Off-Ramp | 89.3 KPCC

Hillsides at 100: Inside one of LA's oldest homes for children

Kevin Ferguson | Off-Ramp — Fri, 17 May 2013 17:35:33 -0700

Ted Lamb, former resident of Hillsides from 1949 to 1951.; Credit: Kevin Ferguson/KPCC

Back in the San Rafael hills of Pasadena stands Hillsides. It a charity that offers shelter, education and treatment to Southern California’s young people and families who need it. And it’s a hundred years old – one of LA’s oldest such organizations.

Off-Ramp producer Kevin Ferguson talked with Hillsides' Director of Communications Marisol Barrios and Ted Lamb. Today, Ted's an attorney, but in 1949 he was just 9 years old--and Hillsides was his home.

Alonzo Bodden on donating a kidney to his brother and finding humor in the process

Patt Morrison | Off-Ramp — Fri, 17 May 2013 16:11:09 -0700

Comedian and Comedy Congress regular Alonzo Bodden ; Credit: Angela Weiss/Getty Images for The Midnight Mi

On March 26th, comedian and Comedy Congress regular Alonzo Bodden underwent kidney surgery. Only his kidney was fine, he was donating one of his to his older brother.

Bodden talks about the misconceptions of transplant surgery and what he learned during the process.

Interview Highlights

Tell me a little bit about your brother:
"He's my older brother, three years older, and he used to beat me up, which I respected. That was his job. I reminded him that it's a good thing that he never hit me in the kidney. But we've always been close. His kidney problems started about 10 or 12 years ago. So, last summer he got down to about 15 percent kidney function and he told me he was going to have to go on dialysis. I told him, well, I'll give you a kidney. I had to undergo a whole battery of tests, which kind of bothered me because, obviously my kidney is better than his. The doctor was actually raving about how big my kidney was. He said we actually had to clear space inside your brother to fit it in."

What are the risks for family members donating kidneys?
"I think it's easier with family. The risk, of course, is rejection, and I think the rejection rate is much lower for a family member. I've tried to come up with a word to describe it. The best I can say is that it's an inconvenience. I went into the hospital Tuesday morning, they took out my kidney. Tuesday afternoon I was able to get out of the hospital be and walk around. By Friday I was out of the hospital and on the following Thursday I was back on stage."

Have you been able to use any of this in your material on stage?
"Oh, absolutely. I get a ton of material out of this. Fortunately I had a doctor with a sense of humor. He said that he and his partner have been together forever, they're like Jordan and Pippen, and I told him he better be Jordan."

What have you learned about kidney disease and transplants?
"There's a low donation rate compared to those who could donate. I know people are afraid, but once I spoke to the doctor and he explained what they were doing and how they do it, it's literally a few days in the hospital and then you're good to go. The other thing was that I didn't know about the causes of kidney disease. Hypertension and diabetes are two things that lead to kidney disease, and I just think that if you're diabetic watching your sugar is a pain, but watching your sugar when you're hooked up to a dialysis machine is a much bigger pain."

PHOTOS: A look inside the taxidermy lab at The Natural History Museum

Mukta Mohan | Off-Ramp — Fri, 17 May 2013 15:33:47 -0700

Taxidermist Allis Markham works on a female Cooper's hawk at the Natural History Museum on April 24th, 2013.; Credit: Mae Ryan/KPCC

The Natural History Museum is celebrating its 100th year this summer. They’ll celebrate with two new exhibits, Becoming LA and Nature Gardens which will feature dozens of taxidermy animals including birds, possums, and cows.

Off-Ramp’s Mukta Mohan talked with taxidermist Allis Markham to find out what it’s like behind the scenes at the museum and to learn about the art of taxidermy.

In the North American Mammal Hall at The Natural History Museum, families gather around dioramas and watch rare animals in their natural habitats. There are jaguars, bison… even polar bears. But unlike at zoos where the animals roam around, all of the animals here are preserved and made to look alive through taxidermy. Allis Markham is the newest member of the museum’s taxidermy team.

Markham describes taxidermy as “science meets art.” She says, “At the end of the day, we’re artists. We’re creating sculpture. It’s model making. You’re just working with this organic material that is essentially an animal.”

