“It isn’t an offshoot of a blockbuster franchise like CSI, it isn’t a critical darling, and characters don’t make a habit of bursting into song. How to explain the success of this old-fashioned procedural?”
Tag: 01.26.11
Is Lady Gaga Gypsy Rose Lee’s Spiritual Daughter – or Mother?
“You know, if Lady Gaga and Dorothy Parker had a secret love child it would have been Gypsy. … Gypsy would show up at the Met wearing a full length cape made entirely of orchids and here Lady Gaga is showing up wearing a cloak made of meat.”
Why San Francisco’s Classical Music Radio Station Went Public
“When the ratings system changed a couple of years ago, that affected every classical station in America. That’s why WQXR in New York had to go public, WCRV in Boston, WTMI in Miami, King in Seattle — all those stations have been annihilated by the new ratings system, and by the way that business is conducted in modern radio.”
A New Crowd-source Arts Funding Project
“Today a new website, wedidthis.org.uk, opens for business. It’s an intriguing idea: it hopes to support specific arts projects via donations, of any size, given online. If the project reaches its target funding, the donors will be given a small reward.”
Optimism For Criticism As An Art Form
“The more I quell my Chicken Little instincts, the more I allow myself to recognize — and enjoy — this moment of incredible intellectual abundance. And in terms of whether the “old regime” still matters, in criticism, we’re always standing on the shoulders of giants.”
How the Wojnarowicz/Smithsonian Hubbub Looks From Europe
Europeans “have reacted to the Smithsonian flap with the same mildly appalled bafflement that they express toward American opposition to the health care bill. It all seems inexplicable to them.”
Broadway’s Top Backstage Substitute
“As any elementary school principal … will tell you, many substitutes are called, but few choose substituting as a life’s work. Tom Santopietro, 56, has. He has made a near-career on Broadway, not as an understudy, but as a substitute for house managers and company managers.”
Pakistani Pulp Novel Too Steamy for Jaipur Book Fair
“The adventures of a lesbian detective kept millions of Pakistanis enthralled for eight years. In weekly installments, its male writer brought to life in high Urdu and Farsi the voracious Bano, a wealthy Karachi-ite who solved crimes and trawled school buses for schoolgirls.” This week the Jaipur festival’s co-director stopped a planned reading (in English) from the series out of deference to the (presumed) “sensitivities of the audience.”