Big Star's last member remembers - Off-Ramp for June 29, 2013

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Jody Stephens, only surviving band member Big Star's debut album, talks with LA Record's Chris Ziegler ... intrepid intern Robert Garrova learns to curl at a bonspiel ... Val Kilmer talks with John Rabe about becoming Mark Twain for his one-man show "Citizen Twain" ... Gavin Newsom on the Prop 8 decision

Big Star's last member remembers - Off-Ramp for June 29, 2013

Jody Stephens, only surviving band member Big Star's debut album, talks with LA Record's Chris Ziegler ... intrepid intern Robert Garrova learns to curl at a bonspiel ... Val Kilmer talks with John Rabe about becoming Mark Twain for his one-man show "Citizen Twain" ... Gavin Newsom on the Prop 8 decision

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Jody Stephens, only surviving band member Big Star's debut album, talks with LA Record's Chris Ziegler ... intrepid intern Robert Garrova learns to curl at a bonspiel ... Val Kilmer talks with John Rabe about becoming Mark Twain for his one-man show "Citizen Twain" ... Gavin Newsom on the Prop 8 decision

Bacon haiku followup: 'Are you kidding? This is NPR!'

After this weekend's broadcast, in which we awarded first prize to this haiku:

We got an angry email:

I responded:

Thanks for writing. I am a stickler for grammar myself, but ain’t with you in this case.

It’s an allusion to the title of a famous book, The Egg and I, which became a famous - and very funny - movie with Claudette Colbert and Fred MacMurray. There’s also a chain of restaurants named The Egg and I.

Here’s what Wikipedia writes about the book:

I’m glad me could clear this up for you.

Bert Stern and Marilyn Monroe's last session - new from Taschen

6/27/2013 UPDATE: Bert Stern died yesterday at his Manhattan home. He was 83. Here's our 2011 conversation.

Marilyn Monroe didn't become an icon on her own. She had co-conspirators -- the photographers whose cameras loved her. Taschen has just published a huge new book of Monroe's last portrait sitting, taken for Vogue magazine by Bert Stern just six weeks before she died. Stern and Monroe worked together for three days at the Hotel Bel Air, which is where Tachen unveiled the new book. Bert Stern was the guest of honor and he talked with Off-Ramp host John Rabe.

Big Star's drummer Jody Stephens on new doc 'Nothing Can Hurt Me'

The above video is a TV performance of "The Letter," by the Box Tops. It was one of the most popular songs of 1967. The singer is 16 year old Alex Chilton, and for most people, this was the first and last time they'd hear from him. But it wasn't the end of his career. Chilton went on to join Big Star--one of the most important and most ignored bands in rock and roll's history. 

In 1971, Chilton, along with singer and guitarist Chris Bell, bassist Andy Hummel, and drummer Jody Stephens recorded "Number 1 Record" - Big Star's debut album. As with the other two albums Big Star would release, Number 1 Record did not hit number 1 on the charts. It sold just ten-thousand copies when it was released in 1972. But like rest of Big Star's repertoire, critics loved it and fans grew to embrace it. 

Today, drummer Jody Stephens is the only surviving band member from that session. Chris Ziegler, editor in chief of L.A. Record, talked with Stephens about Big Star and about Nothing Can Hurt Me, a documentary on the band that opens at Santa Monica's Nuart Theatre Friday, July 5. Watch the trailer:

Lt Gov Gavin Newsom on Prop 8 and the Supreme Court

Prop 8 is dead.  Lt Governor Gavin Newsom started the whole thing as Mayor of San Francisco, and we had a wide-ranging interview the day after the Supreme Court decision came down. 

"Considering the conservative and cautious nature of this court," he said, "We did about as well as I could have hoped and expected, but yeah, sure, I wish they had ajudicated on the merits. I wish we had the kind of sweeping decision" that came from Judge Vaughn Walker.

I also asked him a tantalizing what-if question. What if then Gov. Schwarzenegger and then-AG Jerry Brown has not refused to defend Prop 8? That would have eliminated the possibility of the Supreme Court deciding as it did, ruling that gay marriage opponents have proven no harm, and so do not have standing in the case.

Newsom says he's had private conversations about this topic, but now for the first time publicly says yes, it might have radically changed the outcome, might even have killed gay marriage in the US, because the court would probably have decided the case on its merits, if it didn't refuse to hear it in the first place.

Off-Ramp goes curling at Orange County's Surf City Bonspiel

Last weekend, curlers of all skill levels -- from Olympic medalist Pete Fenson to those just starting out -- came together for Orange County’s first three-day bonspiel (that’s a curling tournament) in Westminster. 