On the fourth floor of the museum is a temperature controlled taxidermy lab with no windows—that keeps the skins from fading in the sunlight. Death masks line the walls. Thousands of reference photos lie in drawers, and a full-sized Corriente cow stands in the middle of the room.

All of the museum’s animals either were donated or found dead in the wild by staff members like Markham. The space is cluttered with tools used for taxidermy — steel brushes, thread, glass eyes. Markham uses scalpels to skin animals and prepare them for mounting.

“I mean it’s like the old phrase, ‘there’s more than one way to skin a cat,'" said Markham. "I can tell you first hand, that there is. There’s several different types of incisions.”

In her lab, a parrot lies on a tray with its wings spread out. All of the bird’s insides have been removed, revealing the slimy skin underneath the feathers.

Markham gently holds the parrot skin up to a fleshing wheel, a rotating wire brush that shaves off the fat from animals.

“It’s almost weird for me that people are like, 'oh grossed out, that’s dead.' Well, it ceased living, but it’s still very much organic and there are things happening with it, and I’ll make it look alive again,” says Markham. “It’s all just science, and it’s all anatomy and nature, and I think that’s beautiful.”

To view some of Markham’s recent work, visit the new Nature Gardens exhibit opening in June and the Becoming LA exhibit which opens in July at The Natural History Museum.

Dr. George Fischbeck talks about his life 'In Weather'

Dave Coelho | Off-Ramp — Fri, 10 May 2013 16:36:04 -0700

Patt Morrison poses with legendary weatherman Dr. George Fischbeck at the Mohn Broadcast Center. ; Credit: Dave Coelho/KPCC

Not only was George Fischbeck, also known as Dr. George, one of the most beloved characters on local television, he also an award-winning journalist and educator. Fischbeck spent the better part of 25 years on TV in Los Angeles.

The man with the bow tie and glasses is 90 years old now, but is still a character, a performer and a teacher. He has never pretended to be a meteorologist, but he does know how to get peoples' attention. And how to get them to learn and remember. Patt Morrison spoke to him about his new book, "My Life In Weather."

On being a weatherman and a teacher:
"Well, I couldn't do anything else. I come from a family of teachers, and I'll tell you one thing about teaching, if you can get a kids attention you can teach them anything. You've got to do whatever you can to make sure they're listening to you and not doing anything else. And then you can teach them."

On doing the weather in the early news days:
"I knew everybody in the viewing audience. They were all my friends to begin with, and when I opened up and said 'my friends' they knew who I was talking to. And I've got their attention, and that's the whole secret."

On how doing the weather changed over the years:
"I started in the early days I was a weather forecaster with the National Weather Service. I put in my time down at the weather station three times a day. I had my maps and I'd take my maps, make Xerox copies and I'd put the maps on the air so people could see what I was doing. And now everyone does it."

Life after 'Gatsby': F. Scott Fitzgerald takes on Hollywood

Dave Coelho | Off-Ramp — Fri, 10 May 2013 16:12:33 -0700

F. Scott Fitzgerald in 1937.; Credit: Library of Congress

After the critical and commercial success of his third novel, "The Great Gatsby," F. Scott Fitzgerald had made it in the writing world. However, his career took a turn in 1937 when he moved to Hollywood to write scripts for MGM.

While he is said to have found the work degrading, he pocketed almost $30,000 a year for his services, which was quite a bit of money back then. You won't find too many blockbusters on his IMDB page, but it's notable that "Gatsby" is being released as a major motion picture for the fourth time.

USC professor and film historian Leo Braudy spoke to Patt Morrison at an old haunt of Fitzgerald's, Musso & Frank Grill in Hollywood.

Interview Highlights:

On why F. Scott Fitzgerald came to Hollywood:
"He came early on and he worked on various things and hardly anything was ever made. The main result of really being in Hollywood were really his pet hobby stories about a screenwriter who failed in the same way that F. Scott Fitzgerald failed, and sold out much in the same way that Scott Fitzgerald tried to sell out. And of course, the last unfinished novel, 'The Last Tycoon.'"

