Dinner Party Download ... "Up!" gets best pic nom, we talk with Ed Asner ... Queena tastes a bacon donut ... Steve Julian tastes at least six tequilas but no margaritas ... Remembering journalist and author Tomas Eloy Martinez, who bared the soul of Argentina.
Mixologist Julian Cox, Rivera's rising star
Some of the best food in town is at the new downtown restaurant, Rivera. And as KPCC's Steve Julian discovered, it also has some of the best drinks ... courtesy of the award-winning Julian Cox. Steve also discovered what you WON'T find there. Hint: You never have to say "rocks" or "no salt."
Come inside for more photos of Cox and Rivera by Steve Julian.
All photos by Steve Julian, who also writes about food for the LA Weekly’s Squid Ink blog.
Queena Kim eats a bacon doughnut at the Nickel Diner
Nickel Diner's chef Monica May and owner Kristen Trattner like to experiment with making pastries you wouldn't think of. One of the more notable ones: the bacon doughnut. Off-Ramp producer Queena Kim LOVES bacon and likes doughnuts ... but a bacon ... doughnut?
Marc Haefele remembers crusading writer Tomas Eloy Martinez
“Of all the professions, journalism is the one that allows the least amount of space for absolute truths.” Those were the words of Argentine journalist and novelist Tomas Eloy Martinez, who died January 30th, and it's how Off-Ramp literary commentator Marc Haefele begins his remembrance of a journalist who made a difference.
Marc's script:
Martinez has had five of his books published in English, but he’s not as well known as his compadres, like Manuel Puig, who wrote “Kiss of the Spider Woman,” or Julio Cortazar, who wrote “Hopscotch.” But historically, he was more important than either. He was the literary conscience of his nation, during and after the torture-based dictatorships of the last century.
Martinez was born in 1934. He started writing fiction when he was 10, after his parents forbid him to read. He became a journalist but fled Argentina in 1975 because the government wanted to kill him.
While editing a major news journal in Caracas, Martinez returned to fiction and wrote his two most famous novels — about the Perons, Juan and Evita. The first, “The Peron Novel,” mustered the armaments of fiction to delineate a dictator Martinez considered beyond factual description. The second novel was: “Santa Evita.” A bestseller all over Latin America, it was translated into dozens of languages—including English. Unlike the musical “Evita,” it was ferociously unsentimental, dealing largely with the peculiar adventures of her embalmed corpse. But his book was so credible that the imaginary phrase that Martinez had her say to Peron on their first meeting: “Thank you for existing,” was engraved on the Eva Peron Museum. Martinez once said, “Journalism in inherently unfaithful to reality.” Only his brand of fiction—enormous research enhanced by vast imagination—could convey the huge tragedies of his motherland.
But it wasn’t until “Purgatorio,” his final novel, that he could focus his searchlight on the hideous dictatorship that controlled Argentina from 1976 to 1982, in which the ruling junta disappeared 30,000 people. “Purgatorio” is set in suburban New Jersey, where he spent his last years teaching Latin American Studies at Rutgers. But in the book, Martinez makes himself secondary to the character of Emilia Depuy. She’s the daughter of a junta member and her disappeared husband shows up 30 years later. Emilia’s turmoil evokes all of Argentina’s denial of its national tragedy.
Into Emilia’s story is woven the author’s own history -- including treatment of the long-advancing cancer that killed him at the age of 75 -- and his deep love of the little New Jersey town where Tomas Eloy Martinez lived his exile.
For Offramp, this is Marc Haefele.
Stoltze to LA City Councilmembers: ever smoke pot?
The Los Angeles City Council approved a new ordinance that would shut down most medical marijuana dispensaries in the city. KPCC's Frank Stoltze wanted to know how many serving councilmembers have ever smoked the pot they're trying to regulate.
It was 1968, and Councilman Tom LaBonge was a high school kid sweet on a girl. She offered him some pot.
“I was 15. It was after school. I was visiting a girl. And ya know, that’s what you did then," said LaBonge.
