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contents CONVERSATION 16 JOEY DEFRANCESCO of organ jazz,
The intersection of art, entertainment, culture, nightlife and mad genius.
of Van Morrison
Since 1992
of More Music,
215-862-9558 icondv.com
The multi-instrumentalist talks about the past and future
ART EXHIBITIONS
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Art In The Park West Park, Allentown
and more. 5|
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Gregory Luisi Swan Boat Gallery Starstruck: An American Tale Lehigh University Art Galleries
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ON THE COVER:
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A THOUSAND WORDS Apprehension
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BOOKS (Continued)
THE ART OF POETRY
Rogues: True Stories of Grifters, Killers, Rebels and Crooks by Patrick Radden Keefe
THE LIST Valley City
The Maze (A John Corey Novel) by Nelson DeMille
PORTFOLIO
HER STORY The Art of a Relationship FILM ROUNDUP Benediction Crimes of the Future Elvis Mad God FILM CLASSICS The Congress House of Bamboo Stalker Party Girl BOOKS Freeze Fresh: The Ultimate Guide to Preserving 55 Fruits and Vegetables for Maximum Flavor and Versatility by Crystal Schmidt
Trisha Vergis, Red Sunflowers.. Silverman Gallery of Bucks County Impressionist Art, Buckingham, PA
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Portrait of an Unknown Woman by Daniel Silva Profiles in Ignorance: How America's Politicians Got Dumb and Dumber by Andy Borowitz The Price of Time: The Real Story of Interest by Edward Chancellor Fairy Tale by Stephen King Mad Honey by Jodi Picoult 30 |
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HARPER’S Findings Index
PUZZLE Washington Post Crossword
PUBLISHER & EDITOR Trina McKenna trina@icondv.com ADVERTISING Raina Filipiak filipiakr@comcast.net PRODUCTION Paul Rosen
Joanne Smythe CONTRIBUTING WRITERS
A.D. Amorosi Ricardo Barros Robert Beck Jack Byer Pete Croatto Geoff Gehman Susan Van Dongen Grigsby Mark Keresman David Stoller Keith Uhlich
PO Box 120 New Hope 18938 215-862-9558
IReproduction in whole or in part without written permission is strictly prohibited. ICON welcomes letters to the editor, editorial ideas and submissions, but assumes no responsibility for the return of unsolicited material. ICON is not responsible for claims made by advertisers. ©2022 Primetime Publishing Co., Inc.
a thousand words
STORY & PAINTING BY ROBERT BECK
APPREHENSION YOU TAKE SPECIFIC NOTICE of a policeman when one is in your field of vision, or at least I do, and I don’t think I’m much different than you. That’s by design, so seeing the cop wasn’t unusual in itself. I drove along the strip center parking lot looking for an open space near the drug store, and I saw the policeman walk up the steps to the sidewalk in front of the shops. I figured he was going to get something at one of them: a cup of coffee, a slice of pizza, a prescription. I like it when I see cops as people rather than cops as cops. That gives me a sound feeling. It’s good for everybody. I found a spot across from the pharmacy and got out of the car. I looked both ways and then up to the sidewalk and front door, and there was the policeman. He had just gotten a man’s attention and was asking him a question. It’s branded in my mind. The policeman’s navy blue slacks, shirt, and hat, with touches of yellow. The man wearing all black. Tight pants, bulky leatherlike jacket, glints of C O N T I N U E D O N PA G E 2 6
Robert Beck’s focus is on our here and now. A leading voice in the art community, his paintings have been featured in more than seventy juried and thirty solo gallery shows, and three solo museum exhibitions. His writing in ICON has been a reader favorite for seventeen years. ICON |
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exhibitions
Devyn Briggs
Art In The Park West Park, 16th & West Turner Sts., Allentown Westpark-ca.org/art September 17, 10–5 Art In The Park is a day-long festival where more than five dozen artists and crafters display their works in Allentown’s beautiful and historic West Park. This free festival will include demonstrations by a portrait artist, a potter, a woodworker, and other artisans. There will be performances at the bandshell by Allentown Band (America’s oldest concert band), students from Community Music School of Allentown, and members of Repertory Dance Theatre of the Lehigh Valley. Food from Church of the Mediator will be available adjacent to the Park. Supported by West Park Civic Association and organized by Alan Younkin and Michael Schelp.
Jeff Wetherhold
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Starstruck: An American Tale
Gregory Luisi Swan Boat Gallery 69 Bridge Street, Lambertville NJ 518- 567-5446 SwanBoatGallery.com Thurs–Sunday, 1–4, and by appointment Through August Gregory Luisi is a painter of great intensity both psychologically and philosophically. He addresses the question of what is real and what is illusion. His sense of color and light are as though the viewer is looking through a magic prism. Vibrant and subdued hues balance work in his still life and portraits. His work has been shown in many Manhattan and New Jersey galleries and museums. The Swan Boat Gallery exhibits modern and contemporary art from artists around the world with diverse backgrounds and styles. Its mission is to present a cultural center with poetry readings, artist talks, art for kids and other events.
Lehigh University Art Galleries (LUAG) 420 E Packer Ave., Bethlehem, PA 610-758-3615 luag.org September 6–December 3 LUAG is pleased to present a new, site-specific multimedia work by internationally renowned visual artist Shimon Attie. Invited to create a new body of work as Lehigh University’s Horger Artist-in-Residence (2021-22) in the Department of Art, Architecture and Design, Attie has created an artwork which interrogates Bethlehem’s past and present as a microcosm of America. The completed artwork is a hybrid video and sculptural installation which juxtaposes and examines Bethlehem’s past and present. The piece comprises a central sculpture centered between two channels of synchronized video. The sculpture is inspired by the existing 90-foot-tall brightly lit Bethlehem Star on Bethlehem’s South Mountain, built by the Bethlehem Chamber of Commerce in 1937 as a commercially-minded endeavor to brand Bethlehem as The Christmas City. The Star on the hill is brightly lit in “Christmas white” and on a clear evening is visible for 60 miles. All photos: Video still from installation, Shimon Attie, 2022
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the art of poetry
DAVID STOLLER
Brancusi’s Dog Constantin sits with the Long-haired, snow-white Polar, Musing on the inner self, the essence, Of his furred friend. Eyes that light up in greeting, Mourn departures, flash in defense, Should be highlighted, Making the intrinsic unmistakable. A nose, so joyously busy, All sniffed and sniffing, Should claim a more elegant length Befitting such clarity of purpose. A character so noble, And so common the same— None better or worse … There, a short-haired, black and white Polar! A great calm settles over Constantin. Such a feeling That a dog might deliver, Or a design reduced to its essence.
The poem presented here, entitled Brancusi’s Dog, is my take on the sculpture (in epoxy resin), also entitled Brancusi’s Dog, crafted by a young Chris Van Allsburg in 1969. Van Allsburg greatly admired the Romanian master, Constantin Brancusi, arguably the father of modern sculpture. Among other things, he knew that Brancusi had a dog he loved and kept with him as he worked, named Polaire (pictured). Van Allsburg, a dog lover as well, was an impoverished young artist in NYC in 1969, when he created Brancusi’s Dog, sculpting a dog that he imagined Brancusi might design (shown above snuggled in one of my sofas). Van Allsburg's career was going nowhere when a friend, noticing that he was good at writing stories, encouraged him to try his hand at writing children’s books … and the rest, as they say, is history. Two of his early efforts, in which he did the art and text, were Jumanji and The Polar Express, two of the most successful titles ever produced in children literature—and hugely successful film franchises.
