Los Angeles September Parenting Radar Screen PLUS Ticket Giveaway!

School Daze

Ticket Giveaway: IRIS for Tuesday, September 13th at 8:00 PM

So... the endless summer comes to an end. Labor Day caught us off guard this year, so much so that we had to scramble to get a lunchbox packed this morning. Never mind, though. The stone fruit at the farmers' market is still incredible, our summer tan hasn't faded and we know those teachers won't pile on the homework ... just yet! We're firing up the BBQ tonight and plan to play cards in the fading September light. Spit, anyone? 

Ticket Giveaway: Cirque du Soleil has a new show, IRIS, A Journey Through the World of Cinema. This large-scale production - created exclusively for its permanent home at the Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles - offers a new take on the art of cinema as only Cirque du Soleil could imagine it. IRIS is an inventive spectacle that combines acrobatics, dance, projections and live music. The show takes the audience on a fantastic voyage directed by acclaimed choreographer Philippe Decouflé with music by Oscar-nominated composer Danny Elfman. Kids Off the Couch subscribers can enter to win a Family 4-Pack to the 8:00 PM show on Tuesday, September 13 by writing to us at familysavvy@gmail.com. Winner to be notified by this Friday morning, so please remember to leave us your cell number. 

Hollywood Bowl: It is still summer at the Bowl, so line up another relaxing evening under the stars; click here for the Bowl's September calendar, which includes performances from Dudamel, Alex Trabek with the American Film Institute's Movie Quiz, and Moulin Rouge.

Elementary: Noted Chinese artist Ai WeiWei's sculptures of animal heads, Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads, have recently been installed at LACMA and is gathering happy crowds of all ages. The twelve massive animal heads are impressive to behold (not to mention, run around!). Click here for a great review of the work from the Los Angeles Times. All Join In: A Fairy Tale Sing-A-Long Afternoon is the most popular Santa Monica Playhouse production ever, so bring your budding music lovers on Saturdays and Sundays, 12:30 and 3:00pm, September 10 through October 16. The excellent companion exhibit to this summer's blockbuster Houdini show features an excellent family program each Sunday afternoon until January. If it's time for your kids to start learning proper manners, consider signing them up for Cotillion this fall at Beverly Hills Manners. Finally, get back to the beach one more time on the Coastal Clean Up Day with Heal the Bay on September 17. 

Middle School: If it's still brutally hot by the weekend, you'll want to head to Malibu and watch the 2011 MSA Classic from September 9-11, celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the Malibu Surfing Association (FREE, and open to all). Or get into a cool movie theater and watch the screwball comedy Bringing up Baby at Free Family Flicks at the Hammer. KCRW's third annual Good Food Pie Contest takes place on Sunday, September 18 at LACMA, with plenty of family programming (whether you bake or not!). And, if pie's not your thing, have you tried fonuts yet?

Teens: A visit to the Annenberg's blockbuster show, Beauty Culture, is a true conversation starter, especially with a teen-age girl. Combine that with Jennifer Siebel Newsom's provocative documentary at the Hammer this month, which pairs interviews with teens and iconic female figures in culture, and is called Miss Representation. 

Adults: Southern Californians take note! We've got your date night covered for the next six months. After much planning, and an unprecedented collaboration among over sixty museums in the region, Pacific Standard Time is here: for six months these institutions, at the initiative of the Getty, will tell the story of the birth of the L.A. art scene. The first ones to check out: a retrospective of the work of acclaimed (and beloved) potter, Beatrice Wood: Career Woman-Drawings, Paintings, Vessels, and Objects opens on September 10 at the Santa Monica Museum of Art. Click here for more on the Mama of Dada, who was 105 when she died in 1993. And, the Pomona College Museum of Art has opened It Happened at Pomona; Part 1: Hal Glicksman,which was reviewed in today's Los Angeles Times.

Planning Ahead: An extraordinary screening of Lord of the Rings, accompanied by a live orchestra, takes place on October 15 at the Honda Center in Anaheim. Grab your seats now for the holiday must-see, The Joffrey Ballet - Nutcracker, for six performances at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in early December.

And of course... the 10th anniversary of 9/11: We think that how you commemorate 9/11 with your family is an extremely personal matter but we did hear about Big Sunday Remembers 9/11, a food drive and breakfast in conjunction with letter writing to our servicemen with Operation Gratitude. Click here for other service opportunities to remember 9/11 through LAWorks. For tips on talking with your kids about 9/11, click here.

