wednesday, may 5, 2010
THE RELIABLE SOURCE
Laura Bush,
welcomed back
The former first lady is the guest of honor at a book party at the Kuwaiti Embassy for her new “Spoken From the Heart,” with attendees crossing party lines. C2
Style
ABCDE
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ART REVIEW
Artistic or whacked?
The best piece of the Foggy Bottom Outdoor Sculpture Exhibit leaves you wondering. C3
CAROLYN HAX
Where’s the meat?
? The graduate wants vegetarian food for her party. Should the family comply? C7
GOING OUT GUIDE
Everybody into the pool!
The Summer Camp pool sessions at the Capitol Skyline Hotel resume Saturday. C10
3LIVE TODAY @
washingtonpost.com/style Amy Argetsinger and RoxanneRoberts of The Reliable Source Noon • The Web Hostess with Monica Hesse 1 p.m. • The “Lost” hour 2 p.m.
Redskins charged
with holding
Daniel Snyder apologizes for blocking WJLA from reunion of cheerleader and husband
by Howard Kurtz
It was the sort of feel-good story that local television loves. A Marine lieutenant calls his home- town station, saying he is coming home early from a combat tour of Iraq and Af- ghanistan and wants to surprise his wife — with the cameras rolling. But because Lt. Denver Edick’s wife is a cheerleader for the Washington Red- skins, the easy score turned into a turf battle in which ABC, the network that pitched the idea, wound up barred from FedEx Field, while the team handed the ball to the NBC station in town, which happens to be its broadcast partner. And the Redskins formed a defensive line against any other coverage. A news executive involved in the discussions says a Redskins official told him that if Kristin Edick talked to anyone from WJLA, the ABC affiliate, she would be dismissed from her cheerleader’s job.
redskins continued on C5
Clack. Clack. Clack.
White jumps black.
“Crown me, mister! Just crown me! You don’t have a move on the board.” “Put him down. I put him there for a reason, for a season.” “You talkin’ way, way, way much too much trash!” “This is checkers, man! This ain’t no damn chess!”
JAHI CHIKWENDIU/THE WASHINGTON POST JOHN HAYNES
“THE GREAT GAME”: Tom McKay
in the 12-play cycle about Afghanistan.
Shakespeare waging Battle of Britain
by Peter Marks
In a coup for its F Street showplace,
Sidney Harman Hall, the Shakespeare Theatre Company has snared two mar- quee, topically adventurous productions from Britain for next season, further evi- dence that the company is mounting a ro- bust challenge to the Kennedy Center as the city’s premier venue for British thea- ter.
The two-week engagement in Septem-
ber of “The Great Game: Afghanistan” — a series of 12 original short plays about Afghanistan — and the Washington pre- miere next January of the captivating Scottish drama “Black Watch” represent significant advances in the Shakespeare’s efforts to fill the 775-seat Harman with important work from abroad. And on the heels of last September’s sold-out visit of Helen Mirren in the Na- tional Theatre’s production of “Phèdre” — the only American stop for that Lon-
theater continued on C3
Backstage looks at ‘Burn Your Bookes.’ C2 Tony Award nominations stiff some showy duds. C3
The Kid, the Razor, Pressure Man, the Hawk. These are the men of the checkers club, where they move through life together.
by DeNeen Brown
KEEPING WATCH:The Capitol Pool Checkers Club, whose members pay $30 a month in dues, has been around for three decades. “We really talk trash here,” one player says.
It’s a Tuesday evening at the Capitol Pool Checkers Club, at Ninth and S
streets NW, and outside the air is cool, cold and gentrified. Inside, noth- ing much has changed since the ’80s. The yellowing tiles of a linoleum floor still yellowing. Wood paneling still buckling. Refrigerator singing. Scent of intensity. Six checkerboards and 24 men. Their shoulders curled, hovering over a game that mesmerizes them. Brings them out nearly every evening like a sweet addiction. The coolness of a checker in hand. The flatness of the board that rises before them like an empire. The checkers club is a throwback to the days when men gathered
across class and income lines to compete and play the dozens. No women around — fussing, nagging — to mess with the mind. Just men and their conversations and games in a competition that will go down to the wire, way past midnight.
checkers continued on C6
BOOK WORLD
In the name of the Father, the Son . . . and the other Son
Jesus and Christ are twins in an atheist’s retelling of the Gospels
by Ron Charles
F
ear not, for, behold, I bring you tid- ings of great joy: Philip Pullman’s novel about Jesus is not quite as shrill as his public statements on reli- gion would suggest. Choosing a vocal atheist and best-selling British fantasy writer to retell the story of the Gospels was clearly an answer to some pub-
THE GOOD MAN JESUS AND THE SCOUNDREL CHRIST
By Philip Pullman Canongate 245 pp. $24
licist’s prayer, but for all its satanic fan- fare and heretical rejiggering, “The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ” is — God forbid — kind of in- spiring. It even manages to convey a
message that’s always been central to Christian thought. Pullman’s little book is part of the Canongate Myth Series, which began in 2005. Each volume presents a classic story reimagined by a popular author, such as Margaret Atwood on Penelope or Michel Faber on Prometheus. But let’s be honest: If you play with “The Odyssey,” people are mildly amused; if you fiddle with Jesus, people begin col- lecting dry sticks. Sure enough, Pull- man noted recently in the London Times that he’s already received “scores” of threatening letters from zealots who say he “deserves to be pun- ished in hell.” (For the publisher, those
letters are like manna from heaven.) And for an extra thunderbolt of atten- tion, he told another paper that he hoped the “wretched” Catholic Church would “vanish entirely.” But Pullman plays the role of devil’s
advocate so well that this battle sparks all the suspense of fulfilled prophesy. With its sharp critique of religion, Pull- man’s fantasy series, “His Dark Materi- als,” is already among the most fre- quently challenged books in U.S. schools, and this slim, polemic volume will surely be the target of similar ob- jections. (Hint to conservatives: To kill a
book world continued on C4
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