Helly Nahmad's sentence

Painting by 7th grader combining Felix the cat with Warhol's Marilyn Monroe. Borrowed from this art teacher-help site

Helly Nahmad is a 35 year old art dealer in NYC. He comes from what has been billed as the wealthiest family in Monaco, learning the art business from his father David, who regularly bids up prices at Christies and Sotheby's. The big auction houses love this uber-rich family, even if it does periodically cause the feds to look into price-fixing.

Nahmad, pictured with Victoria's Secret model Miranda Kerr. Photo from The Daily Mail

Today Nahmad faces charges of racketeering, gambling, money laundering, and conspiracy all tied to a sports-betting enterprise and the Russian mob. As I read about his fraudulent selling/trading in high-stakes art, I was reminded of the recent Pulitzer Prize winner, The Goldfinch, by Donna Tartt, in which a painting is used as gang-land currency. The mobsters in that book do not all get off the hook easily.

Prosecutors with the US attorney's office recommend a year to 18 months for playboy Nahmad, who is a first-time offender, but a really big one. Here's the deal that Nahmad's attorneys are proposing today:

1. No prison.
2. Nahmad will instead put 100K per year towards a program in a Bronx homeless shelter to bring kids to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. *

*Nahmad professes to be qualified for this project by saying in a letter to the judge: " I do not have a great education in other subjects, but I really do know a lot about art, and I think I could really teach young people in a good way and hopefully introduce them to a world they might otherwise never visit."

Okay, deals are cut all the time between wealthy offenders and the court. I really wonder what is right, though. This feels somehow wrong. Introducing kids to art is praise-worthy, but what exactly is this "world they might never visit?" Nahmad's art world is a dirty place, one in which artists aren't rewarded really at all. Nahmad's family has feathered its own nest in that world for decades, and I wouldn't want a child of mine learning from him no matter how desperately homeless I might be.

Photo from Cascadia Courier

Nahmad may well be successful in his plea to avoid jail today. If so, I hope he is required to personally put in time with whole big crowds of rowdy 13 year olds in a genteel museum setting, every day for hours. It takes a trained professional to do this well, and it has to be one who loves kids. Helly, is that you? Be careful what you wish for.

Update: The judge didn't buy it and Nahmad goes to jail for a year and a day.

Ringing o' the bell

 Here's a salute to the group at Friday My Town Shoot-Out, and especially to my first blogging friend Barry, who died almost 4 years ago.

 

Some words of explanation written by Ginger V:

We, the FSO Gang, got started in the early part of 2009 and one of the original 10 or so, was Barry of An Explorer's View.  He quickly became a favorite within our group plus 600 odd followers out in BlogWorld.  Almost from the beginning, we knew he had been diagnosed with a rare throat cancer and was battling for his life.  His writing brought us in and made us care about his struggle.  We got to know his wife Linda, and his special dog, Lindsey.  The battle became very personal to us all.

During a post about one of his visits for chemo, he talked about the bell that stood outside of the hospital that was rung by patients in celebration of a completion of another round of Chemo.  The idea flew around the globe, at 2 O'clock his local time, he would ring the bell and we, wherever we were, within our own time zone, we would ring a bell with him. 

This week the participants at FSO are posting videos and pics of local bells. The bell I show you here is one I have known since I was a small child. My mother would send me out to ring this (terrifically heavy) bell at mealtimes, calling my dad and brothers in from the field. BONG BONG BONG! I think it was forged in the nearby town of Saukville, Wisconsin, and it was super loud. It still stands in my mother's back yard, quiet now, except for the twittering of birds at its feeder.

Cephalopod Coffeehouse book review: Americanah

Americanah, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was somewhere on the "to read" list when my daughter  suggested that I pretend to look at it like a screenwriter might. So, boom, just like that I decided to read it because I'll never ever have another chance for input on a film, even if it's an imaginary film. Fun! As I made my way through this tale of love, race, and adopted countries, I constantly pictured it as a movie. What could be left out? What has to stay? It turns out to be an interesting reader's strategy.

The story revolves around a Nigerian couple, friends from school, who find themselves worlds apart when Ifemelu goes to college in the US and Obinze ends up illegally in England. While she struggles but thrives in Princeton, he is arrested and deported as an undocumented alien in the UK. Eventually Ifemelu also returns to Nigeria to find Obinze dutifully married and caught up in lucrative real estate deals. The book covers three nations and a decade of political change, including the election of America's first black president. It describes the difference between "African Americans" and "American Africans," it examines bi-racial couples, liberal hypocrisy, and the uneasy relationship between non-whites. It looks critically at the country Nigeria has become. It is a really good read.

Here are points/opinions that a screenwriter might consider:

1. Ifem is the main character, but The Zed's story is stunning too. There are two parallel stories, but Obinze's was more weakly portrayed in the book & would have to be beefed up in a film.

2. I like the blog entries and think it gives structure. I pictured these like similar scenes in BBC's latest Sherlock series (you now what I'm talkin' about: Benedict Cumberbatch's version of course). But sometimes those entries tend to preachiness so I guess you'd want to be careful. 

3. Dike! (Ifem's charming nephew who grows up in the US) I don't think the film should show him going to Nigeria. That really fell flat in the book & would be worse in the movie. 

