Phineas and Ferb

“There’s 104 days of summer vacation, and school comes along just to end it. So the annual problem for our generation is finding a good way to spend it. Like maybe…”

So begins the theme song of the Disney Channel animated series Phineas and Ferb. Phineas and Ferb are brothers with a perpetual summer of fun at their fingertips. Phineas is the verbal idea man, devising the most out-of-this-world projects and plans. Ferb is the softspoken man of action who can make it, build it, and bring the plans to life. Their sister, Candace, is on a lifelong mission to “bust her brothers,” which means she wants her parents, specifically her mother, to catch the boys in the act and punish them. Their pet platypus, Perry, has a secret identity as Agent P. His job is to keep the evil Dr. Heinz Doofenshmirtz from bringing ruin to the Tri-State Area. The family’s parents are blissfully unaware of the goings on inside their home, or more typically, out in the back yard.

You may have guessed that this is meant to be a children’s TV show, but there is humor and enjoyment here for adults as well. As in many Disney productions, jokes are included for the entertainment of adults watching with their children. The animation is well done, and the voice acting is spot-on. Each episode includes a brief musical interlude with an original song written to support the plot. The characters either break into song, or a montage is shown with music to accompany their actions.

Between Phineas and Ferb’s daily creation, Candace’s efforts to bust them, Perry’s duel with Doofenshmirtz, and the requisite song, there’s a lot to pack into such a short show, but the episodes are well-paced so that it never feels rushed. In-jokes and references to previous episodes are fun to spot, and throughout the course of the series Phineas and Ferb have done nearly everything they mention in their theme song: building a rocket, fighting a mummy, discovering something that doesn’t exist, giving a monkey a shower, and of course driving their sister insane.

Among the episodes featured on these two DVDs are some of my personal favorites, including standouts I, Brobot, in which Phineas and Ferb build Phinedroids and Ferbots, Lawn Gnome Beach Party of Terror, in which the boys build a beach in their backyard, and Flop Starz, in which the boys endeavor to be one-hit wonders.

Check the WRL catalog for The Fast and the Phineas, and The Daze of Summer.

Columbine, by Dave Cullen

Within hours of the massacre last week at Fort Hood, reporters were asking Dave Cullen if the rampage was “like Columbine.” Cullen cautions that we can’t know yet—that we must wait for the facts. “If we guess now, the myths will be with us forever.”

Cullen knows how hard myths die. He was a reporter at Columbine on April 20, 1999, and has worked on the story ever since. He has seen the stubborn persistence of early, inaccurate beliefs: the crime was variously blamed on some combination of Marilyn Manson, a “Trench Coat Mafia,” Satanism, and bullying in those first chaotic days. Ten years later, Cullen puts the myths to rest in a masterwork of reporting that finds the ideal balance between sensitivity and service to the truth.

Columbine sets out to answer the question of questions: why? Should we be surprised to learn that there are at least two whys? Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris were both seriously messed up, but in very different ways. Drawing on interviews and reams of documents, including journals by the killers that were made public in 2006, Cullen details their final year, during which they planned the attack and engaged in troubling behavior that was not exactly unknown to authorities.

The narrative shifts back and forth in time from the murder plot to the personal stories of the victims—those who survived and those who died—to the community’s response to the tragedy. There are accounts of heroism that I hadn’t known about: two Eagle Scouts who tried to save a beloved teacher who was bleeding to death… a Lutheran minister who held a secret funeral for Dylan Klebold and expressed sympathy for his parents, acts of compassion that cost him his job.

Of all the books that I have read in 2009, Columbine is the one that stays with me. It tells a dark and disturbing story, difficult to read but important to know. Mostly, it makes me grateful for reporters like Dave Cullen who work to bring the truth to light, no matter how unwelcome it might be.

Check the WRL catalog for Columbine

Zeitoun, by Dave Eggers

Here’s a tale with a bracing lack of ambiguity. It is a shameful story, an incredible story that I wish were a work of fiction.

