Alison Bechdel, Tom Tomorrow, Jen Sorensen and others salute Matt Groening’s great print comic, recently discontinued after 35 years.
Author: Matthew Westphal
Inquiry Finds That Four Rebecca Investors Did Not Exist
“The lawyer for the lead producer of the Broadway musical Rebecca, which collapsed after the reported death from malaria of a mysterious investor, said on Sunday that he had confirmed that the investor and three others brought in by a middleman with a history of civil fraud complaints never existed.”
Jean-Michel Basquiat, World’s Hottest Dead Young Artist
“Almost 25 years on from the artist’s death, the obsession with his work continues to grow, as for the second year running his work sold for more money at auction than any other contemporary artist.” (On Wednesday, his 1984 Big Joy sold for £2.6 million.)
The TV Acting Careers Of US Mayors
Professional actors generally play presidents, senators and the like, but big-city mayors sometimes appear as themselves. Here’s a look – from Kurt Schmoke to Rudy Giuliani to Mike Bloomberg to Rahm Emanuel (and even London’s Boris Johnson) – at another way politicians pretend.
Who Stole Victor Herbert’s Baton?
A display box containing the operetta composer’s conducting baton and other items, valued together at $80,000, was stolen in late August from a home in a Philadelphia suburb. Taken at the same time was a $3 million bust of Benjamin Franklin, which was recovered in late September.
Carolyn Cassady Would Not Read On The Road, She’ll Have You Know
Says Jack Kerouac’s sometime lover and Neal Cassady’s erstwhile wife, now living in an English trailer park (“there is nothing I like about America”), “I didn’t want to read On the Road when it came out in 1957 because I didn’t want to know what Neal was doing with Jack when he left me. And, anyway, it was not my type of literature. I prefer Dickens, Shakespeare and the classics.”
And When We Say ‘Dark Comedy’, We Mean Dark Comedy
“Comedy nights are rarely well-lit, but this is taking things to extremes. Tonight, while the comedians are on stage, every light in the room will be off. This is Comedy in the Dark at the Soho Theatre in London’s West End, the first date of a month-long tour. As the blurb on the website puts it: ‘We’re talking pitch, pitch black’.”
In London, Female Stage Directors Are Coming Into Their Own
Matt Wolf: “‘My God, there are a lot of women directors working in the theater these days in London,’ a female theater director who happens not to be from London remarked to me the other day. It’s true. More women directors are proffering their work in London than I can ever recall and at a level lately that has often eclipsed the men in their midst.”
Stéphane Lissner Will Leave La Scala To Head Paris Opera
The first non-Italian to run La Scala, Lissner took over the Milan company in 2005 following what was, even by La Scala’s standards, an extremely tumultuous period. He will return to his hometown and the Opéra National de Paris in 2015, replacing Nicolas Joël, who says he’s stepping down two seasons hence to protest budget cuts.
Confucius’s Ideal Ruler (He Actually Existed)
“Three thousand years ago, the Duke of Zhou set China a glowing example. A paragon of virtue, he spelled out a philosophy of a ruler in harmony with heaven that inspired Confucius, and” – centuries later, after the disastrous Cultural Revolution – “came to fill the ideological vacuum left behind by Chairman Mao.”