Originally published on Mon December 3, 2012 8:03 am
Matthew Specktor is the author of the forthcoming novel American Dream Machine.
Some books love to be loved. They make their moves on us softly, they butter us up. Who doesn't love Atticus Finch or Franny Glass? These people resemble our better selves, and it's easy, from there, to love the books that contain them. So why is it that whenever someone asks me what they should be reading, I steer them instead toward one of the most loathsome characters in contemporary fiction, Philip Roth's Mickey Sabbath?
Originally published on Thu December 6, 2012 10:05 am
Part of a book critic's challenge is to sift through piles of new publications, panning for literary gold. In a way that makes us what one of my favorite children's book heroines, Astrid Lindgren's Pippi Longstocking, called a "turnupstuffer" — "Somebody who finds the stuff that turns up if only you look." Or like Dickens' optimistic Mr. Micawber, who was always sure something good would turn up.
On Monday's Morning Edition, Hayden Planetarium director and pop-culture go-to science guy Neil deGrasse Tyson tells NPR's David Greene the story of how he came to lend a hand to Superman.
Gary Ross has penned and directed some big Hollywood hits like Big, Pleasantville and The Hunger Games. But for the past 15 years, his obsession has been something much more personal: a Dr. Seuss-ian children's book called Bartholomew Biddle and the Very Big Wind.
It started when Ross got a call in 1996 from fellow screenwriter David Koepp. Koepp was up against a tight budget and approaching deadline with his debut directorial effort, The Trigger Effect. Its heroine had to read an as-yet-unwritten bedtime story to her child.
Photographer Ken Regan with the Rolling Stones, 1977
Credit Ken Regan / Camera 5
Elvis Presley, early 1960s, with Nancy Sinatra. "I knew I would have to hustle in this competitive business if I wanted to make a name for myself .... But I had to make it to this one: Sgt. Elvis Presley, stationed for two years in Germany, was flying in to meet with the media at Fort Dix, N.J., on the eve of his discharge."
Credit Ken Regan
The Beatles with Ed Sullivan, 1964. "The audience in the 703-seat theater shrieked nonstop. This was at the deafening dawn of Beatlemania. You couldn't hear a thing. Some fans just seemed to be in shock, staring ahead, tears running down their cheeks."
Credit Ken Regan
"When The Beatles returned to America in August, 1965 ... I got one of my favorites. Walking the aisles, one audience member caught my eye: an older man sitting with his fingers plugged in his ears to mute the high-pitched squeals. As I moved in for this terrific shot, I got a closer look and realized I was photographing the legendary composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein."
Credit Ken Regan
The Rolling Stones on Saturday Night Live, 1978. Bill Murray blow-drying Ron Wood's hair.
Credit Ken Regan
Sonny and Cher, 1966. "I truly lucked out with the kind of access that almost no longer exists. 'I Got You Babe' had been a number one hit in the summer of 1965, but the sassy, animated couple — Sonny was 34, Cher was 19 — couldn't have been more cooperative, friendly, and open."
Credit Ken Regan
Woodstock, 1969. "Woodstock was not just the mother of all rock festivals, it was a photographer's paradise."
Credit Ken Regan
Arlo Guthrie and Pete Seeger confer at a benefit played in Tarrytown, N.Y., for Hudson River Sloop Clearwater Inc., 1969. "He's the son of populist folk pioneer Woody Guthrie, but Arlo Guthrie, when he was only twenty-two, had found his own voice with his sardonic, counterculture anthem, 'Alice's Restaurant.' "
Credit Ken Regan
Mick Jagger's 29th birthday party. "At the party I photographed Mick and Keith with Bob Dylan at a time when Dylan sightings were extremely rare. Why was he there? Maybe the folk-rock icon was curious to meet up with rock 'n' roll's greatest icons-in-the-making."
Credit Ken Regan
"Once ... I thought, God, that smells really good, like eggs or something. I went into the kitchen — this was still midday — and there was Keith, standing over a frying pan at the stove, without a shirt on, cooking up some eggs. I had to do a triple take: he never got up much before six or 7 p.m. Thank God I had my camera because this was a one-in-a-million shot."
Credit Ken Regan
Tour of the Americas, on the plane between San Antonio and Kansas City, June 1975, (left to right) Bianca Jagger, Ron Wood, Charlie Watts and Keith Richards.
Credit Ken Regan
"In 1977, Peter Frampton was filling 90,000-seat stadiums as a good-looking songwriter and fluid, blues-rock guitarist who made upbeat lollipop rock. I shot him in several situations ... [including] at a sold-out concert in Philadelphia's JFK Stadium."
Credit Ken Regan
Westbury Music Fair, January 1970, Jim Morrison and The Doors
Credit Ken Regan
Janis Joplin at the Fillmore East, March 1968
Credit Ken Regan
"In 1970, Time sent me down to Hendersonville, Tenn., near Nashville, for a story on Johnny Cash. I spent a couple of days with Johnny and his wife, June Carter Cash, photographing them at their home. The shoot was both a challenge and a thrill."
