Just finished reading Kaufman’s meta-screenplay for Adaptation, which is based on Susan Orleans’ novel The Orchid Thief. In 2002, Spike Jonze made the highly inventive and hysterically funny film Adaptation with a great cast and excellent visuals. It’s all worth the deep dive if anyone wants a good summer goal.
Hot Dog Diary - Graphic Novel by Nathan Tolzmann
My lovely wife Emily, for my birthday, gave me this newly published labor of love from our good friend Nathan. It is the beautifully drawn chronicle of a bike trip from the NW coast to Chicago Nathan made 20 yrs. ago with his good friend Matt. The biking took about 4 months and the graphic novel took almost 4yrs. to complete.
The teaser is…there’s a fun cameo of me in it that was kind of exciting to discover.
2 additional things: a) find the book here b) and/or go here to see more of some of Nathan’s art
Ai Weiwei - Activist and Artist (b. Aug. 28, 1957)
After Ai Weiwei’s father's poetry in the late 50’s distressed the Chinese government, he and his family were sent to a labor camp when Ai was one - where they would spend the next 16 years surviving brutal conditions. Only after Mao's death in 1976, would his family returned to Beijing where he helped form his first arts collective.
Between 1981-1993, Ai studied English and Art in the US. When he returned to China, he was an outspoken critic of the corrupt government. His work often incorporates themes of global refugee crisis, government surveillance, political prisoners and freedom of speech. His ideas and actions have led him to be arrested and harshly detained multiple times by the Chinese authorities.
When asked if he is ever scared for his life (for his actions), he responded, he is more scared of doing nothing.
See an elegant interview he gives here with Trevor Noah.
14,000 salvaged Refugee life vests wrap the columns of Berlin’s Konzerthaus (Concert House)
HOT DOG DIARY - NATHAN TOLZMANN
Our friend Nathan went on a bike trip 20+ yrs ago (when he was 29) across the U.S. and just completed his epic (and beautiful) graphic novel chronicling that journey he and his buddy, Matt, made. Visit his site here to experience it and word on the street is to check it out before the publishers chop-out-all-the-good-parts ;)
David John Moore Cornwell (Oct. 19, 1931 – Dec. 12, 2020)
Better known by his alias John le Carré, was author of dozens of spy novels.
