Close Encounters of the Tommywood Kind

This latest volume of collected columns presents a variety of close encounters of the Tommywood kind. It looks forward to high tech offerings from CES and on display at the Israel Conference and looks back at the Hollywood Blacklist in Exile. There are articles about well known writers such as Michael Chabon, Saul Bellow (though the prism of his first born son), and Etgar Keret, profiles of legends such as Lou Adler visual artists past, such as Hans Richter and Jackson Pollack and present, such as Judy Fiskin, Gary Baseman, Miri Chais, Nor Evron and Orit Raff. There are celebrations of those long departed such as The Marx Brothers, the Jewish Heroes of the Soviet Red Army during WWII, and an appreciation of Sandy Frank, a life ended too soon. Singers and songwriters abound from Theo Bikel, to Noa and Danny Sanderson, and Los Angeles resident performer-priest, Leonard Cohen whose new album released around the time of his 80th birthday, is in itself cause for the celebration that occurs in Tommywood.