Hawaii is 5,000 miles away. On a muggy summer night, the Lower East Side feels just as distant. But the party for the paperback edition of "Fierce Heart: The Story of Makaha and the Soul of Hawaiian Surfing" [To buy the book from Amazon, click here. For the Kindle version, click here] featured not only a rare New York appearance by its author, my friend Stuart Coleman, but a performance by authentic hula dancers. With the bartender pushing fruity drinks and surf movies in the background, distance vanished, and it was almost possible to believe we were in the vicinity of Makaha, an area on Oahu’s wild western coast where the surf and the people are generally considered too wild for tourists. In his book, Coleman profiles some of the area’s greatest cult figures — and their very appealing subculture. If Buffalo Keaulana, Israel Kamakawiwo’ole and Sistah Rell aren’t even “Jeopardy” answers for you, you may want to do your remedial Hawaiian reading here.
Beautifully furnished one-bedroom on 87th St. between West End and Riverside. Pre-war building, 800 sq. ft., eat-in kitchen, elevator. All utilities (that’s wi-fi and cable, too) included. One-year sublet, $2,700 per month. Write KateHamptonNYC@AOL.com.
The Miles Franklin Literary Award is the most prestigious literary prize in Australia. Funded by the author of "My Brilliant Career," it’s awarded to "the novel of the year which is of the highest literary merit and presents Australian life in any of its phases." This year’s winner: Peter Temple, for "Truth." To quote the judges: "’Truth’ disorients the reader with multiple plots and elliptical exchanges: blank spaces occupy almost as much room on the page as the print. In this way Temple takes a popular genre and transforms it into a radical literary experiment in realism and fiction. There is minimal exposition of plot and character; rather the narrative is embedded in voice and dialogue rich with colloquialisms and police lingo, heard in grabs from radio, in cars, on mobile phones, and in conversations across always crowded rooms. We learn to trust the accumulation of fragments and scenes. Few contemporary fiction writers grasp the speech and silences of the Australian vernacular as effectively as Temple." But then you knew most of this from my review. To read my take on "Truth" — and to buy the book — click here.
My pal Craig Davis, once lord of creativity at JWT, moved back to his native Australia to become Chief Creative Officer at Publicis Mojo — and launch the first web site to link advertising with idealism. Brandkarma.com asks: Oil spills, product recalls — can brands be a force for good? And then people around the world use the site to offer opinions, brand by brand. Now, as the ad world convenes at Cannes, Craig asks you to join — and influence — the conversation by sharing just six words. He asks: With resources imperiled in an increasingly crowded world, what matters most to you? There’s a little box at the top of the screen. Think, type, hit send. And thanks.
Eric Balderas, who is about to be a sophomore at Harvard, has the classic biology major’s dream — cure cancer. This month, when exams ended, he flew home to San Antonio. At the airport on his way back, his Harvard photo ID didn’t get him past the TSA. That is because Eric was born in Mexico and came to the United States, with his mother, as a very young child. Which makes him an illegal immigrant. Early in July, the Department of Homeland Security will decide if he’s to be deported to Mexico. But let Eric explain…. (Thanks, Digby.)
Summer. Brain rot rules the sixplex. Is there any movie worth seeing? Two. First up: "Winter’s Bone," my favorite movie of the year. (To read my rave and find a theater, click here.)
And not to overlook: "The Secret in Their Eyes." From Argentina. It won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film. Playing in cities now. Like "Winter’s Bone," well worth a car trip, if necessary.
Jonathan Alter writes: “Obama had just gotten back from Asia, and he said that he had just spoken with the President of South Korea who had told him that his biggest problem that he was facing domestically that the parents were very concerned that their kids were only learning English starting in 2nd grade and not in 1st grade and he was under pressure to import thousands of new English teachers. And Obama says, ‘This is what we’re up against in international competition.’ And then he left that session and did interviews with the American press and all they wanted to know was: ‘Had he read Sarah Palin’s book?’ And then he shook his head and, I’ll never forget that, he shook his head in dismay and kind of muttering said, ‘True story. True story.’”
When I read that, I thought there must be thousands of stories with the same punch line: The American Empire just loves quicksand. And then I see something like this — kids at Ohio State creating a flash mob as they perform a neatly choreographed version of “Don’t Stop Believing” — and I think, “How great, how fun.” (Thanks, Linda.)
I reviewed "Steinbrenner: The Last Lion of Baseball" for Bloomberg Business Week. It was a splendid opportunity to be kind to the failing 80-year-old majority owner of the New York Yankees. I didn’t take it. Read it here.
