“Fire-breathing bizarros are so hard to find these days. (No, Glenn Beck doesn’t count.) And when’s the last time you saw a girl change into a gorilla? A headless woman? The Human Blockhead? (Again, Glenn Beck doesn’t count.) What used to be a mainstay of American circuses and county fairs – the sideshow grotesquerie – is on its last legs.”
Tag: 08.14.09
In Britain’s Burgeoning Muslim Community, Where’s The Good Islamic Architecture?
While there are a few showplace mosques, many houses of worship for British Muslims are drab little storefronts or repurposed churches with a dome or minaret tacked on. Sometimes, immigrants from simple South Asian villages are recreating the modest spaces they knew at home; other times, grander plans for mosques encounter fierce local opposition. Might the neighbors be won over by genuinely beautiful architecture?
Where The Marble Has Bewitched Sculptors For Centuries (And Still Does)
None other than “Michelangelo built a road up to the mountain [near Pietrasanta], which he named Altissima (the highest). His reward was a marble of unsurpassed whiteness, ideal for sculpture. Artists – from Giambologna and Vasari to Joan Miró, Henry Moore and more recently Damien Hirst and Marc Quinn – have been flocking to Pietrasanta ever since.”
Suicide As A Strategy For Escape
“Should we regard suicide — under the right circumstances — as the logical end of the Good Life? The question is raised by the death of the distinguished British conductor Sir Edward Downes, 85, and his wife Joan, 74,” whose children framed their deaths “as the culmination of the couple’s fruitful years together.” Michael Chabon, considering David Foster Wallace’s suicide, says that while “suicide is an idea alien to my way of thinking … [t]he world, like our heads, was meant to be escaped from.”
Shepard Fairey: Why I Protect My Building Against Graffiti
“I’m a champion of free speech. I think it is important for people to be able to speak freely, but if I’m watching a channel whose content is not my cup of tea I may choose to change the channel. It does not make me an opponent of free speech. Preferring my brick unadorned does not make me anti-graffiti. Every time I put a piece of art on the street I know it may be cleaned. That is the nature of the art form.”
A Mathematical Model For Surviving A Zombie Attack (Oh Yes, They Did It)
“Oh yes, somebody actually did a study on mathematics of a hypothetical zombie attack, and published it in a book on infectious disease. … ‘Clearly, this is an unlikely scenario if taken literally,’ they wrote. ‘But possible real-life applications may include allegiance to political parties, or diseases with a dormant infection.’ Right.”
State Of Michigan Closes Landmark Metro Detroit Jazz Venue
“Ann Arbor’s Firefly Club, a beacon for live jazz for nearly a decade and regarded by aficionados as metro Detroit’s finest all-around jazz club, has been closed and its property seized by the Michigan Department of Treasury due to a delinquent sales tax bill.”
Budget Slashed At Fresno Art Museum
“The Fresno Art Museum this week is cutting its budget by a third, laying off a still undetermined number of its 15 employees and declaring furloughs for those who remain. The museum also is reducing the number of days it will be open.”
LACMA Stays Mum In Face Of Grassroots Campaign To Restore Its Film Series
“They’ve written e-mails. They’ve organized a petition. They even got the attention of director Martin Scorsese, who has sent a letter to LACMA protesting the decision to shutter the museum’s weekend film program.” The group “Save Film at LACMA said that the museum has corresponded with them, but that ‘so far we’ve seen form letters and boilerplates filled with double-speak’.”
To Improve Poetry Literacy – Give Away Poetry?
“I think, in order to save the emergency situation we find ourselves in, we should be dishing out best-of compilations of our greatest poets (and not just English-language poets, either) at every street corner. Wouldn’t that be brilliant?”