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readbykena-blog · 7 years ago

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13 years - 305 books

I am an avid reader and friends frequently ask me what I am reading. Here I will try and post a brief review of each book I read. To begin with here is a list of books I have read over the last 13 years. Feel free to ask me any questions.

2017: (22)

-Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

-Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O'Dell

-Corporate Communication, Theory & Practice by Joep Cornelissen

-Mariette in Ecstasy by Ron Hansen

-Where'd You Go Bernadette by Maria Semple

-A Long Walk to Water by Linda Sue Park

-Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance

-Theorizing Crisis Communication by Timothy Sallow and Matthew Seeger

-Infamous Scribblers: The Founding Fathers and the Rowdy Beginnings of American Journalism by Eric Burns

-The Global Public Relations Handbook by Krishnamurthy Sriramesh and Dejan Vercic

-The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

-When My Name was Keoko by Linda Sue Park

-The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales by Oliver Sacks

- Introducing Communication Research by Donald Treadwell

- We are never meeting in real life by Samantha Irby

- Ethics in Public Relations by Kathy Fitzpatrick and Carolyn Bronstein

- The Gene: An Intimate History by Siddhartha Mukherjee

- Freedom by Jonathan Franzen

- Origin by Dan Brown

- What Happened by Hillary Rodham Clinton

- Social Media Communication by Jeremy Harris Lipshultz

- A Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela

2016: (20)

-A Renegade History of the United States by Thaddeus Russell

-Being Mortal by Atul Gawande

-The Underground Abductor by Nathan Hale

-Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote

-The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros

-The Other Wes Moore by Wes Moore

-The Speechwriter by Barton Swaim

- In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

-The Aviator's Wife by Melanie Benjamin

-The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah

-But What If We're Wrong by Chuck Klosterman

-Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

-Brewster by Mark Slouka

-Rosemary The Hidden Kennedy Daughter by Kate Clifford Larson

-The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman

-The Diary of a Nobody by George and Weedon Grossmith

-Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

-The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid

-The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

-A Man Called Ove by Frederick Backman

2015: (29)

-All The Truth Is Out by Matt Bai

-Double Down by Mark Halperin and John Heilemann

-The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri

-Dad is Fat by Jim Gaffigan

-Yes Please by Amy Poehler

-A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines

-All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

-The Girls of Atomic City by Denise Kiernan

-The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

-To Have and Have Not by Ernest Hemingway

-In Our Time by Ernest Hemingway

-A Country Doctor by Franz Kafka

-The Garden of Eden by Ernest Hemingway

-Persuading Scientists by Hamid Ghanadan

-The Splendid Things We Planned by Blake Bailey

-Modern Romance by Aziz Ansari

-A Heartbreaking Word of Staggering Genius by David Eggers

-Polio, An American Story by David Oshinsky

-The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer

-Go Set A Watchman by Harper Lee

-One Summer America, 1927 by Bill Bryson

-Brain on Fire by Susannah Catalan

-The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

-The Making of Modern Medicine by Michael Bliss

-People I Want to Punch in the Throat by Jen Mann

-Internal Medicine by Terrence Holt

-The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri

-The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni

-The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd

2014: (10)

-David and Goliath by Malcolm Gladwell

-Why Grizzly Bears Should Wear Underpants by The Oatmeal

-Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer

-Wild by Sheryl Strayed

-Stiff by Mary Roach

-An Abundance of Katherines by John Green

-Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi

-Dataclysm by Christian Rudder

-Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracey Kidder

-Columbine by Dave Cullen

2013: (13)

-The Next Best Thing by Jennifer Weiner

-The Path Between The Seas by David McCullough

-Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls by David Sedaris

-I Wear the Black Hat by Chuck Klosterman

-Dreams from My Father by Barack Obama

-A Hologram For The King by Dave Eggers

-Inferno by Dan Brown

-The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson

-Heads in Beds by Jacob Tomsky

-Monkey Mind by Daniel Smith

-The Brief Wondrous Live of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

-Truth in Advertising by John Kenny

-The Cell Game by Alex Prud'Homme

2012: (16)

-Walden by Henry David Thoreau

-Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau

-The Visible Man by Chuck Klosterman

-Overtreated By Shannon Brownlee

-Listen To Your Heart by Fern Michaels (TERRIBLE BOOK!)

-The Ten, Make That Nine Habits of Very Organized People. Make That Ten, by Steve Martin

-The Pleasure of My Company by Steve Martin

-Baby Proof by Emily Giffen

-Natural Experiments of History by Jared Diamond

-The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein

-The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander

-Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson

-Secrets of The Baby Whisperer by Tracy Hogg

-A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson

-The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

-Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver

2011: (20)

-Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson

-I Feel Bad About My Neck by Nora Ephron

-Tinkers by Paul Harding

-How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie

-What the Dog Saw by Malcolm Gladwell

-The Jungle by Upton Sinclair

-The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee

-An Object of Beauty by Steve Martin

-Tea Time For the Traditionally Built by Alexander McCall Smith

-Bossypants by Tina Fey

-The Pearl by John Steinbeck

-Summer Sisters by Judy Blume

-Crucial Conversations by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillian and Al Switzler

-Beautiful Boy by David Sheff

-The Paris Wife by Paula McLain

-Of Thee I Zing by Laura Ingraham

-A Dog's Purpose by W. Bruce Cameron

-Rules of Civility by Amor Towles

-The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

-Trust Me I'm Dr. Ozzy by Ozzy Osbourne

2010: (26)

- History's Worst Decisions and the people who made them by Stephen Weir

- Junky by William S. Burroughs

- One Fifth Avenue by Candace Bushnell

- Killing Yourself to Live by Chuck Klosterman

- Food Rules by Michael Pollan

- Noah's Compass by Anne Tyler

- Breathing Lessons by Anne Tyler

- Drive by Daniel Pink

-The Help by Kathryn Stockett

-The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

-US Americans Talk About Love Edited by John Bowe

-For You Mom, Finally by Ruth Reichl

-The Financial Lives of the Poets by Jess Walter

-Cowboys Are My Weakness by Pam Houston

-The Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larsson

-Barrel Fever by David Sedaris

-You Are Not a Stranger Here by Adam Haslett

-Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck

-The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

-The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest by Stieg Larsson

-I'm a Stranger Here Myself by Bill Bryson

-The Heretic's Daughter by Kathleen Kent

-Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk by David Sedaris and Ian Falconer

-Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller

-A Girl Named Zippy by Haven Kimmel

2009: (22)

• Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

• Remember Me? By Sophie Kinsella

• A Long Way Gone, memoirs of a boy soldier by Ishmael Beah

• Wishful Drinking by Carrie Fisher

• Slummy Mummy by Fiona Neill

• Born on a Blue Day by Daniel Tammet

• Crawfish Mountain by Ken Wells

• My Horizontal Life by Chelsea Handler

• Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee

• A Fraction of the Whole by Steve Toltz

• Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse

• Mistakes Were Made, by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson

• Gertrude by Herman Hesse

• The Sportswriter by Richard Ford

- Born to Run by Christopher McDougall

- The Almost Moon by Alice Sebold

- Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh

- When You are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris

- Holidays on Ice by David Sedaris

- Bright-Sided by Barbara Ehrenreich

-The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown

-Super Freakonomics by Levitt and Dubner

2008: (21)

