Jewish History & Culture
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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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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