Gleanings: Book Reviews, Broadway, Big Green Taxis...

• NY Times: A new poll finds that a majority of both Democrats and Republicans believe global warming is a threat. At last.
• Huffington Post: Are book review sections in newspapers going extinct? (via BB&H)
• Roger Ebert's first pictures and comments since his stroke.
• Business 2.0: Startups to watch in 2007 (via Get Satisfaction).
• Playbill profiles the longest runs in Broadway history
• SF Gate: Green Cab is a new taxi cab company based in San Francisco using only hybrid cars.

One Sentence Movie Reviews: "42nd Street"

42nd Street (1932): "This is not the same movie as 'Miracle on 34th St. even though I spent the first 15 minutes wondering who played Kris Kringle."

Notes: Seem at the glorious Stanford Theatre, as part of my ongoing quest so see every movie in the AFI 400.

Word of the Day: "Embellish"

Embellish (verb): "To enhance with fictious additions"

Source: First heard of while reading Superfudge in the first grade when I thought it meant "to get pregnant" because "embell" sounded like something having to do with "belly". Heard last week on Ugly Betty.

Cinematic in Toronto:

Toronto Screen Shots is a new weblog covering cinematic happenings in Toronto, one of the world's great cities for film lovers. The project is a joint collaboration between local bloggers Jay Kerr and James McNally, the later of which is a close friend. Jay I feel like I've met, don't remember, and will feel like an imbecile when reminded.

Song of the Week: "'Cause You Can"

Song: "'Cause you can"

Artist: Birdmonster

Sound: Three guitars crashing into one another yet coming up with melody instead of noise. Pump-your-fist-and-chant vocals on top of it. Allmusic calls them "A San Francisco version of Ted Leo & the Pharmacists."

I know they're considered all indy rock and moppy-haired and whatever but try not air guitaring. I dare you.

Source: My friend Hannah.

Listened to: Almost every time I pick up my iPod. The apostrophe puts them 4th in the list of nearly 4000 songs, right behind "!!!!" by the Roots, "'39" by Queen and "'40" by U2.

Actions: Last night, I'm having dinner with my friend Jenny at NOPA. I see Birdmonster is playing up the block. I convince her to say for 4 songs (Verdict: The band is loud and the lead singer is dreamy). It was still enough for me to want to buy their debut album No Midnight.

Listen, Download.

One Sentence Movie Reviews: "Off the Menu: The Last Days of Chasen's"

Off The Menu: The Last Days of Chasen's (1997): "What gives a life meaning is never for us to judge"

Notes: Documentary on the closing of the legendary Chasen's restaurant, which entertained presidents and celebrities in Beverly Hills for 59 years. Focuses on the staff who from the general manager to the coat check girl, eached worked there over 30 years apiece.

I only went there once, for dinner on my 20th birthday, and I miss it. Heartbreakingly sad.

David Halberstam Killed in Car Accident:

SF Gate: Legendary investigative journalist David Halberstam was killed today in a car accident near Menlo Park, California. He had been investigating a 1958 NFL championship game and had given at UC Berkeley's School of Journalism over the weekend.

David Halberstam was 73 and a towering figure of American journalism. His book The Fifties was one of the first I bought for myself as a young adult. Our entire profession mourns this evening.

My friend Jeff Chang had this quote from Halberstam himself.

I have what I call the backup catcher theory. Most other people doing a book want the top guy. My belief is, you probably learn more from the backup catcher on a baseball team than from the star. Because the backup catcher's smart: He watches the game, he's into the game, he always has to be ready, and when it's all over, 20 years later, he has a lot of time to talk because not a lot of people come to see him. When I did 'Summer of '49,' about Williams and DiMaggio on those two great teams, the Red Sox and the Yankees, no one was more fun to talk to than a guy named Matt Batts, a former Red Sox catcher down in Baton Rouge, La. He had nothing but great anecdotes.

Always look for the story behind the story. That's a lesson to live by.

Word of the Day: "Sagacity"

Sagacity (noun): Acuteness, Soundness of Judgement

Root: From the Latin sagācitās which means wisdom. Also where the words "sage" and "sages" come from.

Heard: on Michael Silverblatt's brilliant two part interview with Norman Mailer on Bookworm.

Wordy Birthdays:

William Shakespeare and Vladimir Nabokov were both born today. During their lives, each had perhaps the largest written vocabulary in the English language.

In their honor, please use one word you would never ordinarily employ in everyday conversation. Mine is consanguineous (Via The Writer's Almanac).

On Nirvana:

My review of Nirvana: The Biography appeared in the LA Times last week. An idea of what I thought...

Back then, if MTV or commercial radio didn't speak to you, you had a single alternative: an underground society of fanzines, tape trading, self-promoted concerts and college radio. This alienation from a heartless mainstream gave birth to punk in the '70s, hip-hop in the early '80s and the rock scene that birthed Nirvana. It also played into the central myth of rock 'n' roll itself: Society wants to squash you and your friends, and music is your liberation.

But now, a music fan has infinite listening choices and can locate peers through a few mouse clicks. Commercial radio and major record labels are self-destructing. Musicians develop enormous following through a few songs on MySpace. While major record labels are in freefall, music has never been cheaper, more diverse or easier to find. The "kids" have won.

All of which seems lost on True. Does he really believe he's delivering blows against the empire by calling MTV "the absolute enemy"? His final assessment of Cobain's life ("The system kills you") blows right by the point: The system killed Cobain, a conflicted artist both ambitious and afraid of success, in large part because he was born too early for more than one alternative to it. Well-deployed bluster, as rock critic Lester Bangs illustrated, is the spun gold of the medium. But bluster in service of an outdated mythology is noisy where it should be compelling, aimless where it should be incisive. And True's lecture-gossip-anecdote-rant-repeat prose rhythms do him no favors.