Driftwood & Dogs

Mother Nature has conspired of late to turn the ongoing sunny warmth here at the beach into something more like winter. Beginning early Thursday a colder, grayer outlook pushed aside the T-shirt days, reminding all that Florida is not always postcard pretty. Half-dressed breakfasts on the patio sheltering behind sunglasses and baseball cap hit a stop sign and yesterday I had to bear up under a somber sky and chilly wind with jeans and a sweater out of storage. At least I was able to walk on the beach, though strong winds handicapped half the distance, making two miles seem like four.

First discovery was of a large tree trunk washed up onto the beach by recent high tides and strong surf. Approached from a distance it had the appearance of an ordinary driftwood log, but closer inspection revealed an entire colony of attached shells, a living population of a type hard to identify. It was at once both beautiful and sad, a fascinating arrangement of clustered shells filled with creatures drying out and on the verge of death. It lasted only a few hours before being cut up and hauled away by the Beach Patrol. The sharpness of the shells and the possibility of the log being once more submerged by a rising tide made it a hazard on a beach still used by fishermen, swimmers and surfers. Who knows where the tree trunk entered the water and when that might have been?

A mile down the beach was a new sign placed just below the dunes warning animal (dog) owners of the ordinance against dogs on the beach. In my time here it was the first occasion of seeing a notice for something residents at least have long known about. The number of times I have seen people with a dog or dogs on the beach is too many to count, but in most cases those people are visitors unaware of the ordinance. Why such a law? This particular stretch of beach is federally funded and protected because it is historically a nesting site for sea turtles. Understanding the rigidity of local biologists tasked with nurturing, protecting and keeping tabs on sea turtles along Florida’s east coast is hard without an eye to eye meeting and a good measure of patience. By and large, the majority of those biologists would be happiest seeing the entire coastline returned to the pristine conditions of the nineteenth century—Don’t turn on patio lights! You’ll frighten the turtles. Don’t get too close to the nests; don’t use flashlights on the beach. You'll disorient the turtles. Dogs will dig up the nests!

Yeah, well I too want to protect the turtles and their hatchlings, but still prefer something along the lines of a compromise. Admittedly, on rare occasions a dog off-leash might want to dig a hole on the beach, and might use the opportunity to take a whiz, or… But otherwise, what’s the great harm? One of the reasons I don’t have a dog is because of the ordinance saying a dog is unwelcome on the beach. Still, I do accept that there is another side to the question.

Harry Brown is Old and Tired

Michael Caine, or more correctly Sir Michael Caine is one of those actors who never seems to take any time off, making one movie after another. Three of his films are upcoming in 2012 and two others in production for 2013. Something must have been going on in 2009, because the only movie for that year with his name on it was Harry Brown. He made the most of it however in playing the role of a dowdy old pensioner in a head to head with murdering thugs, a performance that brings out the actor’s rich palette of experience applied with the quietest and subtlest of acting skills.

Directed by Daniel Barber, Harry Brown is a British film with Hollywood antecedents, most notably Clint Eastwood’s 2008 picture Gran Torino, and the earlier Deathwish with Charles Bronson. It’s the old story of the average man reaching a point where enough is enough and justice becomes a personal crusade. The difference in Daniel Barber’s take on this theme is that his average man-Harry Brown is an old and nearly decrepit retiree suffering from emphysema, a man we might expect to fall asleep before he can pull the trigger.

The story is set in modern day Britain, in a particular corner where drugs and guns are the currency of the day. Harry Brown is a modest and law-abiding man, a retired marine living in a desolate central London public-housing block, living a kind of hell, silently watching from his apartment windows as violent hoodlums openly sell drugs, and for a laugh beat and murder strangers. Harry’s wife is dying in a local hospital and apart from sitting by her bedside, he spends his days in solitude, playing the occasional game of chess at a nearby pub with his best friend, Leonard. Unlike Harry, Leonard has been singled out for torment by the local rowdies and confesses his determination to fight back. Harry warns against it, but Leonard is unhearing and subsequently killed by several of the gang. The death of his friend is the catalyst that sets ex-marine Harry on a path of brutal justice.

