Bob Miller recalls 44 years as the voice of the LA Kings, why kids need death education and just how do you say Los Feliz?
Kings announcer Bob Miller on his upcoming retirement
The sunny skies of Southern California are one of the reasons why I love living here, but its sports scene is also at the top of my list.
When I was growing up in Los Angeles, this city had the best of the best describing the games on air.
Four Hall of Famers broadcasting in the same city, sometimes on the same day, is something no other city could even come close to be being able to claim.
There was Chick Hearn with the Lakers and Vin Scully with the Dodgers — who still have the great Jaime Jarrin calling the games on Spanish-language broadcasts.
And then there's Bob Miller. He started to call Kings hockey games in 1973, and was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2000.
On Thursday he announced that after more than 3,000 broadcasts over 44 years he will be retiring.
Miller will call two more Kings games and then drop the mic.
I talked with Bob Miller, and you can hear his legendary voice in my interview with him by clicking the blue audio player above.
State of Affairs: CA reps respond to Sessions snafu, Rohrabacher forges strange alliances
Two words, one big story this week. Those words? Jeff Sessions.
So what have California's lawmakers been saying?
Take Two talked about it with:
Carla Marinucci, senior editor for Politico's California Playbook
Thad Kousser, professor of political science at UC San Diego
Click on the blue bar above to listen to the entire interview.
Los fey-LEESE or Los FEE-lez?
There's this neighborhood in L.A. that's right between Silver Lake and East Hollywood: Los Feliz.
Say it out loud.
Delta Air Lines recently put up a billboard in L.A. about flights to and from Mexico.
It reads, "Go where everyone agrees how to pronounce Los Feliz."
In the traditional Spanish, Los fey-LEESE is the right way.
But in traditional Angeleno, you've got to say it Los FEE-lez.
That last one never sounded quite right to some of us here.
We called some experts – people who live and work in the neighborhood – to figure out what they prefer.
"I sell houses in Los FEE-lez," says Glenn, a Los Feliz realtor with RealPro Eastside. "A lot of the natives including my wife, who's from Michoacán in Mexico and she's got deep roots in the city, she pronounces it a lot differently than I do."
So around her, it's her way.
"I don't argue with my wife. Are you kidding me? Happy wife, happy life!"
fey-LEESE - 0, Los FEE-lez - 1
Next we called the neighborhood newspaper.
"Los FEE-lez Ledger, this is Erin."
Strike two for the Spanish pronunciation.
"I was raised here and that's just how I've always heard it said," she says, even though she took a stab at Los fay-LEESE. "I've tried a couple times saying it that way and people looked at me like I was either an idiot or a tourist."
fey-LEESE - 0, Los FEE-lez - 2
Finally we called YogaWorks Los Feliz (which is more on the East Hollywood side of the Los Feliz-East Hollywood border).
"My goodness, I've always wanted to be on the radio!" says Alex who answered the phone with "YogaWorks Los FEE-lez."
"It just feels comfortable," he says. "Los fey-LEESE seems hard and jagged."
Don't expect him to change it up anytime soon, either.
"I'm about 6'5" 250. Usually people don't tell me I'm wrong about anything," he says.
So in our completely unscientific survey, the people of Los Feliz agree: they live in Los FEE-lez.
fey-LEESE - 0, Los FEE-lez - 3
This story has been updated: KPCC's own staff can't even agree on the best way to write up the pronunciations on each of these variations. "fay-LEEZ" has been rewritten to "fey-LEESE," per the recommendation by staffer Oscar Garza.
Oh Snap! California school makes $24M off Snapchat investment
Who knew it'd be so lucrative to create camera phone filters that make you look like a dog?
Snap Inc., the Venice-based company behind the popular app SnapChat, made its initial public offering to Wall Street this week.
And early investor Saint Francis High School in Northern California is now $24 million richer.
#blessed
"It's been a pretty amazing, transformational couple of days here at school for us," says St. Francis' president Simon Chiu.
The private Catholic school gave $15,000 in seed money to the company in 2012 when it first started.
It doesn't take a math club to figure out that it multiplied its investment 1,600 times.
Chiu says early plans for the money include beefing up the school's financial aid and tuition programs, increasing resources for teachers and also investing in St Francis' infrastructure.
So, sorry students of St. Francis – this doesn't mean that your prom is going to be extra glamorous this year.
But, who knows, President Chiu says the administration might be plan something special for the kids to celebrate.
"Well, I'll leave it up to the principal," he laughs. "I'm not sure!"
Teaching kids about the end of life
Three things are certain in life: Death, sex and money.
At home and school we learn about the last two, but talking about death ... not so much.
Because of this one physician says kids are ill-equipped to understand some of the tough decisions made at the end of life. So she designed a class to deal with it.
Dr. Jessica Zitter practices palliative medicine at Highland Hospital in Oakland and is the author of Extreme Measures: Finding a Better Path to the End of Life. She joined Take Two to talk about death education.
On how she structured her death education class
It was a two session class, with the first debunking the media portrayal of how hospitals and doctors can really help when people start to approach the end of life. We showed a clip from [the TV show] 'Grey's Anatomy.' The kids all really loved it. But then we went on say this is really not how it happens. We went on to gently talk about how it does happen in an intensive care unit... and talk about what really happens to bodies as they start to die and especially as we start to prop them up on machines. The kids were really fascinated and very surprised.
