arts & leisure

[jfb]

Oh New York Times, how I've missed you! Somehow, even on the Sunday when I was in New York (or at least nearby), I didn't pick up a single paper on the whole trip.

Unfortunately today's A&L is a little sketchy, but it's still better than no Times at all:

• Gus Van Sant's new Columbine movie, and a preliminary analysis of Look-Look, "a new magazine conceived to showcase the work of young artists."
  
• Best paragraph from Jon Pareles's Playlist:

  In Avril Lavigne's petulant footsteps comes another teen-rock rebel, 16-year-old Katy Rose. On her debut album, "Because I Can" (V2), she's peeved at boys, parents and the disappointments of adolescent life, and she describes them in long-lined, precisely rhymed couplets: "I need to take a shower when I look at you/ You sting and hurt like a bad tattoo." Somewhere in California, a high-school literary magazine has lost a star.

  Also, lots of albums I should be more excited about.
  
• The Strokes, the Rapture, and New York rock. Whatever.
  
• New movies about dead poets Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes and fake journalist Stephen Glass.
  
• Twelfth Night with an all-male cast. (Yes, this means the woman disguised as a man is played by a man. Just like Shakespeare did it.) And Minneapolis's experimental Theatre de la Jeune Lune does Hamlet.
  
• Frank Rich's silly but fascinating comparison of the Republicans and the Rat Pack.
  

One of the interesting things about a newspaper is how its layout can lead you to read things you wouldn't seek out. Following one article to the page it's continued on, your gaze ranges across whatever shares the page with it, and maybe you learn something new.

Case in point: I pretty much never read the dance articles; the art itself is one I've never developed a taste for, and if I had, I still don't know if I'd want to read about it. But on my way to the end of the Stephen Glass article, I tripped over Roslyn Sulcas's article about classical dancers adapting to William Forsythe's momentum-driven, semi-improvisatory choreography.

"I remember, when I first did Bill's work, thinking I don't want to do it wrong, but then just deciding to go for it. You have to push past what you think is 'right.' The freedom of that can be a little daunting, but it's ultimately liberating."

I don't know if I'd actually enjoy seeing it, but it sure was fun to read about.

And a lovely piece about what people get out of opera, and what they feel like they should be getting. We've come to expect "transcendence," writes Anne Midgette, but "Opera deals in human emotions, not divine and ethereal ones. When singing is sublime, it's partly because it amplifies those emotions with a kind of inner purity." Also, quotes from Ann Patchett and Willa Cather novels.

Comments

[bnewmark.livejournal.com]

i have the nyt delivered on sundays, and since i've moved to cambridge, my sunday paper has been delivered minus the magazine and the a&l section. not acceptable. i've called them -twice- about it, and keep saying i want to cancel my subscription, and they keep asking me to try one more week to see if the problem is solved. i spoke with a manager today, who is supposed to call me by wednesday to let me know what the problem is. so frustrating, because i wind up buying -another- copy just for those sections. so annoying. i want a credit for the weeks i've been waiting for the problem to be rectified, but i was too chicken to ask...

[jfb.livejournal.com]

Yeah, really, without A&L, what's the point? You should totally get a credit.

[bnewmark.livejournal.com]

so, an update:
apparently all the sections that didn't come in today's paper arrived yesterday. my housemate brought it in, and i didn't know about it. so.... i guess i need to find out if they're planning on delivering on saturday -and- sunday or just sunday or what. so weird....

Sundays

[talking-sock.livejournal.com]

Glad you are back doing the Times for us. I might start doing a similar Sunday thing -- I have a few less cerebral competitors, like the Ballard market and the Irish bar with music and brunch. But Sunday should be about papers, too.

I saw Loren this week at Ubicomp. He's having a good time teaching. I told him you were in the old town. He's in your old homestate now, of course. I miss lots of people, you know? Time for the annual midlife crisis or something.

Lynn

Re: Sundays

[jfb.livejournal.com]

As the guy who quit his job to be an unsuccessful musician and travel around the country, I have to approve of midlife crises at any frequency. Hope the new post helps, although I think we covered most of its ground on the phone.

I picked three from dozens of photos of Morristown and surroundings--let me know if there's anything you want a picture of, I may have one onhand.

Re: Sundays

[talking-sock.livejournal.com]

Well, it just made me sniffle, actually. But I'm feeling all maudlin right now.

You should've visited me in Paris, too. That would've been fun.

Lynn
PS. Thanks for the pic of the library.

Re: Sundays

[jfb.livejournal.com]

Was that the library? I couldn't figure it out. Because the library has two old-looking wings around a modern center, and that tower looks like the center of a building but it's old. Maybe it's the side?

I have a bunch more pictures of the library from the front, and the inside, and the "THE JOINT FREE PUBLIC LIBRARY OF MORRISTOWN AND MORRIS TOWNSHIP" sign, and the soaring police station across the street with the empty reflecting pool, and the WWI memorial, and, gee, pretty much every public building or park within half a mile of downtown. So much good architecture.

Re: Sundays

[artname.livejournal.com]

Hey, you're nonymous now! Welcome to town.