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How to have the best Sunday in L.A., according to Andrew Bird

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How to have the best Sunday in L.A., according to Andrew Bird

For Andrew Bird, Sundays hold special meaning. Those were the days when jazz would be etched into his subconscious before sunrise — as a 20-something living in Chicago, he’d doze off to late-night music broadcasts on local radio, listening to greats like Lester Young and Coleman Hawkins.

Now, two decades later, Bird’s latest album “Sunday Morning Put-On” (with Ted Poor on drums and Alan Hampton on bass) pays homage to those early influences.

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In Sunday Funday, L.A. people give us a play-by-play of their ideal Sunday around town. Find ideas and inspiration on where to go, what to eat and how to enjoy life on the weekends.

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These days, Sundays look a bit different for the singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and whistler, but they’re still a time for decompressing. “I don’t really have a typical 9-to-5, ‘Thank-God-it’s-Friday’ lifestyle, but Sunday is the closest thing to that,” said Bird, who has released 16 studio albums since his debut in 1996. “It’s the one day I can carve out time for non-work, creative things.”

Bird and his wife, Katherine Tsina, along with their 13-year-old son, have set down roots in Northeastern L.A., which they’ve called home for the last 11 years. Bird is currently on tour and will play two shows at the Hollywood Bowl in August, with Pink Martini.

For Bird, an avid mountain biker, being able to be outside any day of the year is one of the best things about living in L.A. “I love mountains,” he says. “I’m just a lot healthier here than I was anywhere else.”

This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for length and clarity.

8:30 a.m.: Wake up with pancakes and jazz

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We’ll make breakfast, coffee, put on a jazz record and take it pretty easy. Sometimes we’ll make pancakes, like Dutch baby pancakes with lots of fruit on top. That’s kind of a special Sunday treat. Other than that, eggs and bacon, and lots of stone fruit berries.

9 a.m.: Grab my bike and hit the trails

If I’ve got a mountain biking ride scheduled with some other folks, we’ll either meet up at Dirt Mulholland or JPL (I just say JPL for all of the trails that are in Altadena via the Arroyo Seco River). That’s my ideal spot, it’s about 15 minutes away. I’ll ride up the Gabrielino Trail where there’s horses, hikers, bikers, but it all depends on the temperature. If the weather report says 75 to 80 degrees, it’s borderline too hot. Up above when it’s exposed, it’s really more like 90 degrees. I’ve come close to having heatstroke up there.

If it’s too hot, you stay down on the river bed, which right now has a lot of water in it so you get wet going across six or seven river crossings on your bike. It’s really an almost jungle-like environment. It’s really like another world. If you’re used to Griffith Park, which is just scrub and piles of loose sand and quartz, this feels much more tropical and remote.

11 a.m.: Refuel with fresh pasta or sandwiches

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After that, not too far away is this deli that I’ve just been really into lately called Ferrazzani’s. It’s part of Semolina Artisanal Pastas company and they make fresh pasta right there. Next door, there’s an Italian market that has cheese and guanciale and fresh pasta and they make like five different sandwiches. They’re all just delicious. It’s a nice spot.

1 p.m.: Have a family sketch session

There was one day when [my family and I] went to the Norton Simon Museum and sketched modern art and that was a pretty awesome day, I have to say. The scale of it reminds me of a Chicago museum in a lot of ways, like a mini Art Institute. And I like the building itself, with all the heath piles on the outside.

My mom was an artist and she used to take me and a bunch of my friends down to the Art Institute and we’d bring sketch pads and sketch whatever we found interesting. I started doing that with my family and I don’t know why more people don’t do it. It makes it a whole different experience and you get to compare your sketches with everyone else that’s sketching the same thing. I’m really not a visual artist, but that one little tradition from childhood is something I really enjoy.

4 p.m.: Stroll through Atwater Village

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We spend a lot of time in Atwater Village on Sundays. They have a farmers market and my wife has a shop there, Avion Clothier. That’s been kind of a hub for us for the last nine, 10 years it’s been open. It’s just a cool spot.

In Atwater there’s Alias Books, Proof Bakery and wide sidewalks with cafes. It has street life, which is a rare thing in L.A. and it’s designed like an old western town with a super wide boulevard that you could have a parade on, wide sidewalks, and then normal commerce as opposed to the beige corner strip mall stuff that’s all over Hollywood. If you build it, they will come. It’s pretty hoppin’ these days.

6 p.m.: Sunday family dinner

Afterward we have Sunday family dinner with my wife and son and my sister-in-law who lives down the street. We tend to make homemade bolognese. It’s a joint effort but most of the credit goes to my wife. I’m a line cook.

7:15 p.m.: Watch a movie or jam with my son

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And then the extended family comes over and hangs out and we maybe watch a movie all together. Sometimes we kind of split off and my son and I will watch “Rick and Morty” while my wife watches something that’s more her speed. Or my son and I will play ping-pong or tennis or something like that. He just turned 13 and he’s a really good guitarist and singer, but he hasn’t shown any desire to make that his life’s work at the moment. He got really good at the guitar during the pandemic — he plays finger-picking style guitar.

