Post Archive

  • Picturing LA (Julius Shulman)

    Julius Shulman, the still much-in-demand architectural photographer, famous for his photos of Modernist homes, turned 97 a few weeks ago, and the partying has been pretty much nonstop -- which is the way Shulman likes it. The Getty Research Institute, which houses Shulman's photographic archive of more than 260,000 negatives,…

     Read More


  • Michael Chabon's Amazing (Jewish) Adventures

    On the occasion of the first annual "Celebration of Jewish Books" at the American Jewish University in Los Angeles, the Jewish Journal asked me to engage Michael Chabon in a (brief) conversation about the Jewish flavor of his work. Herewith the results: Novelist Michael Chabon has an agent, Steven Barclay,…

     Read More


  • Rivers of Music

    Producer, songwriter and musician Larry Klein is having a good year. In a way, one could say his current success is the culmination of a process of recontextualizing his background, his experience, his talents and his interests. Two records he produced have just been released on Verve Records: "River: The…

     Read More


  • Let Us Travel To Iran

    This fall, I am asking you to travel to Iran. Not the present-day, front-page, headline-grabbing, nuclear-developing, Holocaust-denying, Israel-hating Iran, but the Iran of just 20 or 30 years ago, as described in two newly published novels, Gina Nahai's "Caspian Rain" (MacAdam Cage) and Dalia Sofer's "The Septembers of Shiraz" (Ecco).…

     Read More


  • Summer and the start of school

    In one of his most famous works, the French poet Francois Villon asked: "Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan? (But where are the snows of yesteryear?)." I might ask the same about where this summer went. It seems like just last week my daughter was getting out of class, and…

     Read More


  • Zsa Zsa Gabor: The Last of the Hungarian Mohicans

    "I want a man with kindness and understanding. Is that too much to ask of a millionaire?" -- Zsa Zsa Gabor Lately, I have been thinking about Zsa Zsa, and it makes me sad. A few years ago, she crashed her car on Sunset, and she has been wheelchair-bound since.…

     Read More


  • Big Fun Under the Big Top

    with additional reporting by Natasha Teicholz When I heard that the circus was coming to town, I couldn't wait to take my daughter. I'm talking about the Greatest Show on Earth, Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, appearing in Orange County until Aug. 5. I know that Cirque du…

     Read More


  • GOOD AS (Jonathan) GOLD

    "The plov is great." Jonathan Gold, the LA Weekly's restaurant critic and the 2007 winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism, e-mailed me the above about Uzbekistan (the restaurant on La Brea, not the country), where we were planning to meet. He assumed, of course, that I knew what plov…

     Read More


  • Conversations with David Mamet and Nathan Englander

    Conversations with David Mamet and Nathan Englander: DAVID MAMET As part of the Nextbook Festival of ideas, held at UCLA on April 22nd, I interviewed Pulitzer prize winning playwright, screenwriter, novelist and essayist David Mamet. Nextbook had chosen the title of "Make Believe Jews" for our conversation and I took…

     Read More


  • Conversation with Nathan Englander

    NATHAN ENGLANDER About a month later, on May 21, 2007, I found myself on the stage of the Mark Taper auditorium at the Los Angeles Central Public Library, as part of the ALOUD series, in conversation with Nathan Englander whose new novel, "The Ministry of Special Cases" (Knopf) had recently…

     Read More


  • Bruce Teicholz, my father, always said he wasn't a hero.

    To see the article as featured in the Jewish Journal, click on: For the cover: http://tommywood.com/cover.pdf For the article, with photos http://tommywood.com/JJcoverarticle.pdf He left his mark fighting in the Shoah, spearheading postwar relief efforts, aiding migration to Palestine - and on me My father always said he wasn't a hero.…

     Read More


  • The Salonistas of LA

    Great ideas and great literature are being championed, promoted and supported in Los Angeles, in public and private forums, in private homes and public spaces, through the age-old medium of conversation. Several years ago, the Jewish Museum in New York mounted an exhibition called "The Power of Conversation: Jewish Women…

     Read More