• The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama

• Inside the Minds, The Art of Public Relations by CEOs

• Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

• Savage Inequalities by Jonathan Kozol

• The Pig Did It by Joseph Caldwell

• The Known World by Edward P. Jones

• Dark Roots by Cate Kennedy

• East of Eden by John Steinbeck

• Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susan

• Wired by Bob Woodward

• One Pill Makes You Smaller by Lisa Dierbeck

• A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley

• Secrets of the Baby Whisperer by Tracy Hogg

• Pound for Pound by F.X. Toole

• All the Way Home by David Giffels

• Bonk by Mary Roach

• In Patagonia by Bruce Chatwin

• Then We Came To The End by Joshua Ferris

• The Sea by John Banville

• Downtown Owl by Chuck Klosterman

• Female Chauvinist Pigs, Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture by Ariel Levy

2007: (28)

• Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

• 1984 by George Orwell

• What Ifs? Of American History edited by Robert Cowley

• The Executioner’s Song by Norman Mailer

• Rabbit, run by John Updike

• Life of Pi by Yann Martel

• The Armies of the Night by Norman Mailer

• Pigtopia by Kitty Fitzgerald

• FiSH by Stephen Lundin, Harry Paul and John Christensen

• The Witness for the Prosecution and Other Stories by Agatha Christie

• 1776 by David McCullough

• Summer at Tiffany by Marjorie Hart

• Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

• Absurdistan by Gary Shteyngart

• Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

• Fall on Your Knees by Ann-Marie MacDonald

• Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver

• Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis

• The Memory Keeper’s Daughter by Kim Edwards

• Men at Arms by Evelyn Waugh

• A Dog Year by Jon Katz

• 1491 New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles Mann

• IV by Chuck Klosterman

• Devil in the Details by Jennifer Traig

• The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith

• The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan

• Born Standing Up by Steve Martin

• No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy

2006: (27)

• Collapse, How societies choose to fail or succeed by Jared Diamond

• The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman

• Freakonomics by Levitt & Dubner

• Harry and Ike by Steve Neal

• State of Denial by Bob Woodward

• Crossroads in American History by James McPherson & Alan Brinkley

• The Lexus & The Olive Tree by Thomas Friedman

• The Lessons of History by Will & Ariel Durant

• Strategery by Bill Sammon

• Still Life With Woodpecker by Tom Robbins

• Japanese Canadian Redress, The Toronto Story

• The Untold Story of the Yom Kippur War by Howard Blum

• The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles

• Cat Among the Pigeons by Agatha Christie

• Red Weather by Pauls Toutonghi

• Wifey by Judy Blume

• Frantic Transmissions to and from LA by Kate Braverman

• Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs

• Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald

• A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh

• The Shipping News by Annie Proulx

• The Curious Incident of the dog in the Night-time by Mark Hadden

• A Million Little Pieces by James Frey

• Marley & Me by John Grogan

• The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

• Lipstick Jungle by Candace Bushnell

• Boni y Tigre by Kathrin Sander

2005: (51)

• Guns, Germs, And Steel by Jared Diamond

• The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell

• Blink by Malcolm Gladwell

• Sex, Drugs, And Cocoa Puffs by Chuck Klosterman

• The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf

• A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf

• Mary Magdalene by Lynn Picknett

• Hell's Angels by Hunter S. Thompson

• The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe

• Bob Dylan Chronicles Volumn 1 by Bob Dylan

• Smashed by Koren Zailckas

• Culture Shock Costa Rica by Claire Wallerstein

• The Know-It-All by A.J. Jacobs

• Dress Your Family in Corduroy & Denim by David Sedaris

• Naked Pictures of Famous People by Jon Stewart

• All the President's Men by Bernstein & Woodward

• The Final Days by Bob Woodward & Carl Bernstein

• The Secret Man by Bob Woodward

• Shadow (5 Pres. & the Legacy of Watergate by Bob Woodward

• All Politics is Local, by Tip O'Neill

• What's the Matter With Kansas? (How Conservatives Won the Heart of America) by Thomas Frank

• Don't think of an Elephant by George Lakoff

• Confessions of a Political Junkie by Hunter S. Thompson

• America The Book by Jon Stuart

• One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey

• The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett

• Tortilla Flat by John Steinbeck

• Cannery Row by John Steinbeck

• Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

• The Call of the Wild and White Fang by Jack London

• Animal Farm by Goerge Orwell

• Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnecut

• The Stranger by Albert Camus

• Empire Falls by Richard Russo

• The Great Fire by Shirly Hazzard

• A Patchwork Planet by Anne Tyler

• The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

• Skirt and the Fiddle by Tristian Egolf

• Drive Like Hell by Dallas Hudgens

• The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown

• Angels & Demons by Dan Brown

• Deception Point by Dan Brown

• Digital Fortress by Dan Brown

• The Ship of Brides by Jojo Moyers

• Angry Housewives by Lorna Landvik

• The Celestine Prophecy by James Redfield

• Loving Che by Ana Menendez

• Wolves in Chic Clothing by Carrie Karasyov & Jill Kargman

• Citizen Girl by Emma McLaughlin & Nicola Kraus

• And Sister by Sophie Kinsella

• Trading Up by Candace Bushnell

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chicagoindiecritics · 5 years ago

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New from Every Movie Has a Lesson by Don Shanahan: REWIND REVIEW: Where’d You Go, Bernadette

(Image: cnn.com)

For an occasional new segment, Every Movie Has a Lesson will cover upcoming home media releases combining an “overdue” or “rewind” film review, complete with life lessons, and an unboxed look at special features.

WHERE’D YOU GO, BERNADETTE

There are parallels between which filmmaker Richard Linklater always seems to operate. It was either “free-wheeling fun” or “poignant realism” with “scant middle ground.” Call them Party Linklater and Deep Linklater. The question mark skipped from the title of Where’d You Go, Bernadette can be placed in the sentence of which Linklater did we get? Welcome to the uncharted and unexpected “scant middle ground” where grandiose fiction is the party and odd eccentricity is the depth.

Neurotically charming, yet misshapen in many ways, Where’d You Go, Bernadette is wholly unique from the Texan and Hollywood outsider. The movie has the equal ability to disarm and disgust depending on your perspective or experience with the Maria Semple source material. Non-readers will float with the staccato blustering and the Antarctic kayak currents of fancy. Ardent fans will wonder where all the scintillating mystery went that gave merit to all the haphazard happenings beset on the family of narrator Balakrishna Branch, affectionately known as “Bee” and played by debuting talent Emma Nelson.

ANTICIPATORY SET AND PRIOR KNOWLEDGE:

Bee is the uber-precocious 15-year-old daughter of a pair of brilliant-minded, attracted opposites. Her father is the Microsoft-backed tech innovator Elgin Branch, played by Billy Crudup, earning industry kudos and TED Talk stages with groundbreaking new mind-to-text recognition software. The extroverted and borderline workaholic is matched by his reclusive and agoraphobic wife and Bee’s titular mother, played by Academy Award winner Cate Blanchett and her bangs. Detailed by exposition-minded video essays viewed by characters on screen, Bernadette Fox was once the toast of Los Angeles and the most brilliant architectural design savant of her generation before professional disappointment burned and stomped over her creativity.

