Author: Matthew Westphal

Meet The Newest Head Writer At ‘Jeopardy!’

Way back in the ’90s, Michele Loud applied to be a researcher for the show just a few weeks after she flunked the test to be a contestant; a year later, out of the blue, they called her in. Twenty-six years on, she’s now one of two staffers running the writers’ room. Here she explains how categories get chosen and clues get written as well as the extra jobs each staffer has during taping. – Vulture

‘Angels’ In East Texas: How Tony Kushner’s Play Tore Apart, And Then Changed, A Small Southern Town

In 1999, a small college in Kilgore, TX — in an area where, at the time, gay men were routinely beaten and sometimes murdered — staged Angels in America, angry protests from local fundamentalists led to a showdown that attracted national media attention. Wes Ferguson, who edited the college paper at the time and whose sensationalist headline on a preview story ignited the fury, recounts how it went down and talks to some of the key participants about how they, and the town, were changed by the furor 20 years ago. – Texas Monthly

Viengsay Valdés Steps Into Alicia Alonso’s Formidable Shoes At National Ballet Of Cuba

Her dancers, she tells Marina Harss, “are very excited. I want to give them confidence, a sense of security and, above all, justice. I think there are dancers who haven’t had an opportunity to prove themselves. … They’re so young, so impatient, and if you don’t motivate them, they lose their drive. You have to know how to lead them, how to be just. There are roles for everyone. That way, the company will feel loved and cherished.” – Dance Magazine

Huang Yong Ping, One Of China’s Most Daring Modern Artists, Dead At 65

“In his sly installations and sculptural work, Huang often melded techniques derived from the history of Chinese art and international avant-garde movements alike. His ability to deftly combine seemingly opposed methods of art-making made him one of the foremost artists in an emergent group of Chinese artists during the late 1980s … [and] allowed him to address taboo subjects in China and beyond with audacity and wit.” – ARTnews

How Condé Nast (Who Was A Real Person) Invented The Glossy Magazine

“The equation of upscale readers and upscale brands with profit, projecting an aspirational image of the ideal consumer through both editorial and ads so that vulnerable readers would chase it, made Nast’s fortune many times over. His company established the template of the editor as a heroic, godlike figure casting down commandments from a print Mount Olympus, a status that continued after Nast’s death through the twentieth century.” Then, of course, came the internet and social media. – The New Republic

Managers Of Paris’s New Concert Hall Try To Fine Its Architect €170 Million, And Architect Counter-Sues

In 2006, when plans for the Philharmonie de Paris were announced, the venue, with a flashy, futuristic design by starchitect Jean Nouvel, was supposed to open in 2013 at a cost of €173 million. By the time it actually opened in 2015, the building’s cost was €386 million. So authorities sent the architect a bill for €170 million in penalties for late delivery and overruns. Now Ateliers Jean Nouvel has gone to court, arguing that the bill is “totally disproportionate, not only in the absolute, but also relative to the sums that were actually received.” – Yahoo! (AFP)

Leonardo Da Vinci’s Design For The World’s Longest Bridge Would Have Worked, Say MIT Scientists

In 1502, Leonardo submitted to the Ottoman sultan a design for a bridge over the Golden Horn in Istanbul that would have been, at the time, by far the world’s longest, and tall enough for ships to pass underneath. The skeptical sultan rejected Leonardo’s plan, but a team at MIT has modeled it out and says that, with materials and technology available at the time, the bridge would have held up. – Ars Technica