Chris Bohjalian's Blog - Posts Tagged "the-light-in-the-ruins"
And the Oscar for Best Preview goes to. . .
I went to the movies four times between Christmas and New Year’s Eve. Here, as a public service, is all you need to know about “Les Miserables,” “Zero Dark Thirty,” “The Silver Linings Playbook” and “Hyde Park on Hudson.”
I saw “Zero Dark Thirty” with my wife and daughter, and you must see this film with the two of them. It’s tense and those two women really get into stressful movies. Also, my wife is a stress eater, like me, so the two of us consumed enough popcorn to fill a Mini Cooper. Of course, our popcorn consumption was fueled in part by the fact we had to watch seven previews before the movie. Yup, seven. Not an exaggeration. And most of the trailers involved car chases and shootouts. I like a car chase and shootout as much as the next guy, but the theater’s speakers were set at jet engine and I am pretty sure I left with a noise-induced hearing loss.
“Zero Dark Thirty” also features an actor named Jason Clarke, who deserves way more Oscar buzz than he has been getting. Listen for his line about a dog collar: It is intellectually challenging, morally disturbing, and very, very memorable.
My daughter and I saw “Hyde Park on Hudson,” which stars Bill Murray as President Franklin Roosevelt. I like Murray a lot as a performer, but Daniel Day Lewis has nothing to fear when they dole out the award for “Best Presidential Impersonation.” Just for the record, this movie has both the single most uncomfortable presidential sex-in-a-car scene ever and the single worst line of dialogue an Oscar nominee has ever had to utter. That line? It belongs to Laura Linney and involves sharing a president. It suggests either Hyde Park was a pioneering sexual commune or FDR was a Mormon. Also, the movie has way too many actresses named Olivia.
“The Silver Linings Playbook” has the “Best Hemingway Joke” of the four films, but “Les Miserables” has the “Best Singing.” You would think “Best Singing” would be a slam dunk for “Les Mis,” but it’s not. Exhibit A? Russell Crowe. A lot of people have thrown Crowe under the bus because he has nowhere near the singing voice of everyone else in the cast, but it didn’t matter to me. I thought Crowe was terrific. Also, his character’s body makes what might be the most incredible sound in the whole movie when it cracks into the stones in his (spoiler alert) suicide. Big props to the foley artist for that little moment. Awesome.
Most people who see “Les Mis” have seen the musical on stage somewhere, so I was really pleased that no one around me was mistaking the movie for a French Revolution story and asking where and when the guillotine would show up. I wasn’t able to sit near my daughter because the theater was packed, and so I had strangers on either side of me. They were both sobbing through the final hour. I wanted to reassure them that I had seen Anne Hathaway host “Saturday Night Live” and it was clear she was eating again, but I didn’t. I’m a stickler about not talking during movies.
Altogether, I saw three actresses crying in close-up: the aforementioned Hathaway in “Les Mis;” Jennifer Lawrence in “The Silver Linings Playbook;” and Jessica Chastain in “Zero Dark Thirty.” A lot of folks want to hand “Best Tears” to Hathaway for the rawness of her sobbing in “I Dreamed a Dream,” and it is a great performance. I loved every tear. But I’m going to present “Best Tears” to Lawrence. Hers were the sort of rom-com tears that are authentic and honest — and, thus, rare.
“Best Audience Texting” during a film — or, I guess, least audience texting — was during “Hyde Park on Hudson.” But I believe that’s only because the average age in the theater was somewhere between 75 and embalmed. I’m not sure anyone other than my family even knew how to text.
So, there you have it, my thoughts after 10 hours in the dark. Happy viewing.
* * *
This column originally appeared in the Burlington Free Press on January 6, 2013. His new novel, “The Light in the Ruins,” arrives on July 16, 2013. You can add it to your Goodreads "Want to Read" queue by clicking here:
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16...
I saw “Zero Dark Thirty” with my wife and daughter, and you must see this film with the two of them. It’s tense and those two women really get into stressful movies. Also, my wife is a stress eater, like me, so the two of us consumed enough popcorn to fill a Mini Cooper. Of course, our popcorn consumption was fueled in part by the fact we had to watch seven previews before the movie. Yup, seven. Not an exaggeration. And most of the trailers involved car chases and shootouts. I like a car chase and shootout as much as the next guy, but the theater’s speakers were set at jet engine and I am pretty sure I left with a noise-induced hearing loss.
“Zero Dark Thirty” also features an actor named Jason Clarke, who deserves way more Oscar buzz than he has been getting. Listen for his line about a dog collar: It is intellectually challenging, morally disturbing, and very, very memorable.
My daughter and I saw “Hyde Park on Hudson,” which stars Bill Murray as President Franklin Roosevelt. I like Murray a lot as a performer, but Daniel Day Lewis has nothing to fear when they dole out the award for “Best Presidential Impersonation.” Just for the record, this movie has both the single most uncomfortable presidential sex-in-a-car scene ever and the single worst line of dialogue an Oscar nominee has ever had to utter. That line? It belongs to Laura Linney and involves sharing a president. It suggests either Hyde Park was a pioneering sexual commune or FDR was a Mormon. Also, the movie has way too many actresses named Olivia.
“The Silver Linings Playbook” has the “Best Hemingway Joke” of the four films, but “Les Miserables” has the “Best Singing.” You would think “Best Singing” would be a slam dunk for “Les Mis,” but it’s not. Exhibit A? Russell Crowe. A lot of people have thrown Crowe under the bus because he has nowhere near the singing voice of everyone else in the cast, but it didn’t matter to me. I thought Crowe was terrific. Also, his character’s body makes what might be the most incredible sound in the whole movie when it cracks into the stones in his (spoiler alert) suicide. Big props to the foley artist for that little moment. Awesome.
Most people who see “Les Mis” have seen the musical on stage somewhere, so I was really pleased that no one around me was mistaking the movie for a French Revolution story and asking where and when the guillotine would show up. I wasn’t able to sit near my daughter because the theater was packed, and so I had strangers on either side of me. They were both sobbing through the final hour. I wanted to reassure them that I had seen Anne Hathaway host “Saturday Night Live” and it was clear she was eating again, but I didn’t. I’m a stickler about not talking during movies.
Altogether, I saw three actresses crying in close-up: the aforementioned Hathaway in “Les Mis;” Jennifer Lawrence in “The Silver Linings Playbook;” and Jessica Chastain in “Zero Dark Thirty.” A lot of folks want to hand “Best Tears” to Hathaway for the rawness of her sobbing in “I Dreamed a Dream,” and it is a great performance. I loved every tear. But I’m going to present “Best Tears” to Lawrence. Hers were the sort of rom-com tears that are authentic and honest — and, thus, rare.
“Best Audience Texting” during a film — or, I guess, least audience texting — was during “Hyde Park on Hudson.” But I believe that’s only because the average age in the theater was somewhere between 75 and embalmed. I’m not sure anyone other than my family even knew how to text.
So, there you have it, my thoughts after 10 hours in the dark. Happy viewing.
* * *
This column originally appeared in the Burlington Free Press on January 6, 2013. His new novel, “The Light in the Ruins,” arrives on July 16, 2013. You can add it to your Goodreads "Want to Read" queue by clicking here:
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16...
To find the meaning of baseball, roll the dice
It wasn’t one of those pitching duels for the ages — the final score was 4-2 — but it was two hurlers facing off who between them have an astonishing 615 Major League wins. It was likely Hall of Famer and Yankees ace C.C. Sabathia against Walter Johnson. Yup, that Walter Johnson: the Washington Senators pitcher who won a mindboggling 417 games.
