17 Year Itch
Saturday, August 03, 2002
driving poemtiny leaves, brown and dry
fell from elms, here they lie
little bumpy berries, red and prickly
sit on my windshield, inexplicably
I accelerate and they wiggle
hop and jump, a little jiggle
on the highway, in the flow
pick up speed, off they go
this wee drama when I roam
makes me think of you back home(with thanks to astro bunnies!)
l+
A P 11:05 AM
Friday, July 26, 2002
Turns out, M. Chabon is a big baseball fan.
A P 12:58 AM
Monday, June 24, 2002
I guess it wasn't "Fresh Air." Ricky Jay on The Connection back in 1999.
A P 2:06 PM
Apparently, the egg drop trick doesn't always work.
A P 2:02 PM
Some reviews of Minority ReportI liked the review by Ken Turna in the L.A. Times, especially his praise of Tom Cruise: Though his is the starring role, it is in some ways a thankless one, needing him to be the tireless turbine that powers this expensive cinematic machine and nothing more. It's not the kind of work that wins awards, but without Cruise's intensity almost willing our interest in Spielberg's unrelentingly dark world, "Minority Report" wouldn't have nearly as much life as it does.
Salon compared it to Blade Runner and The matrix. "If there's nothing especially original about the combination, it's brilliantly executed as pure cinema, both breathtaking and disturbing," they said.
A P 1:55 PM
Thursday, May 16, 2002
A few details about M. Chabon's latest...for kids but an interesting read for adults too, so they say.
A P 1:05 PM
Sunday, April 28, 2002
A little preview of the show we're seeing (Ricky Jay: On the Stem)
"Jay will spin tales of con artists, spiritualists, gamblers, pickpockets, magicians, and burlesque entertainers while performing (and even improving upon) their legendary entertainments. Expect to see bits of Hubert's Flea Museum (a 42nd Street landmark from a century ago) and the "Automaton Orange Tree," a perplexing device invented in 1848 by Robert-Houdin, the master magician whose name was appropriated, in homage, by Houdini." -- New York Metro
A P 11:45 AM
Hmm, there also seems to be a connection between Mr. Jay and Gravitate:
"In another era, Jay would have been a riverboat con man, a traveling mountebank, hawking snake oil and fooling the rubes. In this era, he's a skilled showman whose appreciation and knowledge of magic lore and history is obvious. His script ranges from the streetwise slang of a three-card-monte dealer to flamboyant, Shakespeare-tinged interlocution." -- The Orange County Weekly
A P 11:32 AM
So sorry that I didn't give you more info about Ricky Jay! He's not exactly a typical magician."I don't like to use the word "tricks." I do think of them as theatrical pieces, and as pretentious as that might sound, there's a real reason for it. It's not the idea of tricking you; it's the idea of taking you along on this particular journey the way you would in any other theatrical situation. But, hopefully, you're going to be fooled at the end." --RJ in The Onion
A P 11:27 AM
Friday, April 05, 2002
And you don't have to worry about Oprah setting the agenda at book club anymore.
A P 1:38 PM
My, my our boy M. Chabon has been busy. EW, in an article not yet online, reports that the boy wonder has signed a $2.5 million two-book publishing deal, with movie rights to the first book (Hatzeplatz) going for $250K. He's still working on the K&C screenplay but sold rights to DC COmics to make a comic book of the escapist!
A P 1:30 PM
Wednesday, April 03, 2002
Met's surrealism show gets some inkAnd some brief thoughts on To you the Birdie. The Village Voice has a longer review here. (Summary: "This Phedre often seems like a disaffected supermodel suffering from a self-inflicted eating disorder. By slyly updating the privileged social context, the production wittily turns catastrophe into comeuppance.")
A P 3:58 PM