Off-Ramp host John Rabe talks with the founders and contributors to Slake, the new Los Angeles literary quarterly … including editors Laurie Ochoa and Joe Donnelly, and writers Jonathan Gold, Jamie Brisick, John Powers, Jervey Tervalon, and John Albert. The LONG version of their conversation (and we mean LONG) is on iTunes as a special Off-Ramp podcast.

Michael Q Schmidt is 57 years old, and weighs about 300 pounds. You wouldn’t guess it by looking at him, but he’s made a career based solely on his looks. As an actor, you might have seen him on Cartoon Network, the Harry Potter films and dozens of music videos. Off-Ramp’s Kevin Ferguson sat down with Schmidt at his home in Placentia.

UPDATE: We're reposting this segment for Rosh Hashanah, which begins at sunset on Wednesday, September 28. ----- The Jewish month of Elul begins at sunset on Monday, August 9th. Every day during Elul, until Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, observant Jews will want to hear the shofar, the animal horn. Michael Chusid, Angelino and author of "Hearing Shofar: The Still Small Voice of the Ram’s Horn," joins Off-Ramp host John Rabe in the Crawford Family Forum to teach us about the shofar ... and teach John how to play it. COME INSIDE for a link to Michael's book.

Taco trucks used to be where you went to get … tacos. Now they serve everything from French crepes to Vietnamese sandwiches. But in everything that’s been said about taco trucks, Off-Ramp’s Bridget Read still hadn’t heard one of the most basic things about them: who makes them?

Off-Ramp literary commentator Marc Haefele says, in general, it's another case of outsiders not getting it.

John Rabe and Colleen Bates of Eat LA talk with David Lazarus about the controversy stirred over tipping column in Times this week: should we tip before or after tax?

This week: Office star Rainn Wilson berates LACMA, Walt McClements of Minneapolis' Dark Dark Dark tells a pesky bartender joke, and much more!