Hurricane Sandy Will Hit Sesame Street

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From Gothamist

In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, PBS will be re-running Sesame Street's 2001, five-part hurricane special. While the special has run before—both in 2001 and right after Katrina in 2005—this will be the first time it will air after a devastating hurricane hit Sesame Street's front yard directly.

 In the episode, Big Bird's nest is destroyed, but the neighborhood comes together to help out. Sesame's supervising producer Nadine Zylstra told EW, the special tells the story "of everybody on the street getting ready for a hurricane, and then ultimately recovering from a hurricane." The latest airing will include a few edits, as well (though sadly no Trey cameo): “For this latest airing, the show’s team excised the portion about hurricane preparation and edited the hour so that it focuses on Big Bird’s loss—his nest is ruined, and after it’s been repaired, he returns home only to find that the nest still isn’t safe for habitation. (A city nest inspector tells Big Bird that its mud isn’t dry yet.)"

The show's edits and new additions were put together while Sesame employees were dealing with Hurricane Sandy-related obstacles of their own—even the show's tapes were stranded in storage in LIC.

 According to local listings the show will air Friday at 7 a.m.

David McCullough Writes Books On A Royal Typewriter

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From H 

Mr. McCullough was being interviewed by the one and only Morley Safer (television's own cultural historian) in a two-part series which will be completed next Sunday night.

These two giants seized current times to philosophize about their forebears, the Revolutionary "giants" who first created this country in 1776. (Next Sunday, don't miss McCullough expounding on his latest book about how the colonists visited Paris early and late and got so much to bring back to the U.S. The book is titled The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris -- Simon & Schuster.) 

McCullough is seen working still on his trusty Royal typewriter, which seemed in keeping when so many about me on the Northeastern seaboard didn't have enough electricity to keep their cell phones, computers and Internet going. Even if you had some juice now and then, you were writing for a large audience that had other horrid things to worry about from hurricane "Sandy" and they couldn't read it! 

Author McCullough said, in defense of his Royal, "I work on it because I can't press a button and have it all disappear." He said the story of America's travails, triumphs and adversity is just that -- the vehicle of a story... like 'when in the course of human events'... What is important is (for men) to just talk straight. Authenticity is what works."

ANDY WARHOL's FLOWERS Exhibition @ Eykyn Maclean Gallery

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From Eykyn Maclean

Eykyn Maclean is pleased to present a comprehensive survey of Warhol's Flowers paintings of 1964 and1965. Gallery Director Kristy Bryce explains, “This show will bring together prime examples of Warhol’s Flowers ina variety of media to explore the series in a depth not previously addressed in an exhibition format.”

Warhol began work on his Flowers series in the summer of 1964, soon deciding that it would be the focus for his first show with Leo Castelli in the fall of that year. For the Castelli show, he worked on 48- and 24-inch square canvases. For his following show, at the Sonnabend Gallery in Paris in the spring of 1965, he included additional sizes – 14-, 8-, and 5-inch squares. The square format allowed Warhol complete freedom with orientation. For the first time, his works had no fixed upright, allowing the Flowers to be installed in a variety of ways. Another unique aspect to this series is the different techniques and media he explored, including silkscreen, pencil, hand painted acrylics, and fluorescent Day-Glo paint. Eykyn Maclean will include examples of each of these sizes and techniques to better trace the nuances of development
within this important series. Also included will be the only surviving banner (a Flowers painting on red fabric) that Warhol made for the 1965 opening of New York City's Peace Eye Bookstore.

Unlike Warhol’s work prior to this point – which drew upon images in the mass media as well as commercial brands – Warhol turned to a different source: a spread in a magazine called Modern Photography. The magazine’s June 1964 issue featured a photograph of seven hibiscus flowers taken by executive editor.

