Sandra Tsing Loh

Pasadena public radio personality-writer-monologuist-concert pianist-Caltech grad Sandra Tsing Loh can be heard every week in some 360 markets in the U.S. and abroad (via the Armed Forces Radio Network), wittily illuminating some interesting but hitherto obscure factoid in her minute-long show-ette, "The Loh Down on Science" ( lohdownonscience.com ). Now the versatile host, based at KPCC-FM (89.3), is developing an hourlong quiz and variety show designed to shed light on research by Caltech professors — and lend new meaning to the phrase "popular science."

Pasadena public radio personality-writer-monologuist-concert pianist-Caltech grad Sandra Tsing Loh can be heard every week in some 360 markets in the U.S. and abroad (via the Armed Forces Radio Network), wittily illuminating some interesting but hitherto obscure factoid in her minute-long show-ette, "The Loh Down on Science" ( lohdownonscience.com ). Now the versatile host, based at KPCC-FM (89.3), is developing an hourlong quiz and variety show designed to shed light on research by Caltech professors — and lend new meaning to the phrase "popular science."

Thank you for the great article and lovely cover picture of Sandra Tsing Loh ("The Multi-Cult Semi-Celeb," by John M. Glionna, photograph by Rachel Weill, April 9). I have been a fan of Loh's since I first heard her intelligent, offbeat humor on Peter Tilden's radio show when she guested several years ago. She did an impromptu commentary on "Friends" that was hilarious. Last year I enjoyed seeing her as a panelist at the L.A. Times Book Festival, where she held her own with such heavyweights as Steve Allen and Arianna Huffington.

James Rainey has been charmingly gentle in reprimanding Sandra Tsing Loh for her harangue against marriage ["Loh Has Left Him Feeling Jilted," June 17]. Perhaps if Loh wants to avoid the moralistic scorn she expects, she might avoid writing about her infidelity in a national magazine, but I suspect she will wear her scarlet letter as a fashionable accessory while profiting from writing about her unhappiness. Nothing sells, apparently even in the Atlantic, like complaining. David Eggenschwiler Los Angeles

Performance art--a term that still confuses a lot of people--is best seen instead of talked about. Two splendid examples are Sandra Tsing Loh and Barry Yourgrau at Theatre/Theater. "Two Funny" is a pair of solo turns, Loh at a grand piano doing musical monologues on American movie musicals and Yourgrau--are you ready for this?--standing there reading to you from one of his short stories.

After an off-Broadway run in New York in May, Sandra Tsing Loh has brought an L.A. version of "Bad Sex With Bud Kemp" to the Tiffany Theater in West Hollywood, where the show began a six-week run Monday night. Through her witty radio commentaries ("The Loh Life," heard on KCRW-FM 89.9) and books (the essay collection "Depth Takes a Holiday" and last year's novel, "If You Lived Here, You'd Be Home by Now"), Loh has become one of L.A.'

Selecting schools in L.A. is the seventh circle of hell. The process is so unnervingly difficult that even the most Zen of parents can be worked into frightened paranoiacs, usually around the time their kids are learning to put on their own underwear. Should they send their spawn to private school or public? Pay the exorbitant tuition that will sequester them amongst the children of the monied and educated or pay nothing and throw them to the wolves with the kids of the working class?

Forget the NCAA tournament. Sandra Tsing Loh has gone through true March Madness. In the last three weeks, Loh has weathered a family crisis, emergency rooms and sick children, the heartbreak of being fired from her gig as a commentator for KCRW-FM (89.9), the sweet revenge of being offered that job back -- and turning it down. She said hello to notoriety and goodbye to her status as a "painfully obscure $150-a-week semi-retired performance artist."

Sandra Tsing Loh is a radical among her friends. Loh's friends happen to fit the definition of set-painting, freelance bohemian types. So, of course, that means she's married, likes to barbecue and enjoys her happy home in the much- maligned Valley--pool, Ikea furniture and all. It was not always thus. In Loh's not-too-distant youth, the writer-cum-performance artist was in the throes of her avant-garde phase, living in that other Valley, the one where Pasadena nestles.

