Category: people

“I’m inviting them to my studio to audition. I don’t have a camera there, so I have to see their bodies — it’s a very expensive process,” Mr. Close said. “I’ve never had a complaint in 50 years, not one. Last time I looked, discomfort was not a major offense. I never reduced anyone to tears, no one ever ran out of the place. If I embarrassed anyone or made them feel uncomfortable, I am truly sorry, I didn’t mean to. I acknowledge having a dirty mouth, but we’re all adults.”

Civil forfeiture allows law enforcement to take and keep cash, cars and other property without ever charging someone with a crime. Before that fateful March day, Phil had never heard of civil forfeiture. He was just a musician driving through Wyoming to a show in Salt Lake City. Phil had big plans for his life savings, which he brought with him for safekeeping.

“A dark-haired beauty with a pure classical technique, … [she] was one of a golden generation of ballerinas who made the Royal Ballet into a global phenomenon in the mid-20th century.”

One of the great satisfactions of being a leader is that you get to be a teacher, sharing the wisdom you’ve acquired over the course of a career with young colleagues hungry for time-tested advice. But when it comes to inventing the future, the most effective leaders are the most insatiable learners. Creative leaders are always asking themselves, “Am I learning as fast as the world is changing?”

“[She] became a nightclub sensation in the 1950s with her then-husband, the comically disruptive entertainer Louis Prima, and … gradually emerged from his shadow as an acclaimed solo performer” whose hits with bandleader Nelson Riddle, on Capitol and later on Frank Sinatra’s Reprise label, included the million-seller “I Wish You Love” and “Little Girl Blue/Little Girl New.”

He started out as “a self-described ‘tone deaf’ concert promoter who turned Washington’s tiny Cellar Door music club into a venue that hosted the likes of Neil Young and Miles Davis” and went on to create Cellar Door Productions, “[which] produced more than 500 events each year and reportedly grossed up to $100 million annually, booking acts such as the Rolling Stones, Madonna, Pink Floyd, the Dave Matthews Band, U2 and the Who.”

Among the evergreen television series his company, Filmways Television, produced were Mister Ed, The Beverly Hillbillies, Petticoat Junction, Green Acres, and The Addams Family; the titles he produced for the big screen included Save the Tiger, Catch-22, The Cincinnati Kid (he fired Sam Peckinpah as director and replaced him with Norman Jewison), and The Americanization of Emily.

“Few people would honestly argue that there is nothing worth improving about the way they live and the way they experience the world. Some people regard their own particular weaknesses and conflicting emotions as a valuable and distinct part of their ‘personality,’ as something that contributes to the fullness of their lives. They believe that this is what makes them unique and argue that they should accept themselves as they are. But isn’t this an easy way to giving up on the idea of improving the quality of their lives, which would cost only some reasoning and effort?”

Howland was 80. Her work “might never have resurfaced had not a copy of ‘W-3’ caught the eye of Brigid Hughes, editor of A Public Space, when she was browsing through a $1 cart at the Housing Works Bookstore in Manhattan in 2015. The book intrigued her, and some digging eventually led her to Jacob Howland. A Public Space now hopes eventually to reissue all of Ms. Howland’s books.”

“Is the secretive street artist Banksy actually a fedora-sporting middle-aged white guy who dresses ‘inconspicuous’ when he goes out stenciling? That certainly seems to be the case if the photo snapped by 24-year-old British tourist Jason Stellios and published by the Daily Mail is to be believed.”