“Moments of surprise, whimsy and unconventional truth burst from the pages of Slake: Los Angeles, the new quarterly journal whose editors have essentially flipped the bird at the faster-quicker-shorter imperatives that are supposed to define 21st century media.” The fat first issue is “filled with essays, poetry, photography, short fiction, reported stories and almost no advertising. “
Author: Laura Collins Hughes
A Contemporary Opera, Staged In A Vacant Car Dealership
“The work took seven years to develop, runs three hours long, includes the collaboration of 21 writers and 11 composers, is performed by 21 actors and nine musicians,” and transports spectators “from scene to scene and set to set in a train of carts pulled by an electric golf cart. Those with the lower-priced tickets follow the trains on foot while dragging along their folding chairs.”
In A Hurry? Better Read That Book On Paper, Not Tablet
“The [very small] study found that reading on an electronic tablet was up to 10.7 percent slower than reading a printed book. Despite the slower reading times, Nielsen found that users preferred reading books on a tablet device compared to the paper book. The PC monitor, meanwhile, was universally hated as a reading platform among all test subjects.”
Man Who Threatened Obama In Poem Pleads Guilty
“Magistrate Judge Dave Whalin had previously ruled that the threat wasn’t protected [speech] merely because it appeared in a poem, saying it wouldn’t have mattered if Spencer ‘carved the message into a stone sculpture’ or ‘cross-stitched it on a pillow.'”
Why The Lord Of The Dance Is Back Onstage
Michael Flatley is “52, and under those well-cut clothes, there is a definite roll of middle-age spread. The Sunday Times Rich List has him down as worth £246 million. So why on earth would he want to put himself through the kind of punishing routines that — even the last time he danced them — left him lying for hours backstage, with his legs encased in ice?”
Belarusian Regime Invites Tom Stoppard For A Visit
“The invitation is the outcome of Sir Tom’s backing of the dissident Belarus Free Theatre – a group that has been subject to constant harassment since its formation in 2005 – and a protest against draconian new laws regulating internet access in the former Soviet republic.”
Lyric Opera Of Chicago Director To Retire
“After more than four decades serving in various production and administrative capacities at Lyric Opera of Chicago, [William] Mason has announced he will step down as the company’s general director at the end of the 2011-12 season.”
Conservatives Get An Entertainment Channel All Their Own
“Currently, RightNetwork has just three shows. One of them is a stand-up comedy series taped at a club in Los Angeles called Right 2 Laugh.” In the series’ trailer, a comedian “jokes that he’s ordering one of those coins with President Obama’s face on it because, he says, ‘any collector will tell you a coin is worth a lot more when there’s an obvious mistake on it.'”
Cesare Siepi, Great Operatic Bass, Dies At 87
“For years, he was the reigning bass at the Metropolitan Opera, and a regular fixture at London’s Covent Garden and many other houses around the world,” where “he was one of the few Giovannis who could both sing with the sensuous, seductive ease the role requires and look the part of the irresistible seducer. He owned the role for decades….”
Inside The Redness That Is Nouvel’s Serpentine Pavilion
“Jean Nouvel likes red. But then so did Matisse who said, ‘things only become what they are when I see them with the colour red.’ And that’s Nouvel’s point too. It is not simply about redness, but how it affects the other colours that are within its glow.”