Entertainment

Running- More important than smoking

Rick Retzman would be the perfect spokesman for the Great American Smokeout, an annual event sponsored by the American Cancer Society.

A former smoker turned marathon runner, the 49-year-old Salem resident never lets an opportunity pass to encourage someone else to kick the habit.

Retzman smoked for three decades and tried to quit many times. Nineteen months ago, fueled by a passion for running, he finally succeeded. Since then, he has participated in two marathons and an ultramarathon.

He welcomed the chance to tell his story in advance of the 30th anniversary of the Great American Smokeout, which is Thursday, the day when millions of Americans are urged to smoke less or not at all.

"It was April 4, 2005. I went to San Diego for some training and was going to be there six days and figured the change of routine would help. Smoking was starting to interfere with my running.

I decided that would be a good time to just quit. I left my cigarettes in the garbage on the way into the airplane and haven't smoked since. I can't say I haven't wanted one and even dreamed about one," he explained how he quitted from smoking.

By then he had passsed over over 30 years with litte over a pack a day. He had used various types of brands. He also remembered his first day of smoking. "I was in high school, trying to be cool. I wanted to blow a smoke ring. By the time I finally could blow a smoke ring, I was addicted. I was in the Army by that time, and who cares at that point? When you're young, you really don't think about your mortality. It was in the early '70s, and it was common. Everybody smoked."

"I used to go over to Bush Park and run up and down the Soap Box Derby track. It's a half-mile round- trip if you go up and back down. When I got to the top, literally, my fingers would be tingling and my toes, and I'd be kind of dizzy. It was kind of scary. I had to just say, 'Are you going to run or are you going to smoke?' I really did like smoking. I had to find something that was more important.

Running had become more important my times and being able to go further and longer. That's what helped me do it." He had taken a number of steps to quit from smoking.

"Hundreds and hundreds of times. I tried hypnosis, and I've actually tried patches probably four different times before. I've tried various pills that you can take those stop-smoking-type pills and none of those were successful," Today he is a happy person and he says that he does not dream about smoking again.

I'm going to be turning 50 next year, and when I quit smoking I thought, 'I've got to replace this, and I've got to have a goal.' I think you can't make your goals too wussy. I thought, 'OK, let's do a 50-mile run on my 50th birthday.'

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Clooney, the 'sexiest man'

Coming off a pivotal year in which he earned three Academy Award nominations and clinched an Oscar for his performance in "Syriana," actor George Clooney was again named People magazine's "Sexiest Man Alive" last week.

The accolade marks the second time Clooney, 45, has topped the magazine's annual list of Hollywood beefcake, having been so honored in 1997. His close friend and co-star Brad Pitt is the only other celebrity twice dubbed People's "sexiest man."

"This one's going to be hard for Brad since he's been 'Sexiest Man Alive' twice," Clooney joked in an interview with People. "He's enjoyed that mantle. I'd say, 'Sexiest Man Alive' to him, and he'd go, 'Two-time.' So that's been taken away."

Cynthia Sanz, a member of the magazine's editorial panel that selects its "sexiest man" honoree, said Clooney was chosen for a combination of factors.

"His big movies came out at the end of last year, he has been active in the campaign to help people in Darfur, obviously he's great looking we just thought he was the total package this year," she told Reuters.

Sanz added that Clooney's status as one of the world's most eligible bachelors helped. "It's a little more fun when the sexiest man alive is available," she said.

Clooney headed to California from his native Kentucky in the early 1980s to work as a chauffeur for his aunt, singer Rosemary Clooney, before making his own way in show business.

He got his big break on TV hospital drama "ER," playing pediatrician Dr.Douglas Ross. After leaving the show, he went on to establish himself as an A-list leading man. Last year, his credentials as a Hollywood heavyweight in front of and behind the camera were cemented by his work in two acclaimed films the McCarthy-era drama "Good Night, and Good Luck," which he directed, co-wrote and acted in, and the political thriller "Syriana."

Besides winning the Academy Award for playing a CIA agent in "Syriana," Clooney earned an Oscar nomination as best director for "Good Night, and Good Luck," becoming the first person nominated for acting and directing in two different films in the same year.

Reuters

Michael Jackson returns to stage

Singer Michael Jackson has appeared on stage for the first time since being acquitted of child abuse charges.

But the pop star disappointed fans by singing just a few lines of We Are The World at the World Music Awards ceremony at London's Earls Court.

The star told reporters it had been a "misunderstanding" that he would sing his hit single Thriller. The 48-year-old also scooped a tribute award for selling over 100 million albums throughout his career.

Beyonce Knowles presented him with the award, saying: "If it wasn't for Michael Jackson, I would never ever have performed." Jackson received a standing ovation as he walked onto the stage.

He told the audience: "I love you. God has answered my prayers.

"Thriller has become the biggest-selling album of all time, with 140 million sold. I love all the fans from the bottom of my heart. I love England."

He then left the stage to boos from the crowd who had still expected him to sing. He had also been booed by fans outside the venue for failing to meet them when he arrived, after they had queued for several hours.

Fans disappointment

The show continued with a performance from Rihanna, but just as Jackson fans were about to give up on seeing their icon perform, he reappeared on stage with a choir of 50 young people.

He sang two choruses of the song Heal the World before he threw his jacket into the crowd.

