Democratic party leader Christine Pelosi on the Sacramento harassment issue, a four-course Thanksgiving ice cream meal, foreign students reflect on the holiday.
California Democratic Party demands action on sexual misconduct
Christine Pelosi was one of 300 women in California politics who signed a letter last month alleging sexual misconduct at the state capitol. The women said they had "endured, or witnessed, or worked with women who have experienced some form of dehumanizing behavior by men with power in our workplaces."
Since that letter was first published, numerous lawmakers at both the state and federal level have been accused of sexual misconduct, including California Assemblyman Raul Bocanegra (who has since resigned) and U.S. Senator Al Franken -- both Democrats.
Now, leaders of the California Democratic Party have come up with a list of demands for how to respond to sexual misconduct allegations. Christine Pelosi chairs the California Democratic Party's Women's Caucus, and she joined Take Two to speak with A Martinez.
CLICK ON THE BLUE MEDIA PLAYER TO HEAR THE ENTIRE CONVERSATION WITH CHRISTINE PELOSI.
Las Vegas shooting victims file lawsuits in with LA Superior Court
Hundreds of victims of the Las Vegas shooting in October filed lawsuits with the Los Angeles Superior Court on Monday. The action follows several other lawsuits filed in a Nevada court earlier this month.
One was directed at MGM Resorts International, which owns the Mandalay Bay Hotel where the shooter staged his attack. LiveNation, which organized the concert the victims attended, is also being sued.
"The plaintiffs are suing MGM and Mandalay Bay because they claim they didn't adequately monitor people coming into the hotel and didn't adequately respond quick enough once a security officer had been wounded shortly after the firing began," said Adam Zimmerman, associate professor at Loyola Law School.
Lawsuits against property owners and event managers are common in the aftermath of a tragedy that involves injury or death. Zimmerman said that courts have yet to determine a definitive answer as to whether or not these types of entities are culpable in such an event.
"There is some precedence, historically for holding property owners ... and landlords responsible for crimes that occur on their property when they're foreseeable," Zimmerman said. "The question, in this case, is whether or not they can be held responsible for something as unforeseeable as a mass shooting that took place in quite this way."
Why plaintiffs feel the MGM bears blame for the Las Vegas shooting
"There were a few red flags raised about the particular shooter. That he'd been carrying ten bags full of guns; that he had security cameras posted around his own hotel room; that he didn't really leave his room for over three days. So the claim is that there were enough red flags there that they should have responded quicker or noticed something. And it was their failure to do so that left them in jeopardy."
How much culpability venue owners have in tragedies
"One of the things that the plaintiffs say is that in this day and age we're living day to day with a new mass shooting and at what point is a property owner or a concert hall going to be held responsible.
"Property owners owe some responsibility to people in their facilities. It's particularly true when someone is paying you for the privilege of using that facility. Because when you're paying for the privilege of using a hotel, you go into the hotel with the expectation that they're going to make it safe for you. The question in these cases, which courts haven't totally reached, is can you be held responsible for a shooting that not only might threaten people within the building but people down the street. That's a much harder question."
How cases like this have previously been settled
"They often go to trial, a lot of times they're dismissed on the grounds that the shooting was unforeseeable. There have been many settlements after [the shooting in 2007 at] Virginia Tech. They had a settlement. Sometimes we see efforts to set up compensation funds for the victim's families. But I don't think there's any case I know of where a property venue was found responsible and the verdict was actually upheld in the end."
To hear more about these lawsuits and the precedent for them, click the blue player above.
Want food that's "American?" Try kimchi tacos and adobong baboy
This Thanksgiving, you may think that sitting down to a traditional American meal means turkey and mashed potatoes. But in places like California, many Americans' families are recent immigrants who brought their cuisine with them.
Gabrielle Langholtz is author of "America the Cookbook." She joined Take Two's A Martinez to talk about the many different dishes that are both ethnic and American at the same time.
I scream, you scream, for turkey-flavored ice cream
Thanksgiving this year is espected to be a scorcher, with some temperatures in SoCal reaching as high as 97 degrees. So, if you don't feel like roasting alongside your turkey, Salt & Straw is offering a full Thanksgiving meal in ice cream form.
Take Two producers Leo Duran and Lori Galarreta visited the Salt & Straw in Downtown L.A. to have a three-course meal.
First up: Salted Caramel Thanksgiving Turkey
This flavor seems like your standard salted caramel ice cream until you come across a crunchy, caramelized and salty turkey skin.
