“Cannes will bristle. The bigwigs at Venice may twirl. There’s a major new cinema event on the scene: the inaugural moustache film festival, to be held in Portland, Maine on 30 March. The festival is an offshoot of the annual Stache Pag, a moustache pageant showcasing the best in east coast facial hair.”
Tag: 02.07.12
Why Is It So Hard For New Musical Instruments To Catch On These Days?
“It’s hard to overstate the importance of new musical instruments in history. The piano’s dynamic range allowed for a subtlety in composition previously unimagined. The modern drum set paved the way for jazz. Rock and roll would not have happened without the electric guitar. … So what happened? Why has there been such a drought of [successful] new instruments – especially in rock and pop, which thrive on novelty?”
The Real Star Of The Artist – Uggie The Dog – Retires Due To Illness
“Now it’s been revealed that the 10-year-old Jack Russell, who will retire from feature film-making after the Academy Awards ceremony, is leaving the biz due to a mystery illness that has baffled experts and cost his trainer thousands of dollars in vets’ bills.”
Meryl Streep: How Opera Training Helped Me
“I learned the importance of breath. There was a thing I learned in my lessons from Estelle — to breathe from your back. She would always say, there’s room in the back — that you expand three dimensionally. … I use it all.”
The Free Open-Source Textbooks That Will Save Students $70 Million
“Using Rice’s Connexions platform, OpenStax will offer free course materials for five common introductory classes. The textbooks are open to classes anywhere and organizers believe the programs could save students $90 million in the next five years if the books capture 10 percent of the national market.”
The Art Hotel That Challenged Guests To Steal Its Art
“One couple failed because they Tweeted their every move. One man attempted to hook the picture off the wall with a long broom. Having eluded such elaborate ruses, Pulp Fiction will now be donated to Crime Stoppers, a division of the police, and will be auctioned off to raise funds for crime fighting.”
The Music That Takes Over Your Smart Phone
“A startup called SonicNotify embeds inaudibly high-pitched audio signals within music or any other audio track. When a compatible app hears that signal, it triggers any available smartphone function to link you to websites, display text, bring up map locations, display a photo, let you vote on which song a performer plays next and so on.”
Ten Museums Contend For This Year’s £100,000 Art Prize For Innovation
“M Shed in Bristol, Turner Contemporary in Margate, The Hepworth Wakefield and Glasgow’s Riverside Museum are among the 10 museums in contention. The prize rewards excellence and innovation for a project completed or undertaken in the previous year.”
The Craigslist Poetry
“The following are real, quirkily obtuse entries from the Missed Connections section of Charleston Craigslist, broken into lines and stanzas and minimally edited for clarity…”
London Plan For Free Dance Training For Boys In Regular Academic Programs
“The Class would be a school for boys aged 11 to 16, located in London … [where] every pupil will take daily ballet classes as well as trying other dance classes across the week and studying an English Baccalaureate-style curriculum.”