Can chimps and rhinos tell us anything about sex? Zoo animals lack coital finesse, and there’s no cuddling. Plus: three great guacamole recipes from Bricia Lopez of Guelaguetza.
Super Bowl XLVIII: Guelaguetza's Bricia Lopez on guacamole done right
Superbowl weekend is high season for the avocado, and since we are going to eat 100-million pounds of them, mostly in guacamole, Off-Ramp's John Rabe called Bricia Lopez for some fresh ideas.
Bricia's family owns Guelaguetza, the Oaxacan eatery in Los Angeles' Koreatown. Guelaguetza's motto is "I love mole," and after all, while guacamole isn't specifically Oaxacan, it is a mole, and Guelaguetza is proud to include it on the menu. Bricia shares two of her favorite recipes here, and there's one more in the audio interview.
Guacamole a la Oaxaqueña
Serves 4-6
- 3 Avocados, preferably of Mexican origin
- 1 1/2 Limes, their juice
- 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1 Chile Pasilla Oaxaqueño, seedless, finely chopped
- 1 small tomato, finely chopped
- 1/2 red onion, finely chopped
- 1 shallot, finely chopped
Grind the avocados in a mortar or a food processor and add the lime juice, cumin and salt.
Mix in the Chiles, tomatoes, onion and shallot and stir with a spoon. Add more salt if needed.
Note: Chile Pasilla can de be substituted with a Chipotle or two chiles de arbol. You can toast the chiles on a pan or griddle for a smokier flavor.
Smokey Guacamole
Serves 4-6
- 2 tomatillos, peeled
- 1 garlic clove
- 2 serrano chiles
- 3 avocados
- 1/2 teaspoon
- Kosher salt
Wrap the tomatillos, garlic and chiles on aluminum foil and place on a griddle. Roast them for about ten minutes, turning them carefully so they roast evenly on all sides.
Allow them to cool and grind the three ingredients plus salt in the mortar.
Add the avocados last and grind until achieving the desired texture. Add more salt if needed.
Bricia also urges you to buy a molcajete, the traditional guacamole prep dish. They're cheap, and since you can put them right on the table, they're conversation starters.
(Early photo of an avocado packing plant. Credit: LAPL/Security Pacific National Bank Collection)
Baca's longtime PIO reveres his boss, remembers his own days as 'young punk'
"The very first time I met (former LA County Sheriff Lee Baca), he had just been elected, and it was during the Montrose Christmas parade. I was in it as the publisher of the LaCanada Valley Sun, as was he, being the newly elected sheriff. I was told ... that he really wanted somebody to come work for him that knew more about the media than he did ... I didn't think I could do the job."
But he could do the job. For about 13 years, Steve Whitmore was the public face of the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department. But with Baca retired and replaced by Orange County Undersheriff John Scott, Whitmore has, in turn, been replaced by Captain Mike Parker. Baca announced his departure a few weeks ago, and left office under a cloud: Claims of political favoritism, bad management, and severe inmate abuse at the jails.
But when he spoke with KPCC's Frank Stoltze Wednesday, one day before his boss's official last day, Whitmore would have none of it.
"I think he was good manager. I think what happened was it that there was some miscommunications. Does he trust people? yes. Has he said has he trusted maybe the wrong people? Maybe so. But when you run an organization of 18,000 people, and maybe this is what people don't understand, you have got to delegate."
Not only was Whitmore a journalist for two decades, giving him an appreciation of the reporter's job, but he also has perspective on the cop's job.
Over 40 years, ago, when I was a young punk, I had an interesting arrangement with alcohol. And that landed me sometimes in jail, sometimes in the LA County jail. So, if there be an example of redemption, and the fact that the sheriff of Los Angeles County believes in redemption, I'm grateful for it. And Sheriff Baca understands that life is not static; there is no life that's wasted.
Whitmore defends Baca to the end. "Could have I have done better?" he asked. "Oh, God, yes. Maybe if I had done better, my sheriff would be doing better."
Whitmore, 63, and son of late actor James Whitmore, says he's still with the department, and is taking a couple weeks off to figure out his next steps.
Sex and the City Zoo: Knowing how animals breed is vital and earthy
ADVISORY: This story includes biologically correct descriptions of sexual acts among zoo animals and some joking about the parallels with human relations.
"Tell me about the love life of a flamingo," I said.