On the frustration that East Coast literature writers felt toward screenwriting:
"They couldn't actually do it and, in fact, a lot of the people that they had disdain for, the producers particularly, who they thought of as ignorant, actually had a better sense of what the public wanted than they did."

How did Hollywood regard these writers? They paid them tremendous sums. At one point Fitzgerald was getting $1,000 a week, which is really good money now days.
"They were living high, they were being paid very well, but they had this very corrosive disdain for what they were doing. Unless you could really get into it, unless you could feel it, you weren't going to do very well."

Should Hollywood have any regard for Fitzgerald as a Hollywood figure or is it all about his novels and short stories?
"I think he's part of that whole world, the people who came out from the east coast with their very different attitudes, people who came out and who made something resembling a life out here, but had these feelings of disdain towards the place."

Student veterans speak out about their experiences in higher education

Mukta Mohan | Off-Ramp — Fri, 10 May 2013 15:11:26 -0700

; Credit: Mae Ryan/KPCC

After 9/11, a new GI Bill was introduced. It was supposed to offer the same kind of welcome that returning veterans from World War II received but adjusted to 21st century needs. Currently, about half a million veterans are taking advantage of this opportunity at pursuing higher education. However, a college campus can seem just as alien as the foreign places that vets had served in.

On May 7, 2013, American Public Media and KPCC presented a forum about the challenges that student veterans face. Several students, professors, and university staff members came together to talk about veteran issues on college campuses. The discussion was facilitated by Patt Morrison.

Kolin Williams, an army veteran and veteran’s counselor at Saddleback Community College spoke about some of the struggles that student veterans face. “Many veterans are re-entry students, and they’re not always good students. I find that most frequently, they typically struggle in academics,” he said. “Many use the GI Bill as a transitioning tool just to pay basic bills… [they] may not even believe that they belong in college.”

Marshall Lewis, a Marine attending Pasadena City College, believes that college can be mentally and emotionally hindering if veterans do not have a support system. “I was in the Phantom Fury, the Second Battle of Fallujah. I had a political science professor who was, second day of class I believe, speaking about the Battle of Fallujah…the professor from the bottom of the classroom looks up at me and says ‘hey, do you know that all your Marines and all your friends died for nothing?’” This story conjured up a lot of emotion in the room – gasps of disbelief and nods of familiarity.

At Fullerton College, a Veterans Resource Center with a camaraderie room offers the support system that student veterans need. “My first semester, I definitely had issues trying to communicate with other people. You just can’t relate to other students who are 18, 19, who are late, who are messing around on their phones,” said Mike Lee, an Air Force veteran. He said that the camaraderie room was a space where students could vent and talk to other people with similar experiences. It helped him get involved with campus life.

Now Lee is transferring to UC Berkeley and works at the Veterans Resource Center on campus where he helps students lay out a long term plan. “As soon as you can teach a vet how to plan their own courses, how they’re going to transfer and put their destiny into their own hands, they seem to flourish a lot more, because they know what needs to be done - not just past this semester, but next semester and the following semester. You essentially empower them to hold their own future.”

See more photos of the student veterans and their mentors on KPCC's visual journalism blog AudioVision.

'Where the boys did their funny stuff' -- Interview with author Jim Pauley on his book "The Three Stooges: Hollywood Filming Locations"

Robert Garrova | Off-Ramp — Thu, 09 May 2013 11:46:41 -0700

Author Jim Pauley with his book "The Three Stooges: Hollywood Filming Locations" outside Larry Edmunds Bookshop on Hollywood Blvd.

Three Stooges expert Jim Pauley has a book out on Santa Monica Press called "The Three Stooges: Hollywood Filming Locations." The book looks at many of the places in LA where the Stooges went to film their shorts in the 30s and 40s and includes both black and white stills and present day photos. Off-Ramp's Robert Garrova met with author Jim Pauley at Larry Edmunds Bookshop on Hollywood Blvd. to talk about his book.

Longtime Three Stooges fan Jim Pauley became a detective for his book "The Three Stooges: Hollywood Filming Locations." But instead of looking for crime scenes, Pauley sifted through black and white stills, library records, and talked with Hollywood historians to find where it was The Three Stooges went to film their comedy shorts in the 30s and 40s.

