Boomerang

Were you aware that May is National Pet Month? In honor of it, for this week’s Sense and the City, out in print in today’s Ticket, I present the tale of Boomerang and the butterfly:

Boomerang is my cat, so named because when he started hanging around my house as a stray, whenever I shooed him out of my yard, bang, he’d come back again. Just like a boomerang.

Eventually, he charmed his way into my heart and home. I adopted him, moved him indoors, domesticated him (um, yes, that means I neutered him) and made peace with being considered a crazy cat lady, with not one, not two, but three rescued cats.

When he was wild, he would sit a few feet away from me as I worked in the yard pulling weeds or digging up old tree stumps. He’d roll in the grass, climb trees, hide under the fallen palm fronds and play in the leaves when I raked; it was almost like having a dog.

He’d catch turtles in the nearby pond and hunt lizards and birds. Many mornings I opened my front door to find a dead something or other he’d caught and brought home with pride as a present for the woman who was now feeding him so well he no longer needed to eat what he killed.

After adopting him, I trained him to walk on a leash so he could still enjoy the evening air, stretch his legs in the grass, sniff the air and remember his former life of freedom.

One evening, I took him on a walk along the long row of Mexican petunias bordering the sidewalk in front of my house. As we meandered along, a butterfly floated past us, flitting in and out among the bushes. No ordinary butterfly this, it was large and magnificent — dark brown with just a thin line of yellow along the edges. As I stopped to watch him, Boomer laid down on the sidewalk, enjoying the warmth it still had from the hot day.

Check out the conclusion to the story over at the Ticket website.

The cover of Diane Keaton's memoir, Then Again

Mother’s Day is coming up this Sunday, and rather than just do brunch (like you’ve done every year for the past decade), why not reflect on what makes your mom tick, and take some time to get to know her? That’s the subject of this week’s “Sense and the City,” out in print in today’s Ticket.

Here’s a sample:

Actress Diane Keaton focuses much of her new memoir, “Then Again,” on her mom — helped by having access to 85 volumes of diaries her mother wrote over the course of her life. The journals contained thousands of pages of her mother’s most private thoughts about herself, her children, her marriage. I don’t know if Keaton knew her mom all that well while she was alive, but she sure gained entirely new and perhaps sometimes shocking insights into her mother after her death through these journals.

In this day of electronic correspondence and Facebook, fewer and fewer people are keeping journals, much less busy moms who nowadays even keep their grocery lists on their smart phones.

The roles moms play, though — as breadwinners, carpoolers, laundresses, housecleaners, homework-helpers, grocery-getters, button-sewers, advice-givers — haven’t changed much, and those busy duties make it even harder to get to know them. Unfortunately, many children take it for granted that they know all there is to know about their moms.

After all, “Mom” encompasses everything. For most kids, the concept of “Mom” is that of a bottomless pit. Everything goes in — every desire, want, need, curiosity, whim, joy, heartache, drama, catastrophe and success is poured in — but not much about Mom ever gets to come out.

How can it? They’ve got to attend to your needs first.

For the rest, head over to the Ticket website.

That right there is a (very) foul-mouthed glimpse at the film Another Happy Day, unveiled at Sundance last year and now available on DVD.

The movie tells the story of a twice-married mother of four traveling to her parents’ estate for the wedding of her oldest son. The cast is dynamite: Ellen Barkin (Sea of Love, This Boy’s Life, Ocean’s Thirteen), Kate Bosworth, Ellen Burstyn (Requiem for a Dream), Thomas Haden Church (Sideways) and Demi Moore. And so’s the pedigree of first-time director Sam Levinson, the son of Barry Levinson, who has helmed major Hollywood hits like Rain Man and Good Morning, Vietnam.

Ellen Barkin in a still from Another Happy Day / VIA IMDB

The movie is a tense, sharp-tongued family drama dripping with black comedy, and I’m not surprised the move won a Best Screenwriting award at Sundance 2011. The dialogue is just that provocative and cutting.

I month ago, I filled you in on my top Sarasota Film Festival picks, and even though Another Happy Day didn’t come anywhere near our local fest, I’m happily adding it to the heap of festival-style films I’m recommending this year. Well worth a rent.

Kevin So will play WSLR's Kumquat Court studios at 8 p.m. Fri., May 18

This year’s tourist season might be dead, but hurricane season is looming. For this week’s Sense and the City, I’m spotlighting a handful of must-do events coming down the pipe in May.

Here’s a taste:

The Sarasota Film Fest has come and gone; snowbirds are flying north, it’s only a matter of weeks before another hurricane season kicks off — May has arrived and with it, a calmer, but no less fun flurry of places to see and be seen.

