Haiku Contest Update!; Dinner Party Download: Barista Throwdown; He's Always Part of the Team; They Wear Their Colors Proud; They Shout Their Voices Loud; McCain's Theme Song; The Titan of Trailers; Ben Vereen: Up Close and Musical; Cut-Throat Coffee; The Sounds of Death Race; Chinese Type-Casting; You're a Good Man, Bill Melendez; Schulz and Baseball; A Labor of Laughs; Congrats, Quinn!; Music Featured on Off-Ramp: Priscilla Ahn's "I Don't Think So"
Many great entries. John reads the best of the best. Click Below. Enjoy!
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. This week: A sober chat with Ezra Feinberg about his psych-rock band Citay... We remember the Great Fire of London with a conflagrant cocktail... and a champion barista drinks deep the mad flava of competitive coffee-making.
Last March, Los Angeles H.S. junior and star football player Jamiel Shaw was killed outside his home. His teammates were looking forward to playing with him. KPCC's Brian Watt says now they're playing for him.
KPCC's Kitty Felde takes in the fashions of the Democratic National Convention...
...and KPCC's Frank Stoltze captures the accents of the Republican National Convention.
Off-Ramp airs a new McCain song that's not been endorsed by the candidate.
Gary Owens remembers his friend Don LaFontaine, the king of the voiceover artists. He's the guy who began the "In a world..." craze.
You might have seen Ben Vereen in "Wicked," "Jesus Christ Superstar" or the T.V. series "Roots." Vereen will be at UCLA's Freud Playhouse in an evening called "Up Close and Musical." He chatted with Queena Kim.
Dinner Party Download's Rico Gagliano discovers caffeine and competition make for a strong concoction at the National Barista Competition.
We meet composer Paul Chihara, who did the soundtrack for Roger Corman's original Death Race 2000.
A documentary called Hollywood Chinese is screening in Pasadena. It shows how the movie industry methodically cast Chinese actors in stereotypical roles.
Off-Ramp animation scholar Charles Solomon remembers Bill Melendez, who created the Peanuts TV specials, including "A Charlie Brown Christmas."
In keeping with the Peanuts spirit, KPCC's Inland Empire reporter Steven Cuevas visits a new Riverside exhibit of Charles Schulz's baseball comics.
John talks with Dave Strickler, who has cataloged all 104 years of the L.A. Times' comics pages from "Buster Brown" to "La Cucaracha."
Off-Ramp contributor Quinn Kiesow just won Day-to-Day's California Dreaming musical contest. His song "Los Angeles" best captures "the spirit of California Dreaming."
Priscilla Ahn performs "I Don't Think So" from her 2008 album, A Good Day in an Off-Ramp exclusive video.