That was the start of a journey through the L.A. Zoo occasioned by the zoo's Valentine's fundraiser "Sex and the City Zoo." In order, the event includes an illustrated lecture about the sex lives of animals, then a romantic candlelight dinner.
Judging from what I learned from Mike Dee, who'll be giving the lecture, it's a good thing they do the talk first, then dinner ... and they better serve a lot of wine. Dee has a long history at the zoo dating back to the 1960s. He was the senior keeper, then general curator, and worked on the Indian rhino breeding project, which saw the birth of the first Indian rhino at the L.A. Zoo.
The flamingo is actually about the most phlegmatic lover Dee showed me at the zoo. The male does a bit of a dance, then they breed, she lays an egg, and they raise the chick together. Dee says what's critical for flamingos is that "they have to be in a large number, groups of eight to 10, before they will actually breed and produce offspring."
Next , the mountain or woolly tapir looks like a cross between a bear and a Shetland pony, and when the male goes after a female in heat, he chases her and violently bites at her legs until she gives in. Dee says the male tapir is, shall we say, prodigious, and draws a lot of attention from visitors. Figuring out how they breed is vital because these animals — which, Dee says, love to be scratched under the chin — are severely endangered. "We were the first zoo to ever breed the mountain or woolly tapir, back in 1974," Dee says proudly.
Our next stop was to see an Indian rhino, which has been successfully bred by the L.A. Zoo several times. The female's offspring are now all over the globe, Dee says, and when I ask, "Do they ever call her?" He says, no, they can't use the phone. Rhino mating can be extremely violent, and the keepers have to perfectly gauge when they bring the male and female together to coincide with the few hours of her peak of estrus. When the male finally mounts the female, which is usually done in the water, they can stay coupled for up to an hour, during which time the male can ejaculate 70-plus times. Dee says it's a long and difficult journey for the sperm to fertilize the eggs, so there's a definite biological advantage to multiple ejaculations.
Our last stop was at the chimp enclosure, and Dee says he picked them because he wanted to show that what humans find attractive isn't what chimps find attractive. A female chimp advertises her readiness to breed with a pink and swollen anogenital region. "So when they're in full-blown estrus, every male chimp that's even close by is going to want to breed them." Dee says many zoo visitors think the huge protuberance means something is wrong with the animal.
So what does this expert on animal sexuality — he's an international authority — have to say about human relationships? What's the secret?
"You ply them with flowers," he says. "You send them little notes."
The other night, Dee says, he set out his and his wife's coffee cups and left a love note under hers. The next morning, she was up and gone already, but next to his "I love you" was a smiley face she'd drawn before she left.
(Photographer Gary Leonard, who accompanied me on my trip through the L.A. Zoo with Mike Dee, has been covering Los Angeles in photos since the 1960s, and his photos are a regular feature at LA Observed.)
Oscars 2014: Best Makeup nominee Joel Harlow on The Lone Ranger, Pirates of the Caribbean and more
Joel Harlow is a man of a thousand faces, but almost none of them are his. The veteran makeup artist has worked on TV's "Mad Men" and the feature film "Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl." In 2009, Harlow won the Academy Award for Best Makeup and Hairstyling for his work in JJ Abrams' "Star Trek" reboot. This year, Harlow is nominated again, this time for his work on Johnny Depp in "The Lone Ranger." KPCC's Patt Morrison talked with Harlow about how he became one of the industry's most beloved makeup artists.
Harlow began his film work in animation, but was captivated by movies at a young age. "I was first inspired to do something connected with motion pictures when my father showed me the original King Kong," he said. "And I knew, watching that kind of magic, that I wanted to be involved in the creation of that kind of magic."
Growing up, Harlow took to making elaborate costumes at a young age — often at the peril of his parents' home. "I destroyed my mom's stove, I destroyed my dad's sort of library carpet," he said. "Just playing around with plaster and latex."
RELATED: Oscars 2014: Predicting the winners
Harlow's worked in makeup for more than 20 years and with hundreds of actors. But perhaps more than any other performer, Harlow's worked closest with Johnny Depp. In films like "Dark Shadows" and "Pirates of the Caribbean," Harlow established a working relationship with the actor. In "The Lone Ranger," Harlow would spend as many as eight hours applying the makeup on Depp.
