Hello. I’m Gavin Edwards, the public speaker and the New York Times-bestselling author of The Tao of Bill Murray, the ’Scuse Me While I Kiss This Guy series, and Kindness and Wonder: Why Mister Rogers Matters Now More Than Ever. If you’re interested in hiring me, click here for more information.
Recently, while writing a newspaper article, I learned that (a) I needed to know the middle name of the singer Al Green (b) there is some disagreement on how he spells it.
He was born Albert Greene on April 13, 1946 (he dropped the final E from his last name shortly after he began his professional singing career). But his middle name is rendered as “Leornes” by some sources (including Wikipedia) and “Leorns” by others (most notably Jimmy McDonough’s definitive 2017 book Soul Survivor: A Biography of Al Green). Contacted through his PR representative, the Reverend Green declined to clear the matter up.
Wikipedia didn’t have any backup for “Leornes” (and I worry that the name has got caught in a citation loop, where the Wikipedia page refers to other sources that in turn draw on the Wikipedia page). But I corresponded with Mr. McDonough, who kindly shared some of his source material, which proved to be court documents, all of which consistently spelled the name “Leorns.” With his permission, I’m sharing them here:
Happy new year! In case you missed it in 2022: I had two articles in the “Overlooked” section of The New York Times (aka “Overlooked No More”), which profiles remarkable people who never got proper obituaries in the Times, due to the cultural biases of past decades.
The first article was on Vera Menchik, the world’s first women’s chess champion (her reign lasted from 1927 to 1944). I regretted that I didn’t have space to include information on a couple of her contemporaries, including her husband’s Rufus Stevenson’s first wife, Agnes Lawson Stevenson, a top-notch player who died when she walked into an airplane’s whirling propeller. And Menchik’s last major tournament, at the Chess Olympiad in Buenos Aires in 1939, pitted her in an epic match against Sonja Graf, an equally fascinating figure.
Graf had left for Buenos Aires as part of the German team but was removed from it en route by Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi minister of propaganda. Unwilling to recant her public anti-Nazi statements, Graf played the tournament under “the international flag of Liberty.” After finishing second (losing a very close match to Menchik), she stayed in Argentina rather than return to Nazi Germany.
The second article was on Dorothy Spencer, a deft film editor who cut over 70 Hollywood movies across five decades. I wasn’t able to see all of them, but I particularly recommend Stagecoach and To Be or Not to Be (the Ernest Lubitsch version, not the Mel Brooks remake). I was particularly proud that I was able to track down a couple of editors who had knew her professionally at Universal Pictures (her last movie was the otherwise forgettable The Concorde… Airport ’79 in, yes, 1979).
May their lives be an inspiration in 2023, and beyond.
Some months back, my pal Greg LaCour, who edits Charlotte magazine, sent me an email that included the photo you see above, and asked if I’d be interested in writing about the crazy two-week period in April 1972 when the Charlotte Coliseum hosted Billy Graham, pro wrestling, Elvis, and a minor-league ice-hockey championship series. My answer, of course, was yes. And now you can read the results, titled “Slap Shots & Elvis & Bad Guys & Jesus,” either in a gorgeous eight-page spread of glossy pages in the October issue of Charlotte (on sale now at a newsstand near you, if you live in or around the Queen City), or on the web by clicking this link.
Coolio died this week—just 59, way too young. Back in 1996, I spent a week traveling around the world with him for a magazine cover story: a live show in DC, multiple appearances on MTV in New York City, and memorably, a visit to a bookstore in London. The opening paragraph of the article:
Coolio raps for a living, but he’d rather ride dragons. When he’s not onstage or in the studio, he reads and rereads Anne McCaffrey’s series of Pern fantasy novels. “I think it’s her compassion,” he says. “Plus I like the idea of speaking to dragons telepathically.” So today in London, Coolio has cancelled a smorgasbord of phone interviews with Scandinavian journalists so he can restock his Pern library. Once he’s completed his collection, he plans to line them up in order and read them all yet again. Coolio strides into a large Dillon’s bookstore, locates the science-fiction section, and starts snatching McCaffrey’s novels off the shelves. He quickly considers each one before shoving it back on the shelf or tossing it in the pile of keepers at his feet: Dragonflight, Dragondawn, All the Weyrs of Pern, Firstfall, and Moreta: Dragon Lady of Pern. But he scowls: there’s a glitch. “Where the fuck’s The White Dragon?”
After I tweeted out that paragraph on Thursday night, it went viral, so I’ve put the whole article up in my archives: you can read it here. (The text alludes to a provocative photograph of Coolio taken by Jean-Baptiste Mondino, where Coolio agreed to be strung up by the neck to symbolize the ongoing death of young black men. It was powerful and unsettling, which is what I think attracted both Mondino and Coolio to the image.)