"It's really interesting to track down the locations. Where did the boys do their funny stuff? Of course they were in soundstages most of the time, but where were they outdoors?" Pauley said. "And if you love Hollywood and you love Los Angeles, it kind of ties in nicely. There's nothing like being where Moe, Larry and Curly were."

Pauley found some of the best spots in LA where the Stooges went to shoot. Like an outdoor staircase in Silver Lake, a business address on Larchmont Blvd and a spot next to the LA River along what we now call Forest Lawn Drive.

Pauley's book includes "Then and Now" shots too. On one present day shot, Pauley was even able to get Moe Howard's daughter, Joan Howard Maurer, involved. When Joan was 11-years-old, her dad included her as an extra in a short titled "Pop Goes the Easel."

"That particular scene involved Moe, Larry and Curly jumping through hopscotch chalked out on the sidewalk that the two girls had made. And as the boys run through, you actually see the two young girls in the background. Well also, there's a very important clue in the background and that is the number 107," Pauley said.

Pauley started to notice present day features at 107 Larchmont Blvd. that matched the ones from the short. He recognized the buildings, the windows, the rooflines, some of which haven't changed much over the years.

"Joan had seemed to think that the scene was shot at one of the Columbia Studios. But I was able to prove that it was actually shot at 107 Larchmont Blvd., which is still there today. The building is still pretty much the same, just some minor changes. I actually brought Joan back to that location some 65 years later and took a real great picture of her that is now featured in my book. A sort of 'Then and Now' shot," he said.

Pauley even proved some Laurel and Hardy fans wrong when he found another location: The Stooges steps in Silverlake. The steps are featured in a Stooges short titled "An Ache in Every Stake" in which the boys are ice men and have to deliver a heavy block of ice up a long set of stairs. The steps, contrary to what some other Hollywood buffs had thought, are actually located at 2257 and 2258 North Fair Oak View Terrace in Silver Lake and are still there today.

Aside from being a great read for Three Stooges fans young and old, Pauley's book is also a visual archeological dig through LA's past -- a time when the hills of Silver Lake and Echo Park were undeveloped and the LA River was concrete-free.

Will LACMA's new blueprint be grand, or 'glass underpants' — and does it matter?

Marc Haefele | Off-Ramp — Mon, 06 May 2013 12:13:07 -0700

LACMA's newest/oldest attraction: 'Levitated Mass,' which rolled into the museum in 2012.; Credit: Grant Slater/KPCC

Off-Ramp commentator and contributor Marc Haefele checks in with a commentary on the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's plan to undergo a $650 million makeover.

The most trying thing about covering L.A. for an entire generation is seeing things that went badly the first time come around again. Like, the execs at the Department of Water and Power sneaking Sparkletts dispensers into their headquarters. Or, more recently, LACMA’s leader deciding it’s his duty to tear the place down.

The plan is to demolish two-thirds of the museum and build a new one — for a mere $650 million.

Last time it was a mere $300 million the LACMA board wanted to redo the place. That was just 11 years ago. The board proposed to reduce to rubble the original 1960s William L. Pereira galleries, as well is the Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer neo-Deco building of 1986. The $300 million would have spread Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas’ parasol roof over a collection of new galleries. It failed to impress the critical public, of whom some —including me—wondered if that kind of funding mightn’t have been better applied to arts programs in the local schools, colleges and universities.

So the county cooled to Koolhaas. Now the demo sparkplug is Museum Director Michael Govan who, according to the Los Angeles Times, has been working ever since 2006 to accomplish what his predecessor failed to do.

Now, of course, we are talking a full two-thirds of a billion dollars, to be raised from people just like you and me — except with millions more to spend. Again, the Pereira and HHP buildings will get the chop. This time the favored architect is the Swiss Peter Zumthor, who’s kind of the Terrence Malick of his field: He’s done few projects, many of them thoroughly controversial — one recently was rejected by its intended Bavarian recipients, who called it “The Glass Underpants.”