LESSON #1: “THE BRAIN IS A DISCOUNTING MECHANISM” — Bernadette’s own explanatory observations of self-diagnosis are fueled by empirical study, plenty of science, and a side of doubting bullshit. It’s true that the brain looks for risk and signals accordingly. To call it a design flaw for danger instead of joy, however, is where you squint at the woman’s nuttiness to a degree. Still, this background and Cate’s delivery of it all sheds light on the movie’s nervous system.

For years, Bernadette has buried herself in two projects: being a mom and endlessly tinkering with restoring a huge derelict old school building into the family’s home in the Seattle burbs. Anxiety has grown into to insomnia and a racing heart during social and domestic confrontations. Her most common clashes are anything requiring Bernadette to interact and keep up with the joneses of the hoity-toity private school Bee attends (something matching of Semple’s inspiration). That judgy crowd is led by the granola and snooty next door neighbor Audrey (Kristen Wiig) and her minion Soo-Lin (TV actress Zoe Chao) who works with Elgin.

LESSON #2: DIFFERING PERSPECTIVES ON FAILING LIVES — We learn a great deal about where Elgin and Bernadette stand in a dynamite sequence of two separated venting sessions. Elgin has approached a psychiatrist (Judy Greer) about how to deal with his wife. In a different location, Bernadette catches up with an old colleague (Laurence Fishburne) that she hasn’t seen in years. Deftly constructed with surgical editing from Linklater regular Sandra Adair, his lament combines with her rant. His conclusion is help while hers is to create, showing just how far apart the two former lovebirds are now.

Outside of her impressionable daughter, Bernadette’s verbose and unrestrained external monologue is received and filtered through “Manjula,” her unseen automated text-to-speech personal assistant service. Even with the prospect of an Antarctic cruise vacation for Bee on the horizon, all of the loose threads of Bernadette’s current course are unraveling to several breaking points. Everyone can see these potential disasters coming except her and the loyal Bee who considers her mother her best friend.

MY TAKE:

LESSON #3: LOVE SOMEONE’S FLAWS — The movie presents a family that still loves the mess that Bernadette has become. Her husband, for all his worry, remains a willing confidante. The nearly unconditional love between daughter and mother is tremendous. Mom defends her daughter’s independence and the resilient girl gives it right back in the face of the catty other moms. Accepting and inspiring familial love trumps every quirk or mistake and the film forces a great many syrup-coated steps to ensure that happens.

Showing off as much if not more unstable petulance as she did winning the Oscar for Woody Allen’s Blue Jasmine, Cate Blanchett bring a dizzying level of detail to her characterization of depressed pizzazz and wallowing pluck and play Bernadette Fox. There is never a wasted movement or breath with Cate. This is complete immersion and her vocal and physical expressions and actions of exasperation are fascinating to watch. Sure, maybe we’ve seen this level of difficulty before from the newly-minted 50-year-old, but the capability and brilliance she brings to these odd roles is nearly second to none. Put her right there next to Meryl Streep where her dedication to any and every challenge cannot be questioned.

Across from that celebrated star of rich and storied career heights is Emma Nelson, the rookie in her first movie. Experience be damned, she becomes the emotional linchpin of the whole darn thing. Every arc of personal improvement for Bernadette lifts one for Bee and the first-timer exudes mettle and moxie. That girl is going places besides just her next year of high school.

Admittedly, Where’d You Go, Bernadette is tricky business for Richard Linklater. Semple’s best-seller is a uniquely mystery-driven collection of documents, emails, and transcripts, stuff not easy or clear to translate on screen without heavy narration or the wild visual creativity of something like Searching. Linklater and the Me and Orson Welles screenwriting team of Holly Gent and Vince Palmo bent and stripped away that hop-scotch of truth and “you never know everything” intrigue to fashion something more straight-forward and safe as a character piece narrative. In doing so, the resulting film skimps on opportunities to wreck more havoc in personal lives. The fits and spurts of how far to raise eyebrows comes out in the film’s unevenness. Luckily, the acting is steadfast and satisfying.

LESSON #4: TAKE A JOURNEY OF SELF-DISCOVERY — Critique aside, the clear goal for Linklater was to create or hone something more pleasant than a tawdry yarn of competing gossip. The third act of this movie takes a walkabout-ish excursion and turn for Bernadette and company brings aims positivity to elevate the doldrums of everyone’s downward spiral. Choose your journey to reinvigorate your soul. The Antarctica location doesn’t matter. It’s the fact you take one when you need it most.

3 STARS

EXTRA CREDIT:

(Image: filmlinc.org)

The 20th Century Fox home media edition of Where’d You Go, Bernadette offers a tiny sprinkle of background on Linklater’s feature film. Tiny does mean tiny. There are only three special features and one of them is a 26-picture gallery of production stills. That’s hardly a deep dive. Someday, a talkative casual guy like director Richard Linklater needs to grace us with an audio commentary on the level with his legendary Dazed & Confused track. Until then, these vignette crumbs made the Trailer Park Content house will have to do.

The main feature is the 15-minute “Bringing Bernadette to Life.” It’s a sharp behind-the-scenes retrospective on how this project came to be with its assembled talent. The blue-jeans-casual director talks about how he was introduced to and dissected Maria Semple’s book with his trusted screenwriting collaborators Holly Gent and Vince Palmo. Linklater was captivated from the opening line of “Just because you can’t fully know somebody doesn’t mean you can’t try” while Cate Blanchett called it a “bugger” to adapt with its format of letters and emails. Richard’s goal was the show everything about the main character and not shy away from raw truths and painful confrontations.

Blanchett was the actress Linklater pictured while reading Semple’s novel and came to realize she was the only one to pull off this discombobulated lead role. The Oscar winner puts in her interview time in the feature discussing all the quirks and themes. For a fun fact, Blanchett wore Semple’s own sunglasses from when she wrote the novel. Furthermore, nice bouquets are also shared by Emma Nelson, Billy Crudup, and Kristen Wiig. Each player speaking on the main character and her wavelengths.

The second mini-doc is the five-minute “Who Is Bernadette.” For a movie about thinking and talking out loud, we get the talent thinking and talking out loud. It’s more of the same with the edited montages set to the voiceover sharing of the cast and crew. It’s not much, but the insight is appreciated, especially with Semple herself offering her stamp of approval. All in all, the special features won’t be the reason one purchases this movie. They’ll be there for the finished film itself.

LOGO DESIGNED BY MEENTS ILLUSTRATED (#843)

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apocalypticmovierp · 5 years ago

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‘Where’d You Go Bernadette?’: Richard Linklater & Cate Blanchett Totally Miss The Mark In A Limping Twee Comedy [Review]

Not a screwball comedy or inspirational tale of creativity unleashed but trying to be both those things and more, Richard Linklater’s lackluster adaptation of Maria Semple’s bestselling novel “Where’d You Go, Bernadette?” is a late, dull entry in a louder-than-usual summer movie season that truly needed something special, warm, and human-scale. Try as the filmmakers do to conjure a restorative kind of magic in its searching, yearning storyline of renewal, they are not able to come up with much more than a limping comedy about a woman with all-too-easily-explained mental issues.

Continue reading ‘Where’d You Go Bernadette?’: Richard Linklater & Cate Blanchett Totally Miss The Mark In A Limping Twee Comedy [Review] at The Playlist.