Just for the record, Johnson died in 1946. Sabathia was born in 1980.
But that’s the beauty of the dice baseball league conceived by Burlington, Vermont lawyer Tom Simon. It’s the best against the best from throughout baseball’s long history.
No, that’s not the beauty. This is: It’s a dice baseball league for kids who love the game. The official name is the Buster Olney SABR Junior Club. SABR stands for the Society for American Baseball Research. Buster Olney is an ESPN baseball analyst and former New York Times sports reporter who was born in Randolph, Vermont. The kids named it after Olney as a small homage.
The group meets Sunday afternoons on the third floor of Simon’s Burlington home, but only during the off-season. “The kids want to be outside playing baseball during the regular season,” Simon told me.
Simon, 47, is a baseball historian and, like me, a serious baseball geek. “Almost everything I learned came through baseball: history, geography, how to pronounce people’s names,” he admitted.
Actually, Simon is way more of a geek than I am. He makes me look like my wife when it comes to baseball knowledge, and my wife once asked me how come all the players don’t dress like the catcher for safety. Although the dozen kids who gather at Simon’s home play a lot of dice baseball, they also learn about the game. The Sunday I visited them earlier this month and watched that Sabathia-Johnson match-up, a Boston Red Sox scout also joined them. Simon has been a member of SABR since 1993. He has edited two books about Vermont baseball and written a third, “The Wonder Team in the White City.” He designed this three-dice version of dice baseball and the hundreds of individual player cards the kids use. Each card is based on the player’s statistical record. As a result, in Simon’s game Babe Ruth is more likely to homer than anyone on the New York Mets’ current roster.
Of course, even I’m more likely to homer than anyone on the Mets’ current roster. I have cats more likely to homer than anyone on the Mets.
Simon’s love for the game dates back to when he was eight and got a phone call from Willie Mays. Yes, that Willie Mays. Mays was a pal of one of his father’s friends and as a birthday present invited Tom into the Mets’ dugout, where Mets reliever Tug McGraw lifted him up and blew a giant bubble gum bubble in his face. Years later, Tom invented his game as a way of sharing his love for the sport with a boy he was mentoring in the King Street Youth Center’s “Big Brother” program.
Today his league has eight teams, each roster filled with players the boys in the club drafted themselves. One team is managed by brothers Alexandre and Sam Silberman. Alexandre is 14 and Sam is 10. Alexandre told me that he enjoys baseball because it’s a game that “can be fast or slow. You can do other things while watching or listening to it.” He often follows games on the computer or listens to them at night.
Alexandre’s observation brought me back to my own childhood and the myriad Mets games I listened to on the radio. I grew up on the East Coast and loved it when the Mets were playing Chicago or St. Louis in the central time zone, because the games dovetailed perfectly with my bedtime.
In fact, everything about Simon’s — and I say this without hyperbole — incredibly wonderful baseball club reminded me of being a boy and something Donald Hall once wrote in “Fathers Playing Catch with Sons,” his essay about the meaning of the sport: “For baseball is continuous, like nothing else among American things, an endless game of repeated summers, joining the long generations of all the fathers and all the sons.”
And so who is the youngest member of the group? Simon’s own son, Nolan, now eight.
* * *
If you’re interested in learning more about the club, email Tom Simon at tps@mc-fitz.com.
* * *
This column appeared originally in the Burlington Free Press on January 13, 2013. Chris's new novel, "The Light in the Ruins," arrives on July 16, 2013. To add it to your Goodreads "Want to Read" list, click here:
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16...
Just for the record, Johnson died in 1946. Sabathia was born in 1980.
But that’s the beauty of the dice baseball league conceived by Burlington, Vermont lawyer Tom Simon. It’s the best against the best from throughout baseball’s long history.
No, that’s not the beauty. This is: It’s a dice baseball league for kids who love the game. The official name is the Buster Olney SABR Junior Club. SABR stands for the Society for American Baseball Research. Buster Olney is an ESPN baseball analyst and former New York Times sports reporter who was born in Randolph, Vermont. The kids named it after Olney as a small homage.
The group meets Sunday afternoons on the third floor of Simon’s Burlington home, but only during the off-season. “The kids want to be outside playing baseball during the regular season,” Simon told me.
Simon, 47, is a baseball historian and, like me, a serious baseball geek. “Almost everything I learned came through baseball: history, geography, how to pronounce people’s names,” he admitted.
Actually, Simon is way more of a geek than I am. He makes me look like my wife when it comes to baseball knowledge, and my wife once asked me how come all the players don’t dress like the catcher for safety. Although the dozen kids who gather at Simon’s home play a lot of dice baseball, they also learn about the game. The Sunday I visited them earlier this month and watched that Sabathia-Johnson match-up, a Boston Red Sox scout also joined them. Simon has been a member of SABR since 1993. He has edited two books about Vermont baseball and written a third, “The Wonder Team in the White City.” He designed this three-dice version of dice baseball and the hundreds of individual player cards the kids use. Each card is based on the player’s statistical record. As a result, in Simon’s game Babe Ruth is more likely to homer than anyone on the New York Mets’ current roster.
Of course, even I’m more likely to homer than anyone on the Mets’ current roster. I have cats more likely to homer than anyone on the Mets.
Simon’s love for the game dates back to when he was eight and got a phone call from Willie Mays. Yes, that Willie Mays. Mays was a pal of one of his father’s friends and as a birthday present invited Tom into the Mets’ dugout, where Mets reliever Tug McGraw lifted him up and blew a giant bubble gum bubble in his face. Years later, Tom invented his game as a way of sharing his love for the sport with a boy he was mentoring in the King Street Youth Center’s “Big Brother” program.
Today his league has eight teams, each roster filled with players the boys in the club drafted themselves. One team is managed by brothers Alexandre and Sam Silberman. Alexandre is 14 and Sam is 10. Alexandre told me that he enjoys baseball because it’s a game that “can be fast or slow. You can do other things while watching or listening to it.” He often follows games on the computer or listens to them at night.
Alexandre’s observation brought me back to my own childhood and the myriad Mets games I listened to on the radio. I grew up on the East Coast and loved it when the Mets were playing Chicago or St. Louis in the central time zone, because the games dovetailed perfectly with my bedtime.
In fact, everything about Simon’s — and I say this without hyperbole — incredibly wonderful baseball club reminded me of being a boy and something Donald Hall once wrote in “Fathers Playing Catch with Sons,” his essay about the meaning of the sport: “For baseball is continuous, like nothing else among American things, an endless game of repeated summers, joining the long generations of all the fathers and all the sons.”
And so who is the youngest member of the group? Simon’s own son, Nolan, now eight.
* * *
If you’re interested in learning more about the club, email Tom Simon at tps@mc-fitz.com.
* * *
This column appeared originally in the Burlington Free Press on January 13, 2013. Chris's new novel, "The Light in the Ruins," arrives on July 16, 2013. To add it to your Goodreads "Want to Read" list, click here:
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16...
The Light in the Ruins -- what it's about
Many of you have messaged me here on Goodreads to ask what "The Light in the Ruins" is about.
So, hot off the presses (so to speak), here is the flap copy.
Happy reading!
PS: If you have not yet added the novel to your "Want to Read" list, here is the link. Remember, the novel arrives on July 16.
* * *
From the New York Times bestselling author of "Midwives" and "The Sandcastle Girls" comes a spellbinding novel of love, despair, and revenge -- set in war-ravaged Tuscany.