Abdulrahman Zeitoun exemplified the “American dream.” A Syrian-American citizen who had settled in New Orleans in 1994, he ran his own successful painting and contracting company, and was known to customers all over town as a hardworking, reliable family man.

Then Katrina came. His wife and children left before the storm, but Zeitoun (nobody called him by his first name) stayed behind in order to look after their properties. After the levees failed, he remembered an old canoe that he had stashed away, and took to paddling around the flooded streets. Because the canoe was so silent, he was able to hear feeble cries for help that rescuers in motorboats and helicopters would never have noticed. He saved a woman who had been clinging to a shelf in her drowned living room for 24 hours. He took food to dogs left behind by their owners. A devout Muslim, Zeitoun believed that God had meant for him to stay in the city and help people. Every day at noon, he phoned his wife, Kathy, who was with friends in Arizona, to tell her that he was OK.

One day, he stopped calling. He simply disappeared from the face of the earth. The story of what happened to him is as appalling as it is compelling. No, he did not fall into the hands of lawless hoodlums; he fell into the hands of people charged with upholding the law.

This is essentially an oral history, Abdulrahman and Kathy Zeitoun’s story as told to the author. Don’t expect a thoroughly documented work of reportage. Not that anyone, as far as I know, has come forward to contradict the Zeitouns’ account of their ordeal.

In the future, the “Zeitoun Affair” may come to stand as an object lesson in injustice and prejudice just as the Dreyfus Affair did in France 100 years ago.  The story is creating ripples. The director Jonathan Demme is planning a movie (an animated film, inspired by the book’s cover artwork by Rachell Sumpter). And Dave Eggers is using proceeds from the book to create a nonprofit foundation to support the rebuilding of New Orleans and the promotion of human rights.

Check the WRL catalog for Zeitoun

Friends of Old Time Music: The Folk Arrival 1961-1965

If you think you’re allergic to folk music, here’s the cure. This three-disc anthology of live recordings contains some of the most powerful, soulful music ever made with or without benefit of amplifiers. It’s not folk music in the “folkie” singer-songwriter genre—the performers are mostly Southerners born in the late 19th or early 20th century who played in the old-time, early country or blues traditions: Maybelle Carter, Dock Boggs, Mississippi John Hurt, Clarence Ashley, Bill Monroe.

The boxed set’s 55 tracks document a series of concerts in Greenwich Village during the folk revival of the early sixties. A group of young scholars that included Peter K. Siegel and the late Mike Seeger brought traditional artists to New York to perform for audiences who truly understood how great they were. These musicians had been forgotten, and were now being rediscovered late in their lives. On one track, the banjo player and bluesman Dock Boggs tells the crowd that he had put aside his banjo for the past 25 years, working as a coal miner until Mike Seeger called him up out of the blue.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking that because these are important archival recordings, they are difficult to listen to. The tracks have been chosen for their drive and universal appeal. The sound quality is excellent. There are fiddle tunes, blues, ballads, gospel songs, solos, duets, trios and quartets. Needless to say, there is no filler–every track is worthy of your full attention. A few personal favorites: Bill Monroe’s wailing vocal and turbo-charged mandolin on “Brakeman’s Blues;” Maybelle Carter’s soulful rendition of “The Storms are On the Ocean;” several numbers by the exuberant one-man band, Jesse Fuller; and the joyous gospel song, “Before This Time Another Year,” by Bessie Jones and the Georgia Sea Island Singers.

Acoustic guitar players, listen closely to Fred McDowell, John Hurt, Jesse Fuller, Doc Watson, Roscoe Holcomb. These are the masters you want to emulate.

Happily, we are now in the throes of a new folk revival. Ex-punk rockers are forming old-time string bands, and young hipsters are flocking to fiddle-and-banjo festivals. This recording should delight and inspire this generation and their grandchildren, too.