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bestbooksnbadkitties · 8 years ago

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Reads and DNF’s -

I can only find so much to say about the books that I read, especially if having read a series like JD Robbs In Death series that has something like 50 novels in it, therefore this year I’m only going to review the books I found exceptionally interesting, amusing or unusual.

However, here’s a list of the books I’ve read, or put down unread since January, that I have not reviewed.

Zero Day by Jan Gangsei – young girl kidnapped, later returned home. Since her dissapearance her dad’s become POTUS – is she really the daughter or not? Will I read the next in the series – probably.

IQ by Joe Ide – brilliant young man from a poor and downtrodden neighborhood in LA solves crimes the police ignore. Hopefully, this series continues.

The Keeper of Lost Causes and The Absent One by Jussi Adler-Olsen – Swedish crime novels featuring Detective Carl Morck –he looks into and solves old cases. Will definitely keep reading these ones.

For the Record by Charlotte Huang – what life’s like as a teenage rock star – not bad!

The Winter Place by Alexander Yates – kind of a fairy tale sort of novel involving 2 kids sent to Finland to live with the grandparents they never knew they had. Read it, skimmed it, read the end.

Echoes in Death by JD Robb – some of these are getting old – this one NOT – will keep reading this series.

Today Will Be Different by Maria Semple – a day in the confusing and frenetic life of Eleanor Floor. Nowhere near as good Where’d You Go, Bernadette.

Vicarious by Paula Stokes –Winter and Rose Kim have not had it easy seen leaving Korea. Now working as Vicarious Sensory Experience stunt girls their life is full of risk. When Rose disappears Winter tries to find out what happened. Did not see this ending coming!

When All The Girls Have Gone by Jayne Ann Krentz – Charlotte’s step-sister Jocelyn is missing. Charlotte joins forces with PI Max Cutler. Deception, terror, murder and romance ensue. I have been reading Jayne Ann Krentz for over 20 years, and will continue to do so.

The Last of August by Brittany Cavallaro – loved A Study in Charlotte – found this one to be confusing and way too much teenage angst. Will probably read another though.

Novels by Lisa Kleypas – My new ABSOLUTE FAVOURITE Romance writer- Read all 5 Wallflower novels, and the first 2 in the Ravenel series. And now going to start the Hathaway series. I believe some are Historical fiction and some contemporary. Wow, did our ancestors in the 1700’s have a lot of premarital sex!

Carve the Mark by Veronica Roth – DNF – couldn’t get into it.

King’s Cage by Victoria Aveyard – had to put it down, nothing was happening – will not read rest of series, even though I loved Red Queen.

The Girl From Everywhere by Heidi Heilig – DNF

The Library at the Edge of the World by Felicity Hayes-McCoy – DNF

Everywhere and Every Way by Jennifer Probst - DNF

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marksemplefertility · 5 years ago

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Mark Semple Surrogacy Colombia – Top Notch Administrator in Medical Tourism

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fertilitysolutionsmarksempl-blog · 5 years ago

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Fertility Solutions International Mark Semple - Legal Surrogacy in Europe

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Fertility Solutions International Mark Semple - It is an award-winning company specializing in global assisted reproduction including surrogacy, egg donation, and in vitro fertilization (IVF).

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spanishmain · 6 years ago

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The Anti-Jacobin Review and True Churchman’s Magazine, 1912

Page 126: He left Gravesend on the 27th of August, 1810, and on the 15th of October reached Curacao, which is not more than fifteen leagues from the Spanish Main.

“It was imagined,” say sour author, “that the declaration of independence by the province of Venezuela, by opening the ports of the continent to a direct trade, would operate to the disadvantage of Curacao, or rather supersede the necessity of such a depot altogether. This may no doubt be true in some degree; but recent occurrences have shown that no advantages of soil or situation can recompense the want of a stable and efficient government, and the consequent insecurity of life and property. Whatever property may be adventured to Curacao is, at least, safe, so long as British laws and British power protect it. But no sooner do we pass those strongly marked boundaries, than we tread on unstable ground, and unfortunately, those who have considered the subject most attentively are the most doubtful as to the result.

This is perfectly true, and equally true is it, that in the present state of that part of the Spanish Continent in which the revolutionary government has been established, there is no security either for property, or for life. At Curacao there was one of the West India black regiments, at whose presence the inhabitants, at first, were greatly alarmed. All the horrors of Saint Domingo were before their eyes, heightened by the exaggerated accounts of refugees from that Island, and they did not take the trouble to examine into he particular circumstances to which those horrors were to be ascribed. But the exemplary conduct of the regiment at length removed their apprehensions, and made them dismiss all regret for the absence of European soldiers. After a fortnight’s residence at Curacao, Mr. Semple sailed for the Port of La Guayra, on the Spanish main, where he landed on the 5th of November. Hence he proceeded to Caracas, over a tract of country, beautifully diversified, and presenting many grand and interesting objects. The town of Caracas is situated at the extremity of a valley, twenty miles in length, and from four to seven in breadth.

Page 130: We see no reason to disbelieve the plain assertions of men, who had no interest to deceive, and who were not aware of the doubts which had arisen respecting the existence of the unicorn. Nor can we easily conceive what proof can be deemed requisite for the establishment of the fact, if the testimony of an eyewitness of unimpeached, and undoubted, veracity, is to be rejected, on no other ground than because people who have not seen such an animal choose to believe that it is nowhere to be found. On the road to Valencia, the travelers passed a beautiful like, about thirty miles in length, and twelve at the broadest part, in width, greatly resembling Loch Lomond in Scotland, though not surrounded by such grandeur of mountain scenery. It is called the Lake of Valencia. After a pleasant journey, they reached their destined port, in safety. But Puerto Cabello, though the only harbor in that part of the Spanish main, afforded not a single inn, and Mr. Semple, and his companion, were indebted to the hospitality of an individual, to whom they had letters of recommendation, for bed and board. The goodness of this harbor, however, is more than counterbalanced by the extreme insalubrity of the place, which, in the summer and autumn, no stranger can visit with impunity. Here, Mr. Semple took leave of his companion, and, in ten days, set off on his return to Caracas, where he had left his brother. Having completed his tour, he presents an interesting summary to his readers, in which he recapitulates, with much pleasantry, the prominent objects which arrested his attention. His account of the manners of the people is by no means flattering; certainly not such as would tempt a stranger to establish his residence among them. The inhabitants of the country, however, are said to differ essentially from those of the towns.

Page 132: These remarks, as applicable to the better classes of society on the Spanish man, are perfectly true; but they were situated very differently from the nobility in France. They had every means of union, every opportunity for cooperation, every advantage of resources, local and general; and their numbers, moreover, were such that they might easily have averted the storm, to the pressure of which they so readily yielded. But this was by no means the case with the French nobility, at the commencement of the revolution. They were scattered over a wide extent of country, and, in every place, had a vast majority to contend with. It is by no means certain, therefore, that, had they remained in France, they would have been able to stem the revolutionary tide, or to preserve even the wrecks of ancient institutions. We rather incline to think, (though not disposed to hazard any decisive opinion on the subject) that they would only have served to increase the myriads of victims, whom the worthies of the revolution doomed to destruction.

