Blog
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Brooklyn Book Festival 2012
This past Sunday, the Brooklyn Book Festival was great; great weather and great turnout. A little recap:
I had a late start, arriving far later than I had intended (I’m not a morning person and life, of course, had some disruption). I bought a book of collected Poetry in Motion poems in postcards from the Poetry Society of America table. Such a nice find!
I collected a bunch of brochures on organizations and sampled a couple of panels. Sometimes I wonder about the wisdom of getting all that stuff, but then again, I get to learn about publishers and not-for-profits that I might one day want to support (say, if I were to win the lottery).
The panels I checked out included the following:
“Fright Write” panel, moderated by Sarah Weinman (on tumblr, “Off on a Tangent,” and previously of “Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind“), with panelists J.R. Angelella (author of Zombie), Victor LaValle (The Devil in Silver), and Chase Novak (Breed). This was a fascinating discussion on suspense and the modern take on monsters – and what the monsters say more about our society. I had especially wanted to check out this panel since (in no particular order) (a) it was hosted at my Alma Mater Law School, (b) I’ve noticed the publicity for Breed in the newspapers (like Janet Maslin’s book review in the NY Times, and Novak’s really Scott Spencer, with NPR coverage!) and in the subway, and (c) I’ve also noticed the publicity for Lavalle, who’s in the middle of the bookstores circuit. I’m not into the horror/suspense genre, but afterward, I was tempted to add these guys to my perpetually long to-read list.
I also caught a little bit of “The Center for Fiction Presents Beyond Earth,” wherein Naomi Novik (Temeraire series), N.K. Jemisin (the Inheritance trilogy), and Rick Bowes (From the Files of the Time Rangers) read brief selections from their works and discussed the art of world-building in fantasy writing and beyond; moderated by Noreen Tomassi, The Center for Fiction. I’m not into fantasy/alternate worlds stuff, but figured I’d check it out since I couldn’t get to check out “The Fragility of Electability: Campaigns, Character, and Messing with Texas,” at Borough Hall, where one could have seen the amazing Ta-Nehisi Coates moderating a discussion with Gail Collins, Jodi Kantor, and John MacArthur (Borough Hall was packed for the attendees for this one and basically “sold out”; oh well; Jodi Kantor’s book The Obamas is still on my to-read list).
I didn’t get to stay long for the fantasy readings though, as I wanted to meet up with friends and thus I joined my friends FC and P for the “Eats Empire” panel, which had Lowell Hawthorne (his book, The Baker’s Son), the father of Golden Krust, and food historian Robin Schulman (her book, Eat the City) discussing the impact of food on the local economy and urban revitalization; moderated by Carlo Scissura, CEO of Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce.
This panel was quite good. Food inspires a lot of thought, so to speak, since the inequity in food access and the difficulties of food businesses are such topical stuff lately. Questions like: how does a company like Golden Krust go from bringing a taste of Jamaica as a niche and to the mainstream; what does a family business do when the next generation does or doesn’t want to take over; what about the changing demographics in the community? And, what about the whole Whole Foods versus local supermarkets dilemma – less supermarkets means less service or options (as seen in Brooklyn with the recent closings of Key Food and Met Food – links to the Daily News’ reports of such) – and then what?
Actually, now I’m beginning to wonder if Schulman’s book is going to be on my to read list (then again, I never got around to reading Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation, since I couldn’t be sure how much I could stomach – yes, pun intended).
I sadly missed the panel/readings with the Poets Laureate (Tina Chang, Brooklyn Poet Laureate; Billy Collins, US Poet Laureate 2001-2003; Philip Levine, US Poet Laureate 2011-2012; and Ishmael Islam, NYC Youth Poet Laureate), and Tony Danza appearance, not to mention the appearances of Pete Hamill and Edwidge Danticat.
Anyway, bottom line is that it was a great Brooklyn Book Festival. A whole load of stuff and a great sense of community support.
And, up this coming Sunday is the Atlantic Antic, the biggest street festival. Brooklyn’s the place to be!
