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Appreciating Burt Bacharach

Bacharach may have been a uniter, not a divider, but surely it’s easy to hear the complexity underneath that ease. The unpredictability and the equally wondrous rightness of so many of his key melodies are what keep them evergreen. - Chicago Tribune

Marianne Mantell, Co-Creator of The Audiobook Industry (Yes, Really), Is Dead At 93

At age 23, she and college pal Barbara Holdridge launched Caedmon Records with an LP of Dylan Thomas reading A Child's Christmas in Wales. The label went on to great success, recording writers reading their work and actors reading plays, creating the market for literature in audio. - MSN (The Washington Post)

Burt Bacharach Dead At 94

"One of the last of the great popular songwriters of the 20th century, ... he created songs that became standards in their own right. They were classy, catchy, commercial and musically complex, and scores of them became hits during a career that lasted more than 50 years." - BBC

One Of The Gun Charges Against Alec Baldwin Has A Big Legal Problem

"Prosecutors in New Mexico charged Alec Baldwin last week with a gun allegation that was not on the books at the time of the Rust shooting." - Variety

Adrien Hall, Founder of Providence’s Trinity Rep And A Major Force In Rhode Island Arts, is Dead At 95

"If you've enjoyed the arts scene in downtown Providence, the popularity of Trinity Rep paved the way for that. If you went on a class field trip to the theatre in Rhode Island, that was probably Project Discovery." - The Providence Journal

Salman Rushdie Gives His First Interview Since The Attack That Cost Him An Eye

"I've found it very, very difficult to write. I sit down to write, and nothing happens. I write, but it's a combination of blankness and junk, stuff that I write and that I delete the next day. I'm not out of that forest yet, really." - The New Yorker

Want To Buy Joan Didion’s Apartment?

About a week ago, on January 27, the spacious four-bedroom co-op was quietly listed for sale. The home—located in one of the “most prestigious residential addresses in New York City,” according to the listing agent, Sotheby’s International Realty—comes with a price tag of $7.5 million. - Artnet

Carol Sloane, Jazz Singer With Early Success Who Waited Decades For A Comeback, Has Died

The singer was 85. She nearly gained stardom in the early 1960s, and then jazz lost its popularity. She found fame again in Japan, and then in the U.S. in 2001 after a chance NYT review brought her to a new audience. - The New York Times

Add Viola Davis To The EGOT Club

It was her year - for a Grammy, at least. - Los Angeles Times

Linda Pastan, Whose Poetry Illuminated Everyday Life, 90

"The range of her poetry was vast. A 1978 collection was called The Five Stages of Grief. On the other end of the spectrum was A Dog Runs Through It (2018), poems that involved the various dogs, present and past, in her life." - The New York Times

Iran Releases Director Jafar Panahi From Jail Two Days After He Starts Hunger Strike

His wife said at the time of his arrest "that his detention - several months before the ongoing anti-government protests erupted - amounted to a kidnapping." - BBC

Remember The Guy Who Streaked At The Oscars?  He Did A Hell Of A Lot More Than Run Around Naked.

"Who was Robert Opel, and why did he do what he did?  ... Even as Opel's fifteen minutes ticked down, his quest for exposure was just getting started. The Oscars were not his first or his last brush with history, and five years later he'd be dead." - The New Yorker

Meet The Most Media-Friendly Of Maria Von Trapp’s Great-Grandchildren

"(He's) not one of the von Trapps you'd occasionally see performing 'Edelweiss' on Oprah or The View in years past. But ... when journalists wondered what the real von Trapps thought of Carrie Underwood playing Maria ..., Myles was the one who gave them a disapproving quote. This occasionally causes issues." - New York Magazine

Filmmaker Jafar Panahi Declares Hunger Strike To Protest His Unlawful Imprisonment In Tehran

"(The award-winning dissident filmmaker) has announced a hunger strike to protest his continued incarceration in Iran's Evin prison, even after the country's courts voided his sentence last week." - IndieWire

Donatello Was The First (More-Or-Less) Openly Gay Artist In Western History

That's not only because he made the first life-sized male nude statue in Europe since the Romans. It's not only because of his David's boyish physique or the muscles of his Holofernes.  There's a surviving piece of 15th-century gossip about Donatello, his recalcitrant boyfriend, and Cosimo de' Medici. - The Guardian

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