Mountain Views News          Saturday, March 26, 2016

11

ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT

Mountain Views-News Saturday, March 26, 2016 


Jeff’s Book Pics By Jeff Brown

American Girls: Social Media and the 
Secret Lives of Teenagers by Nancy Jo Sales
A must read for parents with teens including those 
with boys.Instagram. Whisper. Yik Yak. Vine. 
YouTube. Kik. Ask.fm. Tinder. The dominant 
force in the lives of girls coming of age in America 
today is social media. What it is doing to an entire 
generation of young women is the subject of 
award-winning Vanity Fair writer Nancy Jo Sales’s 
riveting and explosive 
American Girls.With 
extraordinary intimacy and 
precision, Sales captures 
what it feels like to be a girl 
in America today. From 
Montclair to Manhattan 
and Los Angeles, from 
Florida and Arizona to 
Texas and Kentucky, Sales 
crisscrossed the country, 
speaking to more than 
two hundred girls, ages 
thirteen to nineteen, and 
documenting a massive 
change in the way girls are 
growing up, a phenomenon 
that transcends race, 
geography, and household 
income. The book provides 
a disturbing portrait of 
the end of childhood as 
we know it and of the 
inexorable and ubiquitous 
experience of a new kind 
of adolescence—one 
dominated by new social and sexual norms, where 
a girl’s first crushes and experiences of longing 
and romance occur in an accelerated electronic 
environment; where issues of identity and self-
esteem are magnified and transformed by social 
platforms that provide instantaneous judgment. 
What does it mean to be a girl in America in 2016? 
It means coming of age online in a hypersexualized 
culture that has normalized extreme behavior, 
from pornography to the casual exchange of 
nude photographs; a culture rife with a virulent 
new strain of sexism and a sometimes self-
undermining notion of feminist empowerment; a 
culture in which teenagers are spending so much 
time on technology and social media that they are 
not developing basic communication skills. From 
beauty gurus to slut-shaming to a disconcerting 
trend of exhibitionism, Nancy Jo Sales provides 
a shocking window into the troubling world of 
today’s teenage girls.Provocative and urgent, 
American Girls is destined to ignite a much-needed 
conversation about how we can help our daughters 
and sons negotiate unprecedented new challenges.
The Serengeti Rules: The Quest to Discover 
How Life Works and Why It Matters 
by Sean B. Carroll 
How does life work? How 
does nature produce the 
right numbers of zebras 
and lions on the African 
savanna, or fish in the 
ocean? How do our bodies 
produce the right numbers 
of cells in our organs 
and bloodstream? In The 
Serengeti Rules, award-
winning biologist and 
author Sean Carroll tells 
the stories of the pioneering 
scientists who sought the 
answers to such simple 
yet profoundly important 
questions, and shows how 
their discoveries matter for 
our health and the health 
of the planet we depend 
upon.One of the most 
important revelations about 
the natural world is that 
everything is regulated—
there are rules that regulate 
the amount of every molecule in our bodies and 
rules that govern the numbers of every animal 
and plant in the wild. And the most surprising 
revelation about the rules that regulate life at 
such different scales is that they are remarkably 
similar—there is a common underlying logic of 
life. Carroll recounts how our deep knowledge of 
the rules and logic of the human body has spurred 
the advent of revolutionary life-saving medicines, 
and makes the compelling case that it is now 
time to use the Serengeti Rules to heal our ailing 
planet.A bold and inspiring synthesis by one 
of our most accomplished biologists and gifted 
storytellers, The Serengeti Rules is the first book to 
illuminate how life works at vastly different scales. 
Read it and you will never look at the world the 
same way again.


Jeff’s History Corner By Jeff Brown

NEW ROOMS DISCOVERED IN KING TUT’S TOMB 
COULD HOLD ‘DISCOVERY OF THE CENTURY’

