Category: people

Following a first career as an evangelical preacher and political activist (Time magazine once called him and his wife Beverly “the Christian power couple”), LaHaye conceived and co-wrote what was possibly the most successful Christian publishing property since the Bible itself, a 16-volume series of action novels depicting those “left behind” to face the end times following the Rapture.

Literature is full of impostors and noms de plume, from George Eliot to “Robert Galbraith” (aka JK Rowling), but JT LeRoy is something else. George Eliot never did high-end fashion shoots, or received backstage passes to U2 gigs, or was sent Kabbalah books by Madonna.

“Before her Hollywood days and long afterward, Ms. Nixon was an acclaimed concert singer, a specialist in contemporary music who appeared as a soloist with the New York Philharmonic; a recitalist at Carnegie, Alice Tully and Town Halls in New York; and a featured singer on one of Leonard Bernstein’s televised young people’s concerts.”

“I always thought, as soon as my ballet career is over, I would love to do Broadway. … Once nobody wants to see me in white tights anymore, I still would want to be a performer. And Broadway was my first passion. I didn’t realize that this opportunity was going to come around, right in the very middle of my ballet career.”

Tessa Thompson, about Creed: “[It] is not necessarily a political movie, but the way that we had conversations, we thought we were making a really cinema verité about the black experience.”

“November 12, 2013. I was ready to make a jump, I hit a slippery spot on the floor and heard two huge pops in my right knee,” she says. “The ACL (anterior cruciate ligament) had ruptured. The pain came from my tibia slamming into my femur.” She’d had injuries before – what dancer hasn’t? – but realized this could be career-ending: “I went into surgery, knowing I might not come back.”

Question: “Is politics to society what music is to sound?”
Cage: “Yes, if music is thought of as a body of laws to protect musical sounds from noises, as government protects rich from poor.”

And that incident wasn’t even the first trauma the poor woman suffered that year.

“As you surely know, universities have always been crucial for military juntas in Turkey, and certain individuals are believed to be in contact with cells within the military.”

With shelves full of awards, a discography of more than 60 titles, and more than 40 years as titular organist of the famous Saint-Germain des Près church in Paris, he was one of France’s most admired organists, known especially for his improvisation and his Bach. (in French; Google Translate version here)