Nicholson Baker and “Substitute: Going to School With a Thousand Kids”

Nicholson Baker --- “Vox,” “The Fermata,” and “Human Smoke” -- has a new book called “Substitute: Going to School With a Thousand Kids,” which chronicles his stint substitute teaching in Maine’s elementary, middle and high schools. I get a chance to talk to Baker about his book for the Boston Globe.

Blue Man Group goes on ... and on ...

Blue Man Group began in New York City in 1991; four years later, Boston became the first satellite venue. Today, Blue Man Group Boston continues its astounding run, 21 years and 9,848 performances later, and counting. As the years pass, Boston’s cast and crew have played an increasingly key role in building the Blue Man Group empire. Read the rest of my story for the Boston Globe here.

Making beasts “walk like you, talk like you, ooh-bi-doo."

I talk to Jon Favreau about his new remake of The Jungle Book and how he got his beasts to “walk like you, talk like you, ooh-bi-doo.” More on that over at the Boston Globe.

You can't escape escape rooms

What is an escape room? I found out reporting on this story for the Boston Globe. 

A review of Tolkien's “The Story of Kullervo”

My review of “The Story of Kullervo," an unfinsihed story by J.R.R. Tolkien based on six chapters, or “runos,” from “The Kalevala,” an epic poem compiled from Finnish oral folklore. Drafted sometime from 1912 to 1916, when Tolkien was in his 20s, his version represents the then-poet and philologist’s baby steps toward prose storytelling. Read the rest over at the Boston Globe.

Batman vs. Superman Smackdown!

In this 3-parter in The Boston Globe, I give you (almost) everything you wanted to know about Batman and Superman, in advance the new “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice" movie, including: 1) a look at the new movie in the context of previous Batman and Superman films (and if Affleck is up to the task of being the Caped Crusader); 2) an overview of “Batman and Superman at the movies” and 3) a Batman/Superman fact sheet.

Product placement in the National Parks

It’s been said by more than Ken Burns that the national parks are America’s best idea. In “National Parks Adventure,” opening at the Museum of Science’s Mugar Omni Theater on Friday, narrator Robert Redford makes the same claim. But after this hokey and commercialized IMAX road trip, you’ll be thinking the best idea might have been to stay at home. Read the rest of my Boston Globe review.

Geek out in the Galapagos

Sometimes, we watch a documentary to be sucker-punched by its investigative uppercut. Other times, it’s to be awed by nerdy info and eye-candy. The IMAX science museum/aquarium movie “Galapagos 3D: Nature’s Wonderland" may not be subtle or particularly brilliant. But this science-y doc sates that second desire just fine. Read the rest of my review of “Galapagos 3D: Nature’s Wonderland" for the Boston Globe.

What is it like to run the ‪‎Iditarod?

What it's like to run the Iditarod? In my story “1 woman, 16 dogs, and 1,000 miles of snow” for the Boston Globe, I interview Debbie Clarke Moderow about her dogsledding quest to finish the 1,000 mile race --- and write a book about it, called “Fast Into the Night: A Woman, Her Dogs, and Their Journey North on the Iditarod Trail."

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, and the state of the mash-up movie

How to make a mash-up: Into a cauldron, toss some historical or fictional character, dusty novel, or ancient fairy tale. The more staid or stale or out of fashion, the better. Then, stir in creatures or villains from some different genre: zombies, witches, dinosaurs, even Nazis. Pour this mixture into a script, and bake for about 120 minutes at 75 million dollars, give or take a few million. Serve with a reliable dressing — blood and gore, perhaps — that most focus groups will find to their tastes. Prepared correctly, your Hollywood masterpiece will serve the masses.

On Friday, the mash-up rises again with “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.” The movie version of Seth Grahame-Smith’s 2009 novel of the same name retells Jane Austen’s 1813 tale of manners, morality, social standing, and romance, but sets it in a reimagined Regency Era beset by the undead.

Will this new concoction, equal parts Austen and zombie pandemic, deliver a much-needed shot in the arm or another box office blow to the genre? Read the rest of my story over at the Boston Globe

Let's get virtual... virtual ...

In which I try out a virtual reality exercise bike, become a pegasus, lasso some bandits, and come in second as a dog driving a Formula One racing car. Plus, I burn some calories. My story for the Boston Globe.

