The San Diego Union-Tribune: Arts + Culture - Looking ahead special section

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things for

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As COVID-19 continues to cancel events, there’s still room for optimism.

Arts writers pick two things they’re looking forward to in 2022.

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B O O K S James Hannaham’s creativity on display. E6

T R AV E L Ten days on Puerto Rico’s west coast. E13

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B O O K S One local writer makes her debut with a Mesoamerican fantasy novel, and another goes to a galaxy far, far away

BY SETH COMBS

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or me, 2021 was the year I realized just how many amazing novelists called San Diego home. From “Sideways” author Rex Pickett, who published his first mystery this year, to the seemingly countless number of crime and thriller novelists who live here, there just seems to be something in the water. But 2022 seems like it’s going to be a year of fantasy and sci-fi. Here are two that I’m most looking forward to.

“The Lost Dreamer”

by Lizz Huerta

The first in a planned young adult fantasy duology, “The Lost Dreamer” (Macmillan) is the years-in-the-making debut novel from local writer Lizz Huerta. Extensively researched and based on ancient Mesoamerican cultures of Central America, the story centers on the fictional kingdom of Alcanzeh, a largely utopian, matriarchal society that is upended by the return of King Alcan, who declares that he wants to put an end to the city’s traditional ways.

While the book largely revolves around two protagonists, Indir and Saya, Huerta does an amazing job at building, piece by piece, a fantastical world filled with magic, clairvoyance and mythology. What’s more, with its feminist themes and reverence for the Indigenous cultures of the Americas, it’s a much-welcomed departure from the predominantly White characters that make up most fantasy and YA stories. And while the book isn’t being released until March 1, there’s already a lot of buzz about a possible TV or film adaptation. Full disclosure: I consider Huerta to be a friend and colleague, but having already read the book, I would recommend it even if that weren’t the case.

NOAH WHITE

“Star Wars: Padawan” and “Hide” by Kiersten White

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Speaking of buzz, many readers are hoping 2022 will bring the third book in local author Tomi Adeyemi’s “Legacy of Orisha” trilogy or, at the least, the Lucasfilm adaptation of the first book (2018’s “Children of Blood and Bone”). Just as exciting, in my opinion, is local fantasy writer Kiersten White being tapped by Disney to write “Star Wars: Padawan,” a new Star Wars novel about a young Obi-Wan Kenobi and set to be released in June.

White, who lives in Carlsbad, is probably best known for her bestselling YA fantasy novels such as the “And I Darken” and “Camelot Rising” trilogies. Since Disney already has a standalone Obi-Wan television series planned for 2022, White’s

Young adult fantasy author Kiersten White is releasing her first adult novel, “Hide.”

book will be a nice primer.

If that weren’t enough, White will also be publishing her first adult novel, “Hide,” in May. A thriller with supernatural elements, the novel centers on a game of adult hide-and-seek where, if someone is caught, the

consequences are deadly.

“I can only work on one book at a time, but I work very, very quickly,” White told U-T columnist Diane Bell back in October. She certainly does.

Combs is a freelance writer.

C L A S S I C A L M U S I C San Diego Symphony will travel all around the county, and two other local groups plan cross-border projects

BY BETH WOOD

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f all goes well health-wise, 2022 promises a slate of excellent classical musical events. But it’s not just what’s happening this year, it’s where.

Last year, chamber music concerts were heard in the new 120-seat theater at Balboa Park’s Mingei International Museum. And the even newer University of California San Diego @ Park & Market complex in East Village will host musical events in its 225-seat black box theater.

At the La Jolla Woman’s Club, Le Salon de Musiques — an intimate, stage-less chamber music concert series — launched last fall and will continue monthly through June.

Listen carefully, because music will be pouring out across the county and south of the border.

San Diego Symphony: “Hear Us Here”

Many local choruses and chamber music groups have handled not having a permanent home venue by regularly performing in churches and halls.

Some, like the 13-year-old Art of Elan, intentionally integrate performing in a variety of venues into their organizational DNA, planning unique, siteappropriate repertoire for each event.

The San Diego Symphony — while awaiting completion of renovations of its downtown home, Copley Symphony Hall at Jacobs Music Center — will be among the modern musical vagabonds for its 2022 winter-spring season. “Hear Us Here” will include 31 concerts in nine San Diego-area venues, plus one in Palm Desert. That’s the most sites in any symphony season in its 112 years.

Opening the season at downtown’s Civic Theatre and closing at the symphony’s Rady Shell at Jacobs Park, the orchestra will perform in Escondido, Poway, Chula Vista and Rancho Santa Fe, as well as in such San Diego neighborhoods as La Jolla, Del Cerro and Rolando.

Symphony Music Director Rafael Payare and CEO Martha Gilmer are interested in more than geographical expanse. Seven of the upcoming season’s works were composed by people of color. Ten of the featured soloists this season are women. And three guest conductors are from the BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and people of color) communities. The less-familiar works will be presented alongside favorites by such composers as Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Grieg, Brahms and Ravel.

San Diego Symphony members (from left) Douglas Hall (horn), Music Director Rafael Payare, Zou Yu (violin), CEO Martha Gilmer and Erin Douglas Dowrey (perussion).

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Border collaborations

GARY PAYNE

Ruben Valenzuela and the Bach Collegium San Diego are working on “El Mesías: Messiah for a New World.”

Two cross-border projects should generate excitement this season.

Ruben Valenzuela, head of San Diego’s dynamic early-music group Bach Collegium, has been working closely with musical scholar Mario Montenegro, the artistic director of the vocal ensemble at Tijuana’s Cultural Center (CECUT). The project, “El Mesías: Messiah for a New World,” appears to be the first complete Spanish-language libretto of Handel’s “Messiah.”

The world premiere will be presented in Cardiff and La Jolla on March 18 and 19, respectively, and in Tijuana at CECUT Centro Cultural on March 20. For more information: bachcollegium.org Camarada, the eclectic chamber music ensemble, will play in familiar venues this season and is also embarking on a whole new project, “Music of the Americas,” at downtown’s Park & Market.

The brainchild of UC San Diego Associate Chancellor Mary Walshok, the series is designed to showcase lesser-known compos-

ers from North America, including Mexico, and from South America.

Camarada’s Beth Ross Buckley and Tijuana-based bassist/ composer Andrés Martín, an integral member of Camarada, are the co-artistic directors of the series at Park & Market. Martín, whose “Double Bass Concerto” will be performed by the San Diego Symphony in April, will also serve as liaison between Camarada and the Tijuana venue hosting “Music of the Americas.”

The San Diego “Music of the Americas” performances will take place at downtown’s Park & Market Feb. 19 and May 14, while the Tijuana concerts will be at La Caja Arte y Cultura Feb. 20 and May 15. The 5:30 p.m. Tijuana concerts can be attended as separate events or attendees can choose a “Full Experience Day Trip,” which will include group rides in passenger vans, wine tasting, concert and celebration dinner. For more information: camarada.org Wood is a freelance writer.

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D A N C E City Ballet and San Diego Ballet will both bring highly emotional productions to the Balboa Theatre

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Jessica Conniff will perform in San Diego Ballet’s “Giselle,” whose locale has been changed from medieval Europe to the ranchos of Spanish Colonial California.

San Diego Ballet: “Giselle”

BY MARCIA LUTTRELL

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his year, productions by City Ballet of San Diego and San Diego Ballet are primed to deliver excellence.

Like many local dance companies, they were forced to cancel live performances and reschedule, so there has been an abundance of preparation and repetitive rehearsals. Both shows combine traditional classics with contemporary ideas and express, through movement and imagery, a mosaic of emotions that verbal communication fails to achieve. As a word person, I’m inspired.

City Ballet: “Rhapsody in Blue”

During last year’s scramble for survival, City Ballet presented an intriguing, online version of “Rhapsody in Blue,” with original choreography by resident choreographer Geoff Gonzalez that was accompanied by George Gershwin’s familiar score.

I can’t wait to see it live on March 25-26 at the Balboa Theatre.

The overall theme of “Rhapsody in Blue” reflects

ANNA SCIPIONE

the ways that our sexuality is integral to who we are and who we are drawn to, regardless of gender.

Gonzalez’s choreography is ambitious and complex: A pas de deux, for instance, features exceptionally proficient Brazilian dancers Lucas Ataide and Iago Breschi, who manage to express curiosity, sensuality and playful masculinity at once.

The male characters are attracted to each other, but how they identify sexu-

From left: Lucas Ataide, Brian Heil, Megan Jacobs and Jaroslav Richters in City Ballet’s “Rhapsody.” ally is deliberately ambiguous.

This production doesn’t make a social statement about gender equality.

Rather, it recognizes the ways the laws of attraction play into our choices.

The company also will debut George Balanchine’s “Danses Concertantes,” a witty and energetic work that projects the excitement of dancers who are

preparing for a big show — essentially, a performance within a performance.

Additionally, the company will perform “Kingdom of the Shades” from “La Bayadère,” one of the most famous and celebrated of choreographer Marius Petipa’s exotic ballets.

It’s a visually gorgeous excerpt, with the corps de ballet dressed in white and moving in sync.

The Balboa Theatre is the chosen venue for San Diego Ballet’s “Giselle” as well. That production was rescheduled twice last year but on track for its world premiere May 21-22.

Artistic director Javier Velasco has refreshed the story with a Latin theme, changing the locale from medieval Europe to the ranchos of Spanish Colonial California.

The Balboa Theatre was once named Teatro Balboa and featured Latin celebrities along with films from Mexico City, appealing to San Diego’s diverse culture.

Velasco’s commitment to diversity is similar. He is clever at energizing classical ballet with a Latin component, such as his annual “Ritmos Latinos” programs.

“Giselle” is a Romantic, two-act ballet that was first performed in 1841, and it has remained a popular masterwork, known for its juicy, dramatic roles.

It’s a fierce yet sentimental female revenge story about the peasant girl Giselle, who goes insane after being humiliated by Albrecht, a duke in disguise.

The #MeToo movement has illuminated our perceptions of women who have been preyed upon by entitled men.

There are no words to adequately express the combination of rage, shame and humiliation of those victims, which is why the role of Giselle, who gives voice to those emotions in dance, remains relevant.

Soulful ballerina Stephanie Maiorano plays Giselle, and her part demands a full-blown meltdown, requiring her to become gracefully unhinged while balancing on pointe shoes. That scene, in particular, resonates with those who grieve a loss of self and is worth the price of admission.

Luttrell is a freelance writer.

M U S I C Bob Dylan museum to open in Tulsa, Okla., while rising pianist Joshua White is set to record three new albums

BY GEORGE VARGA

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ith the latest COVID-19 variant surging worldwide, predicting which cultural events in 2022 will actually take place as planned becomes more challenging by the week.

Will the Rolling Stones embark on a 60th anniversary tour that will also serve as the band’s farewell? Will twice-postponed festivals finally take place, be they Wonderfront and KAABOO in San Diego or Coachella and Stagecoach in Indio? Will we be able to experience anything approaching pre-pandemic normalcy in 2022 or 2023?

The answers are elusive, at least for now. But here are two music-related events I would welcome in any year.

Bob Dylan archives to open

Bob Dylan’s impact as the most innovative and influential singer-songwriter of the past century has been a matter of record since his musical ascent began in the early 1960s. That impact will be furthered by the May 10 opening of the Bob Dylan Center in Tulsa, the secondlargest city in Oklahoma.

The three-story museum is located near the city’s Woody Guthrie Center, which honors the singer-songwriter who most inspired Dylan as a young troubadour. More than 100,000 items will be housed in the 37,000square-foot Bob Dylan Center, for which memberships are now available.

These items include previously released and unreleased studio and concert recordings; handwritten lyrics, manuscripts, notebooks and correspondence (including letters to Dylan from George Harrison, Tony Bennett and Jeff Buckley); films, videos, photographs and art work; memorabilia; musical instruments; and more. For those seeking the deepest of dives into all things Dylan, it’s Tulsa time.

