times arts

[jfb]

Mostly I don't know why so many people have spent so many words on the Superbowl thing, but Frank Rich's column on the stupid aftermath is pretty funny:

If we are to believe the general outcry, the nation's families were utterly blindsided by the Janet-Justin pas de deux while watching an entertainment akin to "Little Women." As Laura Bush put it, "Parents wouldn't know to turn their television off before that happened." They wouldn't? In the two-plus hours "before that happened," parents saw not only the commercials featuring a crotch-biting dog, a flatulent horse and a potty-mouthed child but also the number in which the crotch-grabbing Nelly successfully commanded a gaggle of cheerleaders to rip off their skirts. What signal were these poor, helpless adults waiting for before pulling their children away from the set?

Jon Pareles writes an overview of music museums (American popular music, that is). I've never been to any of them, and the article doesn't inspire me to:

But while people go to art museums to closely examine paintings and sculpture, and to natural history museums to marvel at dioramas and skeletons, few people go to music museums for music, since it's available everywhere else: on radio and TV, in album collections, onstage, online. As it turns out, music museums do best at presenting everything but the music: the fashion, the detritus, the technology, the business, the biographies, the buzz. They're great places to soak up trivia and gawk at guitars. But as they try to nail the essence of popular music into exhibits and architecture, it eludes them again and again.

A sidebar describes tough times for the Experience Music Project, and notes that "a significant portion" (of what, it isn't clear) will be turned into a museum of science fiction, because Paul Allen likes science fiction.

Pareles's Playlist covers an interesting-sounding jazz trio called Fly, and a new album by the great and eclectic violinist Jenny Scheinman. An article on the struggle to replace Harvey Fierstein in the Broadway musical Hairspray culminates in Michael McKean. And Emily Nussbaum discovers that H. R. Pufnstuf wasn't very good.

(By the way, I've switched this week to a new procedure--new to me, anyway--for linking to Times articles. With luck this will prevent the articles from disappearing behind the wall of pay. Let me know if you notice any problems.)

Comments

[dougo.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the Experience Music Project has a lot of instruments and costumes and the like. But there's also plenty of things to listen to, people narrating various segments of music history. The garage/punk/grunge exhibits are pretty neat, but I'd guess you sort of have to be into that stuff in the first place to really get much out of it.

Also, tickets are way too expensive, like $30+ as I recall. Maybe they'd get more "mainstream" traffic if it were affordable. On the other hand, a science fiction museum sounds neat too. Certainly fits the Hendrix theme...