John Rabe was trying to work as his cubicle-neighbor, Nihar Patel, was digging into a bag of sun chips. The snack giant Frito Lay is marketing its packaging as "noisy with a cause."

Marc Haefele, Off-Ramp's literary commentator, was one of Philip K. Dick's editors, so he knows dark. We sent him two new collections of local-themed noir to review: "Los Angeles Noir 2: The Classics," and "Orange County Noir."

Every year, the Downtown Breakfast Club awards the best in downtown Los Angeles, and punishes the worst at its Roses and Lemon Awards breakfast. KPCC's John Rabe has been covering it for a few years now and says the 30th annual saw a special rose and a very sour lemon. COME INSIDE for the full list of Roses.

This week on CyberFrequencies: the multi-media project "The Entryway:" two white women move into a house of Latino immigrants in LA's MacArthur Park. They do it to learn Spanish. "The Entryway" hit the web in March and reactions to the project tell the story of two LAs ... all of it revealed online. CyberFrequencies joins the debate with blogger Susannah Breslin and Ask A Mexican columnist Gustavo Arellano. To find all the links we talked about in the show, check out CyberFrequencies

4/9/10 UPDATE: LACMA and Watts Towers are talking about a partnership to help maintain and curate the Towers. Here's the piece we ran in October... This weekend, they're commemorating the moment fifty years ago when city engineers discovered that Simon Rodia's iconic Watts Towers were no danger to the public, and too strong to be pulled down. Now, as City Critic Sam Hall Kaplan told KPCC's Frank Stoltze, the Watts Towers are to LA what the Eiffel Tower is to Paris. Come inside for a wonderful 1957 documentary about the towers.

If Dinner Party Download gives you the meat and potatoes for good cocktail party conversation, co-host Brendan Newnam, unrepentant carnivore, offers the meat ... and for Off-Ramp this week, he visits the brand new McCall's Meat & Fish at 2117 Hillhurst in Los Feliz.