Today on the show we start with a discussion about President Obama's latest student loan relief order. Then, the antitrust trial between former college athletes and the NCAA begins today. Plus, Brazil's passion for soccer runs deep through its history, a new exhibit at the Annenberg Space showcases rarely seen portraits of country music stars, and more.
President Obama to sign student loan relief order
President Obama will sign an executive order today, which hopes to ease the pain of student debt.
The move will ensure borrowers pay no more than 10 percent of the monthly income in student loan payments. For more on this, we're joined by Kelly Field, chief Washington correspondent for the Chronicle of Higher Education.
Ed O'Bannon vs NCAA: Trial in antitrust suit begins today
Five years ago, former UCLA basketball star Ed O'Bannon sued the NCAA, a video game manufacturer and a licensing company for using the names, images and likenesses of ex-Division 1 football and college basketball players.
Now the case is finally going to court as a class action lawsuit with only the NCAA as the defendant. The trial is scheduled to start today in Oakland.
For more is Michael McCann who writes about sports law for CNNSI.
Do girls actually do better in preschool than boys?
Magazine articles and mommy-blogs have decried that classrooms are made for girls, leaving little boys squarely in the mischief-maker box.
As preschool becomes more academic, some parents of boys are worried they'll do poorly - or get in trouble. KPCC's Deepa Fernandes decided to dig into boy vs. girl brain science and brings us this report.
Edibles causing issues for Colorado's nascent legal pot industry
New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd wrote about her experience with eating too much of a pot-infused treat while reporting in Colorado. As it turns out, overdosing on pot treats isn't uncommon for inexperienced users. That's only one of the problems that Colorado's been having with pot since it was legalized five months ago.
Jack Healy's been writing about this for the New York Times and he joins the show with more.
How do you find the best burrito in America?
Back in 2007, statistics junkie Nate Silver of ESPN's FiveThirtyEight blog wanted to find the best burrito in Wicker Park, the neighborhood he'd just moved to in Chicago.
A self-proclaimed "burritophile," Silver set up a NCAA-style elimination tournament called the Burrito Bracket to determine the winning dish.
Now, with the help of some friends (including a "burrito correspondent" and "burrito selection committee") and online data provided largely by Yelp, he's setting his sights higher with a quest to find the best burrito in America.
Journalist Anna Maria Barry-Jester is FiveThirtyEight's "burrito correspondent" and she's now on a cross-country quest, sampling burritos along the way to determine which one is best. She joins Take Two to explain how the field of 67,391 restaurants was whittled down to 64 and her burrito-rating criteria.
On The Lot: Tearjerkers, Howard Hughes, Producers Guild and more
Warren Beatty back in the business, Seth Rogen on a ratings rant and the appeal of the tear jerker.
Tom Cruise's big-budget sci-fi action movie "Edge Of Tomorrow" gets bested by a little film about a young couple falling in love, "The Fault in Our Stars," based on a novel that is popular with teens.
Seems like the aggressive marketing campaign behind it paid off. How does Hollywood usually feel about tear-jerkers?
If "The Fault of Our Stars" turns out to be a big hit, can we expect more teen weepies in the future?
Warren Beatty is returning to film after a very, very long hiatus in a film about Howard Hughes.
This is certainly not the first Howard Hughes film. There was of course the Hughes biopic the "Aviator" with Leonardo DiCaprio and Jonathan Demme's "Melvin and Howard." How many Howard Hughes films do we really need? What's our obsession with these?
The FBI raided an LA-based production company and charged the producers with ripping off investors to the tune of more than $20 million. What happened?
Over the weekend, the Producers Guild held it's "Produced By" conference, and there were a couple of notable moments, including something of a rant by Seth Rogen about ratings and big budget movies.
Francis Ford Coppola made a strange prediction about the future of film being "live" or something like live. Can you explain what he was talking about?
Ghostbusters, released 30 years ago, and it's coming back to theaters.
World Cup 2014: Brazil's passion for soccer runs deep through its history
The World Cup kicks off this week, and it's taking place in a country known for bringing passion and flair to the game: Brazil.
Brazil has won five World Cups, more than any other country, and this year it could lift the trophy on home soil. But the tournament also opens amid turmoil and controversy, with criticism over cost overruns, delays in construction and protests about inequality and corruption.