JEFF ROBBINS AP

Three new albums from Joshua White

Versatile pianist Joshua White’s star has been rising steadily with his fellow musicians over the past decade. Credit for this goes to his increasingly impressive collaborations with such esteemed artists as bassist Mark Dresser, flutists Nicole Mitchell and Holly Hofmann, trumpeters Steph Richards and Gilbert Castellanos, and saxophonists Rudresh Mahanthappa, Christopher Hollyday and Jason Robinson.

An El Cajon resident, White has also led a number of his own bands and has headlined at Dizzy’s in San Diego more than any other local or national performer.

But because he has recorded only one solo album, 2017’s superb “13 Short Stories,” his impact as a solo artist has been limited.

Happily, White is poised to remedy that in 2022.

Thanks to a mid-fivefigure grant from the Shifting Foundation, a nonprofit based in Salt Lake City, he is set to showcase his skills as a pianist, composer and band leader by recording three back-to-back albums featuring, respectively, a trio, a quartet and a quintet.

The music each band records, all written by White, will reflect his passion for literature while also underscoring how different modes of cultural expression can be indelibly connected. He cites authors Toni Morrison, bell hooks, Jamaica Kincaid, James Baldwin and Audre Lorde as authors who “have

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greatly influenced my music, thinking and creative process.”

The Shifting Foundation strives, according to its mission statement, to recognize emerging “artists who seek new ground, conceptually, thematically, stylistically, formally, or find new ways of surveying old ground, of reinventing

traditions or synthesizing disparate elements.”

There may be no better description of what the consistently assured and daring White does with his music. Hearing his work documented on three new albums will be well worth celebrating. george.varga@sduniontribune.com

Pianist Joshua White is using a grant from the Shifting Foundation to record three new albums.

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S T A G E World premieres at San Diego Rep and La Jolla Playhouse will dive into history and ask tough questions

BY PAM KRAGEN

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n the coming theater season, I’m most intrigued by two world premiere plays that will deal in fascinating ways with historical events and people, as well as the questions we ask ourselves about ethnic identity and belonging. They are “The Great Khan” at San Diego Rep and “Here There Are Blueberries” at La Jolla Playhouse.

“The Great Khan,” San Diego Repertory Theatre

In March, the Rep will coproduce the rolling world premiere of this imaginative comedy

by San Francisco playwright Michael Gene Sullivan that the Rep first presented online last March in its inaugural 2021 Black Voices Play Reading Series.

It’s the story of a 16-year-old Black boy whose book report on Mongol leader Genghis Khan comes to life when Khan climbs through his window and seeks to rewrite history from a more authentic perspective. Sullivan is the chief writer for the San Francisco Mime Troupe, and his many plays have explored political, social and activist-driven topics. Longtime San Diego Rep artistic director Sam Woodhouse said “The Great Khan” explores the question of “who controls the narrative” in historical biographies written by authors of ethnicities, perspectives and cultures different from those of the historical figures.

In this play, a Black teen named Jayden moves to a new town with his mom to escape the dangerous celebrity he earned after saving a girl named Ant from a group of boys who tried to assault her in their former hometown. Jayden stays mostly in his room playing video games and working on a book report about Genghis Khan until Khan himself arrives with the goal of correcting the common view of him as a bloody warrior. The play will be directed at the Rep by Delicia Turner Sonnenberg.

The play will run March 3-28.

LA JOLLA PLAYHOUSE

“Here There Are Blueberries,” La Jolla Playhouse

In June, the Playhouse, in association with Tectonic Theater Project, will present this world premiere play by Moisés Kaufman and Amanda Gronich.

It’s inspired by a photo album donated to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in January 2007. The album contained photographs taken in 1944 and 1945 by a Nazi official from

the Auschwitz death camp in Poland.

Although the camp staff spent their days killing hundreds of thousands of Jews, they relaxed together on weekends at a nearby vacation chalet. The photos show them singing, sunbathing and posing for photos with notorious Nazi doctor Josef Mengele, seemingly unbothered by the horrors of their work.

The play by “The Laramie Project” author Kauf-

man and Gronich will mix fact — the album and museum archivists’ international efforts to uncover the photographer — with the story of a fictional German businessman who is horrified to recognize his grandfather in many of the images.

Playhouse artistic director Christopher Ashley said the production will feature projections of photos from the album, including the play’s title image of amused

camp workers eating bowls of wild blueberries.

“The play explores how everyday people’s lives and profound harm can coexist,” Ashley said. “The photos are windows into this really rich, vivid, complicated, difficult subject in a way that Moisés is uniquely suited to bring a theatrical clarity to.”

The play will run in June and July. Show dates have not been announced. pam.kragen@sduniontribune.com

Moisés Kaufman will direct his and Amanda Gronich’s play “Here There Are Blueberries” at La Jolla Playhouse in June and July. It’s being produced in conjunction with Tectonic Theater Project.

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Keep an eye out for the return of ‘Atlanta’ and the new series ‘As We See It,’ shows by two of TV’s most creative writers “As We See It”

Jason Katims was a producer and writer on “Friday Night Lights,” one of my favorite shows of all time, plus he adapted the 1989 movie “Parenthood” into a beloved, six-season show on NBC. His latest project is “As We See It,” a coming-of-age series that follows three 20-something roommates on the autism spectrum as they navigate the world. Under any other writer, this concept (which is based on the Israeli series “On the Spectrum”) may seem pandering. But Katims has a trademark of creating realistic and relatable characters while presenting highly emotional subjects in easy-to-digest ways. On “Parenthood,” Katims already handled autism in a respectful and honest way, plus he’s outspoken about his own son with Asperger’s. “As We See It” stars three actors with autism — Rick Glassman, Sue Ann Pien and Albert Rutecki — playing the roommates, along with Joe Mantegna, Chris Pang and Sosie Bacon. Amazon Prime Video is set to release all eight episodes on Jan. 21. nina.garin@sduniontribune.com

GUY D’ALEMA FX

BY NINA GARIN

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here are lots of big plans for TV in 2022 — from Marvel and Star Wars shows and a “Game of Thrones” prequel to the end of “This Is Us” and “Better Things,” and the very highly anticipated second season of “Bridgerton.”

But what I’m most excited about are two shows by some of TV’s most original writers, Donald Glover and Jason Katims.

“Atlanta”

Donald Glover’s FX comedy series has been off the air since 2018, but after COVID-19 shutdowns and complications, the third season is ready to debut on March 24. On the surface, the show is about Earn (Glover), a struggling college dropout trying to provide for his family by managing the career of burgeoning rap star Paper Boi (Brian Tyree Henry), who also happens to be Earn’s cousin. But thanks to eccentric humor and surreal elements, the show often veers away from traditional plot to highlight issues like race, fame, beauty image, social media, mental illness and more. Perhaps the most disturbing and notable episode was Season 2’s “Teddy Perkins,” starring LaKeith Stanfield. It was a psychological look at fame that combined elements of Michael Jackson, childhood abuse and “What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?” that played more like a short horror movie than a sitcom episode. Not much is known about Season 3, except that it was mostly filmed in Europe and that Glover has described it as the most accessible. So if you haven’t been watching, this may be a good place to start.

LaKeith Stanfield (left) and Donald Glover in a scene from “Atlanta.” The FX comedy, which was created

by Glover, will return on March 24 after nearly four years off the air. Glover says the new third season, which was filmed mostly in Europe, is the show’s most accessible yet.

Television producer and writer Jason Katims is known for tackling emotional stories.

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V I S UA L A RT From a grand reopening in La Jolla to a photographic retrospective in Oceanside, 2022 will be a feast for the senses

BY SETH COMBS

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ith museums and galleries officially reopened throughout San Diego — fingers crossed — 2022 appears as if it will be a full calendar year of programming and exhibitions. There is certainly one high-profile reopening in the new year, but as grand an event as that is, it will be art on display that will be the real star of the year.

DON BARTLETTI LOS ANGELES TIMES

“Don Bartletti: Elusive Moments — Enduring Stories,” Oceanside Museum of Art

From his pictures of the war in Iraq to his striking coverage of migration along the U.S.-Mexico border, one look at the photographs of Don Bartletti and it’s easy to see why he’s a Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist. It’s high time we had something of a career retrospective from the local photographer, and “Elusive Moments — Enduring Stories” is precisely that. Opening Jan. 23 at the Oceanside Museum of Art (704 Pier View Way) and running through May 1, the exhibition will feature dozens of award-winning photos, including some from Bartletti’s ongoing “The Roads Most Traveled” series, which spans 40 years of his coverage of migration issues along the Mexico-U.S. border, some of which has appeared in the Los Angeles Times and the Union-Tribune over the years. Says Bartletti: “Even if I know when the sun will set in Carlsbad or where emigrants will cross the U.S.-Mexico border, the essential storytelling moment is inevitably hiding in plain sight.”

“Niki de Saint Phalle in the 1960s” and “Selections From the Collection,” Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, La Jolla

ANDRÉ MORAIN NIKI CHARITABLE ART FOUNDATION

Niki de Saint Phalle, “Madame, or Green Nana with Black Bag,” 1968.

A lot of articles will be written and a lot of attention will be paid to the upcoming reopening of the renovated, redesigned and expanded MCASD La Jolla (700 Prospect St.), and understandably so. After four years, MCASD’s flagship location will have four times the gallery space, as well as a new public park

and ocean-view seaside terraces. I recently got to tour the Selldorf Architects-designed campus, and the emphasis on natural light and high ceilings brings an almost illusory feel to the space. It is going to be a wonder for sure, and one that will probably get all kinds of national attention.

But alas, we should not forget about the art.

MCASD La Jolla will mark the reopening with two new exhibitions, both of which should complement

the space perfectly. First, there’s “Niki de Saint Phalle in the 1960s,” a survey of the late artist’s early works. Saint Phalle is best known for her fantastical sculpture works (locals are likely already familiar with her works in Balboa Park and on the University of California San Diego campus) and MCASD curator Jill Dawsey says the new exhibition will offer viewers a look at Saint Phalle’s “original representations of female agency and volition

that resonate strongly in our own moment.”

Then there’s “Selections From the Collection,” which will feature works from the museum’s permanent collection, specifically those of the California Light & Space movement.

Seeing the works of local legends such as John Baldessari, Robert Irwin and Marcos Ramírez ERRE should serve as the perfect christening of the new space.

Combs is a freelance writer.

AN INTIMATE EVENING WITH

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January 20 Itzhak Perlman: Stories & Music January 25

In Conversation with John Leguizamo January 29

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TEMPEST II TOUR January 30

TICKETS ON SALE NOW!

FREE PARKING FOR EVENTS ArtCenter.org | 760.839.4138

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WHAT’S NEW

“Fishing the Wild Waters: An Angler’s Search for Peace and Adventure in the Wilderness” by Conor Sullivan (Pegasus Books): A former Coast Guard officer and lifelong outdoorsman takes readers to three of the remaining wild fishing destinations in the United States: in Hawaii, Alaska and New England. Yes, he’s concerned with environmental matters and sustainable consumption, but he’s also after the kind of serenity found when humans connect with the natural world.

“White on White” by Aysegül Savas (Riverhead Books): Savas elegantly explores loneliness in her second novel. After a student rents an apartment, its artist owner, Agnes, unexpectedly returns, moving into the upstairs studio. As the two become acquainted, and the student see Agnes’ new works — involving white paint on white canvas — the tenant realizes she’s witnessing a woman crumbling.

James Hannaham is the author of “Pilot Impostor.”

