Nick Cave is the exceptionally talented singer, songwriter, screenwriter, and performer who is most well known for leading Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. In “The Red Hand Files” series, Cave entertains questions from fans around the world. Allow me to cast the spotlight on his response to Hope, Optimism, and Christmas found HERE.

“Hope and optimism can be different, almost opposing, forces. Hope rises out of known suffering and is the defiant and dissenting spark that refuses to be extinguished. Optimism, on the other hand, can be the denial of that suffering, a fear of facing the darkness, a lack of awareness, a kind of blindness to the actual. Hope is wised-up and disobedient. Optimism can be fearful and false. However, there exists another form of optimism, a kind of radical optimism. This optimism has experienced the suffering of the world, believes in the insubordinate nature of hope and is forever at war with banal pessimism, cynicism and nihilism.

“As we move into Christmas, the image of Jesus in the manger — what Yeats calls the ‘uncontrollable mystery on the bestial floor’ — is that hope and that radical optimism incarnate.”

Dana Scruggs for The New York Times.

New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd has written a fascinating portrait of Denzel Washington and his upcoming film, “The Tragedy of Macbeth.”

As has been my custom for the last 30 years, I am most intrigued by elements of religion in pop culture – and Washington is one of the finest examples of interlacing his heartfelt faith with his meticulous artistic talent. Here are four stand-out segments from Dowd’s 3,500 piece.

• He had just put the final touches on a film he directed, “A Journal for Jordan,” the true story of the romance between Dana Canedy, a former New York Times reporter and editor, and Sgt. Charles Monroe King, a soldier who was killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq, after meeting their infant son only once. It stars Michael B. Jordan and Chanté Adams and also opens widely on Christmas Day. Continue reading →

By Steve Beard

Some of the most emotional moments broadcast on television are when deployed military parents return unexpectedly to surprise their kids coming home from school, during a musical recital, or at a graduation. Sheer joy boils over and you can almost feel the tight squeeze of the bear hugs. Tears of happiness cascade down the faces of the unexpected with unreserved elation. In a perfect world, those moments would last forever.

A few years ago, I joined my family at the Mt. Soledad Veterans Memorial in San Diego to honor my grandfather, Harold L. DuVal, a veteran of World War II. For the families gathered at the site near the Pacific Ocean, it is a breathtaking experience. Those leaving flowers or touching plaques want to make sure that their loved ones are not forgotten. Walking the grounds gives a good opportunity to reflect on the service and sacrifice of men and women in uniform.

While Memorial Day in May is specially designated to remember those who made the ultimate sacrifice during military service, Veterans Day in November is an opportunity to show gratitude for all current and former members of the Armed Forces.

February 3 is designated as a special day to honor four specific heroes from World War II (1939-1945) and recognize their acts of self-sacrifice during a fateful night off the coast of Greenland in an area the Navy dubbed as Torpedo Alley – a treacherous stretch of the North Atlantic filled with Nazi submarines. The U.S. Army transport ship U.S.A.T. Dorchester was a cruise ship that had been repurposed to serve during wartime. It carried more than 900 military personnel, merchant marines, and civilians. Continue reading →

Tom and Marchia Morey celebrating the International Boogie Board Day. Screenshot from YouTube.

With the most vivid memories, I recall the first time I rode a Boogie Board in the Pacific Ocean. Like so many other young Southern California kids, I was out trying to learn the rhythm of the sea – waiting and waiting and then paddling and kicking like a runaway riverboat to catch a wave. The older wetsuited surfers may have resented us salt-water-swallowing groms pilfering their waves, but the ocean didn’t seem to play favorites. I learned nothing but respect for the mystical magic of currents, waves, and tides.

The durable and spongy Boogie Board was a great equalizer in the water – allowing the young, gawky, uncoordinated, and amateurish our opportunity on the bullride of the sea. Yippee-ki-yay, dude!

All of this is to say mahalo to Tom Morey, inventor of the Boogie Board who died last month at age 86. “That single device introduced more people to the joy of waveriding than any other person in the world,” said Jim Kempton, president of the California Surfing Museum. “His simple gift – a design that allowed anyone from paraplegics to Pipeline pros to boogie their brains out on a wave – will be his joyous, lasting, legacy.”

Kempton, former editor of Surfer magazine, called Morey “the Ben Franklin of the surfing world. Like Franklin, Morey was a jack of all trades and the master of so many it is almost dizzying.” Morey was a jazz drummer, surfing design fabricator, ukulele player, and an engineer.

The first Saturday of November is International Boogie Day — or the International Bodyboarding Day.

Morey sold his stake in his invention back in 1977. “I got a good chunk of money,” he would later report. “I spent some of it wisely and I spent some of it unwisely. I’ve been up and down and over and out.” When asked at age 72 if the Boogie Board made him wealthy, he said: “I can surf. I’m healthy. I’m creative. Hey! A lot of my multi-millionaire friends … they’re gone. Nobody’s trying to kidnap my kids, because they don’t have no money! I’m not running from the IRS. I don’t have any kind of income that’s of importance. Life is about riding in the curl.”

