Off-Ramp Extra | 89.3 KPCC

Blind mezzo-soprano Laurie Rubin back in LA for concert Nov 6; plus, she has a new memoir

John Rabe | Off-Ramp Extra — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 06:00:03 -0700

Mezzo-soprano Laurie Rubin wrote the poem at the core of her new album, "Do You Dream in Color?"; Credit: Jonathan Barkat

People are weird. Believe it or not, the thing people fixate on when they see Laurie Rubin is that she's blind ... even when they've heard her sing, even when they've seen her in "Sex and the City" evening wear.

The mezzo soprano Laurie Rubin is back in town for a concert November 6th, and she has a new book called Do You Dream in Color? Insights from a Girl without Sight. That's the name of her album, too. Once you hear her sing, you'll forget she's blind.

Here's the interview with Rubin Off-Ramp aired in March.

Carole Bayer Sager, a frank conversation about songwriting and painting in changing times

John Rabe and Hettie Lynne Hurtes | Off-Ramp Extra — Thu, 01 Nov 2012 06:00:03 -0700

A detail of a Carole Bayer Sager painting. Does it make you hungry to hear the whole interview?; Credit: Carole Bayer Sager

Carole Bayer Sager co-wrote the songs of a generation. Come In From The Rain, Don't Cry Out Loud, That's What Friends Are For, It's My Turn. But to quote another song, the times are changing, and she told KPCC's Hettie Lynne Hurtes that as the outlets dried up for her music, and her songs started to stack up, unsung, she turned to an old flirtation - painting - which has turned into a new love.

She talks with Hurtes about painting, collaboration, and the changed music industry.

Her latest exhibit, New Works, is at the William Turner Gallery at Bergamot Station through December 1st.

Meantime, here she is on Top of the Pops singing "You're Moving Out Today" in 1977.

Did Hurricane Sandy wash out The Bridge Tavern in the Bronx?

John Rabe and Brian Watt | Off-Ramp Extra — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 14:14:55 -0700

Alberto of The Bridge Tavern in the Bronx. Monday, October 29, 2012.; Credit: Brian Watt

KPCC's Brian Watt did this interview Monday, as New Yorkers were bracing for Hurricane Sandy.

Alberto, at The Bridge Tavern in the Bronx, told Brian that not only were they not leaving, but were planning to throw a hurricane party.

Apparently, it worked, because an employee at The Bridge told me just now they were unscathed and are open for business. In other words, the Bridge is open.

New show at Take My Picture Gallery: Muralist Siqueiros couldn't say Phil Stein, so he became Estaño

John Rabe | Off-Ramp Extra — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 13:41:56 -0700

Detail of Philip Stein painting.; Credit: Photo by John Rabe

Muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros couldn't pronounce his young friend's name. So Phil Stein became "Estaño." Phil Stein was a painter who lived a long and fruitful and fighting life, burning to tell the story of the little guy against the machine.

In one, from a distance, you see the canyons of New York City, the buildings tall and imposing, like a shield wall or a fort, impenetrable, menacing, inhuman. Move closer, and there's the Guggenheim museum down at the giants' feet. Shapely and sexy, but still dwarfed; art v. the machine. Then, way down there, a little group of angry people, churning. That's quintessential Philip Stein.

Many of his paintings are now on display at Gary Leonard's Take My Picture gallery in downtown Los Angeles, where Off-Ramp host John Rabe talked with Estaño's daughter Anne Stein.

(A Civil Defense: the Paintings of Estaño (Philip Stein) runs through December 31st at Take My Picture Gallery, 860 S. Broadway LA CA 90014.)

Rod Stewart, Creed, Bob Mould, Neil Young ... what's up with all the rock memoirs?

Off-Ramp Commentator Hank Rosenfeld | Off-Ramp Extra — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 15:52:05 -0700

Hank Rosenfeld and just some of the books he had to read on assignment for Off-Ramp.; Credit: John Rabe

I'll tell ya when it hit me, it hit when I picked up the LA Times and saw an ad announcing a reading at Barnes & Noble for the new memoir by the frontman for the rock band Creed. And I thought: Creeed?

The Creed book is just the latest of what seems like dozens of memoirs by musicians. Hey, musicians, leave us kids alone!

