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Podcasts Off-Ramp
Off-Ramp for March 28, 2009
Off-Ramp with John Rabe Hero Image
(
Dan Carino
)
Episode 3524
Listen 52:31
Off-Ramp for March 28, 2009

He's a New KPCC Member; Dinner Party Download: Where Anatomy meets Astronomy; Date Shake Quest: Part 1; Gary Owens Tells All; Date Shake Quest: Part 2; Caspian Rain; Date Shake Quest: Part 3; She Drew the Line; Racy Dates?; A Music Odyssey; Gary Owens' Secret Power

He's a New KPCC Member; Dinner Party Download: Where Anatomy meets Astronomy; Date Shake Quest: Part 1; Gary Owens Tells All; Date Shake Quest: Part 2; Caspian Rain; Date Shake Quest: Part 3; She Drew the Line; Racy Dates?; A Music Odyssey; Gary Owens' Secret Power

Are you? It's thanks to member contributions that we're able to broadcast to new corners of Southern California, like the Coachella Valley (featured on today's show). Whether you listen on KPCC, KUOR, or KPCV, your support not makes our coverage possible...it makes it BETTER. Click here to contribute. Thanks so much.
On this full-length episode: Rocker Benjy Ferree's ode to Peter Pan...We discover the planet that dares not speak its name...and Rico sharpens his conversation skills with Brooklyn's new king of cutlery. For the uninitiated: Dinner Party Download is a fast and funny 12-minute "cheat sheet" of news and culture designed to give you enough conversational firepower to dazzle friends and family at this weekend's dinner party. You're always invited.
Fast-Food Dude Jeff Girod travels to three of the best places for date shakes in the Coachella Valley. First up: Hadley Fruit Orchards.
Meet radio legend Gary Owens. As a disc jockey, he was Number One in every market he worked. He also held together Laugh-In, and was the voice of Roger Ramjet and Powdered Toast Man.
And the winner of the Coachella Valley Date Shake-off: Shields Date Gardens! How can you argue with a 40-foot-tall knight, anyway?
As part of Off-Ramp's ongoing series on writers, we feature Gina Nahai. Her latest novel is called Caspian Rain and it's told from the point-of-view of Yas, a 12-year-old Jewish girl living in Iran in the 1970s.
Jeff Girod digs the dates at Oasis Date Farms, but suggests continuing the tour if you're looking for the date shake to end all date shakes.
Today, we take the painted lines that divide traffic on two-lane roads for granted. But Coachella Valley historian Patricia Laflin says Indio woman Dr. June Robertson McCarroll is responsible for striping our roads.
Mr. Shields created the first version of this show (and this title) way back in the 1950s. Don't worry, it doesn't get too explicit.
Listen 7:32
KPCC's Program Director and Classical Music aficionado Craig Curtis explains what happened to Alex North's unused score for 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Superman has x-ray vision, Wonder Woman her lasso, and radio legend Gary Owens has his voice.