“Death doesn’t lie, so death masks – a cast of the face in wax or plaster, taken just hours after breath has gone – promise truthful representations of the departed. In an era before photography, these masks give us each beauty and blemish, a living presence in unchanging material. But how were they made? And what is their uncanny allure?”
Tag: 07.06.09
Authors Start Pitching Themselves To Book Clubs
“Enterprising fiction writers are marketing themselves to book groups in person, by phone, and over Skype to boost sales. Meet the new breed of literary types on the make.”
A New Company Worth Watching For Its Name Alone
That name would be My Turkey Sandwich. The part-time Salt Lake City company launched last year with a program (titled “Between the Bread”) featuring only the two co-founders as dancers; this year, there will be 14 onstage for “Open-Faced – With a Side of M.A.Y.O.” (That stands for “Movement Activists Yielding Oeuvre.”)
Space Web: The Net Breaks The Bonds Of Earth
“The interplanetary internet now has its first permanent node in space, aboard the International Space Station (ISS). The new software will make sending data from space less like using the telephone, and more like using the web … [and] could one day allow data to flow between Earth, spacecraft, and astronauts automatically, creating what is being dubbed the ‘interplanetary internet’.”
Gehry, Morphosis And A Dozen Other Firms Design Duplex Houses For A Rebuilt New Orleans
“[Brad Pitt’s] Make It Right Foundation recently revealed the new designs that are part of [a] multimillion-dollar initiative to help rebuild the city’s Lower Ninth Ward, devastated in 2005 by Hurricane Katrina.”
Twitter, Twitterati, Twitterverse Enter The Lexicon, Literally
“Twitter has gained academic respectability with inclusion in the Collins English Dictionary. The social networking tool, which has 1.8 million users, will be listed in the 30th anniversary edition to be published later this year. The website, which allows users to send brief online updates to their friends and family, will [appear] as both a noun and a verb.”
Mr. Penn Goes To Washington (Better Late Than Never)
“Actor Kal Penn on Monday became White House wonk Kalpen Modi. … Now, instead of playing a slap-sticking stoner on the run from Guantanamo Bay prison, as he did in the 2008 ‘Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay,’ Modi will serve as an Obama liaison to Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders, as well as the arts community.”
Financially Strained Ballet BC Taps Dancer As Interim A.D.
“Emily Molnar, a principal dancer with Ballet BC who is also an emerging choreographer, has been appointed interim artistic director of the financially troubled Vancouver ballet company. Molnar has been given the task of steering Ballet BC over the next year as the company struggles to regain its financial footing and build audiences.”
Gormley’s Fourth Plinth: The Public As Dead Man Walking
“[T]he spooky and shocking aspect is the march to the scaffold. … It reminded me of nothing so much as Dickens’ great account in A Tale of Two Cities of Sydney Carton being led through the streets to the guillotine in a tumbril during the French Revolution. Did Gormley intend to evoke anything so gruesome, I wonder?”
Drabinsky, Gottlieb Face Sentencing For Livent Fraud
“The sentencing hearing for former Broadway producers Garth Drabinsky and Myron Gottlieb got under way Monday in Toronto, with the prosecution calling for a sentence of eight to 10 years for each defendant. … Charged in October 2002 with cooking the books at Livent, the now-defunct legit production company they co-founded, the two men were convicted March 25 on two counts of fraud and one of forgery, bilking investors of about C$500 million ($430 million). “