“Scientists have found that the sting of rejection fires up the same neural pathways as the pain from a burn or bruise. Besides explaining why some people have thicker skins than others, this fact reveals an intimate link between your social life and your health – you really can die of loneliness.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
What’s Natalia Makarova Up To These Days? (Besides Getting Kennedy Center Honors)
Oh, choreographing and coaching in Japan, Russia, Uruguay … rewriting her autobiography in Russian … She explains (“I am all booked up until 2014”) in a Q&A with Allan Ulrich.
English Arts Groups, ‘It Is Time For Us To Grow Up’
Annabel Turpin: “If, in this relationship, we are the children, then we are the ones who have to now demonstrate our independence and maturity. The most obvious aspect of growing up is the need to become more financially independent.”
BBC Tried To Break Up Morecambe And Wise, Archives Reveal
“As Morecambe and Wise, they were the nation’s best-loved comedy act, their Christmas extravaganzas regularly pulling in audiences of more than 20 million. But BBC chiefs initially believed Eric Morecambe would have a much better chance of TV stardom if he dumped Ernie Wise and went solo. The damning appraisal [was] delivered just two years before the duo … found fame on commercial television.”
Composer Jonathan Harvey Dead At 73
“[He had] been composing since the 1960s, during which period he was a prominent disciple of Karlheinz Stockhausen, whose experimentalism and use of electronic instrumentation influenced Harvey’s early works. But from the 1970s he began to establish his own distinctive voice, drawing on an abiding interest in spirituality and world religions.”
Rococo Furniture As Performance Art
“At first glance it’s a typical high-end rococo desk, its swanlike cabriole legs and paneled sides aglitter with gilt-bronze mounts, its surfaces alive with delicately painted scenes of temples [which are actually inlay, not paint] … Everywhere, hidden buttons, levers and key-operated mechanisms trigger hidden side trays, pop-up easels, secret drawers concealing further secret drawers.”
Covent Garden Kerfuffle Over Last-Minute Firing Of Debut Soprano
“It was always going to be a drama for the Royal Opera House to put on [Meyerbeer’s] epic Robert le diable for the first time in more than a century. It almost turned into a crisis when they gambled with a relatively unknown singer for the grueling lead female role and, at the last minute, had to swap newcomer Jennifer Rowley for a more experienced soprano.”
How Is Matthew Bourne Changing Sleeping Beauty?
For starters: the baby Princess Aurora is a puppet (three different ones, in fact, including one they call “the Exorcist puppet”); the three fairies are named Tantrum, Ardour and Feral; the Lilac Fairy is male (what’s a Matthew Bourne ballet without gender changes?); and Beauty goes to sleep in the Edwardian era and wakes up after 100 years – in the present day.
Slut-Shaming Just Won’t Die (And It Still Inhibits Women)
“For women, engaging in casual sex still carries a stigma, and the prospect of being judged dampens their interest in one-night stands.” A new study “concludes that, more than a half-century after the introduction of the birth control pill, the sexual double standard is alive and well and still influencing women’s everyday behavior.”
Canadian Wins Bad Sex Award (That’s Bad Sex In Fiction)
“A long, shuddering gasp of relief will no doubt have been heard from the losers, as the Canadian author Nancy Huston scooped the least coveted book award of the year, the Literary Review’s Bad Sex prize, for her 14th novel, Infrared, about a woman who likes to snap her lovers in the throes of passion.”