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Safe World
Today I heard President Bush say on the radio, “A free Iraq will make the world safe.” The number of U.S. troops who have died in combat topped 1,000 today.
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What Drives You To Summit?
Ransom Altman, the protagonist of my novel, WILD ANIMUS, is a mountain climber who’s not satisfied merely to summit peaks. He’s on a quest for a level of meaning and truth accessible only in the wildest corners of the globe, and ultimately, he ascends Alaska’s Mt. Wrangell with a single-minded purpose: to reunite himself with…
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WILD ANIMUS preview
This excerpt from Rich Shapero’s new book was just released, if you’re curious to read a little before Rich’s appearance here tomorrow.
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Movie: Frida
This is one of the better artist portrait films I’ve seen. It incorporates her accident, physical problems, lovers, husband, politics, and especially her art into a very real-feeling world. Ann has read a book about Frida, and from what she’s told me the movie is fairly accurate, but a little romanticized. No matter, it’s an…
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Breckenridge
The lesson of our first day on the ski slopes this year is this: if you don’t know where sniff out the deals you will pay out the nose. I remembered that a local grocery chain sells lift tickets, and this saved us $28 on the ski-base price of $118 for two day passes. And…
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Movie: Big Fish
While this movie has some interesting things to say about how our personal histories can disappear and be replaced by the stories we tell, it loses steam beyond that. Too bad, it has some fun moments, but you have to sit through a lot of predictable scenes to enjoy them.
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hobolog Guest Appearance: Rich Shapero
Next week Rich Shapero will make the first guest appearance ever on the hobolog. Rich is exploring alternative ways to promote his new book, WILD ANIMUS. He has started his own publishing company, Too Far, given away thousands of promotional copies of the book (I received one via FedEx), and generally shunned traditional publishing methods.…
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How will we eat it? Recipe 1.
Tonight I resolved to consume one of the more difficult items: a box full of dense, chewy Pemmican bars. There are four flavors to choose from: Carob Cocoa, Fruit ‘N Nut, Almond Coconut, and Sesame Lemon. The Sesame Lemon will require some advanced tactics, I think, so for tonight I selected the less challenging Fruit…
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Phlumf!
We awoke this morning to glorious phlumf in the front yard! We missed it so much in the desert. By the end of the day we had tromped through fields of it and had a game of dog tackle in the yard. Pure joy. (For a definition of phlumf, see phlumf.com.)
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Movie: Lost in Translation
I didn’t plan it, but this movie provides a pretty amazing contrast to The Last Samurai. Here we also have Americans living in the midst of Japanese culture, but in modern-day Tokyo. It’s a pretty stunning comparison. I get the feeling that Sophia Coppola represents a unique phenomenon in Hollywood because her father’s name, connections,…