If it hardly rains here, why does NBC-4 need its new highly-promoted mobile Doppler radar truck? NBC-4’s meteorologist Fritz Coleman explains. -- Chef Vartan Abgaryan’s last restaurant was Cliff’s Edge. And now he’s working at 71Above, at the top of the US Bank Tower. But … he’s afraid of heights. -- When The Rolling Stones made albums in the 1960s, they were in glorious mono. Later stereo mixes were often inferior, but now all the Stones mono songs have been remastered, and you’ll be shocked at how good they sound. -- OK OK, it doesn’t feel like autumn yet, but it officially arrived this week, and there’s nothing better on a brisk autumn day than cider, so we’ll explore the latest culinary thing: cider houses.
71Above: Everything at LA's tallest restaurant (even the chef) started at the bottom
Talk about haute cuisine. 71Above is the round restaurant on the 71st floor of the US Bank Tower in downtown LA, the tallest restaurant West of the Mississippi, so it's as haute as cuisine gets, with a view from Laguna to Malibu.
As chef and partner Vartan Abgaryan (pronounced VAR-tun ab-GAR-ee-yun) looks out the bank of windows that ring 71Above, he says, "If someone calls and says 'I'm running late, there's traffic,' I'm gonna go, 'Where are you?' I'm gonna look down on the street and say, 'I don't see traffic there. Why are you lying? Where are you?' They'll be like, 'Oh, I'm on the Ten, there's traffic.' And I can see the Ten, there's no traffic on the Ten. I'm looking there right now!"
KPCC photographer Maya Sugarman and I visited 71Above Thursday, spending an hour with Abgaryan. (Make sure to listen to the entire interview in the audio player above!) It was supposed to just be a half-hour, but ...
Being at the top of the skyscraper brings a unique set of problems for a restaurant. It's a little like Hawaii or Alaska. Everything needs to be brought up to the 71st floor, from toothpicks to cooks' coats to whole fish. And while guests whizz up to the restaurant on two banks of elevators that get there in two minutes and have TV sets in them, there are only a few freight elevators and they are much more busy and much slower.
That in mind, we started our interview in the ground level storeroom, off the loading dock, and indeed, it took us twenty minutes to get to the 71st floor. "When did this occur to you?" I asked Vartan, who left Cliff's Edge in Silverlake to open 71Above? "Not at the beginning," he laughs. "Definitely not at the beginning. In my mind, everything was going to be so easy, and then after a couple days of coming down here consistently, I realized we had to have a porter because I couldn't make that trip every day."
So he hired Christian Rojas, whose job is to see to bring goods up from the storeroom and bring down trash and laundry and bottles and anything else that can't pile up upstairs. And the kicker: Rojas, who spends so much of his day in an elevator, is a claustrophobe. But that's okay; his boss is afraid of heights!
When we arrive at 71Above, the first thing I do is ask Abgaryan to stand with me and check out the view. "I'm okay now, but in the beginning I would stand a good six, seven, eight feet (away), and I'd have to hold on. But now I'm comfortable." "Do you enjoy it yet," I ask? "It's not enjoyable, no."
But we're doing what the guests do, and it's something Abgaryan has to fight. The view, he says, is his main competition. So, "there's a lot of attention paid to the restaurant itself. The design, the thought behind everything. The chairs, the tabletops, the handmade pottery that we put on the table, the plates, our style of service, our style of presenting food. I'm very visual, so a lot of the food is, for lack of a better word, pretty. We do a lot of things at the table, we sauce things at the table, so people's attentions are focused back onto the food." And, to deliver a complete experience and keep the focus on the foo, the dinner menu is $70 prix fixe, with three fixed courses and a couple extra from the kitchen.
It's been a long but quick climb for the 34-year old Abgaryan. He came to the US in 1991 from Armenia. His first restaurant job was at an Outback Steakhouse, which he says he admires for its organization and success ("a chain that successful, obviously they've done things correctly"), if not its food. Then he leaped straight to Lutece in Vegas, a branch of one of New York's top restaurants, and there he learned attention to detail. He spent 2-1/2 years at executive chef at Cliff's Edge (another metaphor), and then started 71Above this year, with a 30-year lease.
