JACK BERNARD'S TRAVELS

These are the devices that run my life (including the blond and, indirectly, her mother) in the background:

• Two MacBook Pro’s
• One Thunderbolt monitor
• One iPad with aftermarket keyboard
• Two Kindles
• Two VOIP internet phones

These are the devices that display and distribute artistic content:

• One 42” flat screen TV
• One TiVo (digital video recorder) to record TV shows, access Netflix, Pandora, etc
• One DVD/VHS player for DVD’s and old VHS tapes
• One home network wireless receiver
• Not shown – 42” flat screen (in the bedroom)
• Not shown – DVD player (in the bedroom

These devices are for music:

• One AM/FM/CD amplifier
• One CD player
• Not shown – one Apple iPod
• Not shown – three guitars and a kazoo

And these are the devices that control those devices:

• Two Comcast remotes for cable
• One universal remote to control input sources
• One Samsung remote for the bedroom DVD
• One Samsung remote to control the other bedroom remote
• One TiVo remote
• One Hitachi remote for the DVD player
• One ROKU remote to source all kinds of content from Netflix to Hulu to ESPN. (I don’t understand this one yet. It’s brand new from our techie son and daughter in law)

And this is what we use to call Jonathan for help whenever any of the other devices fail to perform as needed:

• Two iPhone 4s’s

I’m old enough to remember when the family crowded around a big old maple covered Philco radio to listen to Jack Benny on Sunday night, when we went to the Roycroft Theater to see Hopalong Cassidy for the Saturday matinee, and when everyone used the neighborhood library and struggled with the Dewey Decimal System to find a morsel of information. Those really weren’t the good old days but they were definitely simpler.

More tomorrow…

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Book clubs are everywhere. They’ve been around since the days when monks were copying manuscripts. They got a big boost when Gutenberg made print more accessible, and they got another kick-start when Oprah Winfrey started one in the media age.

At the grass roots level friends and friends of friends organize them. Bookstores and libraries create them to promote reading and sales. Community centers use them to bring people together. There are online book clubs, church book clubs, and company book clubs. There are women’s groups (by far the majority), men’s groups, singles book clubs, gay and lesbian clubs and couple’s groups.

The big event in the recent growth of book clubs came in 1996 with the creation of Oprah’s Book Club. Big O made it easy. She picked a book every month, published online newsletters and interviews with the author, provided information on how to form a discussion group, and the advent of Book Club 2.0 in 2012 provided a space for online comment and sharing.

With Oprah leading, publishers discovered a gold mine and began including discussion outlines in the back of Oprah’s picks and later in other popular titles that were finding favor with book clubs. It’s common to find these outlines in the paperback editions of many literary bestsellers. Whatever you’re looking for it’s out there.

I’m not much of a joiner. I don’t hike, bike, or ski with groups, and I’m not comfortable at cocktail parties. I don’t belong to any alumni or sports clubs that have a social component. But… two years ago M and I decided to get together with three other couples to talk about books. I’m not sure what pushed me over the lip; I suspect it was the composition of the group. They are all brilliant conversationalists and I knew the level of discourse would be high. One of the men is a psychiatrist who also happens to be a violinist and whose wife is an emeritus professor of sociology at Columbia University. There’s a genome scientist and Shakespearean scholar from the UW whose wife is a sociologist, and there are two MD’s, one in family practice and one whose career was mostly in public health. M and I are the lightweights.

I have no discipline in a bookstore and the result is a chock full wall-length bookcase and an unread pile of books as tall as I am. I will never get to all of them, so why would I take on additional reading? The reason is that I know the group will challenge me by choosing books that I wouldn’t otherwise read. We meet at irregular intervals, because all of us travel and it’s not easy to coordinate schedules. Last night we met for the first of two meetings to talk about Shakespeare. Session 1 was centered on Hamlet and next month we are following up with Henry IV (Part 1) – a tragedy and a history/comedy. Heavy stuff, but the variety gives it freshness.

Shakespeare is just one example of reading that I wouldn’t be looking at without the prod of the book club. In the last two years we’ve read a biography of Catherine the Great, Ari Shavit’s book My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel, Chinese Nobel Prize winner, Mo Yan’s Red Sorghum (almost unreadable), Sherwin Nuland’s How We Die, Aristotle’s Poetics, and Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast. I haven’t loved them all but I have loved the discussions. That’s what book clubs are supposed to be about.

M is more social than I am but also a voracious reader who belonged to two book clubs in Saigon with women from all over the world. And, my former wife has been an active member of a serious book club for 30 years. There has been some turnover there, but most of the original members are still active. My daughter is also a member now. I think there is another 2^nd generation person in the group too, so the groundwork has been laid to keep it going for a long time. I hope it does. People who read restore my faith in a world that seems careening out of control.

