Author: Matthew Westphal

The Iffy Legacy Of Latin America’s Weirdest, Most Embarrassing, Longest-Running TV Megahit

“Sábado Gigante, which has been parodied by such esteemed American outlets as Saturday Night Live and The Colbert Report, is a combination of Maury, The Price Is Right, and American Idol – except a Mexican luchador with a trumpet decides whether the contestant gets fed to a lion, and Don Francisco, the show’s charismatic host, wears a lot of bizarre hats.”

Confessional Writing: It’s Ubiquitous, It’s Annoying, It’s Uncool – But It’s Powerful, And We Seem To Need It

“No writer wants to own the label ‘confessional’ anymore. It’s an epithet, with the same tenor as ‘hipster’ or ‘artisanal’: something for privileged narcissists who can’t see any of their own silliness. … And yet, the practice has deeply ancient, religious roots. Bruenig notes that it was designed not just to let the person who is confessing spill his or her guts, but also a sort of collective anecdote.”

China’s Great, ‘Obscene,’ Frequently Banned 16th-Century Epic

For centuries, Chin P’ing Mei (The Plum in the Golden Vase) – a sprawling tale of the rise and fall of a corrupt merchant and his six wives, and only now available in a complete English version – “has been known in China as an ‘obscene book.’ Governments have banned it and parents have hidden it from children.” Yet, as a 17th-century critic put it, “anyone who says that Chin P’ing Mei is an obscene book has probably only taken the trouble to read the obscene passages.”

The “Patient Zero” Of Online Music Piracy

“One Saturday in 1994, Bennie Lydell Glover, a temporary employee at the PolyGram compact-disk manufacturing plant in Kings Mountain, North Carolina, went to a party at the house of a co-worker. He was angling for a permanent position, and the party was a chance to network with his managers. Late in the evening, the host put on music to get people dancing. Glover, a fixture at clubs in Charlotte, an hour away, had never heard any of the songs before, even though many of them were by artists whose work he enjoyed.”

Scholar Who Rescued 30,000 Volumes Of Chinese Literature From Japan’s WWII Invasion Of Shanghai Has Died At 105

T.H. Tsien, “who was born in China in the twilight of the reign of its last emperor, was a young librarian there during the Japanese occupation, which lasted from 1931 until the end of World War II. Working in secret, he was charged with keeping a trove of precious volumes, some dating to the first millennium B.C., from falling into the occupiers’ hands.”

The First Black Ballerina At The Metropolitan Opera House

“‘It is opening night at the Metropolitan Opera – the gala performance of Giuseppe Verdi’s Aïda. It is the first time in the history of the venerable opera house that it has a black artist on its roster. Let me tell you, my friend, I am just as surprised as anyone else.’ It was 1951, and Janet Collins, the author of these words, was that black artist.”