The national team, though seen by many as one of the favorites, is also under enormous pressure. The sport, known as football throughout the world, has a long and fascinating history in the country.
"It's part of the national identity," author Alex Bellos tells Take Two. His book, "Futebol: The Brazilian Way of Life," explores more than a century of development of the sport in a complex country that emerged from slavery and colonialism into one of the most diverse societies in the Americas.
"Football was the one thing that united Brazilians and made them feel positive and happy to be Brazilian back in the early 20th century," says Bellos.
In the end, Brazilians took a sport introduced by Europe, and reinvented it as their own, says Bellos.
"Football in Brazil is about improvisation, creativity — it's about flamboyance," he says.
Poll: Californians say drought is major crisis, see little effect on daily lives
Three years into one of the worst droughts the West has seen in decades, 9 in 10 Californians now say they consider the drought a "crisis or major problem," according to the latest poll from USC Dornsife College of Letters Arts and Sciences and the Los Angeles Times.
When asked whether the drought has personally affected them to a major degree, a mere 16 percent said yes. 48 percent said it had made only a “minor impact.”
When it comes to finding solutions to the drought, those surveyed showed strong support for efforts like water recycling, capturing storm water and increasing storage in underground aquifers, but only about a third of those surveyed said they wanted to see taxpayer dollars go to improving water storage and delivery systems.
Lester Snow, executive director of the California Water Foundation, joins Take Two to talk about how public opinion works into finding solutions to the drought.
Drought drives groundwater drilling frenzy
The drought has meant a drilling boom in California for water.
There's been hardly any help from the sky or the Sierra snowpack this year, so farmers and ranchers are leaning heavily on pumping groundwater. New studies show that as groundwater is drained from the huge aquifer in the Central Valley, it's putting more stress on the San Andreas Fault, triggering earthquakes.
The California Report's Sasha Khokha has the story.
California officials push driver's licenses for undocumented immigrants
California is about to become the biggest state to allow immigrants in the country illegally to apply for driver's license. More than a million people are expected to apply over three years, but there is the matter of what the license will look like.
RELATED: DMV pushes plan for immigrant driver's license, despite federal reproach
Even though the Department of Homeland Security doesn't like California's design, state officials continue to push it. For more, we're joined by KPCC's Josie Huang, who covers immigration and emerging communities.
What can law enforcement ask you at a traffic stop?
Sheriffs recently testified at the Texas State Capitol that state troopers in border counties are often too aggressive against citizens pulled over for routine traffic stops, but the allegations are hardly confined to state troopers.
If you are stopped what questions must you answer? Following recent allegations of harassment along the Texas border, the Fronteras Desk's Lorne Matalon looked into what questions that law enforcement, state or federal, can ask you.
The answer is theoretically simple: If you’re the driver, you must show your registration, insurance and driver’s license. The exception is in Arizona where police can ask you about immigration status.
If you’re just a passenger and you’re not being detained for a traffic violation, you don’t have to show anything.
Fronteras Desk asked Texas DPS Captain Luis Najera what questions his troopers are legally allowed to ask at a traffic stop.
“As far as the questions that the trooper is permitted to (ask), there are really no restrictions," he said.
We asked Najera, what exactly a citizen is compelled to answer?
"Legally? They’d be compelled to identify themselves and present their driver’s license," he said.
And that’s all, Najera said.
Najera runs DPS in five West Texas border counties in a territory that extends to the New Mexico border. Neither DPS nor Najera has responded publicly to damning testimony April 7, 2014 from sheriffs at the Texas Capitol in Austin.
The Texas Border Sheriffs Coalition, a state-funded nonprofit representing local law enforcement in 20 Texas borderland counties, said state police tactics are fraying nerves among borderland citizens.
Zavala County Sheriff Eusevio Salinas summed it up for his delegation.
“It disrupts the community," he testified before the Texas Senate Committee on Agriculture, Rural Affairs and Homeland Security. "It creates mayhem.”
In January, an artist from Marfa, Texas, Camp Bosworth, was a passenger in a car driven by his wife. It was afternoon. They say they were pulled over by a Texas state trooper.
Bosworth says he declined to give the trooper an ID.
