Call it “The Hunger Games” 2.0.
This past weekend, “Divergent” opened with a respectable $55 million at the box office. It’s hardly “Twilight” money, but it’s a satisfying spring debut for a franchise hopeful that’s following in the wake of “The Hunger Games,” which is also about a feisty young woman leading a rebellion in a post apocalyptic society. (I plan on seeing “Divergent” this weekend though I’m in it mostly for Brando-esque co-star Theo James – he of the sculpted cheekbones and the sullen, sultry way with a self-contained character, Mr. Pamuk in “Downton Abbey” and the title character in CBS’ short-lived “Golden Boy.”)
The success of “The Hunger Games,” which cemented humorous everywoman Jennifer Lawrence as a star, has led toy companies to develop a whole line of weaponry – guns and bows and arrows in pink, no less – for girls who want to emulate Lawrence’s Katniss or Shailene Woodley’s Tris in “Divergent.” I have no problem with this or with stories featuring gutsy, independent-minded young women, having once been a gutsy, independent-minded young woman myself...
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Read MoreBoy, nothing like a day spent meeting members of the public to measure character – yours and theirs – as I discovered when I appeared wearing my deux chapeaux, as WAG editor and author of the new novel “Water Music,” at the recent Hudson Valley Gateway Experience in Cortlandt Manor, N.Y.
First, a big shout out and thank you to Chereese Jervis-Hill of Events to Remember in Mount Kisco, N.Y.; Deborah L. Milone, executive director of the Hudson Valley Gateway Chamber of Commerce in Peekskill, N.Y.; and The Mansion at Colonial Terrace in Cortlandt Manor for a truly terrific day. Some 500 guests milled about the antebellum manse, with its Doric columns and brocade wallpaper, savoring carrot-ginger soup, gluten-free crab cakes, mango ice and sweet potato tartlets. Attendees saw cooking demonstrations; got a chance to meet authors like young Claribel Ortega, who’s on her way with the teen witch novella “The Skinwalker’s Apprentice” (more on her in my upcoming women warriors post); and received freebies like the sweet plants provided by Manzer’s Landscape Design and Development and the smart, sturdy canvas bags from Entergy. Who doesn’t love free stuff?
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Read MoreJust when I thought I’d get a day off from sports, there’s more bombshell news:
Mark Sanchez is out as the New York Jets’ quarterback, and Michael Vick, late of the Philadelphia Eagles, is in.
Boy, you could’ve knocked me over with a, well, Jets’ wristband. Did not see that coming. I mean, after the revelation of Coach “Sexy Rexy” Ryan’s tattoo of his wife dressed in a Sanchez jersey – how it makes one yearn for Colin Kaepernick’s battle of angels all over his sculpted back – as I was saying, after the revelation of Ryan’s Sanchez tattoo, I thought those two were joined at the hip. But nothing is forever, least of all in football.
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Read MoreJust when I thought I was out, they pull me back in – to borrow from Michael Corleone.
Just when I thought I could take a night off from blogging about men’s tennis, there’s big news:
Andy and Ivan the Terrible are splitsville.
Yes, Andy Murray and his coach, Ivan Lendl, have announced an amicable breakup. It says a lot about tennis – a sport in which “love” means nothing – that players and coaches announce their breakups as if they were married. No Lendl fan here – you can’t be a McEnroe fan and root for the dour, robotic Ivan – but give the guy credit. He was the Annie Sullivan to Andy’s Helen Keller. And by that I mean he did what great teachers/coaches do. He helped Andy unlock himself and cross the threshold.
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Read MoreWhen a beautiful, talented woman dies in the prime of life, words fail. I don’t know why the death of L’Wren Scott hit me so hard. As editor of WAG magazine, I featured her dresses in the mag’s pages from time to time. They always captured the myriad aspects of elegance, how it could be prim, erotic, even whimsical. I remember one smashing wine-colored number that I actually helped a reader track down. She just had to have that dress.
Still, I didn’t know Scott. And I can’t say I have the passion for fashion that I have for, say, the arts or certain sports. There’s something unforgiving about fashion. Maybe she felt it, too.
Suicide begs the question, Why? Why do people who seem to have considerable resources of all kinds end it all?
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Read MoreCongrats to Nole, who beat Feddy Bear in the finals of the BNP Paribas Open March 16 in Indian Wells, Calif. 3-6, 6-3, 7-6 (3). (That was the tournament Nole was headed to after he played at Madison Square Garden on World Tennis Day, another BNP Paribas event.)
But apparently, the big news out of the California desert is that Roger Federer is back in the top five at age 32. A larger racket, a healed back and the hiring of Stefan Edberg – yet another 1980s star coaching players who were born in that decade – as adviser have all been credited with FedEx’s renewal. (They call them Fedberg. Cute.)
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Read MoreOne of the great pleasures of reading the Weekend New York Times – apart from the opportunity it affords me to collapse with breakfast, lunch or a cup of coffee – is trolling for blog ideas. The March 16 edition of The New York Times magazine yielded a doozy – a map, as it were, of a new project from the Macro Connections group at M.I.T.’s Media Lab called Pantheon. The odd thing is that The Times’ article doesn’t give the website. But here it is.
This being from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Pantheon has come up with a complex formula to measure historical cultural production. I won’t bore you with methodology – because I’m not smart enough to. But what’s fascinating to me is what piqued The Times’ interest: What does Pantheon say about fame and celebrity? Something I and others have long suspected and that should give our notice-me, selfie society pause: Fame and celebrity are not the same thing.
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