Check the WRL catalog for Friends of Old Time Music

Roseanna, by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö

A team of Swedish police detectives are trying to solve a murder. It takes months. They start with no clues. They wait for a break in the case. They stare out the window at the rain. They play endless games of chess. They walk the streets of Stockholm after dark, looking up at people in lit windows. They drink coffee.

Dull reading? Not for a second. The story moves swiftly along, especially in the many long passages of dialogue. The economy of the prose is a wonder.  Instead of breakneck action, the novel offers the great pleasure of watching professionals at work, really at work, in their offices, on the phone, in the interview room.

Roseanna is the first in a series of 10 crime novels by the husband-and-wife team of Sjöwall and Wahlöö. Originally published between 1965 and 1975 (the year of Wahlöö’s death), they have now been reissued by Vintage Crime/Black Lizard. The fact that they are back in print has everything to do with the current craze for Nordic crime fiction, sometimes dubbed “Scandinavian Noir.” Sjöwall and Wahlöö invented this genre, and they are its master artists. In April 2008, the Times of London ranked them 15th on their list of the top 50 crime writers (though if there were a competition for Most Umlauts in an Author’s Name, they would surely take first place).

The central character in the series is Martin Beck, First Detective Inspector with the National Police. He is an ordinary man with one exceptional quality: his skill in questioning witnesses and suspects and knowing when they are lying. But Beck is no lone sleuth. He and his colleagues form an ensemble cast whose daily routines and minor idiosyncrasies are detailed with dry humor. Here, they are searching for the killer of an unidentified woman whose body was dredged from a lake. What they gradually learn about her and how she lived her life makes them ever more determined to arrest her murderer, no matter how long it takes.

The novel is strongly grounded in its Swedish settings, so much so that I recommend using Google Earth as a companion to your reading. Follow the detectives as they stake out a house on Runeberg Street or tail a suspect down Småland Street, keeping in mind that Sweden, and the world, have changed since the book was written some 45 years ago.

Check the WRL catalog for Roseanna

Child 44, by Tom Rob Smith

How do you investigate a murder in a society where the very idea of murder is unthinkable? This is the existential challenge confronting Leo Stepanovich Demidov, a Soviet state security (MGB) officer in the latter years of Stalin’s dictatorship. When he finds evidence that a colleague’s young son has been murdered, he covers it up.  According to the Party line, such a crime is a not possible in the Soviet utopia. To say otherwise is the kind of blasphemy that leads to the Lubyanka prison and a bullet in the back of the head.

Leo Stepanovich’s mind becomes free to inquire only after an enemy denounces him. He loses his important job and cushy apartment, and is sent to work in a miserable Siberian town. There, truth assaults him from all sides. His wife admits that she married him only because she feared his power in the secret police. His colleague’s murdered son, he learns, is only one of dozens of victims of a sadistic serial killer. And the true nature of the Soviet system is becoming clearer every day.

Perhaps you’re thinking that Child 44 is a brooding psychological novel that explores its hero’s moral dilemma in a deep and leisurely way. Nyet! It is a thrilling thriller that grabs you by the lapels and won’t let go. The violence is grisly and plentiful. The chase scenes belong in an over-the-top action movie. (The novel is set to be made into a film, with Ridley Scott directing.) As the story reached its crescendo, with plot bombs exploding right and left, I should have been rolling my eyes at the implausibility of it all. But too late! I was already completely hooked.

Check the WRL catalog for Child 44

Eat This, Not That, by David Zinczenko

David Zinczenko is the editor-in-chief of Men’s Health magazine. I first noticed his “Eat This, Not That” column in the Yahoo.com Health section. One of the major shortcomings of any diet, according to Zinczenko, is that people do not have much control over how their food is prepared when they eat out at a restaurant.  Obviously you should avoid Double Whoppers if you care about your health and your waistline, but sometimes things are not so obvious: there are other entrees that sound healthy but actually aren’t. Eat This, Not That gives you the tools to make informed choices.

