Category: people

Nightmare tenant? Oh, yes – he poked holes in the roof of his apartment and threw rotten vegetables at his landlady. That in addition to the murder, brawling, whoring and vandalism. In fact, writes Noah Charney, “we know far more about Caravaggio than most pre-modern artists because he was brought to trial so often.”

Bernstein is important for many reasons, including being the first American-born, American-trained conductor to rise to fame and lead an American orchestra. But perhaps most impressive is the fact that he created lasting works of art that were informed by his commitment to social justice, but largely avoided preachiness.

“Mr. Carter’s influence and stature in the magazine and entertainment world is so great that to call his exit a changing of the guard seems insufficient: This is more of a regal passage. One of the few remaining celebrity editors, Mr. Carter — famous for his double-breasted suits, white flowing hair and a seven-figure salary — is a party host, literary patron, film producer and restaurateur who presides over a monthly publication that can still break news in a round-the-clock media age.”

“Pilar Abel, a 61-year-old tarot card reader and fortune teller from Girona, has spent the past 10 years trying to prove that she is the fruit of a liaison between her mother and Dalí in 1955. In June, a court in Madrid ordered the artist’s body to be exhumed after previous attempts to determine paternity had failed.” This attempt, alas for Ms. Abel, was definitive. (At least we know that Dalí’s mustache remains intact.)

“[She] stood apart from her generation in being both the only female ballet choreographer in France and the only leading French ballet choreographer not to have emerged from the Paris Opera academy. Jean Cocteau called her a ‘solitary wanderer who goes beyond the stars’.” Yet she was best known for the 1961 incident when, during a television taping, her costume caught fire and she was severely burned. She was back at work in four months.

“He played alto sax in orchestras led by Tommy Dorsey, Woody Herman, Red Norvo and Charlie Spivak, some of the biggest-name outfits of the day, and was an adventurous-minded player who also helped compose ballet scores and musical tone poems. … [He later] formed a popular big band with his older brother, Les, co-wrote the theme song to American Bandstand, and had his biggest hit album in 1982, a disco-pulsing medley of 1940s standards called Hooked on Swing.”

“Steely Dan sold more than 40m copies of nine studio albums, won four Grammy awards and were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2001. Their music – slick and catchy, with wry, observational lyrics – was all-pervasive for much of the group’s first period of activity, between 1972 and 1981.”

“[He] was among a group of comedians who emerged in the 1950s and early 1960s, including Mort Sahl, Bob Newhart and Elaine May and Mike Nichols, who built their humor around topical storytelling rather than the traditional setup and punchline. His routines about the frustrations of modern life, including pieces about airlines or about the difficulty of dealing with businesses and other institutions, were wildly popular and made him one of the first comedians with best-selling recordings. … [He also] had a late-career resurgence playing Larry David’s dotty father on Curb Your Enthusiasm.”

“It’s a simple argument: a world that is complex requires a poetry that is complex; a world that is somewhat incoherent may actually demand a poetry that is itself incoherent; a world in which no conclusions apply may even revel in its inconclusiveness. To read a John Ashbery poem is to be scrutinized by it. It is less a recording than a recording device, a CCTV screen taking us in.”