Snap Judgments
We weigh in on new books, albums, and films.BOOK
MELANIE GIDEON: THE SLIPPERY YEAR
(Knopf)
While reading a book of essays about a 44-year-old woman’s so-called slippery year, you keep waiting for the fall—the moment when Oakland novelist Melanie Gideon examines her sedate midlife and decides to chuck it for something dramatic and dangerous. But, surprisingly, there is no such climax in Gideon’s memoir, whose quiet and funny musings on the mundane fit her subtitle’s billing (“A Meditation on Happily Ever After”). Instead of ditching her snoring husband and moving to Bali, she merely wonders why a woman with everything has turned out rather cranky—why she doesn’t want to explore the West in the giant van her husband buys, or allow her curly hair to go natural, or join her girlfriends for a night of drinking and cooking. Little things stress her out to such a degree that she employs a gadget called the StressEraser, which works so orgasmically well that she worries what she looks like using it in the carpool line at her son’s school. After a few chapters of one gorgeous and self-ridiculing sentence after another, you realize that Gideon doesn’t need to detonate her life to shake things up. There’s a perfect storm raging inside her head, and its hilarity is drama enough for anyone. A
—STEPHANIE LOSEE
ALBUM
DONNIE WILLIAMS AND PARK PLACE: JUST LIKE MAGIC
(Chump Change Records)
Eventually, if the popularity of American Idol continues apace, record stores will have to devote an entire section to CDs by former contestants. Everyone—from winners like Ruben Studdard and Carrie Underwood to lesser names like Bucky Covington and Donnie Williams—wants to capitalize on a fleeting moment of fame. Williams, a Baton Rouge native and current Livermore resident, made it to the top 32 of 2004’s season three before he was replaced after getting nailed for a DUI. Bemoaning his missed chance at national exposure, Williams quit drinking and hunkered down with R&B composer Paul Tillman Smith, acclaimed keyboardist Kev Choice, and fellow Idol competitor LaToya London. Unfortunately, the album they came up with feels less like magic and more like the quietest of storms. Magic’s tracks meander aimlessly, offering twinkly organs and programmed beats that barely break a sweat. For a guy who lists energetic soul artists like Stevie Wonder and Donny Hathaway as his idols, Williams emits little heat. The one song with some actual gumption, “Send My Baby Back,” doesn’t even feature him—instead, it’s led by the charismatic London. Technically, Williams is a talented singer, but with songwriting and backing tracks as tepid as these, it’s hard to vote for him. C-
—DAN STRACHOTA
BOOK
FRANK PORTMAN: ANDROMEDA KLEIN
(Delacorte Press)
In his wildly popular debut young-adult novel, King Dork, Oakland’s Frank Portman wrote from experience, spinning the tale of a high school supernerd who accidentally becomes a punk-rock god. In his second effort, the Mr. T Experience singer-guitarist upended the classic aphorism by writing what he didn’t know: His narrator is a teenage beanpole named Andromeda who’s obsessed with the occult and tarot cards. Still, there are plenty of similarities between Portman’s two books—ineffectual parents, a protagonist who’s a supreme outcast, and a pile of mysteries, from a dead friend’s specter to an ex’s flirty texts to an imagined conspiracy by the Friends of the Library. Portman makes Andromeda highly sympathetic, giving her a lovestruck sidekick and a penchant for clever wordplay, whether she’s adding to her lexicon of misheard phrases or purposely mangling texts. But there are underlying problems, too: An encyclopedic detailing of the occult drags down the beginning of the story, while the end feels rather rushed, with some of those tangled mysteries either solved too quickly or left dangling. With Andromeda Klein, Portman proves he can craft a pretty good novel that has nothing to do with his life. Given a little more seasoning, he might even write a great one. B
—DAN STRACHOTA
FILM
THE COVE
(Roadside Attractions)
