Category: today’s top story

“On the surface, the impasse revolves around how to divvy up future Internet media revenues. But the real problem is that nobody knows the value of anything anymore. Whether we’re reading horror stories about the mortgage meltdown, watching the dollar plummet or gagging on the prices at our neighborhood gas station, we’re all stumbling around with a nagging feeling that the value of things has become unmoored.”

“Some prominent artists and writers, cognizant of a long, dark history of repression that Russians know only too well, and especially wary of the grip the church is gaining on the state, have been expressing deep anxiety about the government’s starting to encroach on artistic freedom the way it has taken on other aspects of society.”

“While Broadway was thrilled to be back in business yesterday – curtain up, light the lights! – you didn’t see any stagehands or producers doing victory laps around Times Square. Bloodied and exhausted, both sides gave up a lot to get a deal.”

Last week someone started spray-painting “allusions” to the work of author Thomas Pynchon. “As the university begins its cleanup operation and the police investigation continues, two questions remain: Why? And who?”

The settlement came after two days of marathon, all-night sessions and months of negotiation between Local 1 and the League of American Theatres and Producers. Most shows were expected to resume performances Thursday

Sources are saying that Broadway stagehands and producers are “very close” to settling the strike that has shut down much of the Great White Way for the last 3 weeks. “Local 1, which represents the stagehands, has agreed to change some work rules but is still holding out for some kind of ‘salary compensation’ in exchange for those concessions.”

“The background issues underlying the Broadway shutdown are rife across America. No, most of us aren’t busy negotiating the Byzantine hiring regulations for loading in the set of a new musical. But all of us can relate to the fierce struggle wrought by an economy that has transformed housing and healthcare (forget dentistry altogether) into luxuries, given us job security on a wing and a prayer and forced upon businesses a risk-reward ratio that most professional gamblers would smirkingly walk away from.”

“For a year, under the nose of the Panthéon’s unsuspecting security officials, a group of intrepid ‘illegal restorers’ set up a secret workshop and lounge in a cavity under the building’s famous dome. They pieced apart and repaired the antique clock that had been left to rust in the building since the 1960s. Only when their clandestine revamp of the elaborate timepiece had been completed did they reveal themselves.”

The New Jersey Symphony has sold the collection of 20 valuable Italian instruments it purchased in 2003 from now-disgraced financier Herbert Axelrod. “The deal resolves an embarrassing episode for the orchestra,” and best of all, the purchasers will lend most of the instruments back for the NJSO’s continued use.

“Michael Kaiser, the turnaround virtuoso who rescued from financial ruin the Kansas City Ballet, the Alvin Ailey Dance Theater Foundation, American Ballet Theatre and, before coming to the Kennedy Center, London’s Royal Opera House, has developed an almost messianic urge to teach the art of arts management to struggling cultural institutions around the globe.”