Exhibition

November 1 - December 8, 2012
New York gallery hours:
Tuesday - Saturday, 10-5pm
(Please note that the gallery and exhibition will be closed for Thanksgiving from November 22-26)

 

Andy Warhol, Flowers, 1964, acrylic, fluorescent paint, and silkscreen ink on linen, 48 x 48 in

A Second Series of TWILIGHT Fanfic Got A Book Deal

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From  Yahoo

NEW YORK (AFP) - Two fans of the "Twilight Saga" who rewrote the vampire love story as a steamy office romance have scored a two-book deal with a New York publisher in a fresh example of fanfiction going mainstream.

Gallery Books, an imprint of Simon and Schuster, confirmed Thursday a report in The Hollywood Reporter that it will publish "The Office" -- no relation to the Ricky Gervais television series -- plus a sequel next year.

News of the deal precedes the November 15 release of "Breaking Dawn," the fifth and final installment of the blockbuster movie franchise based on American author Stephenie Meyer's best-selling fantasy novels.

A New STAR WARS Trilogy

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Baby Walrus and Jane's Carousel Survives Hurricane Sandy

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From New Yorker by John Seabrook

Few pictures of Hurricane Sandy captured both the enormity of the disaster and the unquenchable spirit buried deep in the city’s core better than the image of Jane’s Carousel, the glass-enclosed merry-go-round on the waterfront near the Brooklyn Bridge, taken at the height of the storm. The photo shows the dark water lapping at the horses’ hooves, with the eerie blacked-out lower-Manhattan skyline in the background, and the festive riderless ponies twinkling merrily in the bright yellow light. Originally posted on Instagram and picked up by CNN, the picture was seen all around the world; at one point that night it was at the top of Twitter’s trends. 

Although the carousel sits on a raised concrete platform equal to the hundred-year floodplain, the East River had already risen to the edge of it, which was the high-water mark during Hurricane Irene. 

New York Aquarium's Baby Walrus, Mitik, Survives The Storm Despite Flooding

From Huffington Post by Sarah Medina

The aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, recently rescued baby walrus, Mitik, was able to weather the storm despite severe flooding on Coney Island, thanks to the constant care of his dedicated caretakers.

According to the International Business Times, the New York Aquarium on Coney Island was completely underwater after Hurricane Sandy caused massive flooding in the area. Aquarium employees remained on-site when the storm made landfall Monday evening and stayed through the night to look after the 236 lbs. walrus, reports the New York World.

Aaron Sorkin, Certified Internet Hater, Finally Joins Twitter

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From Pop Watch  by Hillary Busis

Is Aaron Sorkin ( Academy and Emmy award winning American screenwriter, producer, and playwright)  capable of completing a sentence using 140 characters or fewer? Has he perfected the art of walking and tweeting at the same time? Find out by following the TV vet’s brand new Twitter account, which EW can confirm is the real deal. (He joined the site last Friday; blame Sandy for us not reporting this important news sooner.)

Thus far, the Newsroom creator has only sent two tweets. The first was a hostage-style identity verification photo, seen above. The second was a message sent to actor Richard Schiff: “Other than 18 hrs/day for 7 years I’ve never asked for anything. I want the A. Silber cover,” Sorkin wrote. He was referring to a video of Broadway vet Alexandra Silber singing a new version of The West Wing‘s theme song; Schiff tweeted last week that he would release the clip, “but only after intense tweet demand.”

How many wonders will Sorkin’s Twitter hold? We won’t know until the Oscar winner tweets more — though considering Sorkin’s Internet history, it’s amazing enough that this account exists in the first place.

 

Ekso Bionics' Robotic Exoskeleton Will Help Paraplegics Walk Again

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Jacques Barzun Dies at 104

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From The New York Times By EDWARD ROTHSTEIN - Jacques Barzun, the distinguished historian, essayist, cultural gadfly and educator who helped establish the modern discipline of cultural history and came to see the West as sliding toward decadence, died Thursday night in San Antonio, where he lived. He was 104.
Mr. Barzun was a man of boundless curiosity, monumental productivity and manifold interests, encompassing both Berlioz and baseball. It was a life of the mind first cultivated more than a century ago in a childhood home outside Paris that became an avant-garde salon.