Zumthor has done only two museums, both of them small, in Germany and Austria. I’ve never seen his work in person (I expect most of us haven’t), but from the photos on the web, Zumthor seems to like conventional modern exterior surfaces of concrete and glass, but does some really interesting interiors. We will have to wait for next month to see what he’s planned for our Museum Row. Maybe it will be tremendous, maybe it’ll be another Glass Underpants.

But that’s not the point, is it? The point is: Should our key museum be spending this kind of money on what is, after all, appearances, rather than content? According to the Times, there seems to be quite a lot of vacant space in the current museum, which that kind of money would do a great deal to fill up with worthy acquisitions or exhibitions on just about any scale. Donations on said scale to the above-mentioned nurseries of artistic learning would do more for Los Angeles as an arts center than would even a new museum designed by a reincarnated Michelangelo.

For that matter, what is wrong with the old museum? The Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer section got raves when it opened 27 years ago. The old Pereira buildings got panned, but they do a perfectly functional job of keeping the rain off the art and that art off the floor—and nowadays, the architecture of the '60s is coming back into fashion. What Govan and his ilksters seem to mind about our County Museum is its ragged sum of architectural parts, representing well over half a century of the diverse creativity of one of the world’s most stimulating cities.

But when you stop and think about it, what kind of museum could better represent the sprawling City of the Angels?

Inside the lab of electron microscope photographer David Scharf

Kevin Ferguson | Off-Ramp — Fri, 03 May 2013 15:06:35 -0700

Gray debris dust from World Trade Center Disaster.; Credit: David Scharf

David Scharf is a buddhist, a guitarist, a scientist and artist who works nocturnally. He's also one of the world's leading names in electron microscope photography: those giant, luminescent photos of incredibly small things like bugs, dust, and nerves. His art's appeared in books, galleries, universities -- and the covers of Newsweek and National Geographic.

Off-Ramp producer Kevin Ferguson visited Scharf and toured his Echo Park home laboratory.

See more of Scharf's photos and take a tour of his lab on our new visual blog, Audiovision.

Reich on the brain: Minimalist music and your mind

Robert Garrova | Off-Ramp — Fri, 03 May 2013 14:32:44 -0700

Steve Reich (right) performing "Clapping Music"; Credit: Ian Oliver, Wikimedia Commons

Minimalist composer Steve Reich is coming to LACMA's Bing Theatre next week, where the Lyris Quartet will perform his works Different Trains and Piano Counterpoint.

In the 60s, American composer Reich began changing Western music. He incorporated repetition and loops in a way that classical music typically didn't. Instead of relying on linear melodies, Reich's pieces pulse with subtle harmonies. Minimalist composers like Reich and his contemporaries Philip Glass and Terry Riley were changing what we think of as classical music.

When I need to work, I put on Reich's Music for 18 Musicians. It helps me focus and think in a way other music just doesn't.

Lisa Margulis, who directs the Music Cognition Lab at the University of Arkansas, uses behavioral studies and neuro-imaging to look at the way we engage with music and has a book coming out this fall called On Repeat: How Music Plays the Mind. Margulis says there's actually some science behind my experience.

"One of the things that happens when you're listening to music that repeats, is that you form a kind of connection to it that mimics a state of social understanding and of social cohesion. So when you're having a good conversation with someone, often there's these subtle forms of entrainment that happen where your timing get in sync with each other and this is one of these subtle cues that can tell you how high quality a particular social interaction is. So when music is really repetitive, you can get in sync with it and entrained with it in a way that feels pleasing," Margulis says.

But it's not necessarily the case that one type of music makes you think better than another. Margulis cites one of the classic findings in Music Cognition, the so-called "Mozart Effect."

"So this is this paper that showed that if you play people recordings of Mozart -- two piano sonatas before they did a spatial reasoning task -- they score higher on the task. Now this finding wa interpreted to mean all of these grand things that it turned out not to mean at all. So for example it's not a Mozart effect, because you can get the same thing by playing people Lynyrd Skynyrd or Lucinda Williams or whatever you play them, as long as it's kind of positively valenced and arousing. So really it's an arousal effect."