“I said, ‘I don’t have to give you my ID. I’m not, ya’ know, I’ve done nothing wrong and I’m a passenger in this vehicle,'" he said.
He and his wife, Buck Johnston, were returning from a hospital where Bosworth was treated for an eye injury. Both say they were asked questions that offended them.
Johnston recalled a set of questions that she maintains the trooper asked her and her husband.
“‘Are you married? Why don’t you share the same name?’ And then she looked at my husband and she said, ‘You look familiar. Why do you look familiar? Are you hiding something?’ And he was like, 'No I’m not hiding anything. I’m injured and I’m wanting to go home,’” Johnston said.
Bosworth said he's saddened by what he believes is the response by the majority of people pulled over in traffic stops.
He believes too many drivers and passengers are intimidated to the point they ignore their Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable search and seizure.
“You know, it’s my constitutional right not to be questioned and not to be ID'd without probable cause. It was my duty to say,’You know, hey, my constitutional rights are being violated here. Am I under investigation? No! Have I done anything wrong? No,’” he said.
Although Bosworth and Johnston say the trooper was adamant that they had been driving in a passing lane, she let them go.
But to focus on state troopers exclusively isn’t fair. Sheriffs and police sometimes use the same approach.
Karen Crenshaw, a 51-year-old who had just moved to West Texas, says she was stopped for not coming to a complete stop at the sole traffic light in rural Marfa, Texas.
“I’ve always had a great respect for law enforcement. And I’ve never felt nervous or upset when they pull me over,” she said.
Crenshaw says it was around 11 at night in late April and that two deputies gave her a written warning after a line of questioning that she believes wasn’t relevant.
“‘Where did you move here from? Do you have any illegal substances in the car? Have you ever been arrested? Or convicted of a felony?’ It just felt like overkill,'” Crenshaw recalled.
Constitutional law professor Meg Penrose at Texas A & M Law School says that kind of questioning — beyond the scope of the traffic offense — is itself a violation.
“The longer an officer holds you beyond a traffic stop when there is no probable cause to detain you, that officer has then actually then committed an unconstitutional seizure,” Penrose said.
That's not the case at U.S. Border Patrol checkpoints. Penrose says that agents have the legal right to determine immigration status. But you do not have to answer any questions. If an agent suspects you are in the United States illegally, you can be detained.
But refusing to answer questions does not legally constitute probable cause.
Things are different in Arizona. There the Department of Justice told the state in May that it won’t challenge Arizona’s so-called “show-me-your-papers” provision. That follows a U.S. Supreme Court decision sustaining the provision, while at the same time allowing for future challenges to it.
That provision is now under challenge in a class-action lawsuit. That means that in Arizona, officers can still stop you and ask you to show you’re in the country legally.
Classic LA hot dog stand Tail o' the Pup to be resurrected
Hot dogs are almost an L.A. staple. You can order them at Dodger Stadium and at Pink's on La Brea, but one place you haven't been able to get them is at a gem of a hot dog stand called Tail o' the Pup.
The legendary walk up stand closed in 2005, but its memory lives on. Soon enough you'll be able to dine at this hot dog shaped eatery once again. Here with more is Alison Martino of Vintage Los Angeles, a website dedicated to southern California nostalgia.
Picture This: Rarely seen portraits of country music stars on display in LA
Country music legends Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson and Emmylou Harris are just a few of the artists whose images are part of a new exhibition at the Annenberg Space for Photography in Los Angeles, called Country: Portraits of an American Sound.
The show, which runs through the summer, features works by photographers who worked from the post-war era to the present day.
Curator Michael McCall of the Country Music Hall of Fame says the Annenberg Center insisted on focusing on a select number of photographers. He ended up choosing nine photographers to showcase in the exhibit.
"By doing that I think it focuses you on the photography itself, so it becomes more than just a collection of country music photographs," said McCall on Take Two. "It becomes about the photography and the photographers as much as the people they're shooting."
Some of the photographers include Raeanne Rubenstein, who once worked with Andy Warhol, but went on to shoot country music stars for Rolling Stone, Life and other big magazines. Veteran Grand Ole Opry staff photographer, Les Leverett, captures Johnny Cash and others performing on stage. There's also an early photo of Willie Nelson looking youthful in the 1960s, when he first arrived to Nashville.
