“The travel host Anthony Bourdain, whose memoir Kitchen Confidential about the dark corners of New York’s restaurants started a career in television, died on Friday at 61. For the past several years, Mr. Bourdain hosted the show Parts Unknown on CNN and was working on an episode in Strasbourg, France, when he died.”
Category: people
Jerry Maren, Last Surviving Munchkin From ‘The Wizard Of Oz’, Dead At 98
“The green-clad tough guy of the Lollipop Guild who famously handed Dorothy (Judy Garland) a giant lollipop … Maren moved beyond society’s stereotypes of shortness to make a successful living as an actor and spokesman. He racked up nearly 100 film and TV credits and starred in several commercials. He also played McDonald’s Hamburglar and Mayor McCheese, as well as Buster Brown and Little Oscar in Oscar Mayer’s 1950s ad campaigns.”
In An Increasingly Extremist World, A Pitch For Extreme Moderation
“Wherever you look, whatever you do, performance has gone extreme, often policed by a tracking app or a competitive peer (sometimes masquerading as a friend). Moderation, in any form, is seen as nothing but amateurism, the habit of a slacker who won’t commit 10,000 hours of practice to master something. I long ago decided to invest in extreme moderation.”
Playwright Joe Pintauro, 87
“[He] made the unusual career switch from priest to playwright and [his] works” — among them Snow Orchid, Beside Herself, The Dead Boy, and Raft of the Medusa — “were staged by the Circle Repertory Company in New York and numerous regional theaters.”
How Pop Culture Can Be A Lifeline For Those With Autism
While fictional stories offer escapism for autistic and allistic (nonautistic) audiences alike, for autistic consumers, they can also do much more. They lay out social scripts to follow when dealing with different circumstances, which, for people who have trouble transferring lessons from one situation to another, can be useful.
A Portrait Of The New Broadway Producer
At 42, Jordan Roth has become Broadway’s singular showman, pushing the boundaries of what it means — and, yes, what it looks like — to be a theater tycoon. In a famously flop-prone industry, he is wrapping up his best season ever — successfully luring not only Bruce Springsteen but also Disney (“Frozen”) and Tina Fey (“Mean Girls”) to his theaters, joining the long-running hits “The Book of Mormon” and “Kinky Boots.” He has three Tony Awards as a producer, and this weekend he is vying for a fourth, for a starry revival of “Angels in America.” As his confidence has grown, so has his appetite for provocative self-expression.
The Upside On Performance Of Being Too Busy
In recent years, being busy has become an unmistakable badge of honor in many Western societies. It’s quite common for people to humblebrag that they don’t have a minute to themselves. Feeling busy — that is, perceiving oneself to be a busy person — thus makes individuals feel that they’re prized, important members of society. In research forthcoming in the Journal of Consumer Research, we looked at busyness through this modern self-concept lens. We found that the perception of oneself as a busy person — having what we call a busy mindset — can actually increase people’s self-control via a boost in self-importance.
Clarence Fountain, 88, Leader Of Blind Boys Of Alabama
“Fountain was enrolled at the age of eight into the Alabama Institute for the Negro Deaf and Blind. While singing in the school’s choir, Fountain and five friends formed the Happy Land Jubilee Singers … [and changed] their name to the Blind Boys of Alabama at the turn of the decade. … Despite being one of the more famed black gospel groups during the Fifties, the Blind Boys of Alabama’s popularity waned in the late Sixties and Seventies as secular soul music emerged.” They returned to wide popularity in 1983 with their participation in Lee Breuer’s famous Off-Broadway production of The Gospel at Colonus.
Chicago ‘Rock-A-Blues’ Star Eddy Clearwater Dead At 83
“Often performing with a large American Indian headdress or a wide, flat-brimmed Stetson hat, Mr. Clearwater commanded the crowd’s attention. He duckwalked across the stage and liked to wade into the audience with his guitar. Though classified as a Chicago bluesman, his mostly original repertoire combined elements of gospel, soul and rock-and-roll — particularly the music of Chuck Berry and Louis Jordan — into a boisterous musical stew that he termed ‘rock-a-blues.’ The Blues Foundation inducted him into its hall of fame in 2016.”
When Allen Ginsberg Went Off On RFK Over Pot
When the Ginsberg showed up at Senator Kennedy’s office without an appointment, the senator heard the poet out “on everything from the plight of heroin addicts to federal drug policy to global warming to the war in Vietnam to the invention of LSD to the degraded state of New York City.” Then Ginsberg asked RFK if he had ever smoked marijuana, and Kennedy said no. Uh-oh. (And before he finally left, Ginsberg insisted on singing Kennedy the Hare Krishna mantra.)