Beach(ed) Books:

No reccommended books this week. No time. Instead, here's a little thing I did for KQED radio on the mythic concept of "summer reading" (requires real audio).

And off we go again...

Hey all. Arrived home from Cicago yesterday and slept nearly 10 hours. Must have needed it.

A few nights before, we managed to grab the last available seats for a production of Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind, a brilliant concept from the Neo Futurists theatre troupe. The actors write 30 two minute plays and agree to perform them all in 60minutes. Each play has a number hung from a clothesline above the stage. The audience yells out a number, the actors do that play, yell "Curtain!" then it starts all over again. At the end of the week, they roll a die and whatever number comes up is how many new plays the do next week. They've been doing this way for 15 years.

Oh and it's a blast. Its so neat I may have to import this idea to San Francisco. In my spare time.

Now I'm off again to get all inspired and dizzy and loaded down with free books at the Book Expo America conference, Carnaval for the reading set. I'll be in L.A. until Sunday.

What madness.

More from Chicago:

Chicago is big. Like very big. If it were a baby, San Francisco could fit snuggly in the waistband of its diaper.

More theater last night. This time, we took in a production of Miyagi!, a musical adaptation of The Karate Kid done in a tiny little theater right by the L. Hilariously fun. And I'm a huge Karate Kid fan. Not ironically, not in an "oh isn't that cute" sort-of-way. I love that movie. Pure of heart, devoid of snickering.

It's, dare I say, the best around.

Chi on Stage:

Blogging live from Chicago.

Word.

My buddies and I took in a production of Concerto Chicago, a spoken-word musical performance about the racial and political history of the city at the Victory Gardens Theater. While the play was only ok, it reminded me that it's just plain wasteful to be in Chicago and not take advance of the great theater happening all over town. And I'm not talking about week's-pay-touring-broadway-tickets for a show you can see next summer in Topeka. I'm talking about homegrown plays to suit any taste and may cost you $15, if that. That's the kind of entertainment bargain that wrenches me away from DVD's and my ass indentation on the couch.

Word.

Chi-Town Summer:

Off to Chicago for the weekend. Happy Memorial Day everyone! I feel like I should be humming a song about Memorial Day but I don't really know one. Do you?

This Week's Recommended Books:

I wrapped up reading Tim O'Brien's July July, a recommended book from last week via a longish in-bed read on a beautiful Sunday afternoon. I can't recommend it enough. The story of a class reunion of sixties college friends thirty years later might leave you cold if, well, the 60's do. But like O'Brien's seminal book The Things They Carried, this one easily outdistances its demographic and deftly becomes more about capital letter themes like Aging, Memory, and The Passage of Time. The characters won't become your best friends but there's enough about them to hook you in. By the end, you're weeping for all of them and anyone you've ever known who gave up on life way before it gave up on them.

July, July by Tim O'Brien (Houghton Mifflin, $26 in Hardcover, 322 pp.)

July, July also whet my appetize for more novels built on brisk, confident storytelling. As I do every few months, I then turned to mystery writer Laura Lippman, whose career I've been following in a freaky, stalkerish way since we worked together at the Baltimore Sun about 8 years ago and her dad was a professor of mine at Johns Hopkins. Laura had just begun work on her first mystery, Baltimore Blues.

Since then, Laura's written 6 novels each better than the one before. Her heroine is Tess Monaghan, a private eye with a quick mind, a propensity for rowing, and a quiet cynicism for most of humanity. All of Tess adventures are set in Baltimore, where her dad is a liquor license inspector, her flirtatious aunt runs a feminist bookstore and her boyfriend Crow is a local musician.

Since I'm only an amateur mystery reader, I tend to stick to books that have a great sense of setting and a protagonist whom, even if I don't like, I'm intrigued by. Tess I probably have an out-and-out crush on, even though I know she'd be terrible for me. And I went to college in Baltimore, the wackiest city on the east coast, so I love its trivia and lore.

These things might mean nothing to you but I'd recommend Laura Lippman's books anyway. They're fun, intelligents reads, bordering on literary, but swift of plot enough to head your fingers clinched around their covers. The latest, The Last Place is on my night table now.

The Last Place by Laura Lippman
(William Morrow, $23.95 in Hardcover, 341 pp.)

