Archive for 2004
The Award Goes to… (2004’s Funniest moments on screen)
By Tom Teicholz at 24 December, 2004, 7:34 pm
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 to follow. So although I [...]
Read More >>Dancing Queen (Liane Weintraub and Dance in LA)
By Tom Teicholz at 10 December, 2004, 7:38 pm
Amid myriad reasons for moving to and living in Los Angeles, let me add one: this is a city where one dedicated individual can still have a major cultural impact.
This came to mind recently when I made the acquaintance of Liane Weintraub, a new mother in her mid-30s. Weintraub lives in Malibu and no one [...]
Becoming a Nephew (The Yad Vashem online database)
By Tom Teicholz at 26 November, 2004, 7:41 pm
Today, I am a nephew. Last weekend, the names of more than 3 million persons murdered in the Holocaust were posted on the Internet as part of a searchable database created by Yad Vashem in Jerusalem.
Yad Vashem was established in 1950 by an act of the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, as the Holocaust Martyrs’ and [...]
Literary Journeys (Memoirs by Jonathan Schwartz, Nessa Rapoport and Stefan Zweig)
By Tom Teicholz at 12 November, 2004, 7:43 pm
The most memorable books I’ve read recently have been, ironically enough, three memoirs that stand out for their sensitivity, intelligence and literary quality.
Jonathan Schwartz’s “All in Good Time: A Memoir†(Random House) is a particularly well-crafted, deeply felt story of childhood neglect as the child of famed Broadway and movie music composer Arthur Schwartz, and [...]
Visiting History (The cemeteries of LA)
By Tom Teicholz at 29 October, 2004, 7:44 pm
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 [...]
Read More >>Listening to Lenny (Lenny Bruce)
By Tom Teicholz at 15 October, 2004, 7:46 pm
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 [...]
Read More >>Cleaning House
By Tom Teicholz at 1 October, 2004, 7:48 pm
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 [...]
See Jane Shlep (Yiddish with Dick and Jane)
By Tom Teicholz at 17 September, 2004, 7:49 pm
“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 [...]
Einstein in California
By Tom Teicholz at 3 September, 2004, 11:11 am
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 [...]
Tough Guys (Isaac Babel)
By Tom Teicholz at 13 August, 2004, 7:52 pm
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,” [...]