Jewish History & Culture
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The Living Desert (Palm Springs, The Desert and Deanne Stillman's "29 Palms")
As I write this, it’s 64 degrees in Santa Monica and Sub-Zero is just a brand of refrigerator I covet. On the East Coast, there is a record cold spell and everyone is paying rapt attention to the wind-chill factor. The climatic difference can best be explained not merely by boasting or gloating — but […]
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When Television Challenged America (Rod Serling)
Around this time of year, I’m often prone to recall Rod Serling, who was born on Christmas Day. I’m helped along by the fact that PBS ran their “American Masters” portrait of Serling over the New Year’s weekend even as the Sci Fi Channel ran a “Twilight Zone” marathon. It makes me wonder: Where is […]
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Dreaming of a Blue and White Christmas (Christmas Movies from Michael Curtiz to Jon Favreau)
Christmas came early this year — Nov. 7, when New Line Cinema released “Elf,†the family-friendly comedy that, as of this writing, has earned more than $156 million (see story, p. 19). Another surprise is the success of the far-more-cynical adult offering “Bad Santa,†which had a production cost of $18 million and, since its […]
'Fabulous Invalid' (Ruth Seymour's Chanukah Program on KCRW)
I used to have this Thanksgiving Day ritual in New York: no matter what I was doing, or where I was going, I would find a way to be near a radio around 11:30 a.m., to tune in to WNEW-FM 102.7’s broadcast of Arlo Guthrie’s “Alice’s Restaurant,†in its entirety, in all its musical and […]
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A Search for Intellectual L.A. (Paul Holdengraber and LACMA)
It’s a Friday night and an overflow crowd is jammed into the penthouse of the former May Co. store on Wilshire Boulevard — now Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) West — to hear a conversation between French journalist and philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy and The New Yorker’s Adam Gopnik. Presiding over this abundance of […]
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Reading Something Into Some Books (Marboro Books, Richard Farina and Daniel Deronda)
At 14, I had never read a book outside of school assignments — certainly not for pleasure. I was more of a comic book kid. My parents were concerned and even asked one of my friends to talk to me. I just wasn’t interested. But I liked hanging out at Marboro books in Manhattan. Marboro […]
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