Category: people

Speaking at the Dubai Book Fair, the all-too-outspoken author claimed that his recent suggestion that the elderly be euthanized was “satirical,” directed at his own (baby-boomer) generation, and that, notwithstanding his harsh comments about Islamist terrorism, he admires Islam and that the religion could have saved his now-deceased alcoholic sister.

“It’s surely the dream of every red-blooded American to be catapulted from obscurity to celebrity, to one day knock on the right door and see it swing ajar to reveal a lifetime’s bounty of riches. ‘Dream on,’ you’re probably scoffing, and with good reason. Yet this is precisely what happened, back in the nascent era of television, to a lanky young actor down on his luck by the name of Fess Parker.”

“A health-care joke in the script has been popular with audiences in the week leading to the March 21 Congressional vote on health-care reform, and was especially resonant with Mrs. Obama in the house, observers said.”

“Caractacus Downes was told there was sufficient evidence to prosecute him for assisting his parents’ suicide but it was not considered to be in the public interest to do so. Sir Edward [Downes] died alongside his wife Joan at the Dignitas clinic in Zurich in July last year, leaving £2.6 million to Caractacus and his sister Boudicca, 38.”

“Speaking at the Leipzig book fair on Saturday, [Nobel laureate Herta Muller] said that while she was writing books including her debut, the short story collection Niederungen (Nadirs), which was censored in Romania, she would meet her German proofreader in the woods to avoid discovery.”

“Michelle Obama – with Sasha, 8, and Malia, 11, and about a dozen other people in tow – took in the matinee performance of ‘Memphis’ Sunday. … The musical tells the story of a white DJ, Huey Calhoun, in 1950s segregated Tennesse; his love for a black singer, Felicia Powell, and the then underground sound that gave birth to rock and roll.”

“According to the ancient biographer Plutarch, men were hypnotized not by Cleopatra’s looks but by her wit and charm: Her beauty was ‘not of the incomparable kind that would astonish everyone who saw her,’ he wrote, ‘but her conversation was irresistibly fascinating, and her character utterly mesmerizing’. … Cleopatra’s profile on many surviving coins, which were minted in Egypt during her lifetime, is downright ugly.”

“He’s the Italian composer-prince who murdered his wife and her lover, was into wild bouts of self-flagellation, and who at the end of the 16th century wrote some of the most chromatic vocal music ever conceived in self-pitying lamentation for his human condition. That’s the myth, at least …”

“In works like ‘Medea in the Laundromat’ and ‘Awful People Are Coming Over So We Must Be Pretending to Be Hard at Work and Hope They Will Go Away,’ he presented cartoonishly stylized characters, equipped them with arch dialogue and set them loose in outlandish situations.” He also acted in many Ridiculous Theatrical Company productions.

He “was often Spain’s leading nominee for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Known for his humble nature, his empathy for the poor and a lifelong commitment to rural Spain and its traditions, he wrote of sheepherders, cheese-makers, blacksmiths and hunters. His characters are complex, often reflecting the cultural and political struggles that followed the Spanish Civil War.”