Chef Farid Zadi, from La Cachette and Le Cordon Bleu in Pasadena, has opened his own place ... a cooking school where students can get the basics of French cooking, or fill in the gaps in their knowledge. It's called Ecole de Cuisine, and Off-Ramp's John Rabe attended the press opening luncheon. CLICK THROUGH to see a video of Chef Zadi demonstrating how to cut an onion!

... and not just any chef. Seaman Roibrenn Arlante (Glendale Senior High Class of '08) works aboard the USS George Washington aircraft carrier, so he's cooking for 5,000 men and women. This past weekend, he became a US Citizen, and the ceremony was conducted aboard ship.

A film and a blog got writer and filmmaker RH Greene thinking about the odd celebrity of the late Walking Man of Silverlake, Marc Abrams, who apparently killed himself this summer amidst a reported investigation into prescription drug distribution.

Anyone who went to high school in the last 50 years no doubt knows Upton Sinclair for his Chicago meatpacking expose "The Jungle," but he was much more than an undercover muckraker.

Mercedes Benz's Sascha Simon, in charge of the company's advance product planning in the US, met Off-Ramp host John Rabe by LAX to let him drive the new Mercedes F-Cell car, which is like an electric SUV without, as Simon puts it, "range anxiety." (It is quite fast off the line, by the way.) Mercedes is sending a shipment of the cars to California for testing by consumers, who'd lease them for up to three years. CLICK THROUGH to see Simon showing you the real guts of the car.

Todd Carpenter's day job is teaching photography and neural science to architects. In his spare time, he creates small, focused paintings of Southern California landscapes in shades of gray that are surprisingly evocative and even colorful ... in your mind. His show, "scaped," opens Saturday, October 16, at LAUNCH Gallery at 5412 Wilshire. (The party's from 6-10p.)

...or renacimiento, if you prefer. KPCC's Adolfo Guzman Lopez tastes a Mezcal cocktail with the drink's namesake, Bricia Lopez. Mezcal is a special kind of Tequila made from the Maguey plant in Oaxaca, Mexico.

Find out how to win your dinner party.