Month: August 2017

The Japanese summer delicacy of roasted eel, braised with a tangy sauce and sprinkled with prickly mountain pepper, is in question as the creatures with their mysterious migrations become increasingly endangered. 

 

Soaring demand for Japanese eel, or Anguilla japonica, helped put the creatures on the International Union of Conservation of Nature’s “Red List” of endangered species in 2014. It’s spurring poaching of similar species off the U.S. East Coast. 

 

But Katsumi Tsukamoto, “Dr. Eel” of the only “Eel Science Laboratory” at Nihon University in Japan, thinks he’s unlocked the secrets to eventually farming the eels, known as unagi, sustainably and profitably. Tsukamoto found out where the eels are spawning, and that helped researchers study conditions needed to raise them from the egg stage to adulthood. 

​Secret life of unagi

The possibility of extinction, and soaring prices for grilled eel believed to help build stamina for enduring sweltering summer days, have dismayed many Japanese gourmands and the restaurants that specialize in the dish.

 

Despite their important role in Japanese food culture, until recently very little was known about the life cycles of eels, such as where they spawned and how tiny, nearly transparent glass eels manage to travel back to their freshwater habitats in Asia and elsewhere. 

 

Supplies depend on wild-catching the juveniles and farm raising them until adulthood, a practice that has spread from Japan to Taiwan and mainland China as demand has surged. 

 

Tsukamoto says his discovery of Japanese eel larvae and spawning adults west of the Mariana Ridge, near Guam, in 2009 has enabled him and other researchers to figure out the right diet and environmental conditions for spawning eels and their offspring. 

 

Eel farming

Despite skepticism about the potential for such farming to work, Tsukamoto says three Japanese state-owned laboratories are able to raise the eels from the larval stage and get them to spawn, completing their life cycle. But for now each lab can raise only about 3,000-4,000 a year. A lack of funds is hindering construction of the infrastructure needed to make such operations commercially viable by producing tens of thousands of eels a year.

 

The complete farming of eels and some other endangered species as a way to help them survive by relieving the pressure from soaring demand.

Depending on the restaurant, Yuta Maruyama, an intermediate wholesaler who handles wild blue eel at Tokyo’s famous Tsukiji Fish market, says a multi-course menu including grilled blue eel can cost up to 30,000 yen ($270) per person at exclusive restaurants, mainly in the flashy Ginza shopping and dining district. 

 

The choice eels are often served in different styles to the traditional “kabayaki” eels, which are grilled in a coating of dark soy sauce marinade. Restaurants that specialize in kabayaki, often handed down generation to generation, may offer both wild and farmed eels — with supply depending on what is available that day at the market. 

​Wild-caught, farm-raised

At Hashimoto, a Michelin one-star kabayaki restaurant in Tokyo that first opened in 1835, the eels are all farm-raised the conventional way on the southern island of Kyushu, after being caught as glass eels. 

 

Like farmed salmon, the farmed eels raised from wild-caught glass eels tend to be fattier. “They have a flavor that is preferred by most customers,” said Shinji Hashimoto, the sixth-generation owner.

 

Hashimoto said his kabayaki sauce is “light,” to allow the eel’s flavor to come through. 

 

“The Tokyo palette has traditionally disliked sweet flavors,” he said.

 

To manage with fewer catches and higher prices, Hashimoto tries to get two servings out of larger eels. 

 

After cleaning and slicing them open, the cooks skewer them to ensure they will stay together while cooking. They are grilled directly over hot charcoal, then steamed to soften the flesh. Afterward they are coated in a sauce of soy sauce boiled with sweet rice wine, or mirin and then returned to the grill and basted three times before being served as “unajyu,” steaming hot over rice in a neat lacquer box. 

 

The busiest days tend to be the Day of the Ox in the lunar calendar, the first of which in 2017 was Tuesday, July 25th. Hashimoto served about 150 customers that day. 

 

“Even if the price rose to 10,000 yen (about $90) for one box of unajyu, Japanese people would still eat it once a year,” Tsukamoto said. “Why do Japanese people like unagi? Because we like soy sauce. The salty-sweet sauce, made from a mixture of soy sauce and mirin, is brushed on, is singed and grilled on the eel over charcoal — and that smell makes it irresistible.”
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“Despacito” is easily the song of the summer with the success of the hit stretching beyond Spanish-speaking audiences to make it the year’s most recognized song in the U.S. and elsewhere.

Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee’s song, which has topped the Billboard Hot 100 chart for 13 weeks and counting, set a record as the most streamed song on Spotify and is the first YouTube video to reach 3 billion views. The song also has opened the door for other Spanish tracks to get airplay on American radio.

“The beauty behind (‘Despacito’) is that it was never meant to be a crossover song. When I sat down with my guitar to write this song, I just wanted to write a great song that people would automatically connect to, and dance to, and really enjoy, so it was so nice to see how — in a very organic way — the whole world just connected to it,” Fonsi said in an interview from Spain, where he was set to perform the worldwide hit.

 

“It wasn’t really forced, it wasn’t gimmicky … it’s sort of an accident if you will,” he said. “There’s something magical in that melody and in the beat and in the production … and people in Russia and Australia and U.K. and France and U.S. and South America — everyone’s just dancing.”

Song about falling in love

“Despacito” is the first mostly Spanish song to top the Hot 100 since Los del Rio’s “Macarena” in 1996. The smooth jam about slowly falling in love has become a pop culture phenomenon since its release in January, selling more than 7.7 million tracks — based on digital sales, audio streaming and video streaming — according to Nielsen Music. It has spent 27 weeks at No. 1 on Billboard’s Latin songs charts, and while some believe Justin Bieber helped make the song a hit when he jumped on its remix, it’s quite the opposite.

“Technically, the reason why Justin Bieber discovered the song was because it was so popular already,” said Rocio Guerra, Spotify’s head of Latin culture.

“Despacito” had reached the Top 40 on the Hot 100, and following the Bieber remix — which includes the pop star singing in Spanish —the song reached No. 1. The remix spent 14 weeks on top of Spotify’s global chart until last week when it was supplanted by J. Balvin’s “Mi Gente” — another Spanish song finding success on U.S. radio and the pop charts.

‘Mi Gente’ the next big hit? 

“Mi Gente,” a collaboration with Willy Williams, is No. 30 on the Hot 100 after just a month on the chart.

“I don’t think this is just something that happened overnight … it’s something the Latin music industry and creative community, we’ve been working so long toward this direction, and I don’t think specifically only in the U.S., it’s a global momentum,” Guerra said. “Platforms like Spotify are giving access to the same songs at the same time everywhere, so that’s allowing us to have more (Latin) artists on the (global) chart.”

“There has been a domino effect,” added Guerra, who said there are currently eight Latin songs on Spotify’s global chart, which includes 50 songs. “The more songs that we put on the global chart, people are getting more used to listening to songs in a different language.”

She said that Spotify has spent the last two years pushing Latin music in regions outside Latin America: “We’re proactively trying to push its consumption in countries like Germany, Italy, Switzerland, the U.K. (and) obviously the U.S.”

And there’s proof it is working. Daddy Yankee became the first Latin artist to reach No. 1 on Spotify in June, taking the spot from Ed Sheeran, and the Latin genre is third overall globally on Spotify, just behind pop and hip-hop.

Latin beat on English hits

The Latin beat can be heard on current English-language hits as well, including DJ Khaled and Rihanna’s “Wild Thoughts,” which samples Carlos Santana’s 1999 megahit “Maria, Maria,” and French Montana’s “Unforgettable,” which has a reggaeton vibe (J. Balvin appears on its Latin remix).

Fonsi said he doesn’t want to take credit for the success of Latin music on pop radio, but knows “Despacito” has helped set the mood.

“I hope that it’s a door that will stay open for a long time. I think it’s bigger than just this summer. I think it was (over)due for Latin music to get this attention and I love the fact that we’re all collaborating in different languages,” he said. “It’s not about where you’re from or what language you’re singing in, it’s about bringing cultures together and different styles, and it’s good for music in general.”

‘I think this is a hit’

Erika Ender, who co-wrote “Despacito” with Fonsi at his home in September 2015, said the song felt special when they created it.

“There are some songs that come with a special spark, and I think it’s got it. … We looked at each other and said, ‘I think this is a hit,’” she recalled.