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Marie Curie + Jennifer Steinkamp = LA Kids Off The Couch

Jennifer Steinkamp only at ACME until Saturday, March 12

If you have walked around the W Hotel in Hollywood, or like to hang out near the Hammer's Cafe, you've probably noticed the arrestingly beautiful imagery of artist Jennifer Steinkamp - large, colorful butterflies along Vine Street, or a gently waving tree in the Hammer's courtyard. When we heard that Jennifer had named a recent piece of work after Marie Curie (our favorite female scientist), we popped intoACME gallery, located on Wilshire just west of Fairfax.

The Artist's Work: A pulsating, colorful wall of flowers that is Steinkamp's "Madame Curie" greeted us as we entered the gallery. With lights dimmed to best offset the computer's projections, we were quickly captivated by the rhythmic undulations of stems and petals that seemed to wave in an unseen breeze. The artist recently became interested in Radium and so studied up on Marie Curie, who received theNobel Prize for Physics in 1903, for discovering the element Radium. Steinkamp learned that Marie Curie was a avid gardener, and her work depicts flowers that Curie cultivated in her own yard.

The show, which is only up until this Saturday (3/12), is perfect for kids. They sidle right up to the wall, playing with the image as it beams on their hands and casting shadows on the wall itself. Up close, what was a cascade of posies from the gallery door becomes a needlepoint canvas of form and color. One of Steimkamp's lyrical, waving trees is on view in another room of the gallery.

Learn Online: The cool thing about computer generated art is that you can view it online -- if you can't get to ACME by Saturday, or if you're just curious about this cool artist, here is Jennifer's website with links to all her installations. If you click on one, you can read all about it, but be sure to click on "quicktime movie" to see the pieces in motion. Another version of "Madame Curie", listed first, is installed in the San Diego through June, if you are inclined to take a little road trip south.

A Getty Connection: Jennifer Steinkamp is the FY11 Getty Artists Program's artist-in-residence and has selected college students as the primary focus for her project. Stay tuned for updates this project.

Madame Curie: Getting your kids to watch a classic title is not easy but we promise that Madame Curie is worth the effort -- that is, for kids over the age of 8. (1943, 124 minutes, directed by Mervyn LeRoy). Curie was married to fellow scientist Pierre Curie with whom she toiled in rudimentary laboratories to unlock the secrets of radioactivity. The film, which starred Greer Garson, was nominated for 7 Academy Awards and made the AFI's Top 100 Inspirational Movies list; it is both highly romantic and remarkably good at showcasing the couple's scientific method -- something that our kids study in school, and appreciated seeing in action in the film. We loved that Marie kept at her experimentation, believing in herself and her work, and ultimately triumphing as the first female Nobel Prize winner. Seems that her persistent intelligence ran in the family: her daughter Irene won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1935. Curie also received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1911 for recognition of her work in radioactivity.

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Kids Off The Couch: The January Radar Screen

New Year's Resolutions

The Latest Mommy Wars played out in the Wall Street Journal

It's been hard not to get caught up in the latest parenting debate, sparked by a Wall Street Journal article "Why Chinese Mothers are Superior," author Amy Chau's provocative piece based on her new book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. The Journal received over 5000 responses to the story, and countered with Ayelet Waldman's "In Defense of the Guilty, Ambivalent, Preoccupied Western Mom." Spend a few moments on these articles and you'll have conversation fodder for the rest of the month. Our New Year's resolution is to put a little more tiger into our Western tank of parenting... just as soon as we recover from another weekend of sports games and sleepovers!

PRE-SCHOOL AND EARLY ELEMENTARY -- The Little Mermaid at El Capitan and the reDiscover Center inSanta Monica: Disney's 1989 classic animated tale plays for two weeks at El Capitan in Hollywood, from January 21 - February 10, with a visit from Ariel herself at every show. The El Capitan Theatre will also host "Tiny Tot Tuesday" on Tuesday, January 25, at 10:45 AM only, allowing parents and small children to enjoy the movie with lights dimmed and sound levels reduced. For a fun DIY project, come to thereDiscover Center in Santa Monica on Saturday, January 29 from 2:00 - 5:00 PM with a bag of used clothes to participate in a crafty swap-o-rama.

