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Life & Times Transcript

11/12/07

Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times --

Orange County's housing market has taken a hit, but how far will the effects spread?

Esmael Adibi>> But, of course, the reality now is that there are not going to be as many buyers. But I know that some of the plans are basically shelved for now and they're going to be shelved for at least two or three years.

Val Zavala>> And then, we dare you to sit still as we spend some time with Poncho Sanchez, the King of Latin Jazz.

It's all straight ahead on tonight's Life and Times.

Announcer>> Life and Times is made possible through the generous support of the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of medicine, health, science and education.

And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.

Val Zavala>> The real estate slump is putting the brakes on some major projects in Orange County. Some grand high-rises slated to be built in Anaheim are being pushed back a year and a prominent builder has laid off a third of his workforce. But it's not just private projects, homes and offices that are being impacted. As Orange County reporter Roger Cooper tells us, the slowdown could impact a much anticipated park as well.

Roger Cooper>> The housing market is a lot like that big new balloon at the Orange County Great Park. It has gone up to great heights, but it inevitably comes down and that's exactly what's been happening to the housing market especially in California. In August, existing home sales in Orange County plummeted a whopping twenty percent from a year ago.

Esmael Adibi>> And we were warning actually the developers and potential homebuyers to be careful.

Roger Cooper>> Chapman University professor Esmael Adibi is known for his annual economic forecast. He wasn't surprised when the bubble burst.

Esmael Adibi>> What was unusual with this cycle was the rapid appreciation that they experienced over three, four or five years and the percentage increases were huge. Everybody should have known that this was not going to last forever.

Roger Cooper>> Adibi says what people need to understand now is that the fallout from this housing slump will be felt far beyond housing. Take, for example, the Orange County Great Park. That's the massive project in Irvine that is converting the former El Toro Marine Corps Air Station into a thousand-acre public park.

Money to build the Great Park is to come from a housing development that's being built on part of the land. The homebuilder is Lennar, one of the nation's largest, but Lennar is feeling the housing slump big time. It just reported its third quarterly loss and it's laying off thirty-five percent of its workforce. Some predict that the housing slump will mean a delay in building the Great Park.

Esmael Adibi>> And given the current condition and what's happening not just to Lennar, but all the homebuilders, I think they have to pause and go much slower than what was anticipated and probably the park is not going to become reality based on the timetable that they had two or three years ago.

Roger Cooper>> Not so, says the chairman of the Great Park's board, Irvine City Council member Larry Agran.

Larry Agran>> Well, on point of fact, the Orange County Great Park is being financed and designed separate and apart from the vagaries in the housing market.

Roger Cooper>> Agran says that the Great Park already has two hundred million dollars in the bank and the resources on hand to ride out the housing slump.

Larry Agran>> We have sufficient funds for the next five to seven years to conclude the designing and undertake the early construction of elements of the park as well as the operation of the park. No aspects of the park design, construction or operation are going to be delayed by the temporary vagaries in the housing market.

Christina Shea>> I'm in the real estate business, so personally I understand the effect of this slump in the housing market.

Roger Cooper>> But a fellow member of the Great Park board is not as optimistic. Christina Shea says to expect delays in constructing the Great Park.

Christina Shea>> Oh, definitely, until we see a turnaround in the financial residential market. There was talk by some of the Council members that we're going to see homes in Lennar next year. There's just no way that will happen. So certainly we're looking at a much longer term to develop it.

Roger Cooper>> Lennar says it is still months away from making a decision about whether conditions are right to proceed with the housing tract. In the meantime, Shea believes funding sources for the Great Park should be more diverse and not tied so tightly to housing.

Christina Shea>> This present Master Plan is very much a very passive park. No public-private partnerships, not much retail. I'm very concerned about the financial viability of the ongoing park finances long-term.

Larry Agran>> There are some who believe that the park ought to be a profit center somehow for our community and for the Orange County community. I don't believe that.

Roger Cooper>> Shea has also voiced concern that Lennar might decide against building houses and sell off the land. Agran doesn't see that happening.

