Nearly 40 years after reporting on the Watergate political scandal that led to the resignation of a U.S. president, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein have accumulated a lifetime of experiences in journalism. The University of Tulsa Presidential Lecture Series brings the long-time friends and collaborators together to talk about where their profession has been and where it is headed with new media. Both Pulitzer Prize winners, the authors of All the President’s Men also tell stories of investigative reporting today and the ultimate pursuit of truth in an ever-shifting world of media technology opportunity. What do they think of today’s political election coverage? You know you’re curious. Look for them on Tuesday, March 27 at 7:30 p.m. at the Donald W. Reynolds Center on the TU campus. www.utulsa.edu

Runners, relax. There are no snakes intentionally dropped along the path to stand between you and the finish line of this ultimate endurance challenge. The Tulsa Area Trail & Ultra Runners, or TATUR, would rather send you on a winding trail around Turkey Mountain’s woods in snow, rain or shine. The timed three- and six-hour races require the stamina of a desert camel, the patience of a sea turtle and the strength of, well, you get the idea. Who knows what the weather will be like on March 24? Late spring is as likely to bring chills and snow as it is 80 degrees. Even if you don’t run the entire race, you’re still a winner for having tried it in the first place. Just know that with a top finish comes a life-like replica of a snake in strike pose. Welcome to the animal kingdom. www.tatur.org

Bruce Springsteen, Wrecking Ball – The Boss is back with his 17th studio album. The 62-year-old troubadour of the American working class has explored themes of the common man through a variety of styles from hard rock to folk. Springsteen continues to evolve in what, perhaps unsurprisingly given the times, has been called his angriest album. He also takes inspiration from younger bands such as Arcade Fire, which he has in turn influenced in recent years.

Adam Lambert, Trespassing – All American Idol finalists get their 15 minutes, but some get considerably more. Glam rocker Adam Lambert is certainly among the latter. In the year following his season 8, second place finish, Lambert released a critically praised, commercially successful album with three hit singles and launched a world tour. Although the lead single from his sophomore effort, “Better Than I Know Myself,” is more low key than we’re used to hearing, collaborations with Pharrell Williams, Katy Perry and Bruno Mars among others indicate Lambert may just have the staying power many Idols lack.

The Shins, Port of Morrow – Frontman James Mercer’s indie outfit with an ever-changing lineup stunned critics and music lovers alike with their powerful 2001 debut, Oh, Inverted World. Two more hit albums followed. Now, after five years, fans finally get to hear the hotly anticipated fourth studio release. The band’s latest lineup includes personnel from Modest Mouse and Crystal Skulls.

Madonna, MDNA – The mother of re-invention is set to unleash her 12th studio album – her first not associated with Warner Bros. and arguably the most anticipated album of the year. Ever the master of promotion, Madonna expertly timed the release of the album with her 2012 Super Bowl halftime performance and the release of the football-themed video to the lead single “Give Me All Your Luvin’” both featuring collaborators Nicki Minaj and M.I.A. as cheerleaders. The single itself has received mixed reviews, but this is Madonna, the album will be a hit regardless.
 

My first movie love just passed away.

Her name was Susan Gordon. I met her, as most of us meet our cinema sweethearts, in the electric darkness of a long-ago movie theater, her sweet screen image flickering in front of me, far larger than life. Although I could hardly have known it at the time, I later found out we were both born not only in the same year, 1949, but also in the same city – St. Paul, Minnesota.

Our paths out of St. Paul had led to far different places. She’d gone to Hollywood, where her father, Bert I. Gordon, had become a producer and director specializing in horror films, with his wife often contributing special effects. At the age of 4, I had gone with my younger brother and newly widowed mother to Chelsea, Oklahoma, where she could rely on the support of her home folks. I also must say that by the time I was 9 or 10, I totally represented the Bert I. Gordon demographic – a monster-crazy kid who loved movies, especially scary ones.

We usually returned to Minnesota during each summer vacation, visiting my father’s relatives. This trek always included a trip to the northernmost tip of the state, where an aunt and uncle lived much as farmers there had lived for decades: with an outhouse, a water well and lots of animals. Entertainment was pretty bucolic, too, centered around neighbors and church. When they craved metropolitan diversions, my aunt and uncle ventured into Hallock, a town about the size of Chelsea a few miles away from their farm.

It was in the former town, during a summer’s evening in 1960, that I first encountered Susan. My brother and I had been given the choice of attending an ice cream church social or going to Hallock’s lone picture show. The title of the current attraction, The Boy and the Pirates, with its promise of high kids’ adventure, probably made up our minds for us, and that evening we were comfortably seated in this strange movie theater when I encountered Susan for the first time.