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERS Fiction 1. “Call Us What We Carry”

by Amanda Gorman (Viking) 2. “The Judge’s List” by John Grisham (Doubleday) 3. “The Stranger in the Lifeboat”

by Mitch Albom (Harper) 4. “The Lincoln Highway” by Amor Towles (Viking) 5. “The Wish” by Nicholas Sparks (Grand Central) 6. “Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone”

by Diana Gabaldon (Delacorte) 7. “Wish You Were Here” by Jodi Picoult (Ballantine) 8. “Cloud Cuckoo Land” by Anthony Doerr (Scribner) 9. “Fear No Evil” by James Patterson (Little, Brown) 10. “The Midnight Library” by Matt Haig (Viking)

Nonfiction 1. “The Storyteller” by Dave Grohl (Dey Street) 2. “The 1619 Project” edited by Nikole Hannah-Jones, Caitlin Roper, Ilena Silverman and Jake Silverstein (One World) 3. “Will”

by Will Smith with Mark Manson (Penguin Press ) 4. “The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present”

by Paul McCartney (Liveright) 5. “Taste” by Stanley Tucci (Gallery) 6. “All American Christmas” by Rachel Campos-Duffy and Sean Duffy (Broadside) 7. “The President and the Freedom Fighter”

by Brian Kilmeade (Sentinel) 8. “The Beatles: Get Back”

by The Beatles (Callaway) 9. “Renegades”

by Barack Obama and Bruce Springsteen(Crown) 10. “These Precious Days” by Ann Patchett (Harper)

WARWICK’S TOP SELLERS 1. “Call Us What We Carry” by Amanda Gorman 2. “The Lincoln Highway”

by Amor Towles 3. “Atlas of the Heart” by Brené Brown 4. “The Thursday Murder Club” by Richard Osman 5. “Cloud Cuckoo Land” by Anthony Doerr 6. “The Storyteller” by Dave Grohl 7. “On Tyranny” by Timothy Snyder 8. “Circe” by Madeline Miller 9. “Dune” by Frank Herbert 10. “A Small Book of Jewish Comedians” edited by Tony Nourmand

CALENDAR ADVENTURES BY THE BOOK, (619) 300-2532 Online: adventuresbythebook.com Virtual event: “A Thousand Steps: A Fireside Virtual 1970s Adventure” featuring author T. Jefferson Parker, 4 p.m. Wednesday MYSTERIOUS GALAXY, (619) 539-7137 Online: mystgalaxy.com Virtual event: Kendare Blake (“In Every Generation”) in conversation with Casey Gilly, 6 p.m. Tuesday Virtual event: Yoon Ha Lee discussing “Tiger Honor,” 7 p.m. Wednesday In-store event: James Rollins discussing “The Starless Crown,” 7 p.m. Friday WARWICK’S, (858) 454-0347 Online: warwicks.com In-store event: Susan Meissner discusses and signs the new paperback edition of her book “The Nature of Fragile Things,” 7:30 p.m. Tuesday In-store event: Julia Kelly discusses her new book, “The Last Dance of the Debutante,” in conversation with Kristin Harmel, 1 p.m. Thursday

ISAAC FITZGERALD

‘Pilot Impostor’a marvel of literary creativity James Hannaham’s third novel is a wildly inventive book of prose, poetry and image

BY MELISSA HOLBROOK PIERSON

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ames Hannaham’s first two novels, 2009’s “God Says No” and the PEN/Faulkner Awardwinning “Delicious Foods” of 2015, vaulted him to the top tier of inventive American writers. Now, the publication of “Pilot Impostor” should secure his place at the apex.

Hannaham is not only creative or stunningly gifted or intellectual or supremely original, but all those distinctions at once. This genre-defying book of compressed prose, poetry and image is the product of a mind — and heart — pushing the artistic tachometer to the red line.

Its genesis was a flight to Lisbon just after the 2016 election. Hannaham was reading Fernando Pessoa, the great modernist who inhabited a multiplicity of voices he called heteronyms — some 70-plus personae that were simultaneously aspects of himself and whole-cloth creations. This protean assembly provides Hannaham the ideal entry to an exploration of self, consciousness and creativity.

“Pilot Impostor” is the record of a Black man observing himself observe a deeply peculiar moment. The controls of the American experiment were newly in the hands of a man embodying the “poison cocktail of faked experience plus confidence,” as Hannaham described in an essay in Bookforum. The role of algorithms in determining what we perceive was increasingly

RECOMMENDED READS

“Pilot Impostor”

by James Hannaham (Soft Skull, 2021; 208 pages) insidious. And he was on his way to a country that had birthed both the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the odd genius of Pessoa.

The book delves into these themes, and many more, all interlocking by way of Hannaham’s visual art and brief textual performances, stills from air-disaster videos, screenshots and fragments of Pessoa’s work. The book is so thoroughly fused it is hard to extricate an example, in the way it’s meaningless to examine a single thread from the Bayeux Tapestry, but I was particularly struck by a list piece titled “To Confound Forensics.” This surreal compilation of ways to get away with murder (No. 16: “Be a chimera.”) is juxtaposed on the facing page with a screenshot showing a Facebook pop-up that warns “You are viewing your profile as someone else.”

Hannaham suggests each of us now encompasses such a

multitude of heteronyms, to feed algorithms that then feed us, it can make a Pessoa of anyone.

What is the self, and how can we know it? The role of chance in determining experience is perhaps the overriding, but far from only, subject of this ingeniously faceted book.

It returns again and again to the strange fact that much of life is now conducted inside a box outside of ourselves to which we outsource our thinking. The computer looks at things for us, through the remove of the camera eye; it remembers things we will forget; with its help we make “profiles,” or alternate selves.

The idea that consciousness is but a contingent arrangement of experiential fragments is reflected in both the structure and content of the book. Hannaham’s short texts — philosophical inquiries, experimental and speculative fictions, prose and poems, even a Bowlesian Sonnet — each respond to a brief bit of Pessoa’s poetry hovering suggestively in the margins of the page. These in turn respond to each other, while the author’s subtle ordering poses a question about whether it is possible to ever know the “real” Pessoa. (Answer: Is there a real anyone?)

“Pilot Impostor” has as many fine gears as a Swiss watch. Its several organizational principles together imply that the creation of self only unfolds over time — we become most “ourselves” as we accumulate the sediment of what by chance happens to us.

Some of these are accidents.

Some are delivered in our DNA. But we make something of them nonetheless — a narrative informed by cognitive bias, a fictional projection, a work of art. Or a book that accomplishes them all.

The visuals here are in conversation with the texts, which are themselves in conversation with the fragments from Pessoa. Images from air disaster videos, as well as hoax imagery that proliferates online — such as the meme known as “9/11 Tourist Guy” that purported to show a man on the deck of the World Trade Center moments before a plane hit — comment on the ways digital obsessions take shape. Other images include Hannaham’s assemblages of thumbnail photos of surfaces (Portuguese tile, stained glass, mosaics) and apertures (sky, grates, perforations), still bearing their digital sizing tools. With them the artist proposes that factuality is contextual, perception nothing but an artifice of composition.

Hannaham’s signature sly humor often carries a surprise hit of acid. His second novel posits the plantation slavery system’s persistence in contemporary society; where there were chains and whips there is now drug addiction, to the same end. Famously, one of the “Delicious Foods” central characters, with its own idiosyncratic voice, is crack cocaine. Ventriloquism is only one of Hannaham’s profuse talents.

Holbrook Pierson wrote this for The Washington Post.

Welcome to our literary circle, in which San Diegans pass the (printed) word on books

Melissa Giffen

Marianne Reiner

Job: Youth Services Librarian, Scripps Miramar Ranch Library, San Diego Public Library

Job: Bookseller, La Playa Books/Run for Cover Bookstore

She recommends: “Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle” by Emily Nagoski and Amelia Nagoski (Ballantine Books, 2019; 273 pages)

She recommends: “Tell Me How to Be” by Neel Patel (Flatiron Books, 2021; 336 pages)

Why? Sisters Emily and Amelia Nagoski have created a book that’s a scientific and empathetic look at stress-related “burnout,” including what it is, why so many people (especially women) have it, and what science says about what we can do to manage — not just cope with — our stress. Through their own personal anecdotes and those of close friends, the Nagoskis share concrete examples of the consequences of being overwhelmed by stress and how implementing these scientific methods designed to dismantle stress frees us from carrying it in our minds and bodies long term.

Those who are scientifically minded will appreciate the Nagoskis’ science-based approach and thorough citations. For the rest of us, it’s an accessible read that will give hope and practical help to anyone who feels overwhelmed by everything they have to do (and be) on a regular basis.

Why? Renu and Akash are the mother and son in this poignant Indian American family story. As they are about to celebrate the one-year anniversary of their husband and father’s passing, they meet again in the family home in Illinois where they must wrestle with the deep-held secrets they each keep. Akash, who is gay but not out to his mother and brother, must come to terms with the story of the boy who first broke his heart years ago if he wants to have a chance at living a happy and healthy life now. The widowed Renu, whose acerbic humor had me laugh out loud more than once, confronts her past and whether she made the right decision more than 30 years earlier in choosing to marry a man she did not love, leaving behind her first and only love. This excellent debut novel explores the themes of love, betrayal and reconciliation in a modern, funny and tender way that is sure to make it a readers’ favorite book in 2022.

THE SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE

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SUNDAY • JANUARY 2, 2022

Invaluable affirmations

How the optimistic essays and poems of Maggie Smith have carried an Encinitas writer through a seemingly endless pandemic

BY SOPHY CHAFFEE

T

he poet and essayist Maggie Smith has been my back-pocket companion for the past year of the pandemic.

The Audible version of her book of short essays and positive maxims, “Keep Moving: Notes on Loss, Creativity, and Change,” has been my go-to listen on my phone on bad days.

Her book of poetry “Goldenrod” has also been an Audible salve for me. I read (and reread) the paper versions of these books, but am grateful both are in my back pocket on my phone to pull out wherever and whenever I need her encouragement and wise counsel.

Now, the award-winning poet is also my writing companion as I look ahead to 2022, as her companion book “Keep Moving: The Journal: Thrive Through Change and Create a Life You Love” was recently released.

It contains affirmations from the original book, like, “Stop expecting the worst: at least as many things could go right as could go wrong.”

Also, some new ones, like, “Don’t be surprised to find a mix of your best and worst qualities useful during a difficult time. Maybe your stubborn streak is as necessary to getting through it as your sense of perspective.”

Each affirmation pairs with a writing prompt, like, “What is something you’re nervous about? Ask yourself: What could go right?” and “What are some of your ‘worst’ qualities? How do these qualities serve you?”

With 52 prompts in all, the book could carry me through a year of selfreflection and growth in these uncertain and jagged times.

Like the original “Keep Moving,”

the journal is divided into “Revision,” “Resilience” and “Transformation.” In each chapter, she asks us to reflect back in service of moving forward, as with this prompt: “Reflect on your life as it is today. What would have seemed unattainable five, ten, or twenty years ago? In what ways have you surprised yourself or exceeded your past expectations?”

As I look ahead to 2022, I’m having a hard time not staying stuck in the muck of 2020 and 2021. Also, not giving in to the sharpness of these times. It seems so many of us are quick to elbow and “other” online and on the highway. We’re all on edge because what we thought would be The After Times is still The During Times.

But Smith, with her optimism born of pain, pulls my gaze to a brighter horizon. “Think hard about what you want out of this year, next year, and into the wild, unknown future. Now name those things. Give them language. Write them down as a way of holding yourself accountable — not for achieving them, but for trying.

Commit to trying.”

“Keep Moving: Notes on Loss, Creativity, and Change” (Atria/One Signal Publishers, 2020; 224 pages) “Keep Moving: The Journal: Thrive Through Change and Create a Life You Love” (Atria/One Signal Publishers, 2021; 160 pages)

“Goldenrod” (Atria/One Signal Publishers, 2021; 128 pages)

I downloaded the original “Keep Moving” during an aching time in the pandemic, facing down the first Thanksgiving without extended family and putting on a brave face for my kids despite a world that worried me so.

With maxims like, “Hope is imaginative: it allows you to envision what might be ahead, even when you see nothing,” Smith soon became a standin for my sister Louise, who died of cancer in 2018. Louise, who taught me much about the power of gratitude and the gift of struggle, was who I’d turn to for encouragement and whose voice I missed most in lockdown.

