This Week in Keeping It On the Down Loh

Sandra Tsing Loh

Comments (0) By COLE AKERS Friday, Dec 23 2005

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You may remember Sandra Tsing Loh. Back in February 2004, the performance artist/essayist/novelist/radio commentator's six-year run on KCRW ended after a station sound engineer unwittingly aired Loh's weekly three-minute segment The Loh Life with the F-bomb glaringly unedited in the broadcast. Loh was the latest censorship casualty: those three minutes are considered by some to be the radio equivalent of Janet Jackson's costume disaster televised only one month earlier. But, if anything, the fiasco only bolstered Loh's popularity and solidified her radio martyrdom-cum-celebrity (to wit: in response to Loh's airwave eviction, Variety writer Bill Higgins instigated an anti-KCRW pledge drive campaign with the slogan "No Loh, No Dough." The slogan was printed on 5,000 stickers and given to KCRW subscribers to send back in their pledge-renewal envelopes).

Today, you can still catch Loh and The Loh Life on KCRW's airwave rival KPCC-FM 89.3—and everywhere else, it seems: Loh's slate of current gigs include commentaries on American Public Media's Marketplace; book reviews in The Atlantic Monthly; and, since Dec. 5, The Loh Down on Science, a collaboration between KPCC and the California Institute of Technology. Twice a day, KPCC airs a segment in which Loh (a CalTech alumna) explains some oddity of modern science and technology—all in one minute or less.

Sandra Tsing Loh's The Loh Down on Science airs on KPCC-FM 89.3 daily at 9:19 a.m. and 7:04 p.m. Also, catch Loh's one-woman show, Mother on Fire, at the 24th Street Theatre, 1117 W. 24th St., Los Angeles, (213) 745-6516. Call for times and ticket prices.