Larry Agran>> I'm not concerned. The value of the property and the value to us is in the land. I have no doubt that Lennar is going to be an enduring partner here.

Roger Cooper>> The Great Park is just one of many projects impacted by the housing slump. In another part of Irvine just off the 405, high-rise condominium towers are going up. They were started in better times, but now the question is will there be enough condo buyers when they're finished?

Esmael Adibi>> But, of course, the reality now is that there are not going to be as many buyers. So those programs that are in completion phase are going to be completed, but I know that some of the plans are basically shelved for now and they're going to be shelved for at least two or three years.

Roger Cooper>> In fact, almost forty condo towers were in the planning stages in Orange County, some as tall as thirty stories, but now many are on hold. It's the same situation in Anaheim where Lennar has demolished buildings on fifty acres and was prepared to start building the community dubbed "A-Town".

A-Town is supposed to have eleven residential towers on one site reaching as high as thirty-five stories. It is touted as the centerpiece of Anaheim's Platinum Triangle redevelopment area. But as Mayor Curt Pringle will tell you, the housing slump has put a crimp in those grand plans.

Curt Pringle>> Now there probably will be an additional year or two delay in some of those development plans, but that doesn't mean the concept is off the table. It just may mean it's going to follow the market demands.

Roger Cooper>> In the long run, Pringle says that Orange County's shortage of available land will make high-rises a necessity. But for the time being, he admits that towers are having troubles.

Curt Pringle>> The challenge with tall buildings or condominium projects is that you can't sell a few floors at a time. You've got to finish the whole job.

Roger Cooper>> Professor Adibi has another concern. As an adviser to the State Controller, he's warned him that the slump will make a dent in government coffers.

Esmael Adibi>> My prediction is to better watch out. You know, those tax revenues that are all coming because of the housing market are not going to come in as strong as they did.

Roger Cooper>> Mayor Pringle says that planners from Sacramento to small towns have gotten used to rising property tax revenues.

Curt Pringle>> Now that increase has slowed a bit. That's not devastating, but it's something we need to be aware of.

Esmael Adibi>> But in the long run again, as I say, is a word of assurance. We come out of this. We need the housing units. We need affordable housing units and those towers or Triangle center and Great Park are going to be built, but maybe they're not going to make as much money and, I hate to say it, but maybe not with the same companies that started the whole notion.

Roger Cooper>> But just like a batter in a hitting slump, everyone wants to know when will we pull out of this?

Esmael Adibi>> I believe this is going to probably go well into 2009 partly because we have lots of inventories of new homes and, add to that, the inventory of resale homes is huge.

Roger Cooper>> 2009 may seem like a long time to wait, especially to southern Californians accustomed to a housing market that was flying high. In Orange County, I'm Roger Cooper for Life and Times.

Announcer>> Kcet.org is the place to look for the very latest on Life and Times. You'll find previews of upcoming stories, plus transcripts and audio of past episodes and links to some of our most interesting features. Just go to kcet.org, scroll down the page and click on "Life and Times".

Val Zavala>> It was in 1962 that he won the Nobel Prize in physiology. James Watson, along with Francis Crick, had discovered the structure of DNA and he wrote a book about it called "The Double Helix".

Well, now James Watson has written a very different book. It's called "Avoid Boring People: Lessons from a Life in Science". In it, he offers up more than a hundred lessons, things like "Don't take up golf" or "Find a hero".

Watson was born and raised in Chicago. His father was an avid birdwatcher, but he was stuck in a boring job as a bill collector. His mother was a popular daughter of Irish immigrants. Their son, James, would become an avid ornithologist himself, but more importantly, a preeminent molecular biologist, Nobel Prize winner and, more recently, he agreed to be the first person to have his own gene sequenced and made public.

I had a chance to sit down with James Watson and it was clear that he doesn't hesitate to speak his mind. So you've written a book called "Avoid Boring People: Lessons From a Life in Science". Why did you think there was a need to write this book?

James Watson>> I didn't like to write certain books like other people wrote. I think it's the first self-help book for scientists.