"Thirty years is thirty years," he says. "I don't know how I'm going to deal with that since I've never had a job longer than three years."
I dunno. Is there a good restaurant in Death Valley?
Inside NBC 4's insane new doppler weather radar truck
Did you hear? It rained this week. And last week, too. September's showers marked the first rain to touch down in Los Angeles County since May.
Covering the weather in Southern California is serious business.
NBC4 recently upped its game with the purchase of a brand new, state of the art truck with a mobile Doppler radar attached to the back. Maybe you've seen the ad:
Doppler, by the way, is a common method of tracking weather using microwave signals. Unlike traditional radars, doppler radars can track the velocity and direction of a storm.
NBC named the new truck "StormRanger" and the onboard technology is intense: a state of the art doppler radar, five computers, six screens, five keyboards and the ability to transmit real time weather data from anywhere in Southern California.
The station called the investment "significant" but wouldn't say how much it all cost — the radar itself retails for around $650,000, though. Why drop that kind of coin? Especially in a city where rain is so rare?
"We have nine microclimates in Southern California," says Fritz Coleman, weatherman for the station. "Every one of those microclimates has their own specific needs. It could be sunny and 112 degrees in Palm Springs but raining really hard with a potential for mud slides in a burn area in Santa Barbara."
Coleman says the StormRanger will give NBC a leg up on other affiliate stations — the station can cover dramatic weather events quicker and with more precision. Plus, they can run promos like the one above.
Today's #onassignment: @NBCLA's #StormRanger mobile Doppler radar with @KevinFerguson 📡🌧 pic.twitter.com/RyQShZPtqw
— Maya Lin Sugarman (@mayasugarman) August 30, 2016
And even though it's brand new, the truck's been put to good use covering a cloud of a different kind: smoke plumes from brush fires.
"We gave it its inaugural run up at the Blue Cut Fire up in Cajon Pass," says Coleman. "One of the beauties of the sensitivity of this Doppler is that we can track smoke, and we can track the intensity of the fire."
Massive box set of Rolling Stones in glorious mono takes you back to 1960s
ABKCO has just released a 15 CD boxed set that collects 186 tracks recorded by The Rolling Stones, but in a format not heard properly for years: in the original mono. KPCC's John Rabe talks with Teri Landi, ABKCO's chief audio engineer and the restoration producer for this project.
There was stereo recording in the 1960s. Why were these mono recordings?
A lot of people still only had the capability to hear mono. People were hearing mono in their cars. People were hearing mono on a little transistor radio. And a lot of people only had the ability to listen to mono recordings at home. So they might have had a small record player. They had to be able to service that area of the market.
Describe the sound of the mono mixes.
When they would mix, way back then, they would mix with the intention of making this sound great coming out of the small speaker. Every instrument had to be heard, if they wanted it to be heard. With mono, your entire image is going to be fully centered. It's basically mixed down to one channel. One channel, one speaker; even though we can separate it out into two speakers for our ears. But everything is in one channel and fully centered. Including your bass ... not just your bass but your entire rhythm section. Especially in rock n' roll, that rhythm section is really driving the entire recording. So it's a completely different listening experience.
You'd think that a stereo recording would sound more natural because we have two ears but these mono recordings have an incredible intimacy. It almost sounds more real somehow, like you're closer, more there.
If you could have put yourself in the studio while the Stones were making these recordings, even though yes we have two ears and hear in surround, I think mono might have been a greater representation of what they would have been hearing themselves and listening to in the studio because when they were mixing in mono that's what they heard.
https://soundcloud.com/kpcc/the-rolling-stones-sound-better-mono-heres-why
There were some good stereo versions of these songs but there were some lousy ones too. I'd like you to explain how they screwed it up, or made lesser choices on some of the stereo mixes on these tapes.
You have to think about the method of recording at the time, multi-track. Between '64 and '67 recording the band to a 3- or 4-track multi-track tape would dictate how the instruments would be panned in a stereo mix. In those days, they were doing what would be known as wide stereo. I think they wanted to make it clear to you that this is stereo.