I don’t know if it was love at first sight, but it sure packed a wallop. I came out of that theater aflame with wild new daydreams, innocent but thrilling, involving the sorts of derring-do and hair’s-breadth escapes I had just seen Susan and her young co-star, Charles Herbert, enact on the screen. Of course, I immediately co-opted Mr. Herbert’s place in the action. In trying to describe the intensity of my sudden feelings toward this girl, or her image, I can only invoke the whole notion of courtly love, and what it must’ve meant to the knights in their ancient, chaste days.

When we returned home to Chelsea a week or so later, Susan Gordon still flickered in my head and my heart. I sat down and wrote her a letter, care of United Artists, which had released Boy and the Pirates. She wrote me back – in gold ink! – telling me that yes, indeed, her father was Bert I. Gordon and her mother Flora M. Gordon, whose names I had seen in horror-film credits at the local theater. What’s more, she had a fan club. I not only promptly joined, but also formed a new Chelsea-based chapter, made up of my brother and several slightly bemused friends.

Susan went on to amass significant credits in TV and movies; her role in her dad’s ghost story Tormented (1960), as well as an early 1962 Twilight Zone appearance as a mistreated little girl in leg braces who befriends an alien, still stand out for me all these years later. A few months after that Twilight Zone aired, my infatuation soared into the stratosphere, as my family and I got to spend the afternoon with Susan and her family at their Hollywood home.

It happened because my former-actress aunt, who lived in the San Fernando Valley, had show-biz connections (her son, my first cousin, was a child actor himself, notably playing the kid who comes to town and bullies Opie in a well-remembered episode of The Andy Griffith Show). Knowing of my infatuation with Susan, she somehow got the Gordons on the phone – we were visiting that summer – and wangled an invitation. One afternoon, Aunt Marion inexplicably beckoned me to the phone, telling me I had a call. It was Susan on the other end, asking us over – and showing me that I didn’t have to die to have an out-of-body experience.

I was a shy kid, but when we pulled up to the Gordon’s house in West Hollywood, the shyness had become absolute petrification. I remember meeting Susan and her folks. I remember Bert taking my brother and cousin and me into the den where he had his ham-radio equipment and framed one-sheet posters from his movies, and giving us each a still and comic book from The Magic Sword, his latest picture. I remember walking down the sidewalk with Susan and her pet spider monkey, Tammy. I remember that because Susan’s birthday was around the corner, I’d given her a present of a do-it-yourself mosaic kit I’d purchased at the Chelsea dime store.

And I remember knowing, without really thinking about it, that I would never, ever have another day like that one.

Not long afterwards, I became the first president of the Bert I. Gordon Fan Club, also maintaining my deep interest in Susan and her career. But we grew up, both Susan and I. A few years later, she left the movies, I left for college, and the love and joy and awe associated with the Gordons gradually leaked out into the new atmosphere swirling around me. I always held the thought of somehow meeting up with her again. In 1992, I even dedicated a book I wrote to her. But in those pre-internet days, finding someone from your past wasn’t all that easy.

As it turned out, she found me. Out of the blue, about 10 years ago, I heard from a producer in New York who’d used Susan in an off-Broadway play. They’d been talking one evening about her fan club and had decided to dive into cyberspace in an attempt to find any of the old members. It didn’t take them long to run into my website.

And so, we reconnected. We talked on the phone a couple of times. I interviewed her for the horror-movie magazine Fangoria, which helped lead her to a new part-time career as a guest at nostalgia and horror-movie conventions. We talked a lot over the computer.

But eventually, that drifted away. She was fond of instant messaging, a communication technique I didn’t get and didn’t like, so when I dropped it, our contact dropped off as well.

I hadn’t heard from her in a few years when I got the news. It came from a fellow film fan that provided me links to websites with more information on her death. I clicked on the first one, and the image hit me like a sucker punch.

As is the case with any guy old enough to receive those ubiquitous AARP billets, I’ve seen the emails that show us what our glamour girls of the ‘60s and ‘70s look like today. But dammit, the first photo I saw of the late Susan Gordon looked to me exactly like the face of that beautiful little girl with the big eyes and shy manner who’d greeted me in her Hollywood doorway, on what may have been, in retrospect, the most incredible – and unlikely – day of my life.

Wes Nofire wakes at 5:30 a.m. No alarm clock. His body is used to it. After a quick protein shake, it’s out the door for roadwork. Three or four miles later he returns for push-ups and sit-ups and pushups and sit-ups and rest. At noon he’s off to the boxing gym to work with his trainer, John David Jackson, who sharpens his talents with shadowboxing, jumping rope, working the heavy bag and mitts and sparring. Then it’s recovery time until around 6 p.m. when he heads to the weight gym. After a mile run as warm-up, it’s time for a weight workout – high reps with low weights to avoid over-bulking his six-foot, six-inch, 233-pound frame while building strength and endurance. He tops that off with plyometrics before returning home for dinner and some TV before bedtime at 10:30. In the morning he’ll do it all again.