(cross-posted over at sswslitinmotion.tumblr.com)
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Marching On In September 2012
Because the summer hit won’t completely go away, and because the conductor of this orchestral/choral version of “Call Me Maybe,” is an APA, of course I’ll share this (saw this on Facebook via a friend). As the linked article by Edwin P. Sallan notes,
What should make this version of particular interest to us is the fact that its conductor, 22-year-old Arianne Abela is actually a Filipina, a niece of noted stage actor Bart Guingona. Arianne’s parents migrated to the US before she was born and she also has a 14-year-old sister named Krista who actually edited the video.
In a 2008 article published by the Daily Hampshire Gazette, Arianne was born with physical disabilities brought about by a rare condition called amniotic banding syndrome, which caused her left leg to be amputated. Some of her fingers on both hands are either missing or fused together and there are toes missing on her right foot.
Thankfully, those physical defects didn’t stop her from pursuing a career in music successfully as she went on to graduate at the Yale School of Music and Yale Institute of Sacred Music.
Very cool!
FC shared this interesting item over on Facebook: Rachel L. Swarns writes in the NY Times about how second or third generation Americans try to hold on to their heritage via food. It’s a fascinating and bittersweet article – we want to remember what our grandparents or parents made, but assimilation is hard to fight and maybe we can’t quite get the food to taste the same or it gets Americanized (or we might have even grown up with Americanized versions of the food because of lack of ingredients or whatnot).
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Taking a Pause; Remember and Reflect
As we did last year.
Try to remember the kind of September
When life was slow and oh, so mellow.
Try to remember the kind of September
When grass was green and grain was yellow.
-“Try to Remember,” from The Fantasticks.
(cross-posted over at sswslitinmotion.tumblr.com)
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August 2012: Farewell to the London Olympics 2012
Well, it has been too long. Dust off triscribe a little and do a little blogging…
An Olympic wrap up (oh, come on, why not; it just ended this past Sunday night and surely we’re all still in Olympic withdrawal?).
Of course I got all excited for the the quadrennial (yep, I looked it up) craziness that is the Olympics. I kind of liked the mascots from Beijing and I really liked the mascots from Vancouver. Didn’t get into the London mascots – they do lack that furry cuteness thing that sells boatloads of products (see here for this Slate post on Olympic mascots). Guess the British Olympic Committee didn’t want to do the usual Lion and Unicorn thing?
On the other hand, the photo of Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt prancing with the mascots, after he won the gold – that was kind of funny and priceless.
The Opening Ceremony was definitely something weird and different. Director Danny Boyle bringing in the (fake) Queen to jump out of a helicopter with a parachute (along side Daniel Craig’s James Bond) – well – really? Stunt doubles? The Queen? Oh well. And, sure, I get that you want to celebrate Bond the British icon, but how silly to be timed before the next movie.
I did kind of liked the whole celebration of evolution of pastoral Britain to Industrial Revolution, with actor Kenneth Branagh and odd performance arts stuff.
I was a little pissed with the NBC broadcast (they apparently cut a moment of silence and their context of explanations wasn’t very good).
And, I thought that it was weird that Danny Boyle chose to celebrate the British National Health Care system and British children’s literature (the latter was something I understood; the former – not really). Like everybody else, I didn’t know what to make of the jumping in the bed kids (who are taken care of by the national health people and then somehow dream of … Voldemort. Nice of J.K. Rowling to make her appearance though).
The formal parade of nations was mostly fun, with the usual loads of useless trivia from Matt Lauer, Meredith Vieira, and Bob Costas; but I felt exhausted by watching those poor lines of volunteers drumming and dancing to any beat. That the audio system kept blasting loads of British pop was a relief surely – Amy Winehouse, BeeGees, U2, Eric Clapton, etc., to keep those drummers’ energy going. I really gave the Brits credit for having a pretty awesome soundtrack.
Rowan Atkinson as Mr. Bean? Really? But, not Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry? And, the 1st presentation of many of the endless broadcast of the music from “Chariots of Fire.”
In the end, you couldn’t beat Sir Paul McCartney, who led the biggest sing along of “Hey Jude” at the end of the Opening Ceremony. Although, really, Danny Boyle, all of that Opening Ceremony stuff made me want to watch “Trainspotting” again, versus the “Slumdog Millionaire” – the campy “We love the United Kingdom” and optimism and hope – it got to be a bit much and made me yearn for the crazy Scotland of “Trainspotting.”
On the other hand, Boyle did an impressive job of showing off the diversity of modern British demographics, with all the different people dancing and making the Opening Ceremony possible.
