“8. ‘Role-playing games are just for people who can’t deal with real life.’ – There are, sadly, still a lot of people who think anyone who plays D&D must live in his parents’ basement and bathe once a month. Such people must be put straight, and immediately!”
Author: Laura Collins Hughes
Picasso’s Provençal Château Opens To The Public, Briefly
“In the grounds of Château de Vauvenargues, near the Provençal town of Aix-en-Provence, there is a simple mound of earth, covered in grass and ringed by ivy. Perched on top is a curvaceous bronze nude, made by Pablo Picasso in 1933, and exhibited alongside Guernica in the Paris international exhibition of 1937. But, in terms of significance, it doesn’t come close to what lies beneath: the body of the artist himself.”
Paperless Tickets, Another Attempt To Combat Scalping
Ticketmaster is going paperless on the Miley Cyrus tour. “Concert-goers won’t receive an actual paper ticket. Rather, as they enter arenas, the credit cards they used to purchase the tickets will be swiped and they will receive a seat locator.” Which means parents will either have to go in with their kids or send the moppets in with their credit card. “It also means that if four tickets are purchased on one credit card, the concert-goers all need to enter the venue together.”
Hard Time: Pharmaceutical Exec Sentenced To Write Book
“A former Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. executive was sentenced to write a book for giving false information to U.S. regulators about a botched 2006 agreement to delay generic competition for the blood thinner Plavix. … ‘I hope he’s capable of writing a book,’ said Michael Shapiro, a Carter Ledyard & Milburn LLP attorney in New York who focuses on white-collar criminal defense. ‘What if he were sentenced to hit a home run at Nationals Park?'”
Did Audience And Biography Sway Van Cliburn Jury?
Nobuyuki Tsujii, one of this year’s two winners of the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, “riveted the audience. And juries, even at the highest level, are not immune to audience responses.” Did the 20-year-old’s blindness play a role? “If all the contestants had performed behind a scrim, if no one had known anything about them, if they had been judged purely on musical values, I honestly believe some other pianists would have advanced ahead of Tsujii.”
Great News On Time Travel: You Can Bring Your Clothes!
“Has pop culture been lying to us about time travel? When did it get so convoluted? We would avoid it [if] we could, but this summer, time travel is everywhere, and it’s more complicated than ever. So The Talk sought answers from Sean Carroll, a theoretical physicist at California Institute of Technology, who lectures on time and relativity.”
What If Chicago’s Lakefront Really Were Wide Open To All?
“Chicagoans love to brag about their open, people-friendly lakefront. In reality, 4 of the city’s 30 miles of Lake Michigan shoreline are unavailable to the public” — “an outrageous violation of Daniel Burnham’s ringing epigram that the lakefront ‘by right belongs to the people.'” An advocacy group’s new plan would give it back to them, plugging “these holes with 2 miles of new parkland on both the north and south lakefronts.”
Nextbook Gets A Name Change
“Welcome to Tablet Magazine, ‘a new read on Jewish life.’ That’s our nifty, if somewhat inaccurate, tagline. Tablet isn’t entirely new–it’s a beefed-up, rebranded, refocused update of Nextbook.org, which from 2003 until earlier this year published a range of great writing on Jewish arts and culture.”
In Pursuit Of A Noble Cause, Educational Shows Entertain
“There was a time when nonfiction programming meant slow camera movement, a droll narrator and maybe even the occasional nap — or, on the other extreme, the crass sideshow appeal of specials like ‘When Animals Attack.'” Back then, the object was either ratings or awards. “But today, the lines have been blurred, with networks … recognizing that education and entertainment needn’t be mutually exclusive.”
27,000 Flock To Ballpark For S.F. Opera’s Tosca Simulcast
“The San Francisco Opera set an attendance record Friday for its continuing simulcasts of live performances from the War Memorial Opera House to AT&T Park. An audience estimated by the Opera at 27,000 showed up for the free simulcast of Puccini’s ‘Tosca,’ shown on the scoreboard screen, starring soprano Adrianne Pieczonka as the doomed heroine.”