He said he only did that again a couple more times.
In response to the same query, Councilmember Herb Wesson was coy.
“Let me say this. I know what weed is. I went to college in 1969. And that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.”
Councilman Paul Koretz sounded a similar tone.
“I won’t comment on what things were done in high school and college. But I would say at a minimum it’s been many, many years," he said.
Councilmen Tony Cardenas and Jose Huizar wouldn't even answer the question.
Many politicians still worry that an affirmative response would hurt their careers, even though the president of the United States has acknowledged he smoked pot as a young man.
Councilman Bill Rosendahl seems to have no such worries. Rosendahl, who said his partner used cannabis for medical reasons before he died of AIDS, readily admitted he’d smoked pot too.
“Yeah, I have. Sure. So has practically everybody."
Asked if he still smoked, Rosendahl clammed up. “That’s a private matter."
Councilwoman Jan Perry said she'd never smoked anything because she has allergies. But her younger sister had ingested marijuana pills before she passed away at age 35.
“It did help her keep her appetite up and mitigated some of her symptoms. So I think it would be a lot easier if we just legalized it.”
Councilwoman Janice Hahn – the daughter of the late longtime L.A. County Supervisor Kenny Hahn – never dared take a hit of pot.
“My father said ‘don’t do anything that you don’t want to see on the front page of the L.A. Times tomorrow.’ So I grew up afraid that I would embarrass my father.”
Like many council members, Richard Alarcon said marijuana was hard to avoid.
“Well, ya know I grew up during the hippie era and I’m not going to say I didn’t. I did. And interestingly, I don’t think I ever purchased. If somebody was smoking at a party or something, we would have done it."
Back in the day, they called that freeloading.
“Yes, I was very much a freeloader."
Councilmen Dennis Zine and Bernard Parks – both ex-police officers – said they never smoked pot.
"When I joined the LAPD, if you have smoked marijuana or injected any other drug, you would be disqualified," said Zine, who joined the department in 1968. The rules have since been relaxed.
Councilman Greig Smith is a reserve LAPD cop, and self-described child of the '60s. But he said he never used any drugs.
"This is not something I ever wanted to participate in for my personal body," said Smith.
We didn’t get responses from Councilmen Ed Reyes and Paul Krekorian.
The L.A. City Council President Eric Garcetti stiffened when asked.
“I have,” he curtly said.
Does he smoke now?
"No I do not.”
Councilman LaBonge recalled a party he attended as a teenager.
"I was the best dancer at the party and one of the girls asked me if I smoke pot, and I felt bad because she thought I danced cool because I smoked pot, and I said no, I don’t smoke pot," he said.
LaBonge said, "I never wanted to smoke pot again.”
Except for that one time, he said, when he was in his twenties and another girl offered it to him.
Now, he says, he prefers the high of hiking Griffith Park.
Up! To The Oscars! Ed Asner speaks to Off-Ramp
Ed Asner talks about voicing the character Carl in the animated feature “Up!,” which was just nominated for a Best Picture Oscar. (This is our interview from the release of the movie.)
Dancers vie for spot onstage at the Oscars
KPCC's Brian Watt talks to the other Academy Award competitors -- dancers vying for a spot on the stage on Oscars night.
Pasadena Playhouse to Close
The curtain’s falling at the Pasadena Playhouse, possibly for good. The problem: no money.
The theater’s executive director told the Los Angeles Times that the Playhouse owes its creditors $2 million dollars with no way to pay. Thirty seven employees, he said, will be out of work after the musical “Camelot” ends its run this Sunday.
In a statement, theater administrators said they’re starting a financial reorganization and possibly a bankruptcy filing. That’s because the theater hasn’t attracted a big donor to name the auditorium, corporate donations have dwindled, and the economy’s soured.
The Pasadena Playhouse has tightened its belt before through staff and budget cuts. It’s staging the usually opulent “Camelot” in a stripped-down version with eight actors.
