Sheikh Hani Al-Siba’i: “Are you done? Shut up so I can talk.” Rima Karaki: “How can a respected sheikh like yourself tell a TV host to shut up?” Sheikh Al-Siba’i: “It’s beneath me to be interviewed by you. You are a woman who -” (Mic cuts off.) Karaki: “Either there is mutual respect or the conversation is over. In this studio, I run the show.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
“A Turning Point In Cultural History”: Why The Louvre Abu Dhabi Is Worth Celebrating, Despite Its Dark Side
Jonathan Jones: “Nothing excuses the inhuman working conditions that have been reported. But I suspect that when it opens, this audacious new museum will be admired as a world destination and artistic treasure house. And so it should be. For the Louvre Abu Dhabi is a turning point in cultural history.”
Male Belly Dancers Make A Comeback In Istanbul
“Dressed in skirts decorated with coins and shimmering tassels, male belly dancers are back in vogue, jerking their hips and trembling their abs to hypnotic Turkish rhythms. Known as zennes, the performers were once a mainstay at the courts of Ottoman sultans, but they have been largely out of sight for decades. Their renewed popularity comes amid a broader revival of Ottoman-era culture that has spread to television, fashion and politics.” (includes video)
When Grownups Read Their Teenage Diaries Aloud In Public
“Real teenage diaries are becoming a form of public entertainment – often self-deprecating – in a number of places, as brave souls divulge details of unsatisfied crushes and lost friendships. Ruminations that now seem ridiculous had once seemed profound to those who had written them down.”
Sometimes Even The Danes Can’t Understand Danish
“One thing every foreigner living in Denmark knows to be true is that it’s a lot easier to comprehend written Danish than spoken Danish. … But fret not foreigners, you’re not alone.” Now even Danes need subtitles with some mumble-mouthed actors.
Top Posts From AJBlogs 03.09.15
Other Places: Mr. P.C. On Jazz Wage Economics
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2015-03-09
Monday Recommendation: The Surprising Tom Varner
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2015-03-09
Just because: a Q-&-A session with Helen Frankenthaler
AJBlog: About Last Night Published 2015-03-09
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Albert Maysles, 88, Dean Of Documentary Filmmakers
Often working with his late brother David, Maysles was known for such popular and influential nonfiction films as Gimme Shelter, Grey Gardens, Salesman, When We Were Kings, studies of Vladimir Horowitz and Mstislav Rostropovich (the latter on his return to Russia), and five films about the work of artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude.
“An Otherworldly Experience Not Quite Like Anything Else In The History Of Cinema”: The Maysles Brothers’ Masterpiece, “Grey Gardens”
Andrew O’Hehir: “The world it captures, with its mother-daughter pair of aristocratic castoffs and their crumbling, weed-choked East Hampton mansion infested with cats and raccoons, is now so utterly vanished as to seem fantastic, an allegorical dream concocted by Scott Fitzgerald and Flannery O’Connor more than real people who existed within living memory.”
Women Composers: Genius Is Gender-Blind – And So Should We Be
Sara Mohr-Pietsch of BBC Radio 3: “Someone asked me the other day if the reason there are fewer women composers represented at the highest level was that male composers were simply better. My response was unrepeatably rude. Frankly, it’s too ludicrous a question to validate with a polite answer. My litmus test for those kinds of comments is this: replace ‘female’ with ‘black’, and ‘male’ with ‘white’. Now put the question to me again, and see how comfortable you feel asking it.”
Why That “Things I Can Say About MFAs” Essay Struck Such A Nerve With Writers
Laura Miller: “Not much of ‘Things I Can Say‘ offers a fresh take on the endless MFA debate. More at issue is the swashbuckling, bridge-burning and sometimes contemptuous tone Boudinot adopts and the implication that, as a one-time MFA instructor, he is speaking the secret thoughts of every creative writing teacher to whom a student has entrusted her fledgling work.”