“I am involved but not a micromanager. There is no chance that I could be. I am deeply involved but fully delegate to people who have the responsibility … I am not a coercer or a dictator but if I feel strongly about something I will advocate for it.”
Tag: 05.31.16
One Of Television’s First Pop Stars, A Piano-Playing Indian Pandit, Was Really A Black Guy From Missouri
“According to press releases from the time, [Korla Pandit] was born in New Delhi, India, the son of a Brahmin government worker and a French opera singer. … Not once in 900 performances did he speak on camera, preferring instead to communicate with viewers via that hypnotic gaze. … The way he came to fame is one of those only-in-America fables where the audience and the performer are both invested in the illusion.”
Why Can’t The Great British Bake Off Translate Into A Successful American Spinoff?
“The most damning thing one can say about [the American] ‘Bake Off’ is that it’s sweet TV, the television equivalent of a feel-good Upworthy post that would go viral on Facebook (‘This Show About Cakes Will Restore Your Faith in Humanity’).”
Why So Many Facebook Live Videos Are So Bad – A TV Critic Explains
Willa Paskin: “Where Vine has fetishized brevity and Snapchat ephemerality, Facebook Live encourages video-creators to go long, more than five minutes and up to 90, and caches its videos. … The formal innovations of Facebook Live are length and durability, along with the ‘live’ aspect. And yet so far very few Facebook Live videos have figured out how to capitalize on any of this at all.”
Why Keeping Secrets Is So Difficult (And How To Make It A Little Easier)
“You have to pay a lot of attention both to what other people already know as well as to whether they’re allowed to know the secret information, too. This mental effort can be a problem in casual conversation, where it’s easy to let a piece of information slip unintentionally. Our minds have a limited capacity to process information.”
Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum Goes In-House For New Director
“The board of trustees at the Rijksmuseum announced on Monday that Taco Dibbits, the museum’s director of collections, would replace Wim Pijbes as general director. Mr. Pijbes, who had seen the museum through a major expansion, announced his resignation in March after accepting a job as director of a new private museum.”
They’re Giving British Cops Special Training In How To Handle Protests Against Controversial Art
“The advice pack – put together by Index on Censorship and Arts Council England – hopes to create a more cohesive approach to policing across different forces, with an emphasis on avoiding censorship. Its publication follows protests in recent years against performances at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and the Barbican Centre, which resulted in the cancellation of both shows.”
Irving Benson, One Of The Last Of The Vaudeville/Burlesque Comedians, Dead At 102
“Mr. Benson won an amateur contest as a dancer in the 1920s and, by the mid-1930s, he was touring the country telling jokes. He worked in the vaudeville theater, in which a variety of performers – singers, jugglers, dancers, magicians – appeared on a single bill. For many years, he also appeared opposite strippers and other performers in burlesque shows, vaudeville’s more disreputable cousin.”
Beach Reading For Classical Music Fans: Anne Midgette’s Crowdsourced Guide
When she asked followers on social media to suggest works of fiction that did a good job of treating classical music, Midgette “got back a veritable flood of titles: short stories and novels, popular fiction and Nobel Prize-winners, and many books I’d never even heard of. So here you go: your summer fiction reading list, suggested and annotated by several dozen people.”
Washington Ballet’s Septime Webre Lands His Next Gig
“Webre will curate the S&R Foundation’s new performance series, titled Halcyon Stage, which will present music, dance and lectures on the arts, said Kate Goodall, the foundation’s chief operating officer.”