The Playhouse building is a historic landmark. Many notable actors, including Dustin Hoffman and Gene Hackman, trod the boards there early in their careers.
(Audio: KPCC's Alex Cohen spoke with Stephen Eich, executive director of the Pasadena Playhouse)
This Guitar Saves Dropouts - Innovative Program Involves Students
As Los Angeles Unified School District administrators are set to transfer dozens of campuses this year to non-profit groups that propose new methods to improve learning, the district's Frida Kahlo High School boasts of progress through an innovative East Coast model that got the thumbs up from a Grammy-winning musician in late January, when Adolfo Guzman Lopez went to the campus.
Seventeen-year-old Moises Martinez said he led a gang life in the streets surrounding Kahlo High, near the Harbor and Santa Monica Freeway interchange. "I started gang banging at the age of 12. In a local neighborhood called Primera Flats over here, you can see I’m all tatted out. I got into the gang really deep. I was locked up for four months."
Inside the continuation high school he discovered that the jarana, a ukelele-sized guitar from Mexico, could help him leave that life. "This is a song called 'La Iguana,' we have barely learned it like two months ago and I really like it, I like playing it a lot, so I’m going to play the first part of it."
His tattoos blur as his forearm moves up and down, strumming the guitar's eight strings.
Kahlo High, named after the late Mexican surrealist painter, is run under a so-called interest-based learning model developed by a Rhode Island organization, Big Picture Learning. High school principal Enrique Gonzalez said it tries to find culturally relevant lessons that’ll hook students on learning. "We chose the jarana because it is of the people, it’s call and response from the pueblitos in Veracruz and it’s a genre of music that even in Mexico is not that popular, yet it’s so culturally sensitive to the needs of people that are struggling to survive just as they are in South L.A. or Los Angeles in general."
Gonzalez and the teachers struggle to offer role models the working class students can relate to. They found one in Los Lobos guitarist Louie Perez. In the school’s auditorium, the East L.A. native told nearly 200 students that he grew up in similar circumstances to theirs 40 years ago. "There was a liquor store around the corner, there was a tortilleria around the corner which was kind of cool, and there was a sweatshop, there was a lot of stuff going on and it was kind of a rough neighborhood."
Music helped him survive and thrive. It’s a passion his mother sparked when she took him to the Million Dollar Theater in downtown L.A. when he was eight years old. "There was this mariachi that looked like there were 40 dudes up there, you know what I’m talking about, and they did this big fanfare and the main signer who I think was Antonio Aguilar or Miguel Aceves Mejia, or something like that, came on stage on a big white horse."
Seeing that singer belt out ranchera songs on horseback left a deep impression of the power of music and performance.
During a question-and-answer period, students asked Perez what inspired his song lyrics and how much money he makes. One student wanted to know about a hit song Los Lobos recorded several years before he was born. Perez said they'd heard an older version while growing up. "We always heard 'La Bamba,' you know by Ritchie Valens, when I was a kid we’d listen to 45s, listen to Smokey Robinson, oldies but goodies."
Louie Perez and his bandmates found out the song had centuries-old roots in coastal Mexico – and that the little guitar from Veracruz, the jarana, provided its heartbeat.
He ended the talk by inviting six jarana students, the teacher – a native of Veracruz – to play with him a version of the older and arguably better version of “La Bamba.”
It was just another day of interest-based learning at L.A.’s Frida Kahlo High School.
Dinner Party Download on Off-Ramp
In time for the Super Bowl, Dinner Party Download talks with ex-Onion editor Robert Siegel about his football movie “Big Fan.” And a drink based on a Japanese soldier who rose from the dead.
Presidents Day: Lincoln impersonator says some kids love him, some yell, "Fraud!"
President's Day is Monday, which means work for actor Barry Cutler, who travels the country to bring Abraham Lincoln to life for K-12 students. Some days, he plays Honest Abe for 2,000 kids.
Rabe Takes on World, Universe in Blog
Off-Ramp host John Rabe has a blog that's been called a "must read," and not just by him. Check it out, and please comment.