Besides the 110 images on display, the exhibit also includes classic country albums and film posters, archival artifacts and a 30-minute documentary about the history and cultural impact of country music. You can catch the exhibit through September 28, 2014.
Interview Highlights:
On the early portrait of Willie Nelson:
"It's Willie when he first came to town, which was the early 1960s, and like all country stars at that time, he looked like an insurance man. His hair was parted into a pompadour, it's kind of a glamour shot. He's dressed in a suit and looking very stately and Mad Men-ish. Most people wouldn't recognize him."
On photographer Walden S. Fabry's work:
"Walden Fabry was a portrait photographer who worked in Peoria, Illinois. Minnie Pearl ran into him and had some shots done by him and loved them. She felt it took a glamour perspective on country music, which no one else was doing at the time. It has that soft focus and white background, very focused on the face and the expression in a way that you might see Ingmar Bergman or Humphrey Bogart. He came to Nashville at Minnie's request and ended up having a thriving business for many, many years."
On Raeanne Rubenstein's work:
"Raeanne Rubenstein, grew up in New York, Andy Warhol took her under his wing. She was also at Woodstock. She was shooting for People Magazine, Rolling Stone and Life, and the big magazines in the '60s. She has great shots of Jimi Hendrix and John Lennon and Yoko Ono, and Bob Dylan.
"At some point she started getting assignments to shoot country music stars. She started coming to Nashville and she fell in love with how accessible country music stars were, it was a whole different interaction than she had with rock stars and other people that she shot. They would invite her home and make dinner for her. So she ended up moving down here and she's been here for more than 30 years now."
On Gram Parsons's relationship with Nudie Cohn:
"Nudie was this great tailor, based in L.A. He started off suiting for burlesque performers, then eventually cowboys like Gene Autry and Roy Rogers. By the '50s, every great country star was having these rhinestone, brocaded outfits that were made by Nudie. He became one of the most popular tailors Nashville has ever used.
"I think Gram Parsons — who was a rock and roller, but was interested in country music — wanted to pick up on that so he went to nudie and wanted to design an outfit that's based on the classic country look, but at the same time he made it his own, because it was marijuana leaves and poppies for heroin and pills and nude women. It's just a great shot."
President Obama to sign student loan relief order
President Obama will sign an executive order today, which hopes to ease the pain of student debt.
The move will ensure borrowers pay no more than 10 percent of the monthly income in student loan payments. For more on this, we're joined by Kelly Field, chief Washington correspondent for the Chronicle of Higher Education.
Ed O'Bannon vs NCAA: Trial in antitrust suit begins today
Five years ago, former UCLA basketball star Ed O'Bannon sued the NCAA, a video game manufacturer and a licensing company for using the names, images and likenesses of ex-Division 1 football and college basketball players.
Now the case is finally going to court as a class action lawsuit with only the NCAA as the defendant. The trial is scheduled to start today in Oakland.
For more is Michael McCann who writes about sports law for CNNSI.
Do girls actually do better in preschool than boys?
Magazine articles and mommy-blogs have decried that classrooms are made for girls, leaving little boys squarely in the mischief-maker box.
As preschool becomes more academic, some parents of boys are worried they'll do poorly - or get in trouble. KPCC's Deepa Fernandes decided to dig into boy vs. girl brain science and brings us this report.
Edibles causing issues for Colorado's nascent legal pot industry
New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd wrote about her experience with eating too much of a pot-infused treat while reporting in Colorado. As it turns out, overdosing on pot treats isn't uncommon for inexperienced users. That's only one of the problems that Colorado's been having with pot since it was legalized five months ago.
Jack Healy's been writing about this for the New York Times and he joins the show with more.
How do you find the best burrito in America?
Back in 2007, statistics junkie Nate Silver of ESPN's FiveThirtyEight blog wanted to find the best burrito in Wicker Park, the neighborhood he'd just moved to in Chicago.
A self-proclaimed "burritophile," Silver set up a NCAA-style elimination tournament called the Burrito Bracket to determine the winning dish.
Now, with the help of some friends (including a "burrito correspondent" and "burrito selection committee") and online data provided largely by Yelp, he's setting his sights higher with a quest to find the best burrito in America.