ELEMENTARY AND MIDDLE SCHOOL -- Julian Hoeber at the Hammer and Ben Franklin at the Bowers Museum:We love Julian Hoeber's stand-alone exhibit at the Hammer.Demon Hill is a tilted box made of plywood that sits on an outdoor patio and looks easy enough to climb into... except that once you do, you'll immediately feel like you have fallen down Alice's rabbit hole. Dizzying and mind-warping, boys and girls (who don't get seasick) will find this exploration of "gravitational mystery spots" really cool. The Hammer is also holding a FREE screening of The Goonies on Saturday,January 23 at 11:00 AM. And while you've got science on the brain, try an excursion to the Bowers Museum (in Santa Ana). Their new exhibit brings the inventions, humor and wisdom of one of our country's most original thinkers to life; Ben Franklin: In Search of a Better World until March 13. Before heading out, check out the exhibit's online resources (including a fun guessing game about Franklin's famous sayings). Younger kids will like the nearby Kidseum.

HIGH SCHOOL -- The West Wing: We re-discovered the snappy political savvy ofThe West Wing when our 12th grader devoured the first two seasons over the holidays at the suggestion of her US History teacher. Written by Aaron Sorkin (who just won a Golden Globe for The Social Network), and focused on a Democratic president and his staff, the show is compelling and informative.

PARENTS -- Get Arty: The Los Angeles Art Show takes over the Los Angeles Convention Center from January 19-23. Grab a day pass for a visual vacation, or attend Wednesday's Opening Night Premiere Party, which partially benefits the Getty's program to fund museum visits for disadvantaged kids. In fact, art aficionados can take advantage of free admission at many area museums during the Museum Free-For-All Weekend, January 29th-30th and find deals at over 30 local arts institutions through April 30th, part of Discover the Arts in LA.

Worth Pondering: Our most practical (and so far, successful) New Year's Resolution is to do our best not to waste food. Inspired by Jonathan Bloom's new book, American Wasteland: How America Throws Away Nearly Half of It's Food (and What We Can Do About It). Not only are we are tired of tossing left-overs, we're alarmed that food pantries are struggling to meet the needs of a hungry population. By cooking meals that take advantage of staples in the pantry, we wind up shopping more often for fresh veggies and meat. Yet, we are purchasing and preparing less food, and have actually saved money. Best of all, our refrigerator shelves are far less cluttered. Click here for a NYTimes article that summarizes an issue that touches on our health, our wallets and our natural resources.

Worth Clicking: If your New Year's Resolution has to do with keeping your kids safe in cyberspace, check out Common Sense Media's program to protect kids' online privacy. If your issues have more to do with keeping your household safe, you'll be interested to hear that Consumer Reports teamed up with the National PTA to create a School Safety Alert Program to help families stay abreast of the constantly changing status of items that are in the home.

Yum Yum: Our friends at Coolhaus, a rolling ice cream sandwich truck that was on the front edge of the food truck craze, have a new concept and product: Phydough -- a truck with home-baked treats for your four-legged friends. Follow them on Twitter.

Just for Fun: The Pacific Orchestra has placed 20 pianos in outdoor locations aroundOrange County for the next three weeks. Passers by are encouraged to sit down and play, as part of a promotion called "OC Can You Play;" the pianos are all painted by local artists and will be auctioned off at the organization's gala. So, if you're traveling south in the next few weeks (soccer or volleyball tournaments come to mind) consult this map to find where to pianos are located.

One resolution we can keep is to make our Radar Screen a vital part of your family's planning. To that end, we're dividing our suggestions into age categories to help you speed through our picks. If you have other ideas to help us improve, please send us a note.

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Kids Off The Couch - What's On Our November Radar Screen!

Ticket Giveaway for Toyota Symphonies for Youth and the California State Parks in Hollywood Film Festival
R.I.P. Halloween, hello Season of Giving! Despite the current heat wave, it's time to get into the autumn spirit and be thankful. Thanksgiving is still a few weeks away, so here's a cornucopia of tricks and treats to make sure your November isn't lacking the thrills of the recently departed All Hallow's Eve.

Toyota Symphonies for Youth Ticket Giveaway: Last month we sent a happy family to the LA Phil Presents Toyota Symphonies for Youth: Pianissimo concert. This month, we have two tickets to LA Phil Presents Toyota Symphonies for Youth: Berlioz' Symphonie fantastique at Walt Disney Concert Hall. The concert plays on two consecutive weekends this month (11/6 and 11/13, 11:00 AM) with Dudamel Conducting Fellow Jean-Michaël Lavoie conducting the LA Philharmonic, accompanied by a bevy of ballerinas. Click here if you are free for this weekend's performance - we'll notify the winner by Friday morning.