4. This is a story about relationships between couples, and between countries both native and adopted. The scenes in the hairdressers' shops were very telling & gave unity to the story. 

5. Author Adichie spared no one. Not the liberals who were drenched in cringe-worthy self-admiration, and also had (mostly) bratty kids with no manners. Not the academics, who were pretentious and blind. Not African Americans, whose response to Africans was unsupportive. Not the relatives, whose expectations were stifling. Not other Africans, who were (mostly) hustling to make it on their own. Not the blue collar Americans, who could not see Ifem as belonging to a class above them. All were imperfect. 

6. The writing is not without humor. Never forget the light touch, the line that makes you smile.

7. Ifemelu and Obinze do the best that they can to stay afloat in a shifting and treacherous world. In the end they're still doing their best to resolve matters of love and commitment, even though their solution is also, inevitably, imperfect but right.

8.When one finishes a thought-provoking book it provokes thoughts, like it should. So, one final thought is:  the book transcends race. It is also about just...you know...people?  I would keep that in mind if I were writing a screenplay. I would include Shan, Blaine's sister, if you want to transcend race. Shan's self-concern is non-race-specific. She comes and goes in the story, but she's recognizable across-culture.

Will I imagine every book I read from now on as a movie? To some extent, yes. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad one.
 
Up for more book reviews? Visit The Armchair Squid to read or participate.

Travel

I just returned from a trip to Ithaca, NY, and it was a good one.  Even so, embarking on a cross-country journey always involves the nuisance of pet-care, house-watching, mail-holding plus the  mixture of dread and excitement for the actual travel. 

Airports aren't relaxing places. They overflow with stressed-out people making trips that have nothing to do with pleasure or vacation, travelers rushing to go places they would rather not be. However I do appreciate the effort made by architects to improve the atmosphere. Detroit's hub is a good example, filled with natural light,with soaring ceilings that look like wings, and a bright red tram that speeds silently above. Very nice.

Detroit airport has a spectacular light-and-sound show running continuously as you change concourses. I love this thing.

"Waves In, Waves Out" is an all-textile installation at the Portland airport, by Japanese artist Sayuri Sasaki Hemann. It is dedicated to all people whose lives were changed by the earthquake/tsunami in 2011.

I also love the changing art displays at most airports. Next time you travel you should take a moment to look; it will improve your experience.



So if you're traveling, take a deep breath and try to enjoy it, eh? Pretend you just got a free ticket to an art museum from which you will emerge in a different time and place entirely. Bon voyage.

Weekend wisdom from Eddy

 I am in upstate New York this week, but Eddy has something rather nice to pass along:

To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring - it was peace.

~Milan Kundera, author of The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Random thoughts

This pheasant at a local game farm looked strangely familiar, and I just figured out why.

A tree shaped like T. Rex! I sometimes park in front of this when I go to classes.

Did you know that the word "does" is spelled the same as the word "does?" And also "doughs" sounds like "does" and "duhs" sounds like "does?" The other door just said "bucks" which did not result in such a long and confusing train of thought.

Weekend wisdom from Eddy

Life is a series of experiences, each one of which makes us bigger even though sometimes it is hard to realize this. For the world was built to develop character, and we must learn that the setbacks and griefs which we endure help us in our marching forward.
--Henry Ford

Life is a series of experiences, each one of which makes us bigger, even though sometimes it is hard to realize this. For the world was built to develop character, and we must learn that the setbacks and grieves which we endure help us in our marching onward.
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/character_2.html#oPrxdh8PcQ1405xq.99

Life is a series of experiences, each one of which makes us bigger, even though sometimes it is hard to realize this. For the world was built to develop character, and we must learn that the setbacks and grieves which we endure help us in our marching onward.
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/character_2.html#oPrxdh8PcQ1405xq.99

новорожденных Kerry Bliss

Usually you have to be a zillionaire to get a hospital wing, a football stadium, or a library named after you. If you aren't fabulously wealthy you have to wait until you die, and then maybe you get a city park, or perhaps a street done up in your name, but only if you've been very very good.

It's a rose. Not many peonies here in Oregon.

But let's say you have a choice in the matter. I wouldn't mind a flower, maybe a peony, white with pink edges. A bridge would be great, but it would have to be extremely small, because little bridges are the best, and also because you have to be quite important to get a big bridge in your name.  Let's say the military needs a name for something; like, you know, they name their weapons after people...Howitzers and Sherman tanks and so forth. They could name a parachute after me and I would be happy. Not a gun though.

A small room in a big library would be nice, but the single window would have to have panes in it, and a cushioned window seat for lounging.

Anyway. Those are all daydreams. Shockingly, my son tells me that something has actually been named after me:

Yeah. A freakin' Russian doll-thing. Or whatever that is it's wearing. See for yourself:

http://www.dostavka.ru/Kerry-BLISS-id_6510553

I'm the mom. I should have been googling his name, the youngest son. Looking him up on Google images, seeing what he's up to. Instead he was googling my name, ostensibly giving his girlfriend a preview before she has to meet me in two weeks. So, I wonder what she thought.

Конверт для новорожденных Kerry Bliss - отзывы

I bet she really really can't wait to meet me now.

I do get 4 1/2 stars on a Russian "Target" website though. Not bad. You better google yourself and see how you're doing.