Self-portrait with Polaire, ca. 1930–1939. Constantin Brancusi (French/Romanian, 1876–1957) Gelatin silver print, 9.4 x 7 in. The original glass plate negative is in the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. 8
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David Stoller has had a career spanning law, private equity, and entrepreneurial leadership. He was a partner and co-head of Milbank Tweed and led various companies in law, insurance, live entertainment, and the visual arts. David is an active art collector and founder of River Arts Press, which published a collection of his poetry, Finding My Feet.
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portfolio
PHOTOGRAPH AND ESSAY BY RICARDO BARROS
Jules Schaeffer I spent years following in the footsteps of my photographic idols. I thought that if I could do what they did then I, too, might become a master of the medium. Now I know that I may approach their level of craft, but I can never join them in the newness of their accomplishment. The achievement is theirs. It was a challenge fixed in their time, and in their life circumstances. They did not know what lay ahead when they plunged forward into the unknown. How can we now, with our knowledge of their future, go in the opposite direction? The challenge for me—and I think for all artists—is not to mimic our heroes, but to converse with them through our works. n
Ricardo Barros’ works are in the permanent collections of eleven museums, including the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. He is the author of “Facing Sculpture: A Portfolio of Portraits, Sculpture and Related Ideas.” 10
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the list VALLEY
CITY — GEOFF GEHMAN
My nickname for the Blue Mountain Bowl is The Gods’ Steeplechase. Running between Route 100 in Fogelsville and Hawk Mountain in Kempton, this slaloming, fishtailing cornucopia contains farms, forests, orchards, vineyards, streams, ponds, meadows, prairies and a dizzying number of panoramas. Blissfully free of McMansions, warehouses and tourist traps, it’s the greater Valley’s last paradise, the best territory to cruise mindlessly yet mindfully. Attractions abound: bucolic Leaser Lake, a kayaker’s wet dream; an Asian pear orchard owned by Lutron, a pioneer maker of dimming devices; a twoLeaser Lake hill automobile graveyard, a crazily picturesque public sculpture. Old Philly Pike spirals to a glorious climax: a teardrop-shaped cemetery ringed by corn, soy beans and bird houses; serenaded by birds and winds; centered by a tree pointing a finger to heaven, and bosomed by the Blue Mountain. Welcome to my peace pad, my nirvana shrine. The Bowl’s top pit stop is Wanamakers General Store, an old-fashioned institution with new-age flourishes. Opened in 1886 by a Civil War veteran who witnessed the Confederacy’s official surrender, it specializes in homemade sandwiches
— A.D. AMOROSI
I love August. It is the month I got married, and the month I was born, not in that order. At least one of the handsome Hemsworth brothers has a birthday in August, as does Demi Lovato, Barack Obama, Dua Lipa, and Michael Jackson. It’s hotter than hell in August, but at least it’s not July. And for the most part, it is usually the very last month of the year when I have to watch grown-ups wearing shorts—those long shorts, to boot. Not my thing, your legs that is. This might not seem like a big deal to you, especially since Jay-Z’s Made in America two-day music festival will follow into the same space like ten days later. Still, as of August 21, the Benjamin Franklin Parkway’s 2022 renovation from the Eakins Oval into The Oval XP will close for the season. Billed as an urban oasis before the Philadelphia Museum
of Art, this idea of a reimagined public space made no sense to me unless it had ties to the Museum itself. That would have meant grim, earless Van Gogh-like self-portraits rather than The Oval’s current smiling Selfie Station, and a very still, 100-foot-tall Marcel Duchamp-esque ready
Wanamakers General Store
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Geoff Gehman is a former arts writer for The Morning Call in Allentown and the author of five books, including Planet Mom: Keeping an Aging Parent from Aging, The Kingdom of the Kid: Growing Up in the LongLost Hamptons, and Fast Women and Slow Horses: The (mis)Adventures of a Bar, Betting and Barbecue Man (with William Mayberry). He lives in Bethlehem. geoffgehman@verizon.net 12
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A.D. Amorosi is a Los Angeles Press Club National Art and Entertainment Journalism award-winning journalist and national public radio host and producer (WPPM.org’s Theater in the Round) married to a garden-to-table cooking instructor + award-winning gardener, Reese, and father to dogdaughter Tia.
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her story
FREDRICKA MAISTER
THE ART OF A RELATIONSHIP
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T WASN’T THE TWO nude performers facing each other in a narrow doorway that one had to squeeze between to enter the next gallery. Nor was it the proclaimed “Grandmother of Performance Art” installed by Serbian-born Marina Abramovic herself in the Atrium of New York City’s Museum of AT THE CLIMACTIC POINT OF MEETING, THEY INSTANTLY EMBRACED, ULAY GALLANTLY KISSING MARINA’S HAND—THE POIGNANCY OF THE MOMENT ALMOST OVERWHELMING.
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Modern Art, as individual viewers silently sat across from her, their eyes locked in a mutual gaze. While these works in The Artist Is Present, Abramovic’s 2010 retrospective exhibit garnered the most buzz and visitor traffic, “The Lovers: The Great Wall Walk,” was the show-stopper for me. I even raced back to the MOMA for a second viewing just before the show closed. Even though I have my bachelor’s degree in Art History and worked at a contemporary art museum for 12 years, performance art—in the flesh or on video— has never resonated with me. I typically feel a disconnect between the performance and my psyche that I can’t bridge, leaving me confused, even annoyed, and in the end, asking, “What’s the point?” Not so with “The Lovers: The Great
Wall Walk “ which consisted simply of a split-screen video installation documenting the final joint performance in 1988 of Abramovic and the performance artist, Ulay (aka Frank Uwe Laysiepen), her artistic collaborator, lover, and partner in life for 13 years. In their performance, Marina and Ulay, who died in 2020, walk the Great Wall of China, starting from opposite ends, each walking 2,500 kilometers, and meeting in the middle after 90 days. According to the backstory, the original plan was for the couple to come together midway and marry. Unfortunately, by the time they secured permission from the Chinese government for their undertaking, their relationship had dissolved. Instead, they used the piece to mark the end of their life as a couple, meetC O N T I N U E D O N PA G E 2 7
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conversation
Still swinging after all these years ...and then some Multi-instrumentalist Joey DeFrancesco talks about the past and future of organ jazz, of Van Morrison, of More Music, and more.
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ruth is, whenever you spoke about Philadelphiaborn Joey DeFrancesco, you had to start with the Hammond B-3 and his prowess as part of the grand tradition of funky organ jazz and R&B—a tradition all but born and bred in the City of Brotherly Love with organists such as Charles Earland, Shirley Scott, Trudy Pitts, and Jimmy Smith. Yet if you witnessed him live or paid attention to his albums’ credits, DeFrancesco has long been as formidable, poignant, and spirited a trumpet player as he is an organist, and with his most recent album, 2021’s More Music, equally adept and earnest at tenor saxophonist to boot. The man who pretty much single-handedly revived the jazz organ sound, beloved for its groove from the end of the 50s through to the top of the 1970s, makes the same beautiful noise on saxophone and trumpet. Go figure. And as well as having a handle on his own albums—most spiritually expansive with 2019’s In the Key of the Universe and its spotlight on saxophonist Pharoah Sanders—DeFrancesco is a greatly sought-after collaborator whose most recent pairing found him co-producing and costarring alongside Irish singer-songwriter Van Morrison on 2018’s You’re Driving Me Crazy and 2019’s The Prophet Speaks. If you want proof of how DeFrancesco has inspired Van’s continued sound, check out Morrison’s upcoming live showcase in Philadelphia at The Mann Center on September 6. And as far as Joey DeFrancesco’s live profile is concerned, as soon as he wraps up a series of shows in London, the multi-instrumentalist and his Philly-based crew return to the area with a homecoming of sorts: October 15’s headlining portion of the True Blue Jazz Festival 2022 in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. I caught up with DeFrancesco at his home in Toronto before heading out the door for his London live trek.