Sarah Simms Rosenthal’s father could be witty and warm. But she always had to tiptoe around him; when he was in a bad mood, his rage filled the room, and, more often than not, it was directed against her. Their “broken” father-daughter relationship cost her plenty — a predictably heavy loss of security and love. So it was probably inevitable that she grew up to earn a PhD. in social work and gravitate to patients who shared her issue. Now she’s written "The Unavailable Father" (published as a paperback and in a Kindle edition). It’s a straightforward self-help book — Rosenthal identifies six flavors of absentee fathers (disapproving, mentally ill, substance-abusing, unreliable, abusive and absent), presents case histories and suggests paths to recovery — that should kickstart healing for confused and damaged women. For an overview, visit her web site.
Three weeks before he died — and long before The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was published — the then-unknown novelist spoke with a journalist. Among the revelations Stieg Larsson shared: “I thought of Pippi Longstocking.”
Before Liam Hurley was Josh Ritter’s drummer, he was a puppeteer at the Central Park children’s theater. Now he’s taken "The Curse," a song from Josh’s new CD, and painstakingly made an animated video. Love Josh, loathe Josh, no matter — I don’t see how you can fail to be knocked out by the gorgeousness of this video.
Peter Wolf’s brief tour is ending, and weren’t we lucky to see him. He looks like a stoned hipster out of an R. Crumb comic — skinny, tall, all in black, dark shades, dangling hair, porkpie hat — but as a showman, there’s none sharper. He’s got bouncing leg disease that takes him all over the stage, his karate chops could take Elvis down, he’s the heir to James Brown in microphone manipulation — if he works on his spin moves, he could do some damage as an NFL running back. Soul, R&B, country: He did it all. My wife nailed it: “This is like watching Mick Jagger… from 10 feet away.” Okay, you missed him. Make do with Midnight Souvenirs and Sleepless.
Having been married a few times, I was asked by a friend at the Brennan Center for Justice to review Laura Bush’s memoir. My piece is only a little political, so maybe those of you who remember Laura and/or George fondly can stand to read it without gagging. Anyway, it’s here.
Steve Hannah, CEO of The Onion, is not especially funny. But he is damn smart and a great judge of character, as this New York Times interview suggests. Ten years ago, he met one of my very few heroes, Lt. Gen. Harold Moore, co-author of one of my favorite books, We Were Soldiers Once … and Young. The book about leadership they were going to write didn’t happen, but they spent enough time together for Hannah to learn some valuable lessons. (There are many more — please read the whole, brief interview.) A sample:
He taught me that you never, ever do anything to deprive a human being of their dignity in work, in life. Always praise in public and criticize in private. You might be tempted, for example, when you’re letting someone go, to say something that would diminish the value of their work. Don’t ever do that.
And he taught me that when you’re faced with something that’s really difficult and you think you’re at the end of your tether, there’s always one more thing you can do to influence the outcome of this situation. And then after that there’s one more thing. The number or possible options is only limited by your imagination. Hal often said, “Imagination is enormously important, enormously important.”
This is Hal Moore, accepting an award — in 50 seconds.
A publishing imprint I admire releases just one book a month — a sane strategy in a wobbly business. The June book: a memoir by Brit critic and man about town, Christopher Hitchens, Hitch-22. I suspect the reviews by American writers will be good to glowing — Hitchens is nothing if not witty. Alas, I have always had a visceral dislike for this guy and his smarter-than-you-are, snottier-than-you’ll-ever-dare-to-be style, so I won’t be reading or reviewing it. But I thought an English critic might have a useful take on the book, so here’s Lynn Barber. Punch line: “Hitch admits right at the end that Hitch-22 is ‘a highly selective narrative’. It is indeed — and it is the stuff he leaves out that worries me.”
The 5/20 show was sold out well before the CD was released. (Some tickets are available for the 5/19 show.) If you’re one of the lucky and/or smart people with tickets for the 20th — the night my wife and I are going — and want to make some kind of Head Butler field trip out of the evening, let me know. (If you live in a city that hasn’t seen Josh this time out, here’s the concert schedule.) Below, for those who still are unconvinced, what you could call an audition video.
When last we checked in with Michael Gross, author of Rogues’ Gallery: The Secret Story of the Lust, Lies, Greed, and Betrayals that Made the Metropolitan Museum of Art, he was being flogged by the Museum and its trustees for writing such a cheeky book. The Met wasn’t selling the book in its gift shop; Annette de la Renta had the vapors. I thought this was pigheaded, so I wrote about it. Now Gross has unearthed a new development: Oral histories of Met employees that he would have liked to have read — histories that were to have been made public — have been buried by the Museum. Okay, so Michael Gross is stirring the pot just as his book is published in a paperback edition. But when is the Met going to grow up?
Nicholas Kristof writes in the New York Times that the President’s Cancer Panel is releasing a disturbing report. The key finding: “Only a few hundred of the more than 80,000 chemicals in use in the United States have been tested for safety, Many known or suspected carcinogens are completely unregulated.” Don’t look to industry to seek more regulation. So what can you do to protect your family and yourself? This suggestion leapt out at me: “Filter drinking water.” After researching the convenient methods, my wife and I chose the PUR 2-Stage Dispenser.
