The Lakers, kingpins of the National Basketball Association. The Dodgers, top of the heap in Major League baseball. The Rams, still in competition for the Super Bowl. Thus, it is possible, if still improbable, that the champs of the three most popular American professional sports leagues could all be found in Los Angeles.

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It is a cool November night, and I don’t know it yet, but I am sprawled on my back at the Cal State Los Angeles football field. Above me, a rectangular patch of vision switches on inside my facemask. On the fringes, darkness broken up by banks of electric lights. In the center, dominating the […]

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The next-best thing to hearing/seeing a symphony orchestra perform … is to see/hear one rehearse. An experience I didn’t know was a “thing” until an in-law offered us two tickets to a practice session today by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, at Disney Hall in downtown Los Angeles. And we said, “Sure!” Oh, and a key […]

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Actually, I suppose the overnight air flight never really disappeared. It just seemed to, for those of us who do the majority of our flying inside the United States. (And it is called the red-eye because of how you look the morning after flying most of the night.) After what seemed years since I had […]

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What a fine way to spend a Sunday afternoon in downtown Los Angeles! A great piece of piano music, arranged for orchestra by another classical-music great, played by modern virtuosos led by an inspired director in the finest venue in the western half of the United States. It was so powerful it almost knocked me […]

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I covered the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. (I was a teeny bit too young to see the 1932 L.A. Games, back when the Memorial Coliseum was “only” 11 years old.) And I can vouch that things went off quite well, in 1984. From Opening Ceremonies and the 84 grand pianos and right on down to […]

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