Harry Brown is another powerhouse performance from two-time Oscar winner, Michael Caine, who builds his character from a quiet watching through windows into a determined and unemotional killer. The beauty in this performance comes from the vulnerability of old age that much more than the ultimate violence is what defines Harry. A degree of discomfort comes with watching Caine as Harry, not because we condone his vigilante justice, but because the actor’s stony, yet heartrending presence wins us over. There are no Stallone type heroics; Caine’s Harry Brown is a tired, old man with health issues and physical limits. What is good to see here is an actor playing his age in a film about violence.

Daniel Barber makes his feature directorial debut in this gritty treatment of British social ills, drawing the viewer into his grim, oppressive setting of dim lighting, gloominess and camera angles that mimic a surveillance camera. With overcast skies, dark shadows and a graffiti spattered London neighborhood Barber has made the qualities of fear and despair tactile with a production design that underlines ugly realism. Alternating scenes of quiet, civilized lives indoors with the chaotic frenzy outside, leaves us to wonder if a solution is even possible in a world where police are either helpless, too busy or uncaring. In more than one instance Barber makes use of of cell phones and video cameras to highlight the random violence. Street thugs and gun salesmen are keen on making home movies of their killings and rapes and some of the ugliest violations are made more potent by their shrinkage to the small screen.

The movie makes a bitter statement about the cynicism of inner city youth and the nightmares that are unleashed when problems are allowed to fester by impotent police officers. Hardly a necessary warning at this point, but Harry Brown is not a movie for average fans of Finding Nemo and The Sound of Music. On the other hand, if you’re a Michael Caine fan and if your usual movie ticket is geared toward realistic drama with an R rating, then look for Harry Brown on Netflix, or at your local library. A dark tale well told.

The Art of Yuko Shimizu

Yuko Shimizu is a freelance illustrator living and working in New York City and an instructor at the School of Visual Arts. She was born and grew up in Tokyo always dreaming of becoming an artist. As a woman, the pursuit of that dream was made difficult by growing up in a traditional Japanese family. She studied marketing and advertising at prestigious Waseda University and following graduation worked in advertising in Tokyo for ten years until deciding it was time to make a change and do what she really wanted to do. She left Japan in 1999 to study at the School of Visual Arts in New York. And as they say, the rest is history.

“Panda Bear Girl—The First Asian American Superheroine”—illustration included in the book Artistic Utopia

Since finishing her studies at the School of Visual Arts Ms Shimizu has worked full-time in illustration. Her work has been published in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Spain, Turkey and Japan, and her client list is filled with names like The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly, Interview Magazine, Esquire and Financial Times Magazine. She also finds time to teach in the Illustration and Cartooning Department at the School of Visual Arts.

Outside magazine March 2006; illustration for an article on species that have the fastest growing populations. Beautifully rendered blackbirds stare with a puzzled expression at the creatures inside eggs of an exquisite robin’s egg blue. Note the tree branches drawn in the ink wash style of fifteenth-century Japanese landscape painter Sesshû Tôyô.

Shimizu works in a Manhattan studio, a space she shares with two artists whom she thinks of as her New York family. She loves to travel and usually for two months of the year visits different cities and countries, lecturing at art schools and events, meeting other artists and teachers.

Utne Magazine February 2005 Cover; a totally bizarre illustration showing a young Japanese kamikaze pilot riding a harnessed snail over New York City.

One of three billboards created for a Tiger Beer ad campaign; here in what resembles the design of an old postcard we see a modern container ship loaded with Tiger Beer. Created for billboards, the three illustrations are huge.

With her strong Japanese heritage, it probably is not at all unusual that Shimizu’s illustrations harken back to Japanese woodcuts. With its artful mixture of old and new, in another way her work brings comparisons to modern poet Tawara Machi, who shocks the reader with unexpected combinations. Like the poet, within tradition there is a strong sense of modern sophistication, evidence of a life fed by the color and electric throb of New York City. One magazine cover may include cell phones and iPods beneath falling cherry blossoms with Mt Fuji in the background, while another will show a full moon over an arched bridge straight out of Hiroshige and a half-clothed tattooed woman holding a boom box.