1943: Tucked away in the idyllic hills south of Florence, the Rosatis, an Italian family of noble lineage, believe that the walls of their ancient villa will keep them safe from the war raging across Europe. Eighteen-year-old Cristina spends her days swimming in the pool, playing with her young niece and nephew, and wandering aimlessly amid the estate’s gardens and olive groves. But when two soldiers, a German and an Italian, arrive at the villa asking to see an ancient Etruscan burial site, the Rosatis' bucolic tranquility is shattered. A young German lieutenant begins to court Cristina, the Nazis descend upon the estate demanding hospitality, and what once was their sanctuary becomes their prison.
1955: Serafina Bettini, an investigator with the Florence police department, has her own demons. A beautiful woman, Serafina carefully hides her scars along with her haunting memories of the war. But when she is assigned to a gruesome new case –- a serial killer targeting the Rosatis, murdering the remnants of the family one-by-one in cold blood –- Serafina finds herself digging into a past that involves both the victims and her own tragic history.
So, hot off the presses (so to speak), here is the flap copy.
Happy reading!
PS: If you have not yet added the novel to your "Want to Read" list, here is the link. Remember, the novel arrives on July 16.
* * *
From the New York Times bestselling author of "Midwives" and "The Sandcastle Girls" comes a spellbinding novel of love, despair, and revenge -- set in war-ravaged Tuscany.
1943: Tucked away in the idyllic hills south of Florence, the Rosatis, an Italian family of noble lineage, believe that the walls of their ancient villa will keep them safe from the war raging across Europe. Eighteen-year-old Cristina spends her days swimming in the pool, playing with her young niece and nephew, and wandering aimlessly amid the estate’s gardens and olive groves. But when two soldiers, a German and an Italian, arrive at the villa asking to see an ancient Etruscan burial site, the Rosatis' bucolic tranquility is shattered. A young German lieutenant begins to court Cristina, the Nazis descend upon the estate demanding hospitality, and what once was their sanctuary becomes their prison.
1955: Serafina Bettini, an investigator with the Florence police department, has her own demons. A beautiful woman, Serafina carefully hides her scars along with her haunting memories of the war. But when she is assigned to a gruesome new case –- a serial killer targeting the Rosatis, murdering the remnants of the family one-by-one in cold blood –- Serafina finds herself digging into a past that involves both the victims and her own tragic history.
It's germane: Thank the school and select boards.
I love it when presidential aspirants have what we in the media call a “town meeting” style debate. Those debates are not town meetings — and not simply because there are no school board officials there we can pretend are slow-moving zombies in an Xbox game designed for violent teens with 666 tattooed on their arms.
I really respect everyone on the school board. They are the salmon of local government, always swimming as hard as they can upstream. Sure, most of the time they get what they want — an approved budget — but then they collapse, exhausted. Unlike the salmon, they don’t actually die. But have you ever glimpsed a school board member’s face after Town Meeting Day? They always look like those actors in the last reel of Oliver Stone’s “Platoon.”
In any case, they impress the heck out of me. Every one of them is a much better person than I am. Same with the folks on the selectboard. Just like the members of the school board, they do very hard work for very little money.
The selectboard also does work that is — and there is no polite way to say this — boring. Seriously boring. Work that involves some of the most tedious words in the English language. Words like “permit.” And “budget.” And “grader.”
Moreover, they have to go to meetings. When Dante was designing his inner rings of hell, he wanted to make one of them nothing but meetings. His publisher dissuaded him, explaining that no one would buy the book if they thought there were meetings.
I am reminded of this because tomorrow night and Tuesday mark Vermont’s annual foray into legislative self-determination: town meeting. I’ve now been going to town meeting here in Lincoln since March 1987. I read the Warning (Has there ever been a more aptly named booklet?) and my wife and I make our over-under bet on the word “germane.” How many times will the moderator have to silence one of our neighbors with the dreaded “G” word? Five? Seven? Nine? I speak in public all the time, sometimes before two and three hundred people, but when I stand up to speak in town meeting, I’m terrified. I’m convinced I am about to say something that is not, in the end, germane.
But here’s the thing about town meeting. It works and I love it. It’s messy. It’s contentious. It’s boring.
And yet by the time we are done, we will have a budget for our town and one for our school. When we go home, we will have supported — or chosen not to support — a variety of local nonprofits and social service providers. An animal shelter. A preschool. A hospice.
People joke that making laws is like making sausage. Town meeting has moments like that. Some years, I’ve had absolutely no idea how our moderator or town clerk has kept track of the amendments to the amendments to the motion. For all I know, I have been voting to make Paris Hilton the Queen of our annual Hill Country Holiday. It’s possible I’ve voted to make Slim Jim Pudding a new flavor of Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream.
But I don’t think so because, more times than not, my neighbors know what they’re doing.
I imagine that’s the case in most of Vermont’s 251 towns. That’s why town meeting continues to work, despite people writing its obituary for a quarter-century now. And while the presidential town meeting debates are far more mannered, rehearsed, and staged than what we do here in the Green Mountains, I think we should be flattered that the term still has so much cachet that political spin machines have commandeered it.
Consequently, this week, even if you disagree with everything your school boards and selectboards have said, take a moment to remind them you’re grateful.
And then, to keep them humble, tell them nothing they said was germane.
* * *
This column appeared originally in the Burlington Free Press on March 3, 2013. Chris's new novel, "The Light in the Ruins," arrives on July 16.
I really respect everyone on the school board. They are the salmon of local government, always swimming as hard as they can upstream. Sure, most of the time they get what they want — an approved budget — but then they collapse, exhausted. Unlike the salmon, they don’t actually die. But have you ever glimpsed a school board member’s face after Town Meeting Day? They always look like those actors in the last reel of Oliver Stone’s “Platoon.”
In any case, they impress the heck out of me. Every one of them is a much better person than I am. Same with the folks on the selectboard. Just like the members of the school board, they do very hard work for very little money.
The selectboard also does work that is — and there is no polite way to say this — boring. Seriously boring. Work that involves some of the most tedious words in the English language. Words like “permit.” And “budget.” And “grader.”
Moreover, they have to go to meetings. When Dante was designing his inner rings of hell, he wanted to make one of them nothing but meetings. His publisher dissuaded him, explaining that no one would buy the book if they thought there were meetings.
I am reminded of this because tomorrow night and Tuesday mark Vermont’s annual foray into legislative self-determination: town meeting. I’ve now been going to town meeting here in Lincoln since March 1987. I read the Warning (Has there ever been a more aptly named booklet?) and my wife and I make our over-under bet on the word “germane.” How many times will the moderator have to silence one of our neighbors with the dreaded “G” word? Five? Seven? Nine? I speak in public all the time, sometimes before two and three hundred people, but when I stand up to speak in town meeting, I’m terrified. I’m convinced I am about to say something that is not, in the end, germane.
But here’s the thing about town meeting. It works and I love it. It’s messy. It’s contentious. It’s boring.
And yet by the time we are done, we will have a budget for our town and one for our school. When we go home, we will have supported — or chosen not to support — a variety of local nonprofits and social service providers. An animal shelter. A preschool. A hospice.
People joke that making laws is like making sausage. Town meeting has moments like that. Some years, I’ve had absolutely no idea how our moderator or town clerk has kept track of the amendments to the amendments to the motion. For all I know, I have been voting to make Paris Hilton the Queen of our annual Hill Country Holiday. It’s possible I’ve voted to make Slim Jim Pudding a new flavor of Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream.
But I don’t think so because, more times than not, my neighbors know what they’re doing.
I imagine that’s the case in most of Vermont’s 251 towns. That’s why town meeting continues to work, despite people writing its obituary for a quarter-century now. And while the presidential town meeting debates are far more mannered, rehearsed, and staged than what we do here in the Green Mountains, I think we should be flattered that the term still has so much cachet that political spin machines have commandeered it.