Presented by the Orange County Curling Club, the bonspiel attracted curlers and their families from as far as Toronto. Westminster Mayor Tri Ta helped kick off the ceremonies, which included a bagpipe performance, the Canadian National Anthem, and a shot of whiskey. 

Bill Waddington, President of the Orange County Curling Club, says while curling is big in Canada, its presence in the Winter Olympics is helping it gain popularity in the U.S. too.

Curling is believed to date all the way back to 1521, when Scottish farmers decided it would be a good idea to push tea kettles down stretches of frozen lake. Curlers eventually moved on to using polished rocks instead, and even today, the 42-pound regulation curling stones come from Scotland's Ailsa Craig. 

These days, curlers have more comfortable shoes and they use plastic brushes instead of wooden brooms to sweep the ice in front of the sliding granite rocks. But the spirit of curling is unchanged. 

“Curling is only half about trying to compete,” Waddington says. “Curling is just good people. It’s a very social event. When you come down to curl, you’re really coming down to spend time with friends.” And it's customary for the winning team to buy the losing team their first round of drinks, not the other way around. 

Misha Houser is on the Fundraising Committee for the O.C. Curling Club. She says Curling is a little different than most Olympic Sports.  “This is the only sport where you can go to a tournament and be playing against Olympic Medalists and be a raw beginner. You cannot go to any other Olympic category sport and sit down with the elite in the sport as a beginner and learn.”

If you can’t wait to get out on the ice, check out the O.C. Curling Club’s website for a schedule of Learn to Curl classes. 

Marc Haefele: genre writer Richard Matheson's works were great campfire stories

Richard Matheson stories, when you look back at them, seem to have been not so much read, as told to you around the dying embers of  campfire on a very dark night. Matheson, who died  Sunday in his home in Calabasas, was one of America’s greatest genre writers, whose works encapsulated the worst fears and terrors of the mid-20th Century.

Matheson published his first sci-fi horror story, Born of Man and Woman, in 1950.

In 1957's The Incredible Shrinking Man, for which he wrote the screenplay, who can forget the ever-diminishing Grant Williams, fighting a spider to the death in the now-infinite cellar of his suburban home. Or the even stranger, weirdly optimistic ending that opened onto infinity itself.

But of all his work, what probably most infected the national imagination were his yarns that wound up on The Twilight Zone.

These tales quickly embedded themselves as deeply in the American consciousness as The Tell-Tale Heart or The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.

When The New York Times asked him in 1994 if he believed in life after death, Matheson responded: “To me, life after death and reincarnation are just slices of the pie. Life is a huge wheel and it goes around and around, and life after death is just a segment of that wheel.”

Dylan Brody on immigration debate: Start by replacing the words 'illegal alien' with 'human being'

Here’s the thing about shining cities on hills. People in the dark valleys are likely to be drawn to them.

The immigration debate rages on. No. That’s not right. The debaters rage. The debate doesn’t really do much of anything.

On the anti-immigrant side of the aisle, the arguments tend to be blatantly self-contradictory. Illegal aliens are lazy and they are taking away jobs from Americans. They are a drain on our social services and they are living in the shadows. They are uneducated and they seek to take advantage of our public school system.

On the pro-immigrant side, the arguments tend to be equally problematic in that they seem to be designed to pander to the anti-immigrant point of view. They say that illegal immigrants should have a path to citizenship. That illegals should be allowed to send their kids to our schools even though they don’t pay taxes, as long as we don’t include sales and property taxes in the assessment. That the jobs they take away from citizens are jobs that Americans won’t take for the pay offered.

I believe that both of these lines of thought are wrong-headed. I suggest that we start by replacing the words “illegal” and “illegal alien” with “human being.” This is important because once we begin divvying up humanity into groups it is easy to forget that things like ambition, family, love, work ethic and self-improvement are human characteristics that do not vary with skin tone or place of birth.

Human beings should be allowed to live where they choose. We should, all of us, be allowed to work where we choose and to earn a living wage regardless of birthplace. Every human being should have access to education, to healthcare ... and I will really go beyond the current American viewpoint and say shelter and food as well. Call me crazy, I think the pursuit of happiness cannot commence until the struggle for basic survival is behind us and I think we as a society are capable – if not yet willing – of putting that struggle behind us. All of us.