Ender also credits the song’s success with Fonsi’s decision to get out of his comfort zone.

“People used to see him like a (balladeer) or a pop singer, and he went out of his way to bring something new to the audience,” she said.

 
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Glen Campbell, the grinning, high-pitched entertainer whose dozens of hit singles included “Rhinestone Cowboy” and “Wichita Lineman” and whose appeal spanned country, pop, television and movies, died Tuesday, his family said. He was 81.

 

Campbell’s family said the singer died Tuesday morning in Nashville and publicist Sandy Brokaw confirmed the news. No cause was immediately given. Campbell announced in June 2011 that he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease and that it was in its early stages at that time.

 

“Glen is one of the greatest voices there ever was in the business and he was one of the greatest musicians,” said Dolly Parton in a video statement. “He was a wonderful session musician as well. A lot of people don’t realize that. But he could play anything and he could play it really well.”

 

Tributes poured in on social media. “Thank you Glen Campbell for sharing your talent with us for so many years May you rest in peace my friend You will never be forgotten,” wrote Charlie Daniels. One of Campbell’s daughters, Ashley, said she was heartbroken. “I owe him everything I am, and everything I ever will be. He will be remembered so well and with so much love,” she wrote on Twitter.

In the late 1960s and well into the ’70s, the Arkansas native seemed to be everywhere, known by his boyish face, wavy hair and friendly tenor. He won five Grammys, sold more than 45 million records, had 12 gold albums and 75 chart hits, including No. 1 songs with “Rhinestone Cowboy” and “Southern Nights.”

His performance of the title song from “True Grit,” a 1969 release in which he played a Texas Ranger alongside Oscar winner John Wayne, received an Academy Award nomination. He twice won album of the year awards from the Academy of Country Music and was voted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2005. Seven years later, he received a Grammy for lifetime achievement.

 

His last record was “Adios,” which came out in June and features songs that Campbell loved to sing but never recorded, including tunes made famous by Bob Dylan, Linda Ronstadt and Johnny Cash. Ashley Campbell, also a musician, made a quest appearance and said making the album was “therapeutic.”

 

Campbell was among a wave of country crossover stars that included Johnny Cash, Roy Clark and Kenny Rogers, and like many of his contemporaries, he enjoyed success on television. Campbell had a weekly audience of some 50 million people for the “Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour,” on CBS from 1969 to 1972. He gained new fans decades later when the show, featuring his cheerful greeting “Hi I’m Glen Campbell,” was rerun on cable channel CMT.

 

“I did what my Dad told me to do — ‘Be nice, son, and don’t cuss. And be nice to people.’ And that’s the way I handled myself, and people were very, very nice to me,” Campbell told The Telegraph in 2011.

He released more than 70 of his own albums, and in the 1990s recorded a series of gospel CDs. A 2011 farewell album, “Ghost On the Canvas,” included contributions from Jacob Dylan, Rick Nielsen of Cheap Trick and Billy Corgan of Smashing Pumpkins.

 

The documentary “Glen Campbell … I’ll Be Me” came out in 2014. The film about Campbell’s 2011-12 farewell tour offers a poignant look at his decline from Alzheimer’s while showcasing his virtuoso guitar chops that somehow continued to shine as his mind unraveled. The song “I’m Not Gonna Miss You” won a Grammy for best country song in 2015 and was nominated for an Oscar for best original song.

 

Campbell’s musical career dated back to the early years of rock `n roll. He toured with the Champs of “Tequila” fame when the group included two singers who formed the popular ’70s duo Seals & Crofts. He was part of the house band for the ABC TV show “Shindig!” and a member of Phil Spector’s “Wrecking Crew” studio band that played on hits by the Ronettes, the Righteous Brothers and the Crystals. He played guitar on Frank Sinatra’s “Strangers In the Night,” the Monkees’ “I’m a Believer” and Elvis Presley’s “Viva Las Vegas.”

 

“We’d get the rock ‘n’ roll guys and play all that, then we’d get Sinatra and Dean Martin,” Campbell told The Associated Press in 2011. “That was a kick. I really enjoyed that. I didn’t want to go nowhere. I was making more money than I ever made just doing studio work.”