Consequently, this week, even if you disagree with everything your school boards and selectboards have said, take a moment to remind them you’re grateful.
And then, to keep them humble, tell them nothing they said was germane.
* * *
This column appeared originally in the Burlington Free Press on March 3, 2013. Chris's new novel, "The Light in the Ruins," arrives on July 16.
Co-Hosts for COTS: Seth and Whoopi and Billy better watch out
It was two weeks ago tonight that many millions of us watched Kristen Chenoweth ask movie stars on the Oscar red carpet, “Who are you wearing?” I’ve always found the phrasing of that question a little creepy – a little too “Silence of the Lambs,” if you get my drift. Then we got to watch Seth MacFarlane open his first gig as Oscar host by singing “We saw your boobs” – also creepy, but mostly because of what it says about us, not him.
I am rehashing a two-week-old news story, the 85th Academy Awards, because a week from Wednesday night, March 20, I am co-hosting a gala right here in Vermont with my great friend, Stephen Kiernan. It’s the 30th anniversary gala and fundraiser for Burlington’s Committee on Temporary Shelter at the waterfront Hilton, and I was watching MacFarlane carefully so that Kiernan and I would know how to gracefully move the evening along. You know, how to hit that perfect vibe between Billy Crystal and Michelle Obama. (Incidentally, after watching the First Lady dancing with Fallon and presenting the Oscar for Best Picture, I want our current FLOTUS to be our next POTUS.)
Here is what I took away from the night.
It will be important to remind people of the spectacularly important work that COTS does – both sheltering the homeless in our midst and preventing thousands of others from losing their homes. Between 2008 and 2012, the worst of the recent recession, COTS helped over 1,300 Vermont households – and 1,383 children – remain in their homes. There are a lot of reasons why I’m a big fan of COTS, but right there are 1,300 of them.
Another lesson from the Academy Awards? Neither Kiernan nor I should try and rock a pair of Jack Nicholson shades. Only Nicholson can get away with wearing sunglasses at night. And, along those lines, we shouldn’t ask anyone what they’re wearing – unless they’re Bjork and they’re wearing that swan. Besides, this isn’t a black tie affair. Attire is everyday business. If someone shows up dressed like Charlize Theron or Kristen Stewart, we’ll simply ask if they’re in the right spot. (On the other hand, if someone shows up with Kristen Stewart’s hair, we will also ask if she needs a comb. Bella had serious bed-head on Oscar night.)
Kiernan is an award-winning journalist whose first novel arrives this summer and the former editorial page editor of this very paper. He has the heavy lifting at the gala, because he’s giving the keynote address. I merely have to sing, “We saw your boobs.” I’m kidding, of course. We’re bringing in a children’s choir for that little ditty. I merely have to repress my inner curmudgeon and say clever things like, “Thank you all for coming. Drive home safe – and be thankful you actually have homes. Not everyone does.”
See how easy that was? Both clever and true.
Incidentally, there will be an auction with some terrific items. Among them? The chance to be a character in my 2014 novel – which is set in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom and in downtown Burlington. But, as the old New York State lottery ads reminded us, you have to be in it to win it, and to be in it you have to be at the COTS gala. So, please join Kiernan and me. It’s a great cause and I promise I won’t say anything that Seth MacFarlane did on Oscar night.
I will say things that are much, much worse.
* * *
IF YOU GO
What: The COTS 30th Anniversary Gala
When: Wednesday, March 20. Cocktails at 5, dinner and auction at 6:30
Where: The Hilton, 60 Battery Street
How much: $130 per person
Visit www.cotsonline.org or call (802) 540-3084 (ext. 207) to reserve your seat
(This column appeared originally in the Burlington Free Press. Chris’s new novel, “The Light in the Ruins,” arrives on July 9.)
I am rehashing a two-week-old news story, the 85th Academy Awards, because a week from Wednesday night, March 20, I am co-hosting a gala right here in Vermont with my great friend, Stephen Kiernan. It’s the 30th anniversary gala and fundraiser for Burlington’s Committee on Temporary Shelter at the waterfront Hilton, and I was watching MacFarlane carefully so that Kiernan and I would know how to gracefully move the evening along. You know, how to hit that perfect vibe between Billy Crystal and Michelle Obama. (Incidentally, after watching the First Lady dancing with Fallon and presenting the Oscar for Best Picture, I want our current FLOTUS to be our next POTUS.)
Here is what I took away from the night.
It will be important to remind people of the spectacularly important work that COTS does – both sheltering the homeless in our midst and preventing thousands of others from losing their homes. Between 2008 and 2012, the worst of the recent recession, COTS helped over 1,300 Vermont households – and 1,383 children – remain in their homes. There are a lot of reasons why I’m a big fan of COTS, but right there are 1,300 of them.
Another lesson from the Academy Awards? Neither Kiernan nor I should try and rock a pair of Jack Nicholson shades. Only Nicholson can get away with wearing sunglasses at night. And, along those lines, we shouldn’t ask anyone what they’re wearing – unless they’re Bjork and they’re wearing that swan. Besides, this isn’t a black tie affair. Attire is everyday business. If someone shows up dressed like Charlize Theron or Kristen Stewart, we’ll simply ask if they’re in the right spot. (On the other hand, if someone shows up with Kristen Stewart’s hair, we will also ask if she needs a comb. Bella had serious bed-head on Oscar night.)
Kiernan is an award-winning journalist whose first novel arrives this summer and the former editorial page editor of this very paper. He has the heavy lifting at the gala, because he’s giving the keynote address. I merely have to sing, “We saw your boobs.” I’m kidding, of course. We’re bringing in a children’s choir for that little ditty. I merely have to repress my inner curmudgeon and say clever things like, “Thank you all for coming. Drive home safe – and be thankful you actually have homes. Not everyone does.”
See how easy that was? Both clever and true.
Incidentally, there will be an auction with some terrific items. Among them? The chance to be a character in my 2014 novel – which is set in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom and in downtown Burlington. But, as the old New York State lottery ads reminded us, you have to be in it to win it, and to be in it you have to be at the COTS gala. So, please join Kiernan and me. It’s a great cause and I promise I won’t say anything that Seth MacFarlane did on Oscar night.
I will say things that are much, much worse.
* * *
IF YOU GO
What: The COTS 30th Anniversary Gala
When: Wednesday, March 20. Cocktails at 5, dinner and auction at 6:30
Where: The Hilton, 60 Battery Street
How much: $130 per person
Visit www.cotsonline.org or call (802) 540-3084 (ext. 207) to reserve your seat
(This column appeared originally in the Burlington Free Press. Chris’s new novel, “The Light in the Ruins,” arrives on July 9.)
What it means to be Boston Strong
It has been almost two weeks now since the Boston Marathon ended in a nightmarish terrorist attack; it has been nine days since Boston was paralyzed by a manhunt and Watertown was a battleground. The news cycles are moving on.
But among the elements of the story that will stay with me a long time is this: The reaction of my good friend, Khatchig Mouradian. Khatchig lives in Watertown and the firefight between Tamerlan and Dzhokar Tsarnaev and the Boston police occurred in his neighborhood. When I woke up that Friday morning, April 19, and saw Watertown was in the news, I texted him to make sure he was safe. His response? “I just gave an interview to a newspaper in Turkey. I said I’m so used to explosions that I slept through them.”
Khatchig grew up in Beirut during that country’s cataclysmic civil war. He spent so many nights in bomb shelters teaching his younger sisters to play chess – taking their mind off the reality that their home was, once again, being shelled – that both girls would grow into Lebanese chess champions and win numerous regional and international tournaments.