I was so reassured to hear Smith’s calm voice tell me, “Reflect on what loss has given you, as counterintuitive as that sounds. Think of the solitude, self-reflection, and self-reliance as gifts. Of course they don’t weigh the same as the grief — they don’t balance the scales — but be grateful for them anyway.”

“Keep Moving” became a bestseller because Smith told us what we needed to hear just when we needed to hear it, as well as the backstory to her apprenticeship to hope. Although the award-winning poet wrote the book before the pandemic, it came out in May 2020.

In short essays, she describes how the end of her marriage left her with blank pages she struggled to fill. So, she began writing goals for herself and posting them on social media, often ending with the words “keep moving.”

The book pairs those affirmations with personal essays about her childhood, her miscarriages, her kids, and observations about nature, including the way serotinous pine cones only release their seeds in fire.

Some of those stories and that imagery re-emerge in Smith’s poems in “Goldenrod.” In her poem “At the End of My Marriage, I Think of Something My Daughter Said About Trees,” Smith writes, “When a tree is cut down, the sky’s like / finally and rushes in,” an echo from her essay about transformation called “The Blue Rushes In.” Published in July 2021, “Goldenrod” explores the pandemic directly in poems like, “During Lockdown, I Let the Dog Sleep in My Bed Again”: “Last night my daughter cried at bedtime. / Of loneliness, she said. She’s seen the graph, / the jagged mountain we need to press / into a meadow … I tell her the steep peak makes loneliness / our work, makes an honorable task of it. / But I shut myself in the bathroom and cry, hard, / into a hand towel.”

Smith often describes herself as a recovering pessimist. Some of these poems explore the shadows that might pull her (or me, at least) toward pessimism. The collection includes poems about school shootings, White privilege, immigration atrocities, the state of America’s conscience, and, in “The Hum,” the future. “It’s not a question / without the mark: How do we live / with trust in a world that will continue / to betray us… For the first time I doubt / we’ll find our way back. But how / can we not.”

The final poem, “Verse Chorus Verse Chorus Bridge,” glimpses at optimism and describes the sense of sweet anticipation I was feeling when I read it last summer. It begins, “Until we find the right chord, / we can busy ourselves with the lyrics,” It ends with, “We must be coming / to the chorus now.”

My reaction to the line was, “That’s it! Finally, we’re moving from The During Times to The Emerging Times!”

But now as we crest past the last jagged peak of 2021 into the wild unknown of 2022, I’ve reconsidered tethering my hope to the phases of the pandemic. As we descend through the Greek-lettered strains of the virus, the chorus I hear is “Don’t get fooled again.”

Instead, I am tethering myself to what I learned from Maggie Smith thus far: Expect change. Look for gifts in the rubble of trouble. Revision isn’t erasure. I survived the fires thus far. Do positive. Stop waiting. Imagine my way forward. Be like water and keep moving.

In other words, I’ll keep emerging.

Chaffee is an Encinitas-based writer.

In each chapter, she asks us to reflect back in service of moving forward.

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THE SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE

SUNDAY • JANUARY 2, 2022

“I tried to arrange the program in terms of assertive, quiet, assertive, quiet. These pieces are so challenging, and so interesting from many points of view, that I never get tired of doing any of it.”

Emanuel Ax

Pianist Emanuel Ax returns to San Diego Friday’s sold-out concert, presented by the La Jolla Music Society, is an all-Chopin program

BY MARCIA LUTTRELL

I

f world-renowned pianist Emanuel Ax could ask Frederic Chopin one question about one of the compositions he’ll perform at Friday’s sold-out concert in La Jolla, he would pick the Barcarolle in F sharp major, Op. 60.

A barcarolle in music refers to the folk songs of Venetian gondoliers, with a tempo reminiscent of their rowing pace as they glide along the canal.

“There are literally thousands of questions I could come up with,” said Ax, who has won multiple Grammy Awards, both for solo CDs and for his collaborations with Yo-Yo Ma. “Obviously, a barcarolle is a type of rhythm, so if I would be limited to one question, I would ask Chopin if he really did have a story in mind and how could he possibly write this great piece without ever having been to Venice.”

The La Jolla engagement, part of the La Jolla Music Society’s Piano Series, is an allChopin program.

“Everything is from Chopin’s late period,” Ax explained. “The Barcarolle is new for me, but the Sonata (No. 3 in B-minor, Op. 58) and Polonaise-Fantaisie (Op. 61) I have played for a very long time, so it’s kind of a mixed bag. I tried to arrange the program in terms of assertive, quiet, assertive, quiet. These pieces are so chal-

lenging, and so interesting from many points of view, that I never get tired of doing any of it.”

Like Chopin, Ax was born in Poland.

He took piano lessons from the age of 7 and described himself “as talented like a lot of children are — but not a prodigy.”

His parents survived the Holocaust by moving to Canada.

“We moved from Poland when I was 10,” said Ax, who contributed a Chopin performance to the 2005 Emmy Award-winning BBC documentary “Holocaust — A Music Memorial Film From Auschwitz.”

“My mother had a fifth cousin there and that was the way to get out — you got a letter of invitation.

My dad was a speech and language therapist, which at the time was a new field. In Winnipeg, there wasn’t any opportunity. So, he thought we should move to a big city like New York.”

La Jolla Music Society presents Emanuel Ax When: 8 p.m. Friday Where: Baker-Baum Concert Hall at Conrad Prebys Performing Arts Center, 7600 Fay Ave., La Jolla Tickets: Sold out Phone: (858) 459-3728 Online: ljms.org Ax, now 72, lives in New York City with his wife, pianist Yoko Nozaki. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and holds honorary doctorates of music from Skidmore College, Yale University and Columbia University.

He has performed with artists such as Cho-Liang Lin, Edgar Meyer, the late Isaac Stern and

LISA MARIE MAZZUCCO

his friend of 40-plus years, cellist Yo-Yo Ma. Last year, Ax and Ma recorded “Hope Amid Tears,” an album of Beethoven’s complete works for cello and piano. The duo also made a series of Grammy Awardwinning recordings of the Beethoven and Brahms sonatas for cello and piano in the 1980s.

Did Ax make comparisons?

“Once I make a record, I don’t listen to my own stuff,” said Ax, who is known for his humility as well as his emotive renditions of classical music. “But I think the one thing we did was change a little bit, which I think is good.

‘Hope Amid Tears’ doesn’t sound like the old records, and even if people don’t like it, at least it’s different.”

During the pandemic, Ma and Ax volunteered to play music for hospital patients and essential workers. The duo played outdoors on a truck bed, Ma with a fiberglass cello and Ax on Clavinova piano.

Ax also performed over the phone for intensive-care patients on ventilators.

“It was the only thing we could do to really help, I’m sad to say,” Ax said. “I wish I could have done more. Everybody wanted to help in some way, and I’m a musician. There is nothing I know how to do except play. I felt happy people could get pleasure from it.”

Luttrell is a freelance writer.

‘MAGRITTE’ ILLUMINATES THE LIFE AND ART OF A LEADING SURREALIST

BY HAMILTON CAIN

Walk into the Magritte gallery in New York’s Museum of Modern Art, and you slip into one painter’s grotto of dreams, crisply pictorial and yet dislocating in the worlds they capture, the dreads we can’t identify in our waking lives.

From his famous “The Treachery of Images” (“This is not a pipe”) to “Time Transfixed,” which depicts a train emerging from a fireplace, to “The False Mirror,” an eye with cloud-puffed blue sky as its iris, René Magritte (1898-1967) was drawn to illusions that coexist with reality; none of Dalí’s dripping watches and blotchy figures for him.

We see ourselves in his compositions, and we are unnerved.

The author of acclaimed biographies of Cézanne and Braque, the Oxford-educated Alex Danchev (1955-2016) was finishing his lavish, authoritative “Magritte” when he died suddenly. (Art historian Sarah Whitfield has admirably completed the task.)

Danchev seasons his book with reams of research and critique and gossip, evoking a titan of the 20thcentury European avant-garde.

Raised in a modest Belgian family, Magritte suffered a tragic shock during adolescence: His mother drowned herself in the River Sambre. When her body was recovered, her nightgown veiled her face, a motif that flits across her son’s later canvases.

Idiosyncratic and undisciplined, Magritte enrolled at Brussels’ Académie Royale des Beaux-

“Magritte: A Life” by Alex Danchev (Pantheon, 2021; 480 pages)

ROBYN BECK AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

Gallery security guard J. Dulay beside “Decalcomania” (“La Decalcomanie”) by Belgian surrealist painter René Magritte at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Arts, and found, almost by chance, his calling. His craft took shape, inspired not only by the impressionists and cubists, but also by street forms, such as pulp fiction, theater posters and pornography.

Erotic titillation and the menace of mortality underpin “Magritte.” Danchev cycles through the painter’s oeuvre more or less chronologically, with the occasional leap forward or backward in time, mapping an uncanny cos-

mology. Tubas, clouds, bowler hats, shrouded faces, naked, marmoreal women: All are totems in Magritte’s personal myth, arranged in classical poses and often in clear light, evoking the foreboding in de Chirico’s work.

The book also entertains: Squint hard, and you just might spy an Andalusian dog. Magritte married a childhood acquaintance, Georgette, and decamped for Jazz Age Paris, where he fell in

with a faction that included André Breton and Paul Éluard. Revolution was in the air; these surrealists, many of whom had witnessed firsthand the horrors of the Great War, were committed to the upending of convention.

“Magritte was a maverick,” Danchev observes. “His weapon of choice was the paintbrush. If bourgeois order was nothing but disorder, then it could be subverted, that is, reimagined.”

The couple eventually returned to Belgium, where the painter and his brother founded an advertising firm. As his international reputation grew, he exhibited across continents, collectors clamoring for canvases. The last third of “Magritte” thins out — Danchev was writing this section when he died — but in part the painter’s to blame: He succumbed to the trappings of success, much like the conformists he satirized.

Despite this quibble, “Magritte” is a superb account of one enigmatic, enduring artist, a gratifying addition to our cultural literature, and an ode to modernity’s contradictions.

Cain wrote this for the Star Tribune in Minneapolis.

THE SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE

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SUNDAY • JANUARY 2, 2022

The man next to Mozart

Hershey Felder’s latest musical film examines little-known librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte’s relationship with the composer

BY PAM KRAGEN

palace that still has the decor, now fully restored to its original glory.”

M

ost opera lovers and classical music fans are familiar with the story of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and his operas. But few know the colorful life of Lorenzo Da Ponte, who served as the librettist on three of the composer’s best-known operas, “The Marriage of Figaro,” “Don Giovanni” and Cosi fan tutte.”

Da Ponte’s unusual life — and his perspective of working side by side with the Austrian composer — is the subject of “Mozart and Figaro in Vienna.” It’s the latest musical film written and directed by and starring playwright-pianist Hershey Felder. Streaming at 5 p.m. Jan. 9, the film is being copresented by San Diego Repertory Theatre and nearly two dozen other U.S. theaters. Felder lives and works in Florence, Italy, and all of the scenes in the movie were filmed in the Tuscan city as part of his “Live From Florence” film series.

Da Ponte was born a Jew but his family secretly changed their name and converted to Catholicism. During his long career, he served as a priest, was convicted of running a brothel in Venice and banished, went bankrupt and fled to the U.S., where he founded the first American opera house in New York.

The film will feature an international cast of opera singers, including American baritones Nathan Gunn and Timothy Renner and

CAKEWATCH Today: TV host Jack Hanna (“Jack Hanna’s Into the Wild”) is 74. Actor Wendy Phillips (“I Am Sam”) is 70. Actor Cynthia Sikes (“St. Elsewhere”) is 68. Actor Gabrielle Carteris (“Beverly Hills, 90210"“) is 61. Actor Tia Carrere is 55.

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Musician Ryan Merchant of Capital Cities is 41.

Actor Kate Bosworth is 39. Actor Anthony Carrigan (“Barry,” “Gotham”) is 39. Musician Trombone Shorty is 36. Singer Bryson Tiller is 29.

