. On Wednesday, folk singer and activist Mary Travers of Peter, Paul and Mary died after battling leukemia. As I was reading through several posts, I noticed a lot of users were writing about ''Puff the Magic Dragon'' and Mary Travers:

Just as I did after reading the rest in peace messages to Jim Carroll, I googled Mary Travers and confirmed her death. 

Although Twitter updated me very quickly on two news stories this week, the information was not always credible. On Thursday rumors about Travers' funeral appeared on the site, saying it was scheduled for Friday. One user added to the hoax by joke-tweeting about musicians playing at the ceremony:

Several links to fake news and blog posts fueled the rumors, while confused Tweeters asked for the truth. 

These conversations are what makes Twitter incredible, as said on MTV. Everyday citizens now act as the source of news, and even more importantly, readers are talking back. Sure, wild rumors flare, but people now have a public outlet to discuss the legacy of their favorite public figures or latest news.  

While others write more traditional remembrances or share youtube videos. The point right now isn't what we write, but how we interact.