Adam Gopnik: “Christmas has always been a happily mixed-up holiday for mixed-up people and confused cultures. It is, at its roots, the very model of a pagan-secular-synthetic festival as much as it is a religious one – just the kind, in fact, that the imaginary anti-Christmas forces are supposed to favor.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
How Airline Safety Videos Evolved From Boring Instructionals Into Comic Extravaganzas
It all started with Richard Branson’s Virgin Atlantic (“make flying fun again”), which used hand-drawn cartoons. “In the ensuing years, airlines have pulled out nearly every gimmick imaginable to make their safety video a YouTube sensation. A Qatar Airlines video takes place at an FC Barcelona match, an El Al video takes the form of a cringeworthy Devo tribute, and … even sedate, legacy brands like British Airways, Singapore Airlines, United, and Air France have succumbed to the trend in recent years, with tasteful videos that offer their own unique spin on the genre.” Then there’s the undisputed champion, Air New Zealand …
Nightmare First Date Ends With $1 Million Worth Of Art Destroyed In Drunken Rampage
Texas attorney Anthony Buzbee probably thought his evening was going well when he brought 29-year-old blonde Lindy Lou Layman to his $14 million mansion. But she got overly inebriated, and when he tried to send her home in an Uber, she hurled two sculptures across the room, ripped three paintings – including two original Warhols – off the wall, and poured some as-yet-unidentified liquid on them.
How Spalding Gray Became An Actual Paint Color
Reporter Judith Newman recounts a story that takes in the late monologuist, a Cleveland architect, his Weimaraner, his clients, Sherwin Williams, and, in the end, Gray’s widow and old house.
You Can Now Read The Editor’s Savage Notes On Milo Yiannopoulos’s Cancelled Book
Thanks to Milo’s breach-of-contract lawsuit against Simon & Schuster for withdrawing publication of his book Dangerous, the draft manuscript with comments by editor Mitchell Ivers is now public record. So the Internet is having a high old time with it, and you can join in. (Our personal favorite note: “Beauty regime moved to box at end of chapter, after Nietzsche section.”)
‘We Should Do Nothing’: An Archaeologist Argues Against Rebuilding Palmyra
In an extensive Q&A that also covers the history of the ancient Syrian city, its destruction by ISIS, the lack of an international or UN intervention to save it, and the trade in looted antiquities, Andreas Schmidt-Colinet, an archaeologist who worked at Palmyra for three decades, makes his case for what the West should and shouldn’t do at the site now that the shooting there is over.
The Ten Worst Parts Of Being An Arts Fundraiser
Karen Brooks Hopkins, longtime president of the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM): “As fundraisers, we are constantly told to look at the bright side: If at first you don’t succeed; smile though your heart is breaking, etc. But as a former president and chief fundraiser for a large multidisciplinary arts organization, I have decided, in the spirit of the season, to present my ‘bottom 10 list’ delineating the worst, most excruciating parts of the job.”
Nine Top Architects Share Their Dream Projects to Improve (or Save) New York City
These dreams range from the very-much-doable (Norman Foster extending Madison Square Park) to the interesting-but-unlikely (requiring the new super-tall apartment towers to provide public space) to the good-but-too-expensive (elevated bike lanes) to the insane (damming and draining the East River and using the riverbed as farmland) to why-aren’t-we-doing-this-already? (a “cultural Airbnb” offering vacant storefronts for temporary use as performance or art venues).
Look At How The Met Opera Put Together It Big New Production Of ‘Tosca’
Sure, the casting may have been ill-starred, but backstage, in the “opera factory, … the company’s army of artists and artisans started work nearly a year before its opening night, on New Year’s Eve.” Photographer Todd Heisler and reporter Michael Cooper give us a look at what the troops have been whipping up.
Rose Marie, 94, Comic Actress And Singer Who Had 90-Year Career
She began working as a singer at age 3, had a national radio show at 5 (she went on a national vaudeville tour at 7 to prove she wasn’t really an adult), and had a decades-long television career that included three Emmy nominations for playing comedy writer Sally Rogers on The Dick Van Dyke Show and nearly 20 years as a favorite on Hollywood Squares. She was doing voiceover work as late as this year, and a documentary about her came out just last month. (Fun fact: she says her father was an arsonist for Al Capone.)