A.D. AMOROSI
Organ jazz & R&B, the vibe of its past and future; audiences are suddenly being exposed to new acts such as the Delvon Lamarr Organ Trio, and older acts making comebacks such as Ronnie Foster who is recording his first new album in nearly 40 years. But that sound has never gone away, especially with you around. That’s what we know you for, even as you expand into other brands of jazz and other instruments such as trumpet and saxophone. What is the allure of the Hammond B-3 still, while moving forward?
There’s the genre thing or titles that people use. But, as you noted, the organ is just another instrument to me, as I play several. I’m known for the organ because I came up with that within the idiom. Over thirty years. Now, I’ve always been something of a mainstream player, but I think the most recent album [More Music] takes off from that and is more expansive. You know what the problem is? [laughs] I love everything. It’s almost a hindrance. I’d like to be able to play whatever I want whenever I want, but, like a record with too many styles, no one knows what to do with it. There are a lot of factors on the business side of things. I just keep trying to move forward. It’s nice to see these other acts. Delvin Lamarr? That’s R&B party music. That’s cool, and that’s good. It’s not innovative or trying to advance the idiom. It’s just feel-good music. Ronnie Foster? I love him. I go back with him a long time, and he’s from the same area my family is from: Buffalo, New York, Niagara Falls. I’m happy to see him recording again, because he’s never recorded a full-blown organ record. See, the organ’s always been strong, but now, it’s stronger than ever. I’m happy that’s happening. In the 60s, its prevalence was normal with dominating cats such as Jimmy Smith, Jimmy McGriff, Jack McDuff, Groove Holmes, Shirley Scott, Trudy Pitts, and Larry Young. Almost all of them from Philly. C O N T I N U E D O N PA G E
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Photo: Don Saban
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KEITH UHLICH
Crimes of the Future. Photo courtesy of Neon.
film roundup
Benediction (Dir. Terence Davies). Starring: Jack Lowden, Jeremy Irvine, Peter Capaldi. The eventful and often chaotic life of English poet Siegfried Sassoon (Jack Lowden when young, Peter Capaldi when old) makes for a perfect fit with the elegant, emotionally turbulent aesthetic of writer-director Terence Davies. This is the British auteur’s most explicitly queer film since his early autobiographical shorts Children, Madonna and Child and Death and Transfiguration, one that mixes catty barbs (describing Sassoon’s work, a character suggests it has moved from “the sublime to the meticulous”) with crestfallen visages (as in his Emily Dickinson biopic A Quiet Passion, Davies uses digital morphs to show the horrific toll the years can take on human flesh). Lowden and Capaldi are both superb embodiments of the two poles of Sassoon’s life, which pit the passions of youth against the Passion of Christ—fertile ground to 18
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mine for the Catholic-raised Davies. As with all the director’s work, the tragic arc of the subject’s existence somehow manages to be elating, rapturous despite the copious ruts. [PG-13]
HHHH1/2
Crimes of the Future (Dir. David Cronenberg). Starring Viggo Mortensen, Léa Seydoux, Kristen Stewart. Nobody makes a dystopian near-future quite as sexy as writer-director David Cronenberg. His latest skin crawler-cum-flesh tingler is set in a world desolated by climate change and other ills and focuses on Saul Tenser (Viggo Mortensen), who has extraneous organs removed from his body as a kind of performance art. Caprice (Léa Seydoux), his partner in all senses of the term, supervises these congregational operations, while fangirlish bureaucrat Timlin (Kristen Stewart) vacillates between policing and reveling in Tenser’s act. Cronen-
bergian images and themes abound (you won’t soon forget the dancer with human ears sewn over his entire body). Though at heart, this is the tale of artists (Tenser onscreen, Cronenberg off) rediscovering their creative passions, a pair of spiritual rebirths to which the state of the world is entirely incidental. [R] HHHH Elvis (Dir. Baz Luhrmann). Starring: Tom Hanks, Austin Butler, Olivia DeJonge. Baz Luhrmann’s biopic of singer and musician Elvis Presley is a hollow shell of a movie, as gaudy and bombastic as one of the King of Rock-’n’Roll’s sequined coats without the benefit of a genuine superstar within. Austin Butler only adequately embodies Presley, overdoing the vocal twang and nailing a few of the signature moves, while still seeming like any random impersonator on the Vegas strip. As his nefarious manager Colonel Tom Parker, Tom Hanks goes more for
entertaining broke, leaning hard into the sort of cartoonish villainy that defined his murderous criminal mastermind in Joel and Ethan Coen’s remake of The Ladykillers. Parker is both Salieri and Mesmer to Elvis, forever in his shadow while still canny enough to pull the strings for maximum financial gain. That could be enough of a dramatic focus, but Luhrmann, as is his wont, throws everything possible into this particular stew, negating most of its flavor through visual, aural and thematic excess. Elvis is sad in this film, like really sad, bearing the burden of a nation’s ills on his flimsy shoulders (this is the kind of hyperactive production in which Robert Kennedy’s assassination and Sharon Tate’s murder happen within seconds of each other). Luhrmann makes him into a shockingly dour bore, less a hunk-a than a lump-a burnin’ love. [PG-13] HH Mad God (Dir. Phil Tippett). Starring: Alex Cox, Niketa Roman, Satish Ratakonda. Several decades in the making, stop motion pioneer Phil Tippett’s dark-and-dirty, mostly animated whatsit hits with a primal and potently personal force. Opening on the Tower of Babel and with a quote
Mad God
from Leviticus, the film soon plunges us into a dialogue-free journey through what seems like hell. A gas-masked explorer known only as Assassin wanders this desolate landscape (where feeble, zombie-like creatures do a variety of pointless tasks) with an explosive suitcase. The destructive goal seems simple enough, yet Tippett eventually widens the scope, via some inventively gruesome means, to show that what appears to be a welldefined prison is anything but. There’s horror in this world, yes, but plenty of beauty as well, and one doesn’t devour the other so much as exist in a perpetually shaky balance (the film is perhaps best epitomized by a sequence in which an entire universe is created and destroyed within seconds). In approach, Mad God resembles the great Mamoru Oshii anime Angel’s Egg, with a bit more ribald humor and a Mad Hatter’s sense of improvisation that contrasts with Oshii’s more depressively rigorous temperament. [N/R] HHHH1/2 n
Keith Uhlich is a NY-based writer published at Slant Magazine, The Hollywood Reporter, Time Out New York, and ICON. He is a member of the New York Film Critics Circle. His personal website is (All (Parentheses)), accessible at keithuhlich.substack.com. ICON |
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House of Bamboo
film classics
The Congress (2013, Ari Folman, Israel/Germany/Poland/Luxembourg/Belgium/France/Unit ed States/India) Do aging actresses dream of electric sheep? In Ari Folman’s part-animated/part live-action speculative fiction, Hollywood star Robin Wright, playing a version of herself, has her body scanned so that she can perform onscreen in perpetuity. But this virtual life extension proves prelude to a larger societal breakdown that, like this month’s new release, Mad God, isn’t quite as dystopic as it may initially seem. Writer-director Ari Folman loosely adapts a novel by Polish writer Stanislaw Lem, best known for Solaris, a similarly mind-bending (and -altering) tale of humanity transcending its own boundaries. Wright is brilliant in the lead role, particularly in the scanning scene where 20
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she is “directed” through multiple emotional states, each of them faked to the point that they become ineffably and movingly real. (Streaming on MUBI.) House of Bamboo (1955, Samuel Fuller, U.S.) Sam Fuller’s spectacular widescreen noir begins with the discovery of a dead body at the foot of Mount Fuji (punctuated by an iconic extreme close-up of a woman screaming). No-nonsense army man Eddie Kenner (Robert Stack) comes to the Land of the Rising Sun to investigate, uncovering a plot involving racketeer Sandy Dawson (Robert Ryan), whose designs on Eddie prove to be oddly romantic. Leave it to Fuller to twist the tropes of the time to his thematic advantage: There is a woman, Mariko (Shirley Yamaguchi), who comes between the
