Stories

Andrew Westberg says his wife is "happy it's not tractors. … Pencils are so much easier to store.” - MPR

“There was a customer on the phone who said something along the lines of 'Just throw out $20,000,' and reported to our staff member to shout that out into the room. And boy did it work, because the first time it came up, it stunned the room and silenced the room.” - Slate

And that is its credibility. "The reputation of the Post newsroom has been built upon readers’ trust that reporters do not pay sources, much less steal documents, hack computers, or engage in other deceptive news-gathering practices that have been associated with a certain kind of British journalism.” - The Atlantic

Jeremy Cooper, the winner of the 2019 Fitzcarraldo Prize, remembers when he had a little cushion of money from selling art and a lot of chutzpah: "I ditched my literary agent Curtis Brown, as they strongly advised me against writing fiction and since then I’ve handled all my work myself.” - The Guardian (UK)

Not that this is unusual, sadly: Meg Bellamy “described the comments from internet trolls as ‘a glimpse into being a woman in this industry.’” - BBC

“These five pieces include two-and-a-half hours of music, 621 pages of score, and more than 97,000 piano notes.” - Open Culture

"Previously a curator at the Fine Art Museums of San Francisco, where she led the European paintings department, Brilliant claims that Voena and di Robilant subjected her to sexual harassment and repeated verbal abuse in the form of racist, sexist, antisemitic, and homophobic comments." - Hyperallergic

She’s not having it. “It is antithetical to the life force that exists in all of us,” the singer-songwriter says. - BBC

And no, “there has been no greater original screenplay in the last 50 years than the one Robert Towne wrote for Chinatown.” - The Guardian (UK)

"The truest artist-muse relationship may be that in which the former works with the latter because no other individual talent will bring the art to the exalted level that lives in the artist’s imagination." - Washington Post

“The excavation of the political from the personal is always worth studying, which is part of the reason People has always been such a rich text. But today’s People Magazine is thinner, less glossy, and generally less substantive.” True for many magazines, but for People? It's Barry Diller. - Culture Study

“'It’s an amazing experience,’ Annia Hidalgo, one of the Queer the Ballet dancers, . ‘We all speak the same language. It’s movement, it’s art, it’s ballet, it’s queerness.’” - WPIX New York (MSN)

“Being calculated isn’t easy. Networks and executive producers have to consider the politics of choosing one writer’s or director’s episode over another, and individual writers and directors can always just submit themselves for the ballot.” - Vulture

Players of Elden Ring died so often when the game first came out that live streams of other players dying over and over became a whole sui generis thing. - The New York Times

Crumb’s “scores — created by hand and themselves works of art — are rife with exacting instructions to performers: how to thread paper between the strings of a harp, or how string players should use the thimbles on their fingers.” - The New York Times