The immigration debate starts from a false premise of scarcity. As the finances of the nation consolidate in the hands of the very wealthy, or as I like to call them, the hoarding class, there is less to go around. Those in the hoarding class, fearing they might be blamed, use a fraction of their wealth to influence the media outlets and the politicians so that responsibility for the difficulties of the middle class is heaped on the poor, the immigrants, those who are least able or likely to find a voice. To paraphrase Peter Parker's Gentle Uncle Ben, “With great wealth comes great responsibility.” It is time for the nation that prides itself on great wealth to begin living up to its responsibility. Start welcoming and supporting those who wish to enter the shining city, or stop thinking of ourselves as a beacon of hope and freedom.

I, for one, am not willing to  take down the Statue of Liberty and put up a statue of a grumpy old guy yelling, "Get off my lawn!"

You can find Off-Ramp commentator Dylan Brody on his webpage, on

Winner announced in Off-Ramp Newsletter bacon haiku contest

If you're not signed up for the weekly Off-Ramp newsletter, you're missing the chance to win swag and have fun.

Last week, we announced a 5-7-5 haiku contest. The topic: bacon. The prize: a wallet sent by Oberto, which is unveiling a line of bacon jerky. Off-Ramp literary commentator Marc Haefele judged the entries. 

Bruce Jones, Apple Valley, CA:

Brandy Scheidecker, Minneapolis:

Randy Plaunt, Lansing, MI: 

Victoria Bloch, Los Angeles, wrote two:

All okay, Marc says, but the winner did not use the word "sizzle." He's Steve Moss of Claremont:

Steve Moss gets the wallet, but Oberto agreed to send all the contestants bacon wallets. You can't take part in the next Off-Ramp Challenge if you're not receiving our weekly newsletter. Signing up is quick and easy, and you can do it here.

Push play to listen to KPCC's Josie Huang and Jose Martinez read the winning and losing bacon haikus.

Val Kilmer becomes Mark Twain in 'Citizen Twain'

UPDATE: Val Kilmer brings Citizen Twain to the Kirk Douglas Theatre in Culver City June 28 through July 28. Tickets on sale here.

When Val Kilmer does Mark Twain in his one-man show Citizen Twain, there's a good part of the performance in which Twain is a stand-up comedian. Now, I don't know if Twain, for instance, ever asked "Why don't they make mouse-flavored cat food?" But Twain could have just as easily said that as, say, Steven Wright.

Twain, Kilmer says, may have been the first stand-up comedian because he "was the first person who talked the way we do." Kilmer says he used his own voice, unlike the other public speakers of his time, who affected an unnatural cadence and tone. "He told stories like the was in his dressing room, or standing in a bar, or hanging out on a street corner. He smoked all his life, so he just walked onstage with a cigar, and if he was drinking that night, he had a glass of whiskey." 

Val Kilmer, who played Jim Morrison in The Doors, Doc Holliday in Tombstone, Batman in Batman Forever, and Nick Rivers in Top Secret! - brings Citizen Twain to the Valley Performing Arts Center in Northridge April 6.

In Citizen Twain, Kilmer becomes the famous author onstage ...

... and then, after the show, he peels off the makeup and takes questions from the audience.

Kilmer says he's read everything available about Twain and by Twain, and has spoken with many scholars about the man, and the most satisfying thing about Twain is "his love of humanity, specifically Americans. He says why do the Europeans get all the recognition just they've been there (so long). We're great. How we talk is great. It doesn't matter if it's a lowly river rat, or a slave, or Huck Finn himself."

And yes, has consulted with Hal Holbrook, who has been doing Twain onstage for 60 years now.

But isn't Val Kilmer doing Twain, a role Holbrook owns, a little like Gary Oldman playing the role of George Smiley in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, when even John Le Carre acknowledges Alec Guinness was so perfect for the part that his portrayal interfered with subsequent novels?

Kilmer says his portrayal is different from Holbrook's. He avoids content Holbrook uses, and doesn't limit himself to Twain's spoken and written words, as Holbrook does, which allows Kilmer to comment on current events.

Plus, Kilmer's goal is different. He told me he hit on doing Twain when he started looking for a directing project, and came up with Twain's "obsession" with Mary Baker Eddy, the famous Christian Scientist with whom Twain had a complicated relationship. Kilmer says Twain admired Eddy for imagining a benevolent God, but was jealous of her success, and more than a little skeptical of a person who became a millionaire writing about God.

Kilmer plans a movie about the two, but in the meantime, is taking Citizen Twain on the road across America and maybe the world. It's helping him develop the Twain character for the movie, and is -- by the way -- not just a labor of love. Kilmer says the one-man show - which comes to Culver City in June for a month at the Kirk Douglas Theatre -- is doing very well financially.

(Photo: Val Kilmer as Mark Twain in Citizen Twain, courtesy Val Kilmer.)