But what's the deal? I've been reading as many as I can to see if I can figure it out, from Megadeath's to Mickey Dolenz'e. I started with Chronicles, Bob Dylan's 2004 memoir about his beginnings in New York. It really gave me a feeling of trudging through a New York winter in the snow in Greenwich Village with a guitar, so I went deeper into that scene: with the Carole King's Natural Woman and Judy Collins' Sweet Judy Blue Eyes. Then I had to read Just Kids by Patti Smith. It was a National Book Award Winner, and it really takes you inside. You get to be there with Patti and all those bohemian hearts making all that art back in her day -- and you know what? She doesn't say one bad thing about anybody. (Note to self!)

That was really refreshing, compared to Keith Richards' Life: 600 pages of wild yarns ripping everybody. Too bad he had to have Johnny Depp read the audiobook.

Hey, now there's a Rod Stewart memoir out there, joining Gregg Allman, Rick Springfield, all those Chili Peppers, more than one Kiss and a coupla Guns'n'Roses ... and See a Little Light by Bob Mould from Husker Du.

These memoirs remind me of the musical parts of the counterculture we loved: the love, sadness, anger, those times you wanna jump around, rip it up, or just lie on the floor with your head in between speakers. Headphones ... I think these memoirs get in through there, ya know?

I asked a music writer friend (who just did a review of a new bio of Leonard Cohen) what's behind the publishing trend, and he said: Simple: They're getting huge advances!"

The last book on my list was Neil Young's Waging Heavy Peace. Picture of old Young on the front, young Young on the back. On page 223 Neil says: "Writing is very convenient, has a low expense, and is a great way to pass the time. I highly recommend it any old rocker who is out of cash and doesn't know what to do next. You could hire someone else to write it for you if you can't write it yourself. That doesn't seem to matter. Just don't hire some sweaty hack who asks you questions for years and twists them into his own vision of what is right or wrong. Try to avoid doing that."

Dylan Brody wants to punch many things in the face, including a meme (not a mime)

Off-Ramp commentator Dylan Brody | Off-Ramp Extra — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 11:49:55 -0700

Dylan Brody; Credit: Courtesy Dylan Brody

I was recently asked to write and read a piece at an event for Jennifer Worick's very funny book Things I Want to Punch in the Face. I struggled with the assignment until I wanted to punch the meme in the face.

As a martial artist and a human being, I strive to maintain a non-violent philosophy and certainly don't like to leap straight to violence as a solution to every frustration life throws at me. So let me just put myself at ease by saying right up front that I wish to punch in the face only metaphorically and not at all literally, because I am not Tagg Romney.

(Dylan Brody breaking bricks:)

With that in mind, I want to punch Microsoft Tech Support in the face and have wanted to punch Microsoft Tech Support in the face for a week and a half now. I expect to continue wanting to punch Microsoft Tech Support in the face until a second reinstallation disk arrives -- this one, unbroken in transit. Then I will probably want to punch Microsoft tech Support in the face for at least a day or two more until the installation is complete and I have begun reloading all my other software and wanting to punch other technical support groups in the face.

Let me make this clear. I do not want to punch in the face the technical support personnel with thick Bangladeshi accents and names like Gary and Sarah, even though I know it is culturally acceptable to be xenophobically racist when it is masked behind the comforting economic argument of job insecurity. No. In fact, I want to punch the casual nationalism of anti-outsourcing sentiment in the face until it softens into sympathy for the exploitation of humanity wherever it occurs.

I want to punch Microsoft in the face for its technical support set-up. I don't want to punch Bill Gates in the face. He's just a guy doing very well in a culture that rewards corporate success above all else. No, I want to punch his corporation in the face. Which I really should be able to do, given that a corporation is a person according to the Citizens United ruling. And I want to punch the Citizens United ruling in the face.

Because I do not believe corporations are people, I feel comfortable saying that I want to punch Monsanto in its genetically modified, herbicide resistant face and nobody would fault me for it because we all know that if James Bond were real, Monsanto would have blown up by now in a great, satisfying, orange and black, explosive conflagration in the third act.

