Short Takes

Nostalgic for the Olympics? No need. World-class athleticism has moved to Broadway, where the women in Twyla Tharp’s troupe are tossing off the dance equivalent of triple-axels and the men could teach Shaun White a thing or two about innovative leaps. Okay, I’m not a neutral observer --- I was Ms. Tharp’s collaborator on her book, The Collaborative Habit: Life Lessons for Working Together --- nor am I a dance critic. But even a casual theatergoer can’t miss the level of artistry in Come Fly Away, a dance musical built around the music of Frank Sinatra. Set in a night club, dancers pair up, break up, form new relationships, reunite. The words of love, regret and romantic hope are all Frank’s, who has never sung better; his pristine vocal tracks are supported by a massive --- 19-piece --- live band. But it’s the dancers, who reprise every great move that Twyla Tharp has devised over half a century and add some new ones, who flew me to the moon and back. The show, now in previews, opens on March 25. 

The screenwriter of “Green Zone” (in theaters on March 12) describes it as “Three Days of the Condor” meets “Battle of Algiers.” Hmm. “Green Zone.” That’s Iraq. Title put you off? You avoid “political” movies? No matter --- you’ll see this one. It stars Matt Damon. And was directed by Paul Greengrass, who collaborated with Damon in two small films you may have seen: “The Bourne Supremacy” and “The Bourne Ultimatum.” (He’s also the director of a great, neglected film called Bloody Sunday.) If you haven't seen it, you have homework for “Green Zone” --- Battle of Algiers, the greatest political/war movie ever made. Your reward for Remedial Viewing? The “Green Zone” trailer…. 

 In 'White Hunter, Black Heart,' Clint plays film director John Huston. (Thanks for this, Larry.)

Josh Ritter’s new CD, So Runs the World Away, comes out May 4^th.  An advance copy has come my way --- and I play it so often it's wrecking my life. Not kidding. These songs are urgent and beautiful, worldly and ethereal --- they grab hard and don’t let go. Readers who live in cities where Josh and the Royal City Band will be playing and don’t snap up tickets now are going to feel extremely silly later. But don't listen to me; do listen to ‘Change of Time.’

Gustiamo --- the ultra-special Italian importer of artisanal food --- meets you half-way (maybe more). The ladies write:

10 years of a $15 flat shipping fee --- no more. If you place an order on Gustiamo.com, shipping charges are now calculated on the basis of how many items you are purchasing. This is how it works now: base shipping charge is $5.75, with $2.00 increments for every item and a maximum of $19.75. This means that if you buy only 1 item (hope not!), shipping charges are $7.75; if you buy 20 items (hope yes!), shipping charges are maximum $19.75. This is for ground delivery. Of course, if you are in a rush and prefer to have your order shipped overnight, you still have that option.

 For whatever reason, the image is static. The music certainly is not. 

Not much white wine is consumed in this household, largely because friends keep giving us Chardonnay. I know I’m a jerk about this, but really --- is Chardonnay a wine or a marketing strategy? Chardonnay is especially despised around here because I had a great cheap white once in Paris, a Bordeaux called Chateau Magence. It was thin as a Riesling, just more structured, and it packed a deceptively gentle punch. Sadly, I could never find this lovely white Graves again.
 
Now Chateau Magence is being distributed in the United States, and it’s even better than I remembered. In New York, K&D Wines (1366 Madison Avenue, phone: 212 289 1818) sells the 2008 Magence for $9.49 a bottle --- an insane price for a wine of this quality. (Buy a case, save 10%). If you live elsewhere, ask the best wine store in town to order it. I’ll completely understand if you lie about the price, but won’t you at least tell friends you learned about Magence from HeadButler.com? 

Kate was sister to Anna, mother to Rufus and Martha. She died, age 63, on January 18, 2010. Here she and Anna perform a song Anna wrote, “Heart Like a Wheel.”

For every great video, there is a parody.

Well, surely the happiest --- hang in for the entrance of the bride at the 4-minute mark. Now that is joy! (Views on YouTube: 38,600,000.)