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Q:

What would most theatergoers be surprised to learn about Mozart that only composers and pianists like yourself would know?

“While he was definitely scatological in his letter writing, he was much more serious and quiet in his work and relationships. The other thing is that audiences might be interested in what it is like to be around genius, as the music allows us to be, but unlike Antonio Salieri, who was portrayed in the film “Amadeus” as a jealous enemy capable (possibly) of murder … very dramatic and engaging, but not historically founded. I love the film, and enjoy the drama, but I also think there is a place to tell a human story that might be a little closer to what we think happened.”

A:

COURTESY OF HERSHEY FELDER

Hershey Felder (top center and above center) stars in and directs “Mozart and Figaro in Vienna,” which was filmed in Florence, Italy, due to COVID-19 lockdowns. It’s streaming next Sunday.

Russian soprano Ekaterina Siurina as well as members of the Italian orchestra Maggio Musicale Orchestra. Felder plays Da Ponte, both as a young musician in the Viennese court and in his final years in New York, where he became a U.S. citizen and died in 1838. Felder answered a few questions about his latest project via email last week.

Q: A:

Where did you get the idea for this piece and its focus on Da Ponte?

“I have always been fascinated by Da Ponte. He did work with Mozart, arguably giving

Nicholas Gonzalez (“The O.C.”) is 46. Singer and former “American Idol” contestant Kimberley Locke is 44. Actor Kate Levering (“Drop Dead Diva”) is 43. Actor Nicole Beharie (“Sleepy Hollow”) is 37. Drummer Mark Pontius (Foster the People) is 37. R-and-B singer Lloyd is 36.

Guitarist Nash Overstreet of Hot Chelle Rae is 36. Actor Florence Pugh (“Little Women”) is 26.

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Actor Jill Marie Jones (“Girlfriends”) is 47. Actor D’Arcy Carden (“The Good Place”) is 42. Singer Spencer Chamberlain of Underoath is 39.

Comedian-actor Charlyne Yi (“House,” “Steven Universe”) is 36.

Wednesday: Actor Robert Duvall is 91. Singerbassist Athol Guy of The Seekers is 82. Former

“Mozart and Figaro in Vienna” Streaming: 5 p.m. Jan. 9 Tickets: $55 Online: hersheyfelder.net Mozart the material to become eternal in the world of opera. I loved how Da Ponte spoke about Mozart, and I am quite moved about how we refer to ‘Mozart’s operas’ but not ‘Mozart and Da Ponte’s operas.’ Da Ponte was also a true character, and one could do many episodes on his life. The story is about being in the pres-

talk show host Charlie Rose is 80. Actor Diane Keaton is 76. Actor Ted Lange (“The Love Boat”) is 74. Drummer George “Funky” Brown of Kool and the Gang is 73.

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ence of genius, and contributing to that genius, and perhaps not being acknowledged for having done so.”

Q: A:

Where did you film “Mozart and Figaro in Vienna”?

Sadly, Vienna was in complete lockdown, so we were able to film in the wonderful Palazzo Gianfigliazzi Bonaparte in the center of Florence, which has exactly the interior that a late-18th-century Viennese palace, the emperor’s palace, would have.

The palace itself is historic and the decor dates from exactly the period that Mozart would have visited and played. It is a beautiful

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Actor Reggie Austin (“Agent Carter,” “Pretty Little Liars”) is 43. Singer-rapper Aloe Blacc is 43. Actor Lauren Cohan (“The Walking Dead”) is 40. Actor Brett Dalton (“Marvel’s Agents of

Q:

What’s new with your “Live From Florence” film series, and when are you planning to return to live performances in the U.S. again?

“We are expanding with audiences, and interested in seeing the word of mouth. Slowly the series is garnering a life of its own and theaters do continue to share with their audiences. Theaters have a great challenge this year as this strange virus morphs and challenges theater-makers. I hope to also be back in a theater live at some point, when things are safe, but right now it is hard to know, and of course live performance requires stability for both audiences and artists, so we must hope for that and ensure its possibility.”

A:

pam.kragen@sduniontribune.com

Shield”) is 39. Actor Robert Ri’chard (“One on One”) is 39. Actor Lyndsy Fonseca (“Marvel’s Agent Carter,” “Nikita”) is 35. Actor Liam Aiken (“Lemony Snicket”) is 32. Actor Camryn Grimes (“The Young and the Restless”) is 32. Actor Marcus Scribner (“black-ish”) is 22.

Saturday: Actor-comedian Larry Storch (“F Troop”) is 99. Former “Sunday Morning” host Charles Osgood is 89. Singer Shirley Bassey is 85. Game show host Bob Eubanks (“The Newlywed Game”) is 84. Country-gospel singer Cristy Lane is 82. Singer Anthony Gourdine of Little Anthony and the Imperials is 81. Actor Yvette Mimieux (“The Time Machine,” “Where the Boys Are”) is 80. Singer Juanita Cowart Motley of The Marvelettes is 78. Actor Kathleen Noone (“Knots Landing”) is 77. Guitarist Robby Krieger of The Doors is 76. Actor Harriet Sansom Harris (“Desperate Housewives”) is 67.

Actor Ron Cephas Jones (“This is Us”) is 65.

Actor Michelle Forbes (“True Blood,” “Homicide,” “Star Trek: The Next Generation”) is 57.

Actor Maria Pitillo (“Providence”) is 56.

Bassist Jeff Abercrombie of Fuel is 53. Reggae singer Sean Paul is 49.

Singer-actor Jenny Lewis of Rilo Kiley is 46.

Actor Amber Benson (“Buffy The Vampire Slayer”) is 45. Actor Gaby Hoffman (“Sleepless in Seattle,” “Field of Dreams”) is 40.

Guitarist Disashi Lumumbo-Kasongo of Gym Class Heroes is 39. Actor Cynthia Erivo (“Harriet”) is 35.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

E10

THE SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE

SUNDAY • JANUARY 2, 2022

Top pop culture moments From the #FreeBritney movement to Kim Kardashian’s many headlines, here’s what we couldn’t stop talking about in 2021

T

BY JENNIFER IANNI

he year 2021 was uncharted territory in so many ways. After a tumultuous 2020, many were hopeful that 2021 would bring with it more stability and a return to normalcy. And it did! For a little while anyway. ■ While the COVID-19 pandemic continued to rage, there were glimpses of “normal” in 2021. Live events started to come back. The Oscars were held in person. Talk shows slowly brought back live audiences and in-person guests.

Sporting events continued. We had a Met Gala. ■ And while we’re clearly not out of the woods yet — and we may be headed back into them — 2021 did manage to bring us some entertaining moments in celebrity pop culture.

CHRIS PIZZELLO AP

Carlos Morales of Los Angeles holds a sign with the hashtag #FreeBritney in September.

A pop princess is free EVAN AGOSTINI AP

Former baseball superstar Alex Rodriguez and actor-singer Jennifer Lopez announced their breakup in April.

Big breakups A big celebrity breakup is always a moment. Whether a high-profile couple split through carefully scripted and coordinated Instagram posts or the good old statement from their publicists, a celebrity breakup is a deft social maneuver that requires foresight and planning.

Kim Kardashian is no stranger to high-profile breakups. She and estranged husband Kanye West filed for divorce in February, after months of rumors. Another celeb who’s no stranger to breakups?

Jennifer Lopez, who split from fiance Alex Rodriguez in April, also following months of speculation regarding the status of the power couple.

In perhaps the biggest pop culture story of the year, Britney Spears was finally released from a 13-year conservatorship under which she was fully controlled by her father, Jamie Spears, and others under his employ. Spears had been living in fear and under duress since it had been put into place after a public meltdown in 2008.

Rumors began circulating in April of 2019 that Spears’ much-publicized conservatorship might actually be detrimental to the singer, despite the fact that it had been presented to the public as a positive force in Spears’ life. The #FreeBritney movement initially started as a vague sort of conspiracy theory, but in the end, its ardent supporters helped free Spears, after she finally was allowed to choose her own legal representation.

The unprecedented case’s most powerful moment came in June, when audio of a terrified Spears testifying in court was released. Her voice quivered at times, but her impassioned message was clear: She was fully capable of managing her own life. The conservatorship had traumatized her. She wanted her father out, and she wanted it now.

And that’s just what happened. In September, Jamie Spears was removed from the conservatorship and the world celebrated the fact that Britney was finally free.

Met Gala fashions The Met Gala is fashion’s biggest night; it’s the Super Bowl of red carpet appearances and the hottest and most exclusive ticket of the year. Normally held the first Monday in May, the party was moved to September — and, as usual, attendees dominated the headlines with their fierce looks embodying this year’s theme: “In America: A Lexicon of Fashion.” And nobody dominated more headlines than Kim Kardashian, who showed up in a head-to-toe black Balenciaga look that covered her entire face — and launched a thousand memes.

KEVIN WINTER GETTY IMAGES

Olivia Rodrigo made waves in January with a song rumored to be about her breakup with actor-singer Joshua Bassett.

EVAN AGOSTINI AP

Pop music drama

Travis Barker of blink-182 and reality TV star Kourtney Kardashian announced in October that they were engaged.

Unlikely couples From big breakups to unlikely unions, 2021 gave us a few whoppers.

In January, photos leaked of a freshly single Olivia Wilde holding hands with her wedding plus-one: none other than Harry Styles.

Meanwhile, the aforementioned Kardashian healed her broken heart through pizza dates with Staten Island’s most famous bachelor, Pete Davidson. Photos of the two holding hands at a Six Flags date appeared in October. Her older sister Kourtney Kardashian shocked fans when she debuted her own unlikely relationship with blink-182 drummer Travis Barker in February. After many months of TMI Instagram posts, the couple announced their engagement in October.

Fans experienced massive déjà vu when rumors began flying over the summer that Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck were together again — nearly 20 years after their first ill-fated relationship became tabloid fodder. Lopez confirmed the rumors by posting a steamy Insta pic of the two in July.

EVAN AGOSTINI AP

Kim Kardashian attended the Met Gala in a head-totoe black look that covered her entire face.

In 2021, pop music had us all in our feels — and sometimes correlated with real-life drama. Olivia Rodrigo burst onto the scene in January with her instant high school breakup classic “Drivers License.” The song was a hit, but the story behind it was even juicier: It was rumored to be about her breakup with “High School Musical: The Musical: The Series” (and San Diego-bred) co-star Joshua Bassett — and his new girlfriend Sabrina Carpenter.

In November, Taylor Swift partied like it was 2008 again with the re-release of her album “Red.” After a high-profile dispute with producer Scooter Braun, “Taylor’s Version” of the album contained new re-recordings of songs like “Red,” “I Knew You Were Trouble” and an all-new 10-minute version of “All Too Well,” the song that made us remember why we don’t trust Jake Gyllenhaal.

Also released in November, Adele’s long-awaited next album, “30,” caused happy couples to call it quits, just so they could experience the album the way it was meant to be enjoyed: from the depths of a soulcrushing breakup that changes your very core. OK, that might be a bit of a stretch, but Adele’s latest album proves she’s still the breakup queen.

Beloved reboots and reunions In May, a long-anticipated reunion for a certain momentous ’90s sitcom was released on HBO Max. All six original “Friends” cast members sat down with host James Corden for a retrospective of their time on the couch at Central Perk.

It was an emotional special, with cameos from famous guest stars, a set reunion, poignant Q&As with the cast and more.

Even Justin Bieber showed up.

Another beloved ’90s/2000s staple burst back on the scene with all-new episodes. In December, “And Just Like That ...,” a reboot of “Sex and the City,” dropped on HBO Max. Our four leading ladies have shrunk to three after the departure of Kim Cattrall’s Samantha, and while the show has gotten a mixed reception, die-hard fans of the original will enjoy continuing the adventures of Carrie and pals in the city.