It’s kind of a tricky dynamic because as a professional musician, every time he says he wants to jam, I’m like, “Oh great, OK,” and it lasts about 10 or 15 minutes. Then he goes into a passive resistance mode. So still trying to figure that out. The key is to just kind of be very hands off but it’s hard to repress your pride [as a parent]. He has a good ear and he’s a good musician. But then you say like, “Hey, are you gonna go for a solo in the choir?” And that’s met with like, “Back off.”

9:30 p.m.: Wind down — in bed or on a tour bus

[Bedtime] depends on what phase of the year I’m in with touring or what have you. But when I’m at home, I generally start reading at like 9:30 or 10 p.m. and I’m asleep by 11, maybe. I read a lot at night. Right now I’m reading Don Carpenter’s “Hard Rain Falling.” It’s a ‘50s noir, prison, tough guy sort of novel.

If I’m on a bus tour, I’m in the bunk as soon as the bus starts rolling, by 12:30 or 1 a.m. It’s hard to describe sleeping with 10 other people in like 400 square feet as “luxurious,” but you have a day sheet that tells you what your obligations are for that day, where you have to be, what time. And otherwise you’re kind of off the hook. Life is very simple. So I sleep much better on tour.

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Lifestyle

Sunday Puzzle: An A.C. puzzle to beat the heat

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Sunday Puzzle: An A.C. puzzle to beat the heat

Sunday Puzzle

NPR


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On-air challenge: Every answer today is a familiar two-word phrase or name with the initials A.C.

Ex. Summer cooler  –>  AIR CONDITIONER

  1. Type of electricity
  2. Something that rings to wake you up in the morning
  3. LAX for Los Angeles International or LGA for La Guardia
  4. Color prism for Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon,” e.g.
  5. Ship from which military jets take off
  6. Mystery writer who created Miss Marple
  7. Gangster known as “Scarface”
  8. Longtime host of “Masterpiece Theatre”
  9. French playwright who wrote “The Plague”
  10. Annual yachting competition
  11. Closest star system to Earth
  12. What Ann Landers and Abigail Van Buren each wrote
  13. Container that sprays a mist
  14. Signal that danger is over

Last week’s challenge: Last week’s challenge comes from listener Adam Aaronson, of Deerfield, Ill. Think of a classic movie title in which the initials of all the words up to the last one, in order, spell the number of letters in that last word. The number of words in the title is for you to discover. What film is it?

Challenge answer: “The Wizard of Oz”

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Winner: John Nacy of Jefferson City, Missouri

This week’s challenge: This week’s challenge comes from listener Judy Seaman, of Sandy Springs, Ga. Think of a famous American woman with a two-syllable last name. The first syllable is spelled like a body part, but isn’t pronounced like one. The second syllable is pronounced like a body part, but isn’t spelled like one. Who is this famous woman?
 

Submit Your Answer

If you know the answer to the challenge, submit it here by Thursday, August 8th at 3 p.m. ET. Listeners whose answers are selected win a chance to play the on-air puzzle. Important: include a phone number where we can reach you.

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Lil Wayne Old Lyric Notebook on Sale for $5 Million After Legal Saga

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Lil Wayne Old Lyric Notebook on Sale for  Million After Legal Saga

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Opinion: Remembering our colleague and friend, Ina Jaffe

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Opinion: Remembering our colleague and friend, Ina Jaffe

Scott Simon (top right) and Ina Jaffe (center left) pose for a picture with other NPR Chicago Bureau staff.

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I think Ina Jaffe would want me to remember today that the first time I saw her, she was onstage and unclad. It was the 1970s, and she was in a science fiction production called “Warp! My Battlefield My Body” at the Organic Theater in Chicago. Ina was an early member of the company, along with her husband, Lenny Kleinfeld.

The next time I saw Jaffe, a few years later, she was smartly dressed and had a portfolio under her arm, like artists carry. It was full of clips from a scrappy local weekly, on theater, local politics — which, of course, can also be theater in Chicago — and heart-stopping crimes and colorful characters. The more I read through Jaffe’s clips, the more I thought: Of course they’d be in an artist’s portfolio. She had an artist’s eye for detail, and a performer’s ear for the ring and rhyme of human speech.

Jaffe became part of the group who began NPR’s Chicago Bureau, planting an outpost in Mid-America when the network wasn’t quite yet mainstream. We all saw each other through long election nights, trials, loves, losses, Cubs games, and a full hug of all the complexities of life in a great city.

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Primary election night for Chicago mayor, February 1983. I rushed over to meet Jaffe at Harold Washington’s campaign headquarters. The crush was so great, she couldn’t get through the crowd to put up her mic. So Harold Washington supporters lifted her up and passed her along over their heads, to reach the stage just in time to record a moment of history.

“Now that’s an entrance,” she said.

We both came to Washington. Jaffe was the first editor of Weekend Edition. In many ways this program grew out of our Chicago Bureau, and the style of reporting we tried to practice there. “Make ‘em laugh, make ‘em cry, make ‘em come back for more,” Jaffe used to tell us. I hope you hear that in this show to this day.

Jaffe went on to our Culver City studios, where she created her own beat to cover the challenge and complexities of growing old in America. She made people who can be easily overlooked and lumped together as “seniors,” vivid, unique, and compelling. Jaffe used her skills and stagecraft to bring us stories that will play on in our hearts.

 

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Jaffe died this week, at the age of 75. Thinking about her today will make us laugh, cry, and wish she could come back for more.

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