Ben's Diary

Sir Ben... Who doesn't love and admire actor Ben Kingsley and his riveting performances as Gandhi or Don Logan in Sexy Beast or Behrani in House of Sand and Fog? But now comes word that the actor born Krishna Banji insists on being called "Sir Ben" in social situations. (Sir Ben was knighted by Queen Elizabeth in the New Year's Eve Honors List of 2001). This year, Academy Awards voters reportedly aren't too impressed with Sir Ben's requirement. And the actor only seems to have dug himself deeper with this defense: "I think 'Sir Ben' is lovely. The word 'mister' has just disappeared for me. It's like, when you become a doctor after years of study. I suppose after years of chewing the furniture, I get the 'Sir' for being a thespian."

Ooops.... It's been hailed as one of the greatest public buildings in America -- the gleaming, stainless steel Walt Disney Concert Hall in LA designed by Frank Gehry. But now comes word from the AP that the glare off the hall's shiny curving steel walls is so intense that it's heating up nearby condos at least 15 degrees! Indeed, reflections from the $274 million landmark were scalding some neighbors. When Jaqueline Lagrone arrived home for lunch in her apartment facing the building, she says, "You couldn't even see and then the furniture would get really hot. You would have to literally close the drapes and you'd still feel warmth in the house. You would have the air conditioning on all the time." Officials recently ordered a temporary fix, putting up a synthetic net while they work on a permanent solution. Architects considered the impact of the shiny steel on neighboring buildings, officials said, but during construction, the curving sheets of metal ended up facing a slightly different angle than plans intended. Click here for an image of the concert hall. Disney Hall.bmp

Odds & Ends ... The publication -- or "pub" -- date for my new book approaches. That's March 2nd, 10 days from now, in case you're keeping score at home, and I just saw some new statistics that put the release into daunting perspective. R.R. Bowker, the company that maintains the authoritative Books in Print database, reports that in 2002, the most recent figures show the total number of new titles and editions in the United States grew by nearly 6 percent, to 150,000. Yes, 150,000 new titles and editions per year in the US! General adult fiction topped 17,000 -- the biggest category. In other words, an average of 410 new books or editions are published every single day of the year, including 46 (!) novels ...

The Man Who Ate 350 Coins ... For those of you who think eating a 747 is a stretch, consider this AP report. A 62-year-old man with a history of major psychiatric illness visits an ER in western France. He complains his belly is sore and swollen and he can't eat or go to the bathroom. Doctors take an X-Ray and discover he has swallowed about 350 coins — $650 worth — and assorted necklaces and needles. The mass in his stomach weighs 12 pounds, and doctors operate, but the patient dies 12 days later. Diagnosis? A rare condition called pica, a compulsion to eat things not normally consumed. The name derives from the Latin word for magpie, a bird that eats just about everything. Of course, this case is a far cry from that of another Frenchman, Michel Lotito, listed in Guinness World Records as the world's greatest "omnivore," who helped with my airplane eating novel, and who has consumed six tons of metal in the past 40 years, including bicycles, computers, and yes, a Cessna small aircraft. For the X-Ray image of the coin-eater's stomach, click here. X-Ray.bmp

Love is in the Air ... Seventeen couples from Brooklyn to New Zealand got married on top of the Empire State Building on Valentine's Day this past weekend, according to the AP. All told, more than 170 weddings have taken place on the 86th floor observation deck on February 14th since the tradition began in 1994. The free ceremonies come with a walk to the altar on a red carpet strewn with pink and white flower petals, a musician playing wedding standards on a keyboard and a ceremony performed by a nondenominational minister wearing red, fuzzy slippers with hearts. After each ceremony, the bride and groom receive a champagne toast as well as a stuffed King Kong teddy bear dressed in a red T-shirt emblazoned with a heart surrounding the newlyweds' names. Each year, building administrators receive roughly 30 written requests for a Valentine's Day wedding. Only about half are accepted. (For marriage proposals, I recommend the 102nd floor of the ESB - a small glass enclosed room in the spindle beneath the antenna that has been off limits to the general public since 9/11.)

Hey.... A friend sent an amusing Guardian of London piece (second item) about how we greet each other. "Hi has had a good run, but now it has a rival," writes Tim de Lisle. Hey is coming on strong. "As we've seen with Like and So," de Lisle says, "there's no stopping an American monosyllable once it decides to conquer the world." Here's some history. "It all began in the deep south. The American Heritage Dictionary of 2000 traces hey as a greeting to the southern states in the 1960s (interesting moment). By 2000, it had gone national and was 'close kin to the informal salutation hi, which it seems to be replacing in many situations.' ... The trend may have been hastened by Hey Ya, the ubiquitous song by Outkast, but theirs appears to be an old-style hey. It joins a long tradition - Hey Good Looking, Hey Jude, 'Hey babe, take a walk on the wild side'. Last August, a survey for Microsoft UK claimed hey was the No1 greeting in instant messages. Poor old hi wasn't even in the top 10. But then No. 8 was easy tiger, so perhaps the survey wasn't entirely serious."