Leo's take: "Once you bite down into that crystal crispiness, then all of a sudden you'll go, 'Oh I know that flavor, that's totally turkey meat.' It's actually pretty good."
Lori's take: "I like it. Honestly, I'm getting very, very low turkey vibes. It's good."
General consensus: The one ice cream flavor that was agreed on. It was tasty and weird in a good way.
Second course: Buttered Mashed Potatoes & Gravy
Definitely the most savory of the flavors. It's very dense and made with real chicken broth and potatoes. The website describes this as tasting "sweet and salty with hints of chocolate, coffee and yes, baked mashed potato."
Leo's take: "It's not too sweet. It's just sweet enough that makes it ice cream, but it still has enough of that mashed potato flavor where you're like, 'Oh yeah, that's totally mashed potatoes.'"
Lori's take: "It goes counter to everything I love about mashed potatoes because I love nice fluffy warm mashed potatoes, but this is that mashed potato taste but...cold."
General Consensus: Split. Leo was feeling this flavor and how similar it was to the actual product it was trying to mimic. Lori put the spoon down pretty quickly.
Third Course: Spiced Goat Cheese & Pumpkin Pie
Pumpkin pie is a Thanksgiving staple. When making this flavor, Salt & Straw focused on the pie's custardy-creaminess by using the spiced goat cheese ice cream as a base and tossing in mashed pumpkin and spices.
Leo's take: "It kind of looks like a pumpkin pie covered in whipped cream. I think goat cheese and pumpkin pie...those flavors kind of match."
Lori's take: "There's just some really strong notes of goat cheese in that. I'm not a huge pumpkin pie fan, so I'm gonna move on to the sweet potato."
Consensus: Split. Leo was digging the flavor mashup of pumpkin pie and goat cheese, while Lori moved on to the sweet potato casserole with maple pecan ice cream.
BONUS: Sweet Potato Casserole with Maple Pecans
This flavor contains roasted sweet potatoes, maple-sugared pecans and marshmallow. It's REALLY sweet and even has hints of spice.
Leo's take: "We are on the opposite end of the spectrum. I never liked sweet potato casserole, so to this, I'm like 'meh, it's okay.'"
Lori's take: "It's just sugar on sugar, I love it. It's perfect because you can have the pumpkin pie and I will take the sweet potato casserole."
Consensus: Split once again. But it works out. Leo liked the goat cheese and pumpkin pie. Lori liked the sweet potato casserole and maple pecans. Everyone's happy, and no one has to share.
Here are some other options to stay cool
If a full course ice cream meal doesn't sound like your thing, fear not. There are many other options in Southern California that are feeling the Thanksgiving spirit.
- Jeni's ice cream in Larchmont has sweet potato with torched marshmallows as well as pumpkin five spice.
- Sweet Rose Creamery has apple pie.
- Van Leeuwen has a vegan pumpkin spice.
- McConnell's has cardamom and gingersnap as well as whiskey and pecan praline.
- Carmela has a whole assortment of flavors from cranberry orange thyme sorbet, not too mention pumpkin, apple pie and cardamom and carrot orange ginger sorbet and brown butter sage.
To hear the Salt & Straw Thanksgiving flavors taste test, click the blue play button above.
How international students spend Thanksgiving in Southern California
California is the most popular destination for the one million international students currently in the United States. Heading into the Thanksgiving weekend, we hear from some of these visiting scholars on their favorite Thanksgiving memories.
Growing up in Germany, Dimitar Mi Ho had never surfed a day in his life. Now a PhD student in computer Science at Caltech, he loves to hit the waves.
I really fell in love with surfing when I moved to Los Angeles. And I was hoping to surf on Thanksgiving as well because there’s going to be some swell. But this year I have to visit my girlfriend’s family in the Bay Area. I’m kind of stoked about it, but apparently they put marshmallow in potato. I’m sorry, but I think that’s gross. I’d rather catch some waves!
Thanksgiving is not complete without turkey. Yinan Liu is from Beijing and is now a PhD student in public policy at USC.
Normally, Thanksgiving breaks for me just mean that final exams are coming. But my favorite Thanksgiving was a visit to Universal Studios, Hollywood. My boyfriend and I felt bad for missing out on a Thanksgiving meal, so we got a turkey leg there. The thing is, no matter how full we were before eating the leg, we still wanted to eat more. In the end, we ate two huge turkey legs!
Not all Thanksgiving stories have a happy ending. Hao Zhao, a graduate student in economics at Caltech, recalls a run-in with the law.