two men, but the emotional crux of the film is Sandy’s unspoken queer longing for Eddie, which adds a provocative layer to the tensions the film is exploring on either side of the American and Japanese cultural divide. Whether between people or countries, it is in the implied spaces where the true drama of life occurs. (Streaming on Criterion Channel.) Stalker (1979, Andrei Tarkovsky, Soviet Union) What is the Zone? It’s whatever you make of it according to Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky’s masterwork, which he adapted from the novel Roadside Picnic by brothers Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. For the movie’s purposes, the Zone is the verdant wilderness where the title character (Alexander Kaidanovsky) leads a Writer (Anatoly Solonit-
syn) and a Professor (Nikolai Grinko) to a “Room” that purportedly grants the wishes of whoever crosses its threshold. The threats the trio faces are all imaginary, which doesn’t mean, necessarily, that they don’t exist. Among Tarkovsky’s greatest talents is his ability to evoke menace (and much, much more) from even the most serene landscape, and the contemplative pace of the film only adds to the frequent perils of mind, body and spirit. By the time something otherworldly does occur onscreen it hits with the force of a true religious revelation, where you doubt your own eyes in the face of the seemingly improbable. (Streaming on YouTube – MosFilm Channel.) Party Girl (1958, Nicholas Ray, United States) Did you hear the one about the lawyer who fell for the showgirl? In this colorful crime drama from Rebel Without a Cause’s Nicholas Ray, crippled attorney-to-the-underworld Tommy Farrell (Robert Taylor) swoons over
Cyd Charisse in Party Girl
danseuse Vicki Gaye (Cyd Charisse), which doesn’t much please his gangster employer Rico Angelo (Lee J. Cobb). The pressures of the love triangle, and of Farrell’s desire to go straight for his girl, are a consistent delight, as is the widescreen cinematography of Robert Bronner, which helps brings this fantastical version of crime-ridden Chicago to life. Best in show, however, are two musical numbers featuring Charisse, one of which — where she fends off the attentions of two lusty men with trumpets while decked out in a flowing pink ensemble — among the greatest hoofer sequences ever filmed. (Streaming on Criterion Channel.) n ICON |
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books Freeze Fresh: The Ultimate Guide to Preserving 55 Fruits and Vegetables for Maximum Flavor and Versatility by Crystal Schmidt Storey Publishing, $19.99 Capturing the peak flavor of freshly harvested produce and preserving it for year-round eating is easier than ever with Freeze Fresh, the ultimate guide to freezing and enjoying more than 55 popular fruits and vegetables. Author Crystal Schmidt shares her time-tested preparation techniques that ensure color, texture, and flavor are retained in the freezer. From familiar favorites like apples, corn, potatoes, and peas to surprises like lettuce, avocado, and citrus fruit, Schmidt details the best ways to prepare each food for the freezer, including precooking, slicing, blanching, and more. Rogues: True Stories of Grifters, Killers, Rebels and Crooks by Patrick Radden Keefe Doubleday, $30 Keefe brilliantly explores the intricacies of forging $150,000 vintage wines, examines whether a whistleblower who dared to expose money laundering at a Swiss bank is a hero or a fabulist, spends time in Vietnam with Anthony Bourdain, chronicles the quest to bring down a cheerful international black market arms merchant, and profiles a passionate death penalty attorney who represents the “worst of the worst,” among other bravura works of literary journalism. The appearance of his byline in The New Yorker is always an event, and collected here for the first time readers can see his work forms an always enthralling but deeply human portrait of criminals and rascals, as well as those who stand up against them. The Maze (A John Corey Novel) Pre-order; October 11, 2022 by Nelson DeMille Scribner, $30 John Corey is now in forced retirement from his last job as a Federal Agent with the Diplo22
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matic Surveillance Group. Corey is restless and looking for action, so when his former lover, Detective Beth Penrose, appears with a job offer, Corey has to once again make some decisions about his career—and about reuniting with Beth Penrose. Based on actual, still unsolved murders, The Maze takes the reader on a dangerous hunt for an apparent serial killer who has murdered nine—and maybe more— prostitutes. As Corey digs deeper into this case, he comes to suspect that the failure of the local police to solve this sensational case may not be a result of their incompetence—it may be something else. Something more sinister. The Maze features John Corey’s politically incorrect humor, matched by his brilliant and unorthodox investigative skills along with the surprising and shocking plot twists that are the trademark of this #1 New York Times bestselling author. Portrait of an Unknown Woman by Daniel Silva Harper, $29.99 Legendary spy and art restorer Gabriel Allon has at long last severed ties with Israeli intelligence and settled quietly in Venice, the only place where he has ever truly known peace. His wife has taken over the management of the Tiepolo Restoration Company, and their two young children are enrolled in a neighborhood school. Gabriel spends his days wandering the streets and canals of the watery city, bidding farewell to the demons of his tragic, violent past. But when the eccentric London art dealer Julian Isherwood asks Gabriel to investigate the circumstances surrounding the rediscovery and lucrative sale of a centuries-old painting, he is drawn into a deadly game of cat and mouse where nothing is as it seems. Gabriel soon discovers that the work in question, a portrait of an unidentified woman attributed to Sir Anthony van Dyck, is almost certainly a fiendishly clever fake. To find the mysterious figure who painted it—and uncover a multibillion-dollar fraud at the pinnacle of the
art world—Gabriel conceives one of the most elaborate deceptions of his career. If it is to succeed, he must become the very mirror image of the man he seeks: the greatest art forger the world has ever known. Profiles in Ignorance: How America's Politicians Got Dumb and Dumber Pre-order, September 13, 2022 by Andy Borowitz Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster, $28.49 Andy Borowitz has been called a “Swiftian satirist” (The Wall Street Journal) and “one of the country’s finest satirists” (The New York Times). Now, in Profiles in Ignorance, he brilliantly examines the intellectual deterioration of politics, from Ronald Reagan to Dan Quayle, from George W. Bush to Sarah Palin, to its apotheosis in Donald J. Trump.. Borowitz argues that over the past fifty years, American politicians have grown increasingly allergic to knowledge, and mass media have encouraged the election of ignoramuses who are better at performing than thinking. Starting with Ronald Reagan’s first campaign for governor of California in 1966 and culminating with the election of Donald J. Trump to the White House, Borowitz shows how, during the age of twenty-four-hour news and social media, the U.S. has elected politicians to positions of great power whose lack of the most basic information is terrifying. The Price of Time: The Real Story of Interest by Edward Chancellor Atlantic Monthly Press, $28 In the beginning was the loan, and the loan carried interest. For at least five millennia people have been borrowing and lending at interest. The practice wasn’t always popular—in the ancient world, usury was generally viewed as exploitative, a potential path to debt bondage and slavery. Yet as capitalism became established from the late Middle Ages onward, denunciations of interest were tempered because interest was a necessary reward for lenders to part with their capC O N T I N U E D O N PA G E