If you have your rhythm section (guitar, bass, and drums) cut live, printed to one track of a three or four track tape and you have vocals and maybe other overdubs of other instruments printed to the other tracks, there would be limitations to how you could pan that in a mix. If they were doing a wide stereo mix, many times that rhythm section would be off to the left and then in the right channel you might have an acoustic guitar, piano, and of course by 1966 when Brian Jones experimenting with different instruments the vibes might be in that channel, a dulcimer might be in that channel. Then you have Mick Jagger in the center. So your rhythm section is off to the side. It's not in the center driving it. It makes a difference.
In some recordings, they're called "reprocessed for stereo", they would simply screw around with the EQ for the right and left channel. And you wind up with tin, basically.
They would create a false illusion of stereo by way of equalization. One side you would have a bassier effect, and on the other side it would be more treble. And yes in the end when you were listening to it, it would create a really tinny effect on your ears.
Make sure to listen to the audio player for much more of our interview with Teri, and - duh! - to hear all the music we're talking about.
DIY Film Fest: You know Jack Nicholson can act, but did you know he directed three films?
You don't have to wait for the NuArt or the American Cinematheque to throw a film festival. Make one of your own! Every few weeks, Tim Cogshell, film critic for KPCC's Filmweek and Alt Film Guide, releases another in his series of DIY Film Festivals for Off-Ramp listeners to throw in the comfort of their homes.
Jack Nicholson has over 70 credits as an actor. But how many movies did he direct?
Nicholson has 12 acting Oscar nominations and three wins. He and Michael Caine are the only two actors to be nominated for an Academy Award in every decade from the 1960s to the 2000s. From Easy Rider in 1969 to About Schmidt in 2003. Jack’s acting rightly overshadows his directing efforts - of which there are three or four - if you count his un-credited work on Roger Corman’s "The Terror," with Francis Ford Coppola, among others.
1. "Drive, He Said" (1971)
Nicholson’s solo directorial debut is the 1971 adaptation of Jeremy Larner’s novel, "Drive, He Said." The title is from a Robert Creeley poem about human disconnection in an uncertain time. It perfectly suits the subject of the movie: the unease of zeitgeist. It’s about a horny college basketball star who has an affair with one of his professor’s wives, played by Karen Black. It touches on the social revolution and the still lingering sexual revolution, featuring a long single take sex scene between William Tepper and a dazzling Black, which Nicholson says he filmed "contranudity," with Black wearing a huge fur coat, so the stars look like two bears wrestling.
"Drive, He Said" premiered at Cannes to mixed reviews, with equally tepid reviews and box office upon its release, though Roger Ebert called it “often brilliant” and critic Vincent Canby liked it greatly. The original score is extraordinary and was composed by David Shire, then married to Coppola's sister, Talia. I just watched the other day for the first time since 1990 and it’s still relevant - and even better than I remembered.
2. "Goin' South" (1978)
Jack directed his second film, "Goin’ South" in 1978. It’s an odd caper comedy set just after the Civil War. The plot is nuts, though it's apparently based on something they actually did during those days when men were sparse because so many died in the war: men could be spared from hanging if they could find a woman to marry them.
The movie failed at the time and most critics give it faint praise today. But it’s what I call a "chuckle in every scene" funny. You never really laugh out loud, but you never stop chuckling, because there’s something funny happening in every scene; including a good bit of slapstick.
It’s a movie that actually plays better in an intimate setting – like in your own personal DIY film festival — when you clock every nutty expression Jack Nicholson, John Belushi, and Christopher Lloyd make, and hear every very funny line of dialogue (of which there are many).
"Goin’ South" was meant to star Elliott Gould and Candice Bergen, with Mike Nichols directing. But, when another film Nicholson wanted to make fell through, Jack stepped in to direct and found himself drafted to star. His best work on "Goin’ South" was his discovery of his leading lady, Mary Steenburgen, who was working as a receptionist. It was great call. In her second feature — "Melvin and Howard" — she won an Academy Award.
3. "The Two Jakes" (1990)
Jack Nicholson’s third directorial effort is the sequel to "Chinatown," Roman Polanski’s 1974 neo-noir classic "Chinatown," "The Two Jakes." I really like this movie. It only has one problem, it was made 10 years too late - literally. Originally set for 1985, and meant to be the middle film of a trilogy, "The Two Jakes" had issues from the start.
