The Japanese are doing actual talking less and less on their mobiles, preferring to text or read cell-phone novels. Americans “won’t shut up,” though even they are left far behind by Puerto Ricans. The Spanish think voicemail is rude and always take calls, as do the Chinese, who might miss a business opportunity. And so on.
Tag: 12.30.09
Economy Ushers In An Era Of Amateur Art-Making
“The global recession hasn’t crippled the entertainment industry, as some feared, but it has hastened its embrace of the do-it-yourself movement. From neighborhood theater troupes to bookstore readings, amateur performers are taking their place onstage. It’s less a new development than a return to an old way of life.”
Rule #1: ‘If You Want To Be A Great Writer, Be A Man’
How to change the fact that male writers and subjects are seen as inherently more laudable than female writers and subjects? “First, we have to see prejudice. The top prizes’ discrimination against women has been largely ignored. We can’t ignore it any longer. PW hasn’t yet owned up. Neither has the Pulitzer committee — though there’s hope.”
Glasgow Cultural Venues Taken Over By City Council
“Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, the City Halls and Old Fruitmarket are to be taken over by Culture and Sport Glasgow – an arms-length Glasgow City Council-owned organization – in a bid to prevent their closure. Meanwhile, it is understood that staff members at the venues are being offered voluntary redundancy as the venues look to cut costs.”
Norval White, 83, Co-Author Of Definitive Guide To NYC Architecture
“First published in 1968, the AIA Guide [to New York City] tapped into and fostered a growing national awareness that America had an architectural past worth preserving, a present worth studying and a future worth debating.”
England’s Greatest Composer? A Nomination For Henry Purcell
Ivan Hewett passes over Britten, Elgar and Vaughan Williams for “a workaholic Londoner born 350 years ago who had a talent as wondrous as Mozart’s and, like him, died at the cruelly young age of 36.” (Yet again, Handel is evidently disqualified for being an immigrant.)
Paris’s Musée du Luxembourg To Close (At Least) Temporarily
“Over the summer the French Senate announced that it would close the museum that shares its lodgings in the Palais du Luxembourg. … When the current exhibit, on glass works by Louis Comfort Tiffany, closes on January 17, the museum will be dark until a new [private] company is authorized to reopen the museum, supposedly in 2011.”
Orwell’s Birthplace Finally Scheduled For Restoration
“Orwell was born Eric Arthur Blair on June 25 1903 in Motihari, a tiny town in the impoverished eastern Indian state of Bihar, near the border with Nepal. … For years, the family’s simple white colonial bungalow has been left to decay; damaged in an earthquake it was an occasional home to stray animals.”
How Far Should We Go To Preserve Holocaust Relics?
The recent theft of and damage to the “Arbeit macht frei” sign at Auschwitz raises an unexpected question for curators, ethicists, and us observers: With the atrocities of the Holocaust already thoroughly documented, is it really worth it to expend scarce resources on preserving and repairing the memorabilia of the Nazi perpetrators? Better to just let it all decay and say, “good riddance”?
A Motorcycle Ballet
“Feld Entertainment Inc., the live entertainment production company behind Disney on Ice and the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circus, is taking an edgy turn with its latest production, ‘Nuclear Cowboyz,’ a post-apocalyptic motocross spectacle that sprinkles scantily clad dancers and special effects atop a gas-fueled ballet of high-flying motorbikes.”