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.

Gleanings: Videos from Virginia, Cooks from New Orleans, Film Festivals From San Francisco...

• NBC's controversial airing of excerpts of Cho Seung-Hu's video confession before killing 33 people at Virginia Tech last week.
• World Changing: Why Earth Day has served its purpose and must be put to rest.
• Salon.com: A group of Southern Chefs is raising money to rebuild the New Orleans house and kitchen of Willie Mae, the queen of Creole cooking.
• Times Online: Will the May 5 release of Spiderman 3 be the salvation Sony needs (via Arts Journal)?
• New Statesman: Is there such a thing as "authenticity in popular music? (via AL Daily).
• Variety: Last week, Dave Chappelle performed a 6-hour stand-up comedy set, the longest in the history of the Laugh Factory, where the feat took place (via Kottke.org).
• A short history of the pocket hankerchief (via AL Daily).
• Information Week: Rolling Stone magazine is planning a social network (via Largehearted Boy)
• The 50th San Francisco International Film Festival begins this week

Some Thoughts on Porn:

Rob Long's always entertaining radio commentary Martini Shot has this brilliant insight about pornography a few weeks ago....

Pornography is a bellweather. People in search of dirty pictures blaze a trail of technology, which people in search of less dicey things – like Chinese guys lipsynching, people putting Mentos into Diet Coke, my funny cat, here we are at Carlsbad caverns, whatever -- follow, a year or two later. So if the pornography business is always a few steps ahead of the rest of the entertainment industry -- in distribution and business model -- why not check in with it and see what's up? What's up are online revenues, to almost $3 billion. What's down are DVD sales, by at least 15 percent. What's up are individual brands -- porn stars like Jenna Jameson creating their own branded content and what's down are production costs, a consequence of the fragmented, tighter margin business. In other words, what's going on in the pornography business is what's going to be going on in the rest of the entertainment industry in two years: costs pushed down; online distribution; individual brands eclipsing studio brands, like Tom Cruise buying MGM; smaller, more decentralized production and distribution. Everything, really, that you might expect.

Thought of the Day: "Orderly"

"Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work." --Gustav Flaubert (via Lewis Buzbee)

"Nirvana: A Biography"

LA Times Book Review

Song of the Week: "Theory of the Crows"

I haven't done a Song of the Week in many moons, mostly because uploading song-sized files in Typepad is a mid-sized pain in the tuchas. But thanks (hoepfully) to a minor feature on Last.fm, this will be easier. Plan on seeing more of these.

Song: "Theory of the Crows"

Artist: The National

Sound: Tom Waits-style ballad about working at a dot com as a metaphor for a failed relationship. You heard me right.

Source: Flux Blog

Listened to: 5 times on iTunes and counting.

Actions: My friend Buzz tipped me off about an upcoming National album. As a smaller step, who can name the next song of theirs I should download? And preferably it sounds like this one, which kicks tuchas.

Gleanings: Virgina, Sao Paulo, Wellesley

• Salon: Korean students at Virginia Tech fear racist attacks after identity of shooter is revealed.
• NY Times: Hilary Clinton's Wellesley College classmates reflect on what her presidential run means for their generation of women.
• The city of Sao Paulo, Brazil (population 11 million) has banned outdoor advertising, including billboards and all signage over a certain size. I'd like to see that the morning after (via Boing Boing).
• LA Times: Kirsten is slated to play Debbie Harry in a Blondie biopic. Fits are being thrown.

One Sentence Movie Reviews: "Sorry, Haters"

Sorry, Haters (2006): "No tragic event will give our lives the meaning we need to give to ourselves"

Notes: DVD comes with a roundtable discussion of the film's issues that's pretty dang interesting.

Yay Bookish Birthdays:

Cynthia Ozick, Thornton Wilder, Nick Hornby and Isak Dinesen. Wowee (via The Writer's Almanac).

Honoring Jackie Robinson...

Tomorrow marks the 60th anniversary of Jackie Robinson's debut in Major League Baseball and the beginning of the sport's long journey toward equality for all its players. On that day, Robinson told his wife Rachel "I'll be number 42 in case you have trouble picking me out."

