The old seaport had a major success as the European Community’s Capital of Culture for 2008, with the region’s economy getting a benefit of £800 million. The European Commission president called Liverpool’s effort “one of the most successful capital of culture programmes that we have ever had.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
The Ten Best Onion Headlines of 2008
The Guardian gives its picks, from the famous (“Black Man Asks Nation for Change”) to the topical (“Powerful ‘His And Hers’ Towel Lobby Stalls Gay Marriage Legislation”) to the brilliant (“Man With Apple Hovering In Front Of Face Sues René Magritte’s Estate”).
More Trouble For Ballet BC As Bank Freezes Funds
“Already on the brink of collapse, Ballet BC was dealt another blow this week when Scotiabank froze almost $17,000[Can] of the company’s money. The funds were used to pay off $16,749[Can] owed on Ballet BC’s Scotiabank Visa cards.”
Why Is There Holiday Music Everywhere, Driving Us Insane?
“Can science explain why the same song we enjoy singing with relatives or congregants drives us to visions of sugar-plum homicide when it blares across the public-address system Chez Target?” Actually, it can…
Crusading Against Starchitecture
“Joshua Prince-Ramus is waging a holy war against the sculptors, starchitects, and fey theoreticians of his profession. And in the process, he’s actually building things.” He tells students: “I’ve never seen a client give a shit about my personal vision. I had to figure out how to piggyback what my vision was onto their issues.”
The Taxman Cometh (To Salt Lake)
Utah’s Odyssey Dance Theatre has built up an unpaid liability of nearly $700,000 in payroll taxes and penalties over the past decade or so, even as it has continued to use federal and local funding to expand its programs rather than settle its public debts. Now (as with the rest of us), those debts are catching up with the company.
Swed To SF: MTT Is Worth Every Cent
The president of San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors, angered by Michael Tilson Thomas’s $1.6M salary as an Francisco Symphony music director, wants to cut all of the city’s $1.8M funding to the orchestra. But, MTT having made the SFS into one of the world’s best orchestras, the question “is not how much MTT is worth but how many millions might it cost San Francisco to once more promote itself as a sophisticate city if a Philistine supervisor actually has his way?”
The Five Most Terrifying Local TV Christmas Commercials
“People always lament the decline of those quaint mom-and-pop stores as big chains like Target and Wal-Mart dominate… But here’s something no one considers: What if mom-and-pop are total lunatics?”
America’s Answer To Ferran Adrià
“You have just tried a crunchy handful of one of Dave Arnold’s edible experiments – homemade pork rinds that taste like fatty Cracker Jacks – and now you’d like something to wash it down with.” So the up-and-coming star of molecular gastronomy shoots some CO2 and nitrous oxide into a bottle of tap water “and hands over a homemade carbonated water that is soft, creamy, and sweet.”
What’s So Bad About Peter Seiffert’s Earpiece?
The tenor is singing Wagner’s Tristan for the first time at the Met, and many opera lovers are tut-tutting at his use of an electronic earpiece to get cues from a prompter. “It has long been standard practice for an operatic artist who has prepared a role thoroughly to take cues from a house prompter. But does a singer cross a line by putting an electronic gizmo in his ear?”