Sandra Tsing Loh

Infobox actor
name = Sandra Tsing Loh

---

birthdate = 11 February 1962
birthplace =
othername =
occupation = Actress, author
website = http://www.sandratsingloh.com
imdb_id = 0517815

Sandra Tsing Loh (born 11 February 1962) is a Los Angeles, California-based writer, actress, performance-artist, pop-culture analyst, and radio commentator.

Biography

Loh is the daughter of a Chinese father [ [http://pr.caltech.edu/commencement/05/loh_speech.html Caltech Commencement ] ] and a German mother. She was raised in Southern California. [ [http://marketplace.publicradio.org/about/commentators/loh Marketplace Commentator Biography] ] Growing up in Malibu during the era when it did not have its own high school, she commuted along Pacific Coast Highway south to Santa Monica High School (located near that town's "Dogtown" surf/skating area) in a yellow schoolbus with people like Christophe Pettus (founder of Blowfish) and actor Sean Penn. At "Samohi," Loh was active in the school's orchestra, where she played viola—and occasionally keyboard instruments as needed (most notably piano in "Petrushka," and celesta in "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy").

Loh was also associated with the decidedly nonmusical group that called itself "The Olive Starlight Orchestra," along with computer graphics experts Greg Turk and Eric Enderton, Rhythm and Hues co-founder Keith Goldfarb, physician/poet Jan Steckel, Academy of Motion Pictures activist (and fine-arts scanning pioneer) David Coons, law professor and activist Susan Crawford, and neuroscience-populizer David Linden. Goldfarb, impressed with Loh's intellect and ability to rally people around various causes, began a small coterie he referred to as "The Sandra Loh Fan Club," or SLFC. Many of her friends and acquaintances simply called her "S'loh," in much the same spirit that Eric Clapton earned the nickname "Slowhand" (though in Loh's case it was the quickness of her "mind" that inspired the pun).

Meanwhile, Sandra Loh (as she was known in her youth—her middle name was not in common use then) began her first piece of performance art: a school group that was an active, but good-hearted, parody of the Student Government at Samohi. It called itself "The Young Bureaucrats, Of Course," or the YBOC, and—held together by Loh's commanding, charismatic personality—undertook projects such as pulling up weeds at the high school's courtyard and picking up litter around campus. There was significant overlap in the membership between Loh's satirical-but-positive group and the Olive Starlight Orchestra, which was only forced to choose a name when it sent a "Star Wars" parody to the Dr. Demento radio program.

Loh graduated from Caltech with a BS in Physics, and returned in 2005 to deliver its commencement speech. She is also a graduate of the Master of Professional Writing Program at the University of Southern California. Her early career as a performance artist included a piano concert on a freeway overpass in Downtown Los Angeles, and one in which she distributed hundreds of one-dollar-bills. She went on to perform a number of well-received autobiographical one-woman shows, in which she developed a particular form of observational humor. Her delivery style is generally ironic and spoken somewhat quickly.

Tsing Loh gained some national notoriety when KCRW cancelled her weekly radio commentary, "The Loh Life" after an engineer neglected to bleep her on-air utterance of the word "fuck" during an essay on knitting that aired on 22 February 2004. "The Loh Life" was soon after picked up by the other Los Angeles NPR affiliate, KPCC. She currently produces an NPR segment entitled "The Loh-Down on Science". She is a regular commentator on NPR's "Morning Edition", PRI's "This American Life", and other public radio programs.

Loh is also the author of several books, including the semi-autobiographical "A Year in Van Nuys". The title is a parody of the title of Peter Mayle's "A Year in Provence", though Tsing Loh points out that Van Nuys is not as glamorous as southern France. She has also written reviews of books about parenting, feminism, and several other topics for The Atlantic, where she is a regular contributor. Loh appeared in yet another one-woman show, "Mother on Fire," at the 24th Street Theatre in Los Angeles between October 2005 and March 2006. She made a brief cameo appearance in the 2006 film "Unaccompanied Minors". [cite web | author= | title=Full cast and crew for "Unaccompanied Minors" (2006) | url=http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0488658/fullcredits#cast | publisher=The Internet Movie Database | date= | accessdate=2007-12-24] She is featured in the book "Part Asian, 100% Hapa" by artist Kip Fulbeck and also authored a quote on the book's back cover.

As of 2008 Loh's children attend public school in the San Fernando Valley. [Loh, Sandra Tsing. "Tales Out of School." "The Atlantic". [http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200803/kozol 1] .]

Work

;Discography
*"Pianovision" (1991) K²B₂ Records

;Bibliography
*cite book |last=Loh |first=Sandra Tsing |title=Mother on Fire |year=2008 |publisher=Crown |isbn=9780609608135
*cite book |last=Loh |first=Sandra Tsing |title=A Year in Van Nuys |year=2001 |publisher=Crown |isbn=0609608126
*cite book |last=Loh |first=Sandra Tsing |title=If You Lived Here, You'd Be Home By Now |year=1997 |publisher=Riverhead Hardcover |isbn=157322068X
*cite book |last=Loh |first=Sandra Tsing |title=Aliens in America |year=1997 |publisher=Riverhead Books |isbn=1573226270
*cite book |last=Loh |first=Sandra Tsing |title=Depth Takes a Holiday: Essays From Lesser Los Angeles |year=1996 |publisher=Riverhead Hardcover |isbn=1573220310

References

External links

* [http://www.sandratsingloh.com/ Sandra Tsing Loh official website]
* [http://www.scpr.org/programs/perspectives/loh.html The Loh Life] Audio archive of her radio commentaries at KPCC-FM
* [http://marketplace.publicradio.org/features/loh_down/ The Loh Down] Audio archives of her radio commentaries on the public radio program, "Marketplace"
* [http://pr.caltech.edu/commencement/05/loh_speech.html 2005 Caltech commencement speech]