“My entire career, I stood out too much to fit in. And that whole time, I was the one who couldn’t accept that short, fat and bald could be the next best thing on the block. I had to change how I saw myself. All of my accomplishments were not in spite of my short, fat, bald body, but because of it.”
Blog
‘Sudden Savant Syndrome’ – Why Some People Develop Extraordinary Abilities After Brain Damage
There’s Eadweard Muybridge, who was a bookseller until a traumatic brain injury in a stagecoach accident led him to become the pathbreaking photographer he was. There’s the orthopedic surgeon who suddenly became a talented pianist after being struck by lightning, and the slacking college dropout who became a math and geometry genius after a bar fight. How could this happen? Neurologists have two ideas.
If Houston’s Alley Theatre’s Longtime Artistic Director “Retired” Why Was He Paid $383,000 Severance?
More than 20 current and former Alley employees have told the Houston Chronicle that Gregory Boyd’s 28-year, Tony-winning tenure at the theater was tainted by abusive behavior, particularly toward young actresses. Boyd, who abruptly retired with two days’ notice on Jan. 11, did not respond to requests for comment.
‘Roseanne’, A Sitcom Like No Other, Even After 30 Years
“Roseanne Barr is now a Ghost of Television Past, so strange and contradictory it’s hard to believe she was once one of America’s biggest TV stars. From her prime-time pedestal, she brought all kinds of progressive notions about gender and class to the homes of a nation convulsed by a culture war. She found a way to turn the insult of being poor and a woman inside out: Although Roseanne Conner sometimes pretends to be lazy and a lousy mom, she is neither.”
How Randy Rainbow Became An Internet Sensation Using Show Tunes To Mock Trump
Comedy is a great unifier. I hear from people every day from both sides saying, “We don’t have the same beliefs, and, you know, I hate gay people and I hate white people and I hate black people and I’m an awful person—but I laughed at your video!”
Absence In Montecito: T. Coraghessan Boyle On The Aftermath Of The California Wildfires And Mudslides
“The eerie thing about these nights in Montecito has to do with absence. The absence, first of all, of my neighbors, almost all of whom are under a mandatory evacuation order. They are gone, their houses dark, their cars rolling down other streets altogether – or, in the worst cases, crushed as if for repurposing in the scrap yard.”
The Technology Revolution That Enabled The World’s First Novel
“The book was written about 1,000 years ago, at a time when a lot of literature was still produced by scribes, collected from various sources and cobbled together by editors. The foundational epics and religious texts in circulation then were very different from the reading material we’re used to. In that context, Murasaki’s diary felt to me like a turning point in the history of literature—it sounds so recognizable, so intimate, so modern.”
Masha Gessen: A Life In Seven Forbidden Words
In this adaptation from her Robert B. Silvers Lecture, the National Book Award-winning journalist uses the seven words that Centers for Disease Control researchers were warned to avoid to shape an examination of her own life and her moves across oceans, cultures, and gender boundaries.
Jazz And Classical Pianists Use Their Brains Differently: Study
“While neuroscience has largely debunked the left-right brain divide, new research from the Max Planck Institute … shows that a similar binary might apply to pianists.”
Agnès Varda Is The Oldest Oscar Nominee In History, News She Greets With A Shrug
“Reached in Paris hours after receiving the Academy nod, [the 89-year-old] Varda, for her part, seemed cheery but basically unconcerned. She brushed off the notion the Oscar nomination is any kind of crowning achievement – even if [the documentary] Faces Places will stand as her final film.”