Yearly Archives: 2021
Irish Dance As A Sport (On Tik Tok)
The brothers frequently refer to Irish dancing as a “sport”. “It’s not that we don’t consider Irish dancing an art form because obviously it...
The BBC Has Dominated Audio Content In The UK. Now Podcasters Are Taking Root
While Britain hasn’t seen the cash influx — about $2 billion — that streaming and traditional media companies have spent snapping up the American...
How The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra Has Been Dismantled Over The Past Year
The Metropolitan Opera House has been dark for a year, and its musicians have gone unpaid for almost as long. The players in one...
How Independent Bookstores In The US Survived Over The Past Year (Or Didn’t)
The Washington Post talked to the owners of six indies about how they weathered the year. What follows is an oral history of these...
The Lessons Of Generation X Seem Even More True Today
When Generation X was published, Douglas Coupland observed: “information overload meant 50 TV stations instead of ten.” In the current era where internet connections...
AAMD’s Deaccession Dilemma (& the Met’s Equivocations)
Is the “slippery slope” on the verge of becoming even more treacherous? In conversations with its members this week, the Association of Art Museum...
How Robert Fulford’s Arguments With Glenn Gould Shaped Him As A Critic
As students, Fulford and Gould would argue about music. Fulford was acquiring a taste for jazz and other forms of popular music, which Gould...
The Problem When Everyone Is Right
We are aware, of course, that we might be wrong, because we know that on certain issues we have changed our minds, and therefore...
A Losing Proposition For Independent Bookstores
Despite the pandemic, book sales were up over all last year, but mostly for places like Amazon; bookstore sales fell by more than twenty-eight...
Mad Magazine Artist Al Jaffe Turns 100
He started drawing for the magazine 65 years ago. “Hitting the century mark in age, it’s a nice number” for the brain to consider,...
A Year Into COVID, Canada’s Performing Arts Have Been Devastated
The performing arts, heritage sector and spectator sports – areas of the economy that depend on ticket sales– have lost more than 60 per...
Flory Jagoda, Keeper Of Sephardic Music Traditions, 97
Jagoda sang and wrote songs that connected her to her grandmother in Yugoslavia. "They were songs of home and family, of love and Hanukkah,...
Want To See The Complete List Of Oscars Nominations?
Of course you do! (And there are articles about the highest profile snubs everywhere as well.) - Variety
Even The Grammys, Which Are Awarded Primarily For Sound, Had Major Sound Issues
Can there be hope for regular humans when the Grammy Awards can't get the sound right on Zoom? "The multiple acceptance speeches during the...
TikTok Is Now Where Musicians Go For Rough Drafts
TikTok has dramatically changed how songs, pop in particular, get made. "In some cases, performers are trying out ideas on the platform to see...
The Book ‘Empireland’ Is Selling Well – And Britain’s Imperially Nostalgic Are Flinging Hate...
The author is pleased by the support from his publisher, but the hate has truly ramped up. Sathnam Sanghera: "In a way, it proves...
Fiction Isn’t Memoir, And Yet
"The belief that every novel is a self-accounting is timeworn: Some early readers of Lolita suspected that only someone with the mentality of a...
Why Woody Allen Defenders Are So Upset By The New Documentary
Perhaps they're not used to the world of 2021. "The truth underlying their emotional, often highly personal defenses of Allen is that he’s become...
The Silver Lining Of Netflix’s Password Crackdown Is Your Security
No, really. "Sharing user names and passwords with even your closest relations can have woesome consequences" - and the Netflix crackdown might help save...
If You’re Watching K-Dramas Or Other Korean TV, You’re Probably Seeing A Lot Of...
That is, the fast food chain, not underground trains. The reason: "Product placement in TV shows is a reality the world over. But South...
Will Disney Break Netflix’s Record Numbers For Streaming?
That's what it's poised to do in 2024, or so the predictions say (on the other hand, who could have predicted that every family...
Carmel Quinn, Irish Singer And Storyteller Who Performed For JFK At The White House,...
But more people would know her as the "blue-eyed, flame-haired Irish singer and storyteller who packed Carnegie Hall on St. Patrick’s Day for a...
How Did Disney Get The Bachelor So Wrong This Year?
The Mouse promised change at the protests in the wake of George Floyd's death. But the online chatter over racism on The Bachelor has...
The Swag Continues, Even For The Virtual Oscars
Good: "Some film insiders are privately asking an uncomfortable question: How do you tastefully campaign for trophies when more than 1,000 Americans a day are...
Memoirs Tell Us What We Don’t Know About The People We Know
A good memoir "gets into the feelings that are so buried and complex that they rarely come into focus in a conversation, even among...
