Category: people

The music and culture critic, who won awards and gained fame during his years as a New Yorker staff writer (2004-2015), “has abruptly exited the L.A. Times after less than a year amid allegations of expense-account shenanigans involving a strip club and accepting expensive freebies from sources.”

“I didn’t have any interest in film, I was just interested in racing. After about two months of working for his company, I still didn’t know who Stanley Kubrick was. When [we were finally introduced], I saw this person who looked like Fidel Castro and didn’t realize who he was. I thought, ‘Oh dear, here we go.'”

Madeleine LeBeau and her husband “left Paris just hours ahead of the invading German army; Dalio’s image had been used in Nazi posters to identify Jewish-looking features. They made their way to Lisbon and, using what turned out to be forged Chilean visas, booked passage on a Portuguese cargo ship.”

Joe Rishel, the man who guided and transformed the Philadelphia Museum of Art during his decades there, is “now simply emeritus curator of European painting – a curator who comes in at 10 in the morning, not 9, and doesn’t wear a tie.”

“Though [Darwyn Cooke] wrote extremely well, he was best-known for his art, filled with clean, thick lines; dynamically smooth action; and evocative simplicity.”

“Foster formed a production company, Egg, and entered into a deal with PolyGram Filmed Entertainment, a studio that eventually merged with Universal. ‘Failed moguldom!’ she said with a loud laugh. ‘I was following a path, and — I can’t say I think it was a mistake? But it was a lot of energy output, and I think the energy would have been better spent in other places. When you’re young, you try things.'”

“Dunn had two little-known novels to her name, written in the early 1970s, when Geek Love became widely celebrated. … She seemed bemused by her sudden literary fame after years of struggling to earn a living by working freelance for a number of regional and national outlets, including as an advice columnist and as a boxing writer.”

“After a thorough review process, the National Executive Board of the National Association for Music Education (NAfME) and Michael Butera have agreed that he will not be returning to the association. We wish him well and thank him for his service to our purpose and mission.”

“The weirdest thing about Tomita’s electronic music is that it almost never happened. … He was uninterested in the military marches that he heard on the radio as a young child. His attitude toward music changed when the war ended and his family’s radio started picking up broadcasts from the occupying American forces. Suddenly, jazz, Latin, classical and a host of other exotic genres rushed in to his living room.”