Pilgrim for a Day

I'm going to be a Pilgrim for a Day! On Mon June 16, noon-1, join me and deputy director of Plimoth Plantation Richard Pickering, for a Google Hangout live-cast and witness my transformation into 17th-Century Pilgrim, Stephen Deane. Watch me struggle with a period dialect and ill-fitting shoes in preparation for my live role-play experience on site at Plimoth on June 21. It's all for Boston Gloibe story I'm writing.

Settle your colonial-role-playing curiosity and ask us questions in this rare opportunity to look behind the scenes at Plimoth Plantation’s role players!

More info on how to participate here http://www.plimoth.org/pilgrimforaday

How did I get my mojo back?

BY ETHAN GILSDORF

In a new stunt-journalism story for the Boston Globe, I spent some time trying to address the problem of growing older, not being hip, losing my grasp of pop culture, and otherwise feeling old. 

What happened to that 20- and 30-something dude I once was? I don't look that bad for a 47-year-old. But the idea of trying to be “hip” has been on my mind ever since I turned 47. As I write in the story:

Despite my nerdy backpack-wearing, laptop-carrying, latte-chugging lifestyle, I had begun suspecting I wasn’t the youngest person in the room anymore. My cultural sweet spot hovers somewhere between 1979 and 1999. Sure, I have a smart phone, and have built my obligatory social media identities, but I feel bumbling in my efforts to stay on top of technology. I don’t own a TV, so I miss out on the cult shows. The time when I’d endure long lines at clubs to see bands, even ones I’m oblivious to, was passing. I’m happy staying home and listening to my collection of obscure K-Tel records.

Also: People suddenly call me sir. As in: “Here’s your change, sir,” or “Let me just unlock that case where the teeth-whitening products are, sir.” Do the baggy jeans, cowboy shirts, and running shoes give off old-man cooties? Huh. As time marches forward, and I struggle to identify the latest band artistic icon, trending Internet meme, I wonder if I’ve fallen irrevocably behind.

I decided to embark on a Middle Age Makeover. I concocted a quest to regain my musical, pop cultural, technological, and fashion mojo. You can read the results here.

A kid who brings miniature worlds to life

NATICK — Sometimes, the world can seem overwhelming. Overbearing. If only you were tiny enough to build a house out of cards and climb inside, or escape to a miniature treehouse suspended between stalks of broccoli.

Or better yet, just fly away. Fold a giant paper airplane, then grasp its thin fuselage for dear life and sail across a field into summertime.

Such is Zev Hoover’s fanciful photographic take on reality. His arresting images evoke a wonderland of imaginary environments, built from f-stops and pixels, and hinting at characters with secret stories to tell.

Hoover’s work, which he posts on the photo sharing site Flickr using the handle “Fiddle Oak” (a play on “Little Folk”), has caught fire across the Internet. He has been profiled in the media and on design and photography blogs. On Monday, he will fly to New York to appear on ABC’s “Good Morning America Live” webcast.

One post touting his “surreal photo manipulations” has received 108,000 Facebook likes.

“Maybe a million people saw it,” said the slightly stunned Hoover, who is only 14.

COLM O’MOLLOY FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE

“He’s enjoying this little ride,” said his father, Jeff. “But he’s familiar with Andy Warhol’s idea of 15 minutes of fame and realizes this may be transitory.”

The skinny teen deadpanned, “If I was older, it wouldn’t make as good of a story.”

But it’s Hoover’s talent that has captured imaginations. A film production company contacted him about designing a movie poster. He has been approached by a publisher for a potential narrative photo textbook project. Nikon World magazine asked him to contribute a photo. A lens manufacturer sent him a free lens, saying only: “Take some pictures with it.”

No doubt he will. Plenty of his peers would be happy playing soccer or video games, but not Hoover. He needs to be creating. “I get anxious if I’m not doing something,” he said, sitting outside his family’s Natick home this week. “What’s next?”

His series of “Little Folk/Fiddle Oak” images began during a walk in the woods with sister, Aliza. He remembers thinking, “Oh, wouldn’t little people be cool?” Crouching near the ground, he imagined seeing the world from their perspective. He felt the miniature genre had never been done in photography — “at least not very well.”

“There’s a fine line to walk between having it be too abstract and having it be too cheesy-obvious,” he said.

He performs his sleight of hand in Photoshop, which he taught himself via Internet tutorials.

Read the rest of the front page Boston Globe story. For a photo gallery of Zev's work, look here.