Cover for the October 2007 issue of Word magazine (UK) monthly supplement CD Now Hear This!

A personal favorite is the magazine cover inspired by the Clint Eastwood film, Letters from Iwo Jima. The foreground is framed by a Japanese army officer handing over a letter to a demure Japanese woman—wife or mother. In the middle ground Japanese soldiers toil through curling waves, while in the background Iwo Jima stands against the Rising Sun flag and bombers fly through blossoming cherry trees. Two panels in the top right display the name of the film and the director.

Entertainment Weekly year end Issue 2006; cover illustration for the movie, Letters from Iwo Jima.

In creating a new design, Shimizu reads the attached article, sometimes as many as twenty pages, or in some instances a mere sentence from which she must extract an idea. First comes research before making several free sketches with pen and pencil to help solidify ideas. Having settled upon a basic design, she makes a drawing in the actual size stipulated by the client. She traces the drawing on a light box using pencil and ink, with brush and India ink for any Japanese calligraphy. After the drawing is complete, she scans it and adds color using Photoshop.

Theater poster for the Stephen Sondheim-Amon Miyamoto production of Pacific Overtures, Kanagawa Art Theater, June-July 2011; a gigantic and redheaded Commodore Matthew Perry forces his way through the doors into Japan. The fusuma doors are a clever twist on the opening of the country to foreigners in 1854.

Yuko Shimizu is a fairly common name in Japan and one or two other figures in the limelight share the name. The Yuko Shimizu here is not to be mistaken with another Yuko Shimizu known for designing the well-known Hello Kitty icon for Sanrio.

For an excellent and informative Interview with the illustrator look here.

Hot Diggity Dog

For a long time it was in my head that sausage came to us from Germany. It was a little surprising to learn that not only the Romans and Greeks made sausage, but Babylonians 3,500 years ago enjoyed spiced meats stuffed into animal intestines. The Romans called it salsus which evolved into our word ‘sausage.’ Because of the ribald festivities at Rome’s pagan festival of Lupercus that included sausage, the early Catholic Church outlawed Lupercalia and made eating sausage a sin. The fourth-century Emperor of Rome, Constantine the Great also banned sausage consumption. Much like the case of prohibition in twentieth-century America, the Romans continued to enjoy their sausage in bootlegged fashion. Eventually, like the Americans later, Roman lawmakers repealed the ban.

In the mid-nineteenth century the Butchers’ guild in Frankfurt, Germany came up with a sausage that was spiced, smoked and packed in a thin, almost transparent casing. It had a slightly curved shape and they called it a “frankfurter.” The dachshund breed of dog was popular and somehow the new sausage was sometimes called “dachshund sausage.” That name followed the frankfurter to America. In the 1890s, Charles Feltman, a baker from Frankfurt began selling sandwiches in Coney Island using his hometown frankfurter. He served the frank on a roll with a topping of mustard and sauerkraut. The success of Feltman’s sandwiches allowed him to open his own restaurant and the frankfurter was forever after identified with Coney Island.

In 1906 the slender frankfurter was still a novelty in America and known by several different names: dachshund sausages, frankfurters, franks, wieners and sometimes red hots. They had become popular at baseball games in New York where the vendors would shout out, “Get your red hot dachshund sausages!” One story goes that a popular cartoonist named Tad Dorgan was attending a baseball game one day when heard this call and began sketching a cartoon of a real dachshund smeared with mustard and wrapped in a bun. Back at home he refined his cartoon but couldn’t spell dachshund so captioned his picture, “Get your hot dogs!” The name stuck.

How often do Americans eat hot dogs? Every second of every day 450 hot dogs are eaten in the US. Among Americans who eats the most? New Yorkers eat more than any other city in the country.

We usually think of a hot dog as being an affordable bite to eat. The most expensive hot dog in the world can be had at Serendipity 3 in New York City. It’s called the “Haute Dog” and is grilled with white truffle oil and topped with duck foie gras and truffle butter. It costs an unbelievable $69.

The world record holder for the most hot dogs consumed in a ten minute period is Joey Chestnut, the six-time winner of Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest who set the record in 2009 when he ate 68 hot dogs and buns. He won again in 2011 with a total of 62 hot dogs.