Whatever your listening preference, Margulis says what music does to your brain mostly comes down to arousal. She mentions a study conducted by Alf Gabrielsson and his colleagues in Sweden. Margulis says the researchers in Sweden "...examined thousands and thousands of responses to describe this kind of (musical) experience and found these interesting commonalities across them. Where often people had a sense of even an out of body experience, or of being transported and all of these things that seem to have to deal with a virtual embodiment of the sound. A sense of shared agency with what the sounds are doing."

And while everyone's interaction with music is different, Margulis says minimalist music may just get the brain to react faster. "You really know how the music is going and can be right there with it and have this kind of unmediated experience with it that other music you might need to listen to several times before you could engage with it quite in that way," she says.

So maybe it's minimalist music that helps you think. Or maybe it's heavy metal. Whatever it is, it's a safe bet that your playlist is helping you think when you need it most.

RH Greene reevaluates Wm Friedkin's 'flop,' 'Sorcerer'

RH Greene | Off-Ramp — Thu, 02 May 2013 13:53:11 -0700

(A new revival of director William Friedkin's notorious 1977 box office failure Sorcerer has contributor RH Greene thinking about other ambitious cinematic flops from the "New Hollywood" era, and how time has been kind to them. Sorcerer screens May 9 at the American Cinematheque's Aero Theatre. Greene says a first-ever DVD and Blu-Ray release is currently rumored to be in the works.)

The New Hollywood Directors of the 1970s are remembered for making great movies, including The Godfather, Jaws, Taxi Driver, The French Connection, and Annie Hall. Their failures were equally legendary. In 1980, Deer Hunter director Michael Cimino made a Marxist western called Heaven's Gate. The film flopped so mightily it took down a studio.

Two years later, Francis Coppola released One from the Heart, a small romantic comedy that somehow metastasized into one of the most costly failures of all time. But if there's one New Hollywood movie that has hubris written all over it, William Friedkin's Sorcerer might be it.

The title is oblique, but suggested to audiences a follow-up to Friedkin's mega-hit The Exorcist, which Sorcerer emphatically is not. It's an existential parable about four desperate criminal anti-heroes hired to haul decomposing dynamite through a jungle, and there is nothing like a hero to root for.

Sorcerer was a runaway production; Friedkin overspent his approved budget by around 700%. It's also a remake of a French masterpiece, and it therefore virtually invited critics to make invidious comparisons.

Last but not least: the film's first 20 minutes are in various foreign languages. With subtitles. And oh yeah. Sorcerer is also one of the great American films of its time.

Released in 1977 during the summer of Star Wars, Sorcerer was chased out of theaters to give Luke Skywalker more screens. In a sense, Star Wars never relinquished those movie houses, because Sorcerer is exactly the kind of challenging studio fare the Star Wars phenomenon rendered all but obsolete.

Star Wars is pure escapism, while Sorcerer is a riveting cinematic essay about the futility of human purpose -- an anxious spectacle of emptied men caught in postures of jeopardy and despair. It's a film about Purgatory, not even Hell, about lost men who expiate their crimes through suffering. Or try to, anyway.

The audacious bleakness of the vision is matched to riveting, hallucinatory imagery, including: a broken-nosed bride, reciting her vows beneath two black eyes. Two oversized trucks slow-rolling across a rope bridge while it heaves beneath them like a wakening monster; and Roy Scheider's unraveling gangster Jackie Scanlon, ranting like Ahab as he veers through a dead volcanic landscape weirder than the Moon.

In Billy Wilder's Sunset Blvd., forgotten silent movie star Norma Desmond grieves for a lost era saying, "I'm still big. It's the pictures that got small." Sorcerer is still big too. As is Heaven's Gate, by the way. And Warren Beatty's Reds. And Dennis Hopper's The Last Movie. And many another alleged fiascoes perpetrated by the screen lions of a bygone time.

Say what you will: the blunders of the New Hollywood era took raw risks in the name of art and originality, claiming what Orson Welles called a primary right of the artist, which is the right to fail. How riveting they seem in the time of John Carter and Battleship. And how remarkable that directors like William Friedkin occasionally failed themselves all the way to a masterpiece.