Got Heroes? Viggo Mortensen Lists His Top 230

[this originally appeared in the Boston Globe]

by Ethan Gilsdorf

Who are Viggo Mortensen’s heroes? Ask him, and he doesn’t hold back. That’s what we learned when, after a recent interview, we sent the actor some follow-up questions via e-mail. Here are his responses.

1) Who were your heroes growing up as a child, and who are they today?

Okay, you asked for it...

As a child — say, before age eleven — I suppose they were my father, my mother, various horses and dogs, soccer players for San Lorenzo de Almagro (a club founded in Boedo, Argentina, in 1908 by Salesian priest Lorenzo Massa) like “Lobo” Fischer, “Loco” Doval, “Bambino” Veira, “Sapo” Villar and too many other legendary players from that club to mention — Viking Leif Eriksson, fictional gaucho cowboy Martin Fierro, Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi, Odin, Thor, Jesus of Nazareth, Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, Hans Christian Andersen, William Shakespeare and Miguel de Cervantes, the character Don Quijote, his horse Rosinante and his trusty servant Sancho Panza, Achilles, Odysseus, Theseus, Joan of Arc, explorer Roald Amundsen, Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary, Thor Heyerdahl, Roger Bannister (the first man to break the four-minute mile barrier), marathon champion Abebe Bikila, Edson Arantes do Nascimento (Pelé), long jumper Bob Beamon, Jesse Owens, Bob Hayes, Emil Zátopek, Wilt Chamberlain, Cassius Clay, swimmers Don Schollander and Dawn Fraser, Peter O’Toole’s impersonation of T. E. Lawrence, the crew of Apollo 11, the recently-deceased rock legend Luis Alberto “El Flaco” Spinetta, Carlos Gardel, Bela Lugosi, Greta Garbo, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Louis Armstrong, Edith Piaf, Beethoven, Mozart ... I could probably name more, but surely that gives an idea of how and where I dreamed back then.

Although as an adult I have come to see that no human being is perfect, I now would place at the top of the list the many unheralded people whose small acts of selfless kindness and courtesy, of grace under pressure that we come across every single day are there to be noticed and emulated if we simply pay attention. In terms of individuals who are relatively well-known, I would single out Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Helen Caldicott, Dennis Kucinich, Baltasar Garzón, Aung San Suu Kyi, Julian Assange and anyone who speaks truth to power, stands up against injustice and cruelty regardless of any consequential risk of ostracism or personal physical danger. Of course, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Mark Twain, my father, my mother, and some of the others previously mentioned, are still heroes to me. I can also add, among other diverse sorts of heroes, my son Henry, Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, Sabina Spielrein, Heraclitus, Kierkegaard, Lao Tzu, Epictetus, writers Marguerite Duras, Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen), Albert Camus, Jonathan Swift, E. E. Cummings, Julio Cortázar, Mario Benedetti, Pablo Neruda, Octavio Paz, Juan Carlos Onetti, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Francisco Quevedo, Calderón de la Barca, Lope de Vega, Haroldo Conti, Oscar Wilde, Knut Hamsun, Saxo Grammaticus, Schopenhauer, Ludvig Holberg, Anton Chekhov, Anna Akhmatova, Johannes Ewald, Euripides, Stanley Kunitz, Theodore Roethke, Lewis Carroll, Joseph Conrad, Osip Mandelstam, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Seamus Heaney, Oscar Wilde, Cormac McCarthy, Edgar Allan Poe, Rainer Maria Rilke, Heinrich Heine, Hermann Hesse, Thomas Mann, William Burroughs, Walt Whitman, Kurt Vonnegut and Joseph Campbell, Queen Margrethe II of Denmark, directors Carl Dreyer, Robert Bresson, David Cronenberg, Ingmar Bergman, Andrei Tarkovsky, Luis Buñuel and Yasujirō Ozu, actors Richard Jenkins, Sandy Dennis, Geraldine Page, Meryl Streep, Maria Falconetti, Ghita Nørby, Ariadna Gil, Jessica Lange, Paco Rabal, Fernando Fernán Gómez, Dirk Bogarde, Christopher Walken, Dennis Hopper, Federico Luppi, Montgomery Clift, and Robert Duvall, stuntman Mike Watson, sculptors Bertel Thorvaldsen, Auguste Rodin, Henry Moore, Alberto Giacometti, painters Giotto, da Vinci, Juan Gris, Picasso, Matisse, Cezanne, Andrei Rublev, Velázquez, Rembrandt, Edvard Munch, Vilhelm Hammershøi, Utagawa Hiroshige, Minerva Chapman, Franz Kline, Cy Twombly, Robert Rauschenberg, Richard Diebenkorn, Per Kirkeby, Sigmar Polke, Gerhard Richter, Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, and photographers Jacques Henri Lartigue, Jacob Riis, André Kertész, Alfred Stieglitz, Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Capa, Julia Margaret Cameron, Martin Munkácsi, August Sander, Margaret Bourke-White, Robert Frank, Ansel Adams, Garry Winogrand and Dennis Hopper, tennis champions Rafael Nadal, Björn Borg and Guillermo Vilas, skiers Bill Koch, Juha Mieto, Jean-Claude Killy and Bjørn Dæhlie, newer San Lorenzo players like “Beto” Acosta, “Ratón” Ayala, the heroic 1982 San Lorenzo team that came back from the club’s only descent to Argentina’s second division breaking national attendance records along the way, Guy Lafleur and the great Montréal Canadiens teams from the 1970s, the 1969 and and 1986 New York Mets, Tom Seaver, “Doc” Gooden, New York Knick stars Walt Frazier, Willis Reed, Earl “The Pearl” Monroe, Bernard King, Oscar Reed, Patrick Ewing, Larry Bird, “Magic” Johnson, the U.S.A. 1980 Olympic hockey team, the ’87, ’91, 2008 and 2012 New York Giants teams, Danish soccer stars Allan Simonsen, Michael Laudrup, Peter Schmeichel and Denmark’s 1992’s soccer cinderella-story European Champion team, Johan Cruyff, Mario Kempes, Diego Maradona, Real Madrid’s/Schalke’s Raúl González Blanco, Leo Messi, Gonzalo Higuaín, Zinedine Zidane, Bob Dylan, Ada Falcón, Leonard Cohen, Chet Baker, Gustav Mahler, Arvo Pärt, Carl Nielsen and so on...