Thanksgiving breaks are not long enough for me to fly back to China, so sometimes my family visits me. I always take them shopping. One year, my cousin shopped for 10 hours at the Desert Hills outlet, buying for everyone in my family! It was so late when we were finished that I was so tired driving back that I was falling asleep at the wheel. The police pulled me over for drunk driving. No Thanks!
Camilla Fernandez moved to the area six years ago from Chile when her husband started graduate school at Caltech. This Thanksgiving, they got a new addition to the family.
For our first thanksgiving here, I was really looking forward to having everything we have seen on TV: turkey, gravy, mashed potatoes. Our friend was very kind to invite us to her Thanksgiving dinner. I didn’t know until we got there that she was vegan and all her friends were vegan! I was so disappointed. Six years later, now my husband and I have an American baby - Little Nicanor - and we are trying to embrace more American traditions. So maybe this year, we’ll get our own turkey.
K2 Sports: UCLA football searches for new coach, what LA teams are thankful for
As the holiday season approaches, UCLA football fans probably have "new head football coach" at the top of their wish lists. On Sunday, the school released head coach, Jim Mora, who had been the Bruins since 2012.
UCLA's closest rival is USC. But in the battle for Los Angeles college football supremacy, the Trojans have largely overshadowed everything that Bruins have accomplished.
"Jim Mora was supposed to be the coach to change that narrative," Andy Kamenetzky said.
Mora came to USC after several stops throughout both college football and the NFL, where he coached the Atlanta Falcons to play-off berth.
"Jim Mora was still considered this attractive head coach for recruits in that he could sell himself as offering a pipeline to the NFL. He was brash. He infamously declared, 'We own this town,' after beating USC in 2013," Kamenetzky said. "But looking back at it, their recent heights largely coincided with the period that USC was under sanctions because of the Reggie Bush scandal. Once those clouds parted, normalcy was restored."
To hear more from Andy and Brian Kamenetzky on what L.A. sports teams have to be thankful for on Thanksgiving, click the blue player above.
The Binge: Three shows you need to watch after your Thanksgiving food fest
Every month Take Two contributor
stops by with a curated list of the best things to stream on the web. We call it The Binge!
MANHUNT: UNABOMBER (Discovery Channel, Amazon Prime)
Based on the real-life mid '90s case of the Unabomber, the mail bomber who terrorized the United States and frustrated law enforcement for almost 20 years - Paul Bettany is excellent in the lead role. but the supporting cast is top notch as well, everyone from Mark Duplass to Chris Noth and especially Sam Worthington, who plays a a brilliant but untested FBI profiler.
The eight-part series does a good job showing the back-breaking work that went into catching Ted Kaczynski and how many false leads and dead ends the investigators had to chase.
ALIAS GRACE (Netflix)
Our next recommendation is a Netflix Original Series made in conjunction with the the Canadian Broadcast Corporation, or CBC. It's a true historical drama called Alias Grace.
Based on the Margaret Atwood book from 1996, the six-part series is adapted by Sarah Polley. It's about a double murder that took place in Canada in 1843. It is actually stunning how timely this show is. It really shines a light on how women, especially the poor and working class, were stripped away of any true identity and treated like property, and the lead performance by Sarah Gadon is magnificent.
MASTER OF NONE (Netflix)
And to lighten the load a bit, our final offering is the Netflix series, Master of None. Created by and starring Aziz Ansari, who was so good as Tom Haverford on Parks and Recreation, Ansari really delivers the goods in this topical, sophisticated and clever series. He plays Dev, an actor in New York City who pals around town with his diverse group of friends, but the show really works when talking about family and all that entails.
The first season premiered in 2015, but in the second season, there is one episode in particular that brought the show a lot of acclaim titled, appropriately enough, Thanksgiving.
The episode is incredibly powerful but also funny and thoughtful. The episode centers around the evolution of the friendship between Dev and his best friend Denise, played by Lena Waithe, and how Thanksgiving played a part in it. But it also deals with a really serious topic -- Denise's struggle to come out as a gay woman to her family.
Lena Waithe, who plays Denise, co-wrote the episode with Aziz Ansari, and it's largely based on her life and struggles to come out of the closet to her family. Angela Bassett guest starred as Denise's mom, Catherine.
The episode was a big winner for the show. It received a 2017 Emmy Award for best comedy writing. And it also made history, because with the award, Waithe became the first black woman to ever win an Emmy for comedy writing. It's definitely a show well worth your time.
is a writer living in Los Angeles - if you want to catch up on past Binge installments, click here.
(Click on the blue arrow to hear the entire interview)