The US Postal Service had to destroy 100 million stamps of the Grand Canyon because they placed it in Colorado instead of Arizona. Now, the corrected version is flawed… – The Straits Times (Singapore) (AP)
Tag: 02.04.00
IN THE MONEY
If the modern symphony orchestra is in trouble, somebody forgot to tell the Boston Symphony. The orchestra is just finishing up its $130 million capital campaign, which it will “comfortably exceed.” Ticket sales are booming, and orchestra management is confident as it considers where it wants to go next. – Boston Herald
THE END OF CD’s –
– and good times ahead. Digital downloading of music and film isn’t to be feared, says the president of the recording label BMG. Instead, it will create a new boom in the entertainment business. – Variety
THE ART OF NAPPING
A new MP3 music-sharing software program called Napster enables listeners to download music files from one another. Is this what the recording companies fear? – Salon
ALL’S FARE
Embattled Covent Garden announces it will reduce some of its ticket prices, in response to mounting public criticism. – BBC Music Magazine
OVERNIGHT SENSATION
Twenty-something writers – provocative, sexy and extremely marketable – are achieving overnight best-selling status…but let’s not confuse artistic development with publishing glory. Shouldn’t suffering, poverty, and failure be part of the literary journey? – The Age (Melbourne)
LITERARY LETTERS
No predictors of literariness. Some writers are just as witty and interesting and fun in their correspondence as they are in their work. Then there are Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning’s letters to each other. “You can ask someone to tap you repeatedly on the head with a teaspoon or you can wade through the detailed description of every thought either of them ever had.” – The Hungry Mind Review
HARRY POTTER AUTHOR —
— wins British Book Association’s “Author of the Year.” – BBC
GOING WARHOL
What’s happened to David Hockney? In the past decade “he has refused to simplify his signature style, choosing instead to interrogate the rules of representation and reproduction. He’s done photomontage art and fax art, and has written books on what it means to see. He has, in other words, gone Warhol, a wise PR move for an artist always erroneously (yet profitably) associated with Pop, but a disaster for one of the few living painters who can command respect for his traditional skills.” – Feed
PORKY PIG BU HAO
Turner Broadcasting and the Cartoon Network have been banned from Chinese television. “Their actions violated relevant Chinese rules,” an official with the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television said of the network, which airs cartoons by day and old Hollywood classics at night. “They know very well what they did.” – Times of India 02/04/00