According to the National Sausage and Hot Dog Council, the most commonly used condiment is mustard which is the topping preferred by thirty-two percent of Americans. The second place finisher, with twenty-three percent of the vote is ketchup. Chili takes third place with seventeen percent of the vote.

All I Could Drink

By his own admission, Raymond Carver more or less gave up writing at one point and took to full-time drinking. Working different jobs, rearing children, and trying to write, he was drinking heavily by the age of thirty. Five years later, while an instructor at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop Carver recalled that it was less teaching than drinking and almost no writing. Leaving Iowa, the drinking continued for another three years. It was serious enough in 1977 for the writer to be hospitalized four different times for acute alcoholism. On June 2, 1977 with the help of Alcoholics Anonymous he stopped drinking and began a second life. That same year he received a National Book Award nomination for Will You Please Be Quiet, Please. He later said he would have died of alcoholism at the age of forty if he hadn’t found a way to stop drinking, often talking as if his second birthday were June 2, 1977. He conquered alcohol but died of lung cancer at the age of fifty.

Carver examined a great many themes in his poems and stories, but the grind of poverty, the collapse of love and the ruin of alcohol were prominent among them. The alcohol especially, and we get a glimpse of how early it began in his autobiographical poem “Luck.” The poem’s first appearance was in a 1979 issue of the literary magazine Kayak 50. It is included in Carver’s posthumous book, All of Us: The Collected Poems.

A boy wakes to an empty house and the leftovers of his parents’ party…

LUCK

I was nine years old.

I had been around liquor

all my life. My friends

drank too, but they could handle it.

We’d take cigarettes, beer,

a couple of girls

and go out to the fort.

We’d act silly.

Sometimes you’d pretend

to pass out so the girls

could examine you.

They’d put their hands

down your pants while

you lay there trying

not to laugh, or else

they would lean back,

close their eyes, and

let you feel them all over.

Once at a party my dad

came to the back porch

to take a leak.

We could hear voices

over the record player

see people standing around

laughing and drinking.

When my dad finished

he zipped up, stared a while

at the starry sky—it was

always starry then

on summer nights—

and went back inside.

The girls had to go home.

I slept all night in the fort

with my best friend.

We kissed on the lips

and touched each other.

I saw the stars fade

toward morning.

I saw a woman sleeping

on our lawn.

I looked up her dress,

then I had a beer

and a cigarette.

Friends, I though this

was living.

Indoors, someone

had put out a cigarette

in a jar of mustard.

I had a straight shot

from the bottle, then

a drink of warm collins mix,

then another whisky.

And though I went from room

to room, no one was home.

What luck, I thought.

Years later,

I still wanted to give up

friends, love, starry skies,

for a house where no one

was home, no one coming back,

and all I could drink.

Too Much of a Good Thing

Elmore Leonard has written a lot of books, a very prolific writer, and counting the number of his novels, stories, teleplays and movie scripts is a tedious job. I wouldn’t describe myself as a hardcore Leonard fan, but I have read a good handful of his books, westerns and crime novels, and also seen a few movies based on his writing. There’s little mystery about the writer’s position as the Dean of crime fiction, but I wonder if the crime fans are familiar with his earlier western stories of six-gun shootouts and Apache renegades. It was something of a disappointment when I reached the last of Mr Leonard’s western tales. The crime stories fall only a small measure below the westerns, and more than a few are memorable, but with such an output no writer could expect every book and story to be golden.

Elmore Leonard was born in New Orleans in 1925. His family moved about frequently over a number of years, but finally settled in Detroit in 1934. The Motor City became Leonard’s home. He Enrolled at the University of Detroit in 1946 and started pursuing his writing more seriously, entering short story contests and sending stories off to magazines. Graduating in 1950, Leonard got a job as a copy writer. His first success as a writer came in 1951 when Argosy published his story “Trail of the Apaches.” He continued writing westerns, publishing western short stories while completing his first novel, The Bounty Hunters (1953). This past January he published his umpteenth novel, Raylan.

