“One wonders: Would Don Quixote pass the test and be published in New York today? I frankly doubt it. It would be deemed what editors call “a trouble manuscript”: too long, the story line problematic, the plot stuffed with too many adventures that do too little to advance the narrative and too many characters whose fate the reader gets attached to but who suddenly disappear. And that awkward conceit of a character finding a book about himself! The style! Those careless sentences that twist and turn!”
Blog
A Venue As Big As NYC
“The announcement that former Dublin Fringe director Vallejo Gantner has been named P.S.122’s artistic director has quieted fears about the East Village institution’s future. But what will Russell—one of the city’s most visionary performing arts curators, the man who fostered the careers of John Leguizamo, Eric Bogosian, Spalding Gray, and Danny Hoch—do without a venue to program? Why, program the city, of course…”
The Music Stops In St. Louis
“Management called it a strike; the union called it a lockout. But whatever the terminology, for the moment, the music has stopped. Management’s last offer was for around $72,000 this season – less than the $73,900 the players are making now.” At a meeting of musicians “there was no pontification (from the floor); people just got up and said, ‘I’m really sad, but I can’t accept it.’ We need to maintain our position of parity (with comparable orchestras), and we can’t be bankrupt. We need to be able to afford things we’ve invested in, like instruments and houses and education and all of that.”
Renzo Piano, Man About Town
Renzo Piano is the architect of the moment in New York, with several high-profile projects on the books. “For an architect who had never designed a building in New York before these projects emerged, Mr. Piano is suddenly spending a lot of time here. So why is an architect celebrated for three decades, starting with his collaboration with Richard Rogers on the Pompidou Center in Paris, finally having his New York moment?”
Blockbuster News – No More Late Fees
There were shortages of some popular movies at Blockbuster Video this past weekend, as the company eliminated late fees. That means renters can be more leisurely about returning movies. “The Texas-based megafirm eliminated all late fees for rentals, effective Saturday, despite the estimated $250 million to $300 million in revenues they would have generated for Blockbuster in 2005.”
Looking In On The Bootleg “Community”
Communities of movie bootleggers have their own community websites in which they trade praose and information about their latest scores. “On the top sites, on those really private sites, the sport is about the next film and the next game. They score even more points if they do it before the release date.”
A Final “Tristan” For The Disks?
EMI’s Abbey Road Studio is hosting “a gargantuan, million-dollar recording of Wagner’s ‘Tristan und Isolde,’ put together as a now-or-never enterprise for the tenor Plácido Domingo but also as a last, heroic stand from a classical CD industry so crushed by economic pressures that many consider it in terminal decline.” It may be the last ever recording of the Wagner epic.
A Music Camp’s Controversial Modernizing Plans
Large-scale changes are underway at Interlochen Music School, where faculty dismissals and program changes have riled some fans of the school. The school’s board chairman says that the changes are essential because “declining enrollment, fewer applicants, higher cancellations and fewer returning campers were threatening the camp’s reputation and even survival. At the same time, the student-staff ratio last summer was two to one. ‘That is not a sustainable ratio’.”
The Satellite Jukebox
“A handful of new and soon-to-be-released devices enable music listeners to automatically record tracks from satellite radio broadcasts onto hard drives or portable music players such as the iPod. While the recording industry has publicly decried such activities for terrestrial radio, analysts say it has a financial reason for remaining silent about satellite radio recording.”
Addicted To Books On Tape
Reading is king of course. But there are those among us who develop an addiction for hearing the spoken word read to us. “Perhaps there is something psychologically reassuring about listening to someone read a story. Hardly a day has passed in the last 30 years in which I have not heard a spoken-word recording of one kind or another. I go to sleep every night with the soothing sounds of a recorded book.”