We work out our Feliz Navidad earworm issues, hear an all-star cast read "Night Before Christmas," listen to the Hollywood Park bugler, and talk about kids who see numbers as colors.
Want a date? Learn to make classic cocktails!
"That's how I test my dates. If you can't make an Old Fashioned, you ain't getting a date with me. It's the ultimate classic cocktail. It's really easy to make, but it's really easy to screw up, too." -- Krista Simmons, food editor and culinary host, LAist
The Crawford Family Forum is the perfect venue to talk about most things, from politics to movies to health care. But when it comes to classic cocktails, the Forum lacks a few essentials ... like actual cocktails. So when we wanted to explore the rise of classic cocktails in LA, and how to make them, we convened at The Virgil, a cocktail bar in Silverlake, with just the right combination of lack of pretension, devotion to craft, and comfortable grittiness.
I was joined on stage by Krista Simmons, LAist's food editor and culinary host; food and culture reporter Javier Cabral (LA Times Food, KCET Food, Saveur, etc.); Daniel Djang, who founded the blog Thirsty in LA; and Naomi Schimek, beverage director at Spare Room Hollywood and VP of the LA chapter of the United States Bartenders' Guild.
RELATED: 5 LA bars with the best Old-Fashioned. What's your favorite?
First, we learned that LA lagged New York City in the renaissance of classic cocktails ... by 20 years. That while Dale DeGroff, aka King Cocktail, was crafting cocktails in NY's Rainbow Room in the 1980s, it wouldn't be until the mid-2000's that Providence and Comme Ça brought the trend here, and dragged us out of the Dark Ages of Sex on the Beach, Cosmo's, and Long Island Ice Teas, not to mention hyper-dry Martini's, too-sweet-Old Fashioned's, and other concoctions too vile to mention, consumed while wearing Member's Only jackets.
We also compiled a list of the go-to classic cocktails:
- Old Fashioned
- Manhattan
- Sazerac
- Fresh Margarita
- Martini
- Negroni
... and if you'll listen to the audio, you'll not only learn that EVERY ONE of our panelists — drink experts all — put a shocking amount of good vermouth in their Martinis, from 1:4 vermouth to gin to 1:1 vermouth to gin.
Naomi recommends a jigger of fresh vermouth (kept refrigerated and corked, and for no more than 2 months) and a jigger of good gin, stirred over ice, with a dash of orange bitters and a lemon twist.
Dee Dee's Dive replaces The Bucket, Eagle Rock's venerable greasy burger joint
President Obama probably ate there when he was Undergrad Obama, with a fondness for the mustardy Julio Burger. Kareem-Abdul Jabbar would literally duck in for a bacon cheeseburger, then duck out the back. Elmer Dills came and loved it when he was insulted.
I'm talking about The Bucket, the burger joint that has been gracing, or greasing, Eagle Rock Boulevard since 1935. It was shuttered for a couple months this year. Now, it's Dee Dee's Dive, with former owner Dee Dee Baca back in charge.
I got a history lesson on the restaurant from Baca. It was opened as a malt shop in 1935. Then, sometime in the 1960s, it became The Bucket, and Julio Maeso took it over.
Late SoCal restaurant reviewer Elmer Dills gave you a hint of Julio's character in his Hamburger Guide, along with a B rating:
Owner Julio Maeso is a true character and known for his steady stream of insults to his guests. The burger he makes looks like the Empire State Building when finished and his "special secret sauce" will be all over you by the time you finish.
Dee Dee says Julio cut off Dills' tie, and Dills loved it. He treated other people worse. "If you came in and you ordered french fries and a cheeseburger and a regular Coke and you were overweight, you were gonna get a Tab and no cheese and no fries. And he got away with it. I can't do that now."
The Bucket changed hands many times, including once by Dee Dee and her brother, Ivan. Then it was sold to George Eckley. As Damon Gambuto wrote for A Hamburger Today back in 2009, Eckley dispensed with Julio's schtick, but the burgers weren't great:
The meat is delivered fresh daily and is hand formed into the substantial eight-ounce patties. Moments after it hits the grill I see the problem: The cook squeezes a mighty helping of Worcestershire sauce over the patty and then follows it up with a layer of garlic powder so thick that the entire top of the burger is white. My eyes go wide as the patty goes from white to orange as a layer of seasoned salt obscures the garlic powder. Then the cook proceeds to poke the patty, releasing the fat. My hopes go up in smoke.
Eckley is holding on to the beer and wine license and the name The Bucket, hence the name change. Dee Dee explains: "The thing about it is, the owners after Julio have all been kids from the community. Richard Alatorre, Eddie Cienfuegos, myself, my brother, Ivan. All of us born and raised in Eagle Rock. It's been a community thing. That's why I had to come back."
Dee Dee has brightened up and de-greased the place and added rock 'n' roll decor. She's hoping for the same community support that has kept the little burger joint going for almost 80 years.
The Bucket is at 4541 Eagle Rock Blvd. and is open 11:30 a.m. to 8 p.m. every day.
