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On this week’s Stay at Home edition of the NPR quiz show Wait, Wait...Don't Tell Me!, the guest contestant for the 'Not My Job' segment is rock-climbing champion Ashima Shiraishi who’s accomplished her records before the age of 20. From her amusing, matter-of-fact interview with host Peter Sagal, it sounds like – despite being one of the top climbers in the world -- she still lives at home with her parents, where she climbs around on cabinets to get dishes and other household needs.
From the archives. For the Piano Puzzler today, the contestant is Eric Ebbenga. It took a short while to pull out the hidden song, but I think it should eventually become quite clear to most people. And I felt it likely that I had the composer style, as well. But it was between two composers, and I guessed wrong. Listening to Bruce Adolphe play the piece again, I can see where I guessed wrong. You may have better luck.
Readers of these pages know my great affection of the Ravinia Music Festival, which is the summer home of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and also has pop, jazz, and theater programs and more. The park is in Highland Park, Illinois, just across the border from Glencoe, and was a long walk from where I grew up in Glencoe. I went to numerous programs as a kid and later worked for the festival for two seasons. Ravinia has a huge 3,000-seat open pavilion, but also a massive lawn where people picnic and listen to the concert under the stars. Tonight, they are having a "Virtual Lawn Party" fundraiser. It's hosted by Kristen Chenoweth, and has a mix of classical, pop and jazz performers, featuring Ramsey Lewis, Michelle DeYoung, Patricia Raquette, Marquis Hill and Kevin Cole. It begins at 8 PM Chicago time. (6 PM in Los Angeles, 9 PM in the East) with a pre-show 15 minutes before. You can see the "program book" for the show with the selections to be performed here. And the Virtual Lawn Party will stream here. Or if it works correctly, embedded below -- Because of the coronavirus pandemic, the Scripps National Spelling Bee was cancelled for the first time since World War II. For those who miss the event, and as a tribute to the students who lost the chance to compete, the Washington Post organized the first-ever Washington Post Opinions Spelling Bee, which took place a few weeks ago on Zoom. Contestants are made up of Post columnists and editors...with one wonderful ringer thrown in -- the 2015 National Spelling Bee champion, Vanya Shivashankar, now a freshman at Yale.. The Post Bee doesn't last nearly as long as the real thing -- just a half-hour -- but to make it as official as possible, the long-time "word pronouncer" from the official Spelling Bee, Dr. Jacques Bailly, repeats his job here and moderates. The reactions of the good-natured contestants are much of the fun, and much as Ms. Shivashankar would seem the favorite going in, I'll just say that there are some surprises, and the results are not the runaway you might think. In fact, there are some impressive spellers here among the staff. Seriously. As good-fun as this is, the words get impressively hard as the rounds go on. And by "hard," I mean oh-my-God mind-numbing. My favorite part is that, although five years from her championship and a student at Yale, Vanya Shivashankar still employs the tried-and-true technique of visualizing words by drawing them out in her hand. For readers of the Post, you will recognize some of the names (a few of whom may be familiar as commentators on TV) -- Christine Emba, Fred Hiatt, Ruth Marcus, Dana Milbank, Alexandra Petri, Molly Roberts and Erik Wemple As the Post notes, "We had a lot of fun — and we ended up with more respect than ever for the eighth-graders who work so hard every year to compete."
Jon Stewart returned to The Daily Show this week. Ostensibly, it was to talk about his new movie, Irresistible, that he wrote and directed -- but he barely touches on that and turns in all manner of other directions.
Man, is he good. I know it's easy -- and often justified -- to dismiss actors and celebrities when expressing their political and social opinions. But not only do all generalities have their limitations, but the thoughtfulness and insight, mixed with humor, of one Jon Stewart is more than all the Louie Gohmerts (R-TX) you could put together in a lifetime. By the way, when looking for things to watch these days, you might want to check out the first movie that Stewart wrote and directed, which he made while hosting The Daily Show. It's called Rosewater -- a true, serious and riveting story that took place in Iran, touching on events actually related to The Daily Show. The film concerns a Iranian-born journalist Maziar Bahari who returned to the country to cover their elections and was arrested as a spy for espionage. (While there, he did an interview there with The Daily Show and Jason Jones, who plays himself, recreating the events, and after it aired was used as evidence against him.) It's a rich, mature work about Bahari's experience and the efforts to free him, all the more remarkable for it being Stewart's first film. And for reasons I've never understood, it got almost no release when it was made, including no screenings or "For Your Consideration" DVDs during awards season. Speaking of which, it's happily available is here on Netflix as a DVD, and on Amazon Prime for streaming, though not included but for $3.99 rental..It's also available on STARZ. |
AuthorRobert J. Elisberg is a political commentator, screenwriter, novelist, tech writer and also some other things that I just tend to keep forgetting. Feedspot Badge of Honor
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