“You can read Volume 1 online and Volume 2 should be dropping any day now.” The publication’s mission? “Taco Bell Quarterly is the literary magazine for the Taco Bell Arts and Letters. We’re a reaction against everything. The gatekeepers. The taste-makers. The hipsters. Health food. Artists Who Wear Cute Scarves. Bitch-ass Wendy’s. We seek to demystify what it means to literary, artistic, important, and elite.” – Literary Hub
Tag: 02.25.20
Rem Koolhaas Discovers The Countryside (And Comes Off As A City Rube)
Having spent 50 years theorizing about cities, he grew annoyed by how much time his fellow urbanists spend theorizing about cities. So he pulled on his wellies and went tromping out into the sticks with a mixture of wistfulness and obstinate naïvete. The countryside “is largely off (our) radar,” he writes, making that parenthetical our do a lot of heavy lifting. You’d have to be a pretty serious indoorsman to be startled by some of the changes he chronicles, or to believe that the world beyond cities was ever an “ignored realm,” as he calls it. – New York Magazine
Just In Time For Coronavirus? Video Conferencing Is Getting A Makeover
From virtual backgrounds to hide the dirty dished in your sink to AI-powered smoothing of video over iffy connections, video-conferencing services are trying to make the experience more vivid and reliable. – Wired
Director Says Apple Won’t Let Its Products Be used By Bad Guys In Movies
Knives Out and The Last Jedi director Rian Johnson has said that Apple won’t let the bad guys in movies use iPhones. “Apple… they let you use iPhones in movies but — and this is very pivotal if you’re ever watching a mystery movie — bad guys cannot have iPhones on camera.” – The Verge
Anne Midgette: The Placido Domingo Case
“Domingo is, indeed, irreplaceable — because the world no longer has a place for this particular kind of artist, who has done so much to help the field and so much to harm it. And it may well be that without him, the field loses some of its patrons, and some of its funding. It may be, indeed, that the institution of opera fundamentally changes — which is something we should all aspire to if we want this intoxicating, bizarre, glorious art form to continue to be vital, now and in the future.” – The New Beat
After 23 Years, The Team That Created ‘How I Learned To Drive’ Brings It To Broadway
Laura Collins-Hughes talks to playwright Paula Vogel, director Mark Brokaw, and actors Mary-Louise Parker and David Morse talk about the original 1997 Off-Broadway production and why they’ve always wanted to reunite and return to the play. – The New York Times
‘Simpsons’ Actor Hank Azaria Explains Why He Won’t Do The Voice Of Apu Anymore
“Once I realized that that was the way this character was thought of, I just didn’t want to participate in it anymore. … The character of Apu was done with love and pride and the best of intentions. My message is, things can be done with really good intentions and have negative consequences.” – The New York Times
We Will Buy No More Art For LACMA, Says Foundation That Funded Acquisitions For 60 Years
“The Ahmanson’s gift program, which has paid for 114 paintings and 15 sculptures, is the backbone of the museum’s widely admired European art collection.” And why is that program being ended? Because director Michael Govan’s plans (including the new building) mean that “Ahmanson gifts acquired over decades at LACMA curators’ specific request will end up in storage for unknown periods of time — even though they were bought for permanent display.” – Los Angeles Times
AGMA Was Going To Keep Its Report On Plácido Domingo Quiet, And Domingo Was Going To Pay AGMA $500K. Now The Deal’s Off
“The deal they were working on — which called for the union, the American Guild of Musical Artists, to limit its public statements about the inquiry and for Mr. Domingo to pay the union $500,000 — fell apart on Tuesday after details of the investigation were leaked overnight.” – The New York Times
Louvre’s Leonardo 500 Show Demolishes Attendance Record
“[The exhibition] brought in 1,071,840 visitors over the four months it was on view. This figure easily smashed its previous attendance record of 540,000 visitors, which was held by a 2018 Eugène Delacroix retrospective.” – ARTnews