“I’ve been doing this for more than 30 years, and I’ll come out on stage and attack a helpless person for no reason. Just to set the tone. Andy Kaufman would do the same thing, in a jazzy-mime sort of way. He would attack someone, and then apologize. And then attack again. That is the genetics for a lot of people who take the stage.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Ballerinas On The Baseball Diamond
Dancers from the Brooklyn Ballet and a local hip-hop troupe took to the field between innings at the Coney Island home of the minor-league Brooklyn Cyclones “and twirled, leapt and generally offered the fans a sort of graceful athleticism absent from the baseball diamond on all but the most exceptional of plays.”
Will London Really Erase Banksy’s New Olympics Art?
“In cleaning up London’s graffiti for the Olympics city authorities threaten to squelch the work one of its biggest celebrities, the street artist Banksy, but on Monday the secretive graffiti artist showed he wouldn’t be deterred from creating Olympics-related art while the whole world is watching.”
The Paris Neighborhood That Loves Graffiti
“In recent years, the city’s 20th arrondissement has been deliberately positioning itself as a graffiti mecca. A traditionally working-class district whose population has more recently included immigrants and artists, the 20th is now a few years into a campaign that aims to ‘develop urban culture at the heart of the neighborhood,’ meaning graffiti, or as they call it in Paris, le graff.”
In Defense Of Stephen King – On Literary Grounds
“What we call ‘genre fiction’ … strips away the usual and familiar contexts of our lives and replaces them with radically simplified environments: a small crew on a spaceship, a detective trying to stop a killer before he can reach another victim … It is often said that such situations are unrealistic. This is incorrect; it conflates the unrealistic with the uncommon. People do confront such utterly decisive moments: A theater full of people in Aurora, Colorado confronted one quite recently.”
If You Were James Joyce’s Grandson, You’d Become A Pain In The Neck, Too
“After too many scholars and writers took glee in unearthing family secrets, including the madness of his own mother, the madness of his aunt (James’ daughter Lucia), and the filthiest love letters ever sent between two people, who just happened to be his grandparents,” Stephen Joyce “became resentfully litigious, suing small productions of readings from Ulysses for copyright violations and refusing to grant reprint rights.”
The Aqualillies, Reviving Esther-Williams-Style Water Ballet
“Wearing vintage swimsuits and bathing caps, the Aqualillies look like performers from a bygone era. The group is made up of dancers who learned to swim, and synchronized swimmers who learned to dance.”
Why Don’t Donors Give The Corcoran Gallery Money? Nobody Asks
“The Corcoran’s woes are deep, complicated and decades old, but [one member’s] experience distills the essence of the problem: At critical moments, the gallery has repeatedly failed to make its own best case to even its best friends.”
Herbert Vogel, 89, Postal Worker Who Became Great Art Collector
“Unlike many collectors, the Vogels were not wealthy people. They lived and collected their entire lives on their salaries and their pensions. Mr. Vogel worked nights sorting mail at New York post offices, and his wife was a reference librarian in Brooklyn.”
New Zealand Symphony Will Not Be Axed, Says Arts Minister
“Arts, Culture and Heritage Ministry Chris Finlayson says disestablishing the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra is unthinkable. The idea has been put up for discussion, among others, in a review of the country’s orchestras by the Culture and Heritage Ministry.” The report offered several possibilities for change, among them reducing or eliminating the national touring orchestra’s subsidy in favor of the four regional orchestras.