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(a chicken wrap with cilantro and aioli chipotle), candies (pretzel nuggets dipped in chocolate and stuffed with peanut butter), Pennsylvania Dutch treats (Chow Chow) and gourmet condiments (pink salt). Spigots dispense herb-fortified kombucha, the fermented tea; Lemonberry Liberator and other artisan teas are made by female military veterans who run a store called the Skirted Soldier. Drink, eat and unwind on a porch by the ribboning King’s Highway or picnic at side tables near a depot where a steam train stops on summer weekends. (8888 King’s Highway/Rte 143, Kempton; wanamakersgeneralstore.com; 610-756-6609) Limeport Stadium is a baseball park perfect for parking senses and memories. Every seat in the canopied, horseshoed brick bleacher has a marvelous view of a beautiful playing field backed by a rustic fence fronting walls of corn. Games aren’t just watched; they’re absorbed. Bats crack and fastballs sizzle. The slo-mo drama of a relay is easily tracked, as is a center fielder racing over a sea of grass after a ball sailing and rolling towards a slope ending an epic 485 feet from home plate. The berm covers a huge boulder left by the stadium’s builder, Howard “Lefty” Fegely, a dairy farmer who launched a local amateur league featuring his Limeport Milkmen. Christened in 1933 at an approximate price of $75,000, a king’s ransom during the Depression, Lefty’s park is a bargain among bargains. Lawn parking is free; admission is $5 for adults; a hot dog costs $2.50. A non-profit volunteer group raises money with an annual banquet starring such guests as the late major-league umpire Jim Honochick, an Allentown native, and Bill White, retired pro first baseman, former National League president and longtime Upper Black Eddy resident. Oh, and night games are magical, with lights and sunsets blending like a Tequila Sunrise. (1488 Limeport Pike; limeportstadium.org) My Limeport buzz was amplified by a prime-time Saturday visit to The Inside Scoop, an ice creamery with an “American Graffiti”meets-Howard Johnson’s vibe. Lined up for 15 minutes, 10 minutes over my normal limit, I enjoyed an assembly line of efficient, cheerful youngsters making shakes and sundaes in a diner-like, camp-like room with a honeyed-pine ceiling, a blackand-white tiled floor and proverbial beams (i.e., “Ice cream is happiness condensed”). All the while an electronic board announced 38 available flavors ranging The Inside Scoop from Walnut Cinnamon Bun to Rootbeer Italian Ice. While savoring my huge scoops of very creamy, very nutty butter pecan and pistachio, I imagined sharing a 14-scoop, eight-topping behemoth. “The Volcano” matches the massive mascot, a 20-foot-high fiberglass figure transformed from gas-station muffler man to Giant Chip, the Ice Cream Jockey. (301 N. 3rd St./Route 309; theinsidescoop.com; 610-282-1955) St. Michael’s Cemetery has a stunning view of Bethlehem’s beyond and a sublime view of life’s cycle. Standing on the steep, humped slope up to South Mountain, you can understand why European and Mexican immigrants wanted to be buried overlooking their brick row houses and the steel mill that gave them a sliver of the American 24
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Dream. Walker Evans captured this chemistry in a fabled 1935 photo for a federal agency documenting New Deal relief projects. He also photographed the graveyard’s most magnetic monument: a rose-garlanded cross bearing cameos of bun-haired Maria Castellucci and her husband, walrus-mustached Antonio. Painfully neglected for decades, this historic landmark has been painstakingly restored by the Friends of St. Michael’s Cemetery. These heroic devotees mow, weed, patch shattered headstones, clean graffiti, clear brush to uncover memorials long lost to the woods. They’ve added lights and Masses, a communal tomato patch and a July 4 benefit with hot dogs and an expansive, explosive view of fireworks. Their very active Facebook page offers newly archived stories of a United Nations congregation, tales awful and joyful, unsettling and settling. (Fourth and State streets, Bethlehem) n
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made—gigantic urinal, a set of marble sugar cubes, a broken glass Bride—instead of that mobile ferris wheel that they have overtaking the street. Bah. Roger Waters’ This is Not a Drill Tour is finally landing at Philadelphia’s Wells Fargo Center on August 5 and 6 after several cancellations due to Covid. What is funny about this is that the British singer-songwriter and onetime Pink Floyd member has been bitching about Trump for so long and so often that by the time the pandemic was over—here he is, two years after The Roger Waters Donald is out of office, and Waters is still griping and grousing about the ex-President. And, I’m not saying don’t hate on Trump. I’m just saying update the material a bit. Throw in some Biden jokes. Anything. Then again, Waters is playing pretty much nothing but old Pink Floyd songs, so you’re not heading to the Fargo to see something fresh. Know what is back and better than ever? Incarceration. Hang on. Let me be clear: hanging out at Eastern State Penitentiary and taking the old familiar night tours where visitors can take in the gray sights, and dank sour smells of the once-busy Philly prison’s amenities is back in action through September 4. (Just how busy? Capone stayed there. Terry Gilliam, Brad Pitt, and Bruce Willis filmed there). It should also be noted that The BOX, an immersive theater piece written by a once-incarcerated playwright (Sarah Shourd, held in solitary confinement for 400+ days as a political prisoner in Iran), will make its debut at Eastern State Penitentiary on August 13 through 14. With so much legislation being dedicated to keeping people away from incarceration and out of the prison system, playing into it suddenly seems off-putting. Then again, they have a beer garden which seems to make everything alright. n
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glittering decoration. A funky look. Carrying a plastic shopping bag. It was casual until it wasn’t, and it wasn’t in an instant. The man tossed his plastic bag aside and took off, running like a man pursued, which with the briefest of pauses, he was. The officer ran after him, but that was just the opening gambit in this chase. The cop had no chance of catching him. He was talking into his shoulder microphone, running in first-responder shoes, and wearing a day’s worth of cop tools on his belt. But he was one escape route closed off. There weren’t many others. Immediately, loud whoop-whoops and flashing lights came from all directions. A police car flew down the parking lot, trusting that everybody was frozen in place by the loud noise, although at one point it came perilously close to the chaser cop who had his eye on the man and anything he might discard in his futile attempt to get away. The suspect kept running, but there was no good
place to go. A cop car came from the other direction. The guy adjusted course and ran across 202, nimbly dodging traffic. I watched him sprint through the line of trees bordering the other side. Beyond that was a large open field—the last place you would go. He attempted to shed his jacket as he ran across the uneven ground, pulling at the sleeves. Try that sometime—it’s near impossible. The police were always right behind. Or in front. He kept turning in on himself until there was nothing but cops. It didn’t take all that long, but it sure was intense. When we went into the drug store everybody was watching out the front window. We asked if the suspect had been in there (yes) and if he had been shoplifting. The answer was a cryptic “Not exactly.” It doesn’t matter, really. We got my prescription and left. At the far end of the parking lot, the police were frisking a different guy against a beat-up car with a front license plate that looked like it had been
drawn with a crayon. A good guess says that was the getaway driver. It was mesmerizing to see it unfold in real life, but as exciting as it was, it would have been totally unsuitable for Hollywood (i.e., no blood and explosions), which is one of our big cultural problems. Our perceptions and understandings are distorted by the flat screen, where everything gets decided with a weapon. From what I saw, the police were on it. They were awesome, working as a team, getting things under control. A bad thing was happening, and with great urgency, the problem was taken away, gone without a trace, nobody hurt. No shatter and splatter. That’s the way I want to see these things play out. Thank you for a tough job well done. Beyond that, consider that at no time during the chase did the officers know if the guy had a gun in his pocket. Or a friend with one. A friend who watches a lot of movies where that’s how things unfold; that’s what comes next. Like I said, it’s a tough job. n
ter, a recluse in a big house at the top of a big hill, with a locked shed in the backyard. Sometimes strange sounds emerge from it. Charlie starts doing jobs for Mr. Bowditch and loses his heart to Radar. Then, when Bowditch dies, he leaves Charlie a cassette tape telling a story no one would believe. What Bowditch knows, and has kept secret all his long life, is that inside the shed is a portal to another world.
