LA's first gay citywide elected official ... how the SCOTUS decisons will affect married homosexuals at tax time ... Happy birthday ZIP Code! ... the lasting impact of a huge neck tattoo ... Eric Garcetti's week.

Jody Stephens, only surviving band member Big Star's debut album, talks with LA Record's Chris Ziegler ... intrepid intern Robert Garrova learns to curl at a bonspiel ... Val Kilmer talks with John Rabe about becoming Mark Twain for his one-man show "Citizen Twain" ... Gavin Newsom on the Prop 8 decision

Remembering: Breakthrough TV with Norman Lear, Oscar de la Renta with a fashion design student, our loved ones with Caitlin Doughty and "the good death," James Brown and the TAMI concert

The Flesh Eaters reunite to tell the story of their album "A Minute to Pray, a Second to Die," Kevin Ferguson has lunch with Tommy Lasorda at his favorite restaurant, we meet the sole survivor of a disaster you probably haven't heard about.

Take a listen to some of these fine pieces that took you all over Southern California and then, please, help ensure the future of Off-Ramp with a contribution at kpcc.org. Thanks!

Lewis MacAdams - turning 70 this month - takes us up the LA River; James Ellroy takes us back to Dec. 1941 and the start of the Japanese internment; Marc Haefele takes us to the San Francisco of the 50s & 60s.

John spends a day in studio with Petros Papadakis; Kevin Ferguson tells us the story of the Glassell family; and "Tom Explores Los Angeles" takes us deep inside Bronson Canyon and Cave.

The miniature art of Sunland's Alan Wolfson; the High Desert horse rescue hurt by Erin Corwin's murder; It's so hot ... we collected It's So Hot jokes; Charles Burns shows us the Sugar Skull inside the Hive.

Special report: intersection of science fiction and science fact; Brains On and the monarch Mexico migration; Hungry, the competitive eating doc; Kenturah Davis weaves words and art

The sounds of Santa Monica's Pacific Ocean Park; the most powerful man in LA you never heard of; sci-fi tv and movies becomes real life; the Huntington's new American galleries