Says the creator and star of hit parodies Titanique and The Big Gay Jamboree, "I liken myself to the homeless man’s Lin-Manuel Miranda. I’m still broke, but I’ve excelled at carving out a little queer millennial piece of the pie." - Variety
In almost any Auerbach oil painting, early or late, rawness is thick on the ground. So dense, so clotted, and so busily heaped is the pigment that you’re not sure whether to gaze at it, lick it, chew it, or file a weather report. - The New Yorker
“We need to show our industry and music-loving public that there are consequences for inappropriate behaviour,” Katherine Needleman says. - Baltimore Banner
Onion CEO Ben Collins's first thought was, "That’d be one of the funniest jokes of all time if we pulled this off." Once it became a serious possibility, Collins saw the opportunity to use Onion-style satire to expose the fear-mongering, guns-and-dietary-supplements-peddling scam that right-wing outlets like Infowars run. - New York Magazine
There is a flaw at the heart of the concept of scaling, though it can be hard to articulate in the face of “bigger is better.” Looking back to the roots of “scale” can help us pinpoint what conventional wisdom might be missing. - Harvard Business Review
For the most part, show tunes on Broadway still sound more influenced by Andrew Lloyd Webber than by, say, Morgan Wallen. But country music is making inroads. - Christian Science Monitor
The longtime Toronto Star classical music critic reflects: Littler remembers the words of a former editor who told him, your job is to take us to that event. It’s about recreating the experience for your readers. And, whatever that experience was, it’s not written in stone. - Ludwig Van
"Black America tracing itself to Egypt makes as much historical sense as would Czechs deciding to … favor tartans as an expression of being European. … The abiding fondness for the Egypt idea tends to sideline the astonishing history of the empires that enslaved Americans actually emerged from." - The New York Times
This year’s winner of France’s biggest book prize is being sued in Algeria over claims he stole the story from a patient of his psychiatrist wife. - BBC
On Thursday, the European Audiovisual Observatory (EAO), a research body, published its annual report on the theatrical performance of European movies worldwide. It’s not a pretty picture. - The Hollywood Reporter
In contrast to the seeming clarity of colonialism (however much it elides that process’s own complications), current discussions of decolonisation can seem amorphous and slippery. This is not surprising since so many different people and groups are using the concept, at times at cross purposes. - Aeon
Parent company Comcast is spinning off its cable channels but keeping its broadcast networks, including NBC. Both CNBC and MSNBC share, along with the brand name, correspondents and other resources with NBC News; the latter even shares office space at Rockefeller Center in New York. How to untangle all that? - AP
Peter Kyle, the secretary of state for science and technology, is trying to convince social media platforms to do more to prevent online harms, with new laws coming into effect next year that could result in heavy fines and even jail in cases where online safety is breached. - The Guardian
They do not feel like fun experiments or celebrations of beloved albums. They feel like the onward acceleration of a culture industry that is unsettlingly dedicated — not just in our concert halls but on our screens and everywhere else it can reach us — to monetizing our nostalgic attachment to media from the past. - The New York...
He declared opera in America “in grave danger,” entrapped by a “star system” enforced by a social elite. He advocated American opera and opera in English. He urged the substitution of smaller auditoriums, shedding the glamour of opera houses in New York, Chicago, and San Franciso that far exceeded in scale European norms. - The American Scholar