The real attention-grabber in this urgent documentary is dolphin trainer Ric O’Barry, the marine mammal specialist at Berkeley’s Earth Island Institute. After working on the TV show Flipper and arguably spawning a dolphin-captivity industry in aquatic parks, O’Barry has not stopped paying down the debt on his conscience. “The dolphin’s smile is nature’s greatest deception,” he says, as Charlie Chaplin’s bittersweet song “Smile” swims up through the soundtrack. Even if you roll your eyes at that, you’ll still want to avert them during O’Barry’s tour of Taiji, Japan, where tens of thousands of dolphins each year are corralled into captivity or slaughtered horrifically, then sold as counterfeit whale meat. O’Barry and director Louie Psihoyos assembled an A-Team of activists, freedivers, and audiovisual gadgeteers to sneak in and gather incriminating footage, of which there’s enough in The Cove to make you glad there isn’t more. (Doubly so if you happen to represent Japan in the International Whaling Commission.) The movie is full of information and agitation, but it’s most alive in its wordlessly emotive moments, like when the harpooners light cigarettes right after their kill (is that some twisted variation on a satisfied postcoital puff, or an attempt to calm their nerves?) and whenever we glimpse the guilt and desperation etched into O’Barry’s face. B+
—JONATHAN KIEFER
BOOK
JOHN HIGHAM: 360 DEGREES LONGITUDE
(Alyson Books)
Most of us know someone who has left “real life” behind to take an extended trip around the world while the rest of us make excuses for staying put. But how many of us can imagine rounding up our spouse, two kids under age 12, and two tandem bicycles for a yearlong action-adventure covering four continents? John Higham, a Bay Area–based engineer, did just that—then wrote this engaging account of his family’s journey, which begins with a European cycling tour and continues through Africa, Asia, and South America. Along the way, the group faces challenges that would send less resourceful travelers packing—daily homeschooling, broken bones—but for this foursome, it’s all part of the fun. While his play-by-play narrative verges on tedious at times, Higham is largely an entertaining, pleasantly didactic storyteller, supplementing his detailed anecdotes with mini–history lessons and reflections on parenting, cultural differences, and materialism. What makes the book stand out is its inventive Google Earth companion guide: Wherever the application’s logo appears in the text, it directs readers to a web page where Higham provides a “director’s cut” of certain events. In today’s sea of travel memoirs, this feature is a welcome anchor. B
—ANNIE TUCKER
MELANIE GIDEON: THE SLIPPERY YEAR
(Knopf)
While reading a book of essays about a 44-year-old woman’s so-called slippery year, you keep waiting for the fall—the moment when Oakland novelist Melanie Gideon examines her sedate midlife and decides to chuck it for something dramatic and dangerous. But, surprisingly, there is no such climax in Gideon’s memoir, whose quiet and funny musings on the mundane fit her subtitle’s billing (“A Meditation on Happily Ever After”). Instead of ditching her snoring husband and moving to Bali, she merely wonders why a woman with everything has turned out rather cranky—why she doesn’t want to explore the West in the giant van her husband buys, or allow her curly hair to go natural, or join her girlfriends for a night of drinking and cooking. Little things stress her out to such a degree that she employs a gadget called the StressEraser, which works so orgasmically well that she worries what she looks like using it in the carpool line at her son’s school. After a few chapters of one gorgeous and self-ridiculing sentence after another, you realize that Gideon doesn’t need to detonate her life to shake things up. There’s a perfect storm raging inside her head, and its hilarity is drama enough for anyone. A
—STEPHANIE LOSEE
ALBUM
DONNIE WILLIAMS AND PARK PLACE: JUST LIKE MAGIC
(Chump Change Records)
Eventually, if the popularity of American Idol continues apace, record stores will have to devote an entire section to CDs by former contestants. Everyone—from winners like Ruben Studdard and Carrie Underwood to lesser names like Bucky Covington and Donnie Williams—wants to capitalize on a fleeting moment of fame. Williams, a Baton Rouge native and current Livermore resident, made it to the top 32 of 2004’s season three before he was replaced after getting nailed for a DUI. Bemoaning his missed chance at national exposure, Williams quit drinking and hunkered down with R&B composer Paul Tillman Smith, acclaimed keyboardist Kev Choice, and fellow Idol competitor LaToya London. Unfortunately, the album they came up with feels less like magic and more like the quietest of storms. Magic’s tracks meander aimlessly, offering twinkly organs and programmed beats that barely break a sweat. For a guy who lists energetic soul artists like Stevie Wonder and Donny Hathaway as his idols, Williams emits little heat. The one song with some actual gumption, “Send My Baby Back,” doesn’t even feature him—instead, it’s led by the charismatic London. Technically, Williams is a talented singer, but with songwriting and backing tracks as tepid as these, it’s hard to vote for him. C-