In 1997, Major League Baseball agreed to retire Robinson's number in his honor. This year, to commerate the anniversary, every major league team will have at least one player wearing the number 42. Robinson's team, the Los Angeles Dodgers will have every player, coach and batboy wearing the number.

According to the NY Times article I read, The movement began spontaneously when Cinncinati Reds outfielder Ken Griffey Jr asked MLB's commisioner's if he could wear the number on opening day. Word spread from there, with Barry Bonds and Gary Sheffield making a similar request. Now the entirety of major league baseball is participating in some way.

It's tempting to look at Jackie Robinson's place in American history and charatcerize him as a holy noble, the Ghandi of Baseball who put his own safety and comfort on the line in the name of a higher cause. The reality is that Jackie Robinson was a ruthless competitor on the field, an outspoken political activist and a proud yet private man. Many of his biographers submit that he died younger than he should have (from diabetes complications) since he often pushed his body at the expense of its well being.

Jackie Robinson life was about work, both on and of the field, about setting goals, achieving them, them pushing further. His courage and understanding of his place in history are indisputable. But it would be wrong to give his memory a hug this Monday. He wouldn't have wanted it that way.

Why is there an Elephant Standing on my Face?

And why I sound this way...


MP3 File

R.I.P Kurt Vonnegut:

Kurt Vonnegut is gone. He was 84 and lived an extraordinary life.

I'm diving into my old paperback of Breakfast of Champions this week in his honor.

Read Recently: "The Republic of East LA" by Luis J. Rodriguez

Title: "The Republic of East L.A."

Author: Luis J. Rodriguez.

Synopsis: Collection of short stories all set in the historically latino neighborhoods of East Los Angeles. Rodriguez is a longtime journalist, writer and community activist.

Backstory: Book was send my way by its publisher, Rayo Books, some time ago. Picked it up in anticipation of my February drive down to Los Angeles.

Notes: As vivid as a midday sun. The stories read a little preachy at times, heavy on the telling, less so in the showing. But most redeem themselves in character and sense of place.

Verdict: I knew of Rodriguez from his autobiography "Always Running" which I picked up during on of my repeated binges on reading about LA gang life. For some reason, I was only able to read this book while in LA, so specific and clear were its characterizations. I'd say if this part of the world doesn't interest you, this book might have less pull. But if you read short stories just to get a taste a world you may not be familiar with and characters that seem equally served by truth and fiction, pick this one up. I'm glad I did.

Word of the Day: "Parity"

Parity (noun): "Equality, as in amount, status, or character"

Usage: Is NOT a sword fighting technique as much as I want to say "Parity and thrust!" everytime I hear it.

One Sentence Movie Reviews: "Helvetica"

Helvetica (2007): "A documentary about typography can be moving, even inspirational, even if you know nothing about the art of designing letters."

Notes: See this film. You will not be bored or let down. It's coming to a movie theater or film festival near you.

Read Recently: "Waterloo" by Karen Olsson

Title: "Waterloo"

Author: Karen Olsson.

Synopsis: A colorful group of people leading desultory yet redeeming lives in the college town of Waterloo, the former name of Austin, Texas.

Backstory: Picked up at the 2005 Texas Book Festival where I sat on a panel with the author. I read it in anticipation of heading back to Austin for my annual trip to South by Southwest.

Notes: Takes a minute to get moving but when it does, reads like a mellow Tales of the City wearing cowboy books.

Verdict: Another sandwich book. It's a little scattered at times and the controversy it thinks it's building to is a mirage. But it's characters are loveable, its pacing steady and smart and it's affection for Austin thick and generous. Since I lived there for three years and feel much the same way, I liked Karen Olsson's novel a good bit.

One Sentence Movie Reviews: "Big Rig"

Big Rig (2007): "The largest economies in the world are balanced precariously on the backs of the citizens we pay the least and treat the worst."

Notes: Documentary about truck drivers from the director of Scratch and Hype!. Seen in Austin during SXSW 2007 at the glorious Paramount theatre. Highly recommended.

On this Day in History (The Civil War):

On this day in 1865, General Robert E. Lee surrendered to General Ulysses S. Grant in Appomattox Court House, Virginia, thus ending the Civil War. The Writer's Almanac today had a lovely little write-up of the event.