I want to punch great, satisfying, orange-and-black, explosive third-act conflagrations in the face. I want to punch in the face every movie-studio that has rejected one of my character driven, relationship scripts because flawed people resolving and failing to resolve messy, complex human conflicts through subtextual exchanges of language and silence don't sell tickets like fiery explosions do and we're not making art, we're making entertainment. And I have to remind myself that I do not want to punch the twenty-something executives making those decisions in the face, because they are just human, flawed characters trying to do their jobs in a messy, less-than perfect world. Which I would like to punch in the face.

I want to punch the entertainment industry in the face for combining art and the most powerful tools of communication in the history of humanity into a system for the manufacture and distribution of mind-numbing, repetitious, self-referential, self-reverential, carefully non-inflammatory indulgences.

And tonight, when I go home, pour a glass of scotch, and like every other self-loathing sheep in this City of Nobody's Better Angels, turn on the television, I will want to punch myself in the face for my own, human weakness.

Experimental cancer treatment "magic" for La Canada teacher Connie Tucker

John Rabe | Off-Ramp Extra — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 06:00:03 -0700

Connie Tucker and her dog, Snookie, play with the wig Connie used when she was undergoing chemotherapy for her cancer. ; Credit: Ashley Myers-Turner/KPCC

(12/26/2012 UPDATE: Connie Tucker writes, "I just had my third set of scans. My primary tumors are continuing to shrink, and everything else is stable. The doctors at the clinic are still very excited about my progress!" And so are we, Connie! -- John)

This is a story about an experimental cancer treatment that - at least for the time being - is helping a La Canada woman who was dying from cancer. Connie Tucker, 57, has been an ESL instructor at Citrus College for more than 20 years. Her cancer showed up a couple years ago, and after chemo failed she got into a clinical trial for Merck 3475, which theoretically allows her T-Cells to attack cancer. Connie says her tumors started shrinking immediately and have continued to do so, and she literally feels better than ever.

It's very tempting - especially if you have cancer, know somebody who does, or have loved ones who've died of it - to want really hard for this to be a cure. But there are many caveats about this story. Connie says one of her goals, now that she has a new lease on life, is to get the word out that "clinical trials save lives." But many people in clinical trials are not saved. Some are control subjects who don't get the drug. For others, the drug simply doesn't work, or doesn't continue to work. Clinical trials are a vital part of developing medicine; they're simply not meant to be a cure. We simply have to wait to see how this turns out.

This is one story of a woman who is very lucky. If we are very lucky, the drug she's testing will be the breakthrough, but according to the journal Nature, which graphed-out clinical trials, at least as many trials fail as succeed. For much more context and more case studies, check out the excellent article I've linked below from The New Yorker.

TMI: Stoltze and the People

John Rabe and Frank Stoltze | Off-Ramp Extra — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 15:50:57 -0700

KPCC's Frank Stoltze interviews Sophie Lafferty at Philippe's in Los Angeles, Calif., Wednesday, October 10, 2012.; Credit: Anibal Ortiz / KPCC

KPCC's Frank Stoltze is talking with voters about the issues that matter to them, and that make a difference in the voting booth. He talked with Off-Ramp host John Rabe about what he learned at Philippe's a few days ago.

Friday, 6-noon, Carolyn’s Cafe, 1711 West Lugonia Avenue #101 Redlands, CA 92374.

Tuesday, 7am-noon, Frank will be at The Serving Spoon, 1403 Centinela Avenue, Inglewood, CA 90302, where "there ain't no better breakfast."

Certainly More Than You Want to Know About the Fishes of the Pacific Coast, by Milton Love

John Rabe | Off-Ramp Extra — Wed, 17 Oct 2012 14:18:39 -0700

Dr. Milton Love in his office at UCSB Aug. 26, 2011. The author of "Certainly More Than You Want to Know About the Fishes of the Pacific Coast" was in no danger.; Credit: Courtesy Milton Love

Really, the title says it all. And Milton, a marine biologist at UC Santa Barbara, tells us more in our interview.

Amateur historian discovers unknown 19th Century Pres, 'exceedingly dull' Franklin Marshall

John Rabe | Off-Ramp Extra — Tue, 16 Oct 2012 11:11:22 -0700

A photo purported to be that of US President Franklin Marshall, an obscure 19th century President whose historical record is scant to non-existent. ; Credit: Hank Bermenstep/Cincinnati Volksfreund

They exist in a netherworld of history: the obscure 19th Century US Presidents. Men who may have been well-known in their time -- although not necessarily -- but who now couldn't scare up a biographer, let alone a Ken Burns documentary. Who today can quote a speech from Van Buren or either of the Harrisons, name the Polk or Taylor Doctrine -- if there was one -- or think of a scandal or success from the Fillmore, Pierce, Hayes, or Arthur administrations? And who would care to?

