Category: issues

“The Vietnamese fusion joint booted out my colleague LA Times restaurant critic S. Irene Virbila this week and posted a notice on the Internet that suggested other restaurants might consider doing the same.”

“The leaked cables reveal that as early as 2007, the U.S. embassy handed over to Spanish authorities the customs import documents that Odyssey had filed when bringing the hoard of coins into the United States. “The information was confidential and to be used only for law enforcement purposes,” embassy officials warned Spain’s director of customs.

“British contemporary art’s current fame is a product of long years of prosperity when political questions about justice and equality seemed to have vanished from modern culture. But this year real life was radicalised and that will become even more true in 2011. So where does this leave modern art?”

The Arts Council of Northern Ireland is bracing itself for cuts amounting to £4.2 million over the next four years in a newly announced draft budget by the region’s legislative Executive.

“Whether it’s a spontaneous rendition of Handel’s Hallelujah chorus amid a busy shopping day at Macy’s, or thousands of dancers simultaneously executing the same choreography in multiple far-flung cities,or a clutch of actors suddenly morphing into vampires in the middle of a hungry lunchtime crowd – all caught on video and posted online – artists are trying to break old habits and startle, surprise, and seduce new audiences.”

“Video and photo editing, smartphone apps, email and other digital tools are gaining popularity as parents try to persuade their 21st-century kids that there is a Santa Claus. Technology can create evidence more convincing than fake reindeer tracks in the snow – though without a deft touch, Santa can come off looking like a perp in a security video.”

“At Santa Claus Village, I saw the same sort of bewilderment on the faces of parents that I’d seen at Fatima, in Portugal, when I’d visited earlier this year. At Fátima, many of those faces belonged to people who had crawled, painfully, on their knees for miles in hopes of some miracle to be found … Yet for me, the greatest mystery at Fatima was: How could one small town support so many tacky souvenir vendors hawking the exact same religious tchotchkes?”

“Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer first appeared in 1939 when the Montgomery Ward department store asked one of its copywriters, 34-year-old Robert L. May, to create a Christmas story the store could give away to shoppers as a promotional gimmick.”

Ontario’s new law to stop U.S. entertainment giant Ticketmaster and others from selling and reselling tickets to the same event is now in effect.