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newstfionline · 7 years ago

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Thugs, Leeches, Shouting and Shoving at Trump Hotel in Panama

By Kirk Semple, Ben Protess And Steve Eder, NY Times, March 3, 2018

PANAMA CITY--The Trump International Hotel and Tower here is President Trump’s only hotel property in Latin America. At 70 stories, it is the tallest building in Panama, offers sweeping views of Panama Bay and features five outdoor swimming pools. The rooms come with Trump branded bathrobes, stationery and mouthwash.

But in recent days, guests have witnessed a decidedly less glamorous side of the operation: Yelling and shoving matches involving security personnel and others, the presence of police in Kevlar helmets, and various interventions by Panamanian labor regulators, forensic specialists and a justice of the peace.

The source of the drama? The businessman who recently purchased a majority stake in the hotel wants the Trumps out. And the Trumps, who have a long-term contract to manage the property, are refusing to go.

In a letter marked “Private & Confidential” to the hotel’s other owners, the businessman, Orestes Fintiklis, likened the Trumps to leeches who had attached to the property, “draining our last drops of blood,” according to a copy reviewed by The New York Times. He has also filed legal actions accusing the Trump family business, the Trump Organization, of mismanaging the hotel.

The Trump Organization, in turn, has accused Mr. Fintiklis of using “thug-like, mob-style tactics” in trying to force his way into the hotel’s administrative offices, which prompted the physical and verbal altercations, and of engaging in a “fraudulent scheme” to strip the property of its Trump management and branding. Mr. Fintiklis’s criticisms of the company’s management “are a complete sham and a fraud,” the company said in a court filing.

This past week, Panama’s Public Ministry said it was looking into whether there had been any “punishable conduct” in the dispute--which means that an arm of a foreign government finds itself in the extraordinary position of investigating a business owned by the American president.

Just seven years ago, at the hotel’s grand opening, the president of Panama at the time joined Mr. Trump in extolling the property. Panama City was then awash with international investors and a booming economy, earning it the nickname, “Dubai of Latin America.”

Alan Garten, the Trump Organization’s chief legal officer, said President Trump had no role in the current dispute. “This has absolutely nothing to do with the president of the United States,” he said. “It is purely a commercial dispute,” adding that “It is simply getting more attention, obviously.”

But the Panamanian misadventure has become the family business’s biggest headache at a time when its founder is in the White House and every move and woe is magnified across the planet. The business is also showing other signs of receding: The Trump Organization last year agreed to buyout deals that removed the Trump name from once-prized properties in New York and Toronto.

With those stresses and strains, the company is reluctant to walk away from the Panama property and possibly invite other partners to challenge their agreements, according to people close to the company who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The dispute comes as the Trump’s property--like many Panamanian hotels--is struggling.

The hotel lost over $1 million last year, according to the hotel’s confidential financial documents reviewed by The Times, after turning a gross operating profit of more than $800,000 in 2016. (The results are unaudited and may improve somewhat once they are finalized).

Algerd Monstavicius, who bought one of the hotel’s penthouses as an investment in 2007, four years before the building opened, said he had seen revenues from his unit plummet in the past year. He attributes the falloff in part to President Trump’s hard-line stance on immigration and antipathy toward him across much of Latin America.

“The perception is: Trump is anti-Latino,” said Mr. Monstavicius, 78, a retired pathologist living in Incline Village, Nev. “And that’s reflected in the occupancy.”

#Panama #Trump hotel in Panama

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newyorktheater · 7 years ago

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Ben Platt accepting his award as Best Actor in a musical, in a speech that seemed to reintroduce the concept of 78 rpm

Sam Shepard at La Mama in 1971

It was a year of shocks. In 2017, we got Hurricane Harvey and Harvey Weinstein, indecency in the White House and terror in Times Square. Meryl Streep began the year speaking out against Donald Trump’s bullying and ended the year accused of remaining silent about Harvey Weinstein’s bullying. To many in America, to borrow half of Charles Dickens’ famous phrase, 2017 was the worst of times, an age of foolishness, an epoch of incredulity. And the theater community was far from immune. But it was also far from passive. This was also a year of standing up and speaking out, resisting and persisting. Below are some of the top New York theater news stories of 2017, presented chronologically month by month, including prominent theater people who died. As you’ll see, in many of the months, a different new (or newly renovated) theater building had its ribbon cutting ceremony. Nearly every month, resisters held a protest or a spoof of the White House went viral

JANUARY

The Anti-Inauguration

The story of Inauguration Day becomes almost as much about culture as politics. The list of performers who decline an invitation to perform at official Inauguration ceremonies certainly exceeds the list of those who accept – and several, including Tony winner Jennifer Holliday and Springsteen tribute musicians the B Street Band, first accepted and then, after getting flak for their decision, reverse themselves and withdraw. The theater community in New York and across the country held events signaling resistance but also hope. The Ghostlight Project saw people gather outside theaters in all 50 states – including 50 in New York City, plus Times Square – to shine light, literally, against what many fear is the coming darkness. Other projects include the Concert for America, the Inaugural Ball at HERE, and The Resister Project. Trump imposes a visa ban against citizens of six Muslim-majority nations that complicates international artist exchanges. The order sets off court challenges, and revised orders, throughout the rest of the year; the matter as of this writing is still not fully resolved.

Meryl Streep’s speech at the Golden Globes, January 8, 2017: nd this instinct to humiliate, when it’s modeled by someone in the public platform, by someone powerful, it filters down into everybody’s life, because it kinda gives permission for other people to do the same thing. Disrespect invites disrespect, violence incites violence. And when the powerful use their position to bully others we all lose.

In accepting the Cecil B. Demille Award at the Golden Globes, Meryl Streep attacks Donald Trump for having made fun of a disabled reporter — “disrespect invites disrespect” — and addresses Trump’s characterization of foreigners as dangerous. “Hollywood is crawling with outsiders and foreigners. And if we kick ’em all out, you’ll have nothing to watch but football and mixed martial arts, which are not the arts.” Saturday Night Live used a parody of the musical Chicago to spoof Trump aide Kellyanne Conway’s ambition https://youtu.be/sb9ybImGwkU The non-profit Alliance for Resident Theaters opens a new theater, A.R.T./New York with two performance venues, offering a home — and rental subsidies — to some long-time nomadic companies. Jitney, the first play that August Wilson wrote in his 10-play America Cycle – one for each decade of the 20th century – is the last of his plays to open on Broadway.

August Wilson

Jenny Schlenzka, current curator of performance MoMA PS1, is appointed the artistic director of PS 122, only the third person in the post since the East Village cultural center began in 1980; the first woman.

RIP

British actor John Hurt, 77 Mary Tyler Moore, 80, beloved TV actress, Broadway producer and Tony-winning performer, co-founder of Broadway Barks Photographer Martha Swope, 88, ballet and Broadway chronicler for 40 years.