Val Zavala>> Another one of your pieces of advice is "Seek out bright as opposed to popular friends."

James Watson>> Yeah, it was never hard for me because, you know, popular people often said things which made me uncomfortable. You know, Animal House behavior, anti-Semitic remarks.

Val Zavala>> I see. Basically, the snobby --

James Watson>> -- what you call what it was like in the 1030s, yeah. Bigoted.

Val Zavala>> Bigoted.

James Watson>> Yeah. You know, you hear bigots on the Fox network. You know, I can't stand it. I don't think then that people were better or worse than we are today. Human nature, I think, comes from our genes and our genes stay pretty much the same.

Val Zavala>> Now, of course, the title of the book is "Avoid Boring People". Elaborate on that. Why is that important to you?

James Watson>> You know, don't be bored by a lecture. Just walk out. You know, if you think you're going to be bored, sit in the last row so it's not so completely insulting. Walking out from the front row is a statement.

Val Zavala>> But what if we had no choice? A lot of people will say, "But many times, I'm stuck with boring people. I have to be nice to boring people or I have to be in boring situations."

James Watson>> Yeah, my father's life was condemned to that and I've been plucky, but I've always liked to learn from people and reinvent myself. There are people who really change you and that's what I've always sought. Now when you get older, it means you've got to just stay with the young people. But I think there should be strong incentives to make everyone work until eighty because of the life expectancy.

So I would really only give you good pensions, you know, unless there are disability cases, when you reach eighty (laughter), which would mean you can't just not do anything. You can say, oh, well, you can play golf all over the world. Most people can't afford golf all over the world.

Val Zavala>> Well, that's another one of your lessons. "Don't play golf."

James Watson>> Statistics are that, when people stop working, their health deteriorates. We can't afford all these people starting not to work when they're sixty-five and living to be ninety. To let people not work when they're old is to neglect the young.

Val Zavala>> Here's an interesting piece of advice. It's almost actually more of an adage. "Exaggerations do not void basic truths."

James Watson>> When we describe politicians. You know, it's easy to say of George Bush that we've never had a worse president. Well, I don't know how bad a couple of our presidents were (laughter), but it gets the point across that you just can't imagine anything worse than this incompetent boy in Washington.

Val Zavala>> Here's a different kind of advice. You tell people to "Channel rage through intermediaries." In other words, don't be direct.

James Watson>> Yeah. So if you're really mad at your boss, don't say you're mad. Just let someone else know that you're upset because it diffuses. Then the other person can look at it more objectively.

Val Zavala>> But how about people who say, "Why didn't you just come to me and ask me?" Why do you have to be so indirect?

James Watson>> Sometimes you can, but my rule as a boss is to show displeasure immediately. It's not fair to people who are doing what you think is a bad job not to let them know.

Val Zavala>> So when you're a boss, show displeasure immediately.

James Watson>> Yes.

Val Zavala>> You have a piece of advice that seems kind of odd. You say, "Avoid being photographed." Why is that?

James Watson>> Yeah, if you're a president of an institution, it's so easy for you to be photographed next to this person and that person. But you should have the people who actually run the universe to be photographed, particularly younger ones because then their mothers can see their photographs (laughter). By this stage, your mother is dead and gets no pleasure from seeing your photograph (laughter). On the other hand, if you're next to Muhammad Ali, your institution is thought better of (laughter).

Val Zavala>> At age seventy-nine, Watson is impatient. He likes fast food. He doesn't like to walk with fat people because they walk too slowly, and he has advice for bosses about making quick decisions. "Make necessary decisions before you have to."

James Watson>> Yeah, if you know you're going to hire someone, don't wait two weeks. Just hire them. If you don't do it, someone else might hire them. Also, if you don't make them, everyone is waiting for you to make them, so you're slowing down something. As soon as you can make a decision, make it.

Val Zavala>> But that seems to go contrary to academia, which loves process and committees.

James Watson>> I know, and I hate it. Oh, committees. I deplore committees. So I see academia now as filled with Arnold Schwarzenegger's "girly men".

