In Teddy Roosevelt’s day, “bully” was synonymous with “good for you.” Today, it’s synonymous with “pathetic loser.” (As Lenny Bruce joked, “Gee, I hope I’m not out of line.
Over the years I’ve written about dozens of “colorful” local characters. Perhaps none was more “eccentric” than Lawrence Kates, the former co-owner of the then Santa Monica Shores.
The son of a milkman, Robert Redford grew up in the 1950s in Santa Monica in the shadow of the movie studios. Rebellious in his youth, he had two sports heroes: Ted Williams and Pancho Gonzalez.
Over his distinguished six-decade-plus career, Arnold Schulman, 86, a Broadway playwright and two time Oscar-nominated screenwriter, has studied with or written for a few accomplished notables.
Now that Mitt Romney is the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, I must confess that something about him really worries me. And no, it’s not his $250 million net worth, or Swiss accounts, or Cayman Island income making him the poster boy for the 1 percent club.
For those too young to have seen it, or those too old to quite remember, Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) was the lead in Martin Scorsese’s rather dark 1976 movie, “Taxi Driver.
Recently, the New York Times, the Washington Post and even CBS news featured stories about our fair city. Feeling rather prideful, I wondered what they could be about.
April 29th will mark the 20th anniversary of the 1992 L.A. riots. If you’re thinking that’s impossible and where did the time go, that makes two of us.
On the drizzling night of Feb. 26, in Sanford, Fla., Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old African-American, was wearing a hoodie while walking to his father’s fiancee’s house in the Twin Lakes gated community.
When I was growing up in the 1950s, my late father worked such long hours that he and I didn’t spend that much time together. But two passions he passed on to me were his love of baseball and comedy.