TERENCE PATRICK HBO MAX

From left: Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Matthew Perry, Lisa Kudrow, David Schwimmer and Matt LeBlanc reunite.

jennifer.ianni@sduniontribune.com

THE SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE

E11

SUNDAY • JANUARY 2, 2022

A P P R E C I AT I O N

Going beyond pop art

Wayne Thiebaud was often lumped in with Warhol and Lichtenstein, but his deceptively smart work asked you to look closer

BY PHILIP KENNICOTT

H

is paintings were instantly recognizable, and no serious museum of contemporary art was complete without at least one hanging on its walls. Wayne Thiebaud, who died on Christmas Day at 101, painted sweets, clowns and bow ties, and somehow managed to capture the essence of his era in work that was deceptively smart, wry and engaging.

Thiebaud remained productive into the last years of his life. He was still doing interviews slightly more than a year ago, when an exhibition to honor his 100th birthday opened at the Crocker Museum in Sacramento. He was still painting, still observing the world, still making work that seemed to glow the way the skin does after a day in the sun, as if from a surfeit of light.

He was already making art in high school and spent a summer as an animation apprentice at the Walt Disney studios. He was a masterful draftsman, and his early experience with commercial art helped govern his eye, and his hand. Even as he pushed familiar objects to the point of abstraction, isolating them from the world and arranging them with geometric lucidity, he was meticulous about shadows, reflected light and texture. Art museums always seem to favor his lunch-counter images, the pies and cakes. Thus, the institutions that collected his art made those works his signature pieces. But he was also an accomplished and powerful portraitist, and his landscapes, made in dialogue with those of his fellow California painter Richard Diebenkorn, are among his finest achievements.

Museums often feed our inclination to not look at things. We enter a gallery, register the familiar icons, situate them in our mental map of the art world and move on.

There’s a Warhol, there’s a Lichtenstein, there’s a Thiebaud. His work was routinely grouped with that of Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, and thus he must have been a pop artist. But his art resisted the inclination not to look with marvelous energy. And as you were drawn in by its power, waylaid into actually seeing it, the more it seemed a world apart from pop art.

The tone was different, not quite so satirical or arch. He gravitated to consumerist images, things that were familiar enough that they left room for the painter to translate them into something else. Yet the paintings never gave the viewer permission to condescend to the subject matter.

There was, no doubt, a critique of American consumerism somewhere in them, but that wasn’t the thrust of what they were meant to do. There was always an admixture of delight, which tempered any inclination to be sniffish about the Americana that Thiebaud painted.

When asked about the work that came to define him, he stres-

MAX WHITTAKER THE NEW YORK TIMES

Painter Wayne Thiebaud in his studio in Sacramento in 2010. He died on Christmas Day at the age of 101. sed instead his desire for maximal freedom as a painter. Painting was a passion, a calling, perhaps even an obsession. Even if he gravitated back to familiar objects, in a distinctive palette of pastel colors and rich blue shadows, it was the dialogue with art that mattered.

“For me, making a good painting, or a special painting, is probably one of the great achievements of mankind,” he said a year ago November. “It is on the level with scientific research, so my feeling is, once you enter that community of painting, which is a sort of secret society — dependent on art history — you want to compete, you want to contend, however small, or however inadequate.”

Among his imagery were eyeglasses, which, along with mirrors and frames and other devices that foreground our ocular relation to the world, focus on the idea of looking. And not just looking, but the flawed, imperfect, subjective nature of looking. We need art because we are not particularly good at looking at the world. We see things all the time, yet when some truth finally registers in the mind, we say, “I see,” as if our eyes were closed before this epiphany.

WAYNE THIEBAUD

Thiebaud’s “Boston Cremes” (1962) is an oil-on-canvas work of the midcentury popular iconography for which he was known.

In a 1992 painting, “Untitled (Row of Glasses),” Thiebaud arranged eyeglasses on a thickly painted white plane, as if someone had frosted a table with cream cheese and then pressed the spectacles into the goop. The angle of vision and the recession of the

perspective skews the ones in the farthest row so much that they would be unrecognizable if the ones in the foreground weren’t so expertly rendered. We can, for a moment, see ourselves seeing, taking in the image in a glance, while also registering how we tend

to see from one thing to another, unconsciously connecting things, fabricating a vision of the world from chains of otherwise meaningless data. There may also be a sleight of hand with time: Are the glasses nearest us the oldest, while the ones in distance are more of our moment? Is the past easier to read than the present?

It’s curious to see so many eyeglasses in one place. Perhaps we are meant to think of a shop where glasses are sold. Or perhaps someone with a slightly obsessional relationship to things has kept all of his or her glasses over the years and arranged them like pictures from a family album on the table. Perhaps the artist is saying something else. He has, through his painting, made these objects obsolete. As people look at his art, they take their glasses off, and leave them behind, as some people do with crutches, splints and bandages after visiting a healing shrine.

We have touched that secret society that Thiebaud aspired to and can say: I see.

Kennicott is the art and architecture critic for The Washington Post.

WHAT WE’RE OBSESSED WITH RIGHT NOW

‘SEX AND THE CITY’ REBOOT KEEPS THE FOCUS ON FRIENDSHIP

BY JENNIFER IANNI

What I’m obsessed with: “And Just Like That ...,” the new “Sex and the City” reboot streaming on HBO Max. Warning: Spoilers ahead.

Why? Not to age myself, but I was in college when the original “SATC” aired. At the time, my girlfriends and I were enamored of the show. Even though we were younger than the ladies onscreen, their lives were aspirational. It was all so impossibly glamorous. These women had careers and lives that didn’t completely revolve around men. It was the first example I’d ever seen of a show where the women were the core, and their friendships were the most important thing, not their romantic relationships. They taught us it was OK for women to view sex “the way men did” and to enjoy being single. It was a cultural phenomenon that resonated with my friend group and with so many others.

So to say the show had an impact on me is an understatement. I wasn’t quite old enough to drink, but I knew that when I was, I’d sit at a fancy bar and order a cosmo while wearing a nameplate necklace, an oversize flower broach and fabulous shoes, surrounded by my equally fabulous girlfriends.

After the show went off the air, I dutifully watched the two feature-

CRAIG BLANKENHORN HBO MAX

From left: Cynthia Nixon, Sarah Jessica Parker and Kristin Davis in “And Just Like That ...,” which is now on HBO Max.

length films as they came out — even though they didn’t do the show justice, in my opinion. The movies reinforced the notion of not needing to fix things that weren’t broken. Let the show’s legacy live on and stop trying to ruin it with subpar (and honestly, problematic) movies.

But when I heard about this reboot, titled “And Just Like That ...,” I was surprisingly hopeful. Maybe it’s because the show’s announcement came in January of 2021, when life

still felt so bleak. I didn’t realize just how much I’d missed my friends, these characters. Seeing the ladies together again — sans Samantha (Kim Cattrall chose not to return to the series) — brought me back to 2001, sitting in my dorm room on a Sunday night with my girlfriends, ready to watch the adventures of Carrie and pals as they conquered New York City.

Don’t all reboots suck? Yes, but this one sucks a little less. At the time

of this writing, four of the 10 episodes of “AJLT” have aired. And while I went in with reasonable (aka, somewhat low) expectations, I have to say, I really love this reboot. As a huge fan of the original, I’m biased, but “AJLT” reminds me of why I fell in love with the show in the first place.

The snappy dialogue is still there, with the same risqué double entendres that defined the first series. Of course, the chic fashions are still on display. I loved these characters 20 years ago, and I love them now, in this new, more mature stage of life.

Where are we now? The women are all grappling with the usual midlife issues: Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) is suddenly a widow (bet the producers are glad they killed off Mr. Big in the first episode, given the slate of sexual assault charges recently leveled against actor Chris Noth). She’s grieving and coming to terms with her marriage to Big. Charlotte (Kristin Davis) is raising two teens, one of whom is experiencing gender identity issues. Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) finds herself going back to school as an adult while her sexless marriage to Steve (David Eigenberg) flounders.

In fact, Miranda’s struggle to fit in with her woke younger classmates is an apt metaphor for the show: Times have certainly changed, and the ladies are just trying to keep up.

Why I like it: The critical and cultural response to the reboot have been mixed, as is expected. Some of the plotlines are cringe — see: Miranda’s son Brady’s robust sex life. Or Carrie’s new job as the “cis White woman” on a podcast. Or the absence of the iconic Samantha, who was such an integral character on the show.

Is “And Just Like That ...” great television? Not necessarily. But I would argue that the first iteration of the show, as beloved as it was, wasn’t necessarily “great” television either.

The writing could be corny; the plotlines could be clunky. There was little to no diversity. But the characters were captivating enough that the original show surpassed those criticisms. And the focus on female friendship — which can sometimes be dismissed in media — felt refreshing. It was an absolute force, and for those die-hard fans of the original like me, this reboot scratches that itch.

Twenty years later, Carrie, Miranda and Charlotte are still best friends living their lives together in the big city. The message is clear: Men may come and go, but some friendships can last forever.

“And Just Like That ...” is now streaming on HBO Max. New episodes are released every Thursday. jennifer.ianni@sduniontribune.com

E12

THE SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE

SUNDAY • JANUARY 2, 2022

Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Chance the Rapper, Alessia Cara and Josh Groban competing.

BEST B ETS Sunday “The Equalizer”: CBS, 8 p.m.

Robyn (Queen Latifah), defender of the defenseless, and her sniper pal, Mel (Liza Lapira), help reunite a mother and son separated at the border. With the help of CIA liaison Bishop (Chris Noth), they also try to free Mel’s hacker hubby Harry (Adam Goldberg) from jail.

Dirty Jobs: Discovery Channel, 8 p.m. Season premiere.

Host Mike Rowe rolls up his sleeves again for the return of his series that finds him celebrating the next generation of hardworking men and women who have made civilized life possible. The new season allows Rowe to come back for another chance to take on jobs he didn’t get to do before, including the most grueling one of all. In tonight’s premiere, Rowe joins the workers responsible for building America’s infrastructure and finds out what it takes to build complex and vital structures like bridges and highways.

“NCIS: Los Angeles”: CBS, 9 p.m. The team investigates what looks like the suicide of a Navy Intelligence Officer. And Deeks (Eric Christian Olsen) plans to redo the backyard without consulting his wife, Kensi (Daniela Ruah). No, dude.

“Carole King & James Taylor: Just Call Out My Name”: CNN, 9 p.m. “You’ve Got a Friend” is more than an anthem for Carole King — who wrote, recorded and won a Song of the Year Grammy for it — and James Taylor, for whom it was a No. 1 hit. The song also defines their longtime mutual admiration and support for each other, manifested in 2010’s Troubadour Reunion world tour, the centerpiece of director Frank Marshall’s captivating concert doc. “You and I probably just have the same musical DNA,” says Taylor, who first urged King to

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“The Cleaning Lady”: Fox, 9 p.m. Monday New series. Thony (Élodie Yung) is a whip-smart Cambodian doctor who struggles to make ends meet as an undocumented worker after coming to the U.S. from the Philippines in search of medical treatment for her ailing son. After witnessing a murder, Thony cleans the crime scene to stay alive and thus begins living a double life, cleaning for a crime syndicate while doing whatever she can to save her son.

sing her songs in public in 1969 at L.A.’s famed Troubadour club, where she played in his band. Reflecting on the arena tour, which often feels like two greatest-hits concerts on one turntable stage, King notes, “We do it for each other, but what they’re seeing is us having a great time together.”

Happily, we get a ringside seat as they trade off signature songs, including one uninterrupted 35-minute stretch.

Other documentaries may shed more light on these artists’ lives, but none will offer as much pure musical satisfaction in showing how they played.

“S.W.A.T.”: CBS, 10 p.m. An off-duty private security detail goes sideways for Deacon (Jay Harrington) and Chris (Lina Esco) when a cartel tries to kidnap their VIP client. They fight for their lives in a desert ghost town.

Monday “The Bachelor”: ABC, 8 p.m.