Although writer Sandra Tsing Loh was born in Newport Beach and raised in Malibu, she spent summers in Egypt, Brazil and other places she remembers as more stressful than exotic. Accounts of brushes with terrorists are typical of her tales of travels with her eccentric family. But it's the San Fernando Valley that captures Loh's imagination. For four years, the 35-year-old Van Nuys resident wrote a regular column about the Valley for trendy Buzz magazine.

For years, I've enjoyed Sandra Tsing Loh's public radio riffs and her witty-pithy (she might call them "withy") essays on the struggles of juggling work, kids and marriage. She could be that smart friend who had you snorting with laughter on the commute home, exposing the absurdities of modern life. It was a seamless blending of art and life, animated with an unflagging honesty.

Re "Go with a pit bull PTA mom," Opinion, Dec. 16 I was stunned to read that the Los Angeles Unified School District turns down children's books because of an $18-a-book cataloging fee. My son's Mac laptop has a computer program that reads the bar code printed on a book with the tiny camera in the laptop screen. The title and description of the book are recorded. For the price of well under 100 book-cataloging fees, the district could buy a laptop and the program. I agree with Sandra Tsing Loh that the charlatan who is reportedly being paid in excess of $119,000 a year should be fired.

Writer, performance artist and radio commentator Sandra Tsing Loh has parlayed a solo stage show about parenting, schools and dysfunction into a bestselling memoir, "Mother on Fire." The L.A. native recently set up a website, at www.askamagnetyenta.wordpress, to assist weary parents in navigating the public school labyrinth in Southern California. Her weekly radio commentary series, "The Loh Life," runs on KPCC-FM (89.3) in Los Angeles.

SUSAN CARPENTER, in her witty and perceptive review of Sandra Tsing Loh's new book "Mother on Fire" ["One Mom's Gleeful Rant," Aug. 22], did an excellent job of capturing Tsing Loh's consistently amusing (but seriously concerned) tone when navigating the grotesque horrors of the Los Angeles Unified School District's labyrinthine "system." Barry Smolin Los Angeles

Selecting schools in L.A. is the seventh circle of hell. The process is so unnervingly difficult that even the most Zen of parents can be worked into frightened paranoiacs, usually around the time their kids are learning to put on their own underwear. Should they send their spawn to private school or public? Pay the exorbitant tuition that will sequester them amongst the children of the monied and educated or pay nothing and throw them to the wolves with the kids of the working class?

Playwright and poet Brighde Mullins will become director of the University of Southern California Master of Professional Writing program, starting July 1. The organizer of reading series at REDCAT, LACMA and New York's Dia Art Foundation, Mullins directs a writing program at the California Institute of the Arts. Her plays include "Fire Eater," performed at Venice's Electric Lodge in 2004. The faculty for the USC program includes writers Janet Fitch, Judith Freeman and Sandra Tsing Loh. -- Scott Timberg

Classically trained pianist Sandra Tsing Loh wants to be taken as a serious musician even though her Open Festival event Saturday, "Music at the Bonus Carwash," may do little to dispel her reputation for staging amusing avant-garde musical performances.

When Sandra Tsing Loh was a temp at a Van Nuys insurance office, the women were required to wear pantyhose--even if they were wearing pants. Alec Mapa's temp travails included a stint at a Century City office where he shredded documents--and cried--all day. And this was after he starred in "M. Butterfly" at the Wilshire Theatre and on Broadway. Loh and Mapa can swap temp-job horror stories with the best of them. Both are in their 30s, so they share a generational perspective.

Re "A drill can't fix LAUSD," Opinion, April 28 The rest of the world scores quick and easy political points by bashing our public school system. Virtually alone in the world of punditry, Sandra Tsing Loh identifies the successes of public schools. As a parent with children in public school, I love her work on this front, because school staff are properly more concerned with teaching than with rehabilitating their battered image. For readers who merely skim headlines, "A drill can't fix LAUSD" cynically echoes the conventional wisdom that our school system is broken beyond repair.

* To forget the Pulitzers. The Times has been putting energy into prize-winning features that run once a year. Readers care more about the quality of day-in, day-out coverage. (Mickey Kaus) * To print a piece about Los Angeles public schools that isn't either so boring or so terrifying that educated, middle-class parents might actually dare to send their kids there.