Credit Ken Regan
Bob Dylan checking a Halloween mask in the mirror, Plymouth, Mass., Rolling Thunder Revue tour, 1975.
Credit Ken Regan
"Merry players" on the beach, Bob playing trumpet. Thanksgiving, 1975, Sturbridge, Mass.
Credit Ken Regan
Joan Baez and Bob Dylan practicing backstage, Rolling Thunder Revue tour, 1975. "Rolling Thunder was unlike any tour before it or since — an antic, in-the-moment carnival of impromptu happenings starring an ever-shifting cast of offbeat characters. Bob had given me free rein to shoot it all — onstage, backstage, offstage, dressing rooms, parties, trailers, whatever was going on."
Credit Ken Regan
Rolling Thunder Revue tour, Montreal, 1975. ' "What's with the whiteface?" I asked Bob as he was being made up before a show. Nobody could figure that out. He said, "Well, I'm playing these halls and it's really dark. I want the people way in the back to be able to see my eyes." Okay. Whatever."
Credit Ken Regan
Iggy Pop in New York for the Dec. 10, 1984, issue of People magazine. "By the time I shot Iggy for People in late 1984, he had calmed down quite a bit. He was 37, and a cool, terrific, and very amenable subject."
Credit Ken Regan
In the fall of 1977, I did a home take and a People cover (with Mick and Keith) of a very mellow, domesticated Keith Richards with his girlfriend of ten years, Anita Pallenberg, and their eight-year-old son, Marlon."
In 1994, a cover by the late Jeff Buckley helped save "Hallelujah" from musical obscurity.
Credit
Credit Mary Ellen Matthews / Courtesy of Atria Books
Alan Light is an American music journalist. He has served as a rock critic for Rolling Stone and the editor-in-chief for both VIBE and Spin.
Credit Gareth Cattermole / Getty Images
Rufus Wainwright performs in London earlier this year. His cover of "Hallelujah" is among the best-known versions of the oft-interpreted Leonard Cohen song.
Matchmaker Santa is only one of many cornball films in which Santa (Donovan Scott) helps a woman (Lacey Chabert) find a boyfriend (Adam Mayfield). This is the one where the vanilla extract was key.
Credit Alexx Henry Studios / Hallmark Channel
Why yes, this is a promotional image for a real holiday Hallmark movie called Annie Claus Is Comin' To Town. That's Annie Claus, Santa's daughter, inside the snow globe being stared at by her father.
My well-documented weird affection for Hallmark movies brings me — along with NPR.org movies editor Trey Graham — to Weekend Edition on Sunday to talk to NPR's Rachel Martin about the high-profile theatrical holiday film as well as the corny basic-cable incarnations that are appropriate to this season.
On-air challenge: Every answer is a familiar three-word phrase in the form "____ of ____." The letters in the first and last words of each phrase are rearranged. You give the phrases. For example, "Cat of Dog" becomes "Act of God."
Last week's challenge from listener Henry Hook of Brooklyn, N.Y.:In a few weeks something will happen that hasn't happened since 1987. What is it?
William Paul Young grew up in New Guinea, where his parents were missionaries. His bestselling novel, The Shack, was originally written for his six children.
Five years ago, Paul Young was working three jobs outside Portland, Ore., when he decided to write a Christian tale of redemption for friends and family. He went down to an Office Depot and printed off 15 copies of the story he called The Shack.
The manuscript was never intended for broad publication, but it eventually caught the attention of two California-based pastors. They took it to 26 different publishers but got rejected each time. So the pastors set up their own publishing company and started a whispering campaign among churches.
Ron Hufstader, Music Director and Conductor of the El Paso Wind Symphony, and Ali Sanders, Operations Manager, preview the upcoming “No Strings Attached” performance series.
December 7 – Winter Wonderland concert UTEP Fox Fine Arts Recital Hall, 7:30pm www.elpasowindsymphony.com or call 915-799-3455
Las Cruces artist, Wayne Hilton talks about his current project Hermosos Huesos Art Exposition and Book using recycled materials to give new life to the Catrina – the female skeleton icon of Dia de Los Muertos.
Painter Alberto Escamilla, his wife Rachel Escamilla, and Connie Lichlyter, chairperson for the ChristKindel Market in San Elizario, preview this year’s holiday happenings.
2nd Annual ChristKindel Holiday Market Main Street in San Elizario Historic District Saturday December 8 11am-8pm & Sunday December 9 11am-6pm SanElizarioHistoricArtDistrict.com, 915-328-1937
Credit Ben Weinstein Photography / Yale University Press
Amos Oz is a novelist and professor at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. His daughter, Fania Oz-Salzberger, is a writer and professor at the University of Haifa.
