TV shows, TikTok, live mini-shows, Instagram Stories, and memes – comedy has changed. Even the second Borat movie, though it was made and was fairly popular, only shows that “the form itself is in transit, evolving and branching out into a multiplicity of approaches that reflect the diverse and pulsating world we now live in.” – Prospect (UK)
That Viral Band The Linda Lindas Gets A Record Contract
The girls went absolutely viral for a video of their performance at the Los Angeles Public Library, especially a clip with their song “Racist Sexist Boy.” Now the punk band comprised of 10-16-year-olds has a contract. (Though one hopes they don’t tone things down for the record company.) – Variety
Former Moonlighting Showrunner Glenn Gordon Caron’s Time At CBS Ends After An Investigation
After multiple writers left the show following season five, the show investigated. The writers – who all refused to be named out of fear of retaliation – say the environment for them was, at best, terrible. Another former writer on Caron’s show Medium and current producer: “It was a toxic environment while I was there. And now that I have much more experience and I have been a showrunner myself, I can tell you, there are a lot of different ways to tell a writer that what they’re submitting didn’t work for you without attacking them in a cruel way. It is entirely possible to do this job with humanity and warmth and to treat people with respect.” – The Hollywood Reporter
Kathleen Andrews, The Woman Who Helped Bring Us Ziggy, Cathy, And Doonesbury, 84
Kathy Andrews and her husband Jim, “with his best friend, John P. McMeel, concocted a newspaper syndication company from the basement of the Andrewses’ rented ranch house. Ms. Andrews, who had a master’s degree in mathematics, kept the books. They called it Universal Press Syndicate because, Mr. Trudeau said, ‘it sounded bland and boring and like it had been around for a hundred years.'” – The New York Times
Michael Morgan Talks about Developing Young Conductors
The Music Director of the Oakland Symphony speaks about innovation and helping train promising young candidates for the podium. – Aaron Dworkin
Don’t Count Print Newspapers Out Yet
Well, not quite yet, anyway. “When futurologist Ross Dawson published his ‘newspaper extinction timeline’ in 2010, he predicted that newspapers would cease to exist in the UK in 2019, in Canada and Norway in 2020 and in Australia in 2022. Wrong, wrong and, barring some unforeseen Australian cataclysm in the next six months, wrong again.” – Irish Times
A Japanese Composer, A Burkina Faso Storyteller, And A Congolese Rapper Make Opera
Composer Keiko Fujiie, who moved to Burkina Faso and built a house where the musicians can practice without annoying their neighbors, hopes to tour the country and debunk the idea of opera as an elite art form: “”I didn’t come to introduce European opera here – to the contrary – I needed to study their music, and little by little share the dream of making an opera with them.” – BBC
This Year’s Kennedy Center Honors Are A Breath Of Fresh Air
The five honorees said that the six-month delay, and the loss of so many performance opportunities and spaces during the pandemic, made this weeklong celebration even more important. Midori: “This is a blessing, but this is also encouragement, and a motivation for me to be able to continue to connect with others, and to collaborate and to anticipate a new world and a new normal.” – Washington Post
How Jane Rogers Took On Britain’s Very Male Literary Establishment In The 80s
Rogers: “When I started work on Mr Wroe’s Virgins I was 35. I was wildly ambitious, and had a chip on my shoulder. Faber had published my first three novels and all had found critical favour. But I was broke and my sales were poor, and I was spiky about the literary world.” – The Guardian (UK)
How Colonial Williamsburg Is Producing Progressive Theatre
The truth is, enslaved people formed the majority of the town’s population at the time depicted at the site. New interpreters and an urgency to depict something closer to the truth of the history pervades the actors and administrators now. And so: “The instruction has gone out lately to all of Colonial Williamsburg’s dozens of actor-interpreters that the city’s slaveholding past is to figure in every tour and talk.” – Washington Post
And Now Tattoos Will Be Sold As NFTs
But the owners won’t need to get tatted in real life. “In this new marketplace, customers will be buying the exclusive rights to the design of the tattoo, rather than the tattoo itself. ‘I’m selling you an idea, instead of just hours of my life,’ said [L.A. tattoo artist Scott] Campbell, who has been blurring the line between tattoo and fine arts for years, showing his tattoo-inspired sculptures and paintings at galleries and art fairs. ‘The NFT is basically a digital baseball card.'” – The New York Times
Movie Theatres Are Begging Audiences To Return
Apparently, 70 percent of the moviegoing public – which is, let’s note, far higher than the percentage of fully vaccinated people in the U.S. – feel comfortable going to reopened movie theatres now. This week, “before the studios showed off trailers for their upcoming slate of movies, [Arnold] Schwarzenegger led the audience in a chant: ‘We are back. We are back. We are back …'” – NPR