After it was over, Grant said, "[I felt] sad and depressed at the downfall of a foe who had fought so long and valiantly and had suffered so much for a cause, though that cause was, I believe, the worst for which people ever fought." When the Union soldiers began to cheer and celebrate, Grant ordered them to be silent out of respect.

Lee rode back to his camp, and crowds of Confederate soldiers along the road began to weep as he passed. When he reached his tent, Lee said to the crowd, "Go home now, and if you make as good citizens as you have soldiers, you will do well, and I shall always be proud of you. Goodbye, and God bless you all."

Does this kind of respect for an enemy in battle even exist anymore? If no, isn't this a sign of backsliding rather than progress?

One Sentence Movie Reviews: "Reign Over Me"

Reign Over Me (2007): "The worst friendships remind of us of what we don't have instead of what we do."

Seen: At the Paramount Theatre in Austin during SXSW.

Gleanings: Warming, Naming, Debuting, Reality Hacking...

• LA Times: Thanks to global warming, a new study predicts that drought may become a permanent condition in the American Southwest. Super. (via Sam Felder).
• Where do companies get their names? I could read these all day (via Kottke.org).

• New York Magazine: What does making the cover of the New York Times Book Review say about the hopes for your book (via TEV)?
• Bookslut interview with New Yorker political writer Hendrik Hertzberg (via Eat the Press).
• Pranks.com, a blog dedicated to "pranks, hoaxes, culture jamming & reality hacking." (via Laughing Squid).

Word of the Day: "Sanguine"

Sanguine (adjective): "Cheerfully optimistic, hopeful, or confident."

Also: Reddish, ruddy. From same use of "Sang" to mean "red" or "blood" like sangre (blood in Spanish) or sangria, the drink.

Spinning the Truth:

I'm so glad I found this NY Times Op-Ed piece (via a link from Steve Rhodes), written by record store owners and blaming the music industry instead of illegal downloads for killing its business. Retailers can be myopic and defensive about the prevailing winds of change, coverage of them misty-eyed and naive.

Now read this...

The sad thing is that CDs and downloads could have coexisted peacefully and profitably. The current state of affairs is largely the result of shortsightedness and boneheadedness by the major record labels and the Recording Industry Association of America, who managed to achieve the opposite of everything they wanted in trying to keep the music business prospering. The association is like a gardener who tried to rid his lawn of weeds and wound up killing the trees instead.

In the late ’90s, our business, and the music retail business in general, was booming. Enter Napster, the granddaddy of illegal download sites. How did the major record labels react? By continuing their campaign to eliminate the comparatively unprofitable CD single, raising list prices on album-length CDs to $18 or $19 and promoting artists like the Backstreet Boys and Britney Spears — whose strength was single songs, not albums. The result was a lot of unhappy customers, who blamed retailers like us for the dearth of singles and the high prices.

The recording industry association saw the threat that illegal downloads would pose to CD sales. But rather than working with Napster, it tried to sue the company out of existence — which was like thinking you’ve killed all the roaches in your apartment because you squashed the one you saw in the kitchen. More illegal download sites cropped up faster than the association’s lawyers could say “cease and desist.”

And this...

The major labels wanted to kill the single. Instead they killed the album. The association wanted to kill Napster. Instead it killed the compact disc. And today it’s not just record stores that are in trouble, but the labels themselves, now belatedly embracing the Internet revolution without having quite figured out how to make it pay.

At this point, it may be too late to win back disgruntled music lovers no matter what they do. As one music industry lawyer, Ken Hertz, said recently, “The consumer’s conscience, which is all we had left, that’s gone, too.”

Clear, focused, insightful. I'm so happy two men who have every reason to feel screwed over and bitter have instead tried to speak truth to their own experience and learn from it.

Bravo Tony Sachs and Sal Nunziato. Us music fans could use a lot more like you.

Do you have a Moo Card?

So I'm thinking of getting myself a Moo Card and I'm trying to come up with some design ideas. I'd like to ask ya'll a favor..

If you've made yourself a Moo Card, would you send it to me? All it costs is a stamp.

Kevin Smokler
798 Stanyan St. #6
San Francisco, CA. 94117

After I get a few, I'd like to know whom you give your cards to and what you use to carry them.