More tomorrow…

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It’s been a week of murderous drama – Anna Netrebko as Lady Macbeth in the Metropolitan Opera’s HD version of Macbeth, Kenneth Branagh as Hamlet in the 4-hour film of that super-sized Shakespeare tragedy, and Ben Affleck, yes, in the same breath as Anna Netrebko and Kenneth Branagh, as Nick Dunne in Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl. It was a big week for murder, duplicity, troubled marriages, and regicide, making it an exhausting and troubling week.

I had no idea the murderous Lady Macbeth looked like this. Until yesterday I saw her as a pinch-faced, tight-lipped, stringy-haired shrew. After yesterday’s Metropolitan Opera performance I understood how Macbeth could be so easily manipulated. I’d probably do anything she asked too.

Sexy as they are they are not Ms. Netrebko’s most famous attribute. She also sings. It is mesmerizing to watch her and I could easily do it without sound, but as the most acclaimed opera singer in the world it’s the voice that carries the day. It’s electrifying, and her current turn as Lady Macbeth extends her repertoire beyond the Mozart and Puccini that have been her signature roles until now. She’s knocking the critics dead and getting rave reviews.

Zeljko Lucic sings the role of Macbeth and he is good, but Netrebko dominates. I’m not very knowledgeable about opera but I do appreciate the creativity when old standards are updated. It’s a way to keep us from getting distracted by the period settings. Last year Lucic had the title role in a Rigoletto set in the Rat Pack’s 1970’s Las Vegas. This production of Macbeth was modernized and transformed into a battle between two army factions in the 20^th Century.

Something similar could be said for Kenneth Branagh’s 1996 film of Hamlet, which was shot at Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire, doubling as Elsinor, and set in the 19^th Century.

The performance uses conflated texts from several sources and runs almost 4 hours. This version is sometimes called the “eternal” text, possibly because it never seems to end. Nevertheless, it is a stunning work of cinematic art with an all-star cast that includes Julie Christie, Derek Jacobi, Judi Dench, John Gielgud, Kate Winslet,  Charlton Heston, Billy Crystal, Robin Williams, and Jack Lemmon. Some are better than others. I dislike Charlton Heston (RIP) intensely because of his NRA lunacy, but he is really good in the “play within a play.” Jack Lemmon not so much.

Maybe the best part about the DVD is the Special Features part where Branagh and another Shakespearean scholar talk us through the entire play commenting on the actors, the lines, the settings, and the thought behind what is being presented. It’s like a senior seminar on Hamlet. It’s back to school time, and Shakespeare is a good place to restart.

Now about Ben Affleck and Gone Girl. I didn’t read the book and I didn’t think I wanted to see the film, but I watched Charlie Rose interview Affleck, Rosamund Pike, the director David Fincher, and the writer/screenwriter Gillian Flynn and decided I needed to see it. I wasn’t disappointed. I love thrillers and this is a masterpiece in the genre. After the film I had questions about its veracity, but it was a 2-½ hour movie based on a 432 pages book. I trust that some of my reservations and questions about the film can be answered by reading the book. Unfortunately, I have a giant stack of books on my desk and Gone Girl will have to go to the bottom. Nevertheless, it was an exciting night out and a nice change from Shakespeare’s murderous thrillers.

Not all Shakespeare is dark and murderous. Shakespeare surrounds us and I particularly love this monologue by Christopher Gaze the Artistic Director of the Bard on the Beach Shakespeare Festival in Vancouver. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsESSyMnwmU  I hope you like it as much as I do.

More tomorrow…

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So many girlfriends, so many birthdays, so little time…

I’m in trouble. M’s extended birthday celebration is sending ripples through my social network. This morning our friend Julie, who helps us keep our lives in order, came over, and announced that today is HER birthday.

I can’t figure out why she didn’t take the day off, but she showed up for work this morning and started in by telling me she and her husband, Sean, were wondering how long M’s birthday was going to last. They have been closely following my Facebook posts about the BIG EVENT, and they think there are other things that might be of more interest to my extensive network of followers than Day 7 of my wife’s birthday celebration. I told her I thought it was just about over to which she responded with “it better be because today is my birthday and I don’t want any part of Marilynn’s birthday leaking into mine.”

So, M’s birthday is officially over. Today it’s all about Julie.

But, I’m not really in trouble with Julie; the problem is with her husband Sean. Apparently, Julie thought that Sean should do something similar to my FB posts and he did not rise to the occasion. In fact he didn’t meet her other expectations – no present, no birthday card, just a birthday wish on the way to catch their ferry this morning. So, Julie used my FB stuff to rub it in. Now Sean, who is a Redmond police officer, hates me for making him look bad. I don’t want to be on the wrong side of law enforcement, so I’m hoping things will straighten themselves out. Here they are in happier times.

So, I repeat, this is Julie’s BIG EVENT. Happy Birthday, Julie. M and I hope that you and Sean can overcome your disappointment and his resentment and enjoy the rest of the day.

Good luck, Sean.

More tomorrow…

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