Sorry to give you such long lists. Could have been even longer...

2) What are your favorite films, or films influential on your career, and/or what actors do you admire, and why?

Movies, to name a few: The Passion of Joan of Arc, The Godfather I & II, A Separation, The Fog of War, The Conformist, Los Santos Inocentes, The Deer Hunter, Casino, Lawrence of Arabia, Tokyo Story, Autumn Sonata, Sunrise, Andrei Rublev, Citizen Kane, A Place in the Sun, City Lights, Casablanca, Double Indemnity, Sunset Boulevard, Greed, The Night of the Hunter, The Third Man, Gallipoli, Mother and Son, Stalker, Ivan’s Childhood, Red River, Taxi Driver, Frances, Network, Grand Illusion, L’Atalante, Throne of Blood, The Seven Samurai, The Sword of Doom, Hiroshi Inagaki’s Samurai trilogy, Carnival of Souls, Solaris (Tarkovsky’s original)...

Actors, to name a few: Montgomery Clift, Maria Falconetti, Meryl Streep, Marlon Brando, Richard Jenkins, Sandy Dennis, Ellen Burstyn, Geraldine Page, Robert Duvall, Anna Magnani, Peter O’Toole, Toshiro Mifune, Dennis Hopper, Jessica Lange, James Dean, John Hurt, Dirk Bogarde, Bette Davis, Greta Garbo, Glenda Jackson, Vanessa Redgrave, Barbara Stanwyck, Mary Pickford, Liv Ullmann, Ingrid Bergman, Gérard Depardieu, Jean Gabin, Jeanne Moreau, Catherine Deneuve, Ulrich Thomsen, Max von Sydow, Bruno Ganz...

3) Did you read much fantasy or science fiction as a kid? Did you ever play Dungeons & Dragons or know anyone who did?

Never have played “Dungeons and Dragons.” As a kid I read Jules Verne, H. G. Wells, and a few others. As an adult have admired Leonardo da Vinci’s drawings and notebooks.

4) We talked a little about your work as an actor, painter, poet and musician. They all seem linked by story. So I’m wondering what you think is the significance or power of stories? Why are they so important?

We are the stories we tell about ourselves, the stories we tell about others, the stories we read about everyone and every thing.

Ethan Gilsdorf can be reached at www.ethangilsdorf.com