—DAN STRACHOTA
BOOK
FRANK PORTMAN: ANDROMEDA KLEIN
(Delacorte Press)
In his wildly popular debut young-adult novel, King Dork, Oakland’s Frank Portman wrote from experience, spinning the tale of a high school supernerd who accidentally becomes a punk-rock god. In his second effort, the Mr. T Experience singer-guitarist upended the classic aphorism by writing what he didn’t know: His narrator is a teenage beanpole named Andromeda who’s obsessed with the occult and tarot cards. Still, there are plenty of similarities between Portman’s two books—ineffectual parents, a protagonist who’s a supreme outcast, and a pile of mysteries, from a dead friend’s specter to an ex’s flirty texts to an imagined conspiracy by the Friends of the Library. Portman makes Andromeda highly sympathetic, giving her a lovestruck sidekick and a penchant for clever wordplay, whether she’s adding to her lexicon of misheard phrases or purposely mangling texts. But there are underlying problems, too: An encyclopedic detailing of the occult drags down the beginning of the story, while the end feels rather rushed, with some of those tangled mysteries either solved too quickly or left dangling. With Andromeda Klein, Portman proves he can craft a pretty good novel that has nothing to do with his life. Given a little more seasoning, he might even write a great one. B
—DAN STRACHOTA
FILM
THE COVE
(Roadside Attractions)
The real attention-grabber in this urgent documentary is dolphin trainer Ric O’Barry, the marine mammal specialist at Berkeley’s Earth Island Institute. After working on the TV show Flipper and arguably spawning a dolphin-captivity industry in aquatic parks, O’Barry has not stopped paying down the debt on his conscience. “The dolphin’s smile is nature’s greatest deception,” he says, as Charlie Chaplin’s bittersweet song “Smile” swims up through the soundtrack. Even if you roll your eyes at that, you’ll still want to avert them during O’Barry’s tour of Taiji, Japan, where tens of thousands of dolphins each year are corralled into captivity or slaughtered horrifically, then sold as counterfeit whale meat. O’Barry and director Louie Psihoyos assembled an A-Team of activists, freedivers, and audiovisual gadgeteers to sneak in and gather incriminating footage, of which there’s enough in The Cove to make you glad there isn’t more. (Doubly so if you happen to represent Japan in the International Whaling Commission.) The movie is full of information and agitation, but it’s most alive in its wordlessly emotive moments, like when the harpooners light cigarettes right after their kill (is that some twisted variation on a satisfied postcoital puff, or an attempt to calm their nerves?) and whenever we glimpse the guilt and desperation etched into O’Barry’s face. B+
—JONATHAN KIEFER
BOOK
JOHN HIGHAM: 360 DEGREES LONGITUDE
(Alyson Books)
Most of us know someone who has left “real life” behind to take an extended trip around the world while the rest of us make excuses for staying put. But how many of us can imagine rounding up our spouse, two kids under age 12, and two tandem bicycles for a yearlong action-adventure covering four continents? John Higham, a Bay Area–based engineer, did just that—then wrote this engaging account of his family’s journey, which begins with a European cycling tour and continues through Africa, Asia, and South America. Along the way, the group faces challenges that would send less resourceful travelers packing—daily homeschooling, broken bones—but for this foursome, it’s all part of the fun. While his play-by-play narrative verges on tedious at times, Higham is largely an entertaining, pleasantly didactic storyteller, supplementing his detailed anecdotes with mini–history lessons and reflections on parenting, cultural differences, and materialism. What makes the book stand out is its inventive Google Earth companion guide: Wherever the application’s logo appears in the text, it directs readers to a web page where Higham provides a “director’s cut” of certain events. In today’s sea of travel memoirs, this feature is a welcome anchor. B
—ANNIE TUCKER
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