"Chinatown’s" producer, Robert Evans, wanted to play the "second" Jake, a role that went to Harvey Keitel. And "Chinatown’s" writer, Robert Towne, wanted to direct, and didn’t want Evans… in the picture.
But it finally got made in 1990, with most everyone in their original role and Jack Nicholson directing and reprising his role as Jake Gittes. But for the "The Two Jakes" it was too late. Once again, reviews were mixed, though Roger Ebert gave it 3.5 out of 4 stars and Vincent Canby called it "...an enjoyable if clunky movie."
"The Two Jakes" polls 6 out of 10 on Rotten Tomatoes these days, and if in fact it turns out to be the last film Jack Nicholson directs, he can and should be proud of it, along with other directorial efforts, each are worthy additions to our DIY Film Festivals.
Why Genius Grant-winner Gene Luen Yang made Superman a bully
UPDATE 9/22/2016: Mike Roe is prescient! Gene Luen Yang just won a $625,000 MacArthur Foundation Genius Grant because his "work for young adults demonstrates the potential of comics to broaden our understanding of diverse cultures and people." Here's the video from the foundation's website.
Congratulations, Gene!
Gene Luen Yang is a graphic novelist making a big impact on kids. He was named the national ambassador for young people's literature by the Library of Congress and has gone from being a computer science teacher to a comic book writer. He also recently transitioned from longer-form graphic novels to monthly serialized comics.
His latest — DC Comics' "New Super-Man" — tells the story of the teenage Kenan Kong, who becomes China's Superman, a superhero with a mean streak. The story, with art by Victor Bogdanovic, combines western and eastern influences, mixing the story of Clark Kent with the ancient Chinese tale of the Monkey King.
Learning to write monthly comics
While Yang comes with major comic cred, it's been a bumpy road to learning the form of traditional superhero comics. His first major DC project was writing their main "Superman" book.
"I did a 10-issue run on regular 'Superman,' and I was just on a steep learning curve," Yang says. "It was really difficult to come from the world of graphic novels, where there was no page limit, to writing in these 22-page chunks."
Yang says DC stood behind him during the transition.
"I come from the world of young adult graphic novels, and what DC has allowed me to do with this new book is to kind of get back to a voice that feels a little bit more native to me."
Clark Kent: Super bully
"New Super-Man" protagonist Kenan Kong is less of a traditional superhero than his namesake, but Yang says the inspiration goes back to the very beginning of the character.
"If you look at early Clark Kent stories from the late 1930s, early 1940s, Superman started off as kind of a bully. He was kind of a jerk, he was kind of full of himself, and then eventually, as the decades go on, he develops into this moral compass that we all know today."
Yang says incorporating those early traits of Superman gives the story resonance — then Yang adds elements from the ancient Chinese story "Journey to the West."
"The Monkey King also has a similar story arc," Yang says. "He starts off as a bully and he has this process of enlightenment where he arrives at a more selfless character. So by doing this with Kenan Kong, we are referencing both an American story — the story of Clark Kent — and a very Chinese story."
The Asian-American pop culture moment
Asian-American stories have taken on more prominence lately, with TV series "Fresh Off The Boat" leading the way. Stories that come out of Asian-American culture fit well with the increasing diversity in society, Yang says.
"It's rare now that you go through your entire life just with people who look like you or live like you," he says. "You meet people at school, you meet people at work that are completely different from you."
One piece of culture that Yang brings to "New Super-Man" is deep Chinese symbolism, starting with a red uniform.
"A Chinese Superman has to be red, because red is the character with the most cultural currency, and the most cultural meaning for Chinese. It's the color of joy, it's the color of strength, it's the color of virtue," Yang says. "The other piece of symbolism on his costume is the octagon around his chest. Now the octagon is actually a reference to 'bagua,' which is a Taoist concept, and it's fundamental to a Chinese view of the universe. Taoist concepts will play a vital role in this character's journey."
Chinese versions of Batman's and Wonder Woman's uniforms in Yang's comic also incorporate strong color motifs. Yang says he hopes the symbolism will bring something to the story and play to a wider audience.