At the end of the song he spent time shaking hands with people in the front row before leaving the stage. Initially it had been thought he would perform his big hit, Thriller, but instead that was sung by another US star, Chris Brown.

It was not the first disappointment of the evening for Jackson fans, as the star failed to stop and meet the hundreds of supporters who had waited for hours to see him on the red carpet.

Jackson's arrival in the UK has been the subject of intense media coverage, with fans and photographers camped outside his London hotel.The singer has been based in the Middle East since he was acquitted on child abuse charges in 2005.The World Music Awards which present prizes to artists based on international record sales, will be shown on Channel 4 on 23 November.

www.bbc.co.uk

Reading fragments from an incendiary time

Of the hundreds of New York gallery shows this fall, "L.A. Object and David Hammons Body Prints" at Tilton must rank near the top. The show, which closes on Nov. 22, is certainly one of the best I've seen in the city in the past year. Visually it's loaded and nervy, an energy rush. And it's something of an historic event. It cracks open doors, both on an understudied episode in recent American art and on a significant artist.

The artist is of course Mr. Hammons, whose career is one of the most stimulating and influential of the last four decades. Although he is best known for his ephemeral objects and short-term installations, often on themes related to African-American life, his early work took the more concrete form of one-of-a-kind prints based on impressions he made of his own body.

A few of these prints have turned up regularly in museum shows over the years. Most he sold or gave away soon after he produced them in the 1960s and '70s, when he was living in Los Angeles.

Many have rarely, if ever, been exhibited since. Last summer Tilton Gallery's owner, Jack Tilton, went to Los Angeles to track down some of the long-unseen prints. The search had him knocking on doors at the homes of original owners, often in out-of-the-way neighborhoods. One owner would refer him to another until, over a few months, he rounded up the 30 prints now in the gallery. They make a rich and provocative ensemble.

Mr. Tilton's search led him to something else too, namely the contemporary art that formed the context for Mr. Hammons's years in Los Angeles: from 1963, when he arrived from his hometown of Springfield, Ill., to 1974, when he moved to New York City. Examples of this work make up the second half of the Tilton show.

Much of it fits into a movement, sometimes called California Funk, that involves assemblage inspired by, among other things, beat culture, jazz, Dada and Simon Rodia's extravagant found-object monument, "Watts Towers." Although Ed Kienholz and George Herms, both in the Tilton show, were the movement's most visible exponents, African-American artists played a vital role.

A few, like Melvin Edwards and Betye Saar, became national stars. Others, like Ed Bereal, John Outterbridge, Noah Purifoy, Timothy Washington, Daniel LaRue Johnson (who now lives in New York) and the brothers Dale and Alonzo Davis had primarily localized careers but generate a stellar glow in this show.

The form is elaborated through movement in the initial printing, or with the use of multiple impressions. To those basic elements Mr. Hammons added others: silk-screened forms, painting and collage ingredients, including cloth, wallpaper and twine.

Although some prints suggest the influence of Romare Bearden, most have a look entirely their own, a distinctive mix of popular graphics, black vernacular art, performance art and the emotional weight of Goya's prints. Humor, particularly in satirical riffs on ethnic stereotyping, prevents any clear-cut reading.

Yet the simple fact that the imprinted bodies are black bodies, and self-portraits, makes the racial politics volatile and profound. Especially in their performative aspect, the prints point to the increasingly conceptual direction Mr. Hammons would take after moving to New York.

And just as his work went on to inspire artists in several countries, the assemblage movement that had helped form his career - and was by no means confined to Los Angeles - had its own broad influence.

www.nytimes.com

Tango - Passionate dancing

If you like tango shows in one shade - dark and brooding - the Argentine company Estampas Porteas isn't for you. This troupe of five couples, directed by Carolina Soler, takes dancing seriously but also emanates a playful grasp of theater. "Tango Fire," glides along as smoothly as an express train without ever derailing into a pseudo-seduction melodrama.

In the show Ms. Soler, a former ballet dancer who formed the group in 1996, presents a fresh look at the tango form. Part of the allure is the numerous, exceptionally well-cut costumes, created by Ms. Soler and the show's wardrobe manager, Maria Spingola.

The excellent orchestra, Quatrotango, was led by the youthful, shaggy-haired Gabriel Clenar, who directed three musicians while he played the piano. Diego Fama was the singer.

The only disappointment was that Ms. Soler didn't take a curtain call of her own; beyond the admirable performances, it was clearly her visual sense and choreographic skill that knitted the two-part show together. "Tango Fire" transformed the theater from a nightclub atmosphere in "The Milonga" to a more traditional display of stage dancing in "The Show."

In the first half, as couples performed tangos in the center, other dancers stood or sat at tables along the perimeter of the stage, arguing and gossiping with adorable precision. In the second half two couples - Pablo Sosa and Mariela Maldonado, and Mauricio Celis and In,s Cuesta - added complicated lifts to their numbers and daring speed, their legs cutting and dividing the air like machetes.

No couple, however, was as beautifully lavish as Luciano Capparelli and Roc­o de los Santos. In each of their tangos, tension gave way to voluptuous softness, and powerful overhead lifts melted onto the floor in silken extensions. As the title goes, they were on fire.

www.nytimes.com