Say it fast: Listeners help Off-Ramp win twin Twain awards

John Rabe | Off-Ramp — Thu, 02 May 2013 10:13:10 -0700

“It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not deserve them.”

So said Mark Twain. Nevertheless, we are pleased and proud that the Associated Press Television-Radio Association awarded Off-Ramp two of its coveted Mark Twain Awards this week, out of the six that went to KPCC.

Molly Peterson won the Bill Stout Enterprise award for her piece on Prop 37. Best Coverage of an Ongoing Story went to Airtalk for its coverage of the Newtown shooting. Sanden Totten won the "best writing" Twain for his piece on Levitated Masss (the big rock) at LACMA. And Steve Proffitt's piece on the Aurora shooting won for best use of sound.

Off-Ramp's twin Twain's came for our special on the 20th anniversary of the Rodney King Riots, and for James Kim's touching piece on losing his native Korean, and its affect on his relationship with his Korean-born parents.

It can't be said enough that since this station is, in the greatest part, funded by listeners, you deserve the credit for these awards. Your contributions pay for salaries, recording equipment, even the electricity that powers our transmitter up on Mt Wilson. It's all you. Thanks to all who contributed ... and if you haven't, why not do it now and help us win some 2014 Mark Twain Awards!

Supervisor Gloria Molina promises to help save East LA's giant tamale building

John Rabe | Off-Ramp — Wed, 01 May 2013 12:20:01 -0700

The Tamale, when they sold tamales there, in an undated photo from the LA Public Library.; Credit: LAPL/Security Pacific National Bank Collection

As Off-Ramp reported last week, historic preservationists are worried about the fate of the giant tamale building in East L.A., one of the last survivors of an era of "programmatic architecture," which included The Brown Derby, the Tail o' the Pup and other buildings made to look like a motorist-enticing thing.

This morning, I got this email from Richard Schave of esotouric.com:

Please see below. Very good news. More soon.

He said that as he'd hoped, L.A. County Supervisor Gloria Molina is getting involved in the fight, and is sending this email in response to inquiries about the giant tamale:

Thank you for sharing your views regarding the “tamal*” building located at 6421 Whittier Boulevard. I, too, fondly remember it and other iconic structures that lined Whittier Boulevard, and I agree that the structure is worthy of historic designation.

I am pleased to share with you that in the near future, I intend to establish a Los Angeles County ordinance to provide certain benefits for buildings designated as historic; please know that the property owner's consent will be required. My staff is engaging the building's owner to determine if there is interest, and if needed we will work with future property owners. If enacted, this ordinance will preserve this noteworthy edifice for future generations to enjoy, and the property owner will receive tax credits to be utilized for the structure's maintenance.

For more information, she's asking constituents to call Phillip Estes with the County Department of Regional Planning at (213) 974-6425 and asking people to write to the building owners — Sky Realty Investments — at 5191 Fox Hills Avenue, Buena Park 90621.

To write to Molina, you can use this address Molina@bos.lacounty.gov.

Meantime, Schave is delighted:

"I am delighted with Supervisor Molina's response to the problem, not just of preserving the Tamale, but of establishing a formal preservation policy for the unincorporated portions of Los Angeles County. I believe that the best hope for historic preservation is that it become a part of public policy, which is what our call to help save the Tamale brings into focus. And what a perfectly Southern California building to have triggered this wonderful announcement!"

*Yes, properly, it's tamal ... to everyone who also says "lohs AHN-hell-ess."

K-Earth 101's Shotgun Tom Kelly gets his star on the Walk of Fame

John Rabe | Off-Ramp — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 16:57:09 -0700

The cripplingly shy Shotgun Tom Kelly poses with his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. That's Stevie Wonder in the upper left corner. 4/30/2013; Credit: John Rabe

As most on-air radio veterans will tell you, it's better than working for a living. Our job is to talk into a microphone. It may be all we know how to do, it may be all we ever dreamed of doing. In any case, it's all that Shotgun Tom Kelly has done since he was a teenager, and today he received his reward.