Journalist Anna Maria Barry-Jester is FiveThirtyEight's "burrito correspondent" and she's now on a cross-country quest, sampling burritos along the way to determine which one is best. She joins Take Two to explain how the field of 67,391 restaurants was whittled down to 64 and her burrito-rating criteria.
On The Lot: Tearjerkers, Howard Hughes, Producers Guild and more
Warren Beatty back in the business, Seth Rogen on a ratings rant and the appeal of the tear jerker.
Tom Cruise's big-budget sci-fi action movie "Edge Of Tomorrow" gets bested by a little film about a young couple falling in love, "The Fault in Our Stars," based on a novel that is popular with teens.
Seems like the aggressive marketing campaign behind it paid off. How does Hollywood usually feel about tear-jerkers?
If "The Fault of Our Stars" turns out to be a big hit, can we expect more teen weepies in the future?
Warren Beatty is returning to film after a very, very long hiatus in a film about Howard Hughes.
This is certainly not the first Howard Hughes film. There was of course the Hughes biopic the "Aviator" with Leonardo DiCaprio and Jonathan Demme's "Melvin and Howard." How many Howard Hughes films do we really need? What's our obsession with these?
The FBI raided an LA-based production company and charged the producers with ripping off investors to the tune of more than $20 million. What happened?
Over the weekend, the Producers Guild held it's "Produced By" conference, and there were a couple of notable moments, including something of a rant by Seth Rogen about ratings and big budget movies.
Francis Ford Coppola made a strange prediction about the future of film being "live" or something like live. Can you explain what he was talking about?
Ghostbusters, released 30 years ago, and it's coming back to theaters.
World Cup 2014: Brazil's passion for soccer runs deep through its history
The World Cup kicks off this week, and it's taking place in a country known for bringing passion and flair to the game: Brazil.
Brazil has won five World Cups, more than any other country, and this year it could lift the trophy on home soil. But the tournament also opens amid turmoil and controversy, with criticism over cost overruns, delays in construction and protests about inequality and corruption.
The national team, though seen by many as one of the favorites, is also under enormous pressure. The sport, known as football throughout the world, has a long and fascinating history in the country.
"It's part of the national identity," author Alex Bellos tells Take Two. His book, "Futebol: The Brazilian Way of Life," explores more than a century of development of the sport in a complex country that emerged from slavery and colonialism into one of the most diverse societies in the Americas.
"Football was the one thing that united Brazilians and made them feel positive and happy to be Brazilian back in the early 20th century," says Bellos.
In the end, Brazilians took a sport introduced by Europe, and reinvented it as their own, says Bellos.
"Football in Brazil is about improvisation, creativity — it's about flamboyance," he says.
Poll: Californians say drought is major crisis, see little effect on daily lives
Three years into one of the worst droughts the West has seen in decades, 9 in 10 Californians now say they consider the drought a "crisis or major problem," according to the latest poll from USC Dornsife College of Letters Arts and Sciences and the Los Angeles Times.
When asked whether the drought has personally affected them to a major degree, a mere 16 percent said yes. 48 percent said it had made only a “minor impact.”
When it comes to finding solutions to the drought, those surveyed showed strong support for efforts like water recycling, capturing storm water and increasing storage in underground aquifers, but only about a third of those surveyed said they wanted to see taxpayer dollars go to improving water storage and delivery systems.
Lester Snow, executive director of the California Water Foundation, joins Take Two to talk about how public opinion works into finding solutions to the drought.
Drought drives groundwater drilling frenzy
The drought has meant a drilling boom in California for water.
There's been hardly any help from the sky or the Sierra snowpack this year, so farmers and ranchers are leaning heavily on pumping groundwater. New studies show that as groundwater is drained from the huge aquifer in the Central Valley, it's putting more stress on the San Andreas Fault, triggering earthquakes.
The California Report's Sasha Khokha has the story.
California officials push driver's licenses for undocumented immigrants
California is about to become the biggest state to allow immigrants in the country illegally to apply for driver's license. More than a million people are expected to apply over three years, but there is the matter of what the license will look like.
RELATED: DMV pushes plan for immigrant driver's license, despite federal reproach
Even though the Department of Homeland Security doesn't like California's design, state officials continue to push it. For more, we're joined by KPCC's Josie Huang, who covers immigration and emerging communities.