Chapter 1 has a list of the 20 worst foods in America, as well as a restaurant report card of popular fast-food and sit-down restaurants. Some of the grades were surprising to me– Chick-Fil-A gets an A+  while Panera Bread gets a D– but Zinczenko backs up his grade with a short summary of why each restaurant got the grade it did.

Chapter 2 features reviews of 60 popular restaurants. On the left page of each review is a healthy entree that is recommended  (“Eat This”). This includes a nice photograph of the dish, along with its nutritional information. An “Other Picks” section lists other recommended choices. The right page lists dishes that are not recommended  (“Not That”).

I found my share of favorites on the “Not That” side of these reviews. A funny but sobering feature is the “Weapon of Mass Destruction” — an item that can do unusually high damage to your health and waistline. (I did survive one of these weapons recently, the Five Guys Bacon Cheeseburger with barbecue sauce and mayo with fries, which has 1,750 calories and 82 grams of fat, 26 of them saturated.) There is also  a “Hidden Danger” warning with a big black exclamation point when an apparently healthy item is sabotaged by a hidden and unadvertised ingredient.

The other chapters provide even more tools to eating wisely. Chapter 4 is a guide to what food to eat and avoid on holidays and special occasions, which is especially appropriate now as we head into the Thanksgiving season (you will want to limit the amount of dark turkey meat after you read this section). Chapter 5 is a guide to supermarket shopping in the same Eat This / Not That format. I’m a big peanut butter fan, and I was surprised that a reduced-fat version is not recommended because …. well, you will have to read the book to find out.

Useful as the reviews are, they are by no means comprehensive, so you may want to check out some other titles in this series:  Eat this, not that! supermarket survival guide : the no-diet weight loss solution,  Eat this, not that! for kids! : thousands of simple food swaps that can save your child from obesity! and Eat This Not That! Restaurant and Fast Food Survival Guide: The No-Diet Weight Loss Solution. But this book is a great place to start in finding the right kinds of foods to eat and avoid to help you live a healthier life.

Check the WRL catalog for Eat This, Not That

Classical 2009

One of my favorite CDs, Classical 2009 features a variety of pieces performed by some of the biggest names in the classical and classical crossover performing world. If you are a new listener to classical music– or if you are like me and you enjoy discovering new music– you are sure to find something you like on this album, featuring 40 selections and two-and-a-half hours of music.

Several selections are outstanding:

• The Venezuelan pianist Gabriela Montero does a classical improvisation of the third movement of JS Bach’s Italian concerto that is very interesting and somewhat unusual, especially if you are used to hearing more jazz-infused improvisations done by the likes of the Jacques Loussier Trio and the Swingle Singers
• The King’s Singers do a great  rendition of the traditional folksong “Scarborough Fair”; I’ve heard this sung many times but I’ve never heard such a beautiful arrangement, and the blending of their voices is really amazing
• Sarah Brightman does a beautiful duet with the countertenor Fernando Lima in “Pasion” by Jorge Avendano Luhrs. She has such an incredible voice and it mixes well with Fernando Lima’s high tenor

There are many more artists you’ll enjoy: trumpeter Alison Balsom playing a selection from the Hummel Concerto; soprano Natasha Marsh singing an incredibly clear interpretation of the “Der Holle Roche” (Queen of the Night) aria from Mozart’s opera The Magic Flute; multi-talented pianist Myleene Klaas doing a fine arrangement of Ennio Morricone’s “Il Mercenario: Chi Mai” with the City Of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra.

Considering the huge selection here, you will no doubt find some pieces that are not to your liking– I usually do not care for heavy orchestral works, so Sir Simon Rattle’s interpretation of Mussorgsky’s “Great Gate Of Kiev” didn’t get much airtime in my CD player– but there is much to enjoy and discover on this album, so it comes highly recommended.