Likewise, there are my friends from Israel who, at different points in their lives, knew that any moment a bus might burst into flames or a missile might explode in the street.
Obviously our country is not exempt from terror. At different times in the past two decades, we have been targeted by foreigners and by our own citizens. We all know the worst examples of each: The attack on the World Trade Center in Manhattan on the one hand, and the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, on the other.
And we will be attacked again. The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security may unravel and stop a thousand schemes, but eventually they will miss one – as they did with the brothers Tsarnaev. This is not a criticism of either organization; it’s only an acknowledgment that perfection is impossible in this game. We’re not talking nine innings; we’re talking every single day of every single year. And this is a very violent world.
But we don’t live under the shadow of terrorism the way some parts of the world do. We don’t for two reasons: First of all, because even though perfection is impossible, we come impressively close. Second, because even though we know the violently alienated are out there, we don’t let them win. We go about our lives.
Sometimes, I’m frustrated with our country. Most recently I was aggravated when we failed to achieve meaningful gun control, despite the horrific slaughter at an elementary school in Connecticut last December. But more times than not I am proud of who we are and what we accomplish. The heroism of the runners and doctors and first responders that followed the Boston Marathon bombing is another legacy to that tragic moment in our history. So was the work of our law enforcement officials. The spirit of Boston in the days after the attack has left me moved and inspired.
Which brings me back to my friend in Watertown. Khatchig is the editor of “The Armenian Weekly” and a genocide scholar. If anyone understands the historical context of violence and terror, it’s a genocide scholar. If anyone understands a world where people detonate bombs designed to kill innocent people, it’s a fellow who grew up in Beirut. He also happens to be one of the smartest people I know. This was his response when I asked him what it felt like to witness the sort of violence he knew from his childhood and young adulthood in Lebanon occur in his neighborhood in Massachusetts:
“It is when hatred and violence strike close to home – whether home is Beirut or Watertown – that our true commitment to the values and principles on which we pride ourselves is tested. Terror is defeated by upholding those principles – across the board and all the time – and not by renouncing them with the excuse of making home a safer place. That, for me, is homeland security.”
It will be long after the news cycles have moved on that we have fully regained our equilibrium. In the meantime, I will take pride in the people of eastern Massachusetts, and comfort in the courageous way they have, pure and simple, gone on living. That’s what it means to win. That’s what it means to be Boston Strong.
(This column appeared originally in the Burlington Free Press on April 28, 2013. Chris’s new novel, “The Light in the Ruins,” arrives on July 9.)
But among the elements of the story that will stay with me a long time is this: The reaction of my good friend, Khatchig Mouradian. Khatchig lives in Watertown and the firefight between Tamerlan and Dzhokar Tsarnaev and the Boston police occurred in his neighborhood. When I woke up that Friday morning, April 19, and saw Watertown was in the news, I texted him to make sure he was safe. His response? “I just gave an interview to a newspaper in Turkey. I said I’m so used to explosions that I slept through them.”
Khatchig grew up in Beirut during that country’s cataclysmic civil war. He spent so many nights in bomb shelters teaching his younger sisters to play chess – taking their mind off the reality that their home was, once again, being shelled – that both girls would grow into Lebanese chess champions and win numerous regional and international tournaments.
Likewise, there are my friends from Israel who, at different points in their lives, knew that any moment a bus might burst into flames or a missile might explode in the street.
Obviously our country is not exempt from terror. At different times in the past two decades, we have been targeted by foreigners and by our own citizens. We all know the worst examples of each: The attack on the World Trade Center in Manhattan on the one hand, and the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, on the other.
And we will be attacked again. The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security may unravel and stop a thousand schemes, but eventually they will miss one – as they did with the brothers Tsarnaev. This is not a criticism of either organization; it’s only an acknowledgment that perfection is impossible in this game. We’re not talking nine innings; we’re talking every single day of every single year. And this is a very violent world.
But we don’t live under the shadow of terrorism the way some parts of the world do. We don’t for two reasons: First of all, because even though perfection is impossible, we come impressively close. Second, because even though we know the violently alienated are out there, we don’t let them win. We go about our lives.
Sometimes, I’m frustrated with our country. Most recently I was aggravated when we failed to achieve meaningful gun control, despite the horrific slaughter at an elementary school in Connecticut last December. But more times than not I am proud of who we are and what we accomplish. The heroism of the runners and doctors and first responders that followed the Boston Marathon bombing is another legacy to that tragic moment in our history. So was the work of our law enforcement officials. The spirit of Boston in the days after the attack has left me moved and inspired.
Which brings me back to my friend in Watertown. Khatchig is the editor of “The Armenian Weekly” and a genocide scholar. If anyone understands the historical context of violence and terror, it’s a genocide scholar. If anyone understands a world where people detonate bombs designed to kill innocent people, it’s a fellow who grew up in Beirut. He also happens to be one of the smartest people I know. This was his response when I asked him what it felt like to witness the sort of violence he knew from his childhood and young adulthood in Lebanon occur in his neighborhood in Massachusetts:
“It is when hatred and violence strike close to home – whether home is Beirut or Watertown – that our true commitment to the values and principles on which we pride ourselves is tested. Terror is defeated by upholding those principles – across the board and all the time – and not by renouncing them with the excuse of making home a safer place. That, for me, is homeland security.”
It will be long after the news cycles have moved on that we have fully regained our equilibrium. In the meantime, I will take pride in the people of eastern Massachusetts, and comfort in the courageous way they have, pure and simple, gone on living. That’s what it means to win. That’s what it means to be Boston Strong.
(This column appeared originally in the Burlington Free Press on April 28, 2013. Chris’s new novel, “The Light in the Ruins,” arrives on July 9.)
Hope springs eternal: Play ball!
You might not know it from what I share in this column, but I played some pretty serious football and baseball as a boy.
First of all, I was on the same high school football team – the illustrious Bronxville Broncos of Westchester County, N.Y. – as Roger Goodell. Yup, that Roger Goodell. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell. The only difference between us was that he starred at tight end and it was going to take a bus accident in which two-thirds of the team broke their legs for me ever to play in a game. The one time my name appeared in any newspaper in the context of football was when our field goal kicker and I had to swap jerseys so he could play cornerback that afternoon. He happened to kick a winning field goal that day that was, by high school standards, spectacularly long. I got the credit in a newspaper story and, yes, felt pretty horrible. In any case, I was on Roger’s team.
And one year when I was a Little League baseball pitcher, I made the All Star team. Not kidding. I started the All Star game and gave up, I believe, a thousand runs. Okay, maybe not a thousand. But a lot. It might have been as many as eighteen. My strength as a pitcher was pinpoint control, which is indeed rare in Little League. I didn’t walk a lot of people. Unfortunately, my fastball topped out at about ten miles an hour. Umpires and batters alike would doze off waiting for the ball to travel from the pitcher’s mound to home plate. During that All Star game, my control eluded me. The game might still be going on if the coach hadn’t finally given me the hook.
I mention this because Little League baseball is back. I live no more than 150 yards from the baseball field here in Lincoln, Vermont, and while I don’t watch a lot of games, every season I will watch a few. Eight years ago, when my daughter was still in the Lincoln Elementary School, I knew who most of the ballplayers were. Now I haven’t a clue.