 

A sharecropper’s son, and one of 12 children, he was born outside of Delight, Arkansas, and grew up revering country music stars such as Hank Williams.

 

“I’m not a country singer per se,” Campbell once said. “I’m a country boy who sings.”

He was just 4 when he learned to play guitar. As a teenager, anxious to escape a life of farm work and unpaid bills, he moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico to join his uncle’s band and appear on his uncle’s radio show. By his early 20s, he had formed his own group, the Western Wranglers, and moved to Los Angeles. He opened for the Doors and sang and played bass with the Beach Boys as a replacement for Brian Wilson, who in the mid-’60s had retired from touring to concentrate on studio work. In 1966, Campbell played on the Beach Boys’ classic “Pet Sounds” album.

 

“I didn’t go to Nashville because Nashville at that time seemed one-dimensional to me,” Campbell told the AP. “I’m a jazzer. I just love to get the guitar and play the hell out of it if I can.”

 

By the late ’60s, he was a performer on his own, an appearance on Joey Bishop’s show leading to his TV breakthrough. Tommy Smothers of the Smothers Brothers saw the program and asked Campbell if he’d like to host a summertime series, “The Summer Brothers Smothers Show.” Campbell shied from the Smothers Brothers’ political humor, but still accepted the offer. He was out of the country when the first episode aired.

 

“The whole lid just blew off,” Campbell told the AP. “I had never had anything like that happen to me. I got more phone calls. It was awesome. For the first couple of days I was like how do they know me? I didn’t realize the power of television.”

 

His guests included country acts, but also the Monkees, Lucille Ball, Cream, Neil Diamond and Ella Fitzgerald.

 

He was married four times and had eight children. As he would confide in painful detail, Campbell suffered for his fame and made others suffer as well. He drank heavily, used drugs and indulged in a turbulent relationship with country singer Tanya Tucker in the early 1980s.

He is survived by his wife, Kim; their three children, Cal, Shannon and Ashley; and his children from previous marriages, Debby, Kelli, Travis, Kane and Dillon. He had 10 grandchildren.

 

In late 2003, he was arrested near his home in Phoenix after causing a minor traffic accident. He later pleaded guilty to “extreme” DUI and leaving the scene of an accident and served a 10-day sentence.

 

Among Campbell’s own hits, “Rhinestone Cowboy” stood out and became his personal anthem. Written and recorded by Larry Weiss in 1974, “Rhinestone Cowboy” received little attention until Campbell heard it on the radio and quickly related to the story of a veteran performer who triumphs over despair and hardship. Campbell’s version was a chart topper in 1975.

 

“I thought it was my autobiography set to song,” he wrote 20 years later, in his autobiography, titled “Rhinestone Cowboy.”
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Films by Greta Gerwig, Sean Baker and Agnes Varda are headed to the 55th New York Film Festival. The Film Society of Lincoln Center announced the selections of 25 films for its main slate on Tuesday, including eight directed by women.

The festival, held annually at Lincoln Center, is one of the most prestigious of the fall season. Among the films selected are Baker’s acclaimed Cannes entry The Florida Project, the 89-year-old Varda’s Faces Places and Gerwig’s directorial debut Lady Bird. Gerwig’s frequent collaborator and romantic partner Noah Baumbach will also return to the festival with his Netflix release The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected).

Many of the selections, as usual, include previous festival standouts. Luca Guadagnino’s Call Me by Your Name and Dee Rees’ Mudbound will come to the festival after lauded debuts at Sundance. Other Cannes hits include Ruben Ostlund’s Palme d’Or winning comedy The Square and Robin Campillo’s AIDS activist drama BPM (Beats Per Minute).

The festival previously announced its three galas, all of which are Amazon Studios releases. Richard Linklater’s Last Flag Flying, a kind of sequel to Hal Ashby’s The Last Detail, will open the festival. Todd Haynes’ Brian Selznick adaptation Wonderstruck is the centerpiece, and Woody Allen’s 1950s Coney Island tale Wonder Wheel will close.

The New York Film Festival runs Sept. 28 to Oct. 15.
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Deep below London’s bustling streets, a piece of once-vital communications technology will soon be roaring back into life after years of disuse — a train.

The train operates on the “mail rail” line — a 6.4-mile underground train track that once transported letters and parcels 70 feet below ground to and from sorting offices on the east and west sides of the city 22 hours each day.

