Once Presley's granddaughter, actress Riley Keough, filed suit and provided evidence that the organization attempting to foreclose doesn't actually exist, the apparently fraudulent attempt was withdrawn. Now the Tennessee Attorney General is investigating, and so, reportedly, is the FBI, which won't officially comment. - AP
"Shields got 2794 votes, vs. 1940 votes for stage manager Erin Maureen Koster and 834 for Chicago-based actress Wydetta Carter, according to a tally shared with Broadway Journal. Shields hasn’t served in Equity’s governance, unlike Koster and Carter, who continue to have top positions in its volunteer leadership." - Broadway Journal
"For the first time in over a decade — excluding the worst of the COVID-19 crisis — no movie opening during the first six months of the year has come close to hitting the $100 million mark in its domestic launch." Indeed, the last one to do so was last summer's Barbie. - The Hollywood Reporter
"Spanish police have recovered a painting by the late artist Francis Bacon that was stolen from a banker's Madrid home in 2015. The €5m work is one of five portraits of the banker, José Capelo, who was a friend of the artist. Three of the stolen paintings were recovered in 2017." - BBC
Principal percussionist Josh Jones was told over and over that his audition was the best people had ever heard, and he regularly got high praise from the music director. Two years later, he was told his organizational skills were lacking and denied tenure. Was this really about race? - The Washington Post (MSN)
The deal between OpenAI and News Corp. means that ChatGPT will be drawing text and info from The Wall Street Journal and Britain's The Times, yes, but also from the New York Post and the London tabloid The Sun. - The Guardian
That editors edit, which would seem to go without saying, turns out to be a pretty facile summary of a role whose essential ambiguities make it best suited to confidence men or obsessives. The most we can say is that the editor assists the writer. - Tablet
The most potent enemy of reading, it goes without saying, is the small, flat box that you carry in your pocket. In terms of addictive properties, it might as well be stuffed with meth. There’s no point in grinding through a whole book when you can pick up your iPhone. - The New Yorker
Yoshida said the company is now emphasizing the creative process itself instead of prized products of the past like the Walkman portable music player and Trinitron color TVs. He said “synergies” are no longer between entertainment and electronics, but determined by intellectual property spanning animation, music, games and films. - AP
“Some people are more alive than others. Even permanently so.” I find that true to my own experience, even if it is hard to state clearly in what form such vitality exists. - Lapham's Quarterly
"In the state of Wisconsin, we have very little public sector support for the arts. So, whereas in other cities, these gaps that exist between what needs to be spent and what can be generated from performances and philanthropy oftentimes, a chunk of that is filled by public sector contributions. Here, that's not the case." - WUWM
This one is a formal painting of HRH The Princess of Wales (that's Kate Middleton to you and me) by Zambian-British artist Hannah Uzor for the cover of Tatler magazine. The image's reception on social media, like that of the red portrait of King Charles III, is less than rapturous. - ARTnews
Unheard performances by Louis Armstrong at the BBC in 1968, regarded by Armstrong aficionados as some of the jazz legend’s greatest work, are to finally be released. - The Guardian
"Macquarie University research fellow Keagan Brewer and his co-author Michelle L. Lewis seek to corroborate previous suspicions that the enigmatic illustrated text served as a medieval guide to the female reproductive system — based on its imagery and context, as opposed to its (still-unreadable) text." - Artnet
