Uh, not good: “Amazon takes a hands-off approach to what goes on in its bookstore, never checking the authenticity, much less the quality, of what it sells. It does not oversee the sellers who have flocked to its site in any organized way. That has resulted in a kind of lawlessness. Publishers, writers and groups such as the Authors Guild said counterfeiting of books on Amazon had surged.” – The New York Times
Tag: 06.23.10
The Onion: ‘Obama’s Weekly Video Addresses Becoming Increasingly Avant-Garde’
“The president still wants to continue his dialogue with the American people,” said a (fictional) spokesperson. “However, he’s been getting really into Nam June Paik lately, and is passionate about using new technologies and techniques to communicate his message of hope and progress.”
How Whitney Balliett Recorded The History Of Jazz
“When his seminal long portraits are blended with his shorter album reviews and reports from gigs, concerts, and festivals, what unfolds is a panoramic, novelistic chronicle of post-War America. Everything reverberates and gains value. Fifty or a hundred years from now this new publication would be the most important single document of twentieth century American jazz outside of the recorded sound.”
Martha Clarke Wins $50,000 Scripps/ADF Award
The veteran dance-theater artist (The Garden of Earthly Delights, Vienna: Lusthaus, The Hunger Artist) “has won what is described as the largest yearly prize given to a modern dance choreographer, the $50,000 Scripps/ADF award, the American Dance Festival said Wednesday.”
NYC’s High Line, Phase II: The ‘Flyover’ And The ‘Chelsea Thicket’
The second stage of the popular new elevated park, running from 20th to 30th Streets, opens next spring. The design will include “a ‘flyover’ where the walkway rises above the High Line’s level, and into the shady canopy of sumac trees” and “a dense stretch of trees and shrubs” described as a “version of Central Park’s wild and woolly Ramble” and named the “Chelsea Thicket.” (Ahem.)
Netflix Gives Its Blessing To End Of Saturday Mail Delivery
“The approval of Netflix, which has more than 14 million subscribers, follows that of Time Warner Inc., publisher of more than 20 U.S. magazines including Sports Illustrated and People. The Postal Service, which says eliminating Saturday delivery would save $3 billion a year, wants to reduce the service to five days a week.”
Michael Wilson To Step Down As Hartford Stage A.D.
“Michael Wilson, the energetic artistic director of Hartford Stage who embraced the works of Tennessee Williams, Horton Foote and new playwrights during his 13-year tenure, will leave the theater at the end of its 2010-11 [season]. … Wilson’s activities increasingly took him to New York, often waving the banner of Hartford Stage.”
Art Fraudster Lawrence Salander Won’t Go To Jail Yet
The “$120 million art swindler” on Wednesday “got yet another free pass from a generous judge,” who “declined prosecutors’ vehement demand that he be thrown in jail immediately.” This “followed a prosecutor’s nearly half-hour long listing of Salander’s broken promises to the court in the three months since he pleaded guilty to a massive, decade-long swindle.”
A Point-By-Point Takedown Of Lee Siegel’s Fiction Claim
“1. Siegel: ‘Fiction has become culturally irrelevant.’ People buy books, read books, are right now camping on sidewalks to see ‘Twilight: Eclipse,’ a movie based on a book, and they camp out in bookstores too, when a novel they’re eager for is sold at midnight. Maybe these people are not part of our culture?”
Berkeley Art Museum Taps Diller Scofidio + Renfro
“The choice signals that UC Berkeley remains serious about a cultural expansion that would bolster city efforts to position its downtown as a cultural destination. The selection also is an implicit act of one-upmanship to a friendly rival across the bay: The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art has DS+R on a list of four finalists to design an expansion to its home….”