Hi, my name is…

I always find the first few seconds of a phone interview awkward. Most of the interviews I do for stories are scheduled with the help of a public relations person, sometimes weeks in advance. The artist I’m talking with knows there’s an interview scheduled, but that doesn’t mean she knows my name, or what Timeoff and the Princeton Packet are.

This is especially true for musicians who are on tour. They talk with lots of reporters from publications and websites across the country to promote their concerts. In these situations, I usually end up saying something like, “This is Anthony, with Timeoff, the arts section for the Princeton Packet, in Princeton, and other newspapers, (ENTER NAME OF PR PERSON HERE) set up an interview for your concert at (NAME VENUE HERE).” Then the artist assures me she is aware of the interview and is ready to go.

Lori Lieberman made things very easy for me. When I called the singer-songwriter — who’s performing Saturday in the first Concerts at the Crossing show of the season — in Los Angeles, she answered the phone herself, in a way no interview subject had before.

“Is this Anthony?” she said, and thus saved herself from a few seconds of rambling from a reporter in Jersey.


Drawing Inspiration

One of the fun things about interviewing artists is when you notice something that inspired their work. This happened to me recently when I interviewed Margie Palatini, a children’s book author who is appearing at this year’s Princeton Children’s Book Festival, Sept. 10.

Palatini writes book that are clever, funny and often inspired by sources like fairy tales and old movies. Her book Three Silly Billies is a take on Billy Goat’s Gruff, that connection is pretty obvious, but something I didn’t catch onto was that the book is also an homage to the Marx Brothers.

I did notice that Palatini dedicated the book to her “Little Groucho,” but didn’t think much more about it. In her story, the Goats don’t have the money to pass the Troll’s bridge, so they wait in their pool. More and more people join them until they’re able to pass.

During our interview, Ms. Palatini told me her son’s love of the Marx Brothers inspired the book. Then it hit me, “Oh yeah, A Night at the Opera,” I said.

“Absolutely,” she said. “It is the stateroom scene. That is exactly what inspired that.” The stateroom scene is the famous scene from A Night at the Opera, where Groucho’s tiny cabin on a ship gets insanely overcrowded with visitors. It’s a favorite of Palatini’s son. I also know the joys of sharing this scene with a child, as my daughter and I have laughed together many times watching it together.

A bit later, I asked Palatini about her story Oink?, in which two pigs do nothing to the point that their fellow farm animals do their chores, including painting their fence.

Was this, I asked, inspired by the scene in Tom Sawyer, where Tom tricks the neighborhood kids into giving him things so that they can paint his Aunt Polly’s fence?

“Oink? is absolutely inspired by Tom Sawyer,” Palatini quickly replied.

I feel so smart! What a rarity.

You can learn more about Palatini, including the inspirations for many of her books, at her website.

Music of a Rose

Woody Allen’s The Purple Rose of Cairo is one of my all-time favorite movies. A few weeks ago, I interviewed Vince Giordano, who is performing at Saturday’s Princeton JazzFeast and played on that movie’s soundtrack.

Giordano specializes in authentically recreating 1920s and ’30s-era jazz. One of his big breaks came when he was tapped by composer Dick Hyman to work on a few Woody Allen movies, including my beloved Purple Rose.

Something came up during the interview that I couldn’t squeeze into the story. I never realized this, but most of the music in the movie was written by Hyman. I would have sworn it was all old music.

“Those were all original tunes, maybe one or two was an old chestnut,” Giordano told me. “And they were all composed and arranged by the great Dick Hyman. I just can’t stop saying stuff about him, he’s such an unbelievable player and composer and arrange, and an unbelievably great guy too.”

Hey Vonnegut!

Regular web surfers have likely come across dozens of articles and blog posts about I Write Like, a website that tells you which writer’s style you match based on a writing sample of a few paragraphs.

It’s not too scientific, but it’s fun way to kill a lunch hour. So I entered a few paragraphs from a story I wrote about an exhibit of photos of Ellis Island at the Michener Museum, and the site said I wrote like Kurt Vonnegut (cool, that’s the guy from Back to School). Another writing sample was apparently in the style of H.P. Lovecraft.

Then things got interesting. Megan Sullivan, the Packet’s magazine editor, entered some graphs from a story she wrote about 2009’s Princyclopedia. The theme for that year’s event was Alice in Wonderland, and Megan threw in some Lewis Carroll-type wording. Sure enough, I Write Like said Megan writes just like Carroll.

Next I went to The Guttenberg Project and copied some text out of various classic works. It turns out Mark Twain wrote like Mark Twain, and Charles Dickens wrote like Charles Dickens. But Edgar Allen Poe wrote like Lovecraft, and Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote like Poe.

The last experiment came when I entered some Timeoff calendar listings, which are style-less, lists of information, and I Write Like said they were in the style of Dan Brown.

Maybe this thing is onto something.

Take your summer and…

All winter long, as I happily drank hot cider, played in the snow with my daughter, wore sweatpants around the house (man, I love wearing sweatpants), and wrapped myself in warm blankets at night, I heard countless complaints about the cold and the snow.

It’s enough to make a winter lover feel downright stupid and out of touch with the rest of the world.

Now summer is here, which means some good things. There are vegetables growing in our garden, and my wife, daughter and I have had some good times at the pool we go to (though it was way too crowded on Monday). Future weeks promise beach trips, barbecues and water ices.

On the other hand… The heat has been stifling. It hasn’t rained in I don’t know how long, so that when I mowed the lawn (or more accurately the brown spots around my house), I went over some patches of dirt, which resulted in said dirt flying into my face. Last night, our house was filled with the smell of smoke, carried by the wind from a fire near Fort Dix. I’ve been sneezing repeatedly today, and my voice is scratchy. Besides all that, the heat is just making me groggy.

So all you summer lovers can just leave me alone as I count the days to the first frost.

Oh, I forgot to complain about the mosquitoes…

Skunked!

So a friend and I headed to Doylestown yesterday to see Jaws at the County Theater. I wrote about the movie earlier this week in anticipation of finally seeing it on a big screen.

Well, the 7 p.m. screening was sold out by 6. The County did the right thing by adding a 9:30 show but my friend has to wake up real early for work (5 a.m.), so there was no way we could go to the later show. We stared the box office for about five minutes, trying to figure something out, and considered seeing Solitary Man but ended up leaving. It was a major disappointment.

I don’t think I can make the July 4 showing in Hillsborough. The Princeton Library and the Princeton University Art Museum are showing it, but I really want to see it in a movie theater on film.

You can’t keep a good shark down

Yesterday I wrote about Jaws, and its screenings in Doylestown, Pa., and Hillsborough. Two other showings are taking place in the area this summer: The Princeton University Art Museum will host an outdoor screening, July 29, and the Princeton Public Library will show it Aug. 9.