ginnings are exactly what Olivia and Lily need. Their paths cross when Asher falls for the new girl in school, and Lily can’t help but fall for him, too. With Ash, she feels happy for the first time. Yet at times, she wonders if she can trust him completely. Then one day, Olivia receives a phone call: Lily is dead, and Asher is being questioned by the police. Olivia is adamant that her son is innocent. But she would be lying if she didn’t acknowledge the flashes of his father’s temper in Ash, and as the case against him unfolds, she realizes he’s hidden more than he’s shared. n
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ital. And interest performs many other functions: it encourages people to save; enables them to place a value on precious assets, such as houses and financial securities; and allows us to price risk. Over the first two decades of the twentyfirst century, rates have sunk lower than ever. Easy money after the financial crisis in 2007/2008 has produced ill effects: the appearance of multiple asset price bubbles, a reduction in productivity growth, discouraging savings and exacerbating inequality, and forcing yield-starved investors to take on excessive risk. The financial world now is caught between a rock and a hard place. Chancellor explores the history of interest and its essential function in determining how capital is allocated and priced. Fairy Tale by Stephen King Scribner, $32.50 Charlie Reade looks like a regular high school kid, but he carries a heavy load. His mom was killed when he was ten, and grief drove his dad to drink. Charlie learned how to take care of himself— and his dad. When he is 17, he meets a dog named Radar and her aging mas26
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Mad Honey by Jodi Picoult Pre-order; October 4, 2022 Ballantine Books, $29.99 Olivia McAfee knows what it feels like to start over. Her perfect life—married to a brilliant surgeon, raising their son Asher—was upended when her husband revealed a darker side. She never imagined that she would end up back in the house she grew up in and taking over her father’s beekeeping business. Lily Campanello is familiar with do-overs, too. When she and her mom relocate to Adams, New Hampshire, for her final year of high school, they both hope it will be a fresh start. And for just a short while, these new be-
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ing to bid farewell and then going their separate ways. I watched the 17-minute video multiple times on both visits, sometimes leaving to check out other installations but always coming back to Marina in her bright orange parka and Ulay in his blue cape-like coat. Both were walking, sometimes even climbing, through the Chinese landscape traversed by the Great Wall. The vast terrain changed throughout—from plains and flat stretches of desert to overgrown fields and mountainous
eluded me with Richard’s murder and the subsequent trial and acquittal of the accused murderer. I later read that on the opening night of The Artist Is Present, Ulay, whom Marina had not seen since the break-up, showed up without warning and sat across from her in the Atrium. Twenty-two years after “The Lovers: The Great Wall Walk, “ Ulay and Marina Abramovic performed together again. As they connected in silent eye contact, Ulay reached out to take her hands, and Marina started to cry. n
Marina Abramovic and Ulay on their meeting at MoMA
Marina and Ulay approaching each other.
plateaus. Sometimes they found themselves among the Chinese throngs, but they were usually alone with nature. For me, the viewer, the emotional suspense intensified as they moved closer toward their parting reunion. What were Marina and Ulay thinking and feeling during their threemonth trek? Fear about beginning a new chapter without each other? Relief that they would soon be free from the constraints of a relationship that felt stagnant? Guilt about their decision to break up? Excitement about new possibilities awaiting them as solo artists? Should they have tried to work out their differences and reconcile? Their silent performances left me clueless. I just knew I was starting to choke up, and I wasn’t even an active participant in the drama…or so I thought. At the climactic point of meeting, they instantly embraced, Ulay gallantly kissing Marina’s hand—the poignancy of the moment almost overwhelming. The heart-wrenching ending took its emotional toll. Marina was tearful; Ulay looked uncomfortable and nervous. And I, if I hadn’t been in a public place surrounded by masses of people, would have sobbed. I don’t remember ever viewing a work of art that affected me so profoundly and for so long. To this day, I haven’t stopped thinking about “The Lovers,” its emotional power and deep personal resonance for me. Like Marina, I, too, was involved with a lover/soulmate/collaborator (in my case, 14 years). However, unlike Marina and Ulay, my relationship with Richard abruptly ended when he was murdered, stabbed to death by a so-called friend. I had no time to prepare for his untimely, shocking death and no chance to say goodbye. In comparison, Marina and Ulay mutually decided to break up and co-create a performance piece, giving them months to contemplate what would be their final moment as a couple. I envied the closure their farewell would bring—the closure that had ICON |
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A lot of great players around today as well, many of them with more sophistication than the basic back-in-the-chicken-shack thing. I love that that’s going on now, and I just also happen to be doing more now than just the organ.
Joey DeFrancesco Trio, with drummer Anwar Marshall and guitarist Lucas Brown, at Dimitriou's Jazz Alley in Seattle, WA. Photo by Tom Collins
If we go back to before “More Music,” before “In the Key of the Universe,” and before “Project Freedom,” each album builds up its level of free-spiritedness. Now I’m not trying to turn you into Anthony Braxton, but it would seem that you are, incrementally, going further and further out. It’s organic. You’re doing what you feel. How far can you go while still hewing to tradition? Or is tradition no longer even a thought? I don’t think it is at this point. That tradition is a strong starting point, the basis for everything. But I do find myself getting freer and freer. Now, free can mean so many things. Talk to somebody like Sonny Rollins; he liked to play without a piano or a chordal instrument. Ornette Coleman, too. Right. There’s the freedom to go anywhere you want to go, harmonically, without being locked in. You can also just let the time go, just play off each other within your band, and establish a new kind of time: a floating time. That just means to be able to do whatever you want to do. Whatever you feel like. For the last record, More Music, we went everywhere. There’s some gutbucket jazz, but there’s also R&B; it’s a mix. But it’s also all the same. 28
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Having there be more of your own tenor sax playing throughout “More Music” certainly opens everything up. Yeah. I started playing late in 2018 after doing “Key of the Universe.” Being around Pharoah Sanders is what was truly responsible for me picking up the sax in that way—being close to him, and hearing that sound. My biggest influence in the band, in improvising, comes down to the inspiration of the tenor sax players. It was natural then to want to play the instrument.
Ray Charles, and Miles Davis, to name a few. What is the allure? What piques your interest? What complexities and connections are you seeking when you join someone else’s team? Grover—I was 14, 15 when he brought me to Sigma Sound—my first actual big-time recording session. When I get called to do gigs—I mean, John McLaughlin—I was 22 years old in 1993. Just me and Dennis Chambers playing with John. We were called the Free Spirits. Sometimes a gig is about the adventure. For instance, I knew about John’s music at the time, the Lifetime records with Tony Williams, his playing with Miles, his Shakti stuff, but I wasn’t into his Mahavishnu Orchestra. Yet. It took me off guard that he called me to do the gig. And that’s OK. Oh yeah. I had no expectations, save that I knew McLaughlin was great. I learned so much; his approach was so different from anything I had done before. Yet, it was so similar—which made me realize how those twelve little notes could do so many things. In the end, it always goes back to the basics, no matter how intricate you get. That opened my eyes to so much, opened me up harmonically—playing in unison, playing those particular lines. I’m not a sight reader, so I had to learn everything by ear. After Miles and John, I was ready for anything and everything.