RIP Tom Morey.

Hank William tombstone at the Oakwood Cemetery in Montgomery, Alabama. Photo by Steve Beard.

By Steve Beard

The sun was bright and unforgiving as I paid my respects at the gravesite of Hank Williams on a bluff in Montgomery, Alabama. A cowboy hat would have helped. The heat was a far cry from the dreary night of January 1, 1953, when much of the South was covered in snow and ice at the time of the country music star’s untimely death in the back seat of his 1952 baby blue Cadillac on the way to a concert up north. He was 29 years old.

“Praise the Lord – I Saw the Light” is etched in the massive marble gravestone with rays of light descending from the heavens, splicing right through his legendary name. The column is crowned with musical notes. Below, the base of the monument is adorned by a dozen titles of his boxcar worth of hits such as “Your Cheatin’ Heart,” “Lovesick Blues,” “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,” and “I’ll Never Get Out of this World Alive.” Hank didn’t just tug at your heartstrings, he yanked them. Yanked hard. Dejection, cheating, and loneliness.

He also wrote loads of gospel songs. “I Saw the Light” was the most famous. No one mistook Hank for a saint, but his fans could relate to his message about one glad morning – someday in the future – when the old will be made new and there will be no more tears or toil. Situated above his first name, there is relatively understated bronze portrait of Hank playing the guitar with his leg propped up on a bar stool. The lyrics echoed through my mind.

I wandered so aimless, life filled with sin
I wouldn’t let my dear savior in
Then Jesus came like a stranger in the night
Praise the Lord, I saw the light Continue reading →

Pretty stoked to be in Hawaii on Duke Kahanamoku’s 131st birthday. It would be have been a great gift to him to know that Carissa Moore won the first gold medal in surfing at the Tokyo Olympics. She did Hawaiians proud. “Stopped by to share my leis with Duke to honor our father of modern day surfing and the ambassador of Aloha 🌺 Surfing wouldn’t be what it is today without him and all those who have come before,” she wrote on Instagram.

Duke’s love of the ocean — manifest through his Olympic gold medals in swimming and pioneering expertise in surfing — has been a total inspiration and has only deepened my love for Hawaii and the values of Aloha. Happy birthday Duke! Mahalo.

Many years ago when high school life was simple and zesty in the early 1980s, I was more than mildly obsessed with an Orange County rockabilly band called the Red Devils. My friend Jonny Ray slapped a blonde doghouse bass while his brother Dave Lee shredded a Gretsch Silver Jet and Scottie Campbell beat the drums. In the center of the stage was siren who shipwrecked the hearts of many young fans. Emy Lee had a voice that was created to shake rafters. Regrettably, the memory of that foursome’s time on the stage is only preserved via a few YouTube videos.

Through the miracle of technology, I was blasted back to yesteryear last Sunday afternoon when I was able to see Emy Lee perform online with fabulous musicians such as Kid Ramos (Fabulous Thunderbirds) and John Bazz (Blasters). Spectacular. One of the strange and wonderful sensations of life is being able to close your eyes and find yourself transported through well-preserved vocals and piping hot music. The brief set with selections from legends such as Billie Holiday, Ruth Brown, Wanda Jackson, and Janis Martin went by with the speed of a bullet train but brought a truckload of satisfaction.

The Los Angeles Times once described Emy Lee as a “magnetic singer” and the OC Weekly referred to her as “Ava Gardner in cowboy boots.” In her brilliant essay in John Doe’s book, “More Fun in the New World,” Maria McKee of Lone Justice fame described Emy Lee as “a gorgeous Puerto Rican girl dressed in perfect 1950s clothes” who “played a Charlie Christian guitar” and was being compared to Patsy Cline. It was all truth. Decades later, I can’t be more grateful for  Stellar Shows and Concerts as well as Campus JAX in Newport Beach for my nostalgic Sunday afternoon Zoom call to less complicated days.

John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd confer with John Lee Hooker on set of the Blues Brothers.

Twenty years after his death, it is an exceptional day to remember John Lee Hooker, a blues guitar legend and King of the Boogie (August 22, 1917 – June 21, 2001). For fans like me, he first emerged on to my radar because of his appearance in the 1980 movie “Blues Brothers” with Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi.

In respectful memory, enjoy a few excerpts from Charles Shaar Murray’s “Boogie Man: The Adventures of John Lee Hooker in the American Twentieth Century” in 2000.

• “Slouched in his chair and protected by his shades, Hooker works through his tales of lust and anger, sorrow and loneliness, regret and despair. They call certain kinds of blues ‘low down,’ and sometimes what is meant by that is a social judgment on certain sorts of Continue reading →