May 8, 5:30-8 p.m. — Sarasota Magazine holds its Best of 2012 party at Selby Gardens; showcasing restaurants and shops that were voted “best of” by readers of the magazine, and giving scenesters one last “season” event at which to shake things up. I attended last year’s inaugural event and thought it was one of the most fun and relaxed parties I’ve been to in Sarasota — ever. Great people-watching (for the fashion alone) and hob-nobbing party (almost everybody who’s anybody) made all the more enjoyable by music with deejay Barry Carew, cocktails, hors d’oeuvres, and a setting amongst lush greenery, banyan trees and water views. ABC Channel 7’s Bob Harrigan and Lauren Dorsett will emcee this seriously “don’t-miss” festivity. A portion of the proceeds benefit the gardens themselves and the Sarasota Chalk Festival. $50; bestofsarasota.eventbrite.com.

Friday, May 11, is the opening reception of the Florida Artist Group (FLAG) exhibit and symposium at Ringling College of Art and Design, 5-7 p.m., featuring painters, sculptors and photographers who have received statewide and national recognition for their work.

Saturday, May 12, painter/printmaker Tom Nakashima, whose work is currently on view at the Vero Beach Museum of Art, will make a presentation. Also on Saturday — a walk-about of the Sarasota High School soon-to-become Sarasota Museum of Art, led by SMOA founding members Wendy Surkis and Peppi Elona, includes a sneak-peak virtual tour and architectural model of the future museum. The symposium runs through June 1; for details on the opening weekend and entire symposium, visit floridaartistgroup.org.

Read the rest over at the Ticket website.

Curt Schilling (Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons)

The early weeks of baseball season have been making me think about why men love sports so much — and why men love to play sports so much, even when they get too old to compete with the young guys. I wrote about it for this week’s Sense and the City, in print in today’s Ticket. Here’s a taste:

My older brothers were athletes and though I was the youngest, and a girl to boot — they still taught me what they considered to be the essentials of life: how to tuck a football in the crook of my arm and run like hell, how to throw a lateral, how to fake left, how to shoot hoop and aim for that sweet spot on the backboard, how to go in for a lay-up.

Later when I started dating, I always seemed to end up with guys who had a seemingly bottomless wealth of knowledge and superior recall of stats and names and years and coaches and where their favorite players went to college. (Though I’ve wondered, with a couple of boyfriends, how the heck they could remember the number of some obscure player’s high school jersey, and yet still manage to forget my birthday.)

Men always seem so unusually happy when they’re watching sports on television or when they’re getting their clubs out to go hit a few, or when they’ve just come back from an afternoon of Ultimate Frisbee. When I hear a man whoo-hooting with excitement over a touchdown, or see the ultra-relaxed smile of a man who’s just run six miles, I feel like I’m getting a rare glimpse into his interior emotional world.

Most of all, I love men’s never-say-die attitude about their bodies. I admire the way they keep showing up at the court for a game of pick-up with guys half their age, keep tying the shoelaces on their running shoes even when their knees are close to giving out, keep digging the football out of the closet on Thanksgiving Day to throw glory day passes to their young nephews in the backyard.

Read the rest over at the Ticket website.

Frankie Alvarez plays Hamlet in the Asolo Repertory Theatre production of Hamlet, Prince of Cuba (Photo by Scott Braun)

It’s tax season, but rather than turn to a CPA for advice on how to file, I’m reading Shakespeare. Check out my newest Sense and the City column to find out why.

Here’s a preview:

William Shakespeare was born — and died – in the month of April. Even if you’ve never read one of his plays or sonnets, I’m sure you know his words. “Every dog will have its day,” “star-crossed lovers,” “dead as a doornail,” “bated breath.” Even, “Knock, knock! Who’s there?” — just a small few of the many Shakespearean phrases that are part of everyday English language.

Wit and drama aside, Shakespeare’s plays are above all else immutable lessons in living with integrity, a quality which seems as on its way to obsolescence as the American penny — something we fish out of the bottom of our pockets only after we’ve hit rock bottom.

After all, these days, if you’re caught doing something wrong or saying something egregious, you simply show up looking contrite on Good Morning, America or make a tearful confession to People magazine, and voilà, your integrity — or at least your viability in the marketplace of public opinion — is restored.

In a world that increasingly thinks that doing the right thing is simply doing the wrong thing and not getting caught, what relevance can Shakespeare have?

Read the rest over at the Ticket website.