The next generation
As the national ambassador for young people's literature, Yang has been trying to engage kids with reading. Along with the rest of the comics in DC's "Rebirth" line, Yang offered his endorsements of these graphic novels to pull in young adult readers:
- Anything by Raina Telgemeier (best known for "Smile")
- "Meanwhile" by Jason Shiga, which Yang describes as a Choose Your Own Adventure graphic novel
- "Amulet" by Kazu Kibuishi
"All of these are on-ramps into not just storytelling, but into the habit of reading," Yang says.
If you want your on-ramp to be "New Super-Man," the first two issues are in stores now.
An alternate cover for DC Comics' "New Super-Man #1."
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Hard cider's about to have a moment in Los Angeles
Step aside hoppy IPA’s and creamy coffee stouts. There's a new drink in town: hard cider.
Cider is nothing new. It’s a centuries old drink – according to records, Julius Caesar enjoyed it in 55 BC when Romans arrived in England. President John Adams had his apple a day in the form of cider.
Today, it's a budding industry supported by devoted artisans and tenacious cider nerds looking for the next rare bottle.
The Honest Abe Cidery in Carson opened last year, and it turns traditional cider on its head. Honest Abe's serves a barrel-aged cider, a take on limoncello cider, and one that owner Spencer Chambers calls EmancIPAtion with a capital IPA — a cider with IPA-like hops added in.
“To me, this is the best of both worlds," says Spencer. "Here, you get the dry based cider and the flavor and aroma of the hops, but none of the bitterness you generally get in a IPA.”
Cider makers like Spencer use fresh pressed apples and local ingredients — the apples come from Big Bear, and the honey in the limoncello cider comes from farmers in Temecula.
If you make the drive up the 101 to Westlake Village, you might end up at 101 Cider House, another local cider maker with plenty of bright, colorful flavors: from 101’s Cactus Red, which has a neon pink color and tastes like prickly pear – to Black Dog, a smoky black cider that has hints of lemon and activated charcoal that you can see.
In the same way craft breweries denounce lightweight, bland lagers, independent cider makers have their own corporate ogre: Angry Orchard.
“Angry Orchard is sort of like the Bud Light of ciders,” says Sarah Bennett, a food and drinks writer who’s been published in the L.A. Times, the L.A. Weekly, and the O.C. Weekly. “But [some people] don't realize that there is this whole other world out there, what these artisanal ciders are doing to the cider once it becomes a fermented beverage."
"It’s not just these sickly sweet lemonade flavored juices," she adds. "Which is what you are finding on supermarket shelves.”
Otto Radtke is owner of SoCal’s first cider bar, Great Society Cider and Mead, which opened up a few weeks ago in downtown Long Beach.
“Cider, by nature, is dry, and you only make it sweet when you add sugar back into it,” Otto says. “When you come to our place, you won’t get a lot of very sweet things. We have a few things because some people have a sweet tooth. But a lot of the things are actually quite dry, or tart, or sour.”
Great Society has 20 ciders on tap from all over the world, including craft cider taps from companies in Oregon, Washington, Canada, and England that have been around for years.
Simon House is western director of sales for Ace Cider. His dad founded the company in Sonoma County, back in 1993, and it’s the first family-owned cider company in the U.S.
“Cider is pretty new in its development,” Simon says, sipping on a glass of unfiltered blood orange cider. “The variety within the cider category hasn’t been too apparent. The majority of what the cider category is, in its current existence, is generally sweet. But then just like wine – cider ranges from sweet to dry or dry to sweet and it can even be sour. The common beer connoisseur now probably understands — beer can be bitter, it can be funky.”
The future of cider is anyone’s guess, but market research shows that, based on volume of sales, Los Angeles is the largest market for cider in the United States.
With more people drinking cider, Sarah says she now covers cider as part of her beat — she thinks the gluten-free crowd has helped.
“I think they will achieve a market, and that their market will grow. As more and more cider bars open you will see that," says Sarah. "That's the most important part — and what we saw with craft beer. You need the bars to open first — more so than even the facilities that make it, you can’t have breweries if there is nowhere to sell it.”