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Visiting History (The cemeteries of LA)
I have always had a soft spot for Brazil. I spent the summer after high school graduation there, and my wife and I spent our honeymoon there. I love the people, the music, the food and the spirit that Brazilians carry with them as effortlessly as they dance the samba. But I never imagined my affection for Brazil had a historic basis and a Jewish link. I mention this because it turns out that the first Jews in America, who… -
Listening to Lenny (Lenny Bruce)
One night many, many years ago, I was at The Comedy Store on amateur night when Robin Williams walked in off the street and jumped onto the stage. For the next 45 minutes, the air inside the club turned into nitrous oxide as Williams made us all feel a bit brighter, a bit wittier, a bit more manically high just for being able to keep up with him. It felt like being inside a comic mind that was both unhinged… -
Cleaning House
Several months after my mother died, I had to clean out her apartment in New York. The apartment had sold, the co-op board had approved the new buyers, the closing was imminent. The apartment had to be delivered empty. This was the apartment I had grown up in, where my parents had lived, where my father had died more than seven years ago. My parents were from the Old World, and the apartment reflected that. The rooms were dark, filled… -
See Jane Shlep (Yiddish with Dick and Jane)
"See Jane shlep, Shlep, Jane shlep, Shlep, shlep, shlep." This is not your parent’s primer. This is "Yiddish With Dick and Jane," a new parody by Ellis Weiner and Barbara Davilman, who will be reading their work this Sunday, Sept. 19 at the Skirball Cultural Center. The story of how Dick and Jane came to be flavoring their speech with Yiddish began innocently enough two summers ago, when Weiner and Davilman found themselves in Laguna with three hours to kill… -
Einstein in California
One hundred years ago, Einstein was a Zurich Polytechnic teaching graduate who couldn’t land a job in academe. Instead, he got a position as a patent clerk in Bern, Switzerland. Not the most challenging job, but it gave him time to think. Einstein liked to conduct what he called "thought experiments," one of which asked: "What would a beam of light look like if you could race besides it?" During the course of 1905, what has come to be called… -
Tough Guys (Isaac Babel)
Reading "The Collected Stories of Isaac Babel" (W. Norton & Co., 2002) in paperback, edited by Babel’s daughter, Nathalie, got me thinking about Jewish gangsters and tough guys. Babel was born in Odessa in 1894. He wrote of Odessa’s Jewish underworld and its gangsters in sparkling prose. Fifty years before Mario Puzo gave us "The Godfather," Babel offered up Benya Krik. Benya, Babel tells us, had "gangster chic" — a century before Tupac took the stage. Babel’s Odessa was home… -
Rambamalama (The Rambam, Rabbi Leder and Julie Salamon)
Put down your "Da Vinci Code." Set aside your "South Beach Diet." Let your kaballah red string drop off your wrist. I’m here to alert you to the next pop cultural phenom: a 12th-century philosopher popularly known as the Rambam. Just a few weeks ago, I attended the "Aloud" reading series at the Los Angeles Central Library to hear a conversation between Julie Salamon and Steven Leder. Salamon, a culture reporter for The New York Times, is the author of… -
The Kid Still Stays in the Picture (Robert Evans)
Tommywood was expecting a Hollywood moment. Publicity guru extraordinaire Michael Levine had arranged for me to meet legendary Producer Robert Evans at his longtime lair, Woodland, the former home of Greta Garbo. I turned north of Sunset Boulevard and, like William Holden, wondered what I was getting myself into. It’s not that I didn’t appreciate Evans’ accomplishments. Evans, the former head of production at Paramount, was responsible for "Love Story," "The Godfather" and "Chinatown" among many other classic films. He… -
Playing in Uketopia (Jim Beloff and the ukelele)
It’s Sunday night and a half-dozen people are onstage at McCabe’s Guitar Shop in Santa Monica. Jumpin’ Jim Beloff and his wife, Leapin’ Liz, are leading the sold-out crowd as they strum their ukuleles and sing "Farewell." This is the climax to Uketopia, Beloff’s annual celebration of that four-stringed wonder: the ukulele. It is an evening in which almost a dozen performers, from 20s to 90s, including the self-declared "Mr. Ukulele," Charles "Soybean" Sawyer, Fred Sokolow and "King Kukulele," played… -
Most of the Best (S.J. Perelman)
Among the allergens being released this June is a remake of "Around the World in 80 Days," the Jules Verne novel that launched a thousand travel articles. Perhaps Jackie Chan will inhabit the role of Passepartout in a fashion that surpasses the achievements of Cantinflas, "the world’s greatest comedian," according to Charlie Chaplin, a person of no small ego or talent himself. That remains to be seen — or not seen, as the case may be. Although this remake gives… -
Breaking the Mold (Eric Lax's book on the discovery of penicillin)
Earlier this month I attended the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation research benefit for stem-cell research. Although James Taylor’s five-song set and Nancy Reagan’s acceptance speech were each memorable and moving, what I found myself thinking about most that evening was Eric Lax’s new book "The Mold in Dr. Florey’s Coat" (Henry Holt & Company, $25), about the story of penicillin. In the 60 years since it was first made available, penicillin has gone from miracle drug, to cure-all, to over-prescribed.… -
The End of 'Friends'
The last episode of "Friends" airs May 6, and while we may all express a collective sigh of relief at the end of more than a year of shameless hype and exploitation, it doesn’t mean that we can’t stop to reflect on this moment in American cultural history. Or that we don’t care about whether Ross and Rachel will get together. One may debate whether Marta Kauffman and David Crane’s "Friends" will join the ranks of comedy classics, but it…