But these men are Roosevelt's and Reagan's compared to President Franklin Marshall, possibly the most-obscure of them all, and for whom the historical record is so scant, you might even question whether he existed at all. But Franklin Marshall has found his Boswell at last in Barry Cutler, an actor and amateur historian who lives in Palm Desert.

I asked him, "Why are you involved in President Franklin Marshall?" He laughed and answered, "I keep asking myself the same question!" Then he reminded me that he plays Abe Lincoln for school kids across the country. "I go to classrooms and dress like Lincoln and take the kids' questions. And since I like to research all my parts, I started reading up on the Presidents of the 19th century. And you're right that there are a bunch of them nobody's heard of. Fillmore and Hayes and those guys."

As part of that research, he was in Lexington, Kentucky last summer looking into Martin Van Buren's Free Soil Party and the Panic of 1837. In the reading room of Transylvania University, "I found a newspaper article that mentioned President Franklin Marshall. I was really puzzled because I didn't remember a President Marshall." What paper, I ask? "I don't know," Cutler responds. "The top and bottom were torn off."

I tell Cutler I'm dubious. I've combed the record books and the Internet. There's a liberal arts college in Lancaster PA named Franklin & Marshall, but nothing on any President Franklin Marshall. "I can't find anything," I say. "And you're not going to," he responds. "Today, we feed on fame and notoriety and poor President Marshall was barely notable in his own time. He was, as I like to say, a footnote to a footnote. He was exceedingly dull. His own family had trouble even remembering his name. I found a letter from his cousin, George Schultz, a well- known greenhouse owner in Kentucky, in which he refers to 'my dear Franklin' in his salutation and then 'Cousin Frederick' not two paragraphs in. Poor man."

Okay, next question. When did he serve as President?

"You're going to laugh," Cutler says, "But we don't even know that for certain. We have a scrap from what was meant to be his inauguration address, and he mentions 'Poor William.' That might be a reference to William Henry Harrison, who served for only a month in 1841, meaning he served some time after Harrison. But it might also be a reference to Poor William, a character in one of Charles Brockden Brown's lost novels. (William) was a guy who showed off too many times and was shunned by his neighbors. That kind of sums up Marshall's philosophy. He was a dullard and proud of it."

Presidents have elections and victory parties. Not Marshall, says Cutler. Not even an inauguration. "It seems like he wrote the speech, but he was so averse to putting himself forward, he decided not to hold an inauguration ceremony." Cutler says he found a letter President Marshall wrote to the soon-to-be First Lady: "Sophie, the Presidency is a solemn charge, not worthy of false cannons and frippery, and I'll be damned if I'll turn it into a circus sideshow. I'm sorry, my dear; I know you were looking forward to wearing that new bonnet."

So much argues against Cutler's case, but he did find two much more convincing pieces of evidence. The first is the very Presidential photo, above. "There used to be a German-language newspaper in Cincinnati called the Cincinnati Volksfreund, and I bought a box of their archives on e-Bay, including some photos. And in the box was a photo that has penciled on the back, 'President F. Marsh...' but it looks like someone spilled tea or whiskey on it and it's all blurred. My guess is Marshall was coming through town and they covered him ... but I couldn't find an article to go along with the photo.

The second is a song called "The Ballad of Franklin Marshall," which Cutler says he found on a wax cylinder, recorded c. 1900. "Near as I can make out," Cutler says, "There was an ethnographer who was recording figures from history. He met a man named Cobhim Twain who said he wrote Marshall's campaign song years ago. The song includes the lyrics:

The railroad is a belching beast.
So said Franklin Marshall.
The West is barren, let's stay East.
So said Franklin Marshall.
He knows his place, you know his face, so make the right selection.
It's Franklin Marshall, bland but fair, in the next election.

The line "The railroad is a belching beast," Cutler says, "might explain (Marshall's) being erased from the history books. Maybe the railroad millionaires were afraid the sentiment would catch on. He didn't like the railroads, he didn't want to expand West, he didn't want to do anything remotely disruptive."

