Short Takes
August 4, 2009
Why Is This Happening to Me?
I played it once. I played it twice. Now I can’t stop. It’s The Who. 1982. Eminence Front. Handle with care — this could be contagious.
August 3, 2009
Can The Times Open a Movie?
If you’ve been reading the New York Times recently, you may have noticed unprecedented editorial coverage of Nora Ephron’s movie, ‘Julie & Julia’, which opens this Friday. Now Nikki Finke has published an eye-opening scorecard of the coverage. The curious among you may want to check back next Monday for the weekend box office gross, which might tell us something about the effectiveness of the paper’s cheerleading.
July 30, 2009
The Louvre Speaks English
Not getting to Paris soon? Cheer up: The Louvre Museum is now online in an English version, with 22,000 images. Today I visited David’s Intervention of the Sabine Women. If only the virtual espresso could have been real and at the Café Marly.
July 28, 2009
Lori Lieberman
My total bad. The singer-songwriter from Los Angeles — her most recent CD is Gun Metal Sky — made her first New York appearance in four years, and I, thinking the set involved just Lori and her piano/guitar, failed to tell you about it. Well, she came with a full kit, including a cellist and mandolin player, and she delivered her songbook with real power and feeling, and between songs, she was as relaxed and amusing as if she were playing in a living room. Promise: Next time you’ll be warned.
July 22, 2009
Eat, Pray, Revenge?
Every woman alive, it seems, has read Elizabeth Gilbert’s memoir, Eat, Pray, Love. But who knew the name of her former husband? Well, he’s Michael Cooper, and soon we’ll know much more about him — he’s just sold his memoir, "Displaced", to a publisher for publication in Fall, 2010. A news item: “Cooper offers the flip side of her tale — his account of overcoming the divorce and embarking on his own world journey. According to Hyperion, he goes on a ‘search for purpose’ that leads him through the Middle East and other developing countries.”