Disaster preparedness in SoCal ... Dinner Party Download ... Apollo, the Getty Villa's handsome but dangerous god ... Poppies return ... Running the LA Marathon ... Owsley Stanley remembered ... Seth MacFarlane SINGS ... Lomita's "Black Widow"
Rabe asks: Are you prepared for a natural disaster?
If you live in Southern California, you’ve thought about it this week: “What’s happening in Japan could have happened to us.” Still, most people lack a basic emergency plan and emergency supplies.
Scott Sangster has owned his Los Feliz house for about seven years. He says he and his family have always planned to prepare their house for a natural disaster, but never really followed through.
Disaster preparedness consultant Christal Smith says procrastination like that isn't unusual.
"It has to do with mostly denial," she said. "And also a feeling of hopelessness. When you do sit down and really start to take a look at what you might need, it's overwhelming. It makes you just want to just say, 'Oh, forget it.'"
FEMA recommends residents prepare for three days without help, per person. In Sangster's case, that means four people total, plus their dog.
He isn't alone. In the days following the Japan earthquake, Smith's business has seen a dramatic increase in calls.
"Now that people can actually visualize it, there's been a big turn. A lot of people are coming to me," she said.
"Some of the best advice I got from Christal cost nothing to do," Sangster said. "If a disaster strikes when you're separated, how do you re-connect? Where do you meet? It doesn't require any online shopping. I'm motivated."
Family Guy's Seth MacFarlane Sings Live March 26
Seth MacFarlane, creator of the animated series "Family Guy," "American Dad!," and "The Cleveland Show," integrates full-on musical numbers into his shows whenever he can. If you've seen him on Conan, you know he's not only handsome and charming, but can sing.
Now, MacFarlane has recorded "Music Is Better Than Words," an album of "hidden gems" from the Great American Songbook (due in September), and he'll be at Club Nokia on Saturday, March 26, singing the album with full orchestra. Listen to MacFarlane's interview with Off-Ramp host John Rabe to hear unreleased preview tracks from "Music is Better than Words."
Theodore Payne Nursery Annual Poppy Day Sale approaches!
At the Theodore Payne nursery you won't find any African violets, bamboo, nor Botson Ivy: that's because all of the plants sold at the nursery are California natives, and they look a lot more interesting than you might think. Off-Ramp's Kevin Ferguson talked with the Theodore Payne Foundation's Lili Singer about the nursery's upcoming annual Poppy Day sale on Saturday, March 26.
The Black Widow of Lomita case comes to a close
This past Wednesday Eric Delacruz and Fernando Romero were given 26 years to life in prison. It was the last chapter 20 plus year story involving murder for hire, betrayal, insurance money and Sonia Rios Risken, a 60 year old hairdresser better known as the Black Widow of Lomita. Larry Altman covered the case for the Daily Breeze in Torrance, and he spoke with Off-Ramp's Kevin Ferguson.
Getty Villa's Apollo looks cute, but he's a child murderer
"The cutest guy in all of Malibu is visiting the Getty Villa. Just don't mess with him." So says Off-Ramp culture commentator Marc Haefele. He's talking about a life-size drop-dead gorgeous (and anatomically correct) 2-thousand year old bronze statue of Apollo. It comes from the Naples National Museum and is at the Getty Villa through mid-September.
Marc writes:
This particular Apollo was found in surprisingly few pieces nearly 200 years ago, a block or two from the Temple that bears his name in the long-buried Roman city of Pompeii.
He's called Apollo the Archer, but his bow is lost. He's obviously loosing an arrow, though, in the middle of a running step, with his fingers nocked and his elbow pulled back. He's fit, but not ripped -- you don't have to be when you have the powers of a god -- with the body and face of a 15-year old, but a shallow smile and stare as old as the space beyond the outermost galaxy.
At a recent museum reception on an evening so cold the cabernet almost froze in the glasses, Assistant Curator David Saunders explained that Apollo the Archer is one of the most perfect of the very few complete ancient bronze statues known to exist, and that its original discovers and restorers 190 years ago so scrubbed and refinished it that it’s now almost impossible to tell exactly how old it is and where it came from. Probably Rome at the time of the rise of the Empire, Saunders said, but just possibly it was looted even earlier from the great Greek city of Corinth.
Apollo is displayed with an incomplete statue of his twin sister, also from Pompeii. Also loosing arrows, also with a deadly, faraway stare. So what’s the story here? Saunders says the sacred twins may have been the key elements of an ancient temple tableau -- the primeval and mythical tragedy of Niobe and her Children. If so, that makes him particularly scary.