Articles I wrote that were published in January

Staged Resistance Bridging Cultures at China Shanghai International Arts Festivala

FEBRUARY

Barry Jenkins, left, and Tarell Alvin McCraney accept the award for best adapted screenplay for “Moonlight”

At the Academy Awards, a distracted accountant handed the wrong envelope to Warren Beatty, who announced that the winner of the Best Picture was La-La Land. The actual winner, Moonlight, was based on the play, Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue, by Tarell Alvin McCraney (playwright of Head of Passes, the Brother/Sister Plays, etc.), who also won for adapted screenplay. Another playwright, Kenneth Lonergan (This is Our Youth), won in the original screenwriting category, for Manchester by the Sea. Pasek and Paul, the songwriting team behind Dear Evan Hansen on Broadway, won an Oscar as lyricists for the best song, from La La Land. “This is dedicated to all the kids who sing in the rain,” Benj Pasek said, holding his trophy, “and all their moms who let them” Jack Viertel, the producer of the Encores concert production of Big River, wrote to the Times theater editors calling the newspaper’s review of the show by Laura Collins-Hughes a “ significant humiliation for the paper, a stunningly amateurish piece of work.” Critics of his action suggest that it is sexist. He wrote no letter to the editors at New York Magazine, though Jesse Green’s review offered much the same critique. Hamilton’s original Schuyler Sisters reunite to sing at the Super Bowl

#Hamilton‘s Schuyler Sisters (Phillipa Soo, Renée Elise Goldsberry, Jasmine Cephas Jones) slay “America The Beautiful” #SuperBowl pic.twitter.com/I4BtzUrvQw

— Jarett Wieselman (@JarettSays) February 5, 2017

The 2017 Grammy for best musical theater album was given to The Color Purple Dear Evan Hansen cast recording makes it to the Billboard Top 10, only the fourth cast recording since 1965 to have done so.

Charles Isherwood

The New York Times fires its long-time second string theater critic Charles Isherwood, never publicly explaining why Several shows he championed Off-Broadway in the Times, transfer to Broadway in large part on the strength of his review. The Time gives them lukewarm reviews, and they close after just a few months. After a scandalous confirmation of Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education, here is my review of Scandalous, the Broadway flop she produced. The Hudson Theater opens as the 41st Broadway house, with “Sunday in the Park With George.” Although built in 1903, it had not been used to present a Broadway show since 1968, when it became a nightclub, then a hotel conference center. The 115th Street branch of the New York Public Library is being renamed for Harry Belafonte, as the singer, actor, activist and Tony Award winner nears 90th birthday on March 1.

Anna Deavere Smith

Theater artist Anna Deavere Smith won the George Polk Career Award, which is a top award in journalism. A 24-Decade History of Popular Music by Taylor Mac and Matt Ray won the 2017 Edward Kennedy Prize for Drama Inspired by American History,

RIP

Harvey Lichtenstein, 87, executive producer for 32 years of the Brooklyn Academy of Music, transforming it from a moribund institution to “a dynamic showcase for cutting-edge performing arts.”

Arthur and Barbara Gelb

Barbara Gelb, 91, playwright and journalist who, with her husband, Arthur Gelb, produced the first full-scale biography of the playwright Eugene O’Neill Professor Irwin Corey, 102, “world’s foremost authority.”

My articles in February

The N-Word on Stage China on Stage

MARCH

New York theatergoers look to the government for support of the arts – the government of Canada, when Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau attends “Come From Away” on Broadway, accompanied by some 600 friends and allies, mostly Canadian, but also a number of UN ambassadors, and Ivanka Trump. Her father was invited as well, but according to an article in the Washington Post, he said “Absolutely not,” and flew to Nashville instead to visit the gravesite of Andrew Jackson. That same day, the Ides of March, comes news of Trump’s budget plan, which calls for “the elimination of of four independent cultural agencies” – the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Institute of Museum and Library Services, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The Late Late Show with James Corden presented Donald the Musical, with Tim Minchin on a swing singing “When I grow up, I will be president and build big walls, ban Muslims, play with Putin’s (bleep)”? https://youtu.be/WZWNHCRCpNM

Jesse Green

Right before the busiest month in New York theater, theater critics are getting new assignments (a polite way of putting it.) Jesse Green, the current critic at New York Magazine, has been named “co-chief theater critic” of the New York Times. Bryan Doerries, the founder of Theater of War, is named New York City’s Public Artist in Residence, (PAIR.) Theater of War uses the dramas of Ancient Greek and other classic tragedies to help with the healing process. Initially, this was with military veterans, but it has spread. The Actor’s Fund’s Friedman Health Center for the Performing Arts opens in the theater district https://youtu.be/7hNkQu0fKYU

RIP

Miriam Colón a well-known movie actress who took roles opposite Brando and Pacino (most famously as his mother in Scarface) and many others, has died at age 80. She was the founder of the Puerto Rican Traveling Theater in 1967, to bring free bilingual theater to venues throughout New York City

Derek Walcott

Derek Walcott, 87, Nobel Laureate, poet, and playwright of more than 20 plays,

My articles in March

Cooling Down: How Actors Unwind After Taxing Performances Scenes from the original productions of the 11 Broadway plays and musicals that are being revived, for the second, fifth, or 16th time, this season on Broadway.

APRIL

Andy Karl is injured three days before the opening of Groundhog Day, forcing him to miss some performances and wear a knee brace when he returns. In a cheeky bit of improvisation in what was supposed to scene of seduction, he proudly stuck a glass of Scotch on outstretched knee brace. Sweat wins the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. It closes two months later

Lynn Nottage

This is Lynn Nottage’s second Pulitzer – she is one of 15 women playwrights ever to win it. The New Yorker’s Hilton Als won the Pulitzer in criticism, just the second theater critic to do so. Fourteen shows open on Broadway in April, exactly one third of the entire season. Mine of them open in the last ten days of the month — as usual “Rebecca” will never open on Broadway, according to the attorney for its producers, who admits during the trial against the show’s former publicist that the producers have lost the rights to it.

Donald Trump reviews his first 100 days in office. Watch an all-new episode of #TheSimpsons this Sunday at 8/7c on FOX. pic.twitter.com/rDtvNgusFs

— The Simpsons (@TheSimpsons) April 26, 2017

RIP

Linda Hopkins, 92, show-stopping Tony-winning singer, actress and writer Tim Pigott-Smith, 70, who made a splash on Broadway as the title character in King Charles III

My article in April

History of Infamous Broadway Injuries

MAY

The Broadway League releases statistics for the 2016-17 Broadway season just ended. Revenue made a big jump, even though attendance has dipped slightly. The reason is primarily increased ticket prices. Shows that opened during season: 45 (eight of them not eligible for Tony Awards) Attendance at all shows: 13,270,343 visitors (down about .3 percent from 2015-16) Revenue: $1,449,321,564.64 (up 5.5 percent from 2015-16) Richard Rojas crashes his car in Times Square, killing one person and injuring 20. Police iscovered he had taken phencyclidine before the crash. He told them he wanted to die in a “suicide by cop” and that he had been hearing voices. Alyssa Elsman, 18, a recent high school graduate, was visiting New York from Portage, Michigan. Richard Basciano dies at the age of 92, making it likely that the pornography establishment he owned would close, thus leaving only three porn shops in the theater district, which was once the porn capital of the United States. With reports of as many as four theatergoers in a single night fainting, some vomiting, in reaction to the torture scene on “1984,” the producers announced that nobody under 13 years of age (“born after 2004��) would be admitted to the show. Olivia Wilde, one of the stars, Tweeted that “this is not your grandfather’s 1984.” Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney attacks a grant given to the 2014 climate change show by The Civilians, The Great Immensity, to justify slashing the budget of the National Science Foundation