What can law enforcement ask you at a traffic stop?
Sheriffs recently testified at the Texas State Capitol that state troopers in border counties are often too aggressive against citizens pulled over for routine traffic stops, but the allegations are hardly confined to state troopers.
If you are stopped what questions must you answer? Following recent allegations of harassment along the Texas border, the Fronteras Desk's Lorne Matalon looked into what questions that law enforcement, state or federal, can ask you.
The answer is theoretically simple: If you’re the driver, you must show your registration, insurance and driver’s license. The exception is in Arizona where police can ask you about immigration status.
If you’re just a passenger and you’re not being detained for a traffic violation, you don’t have to show anything.
Fronteras Desk asked Texas DPS Captain Luis Najera what questions his troopers are legally allowed to ask at a traffic stop.
“As far as the questions that the trooper is permitted to (ask), there are really no restrictions," he said.
We asked Najera, what exactly a citizen is compelled to answer?
"Legally? They’d be compelled to identify themselves and present their driver’s license," he said.
And that’s all, Najera said.
Najera runs DPS in five West Texas border counties in a territory that extends to the New Mexico border. Neither DPS nor Najera has responded publicly to damning testimony April 7, 2014 from sheriffs at the Texas Capitol in Austin.
The Texas Border Sheriffs Coalition, a state-funded nonprofit representing local law enforcement in 20 Texas borderland counties, said state police tactics are fraying nerves among borderland citizens.
Zavala County Sheriff Eusevio Salinas summed it up for his delegation.
“It disrupts the community," he testified before the Texas Senate Committee on Agriculture, Rural Affairs and Homeland Security. "It creates mayhem.”
In January, an artist from Marfa, Texas, Camp Bosworth, was a passenger in a car driven by his wife. It was afternoon. They say they were pulled over by a Texas state trooper.
Bosworth says he declined to give the trooper an ID.
“I said, ‘I don’t have to give you my ID. I’m not, ya’ know, I’ve done nothing wrong and I’m a passenger in this vehicle,'" he said.
He and his wife, Buck Johnston, were returning from a hospital where Bosworth was treated for an eye injury. Both say they were asked questions that offended them.
Johnston recalled a set of questions that she maintains the trooper asked her and her husband.
“‘Are you married? Why don’t you share the same name?’ And then she looked at my husband and she said, ‘You look familiar. Why do you look familiar? Are you hiding something?’ And he was like, 'No I’m not hiding anything. I’m injured and I’m wanting to go home,’” Johnston said.
Bosworth said he's saddened by what he believes is the response by the majority of people pulled over in traffic stops.
He believes too many drivers and passengers are intimidated to the point they ignore their Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable search and seizure.
“You know, it’s my constitutional right not to be questioned and not to be ID'd without probable cause. It was my duty to say,’You know, hey, my constitutional rights are being violated here. Am I under investigation? No! Have I done anything wrong? No,’” he said.
Although Bosworth and Johnston say the trooper was adamant that they had been driving in a passing lane, she let them go.
But to focus on state troopers exclusively isn’t fair. Sheriffs and police sometimes use the same approach.
Karen Crenshaw, a 51-year-old who had just moved to West Texas, says she was stopped for not coming to a complete stop at the sole traffic light in rural Marfa, Texas.
“I’ve always had a great respect for law enforcement. And I’ve never felt nervous or upset when they pull me over,” she said.
Crenshaw says it was around 11 at night in late April and that two deputies gave her a written warning after a line of questioning that she believes wasn’t relevant.
“‘Where did you move here from? Do you have any illegal substances in the car? Have you ever been arrested? Or convicted of a felony?’ It just felt like overkill,'” Crenshaw recalled.
Constitutional law professor Meg Penrose at Texas A & M Law School says that kind of questioning — beyond the scope of the traffic offense — is itself a violation.
“The longer an officer holds you beyond a traffic stop when there is no probable cause to detain you, that officer has then actually then committed an unconstitutional seizure,” Penrose said.
That's not the case at U.S. Border Patrol checkpoints. Penrose says that agents have the legal right to determine immigration status. But you do not have to answer any questions. If an agent suspects you are in the United States illegally, you can be detained.