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Season premiere. Clayton Echard will step into the role of the Bachelor for the show’s upcoming 26th season, kicking off the series’ landmark 20th year. Clayton was first introduced to audiences on the past season of “The Bachelorette.” He is a puppy-loving goofball with a heart of gold (and surprisingly good dance moves) who is ready to find the love of his life.

“9-1-1: Lone Star”: Fox, 8 p.m. Season premiere. Season 3 of the hit action drama finds the 126 shut down and its crew of first responders dispersed throughout Austin. When a massive arctic blast and ice storm hit Texas and cause widespread chaos, firefighter Owen Strand (Rob Lowe) and paramedic Tommy Vega (Gina Torres) try to reunite their cohorts in an effort to save the city.

“The ’80s: Top Ten”: Nat Geo, 9 p.m. Season finale. Season 1 of host Rob Lowe’s Top 10 countdown series related to

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various 1980s subjects concludes with two back-to-back hourlong installments tonight.

First, in “Gadgets,” Lowe explores the 10 best gadgets of the decade, including iconic inventions like Apple’s Macintosh, Sony’s Walkman, Nintendo’s Game Boy, the mobile phone and the camcorder, and how they shaped the trajectory of the modern world. Then, in “Toys,” Lowe counts down the top 10 toys of the ’80s, revealing the surprising origin stories behind He-Man, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Cabbage Patch Kids and more.

“That’s My Jam”: NBC, 9 p.m.

New series. Jimmy Fallon hosts this hourlong variety game show featuring two teams of two celebrities going against each other for the charity of their choice in a series of music, dance and trivia-based games. The series moves into its regular time slot beginning tonight following its sneak preview near the end of last year. Tonight’s new episode features celebrity guests

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FOOD

“Ordinary Joe”: NBC, 10 p.m.

New episodes. The hit freshman drama returns with new episodes to close out its first season ahead of NBC’s Winter Olympics coverage in early February. In tonight’s new episode, “Snow Globe,” when Gwen’s (Anne Ramsay) school chorus honors her with a tribute concert, she reconnects with an old flame; Cop Joe (James Wolk) and Amy (Natalie Martinez) push each other to confront some hard truths; Music Joe’s (Wolk) world is rocked when Amy discloses a big secret; and Nurse Joe (Wolk) and Jenny (Elizabeth Lail) readjust to being long distance after spending the holidays as a family.

Tuesday “Judge Steve Harvey”: ABC, 8 p.m. New series. Steve Harvey serves as the judge, jury and star of this one-hour unscripted courtroom comedy series. Real-life people with real-life conflicts will present their cases in his courtroom, ranging from family disputes, unpaid bets, sour friendships and everything in between.

With the help of Nancy, his trusted bailiff by trade, Steve plays by his own rules, basing his courtroom on his own life experiences and some good old common sense.

“Gordon Ramsay’s Road Trip”: Fox, 8 p.m. Opa! Chef Gordon Ramsay and pals Gino D’Acampo and Fred Sirieix take a trip through Greece to eat, drink and laugh all the way from the ancient ruins of Athens to the party island of Mykonos.

“Grand Crew”: NBC, 8:30 p.m. New series. This new comedy that previewed last month begins in its regular time slot starting tonight. It comes from “Brooklyn NineNine’s” Phil Augusta Jackson and Dan Goor, and follows a group of young professionals trying to navigate the ups and downs of life and love in Los Angeles who always find time to gather at their favorite bar to “wine down” and unpack it all. In the new episode “Wine & Fire,” the crew spends the night at Wyatt (Justin Cunningham) and Kristen’s (Maya Lynne Robinson) house after being displaced by a local wildfire.

“Abbott Elementary”: ABC, 9 p.m. New series. In the timeslot premiere of this workplace comedy, a group of dedicated, passionate teachers — and a slightly tone-deaf principal — are brought together in a Philadelphia public school where, despite the odds stacked against them, they are determined to help their students succeed in life. Though these incredible educators may be outnumbered and underfunded, they love what they do — even if they don’t love the school district’s lessthan-stellar attitude toward educating children.

Wednesday “The Amazing Race”: CBS, 8 p.m. Season premiere. The 33rd season kicks off with a special two-hour premiere tonight, then moves to its regular time period an hour later next week. Familiar faces this season include “Love Island” couple Ray Gantt and Caro Viehweg, Internet personalities Kim and Penn Holderness, and Anthony Sadler and Spencer Stone, who were involved with thwarting a terrorist attack on a train in 2015.

“I Can See Your Voice”: Fox, 8 p.m. Season premiere. The musical guessing game returns for Season 2. Ken Jeong is back as host, along with celebrity detectives Cheryl Hines and Adrienne BailonHoughton. New this season, contestants are given one chance to use the Golden Mic, which grants them advice from one mystery celebrity.

“The Wonder Years”: ABC, 8:30 p.m. Bill and Lillian decide to join high society club Lads & Ladies as a way to introduce Kim and Dean to positive influences in the community. Bill, Kim and Dean fit right in, but things take a turn when Lillian is treated differently for being a working mom.

“The Conners”: ABC, 9 p.m.

Thinking it’s Ben’s day off, Darlene brings Nick to the hardware store, only to run smack into Ben, who invites Nick to join him at The Lunch Box to watch a Bears game.

Meanwhile, Dan tries to spruce up the bedroom while Louise is out on the road and Jackie meets Logan’s mom.

“Worst Cooks in America”: Food Network, 9 p.m. Season premiere. Chef Anne Burrell is joined for the first time by chef Cliff Crooks to lead the newest batch of 12 culinary nightmares through a rigorous boot camp in their quest to become kitchen masters.

Thursday “Women of the Movement”: ABC, 8 p.m. New series. Tonywinning actress Adrienne Warren portrays Mamie TillMobley in this six-episode historical drama. The limited series chronicles the true story of how, in 1955, Mamie risked her life to find justice after her son Emmett (Cedric Joe) was brutally murdered in the Jim Crow South. Unwilling to let Emmett’s murder disappear from the headlines, Mamie chose to bear her pain on the world’s stage, emerging as an activist for justice and igniting the civil rights movement as we know it today. The series will continue over the next two Thursdays.

“BattleBots”: Discovery Channel, 8 p.m. Season Premiere. The robot-fighting competition is back, with more than 60 teams traveling to Las Vegas for a chance to take home the Giant Nut prize.

Each night, a vicious lineup of bots battle for their lives in the BattleBox, but only the toughest will see the next round.

New Zealand’s End Game currently has the trophy, but teams from the United States are determined to bring it back home. Will they succeed, or will the trophy find a new home in Europe, Asia or South America?

“Flip or Flop”: HGTV, 9 p.m.

Tarek El Moussa and Christina Haack find a house in Anaheim, with some strange additions that could cause problems down the line. They team up with contractor Izzy Battres to make the most of this house without blowing their budget.

“The Lost Kitchen”: Magnolia Network, 9 p.m. New series.

This series follows Erin French and her restaurant, The Lost Kitchen, in Freedom, Maine, which attracts travelers from all over the world.

Friday “Undercover Boss”: CBS, 8 p.m. Season premiere. “Undercover Boss” is back for its nine-episode 11th season tonight with “College HUNKS,” in which co-founders Omar Soliman and Nick Friedman go incognito on the front lines of their College HUNKS Hauling Junk & Moving business.

“RuPaul’s Drag Race”: VH1, 8 p.m. Season premiere. The most-awarded reality competition show in the history of the Emmys returns with a two-part premiere and ushers in 14 new talented queens to compete for the title of “America’s Next Drag Superstar” and a cash prize of $100,000.

Saturday “The Johnnyswim Show”: Magnolia Network, 7 p.m.

New series. Husband-and-wife musicians Amanda Sudano and Abner Ramirez, who comprise the folk/soul/blues/ pop duo Johnnyswim, are the subjects of this series that follows them as they adjust to life and raising their kids at home after years of doing so aboard a tour bus before the COVID-19 pandemic canceled their touring.

“Wedding Veil 1: Something Old”: Hallmark Channel, 8 p.m. Original film. Tonight is the first installment of an enchanting new trilogy starring three of Hallmark’s most beloved leading ladies as longtime college friends who discover a mysterious, antique veil fabled to unite its bearer with her true love. After discovering a long-lost painting, museum curator Avery and successful new board member Peter investigate the artwork’s origins as they plan a charity fundraiser to unveil its restoration. Stars Lacey Chabert, Kevin McGarry, Autumn Reeser and Alison Sweeney.

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SUNDAY • JANUARY 2, 2022

TRAVEL

ANNA MAZUREK PHOTOS FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

Domes Beach, named after a defunct, dome-shaped nuclear facility that dominates the skyline, is a popular surfing spot in Rincón, on Puerto Rico’s west coast.

Beach-hopping in Puerto Rico Island’s less-crowded but historically significant west coast serves as a tropical setting for 10 days of hiking, sightseeing

BY ANNA MAZUREK

M

y rental car shook violently as it slowly crept down the bumpy dirt road along the southwestern tip of Puerto Rico. When the road ended, I set out on foot up a dirt path that led to the gray-and-white Los Morrillos lighthouse, built on the edge of a cliff in 1882. The windows and doorways were the same shade of turquoise as the water crashing into the rust-red sandstone cliffs below.

The lighthouse was my first stop along Puerto Rico’s west coast in early November. After spending a few days of my first trip to the island exploring Old San Juan and nearby tourist sites, I fled the cruise-ship crowds and congested highways for the remote west coast’s narrow two-lane roads and secluded beaches. My goal was to explore this lesscrowded part of the island, known for surfing, hilly terrain and an endless surplus of sunny, 80-degree days. Learning to surf was another priority, but rough seas with waves too big for my novice skill level crushed those plans.

Instead of a surfing trip, this would become a relaxing 10-day beach and hiking trip.

From the eastern side of the lighthouse, I could see stretched out below a pristine, crescentshaped beach that belonged in a

Crash Boat Beach in Aguadilla has a party beach vibe.

Jimmy Buffett song. I walked across the undeveloped, tree-lined beach and followed a trail up another set of cliffs to photograph the lighthouse from across the bay. Then, I couldn’t resist a dip in the water to cool off. Even though a dozen people were on the beach, it still felt isolated. It was only Day 1, and I had already found my favorite beach in western Puerto Rico: La Playuela.

After another bone-rattling drive, I stopped at the Cabo Rojo Salt Flats and walked along the catwalks between reddish-pink

salt ponds. The 1,249-acre area was added to the Cabo Rojo National Wildlife Refuge in 1999 and includes trails for biking and hiking around the two main lagoons, Fraternidad and Candelaria. A private operator harvests the salt, which is left behind when the water evaporates from exposure to the sun, wind and heat.

The lagoons are home to a variety of microorganisms, including Dunaliella salina, an alga responsible for the red hue.

“Although it is a green alga, it creates a large amount of carot-

enoids (beta-carotene) to survive and protect themselves against the intense light,” Ana Roman, deputy project leader at the Caribbean Islands National Wildlife Refuge Complex, said in an email.

“High concentrations of carotenoids (red-orange pigment) are what creates the pink color effect in the salt flat ponds.”

This alga is a critical food source for brine shrimp and other salt-tolerant species, which attract migratory shorebirds. The salt flats, with their prevalence of food, are one of the most impor-

tant stopover points for these birds in the entire Caribbean.

Cabo Rojo’s lucrative salt-collection business has resulted in several historical conflicts, according to Roman. There have been numerous ownership and exploitation issues involving not only the Spanish, who colonized the island after the arrival of Christopher Columbus in 1493, but also the British and Dutch, among others.

In 1769, a bloody fight broke out between local communities over land ownership of the salt flats, leading the area to be named El Combate, which translates to “the battle.”

For another history lesson, I visited the sleepy town of San Germán, the second-oldest city on the island, after San Juan, known for its well-preserved colonial Creole architecture. Founded on the coast in 1511, it was moved inland to avoid plundering pirates in 1573 and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The centerpiece is the 1692 Iglesia de Porta Coeli, one of the oldest church structures in the Americas, which was originally used as a monastery chapel but now houses a small museum.

