Poetry, Sex, And Agatha Christie
“All through childhood I wrote verses and mysteries. There is, for me, one connection: structure. My poetry is metrical, rhyming. My crime novels are highly structured. I never start out with a dead body. I start with an impossible scenario. Opening questions should be mysterious, weird, intriguing and contain the seeds of the solution.”
Spain Bans Aerial Drones – And Deeply Wounds Its Film Industry
“Cromática 45 says it has had four orders cancelled since last week; Camfly has seen 15 orders disappear, ‘all the work until October’; and the Andalusia Film Commission has even had to stop a project for the Andalusian regional government. ‘Today the answer [to clients] is that it’s not possible. We’ll see about tomorrow,’ says Querol.”
Is There *Any* Way To Make The Comcast/Time Warner Merger OK?
Maybe? “There is no better example of the existence of our Second Gilded Age than Comcast. Government has made it possible for the company to exert economic power unheard of a generation ago. If this deal is to go through, Comcast should be required to pay dearly for the privilege of exerting market domination.”
The Fired Creator of ‘Vampire Diaries’ Bites Back With Fan Fiction
“In one of the stranger comebacks in literary history, Ms. Smith is independently resurrecting her stories about the adolescent undead. She’s publishing her own version of ‘The Vampire Diaries’ digitally on Amazon, as fan fiction, creating a parallel fictional universe that many hard-core fans regard as more legitimate than the official canon.”
Falling In Love Over And Over, With Bookstores
“My favorite day at that store was when the power went out for a few hours but we didn’t close. We experienced booksellers manned the computer-less information desk, answering questions using only our amassed knowledge of books in print. It was like bookseller thunderdome, and I have to say that I killed it.”
Remembering The Architecture (And Everything Else) Of The 1964 World’s Fair
“An adult puppet show, ‘Les Poupees de Paris,’ that included figures of Elvis and Frank Sinatra, became the area’s biggest hit.”
Dancers Have iPads, Not Discipline, Says Choreographer
The 88-year-old Gillian Lynne “claimed teachers were tougher when she was starting out, adding that venues such as the London Palladium were ‘run with a rod of iron.’”
That Time Josephine Baker Adopted 12 Children And Bought A Castle In France
“She installed what she called her ‘Rainbow Tribe’ in a 15th-century chateau in the South of France and charged admission to tourists who came to hear them sing, to tour their home, or to watch them play leapfrog in their garden.”
The Surveillance Society Hurts – Literally
People “who had any type of contact with the criminal justice system were 31 percent more likely than those who had no contact to not obtain medical care when they needed it. Even people who were merely stopped by police were 33 percent more likely to not seek medical care.”
When A Studio Fire Destroys Everything
Artist Julian Bell: “At first, the blow seeming so clean and entire, I glimpsed a neat image for it. A rectangle had been punched straight through me and I was an empty frame, the picture gone. And I was struck by the way my fuzzy life had suddenly acquired definition, even if only in negative mode. Now I start to sense the rip is more ragged.”
American Sidewalk Cafés Try So Hard, And Get It All So Wrong – Why?
“They might have the appropriate Bistro Collection Café Chairs. But everything else is slightly awry and amiss, as if designed by someone whose understanding of European café culture arose from having once, long ago, seen the Disney film The Aristocats. The café is poorly positioned, poorly arranged, or too exposed to loud traffic and passing cellphone shouters.”
Record Day Started As A PR Move For Indie Stores – And It Worked
“As recently as 2008, only 2.9 million LPs were sold in the United States, representing about 0.7 percent of annual album sales, according to the Recording Industry Association of America. Last year those sales climbed to 9.4 million, representing 3 percent of all albums, and the independent, off-the-grid nature of many of those sales may mean that vinyl’s numbers are underreported.”
The Granite State Symphony Undergoes A Complete Overhaul
The New Hampshire orchestra abruptly canceled its last two concerts and let its music director go. Now it’s planning to reopen in the fall with new musicians, a new music director, and a new venue.
What Should Happen To The BBC If It Doesn’t Diversify?
Looks like the broadcaster might be losing a fair amount of money as soon as the government makes it legal for people to choose not to pay their BBC license fee.
What Has Osmo Vänskä Been Thinking – And Doing – Since The Minnesota Board Let Him Resign?
“I think that classical music is always going to be here, as long as there are human beings. But I think that everyone has to think about what is the right way to take care of classical music. It is not the first time when there are problems. I don’t know if there has ever been something which is not called difficult time, in history. I think it’s always time to try to adjust.”
New York Is So Expensive – But Here’s One Option For Artists To Live There
“If our projected costs and occupancy rates were correct (and if the jackhammering would let up), each partner would work 10 to 15 hours a week at the co-op to cover our rent, utilities and shared groceries, freeing up time to pursue the low-to-zero-pay projects we all had in music, art, education and writing.”
When Actors Take To Social Media To Lambaste Reviewers
“Franco’s Instagram post came with the comment: ‘Sadly Ben Brantley and the NYT have embarrassed themselves. Brantley is such a little bitch he should be working for Gawker.com instead of the paper of record.’”
The Choreographer Who Took A Bunch Of Professors To A Dance
“My intention was to put dance, rather than them, in the dock. Instead of writing technically about dance, I wanted them to bring their own highly refined terminology to bear on the form. In this way, both dance and academics would change locations and effect a mutual migration.”
Chicago Lays Claim To The Comedy (And Late Night) World
“Colbert is the logical extensions of groundbreaking, neo-absurdist shows like Second City’s ‘Pinata Full of Bees,’ coupled with the arrival on North Wells and North Clark streets of good-looking careerists rather than neo-Brechtian improvisors with much facial hair.”
The Best Easter Art Is Bloody And Disturbing
“Of all the rituals that marked the pre-modern year in Christian Europe, this was the time for the darkest meditations and most intense hopes. This contemplative mood makes the art of Easter far more personal than that of Christmas.”
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Pandemonium At San Diego Opera Board Meeting, Followed By New Chairman And Rescue Plan
Karen Cohn, the board chairman who presided over the sudden plan to dissolve the company, stormed out of the meeting, as did several other members as well as general director Ian Campbell and his deputy and ex-wife, Ann. Carol Lazier, who gave $1 million toward saving the company, is now acting board chair, and she declined to say if Campbell is still affiliated with the Opera.
Oliver Stone Tells The Chinese – To Their Faces – To Make Critical Films About Mao
At the Beijing International Film Festival: “It’s about time. You got to make a movie about Mao, about the Cultural Revolution. You do that, you open up, you stir the waters and you allow true creativity to emerge in this country. That would be the basis of real co-production.”
‘Fecund Imagination And Exuberant Sleight-Of-Hand’: Michiko Kakutani On Gabriel García Márquez
“[In his novels, he] mythologized the history of an entire continent, while at the same time creating a Rabelaisian portrait of the human condition as a febrile dream in which love and suffering and redemption endlessly cycle back on themselves on a Möbius strip in time.”
The Life Cycle Of A Pop Song
The Awl charts the entire course, from the Conception Phase and Underground Phase, through the Indie and Hipster Phases, into and out of the Top 40, to the Shame Phase and beyond. (Not to forget the karaoke afterlife.)
French Court Swaps Bob Dylan Out Of Hate Speech Case
The case stems from a 2012 Rolling Stone interview in which, to some eyes, Dylan appeared to equate Croatians with Nazis. The judge ruled that, since Dylan gave the interview in the U.S., he couldn’t be liable – but the publisher of the French edition of Rolling Stone could.