Well, as you may have heard, there’s a pandemic going on. One sad side effect of that is that it didn’t seem like a good idea to do in-person bookstore readings in recent months: I love meeting readers and signing books, but I’m not such a big fan of hosting superspreader events.
The unexpected silver lining: I did three online Bad Motherfucker events, each of them a conversation with a smart and accomplished friend, all of them very different, and you can watch all of them still!
Last night Douglas Wolk and I were hosted by Book Passage, the cool bookstore with two branches in the Bay Area of California. Douglas is the author of All of the Marvels, an incredibly smart journey through the history of Marvel comics, for which he read every Marvel superhero comic ever (27,000+ of them). So we talked about Nick Fury, naturally—and the ups and downs of doing obsessive research.
Back in November, I talked with Phil LaMarr, the hugely gifted voice actor (Futurama, Samurai Jack, Justice League) and live-action actor (Mad TV, Pulp Fiction) who did a completely brilliant job reading the audiobook of Bad Motherfucker. We talked about his various encounters with Samuel L. Jackson and how each of us approached our work on Bad Motherfucker. It’s archived on the Instagram Live feed of Hachette Books.
Also in November, I had a lively and entertaining conversation with one of my favorite people on the planet: Rob Sheffield, author of brilliant books including Love Is a Mix Tape and Dreaming the Beatles. We geeked out on Samuel L. Jackson movies and misheard lyrics (and where they overlap, in a memorable scene in The Long Kiss Goodnight) and we were hosted by Park Road Books in Charlotte, NC.
Three decades ago, my first job in publishing was as a proofreader at the (big, glossy, squarebound, massively profitable) PC Magazine. I shared a cubicle with Eric Berlin, a young playwright and theater critic, and we killed time when we were waiting for page proofs (exciting stuff like laboratory tests of hundreds of almost-identical printers) by trading stories and reading the slang dictionary.
We fell out of touch after I left the magazine, but reconnected via Facebook–these days, Eric is a professionalpuzzleconstructor. Every year in late January, I would read his recap of the MIT Mystery Hunt, an event on the MIT campus where thousands of puzzle aficionados form hundreds of teams and then spend the MLK weekend tackling puzzles: some of them insanely difficult, some just insane.
After I said, “Hey, that sounds fun, I’d love to do it sometime,” Eric surprised me by inviting me to join his crew of solvers, Team Palindrome, and I surprised him by accepting.
That first Hunt was overwhelming for me: lots of puzzle-solving was happening, but it was all flying by incredibly quickly and Team Palindrome was filled with Jeopardy! champions and crossword-tournament champions and other incredibly smart people. But I contributed in unexpected ways–like making a connect-the-dots version of Guernica–and I loved the people of Palindrome and the crazy puzzles, like the one where a dozen doughnuts got delivered to our team and we had to correlate the flavors of the doughnuts with the information contained on a thumb drive embedded in each one.
So I kept coming back, I got my sea legs, and last year, after years of finishing in second place, Team Palindrome won! Which was a glorious moment (only slightly diminished by it taking place online, because pandemic), but which came with the huge responsibility of running the 2022 Mystery Hunt.
So for the past twelve months, the brilliant minds of Palindrome have been concocting hundreds of puzzles, not to mention all the hard work that goes into creating (to name two large tasks among many) a gorgeous website and a whole mess of entertaining videos that tell the story of puzzlers’ adventures in Bookspace.
(By the way, “Weird Al” Yankovic contributed a video to the Hunt this year. Really. Here it is.)
(Eric collaborated on a New York Times crossword puzzle with “Weird Al” back in 2018. It had lots of cheese references.)
Many brilliant people did lots of work, way more than I did, to make this Hunt a success, but I contributed four puzzles, and I’m really proud of them, so I’m going to share them here. (If clicking on any of them takes you to a login screen, just click on the big “public access” button and then try again.)
In case you’re not familiar with Hunt-style puzzles: as a general rule, they throw you into the deep end of the swimming pool. They don’t typically give you instructions: you have to figure out what’s going on and what the puzzle’s secret architecture is. Often, if you notice a pattern—maybe some consistently anomalous details—you can tease out an answer. But if you find this all wholly baffling, feel free to click through to the solution.
The first puzzle I smithed was The Mouse and the Motorcycle, inspired by a puzzle-related news story last year. It’s a short-and-sweet puzzle: I liked that it had two halves and that you could solve them in either order (and that whichever half you solved first should help you crack the other half). Kah Kien Ong was the editor (thanks!); the puzzle was part of our Star Rats prologue, released before the Hunt to whet everyone’s appetite. If you’re looking for an introduction to Hunt-style puzzles, it’s a great place to start.
I had planned to stop there, but then Eric asked me to collaborate on two puzzles with him: in each case, he had a cool idea for a puzzle but (mild spoiler alert) wanted to draw on my musical knowledge. If you are a music fan, I think you will find Swingin‘ to be worth your time: it’s great fun (and it features delightful art, most of it by Lea Berlin (Eric’s daughter). Thanks to editor Katie Hamill!