But for all his truly conservative ways, Cutler warms to his subject's single-mindedness. "But you can say this about Marshall: He also never courted public opinion and was definitely not afraid to speak his mind. If he was around now, he'd probably get in trouble saying something about the Internet and the gullible masses ... that was one if his taglines, 'the gullible masses need a guiding hand, not some phantom of freedom.'

Cutler agrees with me that Franklin Marshall would never get elected today in a million years.

Barry Cutler will be presenting his findings about President Franklin Marshall to the Southwestern Division of the Amateur Historians of America next month.

Meantime, further research has uncovered that at Lake Superior State College, now Lake Superior State University, in Sault Ste Marie, Michigan, there apparently existed "The Franklin L. Marshall Study Club," chaired by a William Dickinson. The club's letterhead calls Marshall "the foremost jurist west of the Wabash River," and claims his wife was named Rebecca, not Sophie, as Cutler maintains. It also includes a sketch of Marshall from contemporary accounts. He is in spectacles and beard, which would be consistent with his retirement years in Lima, Ohio.

Stunningly, the club's letterhead also refers to a Franklin Marshall biography called simply "Biography of a mid-19th Century President," and reveals other tantalizing details:

"Because of his lack of popularity, the biography had to be privately printed and only 1,500 copies were produced. Of these, only 43 are known to have been sold. The balance were burned several years later during a severe winter in the president's home town, Findlay, Ohio, or Kokomo, Indiana. Two copies were in the Versailles, Ky. Public Library but were stolen during the 1902 Book Feud. ... There are no photographs, paintings, or sketches made during his lifetime. The famous "Findlay Ohio Hoax," a spurious portfolio of sketches surfaced at the turn of the century but disappeared shortly thereafter. The 28 volumes of handwritten diaries ... were later held to be 'too well-written and un-dull to have been written by Marshall.' ... Says Dickinson, 'His history is whispy, his character unfathomable, and his visage dim.'"

Viewing all the evidence, we have to agree with Professor Dickinson. Certainly, if he existed, Marshall should be included in the lists of US Presidents, but it's no great tragedy if his obscurity persists.

Complete lyrics of "The Ballad of Franklin Marshall," by Cobhim Twain:

Excitement brings calamity.
So said Franklin Marshall.
Banks bank on banality
So said Franklin Marshall.
We've had enough of Jackson's bluff and Quincy Adams' bluster.
Stay the course! Don't change the horse ... in the voting muster.

Hail Hawthorne! What old Rome's triumphal parades say about the Endeavour parade

John Rabe | Off-Ramp Extra — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 06:00:04 -0700

The space shuttle Endeavour is seen atop the Over Land Transporter (OLT) in a hanger at Los Angeles International Airport, Monday, Sept. 24, 2012.; Credit: Handout/Getty Images

The LA Times Architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne is floating an interesting idea. He writes, "In parading Endeavour along our boulevards, LA is in some striking ways reenacting one of the oldest public celebrations in Western urban history, the Roman triumph."

Uh-oh, I thought. Are we in the rise or the decline? I called him to find out.

Newpark Mats smooth Shuttle Endeavour's ride

John Rabe | Off-Ramp Extra — Wed, 10 Oct 2012 11:19:17 -0700

Off-Ramp host John Rabe demonstrates Shuttle Endeavor's approach to its temporary home (the white building in the middle of the photo) at the California Science Center. Those are some of the 900 DURA-BASE mats sent to LA by Newpark Mats and Integrated Services.; Credit: Jerry Gorin

It's easy to see how Endeavour will be moved over city streets, but when it comes to getting it across a big field, like at the end of its journey at the California Science Center at Exposition Park, how will they keep it from getting bogged down in the dirt?

The answer is DURA-BASE mats, made by Newpark Mats & Integrated Services, based in Louisiana, where the company supports the oil industry, among other focuses.

Company rep Nate Rehm says 900 of the 8x14-foot mats were trucked from a Newpark yard in Colorado. They're high-density polyethylene and are very lightweight for their size (1,000 lbs), but can take up to 600 pounds per square inch. That translates to an ability to carry loads of 7,000,000 pounds ... more than enough to hold the shuttle. "They have a lip system so they lock together, and we lock them in on all four sides using a locking pin that helps make it a continuous surface."