It's a story dating to the dawn of the ancient world -- so long ago that the gods were in their teens. These two were twins: Apollo the hurter and healer, and Diana, the chaste goddess of the moon. Their father was a roving-eyed Zeus who, after a rather brief encounter, left their mother, the nymph Leto, a single parent. Then Queen Niobe dropped in on Leto one day, and noted that while Leto only had the two kids, she, Niobe, had a healthy pack of 14 -- seven boys, seven girls – whose father was the hard-working stay-at-home Amphion, King of Thebes. Who did you say your tykes' dad was again, some god, did you say? Right. Ms. Single Mom.
But divinities simply don't take stuff like this from mortals. So Leto sent her twins Apollo and Diana, the stars of the new Getty Villa exhibit, on a return visit. Before their mother's horrified eyes, the godly boy shot down her seven sons, the divine maiden the seven girls. For good measure, Apollo shot their father, too. Leaving Niobe alone as the classical symbol, the incarnation of tragic bereavement and total loss.
She fled to Mt. Siplus in what is modern Turkey. There she turned to stone, and from her rocky face, spring-fed tears flow to this day.
Gods may be beautiful to look at, but they really aren't nice people.
RIP Owsley Stanley
Owsley Stanley died Sunday in Australia. He designed the Grateful Dead's logo, was their sound man, and was the inspiration for their "dancing bear" logo. He was Steely Dan's "Kid Charlemagne," with artistic license, because he was the main LSD manufacturer in the drug's early days in San Francisco ("every A-Frame had your number on the wall...").
And he was friend and roommate to Charles Perry, longtime LA Times food writer, who took his first acid trip courtesy Stanley. Perry told us about Stanley in 2008. Listen here and CLICK THROUGH for his remembrance of Stanley for LA Observed.
Dinner Party Download does Austin
This week: From SXSW in Austin comes our all-Texas show: Music legend Willie Nelson talks Crazy… Judge Roy Bean serves justice on the rocks… And Rico explores tex-next cuisine. Plus laffs and music from two SXSW buzz bands: a thilly joke from Toro y Moi and and a tasty tune from Yuck.
Icebreaker: Toro y Moi Chaz Bundick, the man behind Toro Y Moi, parties poolside with (or without) panthers.
Small Talk: Jake Silverstein Jake Silverstein - editor of Texas Monthly - plunges us deep into the heart of…the Amarillo mayoral election. It took another bizarre twist this week, when city officials upheld discrimination against hyphens.
A History Lesson with Booze: Judge Roy Bean and “The Fightin’ Words” This week in 1903, Texas’ most unlikely Justice of the Peace — Phantley Roy Bean Jr. — died. He literally held court in his frontier saloons, so we served ourselves a summons to one of the best cocktail spots in Austin to let another bartender lay down the (liquid) law:
“The Fightin’ Words,” as presided over by Adam Bryan at Bar Congress in Austin, TX:
In a shaker, add:
* 1 oz. True Blue corn whiskey (from Waco, TX)
* 1/2 oz. Maraschino
* 3/4 oz. Yellow Chartreuse
* 3/4 oz. lemon juice
Add ice, shake and strain into a small stemmed glass. Sip and enjoy the sweet/pungent taste of justice.
Guest of Honor: Willie Nelson Music legend… classic songwriter… outlaw… folk hero… Willie Nelson makes it tough to choose your adjectives. He penned mega-hits for Patsy Cline and Roy Orbison, broke open the Nashville scene with his “Outlaw country” music, and became an activist for a slew of sociopolitical causes. And there’s more coming, including a Ray Charles tribute album (out this week) and a Spring/Summer tour that makes us tired just looking at it. Finally, this Saturday, director Billy Bob Thornton’s bio-doc about Willie closes the Film Festival at SXSW. In this chat with Brendan, he recalls growing up in his native Texas, his Crazy start… and then promptly forgets both.
Main Course: Tex-Next Cuisine After a week of pounding BBQ sliders and breakfast tacos at SXSW, Rico seeks an Austin alternative. Enter BarleySwine, an innovative gastropub on the vanguard of the city’s recent food renaissance. Manager/chef Bryce Gilmore — the son of a Southwestern food restaurateur and one of Food & Wine magazine’s nominees for People’s Best New Chef — talks trailers, trout, and the tex-mex dish he still can’t do without.
One For The Road: Yuck - “Georgia” With its approachable 90s sound and smart hooks, the motley London crew Yuck sparked major buzz at SXSW. Their well-received debut album and national tour should only fan the flames. Take a listen to “Georgia” - a song perfect for meeting someone in the middle.
Music On This Week’s Show:
Sea & Cake - “The Argument”
Aphex Twin - “Boy/Girl Song”
Tipsy - “Liquordelic”
Joe “Fingers” Carr - “Somebody Stole My Gal”
Mighty Mighty - “Law”
Willie Nelson - “This Cold Cold War with You”
The Zombies - “Nothing’s Changed”
Yuck - “Georgia”