The other puzzle Eric and I did together was called Scream. We almost gave up on this puzzle several times, daunted by its technical requirements, but each time said “well, maybe we can make it work if we change this one thing.” As a result, I learned a lot more about audio editing software than I expected to! Thanks to Rob Sheffield, Tom Nawrocki, and Bill Tipper for helping me brainstorm on this puzzle, and to Ben Smith for editing it.
Dice. Not pictured: Turkey and Hash.
Late in the year, I discovered that Palindrome had only a few “swag puzzles” in the works (puzzles involving physical objects delivered to each team, like those doughnuts a few years back). Swag puzzles are one of my favorite things about Hunt, and when I learned we might have room for one more, I came up with an idea involving customized twenty-sided dice. It’s called Diced Turkey Hash (although in my heart I will always think of it as Large Icosahedron Collider). Ben Smith edited it with patience and skill (and did superhuman work making sure that 800 custom-printed d20s looked great and got out to 200 teams—thank you, Ben). Diced Turkey Hash has a whole bunch of different elements—I was definitely trying to squeeze ten pounds of puzzle into a five-pound bag—but if you’re up for a challenge, I think you’ll be glad you took the time. I learned a lot doing this puzzle, not least about how to make it a satisfying journey, so that solvers can confirm at various points that they are on the right track. (If you don’t want to go on that whole journey, you still might enjoy trying to figure out what’s going on with the first two dice (printed in black): can you suss out what each of those groups of 20 images have in common?)
Enjoy! Maybe I’ll see you at MIT next year, when the team called “teammate” (who won this year, congrats!) will be running the 2023 Mystery Hunt!
Falling behind on your holiday shopping? There is a one-stop solution: copies of Bad Motherfucker for every man, woman, and child you know.
My biography of Samuel L. Jackson is available everywhere books are sold, including your local bookstore. Or if you’d like to buy it from my local bookstore, Park Road Books in Charlotte, they would be happy to ship you an autographed copy. Either way: get some Samuel L. Jackson goodness in your life this holiday season!
I am motherfucking delighted to let you know that my book about Samuel L. Jackson, Bad Motherfucker, is on sale now. It’s a deep dive into his fascinating life, into his filmography of 140-plus movies, and into the meaning of cool in the 21st century.
(It also has dozens of amazing artists reimagining the posters from some of Jackson’s greatest movies: a gallery show you can enjoy without leaving your home!)
Excerpts from a couple of advance reviews:
“A rollicking, expletive-filled look at the life and career of ‘The King of Cool’…. Edwards is especially adept in his handling of Jackson’s personal life, including his triumph over cocaine addiction and involvement in the civil rights movement. This highly entertaining consideration of the prolific actor is long overdue.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“A revealing look at the unlikely career trajectory of Samuel L. Jackson…. ‘In a fair world, I’d probably have three or four Oscars,’ Jackson has said. This entertaining book proves the point.” — Kirkus Reviews
Gladys Knight & the Pips, “Midnight Train to Georgia”
Albert Hammond, “It Never Rains in Southern California”
Bob Seger, “Hollywood Nights”
Guns N’ Roses, “Welcome to the Jungle”
Dionne Warwick, “Do You Know the Way to San Jose”
By my count, that’s two songs where the singer got chewed up by L.A., one where it happened to her man, one where it’s a third-person omniscient narrator deal, and one where it’s the singer embodies the city itself and is singing in the second person to the hapless arrival.
Charlie Watts (right) and friend, circa February 1970.
The first obituary I ever wrote for The New York Times was back in 2017: the subject was Charlie Watts, the quietly indispensable drummer for the Rolling Stones. (To the best of my knowledge, he never missed a gig in over 50 years, although there are [bizarrely] a few Stones tracks he doesn’t drum on, most notably “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.”)
Long-lead obituary writing puts you in a strange place, mentally. I find that I am often proud of my work—but I hope that people don’t read it for a long time, because every day that an obituary sits on the shelf is a day that the worthy person I wrote about stays on this planet with us. For Charlie Watts, that day came on August 24th, so four years after I wrote it, I hope that now you will read my effort to sum up his life and his music.
Another advantage of long-lead obituaries: having the time to consider and research the subject without massive deadline pressure. In the case of this obituary, that meant tracking down a copy of Max Weinberg’s fascinating but out-of-print book The Big Beat, where he interviews various drummers. The ever-modest Charlie didn’t say anything hugely quotable in his conversation–but that book is where I found a great line by Bruce Springsteen.
In his introduction, the Boss wrote: “As much as Mick’s voice and Keith’s guitar, Charlie Watts’s snare sound is the Rolling Stones. When Mick sings, ‘It’s only rock ’n’ roll but I like it,’ Charlie’s in back showing you why!”
Goodbye Charlie Watts and thanks for everything (but especially “Let’s Spend the Night Together”).
