Arts & Humanities

A Modest Addition to the Lexicon of Excuses

By Mark Peters
Before reading, I want you to know, just in case you hate this column, it is not my column. Not my column! These are not my words, not even the prepositions. I think my cousin wrote this—or one of his creepy pals.

Sorry, I guess I just wanted to be as cool as famous folk who use the “not my X” routine whenever the long arm of the law threatens to burst their celebububble. In a nifty blog piece, Roxanne Roberts and Amy Argetsinger suggest that “not my X” has become a kind of snowclone

Celebrating the King James Bible

By Gordon Campbell
Why all the fuss about an old translation of an ancient book? There are two reasons: first, it is the founding text of the British Empire (including breakaway colonies such as the United States), and was carried to every corner of the English-speaking world by migrants and missionaries; second, it matters now, both as a religious text and as the finest embodiment of English prose. Its history in the intervening centuries has been complex. The text has evolved…

Every week should be fashion week!

By Justyna Zajac, Associate Publicist
New York City’s Fashion Week may have officially kicked off last Thursday, September 9^th, but it was Fashion’s Night Out (Friday, Sept. 10^th) that really seemed to launch festivities. Serving as a celebration of the industry and of anyone with an affinity for dress, FNO encouraged stores and boutiques to partake in one glorious garment party and gift clientele with a variety of freebies and fun. You could listen to DJs spin tunes and play foosball

Death to Humans! (The Apocalypse Remix)

By Robert M. Geraci
Scientific American recently rocked the Internet with its editors’ piece “Death to Humans! Visions of the Apocalypse in Movies and Literature” but, in doing so, have missed half of the fun. In an article where the sublime (The Matrix) meets the atrocious (The Postman), the chief problem that SciAm’s editors suffer is that, to be honest, they do not know what an apocalypse is.

6 Myths about Teens & Christian Faith in America

By Kenda Creasy Dean
Have you heard this one? Mom is angling to get 16-year-old Tony to come to church on Sunday, and Tony will have none of it. “Don’t you get it?” he yells, pushing his chair away from the table. “I hate church! I am not like you! The church is full of hypocrites!” Dramatic exit, stage right. This story sounds true – but it isn’t.

Memo from Lower Manhattan: The Mosque

By Sharon Zukin
Of all the mosques, in all the towns, in all the world, why did this mosque cause a furor in this town? I’m speaking about Park51, an Islamic “community center promoting tolerance and understanding,” as its website says, which is being planned to replace an old five-story building in Lower Manhattan that formerly housed a Burlington Coat Factory store with a modern, thirteen-story multi-service facility modeled on Jewish community centers and the YMCA. The burning issue…

Booze! – Episode 1 – The Oxford Comment

In the premiere episode of The Oxford Comment, Lauren and Michelle talk to Benjamin Carp about the drinking habits of the Founding Fathers and visit brewmaster Garrett Oliver at the Brooklyn Brewery.

George Martin Goes Independent, 2 Sept 1965

By Gordon Thompson
When George Martin first entered the recording industry in the early 1950s, assisting Oscar Preuss at EMI’s Parlophone, he encountered the end of the mechanical era. The company’s facilities on Abbey Road in genteel St. John’s Wood still used lathes to record sound by cutting grooves in warm wax with energy provided by weights and pulleys, like a child of Big Ben. The sheer mechanics of this kind of professional recording demanded large…

Are We Masters of Our Own Destiny?

On Friday, 20th August, I joined the panel for a Great Debate entitled “Are We Masters Of Our Own Destiny?” at the University of Newcastle, organized as part of the Green Phoenix Festival, 2010. My fellow panelists were science writer Rita Carter, and local philosopher David Large. As we suspected, this pitted two biology-oriented commentators against a more conventional philosopher…

BOOYAH!

Yesterday, I was flipping through my (very heavy) copy of The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink, and I found…an entry on BOOYAH!

What is booyah? I’m glad you asked.

Those All-Important First Teachers

By Amy Nathan
“I only want to play cartoon music!” That was the pre-condition my older son made at age seven for being willing to begin piano lessons. He loved music, having become a fan of the Empire Brass Quintet after seeing them on Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood on TV, and was waiting eagerly until he was old enough to toot a trumpet. But learning something about the basics of music in the meantime by taking piano lessons — that he wasn’t sure about. So he made his cartoon-music demand.

For The Love Of Bob Marley

Something about summertime makes Bob Marley music pop up everywhere, but I recently realized I don’t actually know very much about Marley. The following is from The Encyclopedia of Popular Music by Colin Larkin.

What on Earth is The Wind in the Willows?

By Peter Hunt
To judge from a quick poll of friends, acquaintances, students, and the ladies in the village shop, The Wind in the Willows is fondly remembered, even by those who don’t actually remember reading it. It is a children’s book, it is about small animals – and it is somehow quintessentially English: for almost everyone I spoke to, it conjured up endless summer, boating on a quiet river, large hampers of food, a peaceful, unthreatening way of life.

The “Ground Zero Mosque” and An Ode to Political Correctness

By Elvin Lim
Last Friday, President Barack Obama communicated his support for the building of a mosque two blocks away from Ground Zero, saying, “Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as everyone else in this country.” This seemed harmless enough until he found out that over two-thirds of America disagreed with him. Chastened, the President went off-message…saying, “I was not commenting and I will not comment on the wisdom of making the decision to put a mosque there.” Tsk, Tsk, Barack Obama.

The Beatles Arrive in Hamburg, August 1960

By Gordon Thompson
Although Americans often talk about a “British Invasion” that started in February 1964, the groundwork for that cultural phenomenon may actually have begun fifty years ago this month when, on 17 August 1960, the Beatles began performing at the Indra, a small club in red-light district of the West German city of Hamburg. The van and ferry ride to Hamburg with manager Allan Williams had the Beatles arriving at night in one of Europe’s most decadent enclaves. The St. Pauli district thrived on sex

Lives of the Artists

By Alana Salguero, Grove Art Editorial Assistant
From van Gogh and his notorious left ear to Salvador Dalí with his legendary moustache, the art world boasts a colorful cast of characters whose unorthodox behavior has generated as much public interest as its artistic oeuvre. It appears that creativity often begets eccentricity (or vice versa, the age old chicken-and-egg conundrum), blurring the boundaries between art, performance, and life.