Of course, when I would watch an occasional game two decades ago, before my daughter was born, I didn’t know the names of most of the ballplayers either. Neither did Ken Lougee. Who was Ken Lougee? Ken was a neighbor here in Lincoln, a much older fellow who passed away years and years ago. But when Ken was an old man and I was a young man, sometimes we would watch the games together and talk about baseball and, yes, the meaning of life. Neither of us had an answer, but it didn’t matter because part of the meaning of life is simple human connection. He would carry his aluminum lawn chair with the nylon webbing to the grass on the small hill on the third base side of the diamond, and there we would discuss how we had come to Lincoln and the state of the world. Ken was smart and funny and kind. Our conversations would be interrupted – as are all conversations at a Little League game – by the metallic ping of baseball and bat, and we would stop in mid-sentence to watch what was transpiring on the field.
Which brings me back to my own career as a pitcher. Perhaps my favorite memory of my years on the mound is this. It is late on a Saturday morning and the game is perhaps half over. Between batters, I gaze into the small bleachers along the third base side and I’m surprised because there is my father. He had been on a business trip and wasn’t due home until much later that day. But he has, I realize, caught an earlier flight. And there he is, watching.
“Baseball is continuous,” poet Donald Hall has reminded us, “like nothing else among American things, an endless game of repeated summers, joining the long generations of all the fathers and all the sons.”
Maybe that’s why I watch. Maybe that’s why Ken and I used to watch together.
It’s that time of the year. Suddenly it’s spring, even here in Vermont.
(This column appeared originally in the Burlington Free Press. Chris’s new novel, “The Light in the Ruins,” arrives in two months.)
First of all, I was on the same high school football team – the illustrious Bronxville Broncos of Westchester County, N.Y. – as Roger Goodell. Yup, that Roger Goodell. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell. The only difference between us was that he starred at tight end and it was going to take a bus accident in which two-thirds of the team broke their legs for me ever to play in a game. The one time my name appeared in any newspaper in the context of football was when our field goal kicker and I had to swap jerseys so he could play cornerback that afternoon. He happened to kick a winning field goal that day that was, by high school standards, spectacularly long. I got the credit in a newspaper story and, yes, felt pretty horrible. In any case, I was on Roger’s team.
And one year when I was a Little League baseball pitcher, I made the All Star team. Not kidding. I started the All Star game and gave up, I believe, a thousand runs. Okay, maybe not a thousand. But a lot. It might have been as many as eighteen. My strength as a pitcher was pinpoint control, which is indeed rare in Little League. I didn’t walk a lot of people. Unfortunately, my fastball topped out at about ten miles an hour. Umpires and batters alike would doze off waiting for the ball to travel from the pitcher’s mound to home plate. During that All Star game, my control eluded me. The game might still be going on if the coach hadn’t finally given me the hook.
I mention this because Little League baseball is back. I live no more than 150 yards from the baseball field here in Lincoln, Vermont, and while I don’t watch a lot of games, every season I will watch a few. Eight years ago, when my daughter was still in the Lincoln Elementary School, I knew who most of the ballplayers were. Now I haven’t a clue.
Of course, when I would watch an occasional game two decades ago, before my daughter was born, I didn’t know the names of most of the ballplayers either. Neither did Ken Lougee. Who was Ken Lougee? Ken was a neighbor here in Lincoln, a much older fellow who passed away years and years ago. But when Ken was an old man and I was a young man, sometimes we would watch the games together and talk about baseball and, yes, the meaning of life. Neither of us had an answer, but it didn’t matter because part of the meaning of life is simple human connection. He would carry his aluminum lawn chair with the nylon webbing to the grass on the small hill on the third base side of the diamond, and there we would discuss how we had come to Lincoln and the state of the world. Ken was smart and funny and kind. Our conversations would be interrupted – as are all conversations at a Little League game – by the metallic ping of baseball and bat, and we would stop in mid-sentence to watch what was transpiring on the field.
Which brings me back to my own career as a pitcher. Perhaps my favorite memory of my years on the mound is this. It is late on a Saturday morning and the game is perhaps half over. Between batters, I gaze into the small bleachers along the third base side and I’m surprised because there is my father. He had been on a business trip and wasn’t due home until much later that day. But he has, I realize, caught an earlier flight. And there he is, watching.
“Baseball is continuous,” poet Donald Hall has reminded us, “like nothing else among American things, an endless game of repeated summers, joining the long generations of all the fathers and all the sons.”
Maybe that’s why I watch. Maybe that’s why Ken and I used to watch together.
It’s that time of the year. Suddenly it’s spring, even here in Vermont.
(This column appeared originally in the Burlington Free Press. Chris’s new novel, “The Light in the Ruins,” arrives in two months.)
Mother-s Day -- by the book
If you are a little boy and want to test your mother’s love, color in the leaves on the dust jacket of her first edition of Harper Lee’s novel, “To Kill a Mockingbird.” Or draw the Starship Enterprise and a Klingon battle cruiser in the sky on her first edition of Ernest Hemingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea.” I did both.
In all fairness, I’m not sure my mother viewed either book as an “investment.” They just happened to be first editions because my mother was a voracious reader and bought both novels soon after they were published. Nevertheless, she made it clear when I shared my work with her that she would prefer that I didn’t use book covers as coloring books in the future.
She had, in hindsight, a pretty impressive library, and when I was a boy the books sat in long rows of floor-to-ceiling bookcases that one of my father’s best friends, Bob George, built against the dark wood paneling of our family room. And it was a pretty eclectic collection: Alongside the Saul Bellows and the Philip Roths, there was a lot of stuff that was seriously steamy. We’re not talking handcuffs-on-the-cover steamy, but plenty of passages that I couldn’t wait to share with my friends. Exhibit A? Xavier Hollander’s “The Happy Hooker.” Exhibit B? Mario Puzo’s “The Godfather.”
I’ve thought a lot about my mother’s library lately, and not merely because today is Mother’s Day. My most recent novel channels select moments from my childhood, and as I have talked about the book on the road, I’ve found myself flashing back to my boyhood – and, in some ways, why I write books for a living in the first place. My father always believed that my mother was instrumental in my becoming a writer, if only because she was always reading and sharing her love of fiction with me.
But here is one footnote that I never really focused on until this spring: The way it was my blond, blue-eyed Swedish mother – not my Armenian father – who helped connect me to my Armenian literary ancestry. Over the years, she bought me a lot of books, but among them were three that I recall instantly: “My Name is Aram,” Pulitzer Prize-winning writer William Saroyan’s tales of growing up amidst the Armenian community of Fresno, California; “The Forty Days of Musa Dagh,” Franz Werfel’s magisterial epic of the 4,000 Armenians who held off the Turkish Army in the first summer of the Armenian Genocide; and Michael Arlen’s memoir of his reconnection with his Armenian heritage, “Passage to Ararat” – a winner of the National Book Award.
My mother died when I was a much younger man and struggling sometimes mightily and sometimes pathetically to carve out a career as a writer. Given that she was a pretty astute reader, she must have realized that my earliest books were utter train wrecks. Even a mother’s love couldn’t have made her blind to the disaster that was my “apprentice” work. Here is the first sentence from my first published novel: “Lisa Stone slept curled in a ball, a grown woman rolled on her side into a croissant.”
But she kept giving me books. Certainly part of the reason was simply that we both loved to read. But she also knew that I loved to write. Looking back, my sense is that many of the books she gave me were presents born somewhere in that foggy intersection between inspiration and hope. They were a mother’s love made manifest in pulp and ink and glue.
Which is, of course, one of the many things that good mothers do. They prod and they pray and they hope. They are encouraging; they are the last to give up. I had one of those moms. My daughter does now.
Happy Mother’s Day.
(This column appeared originally in the Burlington Free Press on May 12, 2013. Chris’s new novel, “The Light in the Ruins,” arrives in less than two months now.)