Endeavour may not be the biggest thing Newpark has been involved in moving. Watch below as a World War 2 submarine, the U-505, gets moved into Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry.

Rehm says he and other Newpark reps will be in LA this weekend to make sure their mats are holding up their end of the Endeavour project.

(Space) Capsule Histories? 10 shuttle moments, from triumph to tragedy

James Kim and Molly Peterson | Off-Ramp Extra — Tue, 09 Oct 2012 06:00:05 -0700

Space shuttle Endeavour atop the Over Land Transporter in a hanger at Los Angeles International Airport, Monday, Sept. 24, 2012.; Credit: Handout/Getty Images

From the Challenger disaster, to the birth and triumph of Endeavour, to its last flight to LA, listen as KPCC's Molly Peterson and Off-Ramp recount highlights of Space Shuttle history.

Fascinating, shameful slice of US history: the black motorists' Green Book

Marc Haefele | Off-Ramp Extra — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 10:03:06 -0700

The 1949 edition of The Green Book.

On a dark desert highway one night in 1952, Robert J Foster, M.D. was getting tired. Short of Yuma, the neon lights of the motels began to flicker. Foster had driven a thousand miles in his brand new Buick Roadmaster and was eager for a good night's sleep. It was the low season and the highway hotels all showed vacancy signs, but he wasn't welcome at any of them.

Dr. Foster was a black man, on his way to Los Angeles. He'd just left the south, but not segregation. Discrimination wasn't the law in Arizona, but as one sympathetic motel owner told him, "If we let you in, all the other motel owners would ostracize us."

This story is typical of the many in Isabel Wilkerson's definitive history of American black migration, "The Warmth of Other Suns." As Wilkerson points out, the only safeguard black families had against such discrimination was The Green Book, a 43-page paperback put out by Esso, the ancestor of the modern Exxon Corp. "Now you can travel without embarrassment," it tells its African-American readers in its 1949 edition, which is now posted on line. Esso stopped printing the Green Book in 1964 -- when the Civil Rights Act passed.

What it tells us now is something we still don't want to remember about the good old days of Truman and Eisenhower prosperity -- that a very sizable proportion of the U.S. population was restricted in their enjoyment of it. Not just with hotels and motels, either. The Green Book also singles out black-friendly restaurants, bars, barber shops, beauty parlors, drug stores, tailors, even garages in the north, south, east and western U.S. Even in New York and Los Angeles, the chosen places amounted to only a small minority of businesses. The obvious implication being black people were still discriminated against in most retail situations. Being prosperous -- like Dr Foster -- didn't make much of a difference if you were the wrong color.
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But the guide also tells another story--of black accomplishments in the face of Jim Crow America. Like the Center South complex in South Chicago, a handsome three-story 1920s city office block complete with a major theater, auditorium, and a large, black-oriented department store, "employing more than 300 Negroes" according to the Green Book. It shows other major black businesses of the time, as well as handsome war memorials for the black soldiers who fought and died in four of America's wars. So in a way, the Green Book can also be useful today--- as a Black Pride Tourist Guide.

Imagining I was a black person looking for a place to eat in LA 60 years ago, I wondered if I could find a familiar eatery that was integrated at that time. Like I could not find in New York, Boston, Chicago or San Francisco. And I did find one: Clifton's Cafeteria in downtown LA. Open to all races in 1949. Clifton's is closed now for extensive renovations. When it reopens, I have another reason to go back there, apart from its killer breakfasts.

A man who drinks olive oil, a woman who hates fussy foodies, and why canned beer is better. It's EatLA

Colleen Bates and John Rabe | Off-Ramp Extra — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 06:00:15 -0700

To be extra-virgin, olive oil can't be doctored with lesser oils.; Credit: net_efekt/flickr cc

On this edition of EatLA on Off-Ramp, Colleen Bates tastes olive oil with an expert. (Fresh is an attribute you should demand in your olive oil.) We also hear from a woman who wants to punch obsessive foodies in the face. (Eat it, don't talk about it.) And why canned beer is better than bottled beer. (Whaaat?) Plus, Colleen remembers her first meal at the almost late-great Campanile.