The line, construction of which began in 1915, ceased operations in 2003. It will be opened to the public next month as a tourist attraction, part of the new Postal Museum in the city’s Clerkenwell district.

“Mail rail originally came about because mail was being delayed in London due to congestion in the streets above us,” Adrian Steel, director of the Postal Museum and mail rail, told Reuters.

Visitors can now ride a section of the old track in specially built trains, and explore an engineering depot turned exhibition space.

“One of the biggest jobs we’ve had is finding a way of taking people through these narrow tunnels that were never meant for people to pass through in a way that’s not completely uncomfortable or dangerous,” Steel said.

Apart from their role in delivering mail, the tunnels played a useful role during World War I and World War II.

Construction of the line was halted when war broke out and the space was instead used to store valuable artifacts, and was relied on heavily to avoid mail disruption during the blitz of World War II.

Aside from its unique history, another aspect of the mail rail line sets it apart from other London underground train lines — an absence of rats.

“It’s a rodent-free terminal and under London which is unusual,” Steel said. “Because there were no people on the trains, there is no food for the rats and mice.”

Rail mail at London’s Postal Museum opens to visitors on Sept. 4.
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Hackers using the name “Mr. Smith” posted a fresh cache of stolen HBO files online Monday, and demanded that HBO pay a ransom of several million dollars to prevent further such releases.

The data dump included what appear to be scripts from five “Game of Thrones” episodes, including one upcoming episode, and a month’s worth of email from the account of Leslie Cohen, HBO’s vice president for film programming. There were also internal documents, including a report of legal claims against the network and job offer letters to top executives.

HBO, which previously acknowledged the theft of “proprietary information,” said it’s continuing to investigate and is working with police and cybersecurity experts. The network said Monday that it still doesn’t believe that its email system as a whole has been compromised.

This is the second data dump from the purported hacker. So far the HBO leaks have been limited, falling well short of the chaos inflicted on Sony in 2014. In that attack, hackers unearthed thousands of embarrassing emails and released personal information, including salaries and social security numbers, of nearly 50,000 current and former Sony employees.  

 

Those behind the HBO hack claim to have more data, including scripts, upcoming episodes of HBO shows and movies, and information damaging to HBO.

In a video directed to HBO CEO Richard Plepler, “Mr. Smith” used white text on a black background to threaten further disclosures if HBO doesn’t pay up. To stop the leaks, the purported hackers demanded “our 6 month salary in bitcoin,” which they implied is at least $6 million.

 
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The estate of Michael Jackson says a 3-D version of the late singer’s iconic “Thriller” video is set to debut at the Venice Film Festival more than 30 years after its original premiere.

 

The estate says the “latest available technology” was used to convert the 14-minute short film from an original 35mm negative to 3-D.

 

Although the film wasn’t reedited or recut in any way, director John Landis says he was able to “use the 3-D creatively” and promises “a rather shocking surprise.”

 

“Michael Jackson’s Thriller” debuted in theaters and on television in 1983. An hour-long documentary detailing the making of the video will also screen at the Venice festival, which runs from Aug. 30 to Sept. 9.

 

Jackson died in 2009 at the age of 50.
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“Ditch your car” is one of the first bits of advice from author Edward Abbey, for anyone wanting to visit Utah’s vast desert landscapes.

“You can’t see anything from a car; you’ve got to get out of the … contraption and walk, better yet crawl, on hands and knees, over the sandstone and through the thornbush and cactus,” he writes in Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness, based on his two seasons (1956 and 1957) working as a park ranger in Utah.

Abbey was inspired by the western state’s stunning red rock formations that were shaped into other-worldly spires and dramatic arches by geological forces over millions of years.

Some of the most beautiful can be found at five of Utah’s most popular national park sites, known as “The Mighty 5.” National parks traveler Mikah Meyer planned to visit all of them.

Superstar of arches

There are more than 2,000 natural sandstone arches at Arches National Park, making up the world’s largest collection, and Mikah must have been thinking about Edward Abbey as he parked his van and took to the park’s numerous trails by foot.

He says he could see firsthand why it’s one of the most visited parks in the state, with 1.6 million visitors last year.

