“Mr. Goldstein, a slender six-footer, performed his antics at Grossinger’s, perhaps the premier Catskills resort, from 1948 until the hotel closed in 1986. He’d hold absurd exercise classes. He’d have a circle of grown men don silly hats and maneuver them onto one another’s heads, with one hand and without letting the hats tumble to the ground.” He was also probably the world’s master practitioner of the game Simon Says.
Month: April 2012
Werner Herzog On The Future Of Humanity
“Microbes can come and wipe us out. It can happen fast. Avian virus or mad cow disease, you name it. … Or a cataclysmic volcanic eruption which would darken the skies for 10 years … Trilobites died out, dinosaurs died out. Life on our planet has been a constant series of cataclysmic events, and we are more suitable for extinction than a trilobite or a reptile. So we will vanish.”
#EconoHipsters (Hey, Who Showed These Geeks How To Use Twitter?)
Sample tweets: “I saw mortgage backed securities at a loft in Brooklyn in 2004. I thought they were overrated.” “#EconoHipsters seasonally adjusted for the winter quarter before it was cool.” “The economics & happiness literature used to be awesome, before Bhutan went corporate with it.”
Canada’s Venerable National Film Board Is Losing Its Funding (What, We Worry?)
“The cuts appear grave: Less assistance to filmmakers; three to four fewer major projects per year; 73 jobs eliminated. And the Cinérobothèque in Montreal and the Mediatheque in Toronto – popular storefront attractions that offer personal stations for watching 10,000 NFB titles and public screenings – will be closed by September. All this for an institution that last year alone garnered two Oscar nominations. Yet within the film board itself, there’s a sense of renewal.”
What’s So “Live” About Live Performance, Anyway?
“Georgia Institute of Technology professor Philip Auslander first floated the idea that live and mediated performances weren’t really all that different in his 1999 book, Liveness. As the performance scholar pointed out, the very idea of “live performance” came about only when recording technologies created Coachella-style confusion by making the two indistinguishable.”
Italian Government To Sack National Contemporary Art Museum’s Board
“Less than two years after the opening of Maxxi, Italy’s national museum of contemporary art, the Italian Culture Ministry last Friday initiated procedures to replace the board of directors of the foundation that manages the museum with a government-appointed administrator.”
Martha Graham Company To Take Over Old Merce Cunningham Studios
“By leasing space at the Westbeth complex starting July 1, the Graham company and its school will be able to consolidate activities that have been spread throughout the city, including space for rehearsals, classes, offices, archives and scenery.”
Kevin Puts’ Music Pulitzer Marks Rare Opera Win
Very few operas have been awarded the Pulitzer Prize since the prize was established in 1943.
Decision Not To Award Fiction Pulitzer Angers Judges
“The obvious answer is to let the [jury] pick. We’re the people who have gone through the 300 novels. All the board is asked to do is to read three top novels that we’ve given to them…In fact, what’s happened today is a lot of the articles and blog posts have gotten it wrong–they’ve been blaming the three of us!”
Broadway Box Office Bulging
“Spring has clearly sprung on Broadway, with a rising tide of spring-break tourists helping to fuel a strong week that saw every single show in the top 10 break the $1 million mark.”