Letter From LA: Super Bowl Issue
In honor of Super Bowl Sunday and the Chinese surveillance balloons that flew across the country for several days two weeks ago, I decided to revisit John Frankenheimer’s 1977 “Black Sunday,” a thriller about terrorists who commandeer the Goodyear blimp with a plan to murder 80,000 spectators at the 1976 Super Bowl in Miami, Florida. […]
Letter From LA: Gods and Monsters
Swaying palm trees, cool evening breezes, night-blooming jasmine, ruby red and purple bougainvillea, golden sun at twilight: these are some of the cliches that describe Los Angeles — and they’re true. But here’s another version of LA’s reality, from the famous French sociologist, philosopher and cultural theorist Jean Baudrillard: “There is nothing to match flying […]
Letter From LA – Summer 2022 – The Crime Issue
When I was growing up in Los Angeles, there were certain parts of the city you just didn’t go to — the bad sides of town: Watts, East LA, parts of Venice and Culver City, Pacoima, Gardena. The stigma never really bothered me: I hung out with bikers in Culver City, surf bums in Venice, […]
Letter From LA: Spring 2022
It’s been more than six months since my last Letter; this winter was a mind-numbing jumble of ill tidings that, to paraphrase Shakespeare, was a winter of (my) discontent, with little to celebrate, to write about. I can’t remember such despair on the U.S. stage since the dark days of the war in Vietnam: Book […]
Letter From LA: August-September
 Belated Happy New Year and Yom Kippur to my Jewish (and gentile) friends: Sounding the horn at the Jewish new year service. Engraving with etching by B. Picart, ca. 1733. It’s been a very mellow summer in Los Angeles. The weather these past few weeks has been delightful — no major heat waves, with temperatures […]
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