Val Zavala>> (Laughter) People who just want to please?

James Watson>> They want to please and don't make a decision because it might offend someone even though it should be made. Because they don't want to offend someone, they don't see that a highway has to be built. You know, if a highway has to built, just because someone doesn't want it built doesn't mean you should delay it.

Val Zavala>> Boy, a lot of the world must irritate you because this happens everywhere. People are, you know, filing lawsuits, they want to talk about this, they want to get that approval. There are processes and bureaucracies everywhere, so the world must drive you crazy.

James Watson>> Yeah. That's why the only good position is to be the boss (laughter). You can determine the pace at which things happen.

Val Zavala>> James Watson, thank you so much for all your scientific work and some practical advice as well.

James Watson>> Thank you.

Announcer>> To send a comment or a question to our program, you can reach us by mail at this address:

Life and Times
4401 Sunset Blvd.
Los Angeles, California 90027

You can also call our viewer comment line (323) 953-5555) or contact us the fast way by e-mail at kcet.org.

Val Zavala>> He is one of the best conga drummers in the world and his name is synonymous with Latin Jazz. He is Poncho Sanchez and, for the past four decades, he's been putting out music that makes you move. So how has he been able to avoid the pitfalls of the music industry? I got a chance to talk with him at his home in Whittier. But first, take a listen.

[Film Clip]

Val Zavala>> He was the youngest of eleven children growing up in Norwalk and captivated by the Cuban and Puerto Rican drummers who hung out at Griffith Park, but they would tell this Chicano kid to go home. Congas were not for Mexicanos. Oh, yeah?

[Film Clip]

Val Zavala>> The walls in his upstairs studio are covered with photos, posters and memorabilia from a career that started thirty years ago.

Poncho Sanchez>> People know that I'm a big fan of Ray Charles and James Brown, you know. That's James Brown over there (laughter).

[Film Clip]

Val Zavala>> After twenty-three albums, Poncho Sanchez has managed to keep his sound fresh by mixing Latin Jazz with everything from bebop to salsa and soul. His latest album features the rhythm and blues band, Tower of Power. At first, he asked just the horn players to join him.

Poncho Sanchez>> They said, "Poncho, everything's great. We'll do it. The only thing, when I go back to the guys in the band to tell them, hey, the horn players of Tower of Power are going to be on Poncho's record, they're going to say, "How about us?" So I said, "Well, I don't know if I can afford the whole band." I mean, that's the --

Val Zavala>> -- how big is that?

Poncho Sanchez>> Well, there's like ten guys in the band or something.

[Film Clip]

Val Zavala>> But his record company, Concord, sprung for it.

Poncho Sanchez>> My business influences have been Mongo Santamaria, Cal Tjader, Tito Puento, Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, John Coltrane.

Val Zavala>> By far, it was vibe player Cal Tjader who had the biggest impact on Sanchez. Sanchez was only twenty-four years old when Tjader asked him to join his band. It was a dream come true for a young man who couldn't read music, then or now.

Poncho Sanchez>> Well, these are some old Cal Tjader records. Of course, I bought these when I was in high school. "Best of Cal Tjader", Verve Records. Great vibe player, man, and a great person.

Val Zavala>> I asked Sanchez how he was able to avoid the pitfalls that other musicians fall into, everything from creative clashes and business feuds to drugs.

Poncho Sanchez>> The last couple of years with Tjader's band, I was messing around with drugs and drinking a little too much. What happened to me is, when Cal Tjader died, it was like somebody pulled the rug from underneath me because Cal Tjader was like my musical father. I mean, man, I was not ready for that when Cal died. I was with him in Manila in the Philippines Islands when he died of a massive heart attack. I was there with him.

At that time, I was messing with the drugs, like I was telling you, and it was like somebody pulled the rug from underneath me. I didn't even want to play after that. I mean, I was in shock. First of all, just losing him and not understanding. Wait a minute, what's going on here, you know? I mean, I wasn't done with him. You know what I'm saying?

