Strange Land

In ways that affect everything, this has become a metropolis of people born elsewhere, though it is only during global crises that that fact of life tends to sink in. The day-to-dayness of having your heart in two places isn't a reality most Southern Californians bother to take note of. You go to work, you raise your children; barring the occasional far-flung plane crash or earthquake, you don't dwell on the long-distance phone bill, the hours on the Internet. I am from elsewhere.

To secure an audience with the Obama family matriarch at her farmhouse in western Kenya, you are told to pay respects at the local seat of power. This is a run-down government building where the district commissioner, a scowling man in a black suit, receives you without warmth. You've come to see Sarah Onyango, you explain, the woman referred to as "Granny" by the president of the United States. You are coming with the blessing of the president's half brother Malik Obama, you quickly add. District Commissioner Boaz Cherutich, who controls the woman's 24-hour security detail, dismisses you brusquely, saying: With the family's permission, you don't need mine.

In his slate-blue suit and Republican-red tie, John Yoo stands out as discordantly formal among the denim- and turtleneck-clad faculty at Boalt Hall School of Law. Never mind how his politics play in what he derides as "the People's Republic of Berkeley." The former Bush administration lawyer who drafted what his critics call the "torture memos" is reviled by many in this liberal East Bay academic enclave, a feeling that is mutual though not, Yoo insists, wholly unpleasant. "I think of myself as being West Berlin during the Cold War, a shining beacon of capitalism and democracy surrounded by a sea of Marxism," Yoo observes, sipping iced tea in the faculty club lounge, a wan smile registering the discomfort of colleagues walking by en route to the bar. He sees his neighbors as the human figures of "a natural history museum of the 1960s," the Telegraph Avenue tableau of a graying, long-haired, pot-smoking counterculture stuck in the ideology's half-century-old heyday.

In his slate-blue suit and Republican-red tie, John Yoo stands out as discordantly formal among the denim- and turtleneck-clad faculty at Boalt Hall School of Law. Never mind how his politics play in what he derides as "the People's Republic of Berkeley." The former Bush administration lawyer who drafted what his critics call the "torture memos" is reviled by many in this liberal East Bay academic enclave, a feeling that is mutual though not, Yoo insists, wholly unpleasant. "I think of myself as being West Berlin during the Cold War, a shining beacon of capitalism and democracy surrounded by a sea of Marxism," Yoo observes, sipping iced tea in the faculty club lounge, a wan smile registering the discomfort of colleagues walking by en route to the bar. He sees his neighbors as the human figures of "a natural history museum of the 1960s," the Telegraph Avenue tableau of a graying, long-haired, pot-smoking counterculture stuck in the ideology's half-century-old heyday.

Rudy Rucker is certainly entitled to his opinion about the values to be found in Robert Heinlein's "Stranger in a Strange Land" (Dec.23), though the science-fiction fans who voted it a Hugo Award, and its several million readers, obviously disagree. But Rucker's opinion that Charles Manson was influenced by a reading of "Stranger in a Strange Land," which Rucker bases on a reading of "The Family," should be treated as opinion--more likely speculation--rather than as established fact.

The ACLU stand was understandable to a parent. Maybe Dershowitz isn't a parent, I don't know. As a 62-year-old mother of four sons, ages 27 to nearly 40, I feel compassion for the mother of Walter Polovchak. I understand also the minds of the Polovshak children. The U.S.A. is heaven! It isn't easy to raise children, but parental love runs deep. Imagine leaving a 12-year-old in a strange land! I went to the Soviet Union in May of '84 visiting Moscow, Leningrad, Yalta and Kiev. (Russians are human, believe it or not!

The American Cinematheque's survey of Golden Globe foreign film nominees begins Wednesday at the Aero -- a chance to see "The Kite Runner," "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly," "Lust, Caution," "Persepolis" and "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days" all in four nights. Adapted from Marjane Satrapi's autobiographical graphic novel series and told in stark, near-monochromatic images, "Persepolis" merits attention for more than simply being the rare subtitled animated film from somewhere other Japan.

The fuzzy memories are all coming back for Phillip Paley, but sometimes it's still hard for him to talk about his days as America's favorite monkey-boy. "It just changes the way people look at you, once people find out that you were Cha-Ka," the 45-year-old said of his long-gone career as a child actor on the television show "Land of the Lost." "I don't tell too many people. But, well, I guess that's all changing now."

As Danny Hoch ambles through Echo Park, a familiar sight catches his eye. Although he's far from his home in the Williamsburg area of Brooklyn, Hoch instantly recognizes the telltale signs of approaching urban Armageddon: pasty-faced guys in porkpie hats, prowling for overpriced espressos; pierced and tattooed young women pushing strollers; a vintage clothing store rubbing elbows with a Salvadoran pupuseria.

It's always tricky when an author's name becomes an adjective. Orwellian, Machiavellian, Faulknerian -- these designations make it hard to see a writer on his or her own terms. This is perhaps most true of Franz Kafka, whose sobriquet, Kafkaesque, has become a catchall for the weird and inexplicable. Yet 84 years after his death of tuberculosis at age 40, Kafka continues to defy such simplifications, to force us to consider him anew.

The American Cinematheque's survey of Golden Globe foreign film nominees begins Wednesday at the Aero -- a chance to see "The Kite Runner," "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly," "Lust, Caution," "Persepolis" and "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days" all in four nights. Adapted from Marjane Satrapi's autobiographical graphic novel series and told in stark, near-monochromatic images, "Persepolis" merits attention for more than simply being the rare subtitled animated film from somewhere other Japan.

If Ween isn't your favorite band of all time, taking in a concert by the long-running East Coast outfit can feel like crash-landing on an alien planet where everyone speaks a language you don't understand. You see the people around you pumping their fists to rhythms that seem limp. They thrill to guitar solos that sound pretty lame. They laugh uproariously at jokes you didn't realize were intended to be funny.

IN 1975, Saigon and Grand Rapids, Mich., were places as alien to each other as the moon and the sun. Bich (pronounced "Bit") Minh Nguyen was 8 months old when her father fled South Vietnam during the fall of the capital with her and her older sister, leaving her mother behind in the chaos. They joined tens of thousands of refugees who were making the long ocean voyage to America.

Start with a cliche. A young football player -- straight out of Inglewood by way of Compton Community College -- arrives in Nebraska and steps into a wintry landscape. "My first time in snow," he says. An even bigger surprise awaits him soon after, shopping at Wal-Mart. "People walking up to me, hugging me," he says. "I didn't know those people. I hadn't done anything on the field, but they already knew everything about me, my high school and junior college stats."