The Olympics itself was great stuff. Criticizing NBC’s broadcast became something of a sport in and of itself. I could pile on, but I’ll choose not to waste more of the Internet on that.
(oh, ok, some rambling here: hated the dubious amount of limited live stuff at the beginning of the Olympics; the schizophrenic “Here’s gymnastics/cycling/back to volleyball” rotation at night, even though I understand you’d rather not have us sit through five hours of a regular session of gymnastics by itself – but I hated how I had no context and no understanding of how, say, the British men won a bronze in gymnastics; and mindless storytelling and controversy generation – which was a shame, because when the story of an athlete was actually told, it got to be told well – and not just the American athletes’ stories).
If the primetime NBC coverage is going to be a highlights show, because everything already happened (you know, because of time zone differences), then please be a great highlights show, not a half-ass one. I pretty much agreed with NPR’s Linda Holmes on her post on the coverage.
NY Times sports bloggers posted this great item of the US Swim team doing their own routine of Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Call Me Maybe.”
I’m probably not going to be the first or last to say this, but the US Swim team is made up of some ridiculously attractive people. Hmm.
Sure, there was Michael Phelps and his drive for Olympics glory. But, because this is triscribe, I especially got to give a hand to Lia Neal and Nathan Adrian for their Olympics swimming efforts. Lia Neal is the 2nd African-American swimmer to make the team, but also half-Chinese (see here on the profile of her by NY Times’ William Rhoden – h/t: FC via Facebook); Neal probably is way more fluent in Chinese than most of us on triscribe, I’d hazard guessing. Nathan Adrian is also half-Chinese. Hapas!
Oh, and other great Olympics stories: David Boudia, winning the gold after a terrible earlier round of diving; Ashton Eaton in the decathalon; Mo Farah in the long distance running; Oscar Pistorius of South Africa and his amazing legs; and of course Gabby Douglas for winning all-around gold in women’s gymnastics – the first African-American woman to do this, with a Chinese-American coach (an American story indeed!).
It also never ceases to amaze me that the Olympics makes me pay attention to sports that I otherwise wouldn’t care about. I caught snippets of the synchronized swimming; thought those water polo men were buff; and while I still don’t understand trampoline, BMX biking (which was kind of entertaining) or that other cycling stuff (looking at you, team pursuit), I couldn’t pull away from the tv either.
A moment when I felt old watching the Olympics: I was watching the diving and saw USA’s Troy Dumais (finally won a bronze in 2012) and Canada’s Alexandre Despatie (Montreal’s own). I was all “Hey, haven’t they been at it for a real long time now?”; then I checked online and it turned out that they’ve both been in Olympics since 2000. Wow. Good for them. (see here for a poignant story on Despatie from the Montreal Gazette).
Heartwarming essay by NY Times Frank Bruni on “The Soul of the Olympics” – how, even for a brief time, the Olympics gives us hope.
British rock/pop/fashion was totally celebrated during the Closing Ceremony. I didn’t have much to say on the fashion, but I mostly liked the music. It turned out that watching it live streaming online was far more comprehensive, since (of course) NBC messed up with the editing (you might not care for some of the bands, but I’d just like a full show, with no stupid editing. Or a half hour cutaway to a pilot of a sitcom I won’t watch). And, how did this become the Olympics of Ryan Seacrest? (oh well; here’s to the present/future of American tv).
If it wasn’t obvious there: I really wasn’t happy that NBC did what it did to the Vancouver Olympics: split up the Closing Ceremony with the new sitcom. Geez, NBC. This might not motivate people to watch the new show by fall. (see here for a summary review from NPR)
But still: Spice Girls! Liam Gallagher singing “Wonderwall” with his Not-Oasis band! The Who! Tons of great 1980’s and 1990’s stuff! (and George Michael, and a tribute to Queen and John Lennon). Oh, and Eric Idle, but not the rest of Monty Python.
Now, we wait for Rio 2016. (or at least Sochi 2014).
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Happy July 4th!
BBC America’s doing a Star Trek: The Next Generation marathon. And, TCM‘s airing the annual showing of the musical “1776” (see here for the TCM entry on it). But, it is nice outside. What to do, what to do…
(cross-posted to sswslitinmotion.tumblr.com.)
