Adventures in Words

  When Anthony Bourdain came to Hawaii a few years before his death to film an episode of his CNN series “Parts Unknown,” someone threw a big party in his honor. I have friends who were there. It hearkened back to the luaus that greeted Mark Twain on his visit to the islands a century and a half earlier.  Bourdain and Twain were cut from the same cloth – world traveling adventurers whose glib humor and popularity with mass audiences masked the deep compassion and wisdom of their writing. They were working class, men of the people. Guys whose curiosity and love for life stemmed from not placing themselves above it. Memories of the CNN episode are fading now, but I recall that the star of the Emmy- and Peabody- winning series went spear fishing with some bruddahs off Molokai. They snagged an octopus, and Bourdain, as instructed, gamely proved his mettle by chewing on its head to remove its brain as they all bobbed in the channel.  He was into karate at the time, pursuing it with the same

       poynter.org photo Are we over Will Smith yet? Doesn't look that way. The notorious  Slap  is still sparking a veritable feeding frenzy across the mediaverse. So many columnists, professors and pundits have weighed in, I feel like I got PhD's in sociology, psychology and toxic masculinity in the week since the infamous moment that distracted the Academy Awards from the more hopeful messages of award winners “CODA,” Jessica Chastain, Ariana DeBose and “Drive My Car.” Aside from echoing Denzel Washington's biblical sentiment on the matter – who are any of us to judge? – I don't have much to add. Based on a decades-long career, Will Smith is a veritable monument; most of us are no more than flies buzzing around his edifice. But for all the probing of residual racism or the fragile insecurity of manly men, let me nominate two other candidates for boogyman in the superstar's tragic fall: Fame. And fortune. We didn't know it on Sunday night but now we have all b