CAIRO (AP) — Radar scans of King Tutankhamun’s 
burial chamber have revealed two hidden rooms, a 
tantalizing discovery that could resolve a mystery 
as old as the pyramids: What was the fate of Egypt’s 
beautiful Queen Nefertiti?But he said the unexplored 
chambers could hold some kind of organic or metal 
objects.Most experts say that while the scans might 
reveal another tomb behind the false walls, it’s 
unlikely to be crammed with solid gold and a royal 
mummy like Nefertiti, whose 3,300-year-old bust on 
display in Berlin is one of the most famous symbols 
of ancient Egypt and classical beauty.”Quite often, 
people have done these sorts of scans, and when 
actually investigated, things have turned out to be 
nothing like predicted,” said Aidan Dodson, an 
archaeologist at the University of Bristol in England. 
“If they are chambers, most likely they’d be filled 
with more funeral objects of Tutankhamun, possibly 
including some gilded statuettes of gods, or perhaps 
even the mummy of a young child who predeceased 
Tut.Still, the discovery has ignited massive interest, 
and el-Damaty cast the discovery as potentially 
huge. He said the radar scans of the chamber, taken 
last year and analyzed in Japan, will be repeated 
at the end of the month.The contents of the newly 
found rooms could shine a light on one of ancient 
Egypt’s most turbulent times, and one prominent 
researcher has theorized that the remains of Nefertiti 
could be inside.British Egyptologist Nicholas Reeves 
speculates that Tutankhamun, who died at age 19, 
may have been rushed into an outer chamber of what 
was originally Nefertiti’s tomb. The queen was one 
of the wives of Tutankhamun’s father, the Pharaoh 
Akhenaten.El-Damaty said it was too early to tell 
what the metal and organic matter could be, saying 
only that he thinks the chambers could contain 
the tomb of a member of Tutankhamun’s family, 
possibly a woman.

 Luxor, in southern Egypt, served as the 
Pharaonic capital and is home to sprawling temples 
and several highly decorated ancient tombs in 
the Valley of the Kings.Reeves reached his theory 
after high-resolution images discovered what 
he said were straight lines in Tut’s tomb. These 
lines, previously hidden by the color and texture 
of the stones, indicate the presence of a sealed 
chamber, he said. The images were broadcast live 
on national television in September.At the Cairo 
news conference, el-Damaty showed the results of 
radar scans that revealed anomalies in the walls of 
the tomb, indicating a possible hidden door and 
rooms behind false walls that were covered up and 
painted over with hieroglyphics.El-Damaty believes 
that if anyone is buried in the new antechambers 
it is likely Kia, believed by some to be the mother 
of Tutankhamun.Tut, Nefertiti and Akhenaten’s 
family ruled Egypt during one of its most turbulent 
times, which ended with a military takeover by 
Egypt’s top general, Horemheb. The family’s names 
were later erased from official records.


On the Marquee: Notes from the Sierra Madre Playhouse


By Artistic Director, Christian Lebano

After many false starts and blind alleys, I’m so 
excited to announce that our summer musical will 
be The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee 
with a book by Rachel Sheinkin, music & lyrics by 
William Finn, and conceived by Rebecca Feldman. 
This is a wonderfully funny and surprisingly 
moving show that had a really long run on 
Broadway where it won several Tony Awards. It 
all centers on a regional Spelling Bee and the kids 
(played by adults) who are competing – in the 
conceit of the show, a few audience members will 
participate, as well!

 I am so pleased that Robert Marra who directed 
Always…Patsy Cline and Sean Paxton who music 
directed it will return to the Playhouse to bring this 
show to life. Jeffrey Schoenberg who did Patsy’s 
costumes and Cricket Myers who sound designed 
will also come back. I can’t wait to see what this 
wonderfully creative team will dream up with this 
show.

 The road to choosing Spelling Bee was long and 
fraught – there was another show we were really 
hoping to bring to the Playhouse as the follow-up 
to Patsy, but we couldn’t get the rights to do it (I’ll 
try again next year) and so we turned to another 
idea. Again we were stymied by being denied the 
rights to the show. That’s when Robert and I went 
back to the drawing board and came up with a few 
more shows that we wanted to do. We got down 
to Spelling Bee and one other. We went with the 
other one and tried to make it work. It just became 
too expensive a proposition for us to move forward 
with – disappointing but a reality when you work 
with budgets as tight as ours are. So we came back 
to Spelling Bee.

 I think audiences will love this show which is 
suitable for the entire family. The Bee (I have to 
find a good short title to use for it!) will begin its 
competition on July 8 and run through August 21. 
I do hope you’ll come!

* * *

 We’ve had a week of rehearsals for Glass 
Menagerie now. This is a terrific cast and it is 
already taking shape. There are a lot of moving 
parts to this production – projections, a lot of music, 
some choreography and we are moving forward on 
all fronts at the same time. As I’ve said before, I’ve 
long wanted to direct this show and I’m so pleased 
to start seeing my ideas take life on-stage. Tickets 
are now available. I do hope you’ll plan to see this 
show.

* * *

 Charlotte’s Web continues to delight kids 
and adults alike. Tickets are selling well for our 
weekend shows (with a few already sold-out!) – 
hope to see you there with (or without!) your kids 
and grandkids. Please visit our website at or call 
Mary at 626.355.4318 to purchase tickets. 

PATTICAKES1900 North Allen AveAltadena626-794-112820% discount when you mention this ad 
in paper.
Exp: March 31, 2016
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