I would tell God, "What are you doing? That's Cal Tjader. You can't do that. I'm not done with him. I still want to play with him and travel all over the world." Of course, as I got older, I learned that it ain't up to us. You know what I mean?

Val Zavala>> After Tjader's death, Sanchez started building up his own band, but he kept his day job driving a liquor truck for several years. Then again, he came from a hard-working family.

Poncho Sanchez>> My father worked in a dry cleaners all his life and my mother was just a homemaker.

Val Zavala>> With eleven kids (laughter).

Poncho Sanchez>> Eleven kids (laughter). Somebody better stay home, right? My mother was beautiful.

[Film Clip]

Val Zavala>> Slowly and steadily through years of touring, Poncho Sanchez's band emerged as one of the tightest in the business.

[Film Clip]

Val Zavala>> And this --

Poncho Sanchez>> -- is the Grammy that we won for Latin Soul in 1999 and we're nominated right now for another Grammy.

[Film Clip]

Val Zavala>> A couple of years ago, the magazine Jazz Times dubbed Sanchez the King of Latin Jazz, but he doesn't see himself in a castle as much as a fort.

Poncho Sanchez>> I am here to hold the fort down, so to speak, for Latin Jazz because I love Latin Jazz. That's what I know and that's what I do.

Val Zavala>> And he will do it on anything he can find.

[Film Clip]

Poncho Sanchez>> "Get your newspaper in the morning, man."

Val Zavala>> But the drumming has taken a toll on his hands. A few years ago, he had a cut on his finger that refused to heal. Doctors said blood was not getting through.

Poncho Sanchez>> And I went to a hand specialist and what they figured out is that this big callous that was here -- it's down now. It was a big callous. I was hitting the rim of the drum and developing a callous there. I was hitting the rim a lot and it developed a callous and it was pinching the main artery here and the blood that goes to the tip of the finger was not reaching there, so that finger was slowly dying. You know what I'm saying?

I remember when I told the doctor, he said, "You've got to be hitting the rim of the drum with that part of your hand." I said, "No, I don't hit the rim. I hit with this part, you know?" I'm thinking with this, right? He goes, "No, bring me a video of you." The doctor wanted to see a video of me, so I took a video of me playing and he put it in slow motion.

Sure enough, I was hitting it like this. It was like a habit or some kind of movement. He goes, "Look, right there." The doctor showed me what I was doing wrong. "I don't know what you're playing, but you are hitting the rim with that part of your hand." So now I learn to keep this hand up a little more and I don't hit the rim no more.

[Film Clip]

Val Zavala>> Poncho Sanchez's band is going strong. Although some of the earlier members of his band have moved on, Sanchez has brought on young talented artists. Over twenty-eight years as a band leader, one thing hasn't changed. He's still with Concord Records, a major accomplishment in the volatile music business. Besides performing, Sanchez enjoys cooking. He's even melded music with food in a drumming instruction book called "Conga Cookbook".

Poncho Sanchez>> It's an instructional cookbook to teach you how to play congas, but yet we've put recipes between each chapter of different rhythms. You know what I mean? "Now I would like to do an original composition of the band and do a number written by Mr. Francisco Torres and myself, "El Shing-A-Ling".

[Film Clip]

Val Zavala>> At age fifty-four with one of the best Latin Jazz bands in the world, Poncho Sanchez can say that he's made it and he credits his longevity to staying true to himself and his music.

Poncho Sanchez>> I remember when Latin Jazz was not very popular. You know what I mean? And I know that the Poncho Sanchez Latin Jazz band plays a very important part in the growth of Latin Jazz because we take it all over the world.

[Film Clip]

Val Zavala>> Poncho Sanchez is performing on weekends throughout the month at various locations in Studio City, Long Beach and Fullerton. For details, you can go to his website at ponchosanchez.com. And that's our program. I'm Val Zavala. For everyone at Life and Times, thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.

Announcer>> Life and Times was made possible through the generous support of the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of medicine, health, science and education.

And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.

Sponsored in part by:


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