(l-r) Katrina Lenk and Tony Shalhoub

Although it closed at the Atlantic Theater Off-Broadway in January, The Band’s Visit sweeps most theater awards during this month of theater awards. (It will transfer to Broadway in the Fall.) “Rebecca” producers were awarded $90,000 from publicist Marc Thibedeau, far short of $10.6 million they sought.Both sides claim victory

Glenn Close in Sunset Boulevard

Quote of the Month: “I’m sorry. Stop the show. Someone there is taking photos. You must know how distracting and disrespectful that is. Now, we can have a show or we can have a photoshoot.” – Glenn Close

RIP

Dina Merrill, 93, actress and philanthropist William Brohn, 84, one of musical theater’s top orchestrators

My article in May

Power Struggle on Broadway: Escapist vs. Socially Conscious Shows in the 2016–17 Season

JUNE

Gregg Henry (center) and the company in The Public Theater’s Free Shakespeare in the Park production of Julius Caesar

The Public Theater’s production of Julius Caesar depicted a Trump-like figure in the title role, which prompted many protests, and led to some corporations canceling their funding. Shakespeare companies across the country that had no connection to the Public’s production were also the target of angry protests. “Dear Evan Hansen” won best musical and five other awards at the 71st annual Tony Awards, the most of any show. “Oslo” won best play, “Jitney” best play revival, “Hello, Dolly!” best musical revival. Among the highlights of the ceremony was Ben Platt’s Tony acceptance speech: “Don’t waste any time being anyone but yourself because the things that make you strange are the things that make you powerful.” The 2017 Tony Awards broadcast attracts just six million viewers, a sharp decrease from the 8.7 million who watched in 2016. (To be fair, that Hamilton-soaked show had the highest ratings for the Tony broadcast in 15 years.) The Pearl Theatre Co. files for bankruptcy, and is closing after 33 years. https://youtu.be/PQ04sTZ79HQ

RIP

A.R. Gurney, 86, playwright My 2014 profile of Gurney

My article in June

Politics, Propaganda, and Aesthetics: Sorting through Building the Wall

JULY

NYC’s first ever “cultural plan” will link funding of arts groups to the diversity of their staff and board. 180-page Create NYC plan

Diversity Concerns Prompt ‘Great Comet’ Casting Shakeup

After a social media storm over the musical’s plan to replace Okieriete Onaodowan, Mandy Patinkin declined to assume the lead male role. But Oak has announced he’s still leaving August 13.

It’s a month for immigrants and other foreigners. The Canadian theater company Soulpepper is wrapping up its month-long residence at Signature. The first annual Immigrant Arts in America Summit concluded with a rousing concert and resulted in the formation of an Immigrant Arts Coalition. More than 60 artists, including playwright Annie Baker and director Sam Gold, signed a protest letter to Lincoln Center, trying unsuccessfully to get the cultural institution to cancel a production of the Israeli play “To The End of The Land” as part of the Lincoln Center Festival. They objected to some funding that Israel’s Office of Cultural Affairs in North America gave to this play, an adaptation by two Israeli theater companies of a novel by Israeli novelist David Grossman.

Sara Holdren, new critic at New York

Sara Holdren, a recent graduate of the Yale School of Drama who identifies as a theater director, is hired to be New York Magazine’s new theater critic in July, to replace Jesse Green, who was hired at the New York Times to replace Charles Isherwood. She had written just one professionally published review before she was hired. Lawyers for the actor James Franco sent a cease and desist letter to shut down a two-character play entitled “James Franco and Me” scheduled to run at People’s Improv Theater. Initially, playwright Kevin Broccoli promised to rename the play “_____ and Me” and eliminate all mentions of Franco’s name, but otherwise perform it as is.

RIP

John Heard,71,”Home Alone” Dad, “Sopranos” corrupt cop, four-time Broadway veteran

My article in July

John Leguizamo on his life, career, being a theater nerd, and the coming power of Latinos

AUGUST

All 17 members of The President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities, including theater director George C. Wolfe and actor John Lloyd Young, resigned in August to protest President Trump’s comments on the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville. True or false, the first letter of each paragraph in their resignation letter spelled out the word RESIST. Michael Moore debuts on Broadway in “Terms of My Surrender,” opening in August. After one performance, he takes the audience on buses to an anti-Trump demonstration at Trump Tower. The Fringe makes news by not happening – after 20 years, the company went on “hiatus.” Artistic diretor Elena K. Holy says It WILL return next year, but half the size and preferably in one location.

The new Flea theater

The Flea opens its new $18 million Off-Off Broadway theater with “Inanimate” a play about a woman who has fallen in love with an inanimate object. Lin-Manuel Miranda holds a month long #Ham4all fundraising challenge to raise money for the Immigrants: We Get the Job Done Coalition. Josh Groban’s contribution:

Many challenges accepted! @Lin_Manuel requested Burn! I challenge @thatgracemclean & @brittainashford! #HamForAll https://t.co/3Po3AYhmrS pic.twitter.com/sU1VhtVaiH

— josh groban (@joshgroban) June 29, 2017

Quote of the Month

.@NoahEGalvin interview June,2016. I guess he let NY know: In @DearEvanHansen in Nov https://t.co/thDXj0XIv9 pic.twitter.com/jkbjteT1PD

— New York Theater (@NewYorkTheater) August 23, 2017

June,2016. Interview with Noah Galvin, who announces in August, 2017 he will take over the role of Dear Evan Hansen

RIP

Barbara Cook, 89, singer Sam Shepard, 73, playwright, actor Thomas Meehan, 88, librettist Bernard Pomerance, 76 playwright (The Elephant Man) Jerry Lewis, 91, comedian, director, veteran of two Broadway shows. Stuart Thompson,62, producer

My article in August

Antigone in Ferguson: Dramatizing the Divide between Law Enforcement and Community

SEPTEMBER

The Atlantic hurricane storm season hits hard, with 17 named storms, Harvey causing extensive damage to Texas (wreaking havoc in the Houston theater district), Irma to Florida, and Maria to Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico has still not recovered.

Lin-Manuel Miranda has been a visible supporter of the recovery efforts in the island of his ancestors, writing an article pleading for Puerto Rican aid, promoting fundraising, organizing a song a la “We Are The World” entitled Almost Like Praying (an allusion to the Maria from “West Side Story”)

When the president attacks San Juan mayor Yulín Cruz for her “poor leadership,” and suggesting that the island’s residents are are not doing enough to help themselves, Miranda goes ballistic, tweeting: “You’re going straight to Hell. No long lines for you. Someone will say, ‘Right this way, sir.’ They’ll clear a path….You’re a congenital liar.”

Miranda then took the logical next step when he visited Puerto Rico in November to deliver care packages: He announced his return to his starring role in Hamilton, in a production in Puerto Rico, scheduled to run from January 8 to 27, 2019 at the University of Puerto Rico’s Teatro UPR

The Great Comet closes, a disappointment to its fans, who ask: Could it have been saved? When Josh Groban left the role of Pierre, the producers hired Okieriete “Oak” Onaodowan to replace him. Sales did not improve, so they hired Mandy Patinkin, who was to return to Broadway after 17 years to star. Some protested, starting online, accusing the producers of insensitivity and worse, for cutting Oak’s tenure short, and replacing a black actor with a white actor. Patinkin withdrew. Low box office receipts convinced the products to pull the plug. There is a lesson here, but different people argue over what it is. Barry Diller kills Pier 55, his $250 million planned futuristic performing arts center near The Highline. The following month, with help from the governor, Diller changes his mind, the project continues. In solidarity with the NFL players who have been “taking knee” during the playing of the National Anthem before football games to protest racism, the cast of “Miss Saigon” kneel during curtain call Audra McDonald enters Theatre Hall of Fame, along with Matthew Broderick, The Public’s Oskar Eustis + 5 In her new memoir, Hillary Clinton writes about the healing power of Broadway: “There’s nothing like a play to make you forget your troubles for a few hours,” they wrote. “In my experience, even a mediocre play can transport you. And show tunes are the best soundtrack for tough times. You think you’re sad? Let’s hear what Fantine from Les Misérables has to say about that!”