On what Hollywood gets most incorrect about death
I think that Hollywood glamorizes technology and action and resuscitation. Code Blue! Surgery! ER! I think what's missing is that in fact by the time the majority of people are coming to the point where their heart is going to stop and they're going to need a code blue or they're so sick to the point that they're going to need a major operation, many of those people have come to a point where their bodies have started to declare that they're dying. So a lot of the patients that really do end up in the ICU are so debilitated that these types of approaches aren't going to help them. They're going to make things worse.
On how kids learned what would be important as they died.
Once we had debunked this media portrayal of death, then we started to build up another process, to encourage them to think about how they wanted to live their lives all the way to the end. What are the things that are important to them?
We did this by using this really fun game called 'Go Wish.' It's a card game. Each kid gets a deck of 36 cards and on each card is something that's important to them. 'Being able to taste food,' 'Having family around,' 'Not being alone.' So many things. And we asked them to basically play with the cards with each other in small groups so they could talk about what was the most important things to them in their lives. They had the most incredible conversations, some sad, some happy. A lot of kids said they didn't want to be a burden on their family, which I thought was a really powerful thing to hear from a kid.
To hear the interview, click on the blue Media Player above.
On the Lot: The latest on #EnvelopeGate & is ‘Logan’ the best super hero movie, ever?
The best picture Oscar fiasco is the gift that keeps on giving. Since Sunday's snafu, there have been quite a few developments including 'smoking gun photos,' play by play analysis and more
We even did some digging through our own Take Two archives and found out we actually spoke to Brian Cullinan, the Price Waterhouse Coopers accountant who's getting pinned with the debacle
He joined A Martinez in 2014, the year he took on the awards show:
"Well, I'm not sure the calculus that goes into deciding who necessarily is the next one in line to do this but the fact that I've kind of worked a little bit in the business as it relates to PWC, probably but me in a good position to help out with this award show."
For the latest on OscarGate, Vanity Fair's Rebecca Keegan stopped by for a special Friday edition of "On the Lot."
The latest
"Well...a lot. We now have photos of Cullinan in the stage right wings on his phone about three minutes before best picture was announced, which is not something he's supposed to be doing. He's also got two envelopes in his hand. One of them the best actress envelope, one of the the best picture envelope.
So, it's clear that Cullinan and his partner Martha Ruiz will not be coming back to the Oscars next year. Academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs has announced that. What is under review is the accountant firms ongoing relationship with the academy."
Could they get a new firm?
"Well, it's complicated. The PWC, well before there was a Cooper I guess it was just PW, has been working for the Academy for 93 years and they have done everything from not only the Oscar balloting but also they handle the Academy's finances. They handle its elections, they handle its financial documents, its audits and they do so at a great discount, in exchange for the PR boost that...at least until this week, they got from being involved with the telecast."
Stepping away from the Oscars for a second and shifting focus toward a hero we can all get behind.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RH3OxVFvTeg
"Logan" opens in wide release today, it's receiving some pretty positive reviews including this one, from one of our producers Julian Burrell who saw it last night:
"I'm not even that big of a Wolverine fan but I have to say that 'Logan' might be the greatest superhero movie I've ever seen."
To hear Rebecca's insight on this bold claim, click the blue play button above.
Because we already spend enough time in our cars: The best scenic drives in LA
The car is king in L.A. But these past few weeks of rain and slippery roads have made streets even more miserable than usual.
The weather is set to be nice this weekend and it’s getting to be perfect scenic drive weather. And while it sounds crazy to want to actually get in your car to drive in Los Angeles, Associate Editor at Time Out LA, Michael Juliano has some suggestions that might just change your mind.
Juliano wrote all about L.A.'s best scenic drives and when he stopped by Take Two he spoke to A Martinez about the top three.
Linda Vista through the Arroyo Seco
"It feels like a very elegant, historic drive to me. There's a lot of ritzy neighborhoods in Los Angeles county, but there's something about that one in particular, that's so charming.
The route that I list, you start in Glendale and climb up through some really beautiful hillside communities and then eventually you go past the Art Center campus and then as you start to climb down there's this beautiful view of basically the entire Arroyo..."
Michaels pro-tip: Drive this during rush hour.
Angeles Crest Highway to Mt. Wilson
"You start off on the ground here and maybe an hour later you're 6,000 feet up, hugging along steep mountainside roads that, every time I'm up there, I think to myself, 'How in the world did they build this?'
The views are just really incredible. You are so high up and the wall on the side of the road is so low that it's almost frightening at times."
Michaels pro-tip: Drive with a friend and switch off driving. One person drives on the way up, the other drives on the way down.
Mulholland Drive
"It's your sort of road of car chases and make-out points. It's just classic Hollywood...
You can start the drive from basically the 101 and you climb pretty quickly and the first point of interest you'll encounter is the Hollywood bowl overlook and it's a really great view of the city..."
Michael's pro-tips: Gain an appreciation for the beauty of the valley by taking advantage of the many scenic points and turnouts.
To hear the full segment, click the blue play button above.