Wise Guys? According to Reuters, "the Three Wise Men who followed the star to Bethlehem bearing gifts for the baby Jesus may not have been all that wise -- or even men." At its General Synod (assembly) in London over the weekend, the Church of England revised its latest prayer book, saying the term "Magi'' was a transliteration of the name used by officials at the Persian court, and that they could well have been women. "Magi is a word which discloses nothing about numbers, wisdom or gender embodied in the term,'' the Synod said. In the authorized 17th century King James bible used by up to 70 million worshippers in Anglican churches around the world, the gift-bearing visitors are referred to as "The Three Wise Men.'' Now they are to be called just "Magi'' and no longer gender-specific in the Anglican prayer book. "Changing 'Wise Men' to 'Magi' seems to be an entirely sensible move,'' the Synod said. The revision committee explained: "While it seems very unlikely that these Persian court officials were female, the possibility that one or more of the Magi were female cannot be excluded completely.'' There is no theological dispute about the gifts they brought -- gold, frankincense and myrrh -- but the prayer has been changed to use the word Magi on the grounds that "the visitors were not necessarily wise and not necessarily men.'' The decision was greeted by mocking newspaper headlines like "The Three Fairly Sagacious Persons'."

Birds of a Feather ... Best story in the papers this weekend is Dinitia Smith's fascinating NY Times piece brilliantly entitled "Love that Dare Not Squeak its Name." Forgive me for quoting at length, but here's how the article begins... "Roy and Silo, two penguins at the Central Park Zoo in Manhattan, are completely devoted to each other. For nearly six years, they have been totally inseparable. They exhibit what in penguin parlance is called 'ecstatic behavior': that is, they entwine their necks, they vocalize to each other, they have sex. Silo and Roy are, to anthropomorphize a bit, gay penguins. When offered female companionship, they have adamantly refused it. And the females aren't interested in them, either. At one time, the two seemed so desperate to incubate an egg together that they put a rock in their nest and sat on it, keeping it warm in the folds of their abdomens, said their chief keeper, Rob Gramzay. Finally, he gave them a fertile egg that needed care to hatch. Things went perfectly. Roy and Silo sat on it for the typical 34 days until a chick, Tango, was born. For the next two and a half months they raised Tango, keeping her warm and feeding her food from their beaks until she could go out into the world on her own. Mr. Gramzay is full of praise for them. "They did a great job," he said. He was standing inside the glassed-in penguin exhibit, where Roy and Silo had just finished lunch. Penguins usually like a swim after they eat, and Silo was in the water. Roy had finished his dip and was up on the beach. Roy and Silo are hardly unusual. Milou and Squawk, two young males, are also beginning to exhibit courtship behavior, hanging out with each other, billing and bowing. Before them, the Central Park Zoo had Georgey and Mickey, two female Gentoo penguins who tried to incubate eggs together. And Wendell and Cass, a devoted male African penguin pair, live at the New York Aquarium in Coney Island. Indeed, scientists have found homosexual behavior throughout the animal world. This growing body of science has been increasingly drawn into charged debates about homosexuality in American society, on subjects from gay marriage to sodomy laws, despite reluctance from experts in the field to extrapolate from animals to humans. Gay groups argue that if homosexual behavior occurs in animals, it is natural, and therefore the rights of homosexuals should be protected. On the other hand, some conservative religious groups have condemned the same practices in the past, calling them "animalistic." But if homosexuality occurs among animals, does that necessarily mean that it is natural for humans, too? And that raises a familiar question: if homosexuality is not a choice, but a result of natural forces that cannot be controlled, can it be immoral?" Check out the rest of the article -- a fascinating read.

State of the Union ... What's on America's mind? If internet traffic is any indicator, this statistic boggles the mind. Janet Jackson exposing her breast during the Super Bowl halftime show on Sunday night proved to be the most-searched event in the history of the Internet. According to Lycos, the net search engine, Janet Jackson and the halftime show received 60 times as many searches as the Paris Hilton sex tape and 80 times as many searches as Britney Spears. Prior to this episode, the most-searched event in the history of the internet over a one-day period was the September 11 attack on America. Although it is very difficult to compare searches for the two events, it looks like the Super Bowl halftime show was the equal of September 11 when it comes to Internet attention.