The Cherokee boxer had planned to graduate in the top 10 at Tahlequah Sequoyah High School in 2004, to play college basketball and pursue a law degree. But when he couldn’t find the right situation to pursue basketball, those plans changed.

“I went (to college) with the intention of playing basketball,” he recalls, “but it just didn’t happen the way I wanted it to.”  Without basketball, Nofire felt the urge to move on with life, and for him that meant leaving college at Northeastern State University and moving to Tulsa.

“I wanted to get out and explore the world of being an adult,” he says, “but the competitiveness from sports was always there.”

After a few years, that competitive fire led Nofire to a local boxing gym. But without a thriving boxing community in Tulsa, Nofire was forced to teach himself much of the fundamentals of the sport. His teaching method? Watching YouTube videos.

“I learned a lot about technique and footwork watching videos online,” he explains, “and I loved watching boxing on TV growing up.”

His unconventional learning method proved successful enough that he caught the eye of heavyweight contender Kevin Johnson, who asked Nofire to spar with him as he prepared for an approaching fight against a tall opponent. The experience convinced Nofire he could make a living as a prizefighter, and after a brief amateur career, he relocated with his wife, Molly, to Miami, Fla.

“It took that leap of faith,” he says. “We didn’t know anybody in the boxing world there.”

But Nofire did know of Jackson, the renowned trainer who helped shape another Oklahoma fighter, Allan Green, into a contender. Jackson saw enough potential in Nofire when they met to work with him, and six months after Nofire moved to Miami, he and Jackson traveled back to Oklahoma for his first professional bout at promoter Dale “Apollo” Cook’s Xtreme Fight Night at The Joint at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Tulsa. In the five months since he knocked out Marc Webb in that fight, Nofire has fought twice more, prevailing both times. And each victory has come in Oklahoma.

With a goal of six to eight fights this year, the 25-year-old Nofire knows he must continue to rise at 5:30 each morning if he wants to one day fight for a heavyweight championship. He also knows that there are eyes watching him from his home state, many of them youngsters who thirst for role models from within their own communities. Stepping out the door into the dark air, sometimes he thinks of them.

“I hope I can give a lot of younger Native Americans the confidence to go do something,” Nofire says, “let them know there is something else out there.”

Once upon a time, orchestras and bands played catchy, jazzy tunes with exotic flavors of South America, the Far East and other places around the world. Of course, every band had a lovely “girl singer” in the foreground, and she had a velvety voice perfect for songs laced with romance and longing for both people and places. Pink Martini isn’t a holdover from those days, but it sure puts you in another frame of mind. And, it will make you dance. The little orchestra with an enticing sound headed by pianist Thomas Lauderdale and fronted by lead singer China Forbes plays the Oklahoma City Civic Center Music Hall on March 23-24. Maybe you’ll hear classics recalling film of the 1940s and ‘50s, maybe you’ll hear eclectic originals like “Sympathique” and “Hey Eugene.” This rosy little concoction of happy noise deserves to be sipped and savored. www.okcciviccenter.com

Oklahoma folks music icon Woody Guthrie would have turned 100 years old this year, so Tulsa is hosting a different kind of celebration with its Woody Guthrie Centennial Celebration, March 5-11. Guthrie’s life, music and impact on culture are being observed with a major exhibit, a conference at the University of Tulsa and a star-studded tribute concert.

Woody at 100: The Woody Guthrie Centennial Celebration 1912-2012 sponsored by the George Kaiser Family Foundation, continues at the Gilcrease Museum through April 29 and includes everything from journals and artwork to the original draft of the lyrics for Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land.”
The March 10 TU conference, Different Shades of Red, includes sessions that examine Guthrie’s political and social views, explore musical influences, and address Guthrie’s legacy as it pertains to Depression-era Oklahoma.

The celebration reaches its climax on March 10 with The Woody Guthrie Centennial Celebration Concert at the historic Brady Theater. Performing Guthrie songs, headliners include John Mellencamp, Arlo Guthrie, Rosanne Cash and The Flaming Lips, among others.

Tulsa will continue to be at the center of preserving Guthrie’s legacy. The George Kaiser Family Foundation purchased the Woody Guthrie Archives and is creating a permanent home for the archives in downtown Tulsa.

Laura Gilpin worked with black-and-white film, light and a camera. Maria Martinez molded New Mexico’s red clay into glossy, smoke-infused black-on-black pottery. These two women and artists were unlikely contemporaries in the early 20th century, but a shared love of art and the American Southwest made their long friendship and collaboration possible. Philbrook Museum of Art celebrates the work of both in an exhibit entitled Black on Black & White: The Southwest of Laura Gilpin and Maria Martinez featuring Gilpin’s photographs of Martinez and her family at work at the San Ildefonso Pueblo home alongside original pieces from the New Mexico kiln. This striking display of stark refinement is hardly a colorless collection. Rather, viewers get the full spectrum of friendship and respect between two important American artists. The exhibit continues through April 15. www.philbrook.org