Check the WRL catalog for Classical 2009

1,001 Things They Won’t Tell You: An Insider’s Guide to Spending, Saving and Living Wisely, by Jonathan Dahl

1,001 Things They Won’t Tell You dishes out the inside scoop on harmful, hidden business practices, and provides ways for consumers to protect themselves. The book comprises one hundred of the “10 Things They Won’t Tell You” articles from Smart Money magazine–now updated, expanded, and arranged into eleven categories such as “your money,” “goods and services,” “your car” and “your free time.” Each feature is well-laid out, with titles in all-caps (“YOU MAY NEVER SEE THIS SHIRT AGAIN”) followed by a short description of the problem and several ways to avoid or deal with that problem (“when you drop off a garment, be sure to ask for a receipt indicating what you had cleaned”). At the end of each feature is a “Things To Do” list that summarizes the four or five most important things you should do to avoid being taken in.

Some of the business practices Dahl discusses fall in the “false advertising” category: for example, restaurants will pass off cheaper food as higher quality fare, and gas companies tout their gas as superior to the competition’s, when in reality it all comes from the same source. Then there are the problems that business never advertise:

• Warehouse clubs are often crowded with long waits in the checkout aisles while offering a limited selection of merchandise (one tenth of what an average supermarket carries)
• Airlines are bumping more and more passengers from their flights while using ancient planes that run on “Leave it to Beaver”-era technology
• Germs are a common problem in day care centers, fitness clubs and cruise ships and can be a serious health threat.

Some of the things came as a real surprise to me. The little charity cans that you see at the cash registers of local restaurants (I’m a real sucker for the ones with photos of sad-looking dogs and cats) are not what they appear to be: charities will rent their name to these businesses in exchange for a small take of the collections, which can be as low as 1 percent. (Instead of passively dropping your loose change into a charity can, the author recommends you contribute directly to the charity.) There’s a lot here that will shock you– but don’t pick up this book unless you’re prepared to spend several hours absorbed in it: your view on many everyday things will never be the same.

Check the WRL catalog for 1,001 Things They Won’t Tell You

Tomorrow Never Dies (1997)

Tomorrow Never Dies  is one of my favorite James Bond films, with plenty of suspense to keep you on the edge of your seat.  Media tycoon Elliot Carver (Jonathan Pryce) has positioned his satellites to provoke a war between Great Britain and China– and his media empire is primed to reap huge financial rewards by covering the fighting. James Bond has 36 hours to uncover the Carver plot before all-out war begins. Before long, Bond meets Wai Lin,  a Chinese agent who is also investigating Elliot Carver, and together they race to prove that Carver and his satellites have caused the provocation.

What is there to like?  Michelle Yeoh is the biggest treat of the movie. She’s a big name in China, known for her martial arts skills on the screen, and she certainly doesn’t disappoint here. She stylishly kicks butt and gets the better of Bond more than once. There are some great action scenes where she shows off her skills,  like when she fends off a gang attack on a Chinese safe house.

Having Bond team up with a female partner who is also an agent of a foreign government is nothing new– think of Barbara Bach as Agent Triple X in The Spy Who Loved Me– but Michelle Yeoh adds a new, more active  dimension to the role. Pierce Brosnan as Bond is as smooth and dapper as ever in this, his second Bond film, and he delivers his action sequences and his witty lines with finesse.  Bond and Yeoh sparkle together on screen,  as when they jump out the window of a skyscraper and plunge thirty stories before kicking their way back inside.

Teri Hatcher (Desperate Housewives) is superb as Eliot’s wife Paris, an old love interest of Bond whom Bond must pump for information, and Jonathan Pryce does a fine job as the evil media baron. It’s great to see Judi Dench become a regular in the Bond franchise as M, the head of British foreign intelligence and Bond’s boss; she adds a sense of realism to the role, and it’s a treat to see her alongside Geoffrey Palmer (as Admiral Robebuck), who played alongside Dench in the wonderful British comedy As Time Goes By.

If you like this movie, you should definitely check out other Bond films where women agents play a central role, as in the already mentioned The Spy Who Loved Me with Barbara Bach, License to Kill with Carey Lowell, and Die Another Day with Halle Berry. 

Check the WRL catalog for Tomorrow Never Dies