Elizabeth Gilbert memoirs begin in crisis. In Eat, Pray, Love, she's  on her bathroom floor at three in the morning, desperate to end her marriage. In the just-published sequel, Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage, Felipe --- the Brazilian she loves too much to marry --- is detained by Homeland Security as he tries to enter the United States and, six hours of interrogation later, is jailed and deported. (In fact, not really “deported”, because he had a valid visa, a business in America and no criminal past; Homeland Security just decided he was coming to America too often.) 

How can Felipe re-enter the United States? Well, if he and Liz were married… Now, if you or I were writing Committed --- hell, if almost anyone were writing it --- it would be a closely reported narrative exposing the policies of our government in a time when terrorists seem to enter our country freely and grandmothers are strip-searched. It might include a meditation on love separated and love expatriated. And, I suppose, it would explain how two people who were marriage-phobic came to love the knot.

Committed, I am astonished to say, is not that book. Not even close. There are a few memorable vignettes, but it’s mostly a skim-the-surface tour of marriage through the ages. It lacks wisdom. It’s dull. There's nothing to connect the reader to Gilbert. But Viking is unleashing a Palinesque million-copy first printing, and American women are about to be buried under the hype.

Don’t say you weren’t warned.

[For those in the Cult of Liz, who surely believe I'm a jealous hack trying to damage a writer with a golden reputation, you might consider the first review I encountered. It describes Committed as "a strained book that’s part travelogue and part journal entries, but which mainly reads like a Western Civ term paper that was written at the last minute.” And the New York Times review? Dreadful: "She makes writing a book sound like busywork... the strain is as palpable as the voice is cute, and the drama is virtually nonexistent."]

 U2, Fergie --- and Mick Jagger. If you watch nothing else, watch the first 30 seconds for Jagger’s entrance. Maximum excitement, maximum presence. And a life lesson: This is how it’s done. 

Literary pundits have been weighing in on the ills of publishing, so I thought I’d take a shot. I'm a little tougher than most --- as I write in the first sentence of my screed, “Book publishing has been trying to commit suicide for all the decades I've been writing, and now it's finally getting some traction on that project.” My piece appears in Publisher’s Weekly, but you can read it here. 

Atop a list of 100 books, The Times declares, "It is our book of the decade; but it will outlast that judgment, too. It is a work of force and dark brilliance, a perfect expression of the early 21st-century’s terrors —- and of the hope we must all have that we shall not destroy ourselves, nor yet be destroyed." Yes, it’s this, the book you don’t want to read. 

The New York Times reports that hunger in America is at a 14-year high --and it’s 14 years only because the government didn’t start tracking hunger until 1995. That’s 49 million people who “lack consistent access to adequate food”, up 13 million from a year ago. One figure that leapt out at government officials --- and at me -- was the number of households in which children faced “very low food security”. It’s 506,000, which is up from 323,000 the previous year. 506,000 is the population of Oklahoma City! That’s just unacceptable to me. (As are the figures in my city: 1.3 million New Yorkers rely on emergency food.) So….in previous years, this site has approached the holidays with the attitude that, along with gifts, it’s good to share with people who could use some help. And I created lists of worthy causes, many suggested by you. I’ll share them again, but this year, I’d like to focus on feeding kids. If you have favorite hunger programs, please let me know. I’ll post my suggestions soon. 

I had no idea what I was getting myself into when I agreed to write an essay for The Good Man Project. My piece about my education in manhood --- which took place in the beds of some extravagantly kind women --- was one of 31 in this book; I thought it would get lost. But the editors are real go-getters, and so, on Tuesday, November 17th, at 7 PM, at The Gay Center, 208 West 13th Street, I’m going to be reading my essay and talking about it. My partner in this evening of reading and discussion is Cary Wong, who writes that his experiences with men have left him feeling better off being alone. I’m beyond ambivalent about exposing this NC-17 side of me, but I wrote this thing, I believe in it, and I might as well face the shocked faces of Butler readers who show up. It's free. For reservations, click here.