After a morning of exploring, I drove about 13 miles to Joyuda, a three-mile strip of seaside seafood restaurants known as the Gourmet Golden Mile, for lunch. I snagged a table on the shaded waterfront patio at Náutica by Poly’s and ordered a delicious conch mofongo relleno, fried mashed plantains stuffed with conch and served in a tomatobased sauce. By the time I finished my meal, there wasn’t an SEE HOPPING • E14

REVIEW SITES HAVE CHANGED WITH THE PANDEMIC TIMES Google

COVID safety steps, restrictions are now prioritized essentials

BY HANNAH SAMPSON In pre-pandemic times, travelers turned to review sites to discover where they could find the best brunch, the comfiest hotel beds or the cutest locally made tchotchkes.

These days, the questions are a little more serious. Is proof of vaccination required to drink a beer at this bar?

Will that hotel lobby be arranged for social distancing?

Are masks required indoors in that city?

Popular sites for reviews, guidance and travel book-

GETTY IMAGES

ing have adapted, adding COVID-19 details so users can make decisions based on safety measures as well as feedback from fellow customers.

Here’s how four sites — Google, Tripadvisor, Yelp and Expedia — have changed, continuing into the present day as the pandemic evolves.

When searching for flights and hotels on the search engine, Google will include information about advisories or restrictions about the destination.

Results will also show the percentage of flights operating and the hotels that have availability.

As of earlier this year, travel advisories that appear during the search process also include immunization requirements for a destination and allow users to opt in for updates if that travel guidance changes.

In Google Maps, in addition to getting directions and finding businesses in an area, a “COVID layer” tool provides information about how COVID-19 cases are

trending in the area. Safety precautions in place at local businesses are also provided, as well as coronavirus-related alerts for driving and taking public transportation.

Tripadvisor

The company’s “Travel Safe” tools launched in June 2020 to allow hotel and restaurant owners to share their safety measures, including requirements on mask-wearing and social distancing.

Consumers can use a search filter to find businesses that include those precautions.

“As travel restrictions ease, hospitality businesses must recognize the changing expectations from con-

sumers around safety and cleanliness,” chief commercial officer Kanika Soni said in a statement in 2020.

“That is why Travel Safe will be such a vital tool. It will provide consumers with the information and reassurance they need when they travel, while allowing businesses to build trust by highlighting the concrete steps they are taking to keep their customers safe.”

New this year, businesses can also include whether their employees are fully vaccinated, if proof of vaccination is required for guests and if masks are required for customers who are not fully vaccinated.

The company will also take down reviews if users SEE REVIEWS • E14

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THE SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE

SUNDAY • JANUARY 2, 2022

If you go WHERE TO STAY Combate Beach Resort: Carretera 3301 Km 2.7 Interior, Cabo Rojo; (787) 2542358; combatebeach.com This expansive beach resort offers a variety of spotless rooms that sleep one to six people. Amenities include private beach access, pools, a sand volleyball court and a half basketball court. Kayak and bike rentals available for a fee. If you stay for three nights, the fourth one is free with their yearlong promotion. Rooms from about $109 per night.

WHERE TO EAT Rincón Beer Co.: 15 Calle Muñoz Rivera, Rincón; (787) 280-8866; rinconbeercompany.com Located in a colorful town square, this brewery serves up delicious bites, such as burgers and fish tacos, as well as tasty craft brews.

Open Tuesday to Saturday, noon to 8 p.m. Bar food from about $9, beers from $5.

Jack’s Shack: Rt. 4413 Km 0.5 Bo Puntas, Rincón (in front of Pools Beach); (939) 274-8066; facebook.com/ jacksshackpr The fish tacos from this food truck across from Pool’s Beach are some of the best in town. The owners focus on fresh, local ingredients. Open daily 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Food about $9 to $12.

ANNA MAZUREK PHOTOS FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

The author began her tour of Puerto Rico’s west coast at the picturesque Los Morrillos lighthouse.

The go-to brunch spot in Rincón is a villa on a hilltop that serves up breakfast favorites and mimosas with fresh-squeezed juice. Reservations recommended. Open 8:30 a.m. to noon Tuesday to Friday and 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Saturday and Sunday.

Entrees from $10.50.

HOPPING • Solitude can be easy to find FROM E13 empty seat on the patio, and the hum of both English and Spanish conversations filled the air.

The ocean got rougher as I headed north to Rincón, where the Caribbean Sea meets the Atlantic.

The surfing haven covers about eight miles of coastline and skyrocketed to fame after hosting the 1968 World Surfing Championships, which earned it a mention in a Beach Boys song.

Because winter is peak surfing season, I watched experienced surfers ride large waves at Domes Beach, named after a defunct, dome-shaped nuclear facility that dominates the skyline. By 8 a.m., the parking lot was already overflowing, and there were 27 surfers in the water. Like many of Rincón’s beaches, Domes is a small, secluded, palmtree-lined strip of golden sand stretched between cliffs and rocky outcroppings. One of the few exceptions is the seemingly endless Sandy Beach, which is bordered by rows of hotels and restaurants.

Another highlight was the Tres Palmas Marine Reserve, home to the endangered reef-building elkhorn coral, as well as colorful marine life, including parrotfish and blue tangs. The reserve encompasses three beaches and is an excellent snorkeling spot during the summer, when the water is calmer. The most photogenic of the three beaches is Steps, known for a mysterious set of concrete stairs sitting at the edge of the beach.

The beaches weren’t the only thing worth visiting in Rincón; the craft beer at Rincón Beer Co., fish tacos at Jack’s Shack and Sunday brunch at the English Rose were also pluses.

Despite congested parking lots, the Rincón beaches never felt crowded. That changed when I drove about 14 miles north to Aguadilla’s Crash Boat Beach, famous for a uniquely shaped blue pier once used to dock rescue boats that were sent out to save downed pilots

from the nearby U.S. air base. Food stalls filled the parking lot, and speakers were blaring. This was the party beach packed with locals and a few tourists.

The farther north I went, the rougher the water got; a riptide warning kept me out of the ocean for the rest of my trip. I decided to hike from Surfer’s Beach to Survival Beach, a sliver of shoreline accessible only by foot. I started my hike at the Surfer’s Beach parking lot and meandered through the tropical forest along a makeshift trail that spiderwebbed in all directions, staying on the path that hugged the coast. I shared the trail with a retired New England couple who moved to the island to perpetually escape winter.

Lizards scurried into the bushes as I made my way to a section of beach filled with giant rock formations and caves reminiscent of a scene from “The Goonies.” Then I entered the forest again and climbed upward along a tree-root-lined path until I caught a bird’s-eye view of the windswept sands of Survival Beach. Despite trying numerous trails, the tide prevented me from reaching it. Regardless, these beachside trails and secluded coves became one of my favorite aspects of Puerto Rico.

After the hike, I treated myself to the mango salad at Ola Lola’s Tiki Bar & Grille, a mint-green, openair eatery on a narrow, tree-shaded road that became my regular lunch spot. It was the exact kind of bar my 20-year-old self dreamed of opening on a tropical island.

On my last morning in Puerto Rico, I went for an hourlong sunrise walk on the beach in Isabela, on the northwest coast. Aside from a lone jogger’s, my footprints were the only ones in the sand as I walked along the water’s edge, past towering hotels that soon faded into trees. The gently sloping shore was one of the most expansive beaches I had visited, wider than many roads. Every day of my west coast road trip was

REVIEWS • Travelers want info on safety measures FROM E13 target businesses for abiding by local vaccination or mask rules.

Expedia

The booking site’s “COVID-19 Travel Advisor” lets travelers enter the location they are departing from and where they want to go, as well as their vaccination status, to find out the

restrictions and advisories relevant to their trip.

The site also includes a hub with checklists, guidelines and what to expect during all types of trips — as well as ways to change or cancel bookings or track a refund.

Expedia says thousands of hotels have submitted information on their cleaning and safety pro-

The English Rose (La Rosa Inglesa): 413 Carretera Bo, Rincón; (787) 823-4032; theenglishroserincon.com/eat

Ola Lola’s Tiki Bar & Grille: 332 Barrio Bajuras, Isabela; (715) 303-9938; olalolaspr.com This mint-green, open-air tiki bar is a great place to grab a drink or a bite after a long day at the beach. Reservations recommended. Open 2 to 9 p.m.; closed Wednesday and Sunday. Cash or digital payment only. Entrees from $9, cocktails from $6.

Náutica by Poly’s: 4 PR-102, Cabo Rojo; (787) 381-7659; facebook.com/Rest.nautica

The beautiful Survival Beach is only accessible by foot.

Located on Puerto Rico’s Gourmet Golden Mile in Joyuda, this waterfront restaurant serves up mouthwatering seafood dishes and local favorites. Open 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sunday, Monday, Wednesday and Thursday and until 11 p.m. Friday and Saturday; closed Tuesday.

Entrees from $14.

WHAT TO DO Lighthouse of Los Morrillos: 301 PR Llanos Costa, Cabo Rojo; (787) 851-1025; caborojopr.net/ faromorrillos.htm

The conch mofongo relleno from Náutica by Poly’s in Joyuda, a three-mile strip of seaside seafood restaurants known as the Gourmet Golden Mile.

A bumpy dirt road leads to a parking lot that’s a short walk to the historical lighthouse, which is closed for remodeling. Also accessible by foot.

Road open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily, but hours can vary unexpectedly. Free.

spent at a different beach, and the island’s large size — about 3,500 square miles — made it easier to escape crowds and find solitude than the smaller Caribbean islands I’ve visited, such as Saint Martin, Anguilla and Saint Barthélemy.

After my walk, I reluctantly climbed in my rental car and drove to the airport listening to Jimmy Buffett.

As a beach lover who loathes cold weather, I could envision many more winter trips to the island’s laid-back west coast.

The highlights of this scenic wildlife refuge are the Cabo Rojo Salt Flats and hiking and biking trails. The main visitors center and the Cabo Rojo Salt Flats interpretive center are closed because of the pandemic; check website for closures. Ungated trails open daily 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. Free.

Mazurek is a freelance writer.

This article appeared in The Washington Post.

MORE INFORMATION Details: discover puertorico.com

cedures, as well as details about what amenities or services might have changed because of the pandemic. People looking for hotels can use a filter to find those that list “enhanced cleaning” processes.

When searching for flights, users can also compare cleaning and safety practices for specific flights and airlines.

Yelp

On Yelp pages, users can look under the “amenities and more” or “more info” sections to find safety mea-

Cabo Rojo National Wildlife Refuge: Rd. 301 Km. 5.1 Bo. Corozo, Boquerón; (787) 851-7258; fws.gov/refuge/ cabo_rojo

The water of the Cabo Rojo Salt Flats has a reddish hue because of an alga called Dunaliella salina.

sures such as mask requirements or vaccine mandates for staff or customers. Customers can also filter their searches by business attributes such as proof of vaccination requirement and fully vaccinated staff. More than 70,000 businesses have added those attributes to their Yelp pages in the United States and Canada.

People who want to eat out — but not necessarily in a tightly packed indoor setting — can also check to see if restaurants have covered or heated seating outdoors, private dining, or

takeout. The Yelp Waitlist option allows people to join a virtual list and wait remotely with real-time updates on when their table will be ready.

“Throughout the pandemic, Yelp has quickly pivoted to give business owners a platform to help communicate how they’re operating and, in turn, give consumers the information they need to discover great local businesses,” the company’s trend expert, Tara Lewis, said in a statement.

Some companies that require proof of vaccination

have been subject to backlash from users, or “review bombing,” the Wall Street Journal reported.

Yelp is monitoring the pages of businesses that include vaccine-related attributes and will alert unusual activity and remove reviews that violate its policies.

So far this year, the company has placed 200 alerts related to coronavirus precautions and removed more than 8,300 reviews.

Sampson writes for The Washington Post.