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Will a Pair of Beloved Jewish Summer Camps Rise from the Ashes of the Woolsey Fire?
•From the Pacific Coast Highway, just past Neptune's Net, you can see Camp Hess Kramer's giant menorah still standing. However, after last fall's devastating fires and the winter's subsequent mudslides, the fate of the landmark and its surroundings remains uncertain. On a recent visit to the beloved Jewish summer camp,… -
Painted Words, Day-Glo Posters and Hotel Rooms: The Influence Of Allen Ruppersberg
•Allen Ruppersberg: Intellectual Property 1968-2018 at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles (through May 12, 2019), features an artist you may not know well and the extent of whose influence you never realized â until this exhibition.To set this in context: One of the most significant developments in Los Angeles… -
Buried by Vesuvius Explodes the Getty Villa
•Almost a year ago, I visited Pompei and Herculaneum, marveling at the extant evidence of the lives of the Romans as preserved when Vesuvius erupted in 79 A.D.Turns out I didn"t have to travel to Italy to see many of the magnificent treasures from the greatest of Herculaneum's Roman Villas… -
The Sorrow of Soviet Poetry: On Lev Ozerov's "Portraits Without Frames"
•PORTRAITS WITHOUT FRAMES is a singular work of literary biography: a history of Soviet-era literature and culture that is also a masterful poetic sequence in its own right. In Portraits, Lev Ozerov (1914âÂÂ1996), a relatively little-known Russian literary figure, recounts his personal encounters with a who's who of 20th-century poets,… -
"Almost Famous: The Musical" Rocks On
•This Sunday October 27th, "Almost Famous," the Musical based on the 2000 Cameron Crowe movie will end its run at the Old Globe Theater in San Diego. Tickets for the run have been sold out for a while but I was lucky enough to attend a matinee recently, and am… -
Mariinsky's "Jewels" Shine Not as Bright
•At the Music Center in Los Angeles, The Mariinsky Ballet of St. Petersburg performed George Balanchine's "Jewels."In a very informative pre-performance lecture at the Music Center, journalist and dance historian Elizabeth Kaye explained that Georges Balanchine, born Georgiy Balanchivadze in St. Petersburg to Georgian parents, studied at the Imperial Ballet… -
The Vanishing Point of Cool: Glenn O"Brien's "Intelligence for Dummies"
•Glenn O"Brien was an artist, a filmmaker, a musician, editor of Andy Warhol's Interview Magazine, a columnist for Interview, Paper, ArtForum and other publications, and a very successful advertising copywriter and creative director of advertising for Barneys Department Store. For much of his adult life he stood at the cusp… -
The Gift of a Great Photo
•With the holidays imminent, whether due to the spirit of the season or the constant barrage of advertising and emails, one's thoughts turn to gift-giving â for others and, even, for oneself.Many gifts are easily consumable or disposable or subject to the whims of trends or fashions. However, there is… -
Four Quartets, A Memorable Dance Performance For Our Times.
•Coronavirus has given me the opportunity to catch up-to write about exhibitions, performances, books, that I had meant to address but that slipped by until Coronavirus got in the way. I feel like Larry David who has finally found the perfect excuse for avoiding going out and social interactions âÂÂ… -
Travel From Home
•Star Trek famously called Space the final frontier, referring to the explorations of the space ship Enterprise to distant galaxies and planets. But in light of the current coronavirus pandemic quarantine, any travel right now seems far-fetched.Still, I tried to think if going forward I can"t (or won"t) travel in… -
Why are we so obsessed with John Demjanjuk?
•On Tuesday, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum released a photo of Sobibor guards that purports to reveal Nazi collaborator John Demjanjuk in a guard uniform at the Sobibor Death Camp. German historian Martin Clippers said the museum used the German police to conduct a biometric examination to affirm it… -
A Heart Shaped LA Dream Drive
•Saturday Night Live has regularly mocked Los Angelenos for their obsessive and unending conversations about their routes driving to and from any destination â and it is funny because it is true: Traffic and its avoidance is an inevitable fact of SoCal existence.In fact, one of the inside-LA jokes in…