In all fairness, I’m not sure my mother viewed either book as an “investment.” They just happened to be first editions because my mother was a voracious reader and bought both novels soon after they were published. Nevertheless, she made it clear when I shared my work with her that she would prefer that I didn’t use book covers as coloring books in the future.
She had, in hindsight, a pretty impressive library, and when I was a boy the books sat in long rows of floor-to-ceiling bookcases that one of my father’s best friends, Bob George, built against the dark wood paneling of our family room. And it was a pretty eclectic collection: Alongside the Saul Bellows and the Philip Roths, there was a lot of stuff that was seriously steamy. We’re not talking handcuffs-on-the-cover steamy, but plenty of passages that I couldn’t wait to share with my friends. Exhibit A? Xavier Hollander’s “The Happy Hooker.” Exhibit B? Mario Puzo’s “The Godfather.”
I’ve thought a lot about my mother’s library lately, and not merely because today is Mother’s Day. My most recent novel channels select moments from my childhood, and as I have talked about the book on the road, I’ve found myself flashing back to my boyhood – and, in some ways, why I write books for a living in the first place. My father always believed that my mother was instrumental in my becoming a writer, if only because she was always reading and sharing her love of fiction with me.
But here is one footnote that I never really focused on until this spring: The way it was my blond, blue-eyed Swedish mother – not my Armenian father – who helped connect me to my Armenian literary ancestry. Over the years, she bought me a lot of books, but among them were three that I recall instantly: “My Name is Aram,” Pulitzer Prize-winning writer William Saroyan’s tales of growing up amidst the Armenian community of Fresno, California; “The Forty Days of Musa Dagh,” Franz Werfel’s magisterial epic of the 4,000 Armenians who held off the Turkish Army in the first summer of the Armenian Genocide; and Michael Arlen’s memoir of his reconnection with his Armenian heritage, “Passage to Ararat” – a winner of the National Book Award.
My mother died when I was a much younger man and struggling sometimes mightily and sometimes pathetically to carve out a career as a writer. Given that she was a pretty astute reader, she must have realized that my earliest books were utter train wrecks. Even a mother’s love couldn’t have made her blind to the disaster that was my “apprentice” work. Here is the first sentence from my first published novel: “Lisa Stone slept curled in a ball, a grown woman rolled on her side into a croissant.”
But she kept giving me books. Certainly part of the reason was simply that we both loved to read. But she also knew that I loved to write. Looking back, my sense is that many of the books she gave me were presents born somewhere in that foggy intersection between inspiration and hope. They were a mother’s love made manifest in pulp and ink and glue.
Which is, of course, one of the many things that good mothers do. They prod and they pray and they hope. They are encouraging; they are the last to give up. I had one of those moms. My daughter does now.
Happy Mother’s Day.
(This column appeared originally in the Burlington Free Press on May 12, 2013. Chris’s new novel, “The Light in the Ruins,” arrives in less than two months now.)
Hollywood's blockbuster season is here: Duck.
It was over thirty years ago that the Hollywood Blockbuster Season gave us “Odorama.” Yup, 1981’s version of 3-D was a scratch and sniff card with numbered aromas. When a number flashed on the screen, we in the audience would scratch. It was a John Waters gimmick for his film, “Polyester,” which has been used only sparingly since. I saw the film, but all I recall are the ovals on the scratch and sniff card – and one “aroma:” stinky shoes.
We are now once more in the midst of the Hollywood Blockbuster Season, which is kind of like hurricane season except all of the mayhem is digitally rendered and the only casualty is the nation’s collective hearing. I shudder when I think of how many hearing hair cells in my ears have been pummeled by Cineplex explosions, engines, and screams. As a middle-aged man, I may actually have more hair in my ears than I have hair cells. It makes a guy miss “Odorama.”
Nevertheless, I like this season. I really do. When it comes to movies, I have the emotional depth of a thirteen-year-old. A new Batman movie? I’m there. A new Jackass movie? My wife and I are there together. (Diligent readers will recall that my wife and I did not merely stand in line for a recent Jackass film, we were among the first in line on opening night. We were also – by far – the oldest people there. When it comes to movies, apparently neither of us has a whole lot of pride.)
These days a summer blockbuster is likely to come at us – quite literally – in 3-D. We have the technology and so we use it. Baz Luhrmann’s 3-D “The Great Gatsby” opened earlier this month. J.J. Abrams’s 3-D “Star Trek into Darkness” opened this weekend.
Historically, this has been the case with most technologies: When we can do it, we will do it. Among the rare cases when we have not leveraged an invention are the nuclear bomb – at least so far, thank heavens – and supersonic passenger flight. The Concorde allowed people to fly between North America and Europe in less than half the time that it took a traditional passenger jet, but in its nearly three decades of operation, there were relatively few takers. Saving a few hours wasn’t worth the extra cost.
But filmmakers are using 3-D a lot, especially for the movies that premiere in the summer. As anyone who has seen Luhrmann’s 3-D “Gatsby” knows, we don’t merely don the plastic glasses now for the likes of Iron Man, Superman, and Thor. We don them for James Gatz and Daisy Buchanan. Meanwhile, consumers are starting to spend serious scratch to bring 3-D TVs and home theatres into their living rooms.
And while 3-D is not a bad thing and it’s certainly not a gimmick thing, I wonder if it is quite so necessary. Is it as critical a cinematic breakthrough as sound – as talking pictures? As replacing black and white film with color film? As, for that matter, transitioning from film to digital technologies? To computer generated imagery and special effects?
The short answer? No. The truth is, we had 3-D in the 1950s. Who could possibly forget the 1953 3-D science fiction classic, “Robot Monster?” Okay, that’s a bad example. But you see my point. And while 3-D is better now and has the benefits of being married to CGI technology, I’m still not sure it’s essential for most movies. My favorite moment in Luhrmann’s “Gatsby” was that riveting, climactic scene toward the end when Daisy must choose between her husband and her lover. And that was all about writing and screenwriting and acting and directing.
Am I a dinosaur? Maybe. But I don’t think so. I just prefer my 3-D to be in the service of the Starship Enterprise.
(This article appeared originally in the Burlington Free Press on May 19, 2013. Chris’s new novel, The Light in the Ruins, arrives on July 8.)
We are now once more in the midst of the Hollywood Blockbuster Season, which is kind of like hurricane season except all of the mayhem is digitally rendered and the only casualty is the nation’s collective hearing. I shudder when I think of how many hearing hair cells in my ears have been pummeled by Cineplex explosions, engines, and screams. As a middle-aged man, I may actually have more hair in my ears than I have hair cells. It makes a guy miss “Odorama.”
Nevertheless, I like this season. I really do. When it comes to movies, I have the emotional depth of a thirteen-year-old. A new Batman movie? I’m there. A new Jackass movie? My wife and I are there together. (Diligent readers will recall that my wife and I did not merely stand in line for a recent Jackass film, we were among the first in line on opening night. We were also – by far – the oldest people there. When it comes to movies, apparently neither of us has a whole lot of pride.)
These days a summer blockbuster is likely to come at us – quite literally – in 3-D. We have the technology and so we use it. Baz Luhrmann’s 3-D “The Great Gatsby” opened earlier this month. J.J. Abrams’s 3-D “Star Trek into Darkness” opened this weekend.
Historically, this has been the case with most technologies: When we can do it, we will do it. Among the rare cases when we have not leveraged an invention are the nuclear bomb – at least so far, thank heavens – and supersonic passenger flight. The Concorde allowed people to fly between North America and Europe in less than half the time that it took a traditional passenger jet, but in its nearly three decades of operation, there were relatively few takers. Saving a few hours wasn’t worth the extra cost.