“Even outside of the park and all around Utah, there are these arches that just naturally form from the rock eroding, but in Arches National Park are some of the most magnificent … either really large, or there’s two or three all clustered together, there’s a double arch where you can see through two arches at once, and then of course there’s Delicate Arch.”

The massive, red-hued structure is considered by many the most famous natural stone arch in the world. “It’s this perfect arch that seems to come out of nowhere,” Mikah said, “because it’s essentially on its own on top of a hill with a giant vista and mountains behind it.” So it’s not surprising that visitors “one by one, take their time running or walking into the arch to take their picture,” he added.

After his visit to Arches, Mikah accepted a complimentary boat tour on the nearby Colorado River with Canyonlands by Night & Day jet boat company.

“It gives you a perspective of this land which many people describe as Mars with water because it’s just so arid, and so red and orange looking,” Mikah explained. “It’s this really cool juxtaposition not only of views, but of the wildlife that survives in the desert.”

He saw rattlesnakes, salamanders, chipmunks, frogs and deer in and around the river.

Island in the sky

The massive Canyonlands National Park, the next stop on Mikah’s Mighty 5 adventure, has three distinct districts: The Needles, Island in the Sky and the Maze.

The Needles District is home to a large collection of hoodoos, which Mikah described as “giant rock structures that look like giant fingers sticking out of the earth.” Visitors are able to hike around them.

But his favorite was the Island in the Sky district, which he reached just in time for sunset.

“This is where you’re able to drive along a scenic road that takes you along all these incredible overlooks that give you expansive views of the canyon and of the rivers, and it’s a wow moment,” he said. “It’s the take-your-breath-away, audibly say ‘wow!’ moment.”

Heart of red rock country

From Canyonlands, it was on to Capitol Reef National Park, which Mikah described as “a mix of all the other parks.”

“You have some stunning cliffs, some canyon views, some natural rock arches,” he said. “Just a nice blend of all the other Mighty 5 parks.”

In the coming days, Mikah plans to visit the other two of the Mighty 5 parks — Bryce Canyon and Zion national parks.

‘Bloody rocks’

In the introductory remarks to Desert Solitaire, Edward Abbey noted that many of the places he wrote about in 1967 were “already gone or going under fast.”

 

“This is not a travel guide but an elegy. A memorial,” he wrote. “You’re holding a tombstone in your hands. A bloody rock. Don’t drop it on your foot — throw it at something big and glassy. What do you have to lose?”

Mikah has nothing to lose. He plans to continue on his journey to visit all 417 National Park Service sites at full speed, and explore as many of those “tombstones” and “bloody rocks” while he can.

Mikah invites you to follow him on his epic journey by visiting him on his website TCBMikah.com, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube.
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Two members of the Russian feminist punk band Pussy Riot were briefly detained Monday after rallying for the release of a Ukrainian filmmaker outside his Siberian prison.

During Sunday’s protest in Yakutsk where Oleg Sentsov is serving his sentence, the band members unfurled a banner on a nearby bridge that read “Free Sentsov!”

Longtime Pussy Riot member Maria Alyokhina tweeted that she and Olga Borisova were taken to a police station following their detention earlier in the day and faced a court hearing over charges of holding an unauthorized rally.

Borisova later said on Facebook that she and Alyokhina were released after a judge found flaws in the case. It was unclear if the police would refile charges.

A Russian military court convicted Sentsov, who comes from the Crimean Peninsula that Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014, of conspiracy to commit terror attacks and sentenced him to 20 years in prison.

Sentsov, who made two short movies and the 2012 feature film “Gamer,” denied the charges, which he and his supporters denounced as political punishment for his opposition to Crimea’s annexation.

The U.S. and the EU have criticized his conviction and called for his release, and numerous cultural figures in Russia and abroad have urged the Russian government to free him.

Pussy Riot is a loose collective and most of its members perform anonymously. The balaclava-clad women rose to prominence with their daring outdoor performances critical of President Vladimir Putin and Russia’s ruling elite.

An impromptu “punk prayer” at Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Savior that derided the ties between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Kremlin got them into trouble in 2012.

Three band members were convicted of “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred” for the stunt. Alyokhina and another member, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, spent nearly two years in prison.
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