Art Of Death (Of Course, It’s The Boomers’ Turn)

“The death-care industry remains such a strong bastion of quiet conformity partly because the reformers of the baby-boom generation haven’t started dying yet. The boomers have insisted on variety and individuality at every threshold of their lives: sex, marriage, parenthood. In their wide demographic wake. But the boomers are myopic reformers. Generally speaking, they have only just begun to think about death, so have only just begun to pressure cemeteries and funeral homes for change.”

Pauline Kael’s Trash Revolution

“Kael, whose critical reputation was in its early stages, used Bonnie and Clyde as the opening shot in what turned out to be a war against middlebrow, middle-class, middle-of-the-road taste.She announced no less than a revolution in taste that she sensed in the air. Movie audiences, she said, were going beyond ‘good taste,’ moving into a period of greater freedom and openness.”

Glass Houses Abound In Columbus

One of the reasons cited by the Columbus Symphony’s executive director in proposing the dismissal of music director Junichi Hirokami is that the conductor “hasn’t put down roots in central Ohio.” But several of the musicians are pointing out that the executive director himself stays in a Columbus hotel room after two years on the job, and lives in Boston with his family.

Romeo & Juliet Without Sympathy

“Shakespeare has always been up for grabs, and choreographers have every right to use him any way they choose. But if they’re going to give us an alternative version of a story, they have to justify it by the originality and conviction of what they bring to it. The big question is why the ultra-intelligent Mark Morris put so much effort into a story for which he obviously has so little sympathy?”