Dave Van Ronk, the real-life inspiration for Coen Bros' 'Inside Llewyn Davis'
His sound is as American as a Shaker chair ... or a Bible with a bullet hole in it: Dave Van Ronk. Lone man with a guitar. And the inspiration for the latest Coen Brothers movie, “Inside Llewyn Davis.”
But unless you're a folk completist or a Coen Brothers fan, you've probably never heard of Dave Van Ronk. He was one of the original Greenwich Village troubadours — a lynchpin in the American folk music revival of the late '50s and early '60s.
In the big-hearted interview he gave to Martin Scorsese for his Bob Dylan documentary "No Direction Home," Van Ronk remembered his early days and how, in the early 1960s, Van Ronk taught the then-unknown Bob Dylan how to flat-pick and let him sleep on his couch. He mentored Dylan and Tom Paxton and, later on, Joni Mitchell and Suzanne Vega.
For a brief moment, Dylan and Van Ronk were peers and equals, playing on the same bill at Greenwich Village "basket houses" like the Gas Light, having a ball. A good chunk of Van Ronk's output was reissued this year on a three-disc CD anthology from Smithsonian/Folkways.
At its best, it's music that sounds simultaneouslly fresh and as old as the hills. In a better world, and in a different country, Van Ronk might have become a national institution. But Van Ronk was an American, one who died almost penniless after recording 25 albums in 40 years, while scrambling to find money for his medical bills.
By the remorseless American logic that rates movie art by ticket sales and musical ability by licensing deals, Van Ronk was a failure, a beautiful loser, as the Coen Brothers show in scene after scene of their bleak and fictionalized "Inside Llewyn Davis," crafted from the raw material of Dave Van Ronk's life.
Money haunts the Coens' imaginary musical journeyman Llewyn Davis. It haunted Van Ronk, too. The closest Van Ronk came to a hit was when his pal Bobby Dylan swiped a unique Van Ronk arrangement of "House of the Rising Sun" for his influential first album.
Van Ronk laughs heartily after he tells the story, laughter that sounds especially brave when you reflect on his circumstances at the time of this interview. He is close to impoverished and has been for much of the past 40 years. He is participating in an authorized biographical epic about his wildly successful one-time protégé. He is recounting how a surefire hit was taken from him so completely he had to abandon performing it himself.
And yet his laughter is warm, and even wise. Perhaps it's because Dave Van Ronk understood an important idea at the core of folk music, which is that it's most alive when you pass it on. To pass the torch became Dave Van Ronk's purpose in life. It's what makes him a man who succeeded, without ever becoming a success.
Off-Ramp contributor R.H. Greene is producer of "War of the Welles," a behind-the-scenes look at Orson Welles' "The War of the Worlds" 1938 broadcast
Rachel Bloom joins Mantle, Carolla, Poggioli and more in our All Star Night Before Christmas
Rachel Bloom of "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend" was in the The Frame studio today, and after she was done, I asked if she'd lend her voice to our annual audio holiday card to listeners, the All Star Night Before Christmas.
"I'd love to!" she said. "Our family reads this every year at Christmas!"
And thirty seconds later, she'd nailed:
He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot,
And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot;
A bundle of toys he had flung on his back,
And he looked like a peddler just opening his pack.
And now Rachel joins the ranks of celebs and KPCC hosts who hammed it up for us, including A Martinez, Alex Cohen, Larry Mantle, John Horn, Adam Carolla, Salman Rushdie, Kathleen Turner, NPR's Sylvia Poggioli, Ted ("Isaac" on the Love Boat) Lange, and John ("Q" on Star Trek) de Lancie. Patt Morrison specifically asked to read the reindeer names, so she say Donder, not Donner. (I'm sure she's right.)
The late great Steve Julian corralled many of the voices a few years ago in his local theater work, so of course I couldn't take his velvety voice out of there. And neither could I switch out Huell Howser, who closes out the poem in signature Huell fashion.
But there's no need. After all, it's at Christmas that we remember old and new friends, those with us in the flesh, and those with us in our hearts.
9 versions of Jose Feliciano's 'Feliz Navidad' you never knew existed
KPCC news editor Oscar Garza says by simply playing Jose Feliciano's "Feliz Navidad," we risk implanting one of the most insidious ear worms in the history of recorded music. But did you know there are several covers of the song? Don’t say you weren’t warned.
I love Jose Feliciano’s music, but ‘tis the season when the incessant strains of this song can drive you mad. It’s apparently three minutes long, but I wouldn’t know: I only listen for as long as it takes to reach for the dial.
And I get plenty of chances: Every year, “Feliz Navidad” makes Billboard magazine’s top 10 list of most-played holiday songs. And that’s been going on since 1970. That simple, repetitive melody is the key to its success — and also what turns me into a Grinch.
You wouldn't know it, but dozens of other artists have also recorded the song. I’m surprised there isn’t a satellite radio station devoted to the song. The songwriting royalties alone have likely made Feliciano a very, very rich man. I bet everything he owns is lined in fur. Anyway, here’s our Christmas present to you—a listener’s guide to “Feliz Navidad.”
