Michael Chabon, the literary wunderkind, won a Pulitzer Prize for “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay,” which conjured up the American comic book industry in the glory days of the 1930s and 1940s.
This week David Wolpe, senior rabbi of Sinai Temple, delivered one of the invocations at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C. Even for someone used to and deserving of such honors, this is a big deal.
It may seem a sign of overconfidence for someone to tell you he’s rewriting a major work by Beethoven, but for David Lang, who reconceived Bach’s “St. Matthew Passion” for his Pulitzer Prize- and Grammy Award-winning 2008 opera, “The Little Match Girl Passion,” it’s just business as usual.
\” . . . My mother came from Bialystock, near the Russo-Polish border, a very cosmopolitan town decimated by the Nazis. My father came from a suburb [and was] a tailor. Chicago is the biggest Polish population of any city outside of Warsaw . . . \”
Don\’t get Howard Rosenberg started on the snobs who dismiss sitcoms as trash.\n\nThe Pulitzer Prize-winning Los Angeles Times TV critic thinks they\’re an American art form, which is why he\’s hosting \”The Serious Side of Laughter,\” a panel discussion about television comedy Feb. 17 at the University of Judaism. The panelists — responsible for some of the biggest yuks on the tube — include Sam Simon of the groundbreaking animated series \”The Simpsons,\” Judd Apatow of the quirky college romp \”Undeclared,\” Phil Rosenthal of \”Everybody Loves Raymond\” and Larry Wilmore of \”The Bernie Mac Show.\”
If there are two blockbuster motion pictures that stand as the defining pop-cultural phenomena of the 1970s, they are, arguably, \”Star Wars\” and \”Saturday Night Fever.\” And while \”Star Wars — the Broadway Musical\” is probably not as far-off as we may think, \”Saturday Night Fever — The Broadway Musical\” is already here. As in here … in Los Angeles.
It was 1984. A tough, tight-lipped Israeli army colonel was leading a small group of journalists on a tour of southern Lebanon, where Israel was in the midst of a war. The journalists wore army-issue flak jackets. They listened and took notes, as if taking dictation. One correspondent, Thomas L. Friedman, challenged the officer repeatedly. The colonel stonewalled him. But Friedman\’s questions were sharp and unrelenting. \”He\’s going to end up wanting to talk to me,\” Friedman said to a Reuters reporter, \”because tomorrow whatever he says is going to be on the front page of The New York f—— Times.\”
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