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July 4th: Re-Discovering America Through Immigrant Eyes

Re-posted from The Huff Post, June 21, 2014 I brought my wife-to-be here to Los Angeles from Indonesia on August 3, 2001. We’d met on the magical island of Bali, “Island of the Gods”, a little over a year before in the early summer of 2000. After I’d returned to LA, we e-mailed each other for several months, she in “broken English”, after which I went back to visit her for almost a month around Christmas and New Years. We traveled across the island of Java together, taking night buses through the drenched green rain forests for 10 hours at…

Woodshop, for Dad

my father used to be a carpenter a master craftsman a cabinet maker extraordinaire he’d turn these perfect round cherry wood salad bowls on his lathe dove tail smooth fitting mahogany joints on his meticulous router pull his whining De Walt table saw over huge planes of wood that   would magically become with his love and care and endlessly detailed patience kitchen tables with white inlaid formica tops custom built wall units complete with knotty pine bookshelves for the World Book Encyclopedia and antique scrolled top desks with french wire netted doors that were sanded smooth as a baby’s…

childhood heroes, part 1, mickey mantle

june 10, 2014 i’ve been blogging a lot about my childhood lately. my first discovery of anti-semitism on valentines road (https://www.erictrules.com/blog/blog/there-was-a-horse/). my horrendous, forced-upon-me  bar mitzvah at temple sholom (https://www.erictrules.com/blog/blog/bar-mitzvah-blues/) . a lot of pain, a lot of negativity, blah blah blah. we all have it. so what? can i really transform the microcosm of my own pain into the universality of art? make it the story of other people’s pain and suffering? like o’neill? arthur miller? tennessee williams? the 3 greatest american playwrights. not that i’m a great american playwright. i’m not. but… i’m a theater prof, and a…

The “R” word

5/13/14 (On what would have been my mother’s 93rd Birthday; she died in 1999) It used to be the “C” word. C-c-c-ommitment. Normally a young man’s word. Why ever get married, settle down, have a family, limit your (sexual) options? What about freedom? Opportunity? Spontaneity? Improvisation? Living in the moment? Be here now? What about the 60s? Sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll? I’ll tell you “what”. Life is what. It has a way of catching up with even the best (free-est) of us? Leaving us older, lonelier, less and less healthy and attractive with each passing year. Maybe even…

bar mitzvah blues

5/17/14 today, a scorchingly-hot, sunny california day in LA, i went to my friend’s son’s bar mitzvah. sheldon mandel, let’s call the friend… or the son. doesn’t matter. a double jewish name, with a particularly challenging first name to bear, for whoever of the two was the name bearer. what were the parents thinking? sheldon? so obviously a name of head turning, of eye-rolling, of clucking… in modern-day america anyway. but perhaps also … to some… maybe the parents… a name, too, of… tradition? a name of weight and beauty… hebrew, jewish, american tradition. brought me back fifty… three years….

for mom

5/13/2014 a couple of days ago it was mother’s day. my mom passed away in 1999. suddenly… from a cerebral stroke. she never knew what hit her. it’s been a long time. fifteen years, seems like fifty to me. it’s too bad she never got to meet my young indonesian wife when i got married for the first time at age 54. i wonder if they would have liked each other. my mom always wanted me to find… companionship. i’ve found it, i think. i hope she’d be happy for me. but i’m not a father. my wife’s not a…

There as a horse

may 7, 2014 there was a horse. a golden palomino. ginger. like her color. a perfect, golden palomino. no bridle, no saddle, just naked and free. across the street on valentines road. on the bolson estate. tall oak trees, green grass, and a golden horse. she would come up to the fence and let us pet her. or sometimes, feed her apples. whenever she felt like it. she was there before us. the first horse i remember. probably the first i ever saw. ginger. we were the newcomers. 1953. i was six years old. my sister had just been born…

on the bus to palookaville

it’s another nocturnal and nefarious crime caper. naturally, i’m with my uncle harvey, the black sheep of the rosenberg clan and “the con” in my documentary film, “the poet and the con”. we’ve stolen a bus. not ken kesey’s bus. no merry pranksters here. something like the team bus for the lakers, or maybe the ascendant LA clippers. but donald sterling’s not on the bus. who the fuck would want that scumbag, racist b-ball owner, after the un-civil comments he made this past week that inflamed the whole multi-cultural nation? certainly not us. my uncle’s two accomplices in crime, “mo…

sky’s the limit

first day of the rest of my life. i’m “semi-retired” as of today. taught my last USC class of the semester… yesterday… and will be teaching no more fall semesters. just 3 more springs. half time at half pay. “phased retirement”, amigos! time to collect social security, take the leap, and see how to create that “third act” i’ve been talking about for so long…. so… played tennis today. with earl, the pearl. as every tuesday and friday. in LA’s south central hood. slauson and van ness. my favorite thing to do in the world. hit the yellow fuzzy tennis…

Henry Miller

How did my main man, Henry Miller, outcast and misfit of Brooklyn’s 14th ward (Williamsburg), American literary giant & “pornography”/anti-censorship pioneer #1, and one of the most unique and creative voices of the 20th century, become a lost man of American letters? Certainly American academia and its politically correct sister in crime, post 60s American feminism, have cast him out… as misogynist public enemy #1. His rants, his books, “Tropic of Cancer”, “Tropic of Capricorn”, “Black Spring”, “The Colossus of Maroussi”, “The Rosy Crucifixion” (Sexus, Plexus, & Nexus), “The Air Conditioned Nightmare” (his condemnation of 1940s American materialism, “modernity”, and…

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