“Dancing, or at least clubs that offer dancing to electronic DJ music, could be in the fast lane to extinction thanks to an act of Congress. Last week it passed the Illicit Drug Anti-Proliferation Act, also known as ‘the RAVE Act,’ as part of the larger PROTECT Act. The RAVE Act strengthens existing ‘Operation of a Crackhouse’ legislation, under which owners of a property are held responsible for any drug use on their premises. Penalties for violating the Crackhouse statute can include fines of up to $500,000 for an individual or $2 million for a corporation, a potential 20-year prison sentence and asset forfeiture. When used against a real crack house, where individuals gather for the specific purpose of doing drugs, the law makes sense; when applied to music venues where a determined patron can always find a bathroom stall or dark corner to imbibe a chemical, it’s lunacy.”
Tag: 04.27.03
Who’s Earl? The Critic Who Loves Everything…
Just who is Earl Dittman? He’s blurbed for even the foulest of movies as “absolutely loved it” and declares even the sorriest effort as “a cinematic masterpiece.” “The figment of a movie publicist’s wet dream, an avatar of agreeability who never fails to salute whatever bomb is launched out of Hollywood. No matter how soundly a movie is trashed by critics, Dittman can be counted on to declare it a masterpiece in his ubiquitous newspaper ad blurbs.” But does he really, truly exist? Peter Howell goes hunting…
New Gehry Bows
Bard College’s new $62 million Frank Gehry performing arts center is alluring, writes Nicolai Ouroussoff. “Wrapped inside its shimmering steel container, the main performance hall faces a lush, rolling meadow. The smaller theater and rehearsal rooms are plugged into one side of this form. A dense patch of woods acts as a backdrop for the center, with the Catskill Mountains rising in the distance. The arrangement allows Gehry to create a mesmerizing architectural narrative.”
Making A Joyful Noise
Bard College’s new performing arts center makes a goo impression on Mark Swed. “During a noisy and exuberant opening weekend, this marvelous new facility for music, opera, dance and theater, at a small liberal arts college in the Hudson River Valley, has already begun making a statement that is hard to ignore.”
Sawallisch – The Exit Interview
Wolfgang Sawallisch’s time directing the Philadelphia Orchestra is coming to an end. “The 79-year-old maestro, who restored the trademark Philadelphia string sound, performed Beethoven and Brahms with matchless authority, and premiered important new works by American composers, has long lived his public life in a businesslike, nonconfiding fashion. Though his charm and still-hearty handshake suggest he’s always glad to see you, there’s a sense that his availability has fairly strict limits, ones not to be challenged.”
Classical Music – Getting The Lowdown On Cool
David Patrick Stearns wonders about all these attempts to make classical music cool. As if it isn’t already. So maybe watering it down, or sexing it up exposes more people to the art. But does it really? And besides, doesn’t art reward those who make efforts to get close to it (rather than the other way aound)? “So if the latest wave of classical crossovers isn’t making us cool, what is it doing, besides attempting to make money?”
The Barnes – A Unique Art School
The Barnes Collection outside Philadelphia is a great museum yes. But it’s also an extraordinary art school. “There probably isn’t another art school, anywhere, in which students are immersed week after week in one of the world’s great collections. They sit on folding metal chairs in the foundation’s galleries as the instructors teach from celebrated paintings by Renoir, Matisse, Cézanne, Picasso, and dozens of other modern masters. It’s hard to overstate the value of such exposure.”
Destruction Of Culture – Holding American Leadership Accountable
“There is much we don’t know about what happened this month at the Baghdad museum, at its National Library and archives, at the Mosul museum and the rest of that country’s gutted cultural institutions. Is it merely the greatest cultural disaster of the last 500 years, as Paul Zimansky, a Boston University archaeologist, put it? Or should we listen to Eleanor Robson, of All Souls College, Oxford, who said, ‘You’d have to go back centuries, to the Mongol invasion of Baghdad in 1258, to find looting on this scale’? Nor do we know who did it. Was this a final act of national rape by Saddam loyalists? Was it what Philippe de Montebello, of the Metropolitan Museum, calls the ‘pure Hollywood’ scenario — a clever scheme commissioned in advance by shadowy international art thieves? Was it simple opportunism by an unhinged mob? Or some combination thereof? Whatever the answers to those questions, none of them can mitigate the pieces of the damning jigsaw puzzle that have emerged with absolute certainty. The Pentagon was repeatedly warned of the possibility of this catastrophe in advance of the war, and some of its officials were on the case. But at the highest levels at the White House, the Pentagon and central command — where the real clout is — no one cared.”
The Barnes & Noble Way
Dennis Loy Johnson has noticed that Barnes & Noble seems to be less interested in selling new books these days. It follows the B&N formula: “Remember the scenario? It was enacted across America — B&N comes to town and builds a super store right next to the best independent bookstore around. They promise to enhance the local book culture, to spawn a local literary café society, by letting people making all kinds of periodicals available in the entrance way, where people can also post notice of literary events and reading groups. The store also hosts lots of readings by local writers, and organizes reading groups. It’ll be good for all the bookstores and book lovers around! they proclaim. Meanwhile, they sell books at a drastic discount until all the local competition has gone under. Then they stop discounting, prevent anyone from putting free periodicals in the entry way, take down the bulletin board and stop hosting readings and reading groups.”
Naming The Top 50 Women Writers – What’s Wong With This Picture
The Orange Prize is holding a vote on the best books of all time by women writers. “But 50 Best Books by women? The old arguments that greeted the establishment of the Orange Prize itself are immediately unrolled for another airing: chiefly, that women are not a minority group and good writing transcends boundaries of gender, therefore to treat women writers as belonging to a separate category serves to perpetuate divisions rather than address and erase them. The notion of a literary prize exclusively for white writers or, indeed, for men, is untenable, so the defence for a women-only prize must be that we consider ourselves sidelined. Is it still true that women writers are undervalued?”