“It was one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen: 100 rock climbers abseiling down the façade of the Reichstag, slowly unfurling this huge silvery curtain.” While Jeanne-Claude is no longer with us to give her testimony, Christo and project manager Wolfgang Volz give their accounts of Christo’s most successful project before The Gates.
Tag: 02.07.17
How Anna Nicole Smith Went From Sex Symbol To Golddigger To Punchline To Martyr
“No matter how hard Americans tried to regard Anna Nicole Smith with apathetic dismissal, they couldn’t hide their fascination – and still can’t. Why? Was she just another model, another B-lister, another early casualty of reality TV? Or did she show us something about ourselves, about our country, that frightened us more deeply than we could ever admit?”
What’s So Terrible About Instant Gratification?
“While all that instant gratification [that the internet and e-commerce provide] may be convenient, we are warned that it’s ruining a long-standing human virtue: the ability to wait. Well, it’s not waiting itself that’s a virtue; the virtue is self-control, and your ability to wait is a sign of just how much self-control you have.” Alexandra Samuel explains that it’s not really so straightforward.
So, Like, Where Did Everybody Saying ‘Like’ Come From?
Yes, the usage exploded in the 1970s and ’80s, but it didn’t originate with Valley Girls or even hippies – it goes back at least to the 1770s. In this Lexicon Valley podcast, John McWhorter and sociolinguist Alexandra D’Arcy talk about the history and (yes) grammar of “like.”
‘Recruit Rosie’ – ‘Saturday Night Live’ Has Now Joined, Or Been Memed Into, The Resistance
It took one news report that Donald Trump was upset that SNL cast a woman as Sean Spicer for Twitter to erupt with calls for the show to cast Trump’s number one bête noire, Rosie O’Donnell, as Steve Bannon. Megan Garber points out that this is no longer just a joke: “It operated on the premise that jokes can effect significant changes in the daily operations of the White House.” (We want Steve Buscemi as Kellyanne Conway!)
Rajiv Joseph Wins $25K Horton Foote Playwriting Award
The author of Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo and Guards at the Taj will receive the prize at the end of this month. The award from the Dramatists Guild of America was launched just last year, with Stephen Karam (The Humans) the winner.
John Adams Wrote An Opera About Nixon, But He Will Not Be Writing One About Trump
In a Q&A with Gabe Meline, Adams explains the difference he sees between the two men that makes the one more opera-worthy, talks about the other politically oriented work he has written and is still writing, and why his latest arrival at the airport reminded him of the ’60s.
‘Spiral Jetty’ May End Up High And Dry As Its Habitat Evaporates
The Great Salt Lake is drying up at a worrisome rate.
Recreating Martha Graham’s Comic Ballet (Wait, What?)
Yes, Martha did one comedy, a Punch-and-Judy piece from 1941. And audiences did find it funny. The Martha Graham Dance Company found some archival footage of the piece, and hired choreographer Annie-B Parson (herself a “wait, what?” choice) to devise a new piece based on it. Siobhan Burke talks with Parson about how she did it.
Report: Last Year There Was A Surge In Violations Of Artists’ Rights
According to Freemuse, an independent international organization that researches violations of artists’ rights, that global number has more than doubled that for 2015, increasing by 119%.