You'd think after eight hours, the two would run out topics of conversation. Not so, said Harlow. "We talk a lot," he said. "I've been with Johnny for quite a while now. So more than just actor/makeup artist, we have a friendship. So, you know, we'll talk about anything. Very rarely is it just about makeup."
When Harlow goes to the Academy Awards this year, it'll be his second trip. When he won his first award, Joel said he felt lucky to be able to bring his parents along to the ceremony. "They got to see their son actually take home an Oscar, which I gave to them," said Harlow. "I had it in my possession one night, and I gave it to them. I haven't had it since."
Subject of new PMCA exhibit, Alfredo Ramos Martínez, was hiding in plain sight
Picturing Mexico: Alfredo Ramos Martínez in California is at the Pasadena Museum of California Art through April 20.
The paradox of why a great, historically vital Mexican painter is so unknown to modern Angelenos probably has to do with his having spent most of his last 17 years right here in Los Angeles. Alfredo Ramos Martínez was hiding in plain sight.
Ramos Martínez has at last been exposed by a major new show at the Pasadena Museum of California Art. It's accompanied, appropriately, by a separate exhibit of contemporary Chicano artists who may never have heard of him.
Ramos Martínez died 68 years ago, while working on his last mural project at Claremont’s Scripps College, the "Flower Vendors."
(Ramos Martínez at work on "The Flower Vendors." Credit: Scripps College)
Like all of his best American work, it is purely and singularly focused on his native land. Exhibit curator Amy Galpin says Ramos Martínez fled Mexico in 1929, just as many American artists were going to Mexico. But creatively speaking, he truly never left the land of his birth. He simply expressed and developed himself as a Mexican artist in Mexico’s lost northern province — the one we all live in now. So he belongs to California as well.
Ramos Martínez lived his last twenty years in the shadow of three famous compatriots: Diego Rivera, Clemente Orozco … and David Alfaro Siqueiros, whose “America Tropical’’ can now be viewed in downtown LA. Older than these great revolutionary muralists, Ramos Martínez trained in Europe. Although he became a great arts educator, his devout Catholicism put him out of phase with the Tres Grandes and their insurrectionary modernity. It’s also likely that he was deeply affected by the Cristero civil war that raged until 1929, a war that caused the deaths of thousands of militant Catholics at the hands of Mexican troops.
(Alfredo Ramos Martínez: Soldados Mexicanos)
Such upheavals don’t show up in Ramos Martínez’ work, but curator Galpin argues that nevertheless, politics, not ideology, fill much of his later work. Particularly the silk-screen pictures he did on American newspapers in the 1930s. Spreading scenes of austere and impoverished peons over want-ad listings of bankrupt businesses for sale, for instance. The saddening news in the rigid grids of post-Great Crash newspaper columns provides both a background and framework for the ceaseless struggle of the Depression Decade. Galpin notes a further irony: Some of Ramos Martínez’ most affecting scenes are spread over the pages of our own L.A. Times — which was in the 1930s editorially committed to deporting poor Mexican migrants.
These immigrants Ramos Martínez portrays as somber, tranquil. He emphasizes the verticality of their faces, stressing an ancient patience, even among the young. He painted here at a time when this city’s Mexican heritage (think of Olvera Street) was being reclaimed by local Anglos with a vehemence that verged on parody.
But Ramos Martínez never lapsed into caricature. His subjects’ faces, while sometimes gorgeously geometrical, brim with character and dignity.
If the exhibition has a shortcoming, it’s the lack of Ramos Martínez’ earlier work. Did he embrace Modernity while he was in Europe, as did his great Uruguayan contemporary, Joaquin Torres-Garcia? And if so, how much of it do we see here — particularly in his strikingly colored Mexican landscapes?
Instead, the museum contraposes something called Serigrafía, which is billed as surveying “the powerful tradition of information design in California’s Latino culture” with 30 silkscreens dating to the 1970s. These include indelible UFW posters like Xavier Villamontes’ "Boycott Grapes,’’ whose symmetries frame an Azteca crushing the blood out of the forbidden fruit; Esther Hernandez’s “Sun Mad,” the skeletal raisin girl ...
... and Mark Vallen’s “Nuclear War,” the greatest cover ever to appear on LA Weekly.
They are as overtly ideological as Ramos Martínez was not, but they still evoke his spirit, his ganas.