During my sick week, I had to cancel appointments and events all over tarnation but I was most disappointed by missing Douglass Rushkoff's tour stops in San Francisco. Rushkoff, a respected technology author and critic, is the author of the new book Nothing Sacred: The Truth About Judaism, which just hit the shelves. In it, Rushkoff has written the book that I wanted to someday and has probably done it better.

Nothing Sacred accuses contemporary Judaism of losing its focus on spirituality in favor for an obsession with combating inter-marriage and raising money. It's a criticism long overdue. Rushkoff also presents bibliolical and halahahic (according to Jewish Law) evidence why this is a patently unjewish mode of thinking and offers alternative he calls Open Source Judaism. In Open Source Judaism, Judaism's sacred texts are constantly evolving based on the commtenary, thoughts and ideas of those make them part of their spiritual life.

Though I haven't dived yet and can't quite imagine how Rushkoff's ideas will work in practice, I'm fascinated by the project itself. And we are more than ready of a thorough reevaluation of what it means to be an American Jew. Bravo to Doug Rushkoff for his courage and conviction.

Nothing Sacred: The Truth About Judaism by Douglass Rushkoff
(Crown Books, $24.95 in Hardcover, 242 pp.)

No More "One Day More"

Les Miserables has closed on Broadway after 6,680 performances and 16 years at the Imperial Theatre. That leaves only Phantom of the Opera left from the crop of big splashy musical happenings that defined Broadway in the 1980s.

Usually musicals, even ones that have made a bajillion dollars and run for decades, close after they start to lose money and it's clear that public interest is elsewhere. I haven't seen any mention of how Les Mis was doing financially but I can only assume some combination of these factors was the case.

Me, I've seen the musical maybe 3 times and loved it. My first car, a crappy 1978 Volvo station wagon had two cassette tapes in the front seat, AC/DC's "Highway to Hell" and the Les Mis Original Boradway recording.

I am no fan of the musicals but Les Mis got me interested (briefly) in the second French Revolution and the idea that Broadway can make an enormous work of classic literature as much fun as a rock concert. Purists scoff at this sort of thing, arguing that the movement started by Cats and amped by Les Mis and Miss Saigon made musicals less about theater and more about fancy sets and clever marketing. I couldn't agree more. Without Les Mis and its brethren, there would be no Mamma Mia and no Disney footprint on the Great White Way.

All true, all true. It just doesn't bother me all that much.

Dim the Porchlight...

So I performed in Beth Lisick and Arlene Klatte's Porchlight monthly storytelling series. It went ok. I think I need more experience with a microphone and talking on a stage. Suzan noted that I pace a bit too much and flail with the mic, causing my voice to cut in and out, an opinion echoed by my friend Heather Gold, who performed as well. I never knew this.

Sigh. I know this shouldn't depress me but it did a little. I know its all part of creative evolution, to fine tune through experience what you already do well. But to do that you have to leave the honeymoon period of what you do, to acknowledge that not every performance is wonderful, not every time out will be your best. I know its just plain old reality, but I sure liked the honeymoon.

P.S. Everybody else was great. It was a quite an honor to be on the same bill as them.

Down. With...

My review of the upcoming romantic comedy Down With Love is posted on Filmcritic.com. A solid film and a better review than the microwaved prose treatment I served up in my review of City of God.

You Made the Papehs!

So this morning I open up the New York Times to a story called "Dating a Blogger" (reg. required) and starring back at me is a Brooklyn blogger named Deirdre Clemente whom I went to college with and directed in a freshmen play.

I'd ordinarily think this was a wild bit of news, especially over a bowl of Grape Nuts at 9:15 on a Sunday. However, something is in the water I drank back then (or recently) because this is the forth person I know from blogging or before who has been mentioned in that paper of record.

Let's review: My friend Maggie was quoted in some story about Gen X. fashions I'm assuming because she wrote a hilarious series about it for The Morning News. Buddy Josh Benton's CD Mix of the Month Club got some prominant mention and a picture that probably scored JB a bunch of dates. Megan Morrone, who is aparently the object of lust of teenage geeks everywhere, is a producer on Tech TV's The Screen Savers but in another life waited in the academic advising line with me at Johns Hopkins as another Writing Seminars major, searching for guidance.

One or two of these happenings and I think "how neat" and glow inside with smugness that I knew some soon-to-be-famous people. But three? Then four? That's just freaky.