Gia Kourlas: “Fred Astaire, as the famous saying goes, may have been a great dancer, but Ginger Rogers did everything he did – only backward and in high heels. At least she had gravity on her side. Synchronized swimmers often perform upside-down and without air.”
What Does It Mean That ‘Serial’ And ‘Making A Murderer’ Have Led To Changes In Criminal Verdicts?
“The real danger … is that a show or podcast can become so persuasive that audiences think they’re getting the entire story – the objective truth – behind a murder and the ensuing trials. ‘It’s wrong to think of any of these shows as being unmediated texts.”
What Distinguishes A Sentence As A Masterpiece
“If we think of a library as a city and a book as an individual house in that city, each sentence becomes one tiny component of that house. Some are mostly functional – the load-bearing wall, the grout between the bathroom tiles – while others are the details we remember and take away, perhaps recalling their texture and colour when we assemble our own verbal dwelling-place.”
Karen Finley, Still Going Over The Top
“Her work was, and is, raw to the point of scariness, accessing such dark materials as her father’s suicide, incest, and the violation of children. But what Finley’s pieces are not, of course, is erotic.”
Is Sleep Music A Real Thing?
“I give these inventors credit. They are launching their product at a moment when the market for sleep music is starting to stir. In recent months, I’ve encountered a surprising number of creative projects targeted at an unconscious audience. But this raises many questions: Is sleep music a real genre?”
A Broadway Dancer Has Been Charged With Murdering His Boyfriend
“The pair reportedly had been fighting in their apartment in the Morris Heights section of the Bronx. After the fight, Bellamy reportedly contacted a neighbor, who called police. Bellamy was waiting for them and surrendered peacefully.”
A Salute To Gawker, Which Is About To Die
“A media organization that is founded on hostility to the powerful and is run with almost no internal hierarchy will naturally be irregular. It will be invasive in ways that serve the public interest and in ways that cross a shifting public line.”
The Secret Deal SFMoMA Made For An Art Collection From Rich Lenders
“This stipulation has major implications. It means that something like 60 percent of SFMOMA’s indoor galleries (not counting free-admission areas that serve as combination lobby and exhibition spaces) must always adhere — or, at least, respond — to a narrative of art history constructed by just two astute but obdurately private collectors.”
One-Time Theatre Agent Bilked Friends For Thousands
But the play he lied about sounds potentially amazing: “Mr. Scahill, the documents say, falsely claimed to have obtained the rights to the life story of the opera singer Kathleen Battle, aiming to produce a one-woman show, starring Ms. Nyong’o, about the day in 1994 when Ms. Battle was fired by the Metropolitan Opera.”
What Happens When You Get A Breakout Role After Years (And Years) Of Work
“People are always trying to figure out how they know me. I think, for the first time, people are starting to say ‘That’s Sterling K. Brown,’ which is cool, which is uncharted territory for your boy. It’s nice to be called by your name when you’re not in character.”
The Weird Persistence Of Asking Composers To Write Pieces In Response To The Classics
“Commissioners try not to assign composers at random. In some cases, that’s easy, especially if the composers involved are performers, too.”
With Writing, There Is No Actual ‘Reason’ Involved
“I’m removed from the city but I can see it, hear it, smell it. When I first started to work here I thought it would be a good place to meet interviewers or have research discussions, but that idea quickly evaporated. I like it that no one else comes here.”
How To Write Stories, According To A Hugo Nominee (Now A Winner)
“I live on these borders – and these borders that allow me to see from multiple perspectives and kind of take things in and then kind of process certain ideas and certain stories in a very unique way. And that has led me to write this strange fiction that I write, which really isn’t that strange if you really look at it through a sort of skewed lens.”
When Hollywood Loses Control Of Its Own Narrative
“That’s part of what Searchlight was betting on: the simple allure of an auteur and his singular artistic vision to usher a film to greatness. They simply failed to fully research, contemplate, or understand the implications of that alignment.”
The New York Times’ Public Editor Is Not Enamored Of The Paper’s Facebook Live Forays
Someone had to say it: “I have hit upon many that are either plagued by technical malfunctions, feel contrived, drone on too long, ignore audience questions or are simply boring, by I imagine most anyone’s standards. Too many don’t live up to the journalistic quality one typically associates with The New York Times.”
The Married-est Symphony Ever, Or, Whatever PR People Need To Do To Sell Tickets
“Six of the couples perform with the orchestra, and eight are in the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, the orchestra’s all-volunteer choir. The BSO’s associate concertmaster and his freelance violinist wife are also performing.”
Handwriting Is Over – And So Is Printing, If We’d Just Face Facts
“People talk about the decline of handwriting as if it’s proof of the decline of civilization. But if the goal of public education is to prepare students to become successful, employable adults, typing is inarguably more useful than handwriting. There are few instances in which handwriting is a necessity, and there will be even fewer by the time today’s second graders graduate.”