Iain Armitage

The first theater critic to become a TV star? (surely the first who’s 8) Iain Armitage, who became one of the best known theater critics in the country when he began at age 5 to post his reviews on YouTube, stars in a TV series that’s a prequel to the Big Bang Theory, entitled “Young Sheldon.”

J.K. Rowling

Quote of the Month: After seven books and eight movies, J.K. Rowling thought she was done with Harry Potter. “I genuinely, I didn’t want Harry to go onstage,” Rowling said in the video below. “I felt that I was done.”

RIP

Michael Friedman, 1975 – 2017

Composer Michael Friedman 41 Director Sir Peter Hall, 86 Playwright Albert Innaurato, 70

My article in September

Dramatizing Dystopia

OCTOBER

The New York Times and the New Yorker write articles alleging that movie producer Harvey Weinstein sexually harassed and assaulted young actress for years with impunity. In the two months since then, the list of women accusing Weinstein has grown to more than 80 — and counting. On October 15, actress Alyssa Milano Tweets: “If all the women who have been sexually harassed or assaulted wrote ‘Me too’ as a status, we might give people a sense of the magnitude of the problem.” In the two months since, almost 50 high-profile men have been fired, resigned or experienced similar professional fallout as a result of accusations of sexual misconduct.

Accused of sexual misconduct: top row, left to right, actor Kevin Spacey, producer Brett Ratner, comedian Louis C.K., actor Dustin Hoffman, and bottom row from left, former Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore, Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., former “Today” morning co-host Matt Lauer and former “CBS This Morning” co-host Charlie Rose,

It takes two weeks into the #MeToo movement for it to bring down the first prominent figure in the theater industry. In 1986, while they were both in shows on Broadway, Kevin Spacey, then 26, tried to seduce Anthony Rapp, who was then 14 years old, Rapp tells Buzzfeed. Spacey issues a statement that is a non-apology apology, and comes out as a gay man. Ninety-seven theaters in the United Kingdom issue a joint statement on sexual harassment “It is the responsibility of the industry to create and nurture a culture where unacceptable behaviour is swiftly challenged and addressed. …there is no room for sexual harassment or abuse of power in the theatre. Everyone deserves to enjoy a happy, healthy and safe working environment. We will support you to speak out, and we will hear you when you do.” Trump as Lying Theater Critic

While not at all presidential I must point out that the Sloppy Michael Moore Show on Broadway was a TOTAL BOMB and was forced to close. Sad!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 28, 2017

1) You must have my smash hit of a Broadway show confused with your presidency– which IS a total bomb and WILL indeed close early. NOT SAD https://t.co/URgXgzWWVk

— Michael Moore (@MMFlint) October 29, 2017

Broadway producer Roland Scahill who admitted scamming friends and others into investing hundreds of thousands of dollars into a nonexistent play about opera star Kathleen Battle has been sentenced to six months in jail. First Hamilton and now Hello, Dolly have broken $1,000 barrier for box office ticket prices

Springsteen in Springsteen on Broadway

Springsteen on Broadway opens

Annie Baker, 2017 MacArthur Fellow, Brooklyn, New York,

Taylor Mac, 2017 MacArthur Fellow,

Playwright Annie Baker and multidimensional theater artist Taylor Mac are among the 24 winners of the 2017 Macarthur Foundation “Genius” Grants. Ellen’s Stardust offers 31 fired union employees their jobs back thanks to settlement with the union Stardust Family and the National Labor Relations Board.

RIP

Robert Guillaume, 89, actor. best known for TV’s Benson, seven-time Broadway veteran

My articles in October

How do you Theatricalize Oppression? Belarus Free Theatre’s Burning Doors What’s It Like Being on the Autism Spectrum? Andrew Duff in Uncommon Sense

NOVEMBER

Telsey & Co. has fired senior casting director Justin Huff, who has cast six Broadway shows (Kinky Boots, Newsies ) amid internal reports of sexual misconduct. Nine women accuse Playwright Israel Horovitz of sexual misconduct Old Vic releases statement about investigation of Kevin Spacey The investigation resulted in 20 personal testimonies shared of alleged inappropriate behaviour carried out by Kevin Spacey during his time as Artistic Director. New York Mayor Bill de Blasio signed the repeal of the hated 91-year old Cabaret Law, which made dancing illegal in bars/eateries without a cabaret license. (Only 104 out of 20,000 + had one) “New Yorkers looking to let loose will no longer have to fear the dance police” – Councilmember Rafael Espinal Jr. Lincoln Center is killing its Lincoln Center Festival, which for 21 summers has presented theater (and dance and music) from around the world. At the Broadway Accessibility Summit, organizers explained that soon, every Broadway theater will have “on-demand” captions for hearing impaired through an app, #GalaPro

The Tony Awards nominating committee has ruled “1984” ineligible for Tony Awards because the production refused to allow the journalist Jose Antonio Vargas, who is a member of the nominating committee, to see the play.

RIP

David Cassidy

David Cassidy, 67, teen heartthrob best known for his starring role in The Partridge Family musical TV series, the son and stepson of two Broadway musical theater stars, and himself a Broadway veteran.

My articles

Will Future Storytelling Include Live Theatre? When the Playwright Has an Agenda

DECEMBER

Suspect Akayed Ullah, 27, sets off bomb in Port Authority bus terminal in Times Square. Four injured. “This was an attempted terrorist attack” – NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio

The Town Hall on sexual harassment in the theater community at the Public Theater

Town Hall on sexual harassment in the theater is held at the Public Theater In an article in the Hollywood Reporter, Anna Graham Hunter accuses Dustin Hoffman of sexually harassing her when she was 17, interning as a production assistant on the set of 1985 TV film ‘Death of a Salesman,’ Five weeks later, Kathryn Rossetter writes in the Hollywood Reporter that Dustin Hoffman sexually harassed her daily while they both were in the cast of the 1984 Broadway revival of Death of A Salesman Hollywood executives announce the creation of the Commission on Sexual Harassment and Advancing Equality in the Workplace. Chair: Anita Hill After 47 years as avant-garde nomads, Mabou Mines gets his own theater, in the renovated PS 122 building in the East Village, launching The Mabou Mines Theater with Glass Guignol.. A Christmas Story Live, the seventh live TV musical since the trend began in 2013 with The Sound of Music Live, got the worst rating and among the worst reviews. More popular: Fatwa The Musical: https://youtu.be/pDx3vnvSbm8

Top New York Theater Stories of 2017: Reeling, Resisting and Persisting oc It was a year of shocks. In 2017, we got Hurricane Harvey and Harvey Weinstein, indecency in the White House and terror in Times Square.

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