Ticket Giveaway for California State Parks starring in Hollywood Films: Many wonderful films were made in our state parks, and this weekend these productions are being celebrated at a film festival benefiting the California State Park system. See the films on a studio lot, and hear from actors involved with making them happen: Star Wars: Episode VI Return of the Jedi and MASH will be shown at the Paramount Theater at Paramount Studios on Saturday (11/6) and Spartacus and Planet of the Apes will be shown at the Darryl F. Zanuck Theater on the 20th Century Fox lot on Sunday (11/7). We have two weekend passes for a family of four to give away so click here if you want to be in this drawing. We'll award passes by Friday morning.

Art You Glad It's Autumn? The whimsical and colorful work of Maira Kalman will be showcased at the Skirball Cultural Center starting November 17. Maira Kalman: Various Illuminations (of a Crazy World) is the first survey of Kalman's work. A versatile illustrator and decorator, you'll recognize Kalman's work instantaneously from countless New Yorker covers. The Annenberg Space for Photography presents Extreme Exposure, showcasing daredevil photographers who venture into environments where no ordinary documentarian has gone before. We all held our breath at the sight of a determined elephant charging through the shallow waters toward an intrepid photog risking his life for the shot. If your family loves photography as much as we do, head to LACMA to see the godfather of color photography, William Eggleston, and over two hundred of his photographs in William Eggleston: Democratic Camera-Photographs and Video, 1961-2008.

Gobble It Up: November is a time for family, friends, and feasting, but also an opportunity to count our blessings and pay them forward. Kids benefit from even a few hours of service to those less fortunate, and you can learn more from reading past Popcorn Adventures on Oliver, The Blind Side and The Pursuit of Happyness. We love Union Station's annual Thanksgiving Dinner in the park. For the last 20 years the Union Station Foundation has been host to what's been named the "Biggest Potluck in the Nation," with over 1,8000 volunteers and 5,000 meals served last year. There are countless other ways to give back this Turkey day, so check out the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank and Create The Good for ideas for giving in your neighborhood.

DIY Thanksgiving Table: It's our tradition to host our loved ones around the dinner table each year, and the kids love to decorate the table. Some of our favorite finds are the Pilgrim Hat Centerpiece --all you'll need is a terra cotta pot, black felt, and black and yellow poster board. Let the kids create ornate place cards out of colored paper, leaves, and Popsicle sticks. We found a great site to jog your imagination, and another clever craft site with cute ideas like fashioning a photo into a clever Pilgrim napkin ring.

Showtime: If your kids have a fascination with the Trojan War, don't miss master storyteller Daniel Morden performing at The Getty Villa on November 13 and 14 at 3:00 PM. The one hour show is best for kids over eight. From the creators of the global dance phenomenon STOMP comes PANDEMONIUM, featuring outside of the box implementation of everyday objects like bottles, saws, and toys, alongside a complete symphony orchestra with strings, woodwind, and brass. Helen Hunt stars in Much Ado About Nothing in the Shakespeare Center's 25th Anniversary production, for two weeks only in December; featuring the music of Lyle Lovett. A Holiday must-see is The Nutracker, coming to UCLA Royce Hall on December 18. Tickets are sure to twirl out the door quickly, so get your tickets for this wonderful winter extravaganza. For more seasonal sounds, check out the Brian Waite Band at the Santa Monica Library. This kid-friendly jam band is right for elementary school and smaller who will encounter a cast of characters styled to provoke thought and educate through music.

Film Fix: Head to the Hammer Museum on November 14 for a free screening of The Black Stallion, the first feature film by Duma's Carroll Ballard about an unbreakable bond shared between a boy and a stallion while stranded on a desert Island. This weekend, James Cameron's record- breaking masterpiece Avatar will finally be premiering on HBO. Now we can get native with the Na'vi on demand. Be sure to head out to the multiplex over Thanksgiving weekend for Disney's 50th animated tale, Tangled, which opens on November 24. The El Capitan is hosting a live show with the movie's new characters -- Rapunzel and Flynn Rider -- from November 24-December 19.

Fall Back: Just a reminder that we turn our clocks back one hour at 2:00 AM this coming Sunday (11/7) when we go back to Pacific Standard Time. Daylight Saving Time starts again the second Sunday of March 2011.