But refusing to answer questions does not legally constitute probable cause.
Things are different in Arizona. There the Department of Justice told the state in May that it won’t challenge Arizona’s so-called “show-me-your-papers” provision. That follows a U.S. Supreme Court decision sustaining the provision, while at the same time allowing for future challenges to it.
That provision is now under challenge in a class-action lawsuit. That means that in Arizona, officers can still stop you and ask you to show you’re in the country legally.
Classic LA hot dog stand Tail o' the Pup to be resurrected
Hot dogs are almost an L.A. staple. You can order them at Dodger Stadium and at Pink's on La Brea, but one place you haven't been able to get them is at a gem of a hot dog stand called Tail o' the Pup.
The legendary walk up stand closed in 2005, but its memory lives on. Soon enough you'll be able to dine at this hot dog shaped eatery once again. Here with more is Alison Martino of Vintage Los Angeles, a website dedicated to southern California nostalgia.
Picture This: Rarely seen portraits of country music stars on display in LA
Country music legends Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson and Emmylou Harris are just a few of the artists whose images are part of a new exhibition at the Annenberg Space for Photography in Los Angeles, called Country: Portraits of an American Sound.
The show, which runs through the summer, features works by photographers who worked from the post-war era to the present day.
Curator Michael McCall of the Country Music Hall of Fame says the Annenberg Center insisted on focusing on a select number of photographers. He ended up choosing nine photographers to showcase in the exhibit.
"By doing that I think it focuses you on the photography itself, so it becomes more than just a collection of country music photographs," said McCall on Take Two. "It becomes about the photography and the photographers as much as the people they're shooting."
Some of the photographers include Raeanne Rubenstein, who once worked with Andy Warhol, but went on to shoot country music stars for Rolling Stone, Life and other big magazines. Veteran Grand Ole Opry staff photographer, Les Leverett, captures Johnny Cash and others performing on stage. There's also an early photo of Willie Nelson looking youthful in the 1960s, when he first arrived to Nashville.
Besides the 110 images on display, the exhibit also includes classic country albums and film posters, archival artifacts and a 30-minute documentary about the history and cultural impact of country music. You can catch the exhibit through September 28, 2014.
Interview Highlights:
On the early portrait of Willie Nelson:
"It's Willie when he first came to town, which was the early 1960s, and like all country stars at that time, he looked like an insurance man. His hair was parted into a pompadour, it's kind of a glamour shot. He's dressed in a suit and looking very stately and Mad Men-ish. Most people wouldn't recognize him."
On photographer Walden S. Fabry's work:
"Walden Fabry was a portrait photographer who worked in Peoria, Illinois. Minnie Pearl ran into him and had some shots done by him and loved them. She felt it took a glamour perspective on country music, which no one else was doing at the time. It has that soft focus and white background, very focused on the face and the expression in a way that you might see Ingmar Bergman or Humphrey Bogart. He came to Nashville at Minnie's request and ended up having a thriving business for many, many years."
On Raeanne Rubenstein's work:
"Raeanne Rubenstein, grew up in New York, Andy Warhol took her under his wing. She was also at Woodstock. She was shooting for People Magazine, Rolling Stone and Life, and the big magazines in the '60s. She has great shots of Jimi Hendrix and John Lennon and Yoko Ono, and Bob Dylan.
"At some point she started getting assignments to shoot country music stars. She started coming to Nashville and she fell in love with how accessible country music stars were, it was a whole different interaction than she had with rock stars and other people that she shot. They would invite her home and make dinner for her. So she ended up moving down here and she's been here for more than 30 years now."
On Gram Parsons's relationship with Nudie Cohn:
"Nudie was this great tailor, based in L.A. He started off suiting for burlesque performers, then eventually cowboys like Gene Autry and Roy Rogers. By the '50s, every great country star was having these rhinestone, brocaded outfits that were made by Nudie. He became one of the most popular tailors Nashville has ever used.
"I think Gram Parsons — who was a rock and roller, but was interested in country music — wanted to pick up on that so he went to nudie and wanted to design an outfit that's based on the classic country look, but at the same time he made it his own, because it was marijuana leaves and poppies for heroin and pills and nude women. It's just a great shot."