For thousands of years the Jewish people have been forced to move around — fleeing bigotry, slavery, pogroms, famines and tyrants. But words are portable, and to Jews — who are among those known as "the People of the Book" — they are precious possessions. As Amos Oz and his daughter, Fania Oz-Salzberger, write in their new book, Jews and Words, "Ours is not a bloodline, but a text line."
Honorees (from left) James Levine, Elizabeth Taylor, Paul Simon, Chita Rivera and James Earl Jones stand beside first lady Laura Bush and President George W. Bush during the 25th Kennedy Center Honors in 2002. Rivera was the last Hispanic recipient of the award.
Credit Chris Kleponis / AFP/Getty Images
Tenor Placido Domingo was the first Hispanic honoree, receiving the award in 2000.
This weekend, some big names are coming to Washington for a red-carpet event. Dustin Hoffman, David Letterman, ballerina Natalia Makarova, blues guitarist Buddy Guy and the British rock band Led Zeppelin will be receiving the annual Kennedy Center Honors.
It's a prestigious award given to only a handful of performers each year. But over the past few months there's been controversy surrounding the awards. In its 35-year history, only two honorees have been Hispanic, despite the fact that Hispanics are the largest minority in the United States.
Jake Tapper is the longtime chief White House correspondent for ABC News and has just written a new book called The Outpost: An Untold Story of American Valor.
We've invited him to play a game called "It's Mr. Bojangles to you." Three questions for a guy named Tapper about an actual tapper: Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, who some say was one of the greatest tap dancers of all time.
"The word random is the most misused word of our generation — by far," he proclaims to a tittering audience of 20-somethings. "Like, girls will say, 'Oh, God, I met this random on the way home.' First of all, it's not a noun."
This month the book club takes to the skies with the Tom Wolfe classic The Right Stuff, a behind-the-curtain look at the 20th century's most famous test pilots--including Chuck Yeager. Yeager joins the club to talk about his long career, and what he considers "the right stuff."
Photographer James Balog on Climate Change and 'Chasing Ice' — In the new documentary "Chasing Ice," photographer James Balog attempts to capture how the world's glaciers are being affected by climate change. As the film debuts across the country, Balog discusses the project, and what needs to be done to save Earth's shrinking glaciers.
Fortunately, Glen is back this week after two weeks away, and if you don't check out his mother's ceramic goose dressed up for Thanksgiving, you're just not living right.
Chef/Stylist Caitlin Levin and photographer Henry Hargreaves create an interpretation of Mark Rothko's paintings using colored rice.
Credit Henry Hargreaves
One of Levin's greatest challenge is mixing food colors to match Rothko's original work. This image displays the food color palette used to dye the rice.
Credit Henry Hargreaves
Getting the edges to feather as seen in Rothko's original work was a challenge for Levin.
Credit Henry Hargreaves
It took Levin and Hargreaves anywhere between 2 to 3 hours to complete each piece of rice art.
Credit Henry Hargreaves
Levin worked on a project about gradient food dye using several kinds of foods like bananas and rice. It is during this time where she and photographer Henry Hargreaves came up with the idea of doing an interpretation of some of Mark Rothko's paintings using rice.
Credit Henry Hargreaves
The outcome of her work: Levin now owns many Ziploc bags filled with colored rice, about two 25 pound bags, which she plans to use for cooking meals with friends.
Credit Henry Hargreaves
Molds were used to shape the different sized rectangles and to keep separate the colored rice.
Credit Henry Hargreaves
After coloring, styling and photographing the rice, chef and food stylist Caitlin Levin made coconut rice. "It taste the same," she says.
Credit Henry Hargreaves/Timothy A. Clary/Getty Images
Chef/stylist Caitlin Levin and photographer Henry Hargreaves do an interpretation of Mark Rothko's paintings using colored rice. Left, Levin's design, right, the original painting titled White Center (Yellow, Pink and Lavender on Rose) by Mark Rothko as seen at Sotheby's auction house in New York.
Credit Henry Hargreaves
"We do these projects out of love for creating beautiful or interesting work out of a medium that is unexpected," Levin says.
Originally published on Tue December 4, 2012 6:36 am
Back in 1958, when Mark Rothko was commissioned to do a series of murals for The Four Seasons restaurant in New York — a place he believed was "where the richest bastards in New York will come to feed and show off" — his acceptance of the assignment was subversive at best. He hoped his art would "ruin the appetite of every son of a [beep] who ever eats in that room," according to a Harper's magazine article, "Mark Rothko: Portrait Of The Artist As An Angry Man."
Eleven-year-old Ish Taylor is charged with protecting the NFL — and the world — from a scheming supervillain in NFL Rush Zone: Season of the Guardians.
When the NFL wants to make a play for a particular demographic, they go long. To attract Latinos, it forged partnerships with Univision and Telemundo. To keep women happy, it came out with a clothing line featuring shirts that actually fit better than those boxy jerseys.
Now, to engage children, the NFL is going where kids go: Nickelodeon. NFL Rush Zone: Season of the Guardians is a new series rolling out Friday, co-branded by the NFL and Nicktoons.