The character of Raylan Givens has proven popular, and fans can watch the Raylan television series on FX each week. The series began with Leonard’s novella, Fire in the Hole from the 2002 collection When the Women Come Out to Dance. Before that the writer published two Raylan Givens novels, Pronto (1993) and Riding the Rap (1995). Not a whole lot of new with federal marshal Raylan Givens in this latest book. He talks good, says a lot of cool things, charms the girls, shoots the bad guys, tries to get along with even the hard cases.

The truth is, most of it winds up boring. The actor on television is less than mesmerizing and Leonard doesn’t do much better on paper. His ‘language vignettes’ don’t hold on to the reader in this one. How many critics have raved about Elmore Leonard’s gift for dialogue? Now they have a chance to read 278 pages of it—without benefit of much story to hold it all together. The usual colorful, freaky deaky crime-types are all there talking their heads off, at least until they are killed off and Leonard and Raylan launch themselves into a new case. As soon as you develop an interest in one character, Raylan, or somebody shoots them dead and the federal marshal is off on another case with seemingly little or no link to the previous vignette. It all has the feel of ‘story’ ideas for upcoming episodes of the TV show packed together in a shiny but slim ‘new’ release.

I read an interview with Leonard on NPR recently and a good one it was. He spoke at length about the television series and the character of Raylan Givens and about the new book. Now reading this very celebrated writer’s most recent work and recalling that interview, a feeling has come out of it that suggests it’s time now at the age of eighty-six for a celebrated writer to rest on the rewards and laurels of a long, distinguished body of work.

I can recommend nothing more strongly than a collection of Elmore Leonard’s western stories.

A Fragrance of Karlsruhe

With a big pot of black bean soup on the stove yesterday, the thought came that my friend Angela might enjoy a bowl. Though Friday was an off-schedule day for our visits, I hoped the aroma from my bring-in lunch would tempt her to open the door. It was a good day for eating out on the back patio, a spot that when conditions are right produces a quality that brings quiet joy to the heart. A sun-dappled shade hangs over the whole and apart from the distant buzz of a lawnmower the only sound is that of squirrels and lizards scampering across a crinkled carpet of leaves, squawked at by a sullen blue jay.

Angela complains that she can’t eat a bite. An early morning anxiety attack coming like waves of black freight required an unscheduled dose of Lorazepam. “No, I tell you. I can eat nothing. My stomach is empty.”

“Empty? Sounds like a good time to have a light meal,” I answered, knowing the magic in my lunch sack would work better than medicine. “Grab those sunglasses. We’re on our way to an hour of patio madness.” Wheeling Angela out of the bedroom, I added, “I have a salad you’ll like.”

Settled in an almost theatrically lit spot of flickering light and warm shade, we enjoy a lunch of black bean soup and green salad, a toasted muffin. Angela dabbles at her lunch, eating slow bites while describing the small neighborhood she grew up in. Karlsruhe, Germany 1938, a time when the country was flourishing, but conversation guarded. A brother-in-law had not been seen since a late night visit by the authorities. Angela lived a comfortable life with her mother over their perfumery, a place she worked alongside her mother when not in school. An elegant shop with glass cases, its best feature was the cherrywood paneling framed in ebony. The shelves were stocked with a sundry of perfumes and colognes, names like 4711 and Midnight in Paris, hard-to-get nylon stockings, tortoiseshell brushes, combs and barrettes. The building was one of many comprising a triangular block of stores and upper floor dwellings. There was a fine clothing store owned by a Jewish family until they disappeared. Two doors away was the Golden Cross, a favorite eating place for many in the neighborhood. The apothecary was a large establishment on the corner with a rainbow of colored waters sparkling in its windows. As the effects of war ground their way across Germany, keeping the shop open became difficult and Angela’s mother was forced to sell the perfumery. They continued to live in the rooms above the store.

The City of Karlsruhe is in the southwest of Germany, located near the French-German border. It was founded in 1715 as Karlsruhe Palace at a time when the country was a series of principalities and city states. The city was built with the palace tower at the center and thirty-two streets radiating out from it like the spokes of a wheel. Much of the central area was destroyed by Allied bombing during World War II and later rebuilt.