“Americans’ insecurity with the ticking clock was in some ways born out of the opportunities for growth and expansion that did not exist in other parts of the world. We worked harder and competed with one another because there was a chance for upward mobility. Other nations are now taking our lead.”
Tag: 11.23.09
Inflate The Ticket Price, And — Presto! — Box Office Rises
“‘The Princess and the Frog,’ Disney’s first hand-drawn animated feature in five years,” is opening in limited release with an “experience” that pairs the movie with “games, actresses dressed as Disney princesses, props, costumes and other activities.” With ticket prices in the $30-to-$50 range ($20 per person for groups), the box office is looking rather fat.
Public School Uniforms: What They Do, And Don’t, Achieve
New research suggests that mandatory uniforms “make students look sharper and create a safer environment, but they can’t raise a school’s achievement level.”
Beloved NPR Newscaster Carl Kasell To Retire
After 30 years of getting up at 1:05 am to be ready for the first Morning Edition newscast at 5 am, the 75-year-old Kasell will depart the program on Dec. 30. He will keep his other job, as announcer/judge/scorekeeper on the NPR news quiz Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me.
Why We Buy And Read Cookbooks We’ll Never Actually Cook From
Adam Gopnik: “Vicarious pleasure? More like deferred frustration. Anyone who cooks knows that it is in following recipes that one first learns the anticlimax of the actual, the perpetual disappointment of the thing achieved. … [If] the first thing a cadet cook learns is that words can become tastes, the second is that a space exists between what the rules promise and what the cook gets.”
Charges Against Model Who Stripped At Met Are Dropped
The woman “was arrested in August while posing for photographer Zach Hyman who has gained recent notoriety for his photos of nude models posing at New York landmarks, snapping shots of naked New Yorkers (all volunteers) from Times Square to Chinatown for his portrait series.”
Whitney Thinks Hard About The Problem Of Replicas
“How do you acquire or display a work of performance art that exists only in the form of an instruction sheet? What should conservators do about works that are deteriorating because they were made from unstable materials, such as neon, or sharks? If you want to exhibit a huge work of conceptual art,” should you have it shipped or “just get permission to make a copy?”
London Phil Says Its Ex-Financial Director Stole £560K
“Cameron Poole, 35, is believed to have siphoned off the cash over four years to pay for holidays, clothing, antiques and upgrades to his family’s £900,000 four-bedroom home…. He quit the orchestra in August and his former bosses — who receive in excess of £2 million a year from the Arts Council England — have launched a High Court action to recover the cash.”
TMI, Guys: Art Reviews Are No Place For Your Sexual CV
“I don’t remember that after the first showing of Damien Hirst’s shark in formaldehyde … any of the critics shared their views on shark-fin soup, or revealed whether they shop from the Marine Conservancy endangered-species list.” So why have some male critics, reviewing the red-light district reproduction at the National Gallery, spilled about their sex lives?
For Best Dance Results, Spray On A Tan (Six-Pack Optional)
“‘Dancing With the Stars’ producers advise contestants to get sprayed down the Sunday before each televised competition.” At a recent spray-on session, a makeup artist “changed the settings on her gun to paint in the shadows of muscles. Six-pack abs, defined cheekbones and sculpted arms appeared almost instantly.”