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Tommywood: "Light of Day" (Robert Weingarten at the Weisman Museum)
As I drove toward Malibu the other day, Santa Monica Bay was anything but uniform, a shifting collage of textures and hues of blue. As the sun glinted off the water, I wondered: How does one describe the special quality of Santa Monica light? How do you explain it? How do you quantify it? To find the answer, I went to the new Robert Weingarten photo exhibit, “6:30 am,†which runs through July 17 at the Frederick R. Weisman Museum… -
Tommywood: "Raymond's End" (or Phil Rosenthal: Deli Lama) 5-06-05
Phil Rosenthal, the creator of “Everybody Loves Raymond,†which will end its nine-year run on CBS on May 16, and I are fressing at Barney Greengrass in Beverly Hills high atop Barney’s Department Store. It’s not that eating sable is the way I mourn (how is it that a fish can be named after a fur coat my mother owned?) — or that toasted bagels and cream cheese dulls the imminent loss of my favorite sitcom. The reason is altogether… -
www.nextbook.org
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Books
"The Bones" by Seth Greenland (Bloomsbury) Shop at Amazon.com! http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect-home?site=amazon&tag=tommywood-20 "And The Word Was" by Bruce Bauman (Other Press) Shop at Amazon.com! http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect-home?site=amazon&tag=tommywood-20 -
Leaving L.A.
When I go out of town, I often take a novel or two with me, knowing that a plane ride remains one of the few places to get serious reading done. Recently, I read two novels, Seth Greenland’s “The Bones†(Bloomsbury) and Bruce Bauman’s “And the Word Was†(Other Press), which made strong impressions about why, every so often, you need to get out of town. Both novels concern characters who believe their lives are at a dead end, and… -
Luck of the Exiles
Spring is upon us. My allergies have been acting up for weeks. So it seems the right time to talk about cross-pollination, a subject that it is at the heart of important new exhibits in Los Angeles and New York. When Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis was running for president in 1988, he often talked about his father, a Greek immigrant who had come to this country with no money, had worked very hard and made a considerable fortune. When he… -
About Tommywood
Tommywood is a column that explores the cultural landscape of Los Angeles through a personal lens, taking the reader everywhere from a tour of Frank Gehry’s Santa Monica, to Robert Evan’s bed, with a morning spent in Traffic school and lunch with French philosopher Bernard Henri-Levy, with time for a game of mah-jong, and a remembrance of when Hungarians ruled Hollywood. Tom Teicholz is a film producer in Los Angeles. Everywhere else, he’s an author and journalist who has written… -
Woodman Returns (Woody Allen)
At the end of Woody Allen’s “Melinda and Melinda,†I sat in my seat stunned: Woody Allen had actually made a movie I liked — a good movie that had something to say about life and literature. It felt like a long time since I’d enjoyed one of his films. Many years ago, when Allen seemed intent on making ponderous paeans to Ingmar Bergman, I suggested he be strapped into a chair and forced to watch “Sullivan’s Travels†until he… -
The Way It Was (Growing up Jewish in New York)
Last week, playwright Donald Margulies, The Manhattan Theater Club and The Forward weekly newspaper announced the winners of a contest they sponsored on the topic of “What It’s Like Growing Up Jewish in New York.†You can read the winning entries at www.forward.com. I regret to say you will not find my name among them (what do they know?). Still, my great consolation is being able to share my account with you: Growing up Jewish in New York as the… -
Kishon - The Writer
The world lost one of its great comic artists last month. I am referring not to Johnny Carson, who was little known outside of the United States, but to Israeli satirist Ephraim Kishon, 80, who, although little known in America, was beloved around the world. I read somewhere that his books have sold more than 43 million copies and have been translated into 37 languages (although I can’t confirm that there are, in fact, 37 languages to publish in). Kishon… -
Death of a Moralist (Arthur Miller)
Although Arthur Miller was only 33 when “Death of a Salesman†premiered on Broadway, it was a transformative moment in American drama, and Miller’s impact on successive generations of writers continues to this day. In “Death of a Salesman,†Miller was able to find poetry in the personal that transcended the mundane — while creating drama that mattered. Rod Serling, then in his 20s, attended the original production and saw the kind of moral drama about average people that he… -
Was Is Back (Don Was and the return of Was/Not Was)
A few weeks ago, Sweet Pea Atkinson stood on the stage of the Los Angeles House of Blues, dapper in a red double-breasted, collarless suit, wearing a red fedora and red leather shoes. The occasion was the historic reunion of seminal groove band Was (Not Was) after a 14-year hiatus. Sweet Pea grabbed the microphone and proceeded to move the time continuum backward and forward for the better part of a rousing two-hour set. Turns out Was (Not Was) was,…