But filmmakers are using 3-D a lot, especially for the movies that premiere in the summer. As anyone who has seen Luhrmann’s 3-D “Gatsby” knows, we don’t merely don the plastic glasses now for the likes of Iron Man, Superman, and Thor. We don them for James Gatz and Daisy Buchanan. Meanwhile, consumers are starting to spend serious scratch to bring 3-D TVs and home theatres into their living rooms.
And while 3-D is not a bad thing and it’s certainly not a gimmick thing, I wonder if it is quite so necessary. Is it as critical a cinematic breakthrough as sound – as talking pictures? As replacing black and white film with color film? As, for that matter, transitioning from film to digital technologies? To computer generated imagery and special effects?
The short answer? No. The truth is, we had 3-D in the 1950s. Who could possibly forget the 1953 3-D science fiction classic, “Robot Monster?” Okay, that’s a bad example. But you see my point. And while 3-D is better now and has the benefits of being married to CGI technology, I’m still not sure it’s essential for most movies. My favorite moment in Luhrmann’s “Gatsby” was that riveting, climactic scene toward the end when Daisy must choose between her husband and her lover. And that was all about writing and screenwriting and acting and directing.
Am I a dinosaur? Maybe. But I don’t think so. I just prefer my 3-D to be in the service of the Starship Enterprise.
(This article appeared originally in the Burlington Free Press on May 19, 2013. Chris’s new novel, The Light in the Ruins, arrives on July 8.)
The medals have finally come home
U.S. Army private Corrado Piccoli was killed in France in the summer of 1944. This is, in most ways, a very old story – 69 years old, to be precise. Moreover, Piccoli was only one of the tens of thousands of Americans killed in battle that season. Posthumously, he was awarded the Purple Heart.
And yet his story is newsworthy now. Why? Because of that medal – and because of the efforts of Georgia, Vermont’s Zachariah Fike, a captain in the Vermont Army National Guard. Piccoli’s Purple Heart was the first of 60 that Fike has rescued from pawnshops, antique stores, and online auctions and returned to the recipients’ families. He is in the process of finding the rightful owners of 180 more.
“People sometimes think it’s a scam and I want money when I first track down a family,” Fike told me over coffee at Muddy Waters on Main Street in Burlington, Vermont. “But it’s the right thing to do. I consider myself a compatriot. As Americans, we owe these people so much.” To find Piccoli’s family demanded serious detective work: A trip to Watertown, New York. and the high school there. Unearthing a 1941 high school yearbook. Finding the soldier’s grave in the cemetery. An Internet search for family members. Finally he was able to return Piccoli’s medal to Adeline Rockko, now 86 years old, and today the medal is displayed at the Italian American Civic Association in Watertown, New York.
Fike, 32, is a Purple Heart recipient himself. He’s a self-described army brat, born in Germany to a pair of Army drill sergeants. (His mother, he says, was among the first female drill sergeants.) In the small hours of the morning on September 11, 2010, he was wounded in a Katyusha rocket attack at Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan.
Without exception, the families have been profoundly grateful to have the lost medals returned. Fike shared with me an example of how these precious mementoes are lost – and found:
“A married couple in Pennsylvania is exercising on their community track, and as the husband bends down to tie his shoe, he sees a Purple Heart in the snow. The owner had given the medal to his granddaughter, before dying in 2009. The granddaughter carried it with her in her pocketbook. But then her car is broken into and her purse is stolen. When the thieves were emptying the purse, they threw the medal away.”
Whenever Fike comes across a Purple Heart on ebay or in a pawnshop, he buys it with his own money. Before returning it to the family – often in a ceremony with the family and a local chapter of the Military Order of the Purple Heart – he pays to have it mounted and framed. He covers his own travel to wherever the family lives: “We try to honor and symbolize who the soldier was – to celebrate the sacrifice and what he meant to his country.”
To fund his efforts, he has now started a non-profit organization called “Purple Hearts Reunited.”
“I knew this was my calling as soon as I got started,” he said. “It’s my mission in life. I’m giving these families a ceremony that is meaningful and joyful, and they will always have that memory.”
And, of course, they will also have the medal.
Tomorrow is Memorial Day – a day in which we remember our veterans who have died. It’s a tradition that dates back, at the very least, to 1868. Thanks to Fike, now soldiers such as Corrado Piccoli are not merely remembered: Their legacies have been linked with their sacrifice. The medals have come home.
* * *
To learn more about Fike’s project to return Purple Hearts to their owners or families, visit www.purpleheartsreunited.org .
The column appeared originally in the Burlington Free Press on May 26, 2013.
Chris's new novel, "The Light in the Ruins," arrives in six weeks now.
And yet his story is newsworthy now. Why? Because of that medal – and because of the efforts of Georgia, Vermont’s Zachariah Fike, a captain in the Vermont Army National Guard. Piccoli’s Purple Heart was the first of 60 that Fike has rescued from pawnshops, antique stores, and online auctions and returned to the recipients’ families. He is in the process of finding the rightful owners of 180 more.
“People sometimes think it’s a scam and I want money when I first track down a family,” Fike told me over coffee at Muddy Waters on Main Street in Burlington, Vermont. “But it’s the right thing to do. I consider myself a compatriot. As Americans, we owe these people so much.” To find Piccoli’s family demanded serious detective work: A trip to Watertown, New York. and the high school there. Unearthing a 1941 high school yearbook. Finding the soldier’s grave in the cemetery. An Internet search for family members. Finally he was able to return Piccoli’s medal to Adeline Rockko, now 86 years old, and today the medal is displayed at the Italian American Civic Association in Watertown, New York.
Fike, 32, is a Purple Heart recipient himself. He’s a self-described army brat, born in Germany to a pair of Army drill sergeants. (His mother, he says, was among the first female drill sergeants.) In the small hours of the morning on September 11, 2010, he was wounded in a Katyusha rocket attack at Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan.
Without exception, the families have been profoundly grateful to have the lost medals returned. Fike shared with me an example of how these precious mementoes are lost – and found:
“A married couple in Pennsylvania is exercising on their community track, and as the husband bends down to tie his shoe, he sees a Purple Heart in the snow. The owner had given the medal to his granddaughter, before dying in 2009. The granddaughter carried it with her in her pocketbook. But then her car is broken into and her purse is stolen. When the thieves were emptying the purse, they threw the medal away.”
Whenever Fike comes across a Purple Heart on ebay or in a pawnshop, he buys it with his own money. Before returning it to the family – often in a ceremony with the family and a local chapter of the Military Order of the Purple Heart – he pays to have it mounted and framed. He covers his own travel to wherever the family lives: “We try to honor and symbolize who the soldier was – to celebrate the sacrifice and what he meant to his country.”
To fund his efforts, he has now started a non-profit organization called “Purple Hearts Reunited.”
“I knew this was my calling as soon as I got started,” he said. “It’s my mission in life. I’m giving these families a ceremony that is meaningful and joyful, and they will always have that memory.”
And, of course, they will also have the medal.
Tomorrow is Memorial Day – a day in which we remember our veterans who have died. It’s a tradition that dates back, at the very least, to 1868. Thanks to Fike, now soldiers such as Corrado Piccoli are not merely remembered: Their legacies have been linked with their sacrifice. The medals have come home.
* * *
To learn more about Fike’s project to return Purple Hearts to their owners or families, visit www.purpleheartsreunited.org .
The column appeared originally in the Burlington Free Press on May 26, 2013.
Chris's new novel, "The Light in the Ruins," arrives in six weeks now.
