“Both the artistic director and the co-founder of the West Bank’s Freedom Theatre have started hunger strikes in prison. Artistic director Nabil al-Raee commenced his hunger strike last Friday, having spent the last month in administrative detention in an Israeli prison. The company’s co-founder Zakaria Zubeidi began striking on 2 July, vowing to continue until his death if necessary.”
Tag: 07.11.12
Superheroes On The Couch: Analyzing The Costumed Fans At Comic-Con
A few times a year, Bay Area psychologist Robin Rosenberg visits major comics conventions and interviews some of the folks who show up dressed as Batman or the Green Lantern or Catwoman. They usually open up to her very quickly and demonstrate much more insight than those who’d dismiss them as post-adolescent geeks might expect.
Could Amazon Do To The Rest Of Brick-And-Mortar Retail What It Did To Book And Music Stores?
“Same-day delivery has long been the holy grail of Internet retailers, something that dozens of startups have tried and failed to accomplish. (Remember Kozmo.com?) But Amazon is investing billions to make next-day delivery standard, and same-day delivery an option for lots of customers. If it can pull that off, the company will permanently alter how we shop. To put it more bluntly: Physical retailers will be hosed.”
The Secret To Christopher Plummer’s Success
“Reading, getting to know great poets and great prose was enormously helpful … It’s taught me a lot about the music of language … It behooves you to read as much poetry as you can – and to have a musical ear (which I fortunately have) – to know exactly where the climaxes are and where the codas are in your work.”
Are Bad Moods Contagious? Yup.
“Psychologists call this phenomenon emotional contagion, a three-step process through which one person’s feelings transfer to another person.”
Why Do We Wear Pants?
“It turns out the answer is inexplicably bound up with the Roman Empire, the unification of China, gender studies, and the rather uncomfortable positioning of man atop horse.”
‘I Was An A-List Writer Of B-List Productions’: Confessions Of A Made-For-TV Movie Scriptwriter
The beginner’s luck. The “in development” limbo. The meetings. The re-writing of your work. The meetings. The thrill of seeing the setting you imagined actually built. The excitement of penning an OJ Simpson project at high speed. The reviews (“This is another of television’s scavenger productions”). The brilliant work that never got produced. The residual checks.
Sopranos Live Longer Than Altos: Study
“[A] recent study compared the lifespans of 286 sopranos, altos, and mezzo-sopranos (the latter two were combined into one unit), born between 1850 and 1930. … [C]ontrolling for birth year (people born in 1850 were at a disadvantage!), sopranos lived about five years longer than the lower-voiced female singers.” The key? Higher estrogen levels, apparently.
Remember When ‘Satanic’ Heavy Metal Rockers Went After Christianity? Now Some Are Attacking Islam
“‘Burn the Quran! Burn the fucking Quran!’ [an Iraqi] woman screams hoarsely, over and over again. Tinny guitars course beneath her howls, sawing away at any semblance of melody. Sampled snippets of fundamentalist Islamic rhetoric filter through, and muffled voices exhort their unseen audience to praise Allah and to destroy the infidel.”
An LA Theatre Blows Out Its Box Office Records With…
“This is not just your grandmother’s La Mirada Theatre,” crowed Producing Artistic Director Brian Kite in an announcement on the theater’s website, citing more than $1.3 million in single-ticket sales (that is, nonsubscibers) over the past season. By comparison, in 2010-11 the theater barely cleared more than half a million dollars in sales.