Thanks friends.

Quote of the Day: "Self-Made"

"A self-made man is about as possible as a self-laid egg" --Mark Twain

LA in Reverse:

Had a great few days in Los Angeles to celebrate Passover with my parents. Got to check in on old friends and new, see a fantastic art exhibit and spend a lot of quality time with family. The hotel we were staying at was only a few blocks from the former site of the legendary Hollywood restaurant Chasen's. I was lucky enough to have one meal at Chasen's, dinner on my 20th birthday, before it closed in 1995. I took some time to walk around the parking lot and think about how much time has passed since then. I made a note to see the documentary about the restaurant's closing sometime soon but the truth is, it may be too sad for me.

I am a sucker for old Hollywood lore. Maybe it's because I worked at movie studios at the impressionable age of nineteen. Even though my second summer of it cured me of ever wanting to be that close to the business again, it's still the image I have in my head of Los Angeles, an unwieldy, howling, sunshock that still draws young people filled with crazy ideas, a place where, as Steve Martin wrote in his valentine L.A. Story, "They've taken a desert and turned it into their dreams." It's why, when I visit, I stick to old hangouts and places long out of fashion. I'm just not interested in the LA of now. I get so much more out of the LA of then.

Soon I'm going to go back to LA for a few days and have a completely manufactured old Hollywood experience: Stay at the Chateau Marmont (Harry Cohn said "if you must get in trouble, do it at the Marmont"), dine at Dantana's and Musso & Frank's, have a drink at the Rainbow, and take in a show at the Magic Castle. It won't resemble any sort of experience a real Los Angelino has but for a weekend, I can live with that. It'll be great fun for me. I may even wear a seersucker suit and walk with a gold topped cane.

Thought of the Day: "Pretending"

"To become something, you have to pretend to be it first." -- Johnathan Lethem (via TTBook)

The Trailer Master:

Last week my buddy Sam Felder tipped me off that The Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles was doing a retrospective of graphic designer Saul Bass's work for motion pictures. I've been a fan of Bass's work since reading his obituary in the New York Times magazine over a decade ago. I even wrote a paper on him for a History of Design class in graduate school.

Thing was, the exhibit closed on the day I arrived here to celebrate Passover with my family. And the museum closed two hours after my flight landed. And the museum was due north from the airport on the 405 freeway, an ugly snarl of plodding metal and fumes. I arrived with about 40 minutes to spare, sweating and out of breath. From driving.

Saul Bass was one of the towering figures of American graphic design, the man not only responsible for turning movie credit sequences into an art form (the vertical lines than open West Side Story, the Spiral-in-the-Eye of Vertigo, the cascading marquee lights of Casino, all his) but created some of the period's most enduring corporate iconography (the AT&T "Death Star" the United Airlines "Tulip" logo). Bass's posters for movies like Exodus, Anatomy of a Murder and Man with a Golden Arm lined the hall. In a small theater, around the corner, his trailers showed on a loop including his short film Why Man Creates which won an Oscar in 1968. I'd seen portions of it in Middle School so it brought back a lotta good memories.

While watching the trailer loop, a security guard came in and told me the museum was closing in 5 minutes. I told him as soon as he needed me to leave, I would. He then said "You're the last person to see this exhibit. It closes today." I thought about the ten years I had admired Ms. Bass's work, the study, and the research. I thought about finding a copy of Why Man Creates and showing it to my friends, or maybe collecting his movie posters someday and having them line the hall in my house.

I thought that there are few other artists I make this kind of effort to see, if only for 40 minutes and that this was the first thing I did on this trip to Los Angeles.

I thought about all those things, and man, did I feel lucky.

Gymastics. That Will Kick your Ass!

The skill of gymnastics meets the explosive force of karate. Gymkata!

Thank you to my friend Ernie for unearthing this memory I had supressed. One of the lengthy comments on the IMDB calls it "Enter The Mullet."

Thought of the Day: "Foolishness"

"Looking foolish does the spirit good." --John Updike (via The Writer's Almanac)

One Sentence Movie Reviews: "The Sting"

The Sting (1973): "A well executed con should be both delicious in its complexity and just plain delicious too."

Seen: At the magnificant and newly reopened El Cerrito Speakeasy.