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Books
•"The Bones" by Seth Greenland (Bloomsbury) Shop at Amazon.com! http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect-home?site=amazon&tag=tommywood-20 "And The Word Was" by Bruce Bauman (Other Press) Shop at Amazon.com! http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect-home?site=amazon&tag=tommywood-20 -
Leaving L.A.
•When I go out of town, I often take a novel or two with me, knowing that a plane ride remains one of the few places to get serious reading done. Recently, I read two novels, Seth Greenland’s “The Bones†(Bloomsbury) and Bruce Bauman’s “And the Word Was†(Other Press),… -
Luck of the Exiles
•Spring is upon us. My allergies have been acting up for weeks. So it seems the right time to talk about cross-pollination, a subject that it is at the heart of important new exhibits in Los Angeles and New York. When Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis was running for president in… -
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… -
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.… -
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… -
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… -
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… -
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.… -
Whose Culture is it? (Ellen Gruber's 'Virtually Jewish")
•Does it bother you when a white man sings the blues? Is jazz exclusively an African American art form? When Eminem (who is white) is the most popular rapper, Tiger Woods (who is part African American and part Asian) is the greatest golfer and Serena and Venus Williams (African Americans)… -
The Award Goes to... (2004's Funniest moments on screen)
•As the year ends, many of my correspondents (at least one) have been clamoring for the Tommywood Awards, a list of those defining moments in the past year — the best, the worst, the memorable. Frankly, my mind has already gone on vacation and the rest of me is soon…