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Archives for September 2009

The Most Hated Man in New York

Sep 23, 2009 by Ted Botha Leave a Comment

If it is the week of the opening of the General Assembly, you know for sure that New Yorkers are going to be grumbling about the traffic, because avenues and streets all over the place are closed off for the dignitaries arriving in their thousands. One dignitary in particular – yes, that Iranian with the name no one has learned how to say, even after he stole his second election recently – earns special anger and hatred in town. Today on 47th Street, or Dag Hammarskjold Plaza, which is the closest you can get to the United Nations, Little Tehran was out in force, selling anti-whatsisname badges, calling him the worst names in the book (as if he cares), and basically showing the kind of resistance they can’t do in Iran.  Some other lackluster protesters were around too, like the Ugandans carrying posters saying “Stop Poisoning Uganda”.  Lining 47th Street, more curiously, were dozens of black men who could have been extras from the old James Bond movie ”Live and Let Die’. (Remember, where Roger Moore saves Jane Seymour on a Caribbean island?) In their dark suits and bow ties, they looked like they were dressed for a Jamaican funeral, although the wires sticking out of their ears suggested they were secret service men there to stop any of Little Tehran’s revolutionaries from throwing something at the man on the button (see above).

Filed Under: New York Blog Tagged With: ahmadinejad, general assembly, iran, united nations

Book of the Week

Sep 23, 2009 by Ted Botha Leave a Comment

The Good Thief by Hannah Tinti is Robert Louis Stevenson for 2009. It could be set in Charles Dickens’ England, with youngster Ren an orphan and without one hand, but it takes place  somewhere in the American Northeast and finishes in a very odd town called North Umbrage. But lots happens before that – and happens on every page! A mean priest runs the Catholic orphanage until, one day, a handsome, mysterious stranger plucks Ren out of his misery and plunges them both headlong into an adventure chock full of murderers, fortunes, gravediggers, and a dwarf.  And that’s only the start.

Filed Under: New York Blog Tagged With: adventure, hannah tinti, novel, the good thief

About Ted

Ted was born in New York and grew up in Japan, South Africa, and Washington, D.C. He has written for numerous publications, including The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal, Condé Nast Traveler, and Outside. His books include Apartheid in my Rucksack, a personal account of discovering Africa as a white African; Mongo, Adventures in Trash, where he follows the people in New York City who collect what others consider garbage; and, with Jenni Baxter, The Expat Confessions, about South Africans abroad. His latest book, a nonfiction thriller about a forensic sculptor titled The Girl with the Crooked Nose, comes out in January 2012. His novel, The Animal Lover, is on Kindle. He is a swimmer and a runner, and has done his share of triathlons as well as long-distance swims in South Africa and New York’s Hudson River.

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Ted’s Blog

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Safe House

We all know that Cape Town is being used a lot for movie shoots and ad shoots, often doubling for a city in America or elsewhere. This week sees the launch of Safe House, an … Read More...

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