Joey DeFrancesco and Van Morrison.
I saw you play the tenor sax live several times before you put it on a record. You could tell that you were feeling it out, as another texture, another voice, another weapon in which to solo. The fact that you sound so amazing, so lived in so quickly, is truly something. I had been thinking about that for years prior to playing the tenor sax. Something that would free me up. Having musicians like I have, a drummer such as Anwar Marshall and (guitarist) Lucas, frees me up to be able to play the trumpet with two hands as opposed to one or the sax during live shows. I also love playing piano and electric piano, the chords with my left hand. Certainly, the last several albums have more of a spiritual bent. It’s a nuance, an ambiance. Knowing that, like I, you come from a Roman Catholic, Italian-American background, how do the traditions of your religious upbringing hold true today? Where are you now as a spiritual being? That’s how it all started. I don’t go to church, but I have a very strong spiritual belief and connection. I respect everyone’s beliefs—the more you mature, the more you see all sides. I’m still Catholic, but I don’t believe in all of its concepts. I think that I am in touch with the universe. Nature. Going backward or sideways, you’ve played many great and famous sideman gigs and sessions: John McLaughlin, Grover Washington Jr.,
Leading into Van Morrison. You didn’t just session up with him, you co-produced his records. Your name is above the fold. Your band was his band. I love both of those records. There’s some really cool stuff on Prophet Speaks. I met Van several times over the years and knew his music. I thought it was cool when they contacted me to record with him. Cooler still because he wanted my band. He leaned on me quite a bit—what to do and how it should be. That’s what a great artist does; they find a collaborator they like and have them do their thing. That’s what Miles did with me and has always done. Van had a concept in mind. He had my band, which already had its own vibe from working together as long and as closely as we had. We had chemistry, and Van became part of that. Once I figured out what Van was into, it was easy. You could talk to him about every kind of music. Pharoah Sanders? He knew and loved all of that stuff. We hit it off quickly, got into the studio, and laid everything down. Everything on those two albums is one take. We approached things very similarly and very organically. Since you’ll be in Delaware soon, I can’t help but feel like this is something of a homecoming. I know you’ll be playing tracks from “More Music.” That said, along with traveling the world for 40 years playing, you’ve lived away from here for a long time—in Toronto and Arizona. Does Philly still have a hold on your musical vibe? What remains of Philly in your sound? It’s a different mindset. Miles used to say that a record is an advertisement for live shows. I do think Philly is still in my sound. We play differently in Philly than anywhere else. It’s that groove, you know? Ask Philly drummers—they’ll tell you. Look, my parents are from the Niagara Falls area, but I was in Philly for the whole thing—the tail end of the organ jazz sound the first time around as I was born in 1971. I started playing when I was four years old, and there was a lot still happening in Philly. Being born in Philly put me in line with all the local organ greats—that history. And that history is still a big part of me. n ICON |
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harper’s FINDINGS A study in The Laryngoscope found that six of seven singing injuries could be treated conservatively by singing speech pathologists. Users of American Sign Language make obscurer signs closer to the face. Sleep consolidates positive emotions and suppresses negative ones. Late-onset alcoholism may be a symptom of dementia. Gut microbiomes indicate when football players have recovered from a concussion, concussions and traumatic brain injuries can occur among musk oxen and bighorn sheep, and macaques conceived during the 2018 California wildfires have worse memories and are more passive. Researchers identified the spike-protein change that allows canine coronavirus to jump to humans. Canine cognitive dysfunction syndrome may be a useful model for Alzheimer’s, and the subdued, monotonous speech affect of Parkinson’s can be replicated in zebra finches. A metastudy of psychedelic lizard ingestion failed to identify any female users, and light-sensing neurons were revived in the eyes of the dead.
9 Earth plants were successfully cultivated in moon soil. Drywood termites have made at least forty ocean crossings in the past fifty million years, and the black rat colonized Europe twice. A silver Roman penis pendant unearthed by a retiree was ruled to be treasure, then assessed by the coroner of Maidstone for its “foreskin, shaft, and pubes.” The consumption of improperly cooked cow entrails during winter feasts was responsible for the intestinal parasites of those who built Stonehenge. A six-year-old on Bawdsey Beach found the tooth of a megalodon, which were found to have gone extinct partly because of competition with great white sharks. Bottlenose dolphins in the northern Egyptian Red Sea rub against mucus-secreting gorgonian coral polyps to self-medicate, and Indonesian blood python harvesting is unsustainable. Playing the sound of jackdaws reaching a consensus to leave their roosts makes other jackdaws leave their roosts, on average, six minutes faster. Whereas female Eurasian penduline tits bury their eggs in order to abandon their mates and start a second family, Chinese penduline tit couples bury their eggs collaboratively to keep them secure in strong winds. Wild horses can distinguish between positive and negative human sounds.