At the corner of LaBrea and Hollywood, with hundreds of his fans watching - many from San Diego, where he got his start - K-Earth 101's afternoon drive DJ got his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Kelly started working in radio as a teenager when his mom urged him to go see a DJ broadcasting live from a shopping center. After stints at several stations in San Diego, plus Oxnard, Bakersfield, Phoenix, and San Francisco, he moved to LA in 1997 to take over for "The Real" Don Steele, who had died of lung cancer. He's been at K-Earth ever since,and sounds like he's been there forever.

His nickname comes from his dad, who dubbed him "Shotgun" because he always wanted to ride in the front seat. His trademark hat goes back to those days as well. His family went camping, and he loved the park rangers and their hats. It stuck as a visual trademark that, he says, worked especially well when he hosted kids shows on TV.

Standing over his star today, I asked if he'd ever thought this could happen. "No," he said. "You know I never did. It was distant dream, but I didn't know if it would be realized or not."

It's easy to dismiss the importance of a radio DJ. But you have to remember that people who like music aren't tricked into liking that music. For the Boomers, Oldies are an integral part of their lives, connecting them to old schools, old friends, and old loves, and - given all the technological changes that have happened in the last couple decades, it's a miracle that the Oldies, which so many of us first heard on a radio, are still being played on the radio.

Shotgun Tom Kelly knew this when he told me, "The most important thing to me are the people that love this music, and I want to keep them entertained; I want to keep them happy."

RIP Antronette Yancey, public health advocate, author, poet, model

John Rabe and Nick Roman | Off-Ramp — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 15:52:52 -0700

The late Dr. Antronette Yancey.; Credit: Couresty Antronette Yancey

I wrote an obit today and worked really hard to keep from using the words “tireless,” “fierce,” and “passionate.” Not because they weren’t true, but because in Toni Yancey’s case, they were true, but their overuse might make you think Toni wasn’t the epitome of tireless, fierce, and passionate. She was; I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone as dynamic, engaging, and genuine.

Dr. Antronette Yancey died Tuesday. She was just 55. She died of lung cancer, even though she was a non-smoker. She had an amazingly varied resume and I don’t think she failed at anything she tried. She was a college basketball player and a model - she was 6’2” and strikingly beautiful – she earned her MD and became a public health doctor, winding up her career at UCLA's Fielding School of Public Health. She was a poet who could deliver one of her works at any time, and the author of the book Instant Recess, which I edited. She was an out lesbian with the coolest partner, Darlene Edgley. Yancey led exercise programs for the crowds at Padres and Sparks games, advocated getting healthy food into stores in the poor parts of town, and attacked educators for putting standardized tests ahead of phys ed. PE, she pointed out, was proven to raise grades.

If this sounds like Toni might have been was one of those nagging, imperious types – “I can do all this stuff, why can’t you?” – nothing could be further from the truth, and that was what was special about her. When she and Darlene had us over for dinner, we had chicken that was – gasp! – breaded. We just didn’t have a ton of it, and we also had a ton of vegetables.

She still played ball with some friends, but she had a little belly like almost everybody over 40. She didn’t want Americans to become ripped Men’s Health cover models; she just wanted us to think harder about taking better care of ourselves, and wanted government and industry to get involved … if only because it would lower health care costs and increase productivity and profits.

She was a rigorous academic, who knew you also have to inspire if you want to help people change their habits. Here are a few stanzas from one of her poems, sent out by her friends today:

And if you can recapture

Even a little of the joy

Of unbridled movement

Then just maybe

There's hope

For the couch potatoes

Those of you

Too worn down

Even to fidget

And some thoughts from her friends, from that same email.

Her long limbs were essential to Toni’s life path of reaching out and walking with anyone she could inspire and motivate. Most people hope to leave one footprint in society; she has left footprints not just with those she met but through the work she has inspired us to carry on. Toni has pointed the way for thousands – family, friends, academic peers, students and everyone they touch – through education and public health advocacy across our nation. Toni Yancey’s creative, inspiring, and motivating leadership and spirit will be missed by all.

Toni, you helped a lot of people, you made a difference, you kept active for 55 years. Finally, rest in peace.

Listen, on the left, to KPCC's Nick Roman recalling the day we met Antronette.