When I tell people here in Los Angeles that I’m from New Jersey, many of them immediately launch into a fond reminiscence of “The Sopranos,” a bad goombah accent, or some other upward nose-turning about the industrial wasteland they think I sprang forth from.

None of any of that has anything to do with where I grew up.  Mullica Township is a backwoods borough where some of the roads still aren’t paved, and where most of the commerce takes place at roadside produce stands. It has a culture all its own, and one in no way redolent of most assumptions about New Jersey.

Oh, and we have cockfighting. Ever see cockfighting on “The Sopranos”? I didn’t think so.

“Last Ziegfeld Girl Kicks.” Instead, they went with this.

The other day while awaiting the latest unpleasant procedure at the dentist’s office, I came across Reminisce magazine, “The Magazine That Brings Back the Good Times.” Those “Good Times” are defined as the 20’s, 30’s, and 40’s. (Here’s the link, if you’d like to stroll down mothball lane yourself.)

People are entitled to their memories and to be nostalgic for what they’ve lost. Although I know that comic books are printed better now than when I was a kid, I miss that smell of decaying pulp. It was part of the experience. So I do understand. But, while I admit to being biased against the 20’s, 30’s, and 40’s — partly, I’m sure, because I wasn’t there — I have to wonder how “Good Times” has been defined. Given that the 20’s, 30’s, and 40’s encompassed global aftereffects from World War I; the Great Depression; the dustbowl migration; lynching; famine; polio; World War II; the extermination of millions of non-combatants; and the development and use of the atomic bomb (to name just the hits), I’m thinking that these are “Good Times” if you survived.

The LA Times’ Geoff Boucher provides a nice obit for Frank Frazetta in today’s LA Times. Note the quote from Guillermo del Toro (of “Pan’s Labyrinth,” and perhaps the best two comic-book movies yet, “Hellboy” and “Hellboy 2”), who certainly knows his way around visual fantasy.

In Boucher, the Times has a pop culture critic and writer who understands and appreciates comics and all their affiliated passions, removing some of the sting from the newspaper coverage we grew up with — the “Pow! Biff! Bam!” gosh-wow features built around just what those attic treasures are worth, and the quaint profiles of elderly broken-backed artists who “still draw funnybooks” and never got to pursue serious art. When Boucher talks about Frazetta, and his impact, and elicits supporting quotes from respected sources, he lends credibility to the idea that Frazetta was our version of Norman Rockwell.

Legendary fantasy artist Frank Frazetta, he of many cherished paperback book cover paintings of my youth, has died.

Whether or not his art was “Art,” it was exciting and important to many, many of us, especially in our adolescence. The painting above gives you one sense of why.

As Mr. T reminds us in today’s music video, “Don’t be puttin’ down nobody’s mother.” Good advice on Mother’s Day and any day.

UCLA Live has dropped its theatre programming. Well, not willingly; UCLA administration has cut theatre from the series’ budget.

This is tragic, because for nearly a decade, UCLA Live has consistently programmed the best performance series in town — and many of the highlights have been theatre. It’s the only place that the Berliner Ensemble played in the U.S. (in a production of “The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui” that still haunts me); it’s where I discovered The Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio and saw the astonishing “Genesi — From the Museum of Sleep,” which melded placid dream sequences with the twitching disturbances of a David Lynch or Nine Inch Nails; it’s where the Dubliners came over to play Beckett, where “Shockheaded Peter” had its American playdates, where Robert Wilson and Merce Cunningham and David Thomas did things that I’m not sure were theatre or dance or music or performance or what, but which were always mesmerizing. It’s where The National Theatre of Scotland performed their U.S. premiere of “The Black Watch.”

But no more. Dance, music and the lectures series remain intact. “What they’ve done is cut everything related to theater,” Sefton explained.

I don’t know where else in Los Angeles — in Los Angeles! — that one will be able to see this sort of work. No one else brings in shows like this, shows that require enormous theatrical training, often very specialized sets and pieces, and large budgets. At the point at which all the theatre becomes just two-character plays — or, God help us, nothing but solo shows — then there really will be no reason to leave your couch.

Here’s Charles Isherwood on the ups and downs of two-character plays.

New York has recently seen a spate of major two-hander productions, and given the economics of producing theatre, no doubt will see many more. I’d like to see “Red” — with Alfred Molina in it, which will require a trip to New York, unless the production gets remounted here. I saw “Collected Stories” in 1999 at the Geffen Playhouse; Linda Lavin was the star (as she is in New York), and she gave an inspired performance. And it’s a terrific play. If you’re in New York, I recommend it.

Remember back here when I shared with you the trailer for the forthcoming movie “The Human Centipede”?

Well, guess what new movie is so pointless and disturbing that Roger Ebert has decided he can’t actually rate it? You guessed right. Here’s the non-rated, not-quite review.

Tonight I walked my 11-year-old daughter and her friend down to an 80’s party. My daughter had spent hours with my wife going through her collection of 80’s clothing, which still looks so very right to my eyes, but most of which my daughter steadfastly refused to wear because it looked “weird.” After the party, and after I dropped her friend off home, she told me how much fun she’d had at this party, where they played great songs that she hoped I’d heard of, like “We Got the Beat” by the Go-Go’s. Yes, I assured her, I know that one. Then we got into the time-honored discussion of “did they have this when you were young?”

“Did they have TV when you were young?”

“Yes. But we didn’t have gaming systems.”

This caught the attention of my seven-year-old son:  “You mean, no (Nintendo) DS?” He sounded stricken.

“No DS, no Xbox, nothing.”

He was incredulous. “Not even a Playstation?”

“Nope. And no cable, and no DVDs, and no VHS.”

“What’s ‘VHS?'” my daughter wanted to know.

“‘VHS’ tapes. Videotapes. And no internet.”

Her voice grew hushed. “Your time was sad.”

I looked at her in the rearview mirror, my iPhone feeding songs to the car’s stereo while it scanned for email. “Somehow,” I said, “we managed.”