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Finnish laser scans revealed the reason tree branches droop at night. The Corn Belt is on track to become unsuitable for corn cultivation by 2100, and the level of aflatoxins in corn is set to increase. Micromodeling has allowed for the representation of eddies in shallow cloud systems. British ecologists recommended the establishment of moth highways to ease the transition of species driven northward by warming, and the northward movement of the pine beauty moth was fifty years ahead of existing estimates. Scientists were studying a selection of sites that included the Flinders Reef and the San Francisco Bay to define the golden spike of the Anthropocene. Fjords are emitting as much methane as the deep ocean. The ocean is losing its memory. Massive quantities of nanoplastics are distributed in sea spray and fog. Atmospheric levels of helium-4 are rising. River avulsions can be predicted. There may be a mirror universe of particles that interacts with our universe through gravity alone. n 30
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INDEX Factor by which bestsellers about Donald Trump outsold those about Joe Biden in the first two years of their terms: 10 No. of copies of Jill Biden’s memoir sold in the U.S. in its first week of publication: 250 Factor by which Americans are more likely to believe that Republicans are better at controlling inflation than Democrats: 2 % Democrats are more likely than Republicans to carry a lucky charm at all times: 75 To include political language in their Twitter bios: 250 Portion of U.S. Twitter users who think no one else has ever seen their tweets: 1/5 Percentage increase in Google searches for “vasectomy” in the 36 hours after the leaked draft opinion about Roe v. Wade: 340 Percentage by which women are more likely than men to be interrupted in Senate committee hearings: 10 By which such interruptions are more likely when they are discussing women’s issues: 15 Portion of baby boomers who trust the U.S. electoral process: 1/2 Of millennials who do: 2/5 Of Gen Z-ers: 1/4 Percentage by which Democrats are more likely than Republicans to think their lives would make for good reality TV: 32 % increase last year in U.S. prescriptions for amphetamine-based ADHD medications: 10 Percentage of the global supply of these drugs that is used in the United States: 57 Portion of U.S. counties that lack a psychiatrist specializing in children or adolescents: 3/4 Percentage increase since 2015 in the number of prescriptions for antidepressants given to U.S. teenagers: 69 % increase in the use of “buy now, pay later” services by Gen Z-ers since Jan. 2020: 925 Percentage of Gen Z users who have missed at least one payment: 43 Who have missed at least two payments: 30 Percentage increase since 2019 in the average price of a U.S. Uber car ride: 45 Percentage change since 2010 in the average cost of an electric vehicle battery: −89 In the average price of an electric vehicle: +80 % by which U.S. flights to the European Union have returned to their 2019 levels: 73 By which U.S. flights to China have: 1 Factor by which men are more likely than women to claim they’ve had sex on a plane: 4 Percentage increase last year in reports of U.S. planes being struck by the beam of a laser pointer: 41 Cost of a trip to space in a capsule lifted by a helium balloon: $50,000 Aspiring first-time home buyers who will be unable to purchase one this year: 1/5 Percentage increase since 2020 in the portion of U.S. home purchases accounted for by real estate investment firms: 46 Americans who say they would feel disgusted if a homeless person lived nearby: 1/10 Chance that a Democrat has at some point experienced homelessness: 1 in 5 That a Republican has: 1 in 6 U.S. employers with remote workers that use some form of monitoring software: 3/5 Percentage of those employers that terminated employees after implementing this software: 88 Average salary college students expect to make in their 1st job after graduation: $103,880 Average starting salary for a U.S. college graduate: $55,260 Percentage of U.S. adults aged 18 to 35 who don’t see any point in saving money until the pandemic ends: 45 Percentage by which people with minor psychopathic tendencies are more likely to want to invest in cryptocurrency: 12 Cost, per week, to stay at a Swiss center that offers treatment for cryptocurrency addiction: $98,691
SOURCES: 1 Timothy Gill, University of North Carolina Wilmington; 2,3 International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (Geneva); 4,5 National Guard Bureau (Arlington, Va.); 6,7 U.S. Customs and Border Protection; 8 Claudia Flores, University of Chicago Law School; 9–11 Law Enforcement Support Office (Battle Creek, Mich.); 12–14 USA Today (McLean, Va.); 15,16 AH Datalytics (New Orleans); 17 Kaiser Health News (San Francisco); 18 Retraction Watch (NYC); 19 McKinsey & Company (NYC); 20 Travis Pillow, University of Washington Bothell; 21 The Harris Poll (Chicago); 22 Pew Research Center (Washington); 23 Nefesh B’Nefesh (Jerusalem); 24 YouGov (NYC); 25 U.S. Travel Association (Washington); 26,27 Bernstein Research (London); 28 Japan Tourism Agency (Tokyo); 29 Icelandic Ministry of Health (Reykjavík); 30 U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development; 31 Timothy Garton Ash, University of Oxford (England); 32 Dalia Research (Berlin); 33 The Williams Institute (Los Angeles); 34,35 YouGov; 36,37 Trump Twitter Archive (Boston); 38 YouGov; 39 Chris Danforth, University of Vermont (Burlington); 40 International Chamber of Shipping (London).
CAPTAIN OBVIOUS GOES TO THE MOVIES by EVAN BIRNHOLZ
ACROSS Eased up Picked from a slate Being in Keebler ads Joke Capital of Zambia Asinine It’s what you’d expect “___, you’ll find a mattress, a dresser and a nightstand” 25 Exercise experts 26 Foul-smelling 27 “Josephine” singer Chris 28 Egyptian god featured prominently in the text of the Ikhernofret Stela 30 Prefix with paganism 31 Doctor’s administration 32 “___, it will be nighttime” 36 “ Nailed it!” 38 Freckle, e.g. 39 “Well done!” 40 Shriek after a squeak 41 Brouhaha 43 Initials meaning “When will you be here?” 45 Buffalo pro athlete 47 Reason for a sick day 50 “___, but others prefer cold” 54 Slow score tempo 55 “That’s so true!” 56 “Gosh darn it!” 57 Actor Isaac, or an award he could win 60 Yin’s counterpart 61 Major danger 63 Insinuated 66 “This ___ fair!” 68 Subj. of documents revealed by Edward Snowden 69 “___, and you’ll have performed a good deed” 74 Bassist Nielsen 77 Blanket fabric 78 Response to a drill sergeant, at times 79 Softened, with “down” 83 Spiciness choice 85 “Life of ___” (ancient text about a Greek storyteller) 87 “None of that is true!” 90 Poster-hanging strip 91 Except if 93 “___, you must capture one robber” 97 Bob who was the first NBA player to score 20,000 points 98 Mechanical energy producer 99 “Colin in Black & White” 1 7 12 15 19 20 21 23
co-creator DuVernay 100 Give permission to 101 “If Aristotle were alive today ___ have a talk show”: Timothy Leary 102 Excessively 103 “The Tonight Show” host decades before Leno 106 Geological stretches 108 “___? Then we should expect gore” 113 Sitarist’s song 116 Organ with a vestibule 117 Inedible jam source? 118 Flip ___ (team-based drinking game) 119 Vending machine drinks 120 Ordered individually 122 “___? Then you’re not quite a movie star” 126 Knight’s boots and greaves, e.g. 127 Be a web developer? 128 Chicago Bears logo color 129 Hit the gas 130 Visualize 131 Disallows 132 The dog Flash on “The Dukes of Hazzard,” e.g.
1 2 3 4
5 6 7 8 9 10 er 11 12 13 14 15 16
17 18 22 24
DOWN Celebrity’s assumed name at a hotel, say Whole lot One seeing stars? Island called the “queen of the Pacific” in “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea” ___ out a victory (won by one point, say) Small amount of glue YouTube series? Driver’s entrance Fundamental concept in the Zhuangzi “Emerald and Stone” composBrian Infomercial segments Authorize Country singer Morgan or rockabilly singer Collins Easily destroyed SNL actress Hooks She wrote the majority opinion in Kimble v. Marvel Entertainment, LLC (2015) Hardware store fastener “Roots” actress Cicely Send down the wrong path Be inaccurate
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Hybrid tennis wear Foul-smelling “___ thou even hoist, brethren?” (comical weightlifting caption) Site of the first KFC, surprisingly Airport misfortune Animation sheet “Ideally, shortly,” initially Architectural feature of the Hagia Sophia 1 Down indicator Expo structures Soprano Nixon who sang solos in many movie musicals Noisy disturbances Exercise with eight limbs “National Velvet” author Bagnold “The Peasant War in Germany” author Friedrich Goalie Shesterkin who won the Vezina Trophy in 2022 ___ acid (compound in limes) Powdery residue Close to empty Having little influence, as a dictator In times gone by Unstable substance Crisped bread Soil loosener Shift, as one’s head The Sisters of Mercy fan, perhaps Sleepyhead’s response ICON |
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Have supper Happening, so to speak File/extension sites? Parrying sword Nimble Try to prevent “The Stunt Man” actor Peter “Would you look at that!” Ranted and ___ (complained angrily) 92 Cocktail with cognac 94 Handle adversity 95 ___ Spring (series of early 2010s protests) 96 Stuff that coats oakum 98 “L’Amour médecin” playwright 102 Move carefully 104 Secluded space 105 Fires up 107 Therapeutic scents 108 Dabbling ducks 109 2018 French Open winner Simona 110 Creatures whose tails can regenerate 111 Attribute for Hercules 112 Join a group, with “in” 114 Measurement device 115 Valuable skill 119 Alessia who collaborated with Zedd on the song “Stay” 121 Dishonorable sort 123 Wreath with flowers 124 “Stranger Things” skateboarder 125 Pocket watch chain Solution on page 26 A U G U S T 2 0 2 2 | I C O N D V. C O M
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