Miami-based actor Eric Aragon as Paul Fowler, with “The Perfect Wedding” director Scott Gabriel and line producer Matt Dunnam (a 2011 Booker High School graduate)

My column in this week’s Ticket is all about settling into the dark of the movie theater and enjoying some high-quality flicks, just in time for this year’s Sarasota Film Festival. Here’s a taste:

My brain is a sieve when it comes to remembering people’s names, the ticker symbol for my miniscule retirement investment and what I had for dinner last night, but just say the words, “Leave the gun; take the cannoli,” “I’ll have what she’s having,” “Do I laugh now, or wait till it gets funny?” or “Yippee-ki-yay [INSERT WORD THAT'S UNPRINTABLE IN A FAMILY NEWSPAPER]” and I can tell you the film title and character speaking without even scratching my head.

I live for those rare moments when the person I’m talking to nods, gives me a knowing smile, and says simply, “De Niro in ‘Casino’ ” after I toss the line “And the eye in the sky is watching us all,” into a conversation about Google or Facebook.

In other words, I’m a cinephile — a nut for movies and films (and yes, there is a difference). So of course, I love the fact that my hometown has its very own film festival, with its ever-growing film industry bona fides. Though I generally eschew the glitz, red carpets, celebrity appearances and pricy parties — give me a ticket, a dark theater and a film that makes me laugh, cry, cringe, grab hold of the person sitting next to me, feel like falling in love or think about changing my life — and I’m golden.

Read the rest — including the films I’m most pumped about — over at the Ticket website.

Event chair Flori Roberts (Photo courtesy heraldtribune.com)

No, I’m not forcing you to join the military. I’m merely recommending that you sign up to attend the Women’s Resource Center’s Boot Camp for Women Entrepreneurs.

I’ve had an entrepreneurial outlook most of my life — even when I was working for other people. So, I’m completely bummed to miss this fabulous event, which is being offered this Sat., April 14. Even if you work for someone else, the entrepreneurial attitude — thinking/acting/working as an employer instead of an employee — is what sets you apart and paves the way for growth in the company. It’s short money — just $25 to hear from expert entrepreneurs in an all-day seminar.

Click here for more details and to register online.

Sam Harris (Photo courtesy samharris.org)

Over on his blog, Sam Harris — a thinker whose work touches on the messy intersection of science, religion and global conflict — offers interesting some provocative analysis on “The Future of the Book.” Harris draws on his own experiences as a book author, a blogger and a user of social media to examine how free online publishing has altered readers’ expectations of how much they should pay for the written word.

The piece — first published last September — is worth reading in full, but here’s a taste:

I am currently writing a traditional, printed book for my mainstream publisher, the Free Press. At the other extreme, I do a lot of writing for free, almost entirely on my blog. In between working for free and working for my publisher, I’ve begun to experiment with self publishing short ebooks. Last week, I published LYING, my first installment in this genre. The results have been simultaneously thrilling and depressing.

…

The essay appears to have had its desired effect on many readers. But others were not satisfied. Some did not understand the format—a very short book that can be read in 40 minutes—and expected to get a much longer book for $1.99. Many wondered why it is available only as an ebook. Some fans of ebooks were powerfully aggrieved to find it available only on the Kindle platform—they own Nooks, or detest Amazon for one reason or another. However, the fact is that Amazon made it extraordinarily easy for me to do this; the Kindle Single is the perfect format for so short a book; and Kindle content can be read on every computer and almost any handheld device. I decided that it was not worth my time or other people’s money to publish LYING elsewhere, or as a physical book.

On the surface, the launch of LYING has been a great success. It reached the #1 spot for Kindle Singles immediately and #9 for all Kindle content. It is amazing to finish writing, hit “upload,” and watch one’s work soar and settle, however briefly, above the vampire novels and diet books.

I would be lying, however, if I said that I wasn’t stung by some of the early criticism. Some readers felt that a 9000-word essay was not worth $1.99, especially when they can read my 5000-word blog posts for free. It is true that I put a lot of work into many of my blog posts, but LYING took considerably longer to write than any of them. It is a deceptively simple book—and I made it simple for a reason. Some of my readers seem not to have appreciated this and prefer to follow me into my usual thickets of argument and detail. That’s fine. But it is, nevertheless, painful to lose a competition with oneself, especially over a difference of $1.99.

One thing is certain: writers and public intellectuals must find a way to get paid for what they do—and the opportunities to do this are changing quickly. My current solution is to write longer books for a traditional press and publish short ebooks myself on Amazon. If anyone has any better ideas, please publish them somewhere—perhaps on a blog—and then send me a link. And I hope you get paid.