1. Los Straitjackets: This luchador mask-wearing band goes instrumental, with twangy guitars instead of a vocal. This is what Surfin’ Santa listens to.
2. Jon Secada: Somehow, singer Secada has managed to suck the “feliz” out of the song.
3. Celine Dion: Canada, we know we haven’t always been neighborly, but what did we ever do to deserve this?
4. Michael Buble: Yet another Canadian takes a stab. Buble does a duet here with the Mexican singer Thalia. Ack! Attacks on both our borders!
5. The Wiggles: This goes for this Australian children's band, but my advice also goes for versions by the Cheetah Girls, Dora the Explorer and the Rugrats: Parents, even if your kids have been more naughty than nice, don’t subject them to this.
6. It Dies Today: I’d never heard of the metal band It Dies Today, but its name says exactly what should happen to this rendition.
7. Glee: At the other end of the spectrum, the cast from “Glee.” Of course, it’s peppy. Annoyingly peppy.
8. Reggae: Whoa! A reggae version from Freddie McGregor. Nice. But I don’t think that’s mistletoe he’s smoking, mon.
9. Los Huracanes del Norte: Norteño legends Los Huracanes del Norte turn the song into a fine cumbia. This is easily the best of the bunch. The problem is, you won’t hear this, or any other passable version in stores, on the radio, or in elevators. Blame it on lazy programmers or on automated playlists.
Whatever the reason, you’ll only hear Feliciano’s original … Good luck getting it out of your head. And with that, to you and yours, have a feliz — er — a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
Reconsidering 'A Christmas Carol'
You might think “A Christmas Carol,” Charles Dickens’ fable of redemption, is just a part the holiday. But in fact, it pretty much started the whole thing. This weekend, KPCC’s Off-Ramp program, hosted by John Rabe, takes an in-depth look at the Dickens’ classic on “A Christmas Carol Redux.”
Early in Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol,” Scrooge scores points against Christmas that are valid today -- especially today – when he says:
What’s Christmastime to you but a time for paying bills without money? A time for finding yourself a year older and not an hour richer?
And then Scrooge delivers one of the best lines in literature:
If I could work my will, every idiot who goes about with “Merry Christmas!” on his lips would be boiled with his own pudding and buried with a stake of holly through his heart.
“A Christmas Carol” was lucrative from the start. Dickens himself read it to packed houses, and it’s a staple of film and theatre.
Playwright Doris Baizley takes on the commercialization of “A Christmas Carol” in her short play, “My Carol,” about a production designed to maximize profits.
One set. No snow machines, no plum pudding, no period costumes. Handful of actors, prop truck, and that’s it. The best. Hey, my Scrooge doesn’t have to be an old guy. And my Tiny Tim, doesn’t have to be a kid. No kids in my carol, not one. The Crachitt family at the dinner table? Hand puppets. Hah?
Gerald Charles Dickens, Charles Dickens’ great great grandson, might perform the most stripped-down Carol ever. It’s just him, doing all the voices. “If I’m playing it in a theatre,” he says, “I like to play it fairly dark, fairly somber, because it’s a monumental thing that’s happening, that Ebeneezer is going through all of this. And to heighten the sense of joy at the end you have to sort of plummet him into the depths.”
But what is happening to Scrooge? Is it a wonderful transformation … or a conversion? And if it’s a conversion, then from what? Maybe when he wrote that Scrooge was “squeezing, wrenching, grasping, clutching,” Dickens just meant to portray Scrooge as a miser. But remember, Dickens got in trouble for the horrible character Fagin in “Oliver Twist,” who was specifically Jewish.
Attacking “A Christmas Carol” as anti-Semitic may seem harsh at Christmastime, but how do you think it feels to watch the world embrace a story featuring such common stereotypes?
David Grimm wrote the play "A Christmas Golem," narrated by an explicitly Jewish Scrooge who is eventually tortured into converting by his disgruntled clerk, Robert Cratchit.
Now it comes time for Chanukah, and I’m closing for the holiday, I’m sitting at my desk, and Robert says to me, “Do I get Christmas off as well?” I say, “Robert, you can have Chanukah or you can have Christmas, but not both. This is a business after all.”
Former UCLA English Professor Judith Rosen says Dickens was not on an anti-Semitic campaign, but he certainly reflected much of the anti-Semitism of his time. However, that taint aside, she says “A Christmas Carol” hit a nerve that Dickens’ other stories didn’t. It was so successful, she says, because Dickens personalized the lesson of compassion, charity, and transformation. And in doing so, Dickens transformed Christmas. “Christmas used to be, in England before Dickens’ time, a very public, very outdoor festival. One that celebrated the bonds between say the lord of a manor, or a large employer and his workers. And Dickens popularized, through ‘A Christmas Carol’ and through his earlier ‘Pickwick Papers’ a much more private, much more family celebration.”
Listen Saturday at noon and Sunday night at 7 for “A Christmas Carol Redux” on Off-Ramp, featuring more of the productions excerpted above, including a full broadcast of the classic Lionel Barrymore version.