He wrote dozens of books across many decades, demonstrating that old age did not necessarily mean intellectual decline. He published his most ambitious and encyclopedic book at the age of 92 (and credited his productivity in part to chronic insomnia). That work, “From Dawn to Decadence,” is an 877-page survey of 500 years of Western culture in which he argued that Western civilization itself had entered a period of decline.

University of Wyoming Removed A Public Artwork That Tacitly Criticized The Coal Industry

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From NYT by Dan Frosch

The idea behind the sculpture that appeared on the University of Wyoming campus about 16 months ago was simple but provocative: a swirl of dead wood and lumps of coal, intended to show the link between global warming and the pine beetle infestation that has ravaged forests across the Rockies. 

But in a place like Wyoming, where the oil, gas and mining industries are the soul of the economy, some view such symbolism as a declaration of war. 

And ever since the British artist Chris Drury installed the 36-foot-diameter sculpture, called “Carbon Sink,” the university has been embroiled in a bitter controversy, which eventually led to the quiet removal of the artwork last spring after energy officials and their political allies complained to administrators. 

  

The dispute over the sculpture — part of a series of campus installations commissioned by the university’s art museum — has continued to dog the university after it released e-mails discussing the artwork. 

The e-mails, first obtained by Wyoming Public Radio, showed that the university’s president, Tom Buchanan, privately asked that the sculpture be dismantled a year ahead of schedule because of the uproar surrounding it. 

In a note on April 13 to the director of the university’s art museum, Dr. Buchanan wrote that it would be best to remove the sculpture, “given the controversy that it has generated.”

His note followed objections raised by local lawmakers and officials in Wyoming’s energy industry, which helps support the university through state taxes and felt betrayed.

William Faulkner's Estate Suing Woody Allen's Studio

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From the Telegraph By Sameer Rahim

In what Sony Pictures Classics is describing as a "frivolous lawsuit", the estate of the American writer William Faulkner is suing the company for breach of copyright. In a deposition filed at a court in the Northern District of Mississippi, the estate picks up on a quotation from the 2011 Woody Allen film Midnight in Paris... In the film Gil Pender (played by Owen Wilson) is transported back to the 1920s where he meets his literary heroes, including Scott Fitzgerald and Hemingway.

In describing his experience Pender says: "The past in not dead! Actually, it's not even past. You know who said that? Faulkner. And he was right. And I met him, too. I ran into him at a dinner party." The film actually slightly misquotes Faulkner. The original version is "The past is never dead. It's not even past," from Requiem for a Nun (1950).

Nevertheless the lawsuit claims: “The use of the infringing quote and of William Faulkner’s name in the infringing film is likely to cause confusion, to cause mistake, and/or to deceive the infringing film's viewers as to a perceived affiliation, connection or association between William Faulkner and his works, on the one hand, and Sony, on the other hand.”

Clark Kent Quits The DAILY PLANET in The Latest Issue of "Superman"

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From Huffington Post

According to USA Today, Kent leaves his beloved newspaper job in "Superman" issue 13 after becoming disillusioned with the state of journalism in 2012. As "Superman" comic writer Scott Lobdell told the paper, don't expect to see Kent get a job at The Daily Star.

"Rather than Clark be this clownish suit that Superman puts on, we're going to really see Clark come into his own in the next few years as far as being a guy who takes to the Internet and to the airwaves and starts speaking an unvarnished truth," Lobdell said.

Boston Wedding Planner Beat Out Jay Z and Beyonce in Race to Trademark Blue Ivy'

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From The Huffington Post   

Earlier this year following the birth of their daughter, Blue Ivy, Beyonce and Jay-Z filed a trademark application in an attempt to protect the infant’s name from commercial use.

While previous reports expected the couple’s motion to be approved by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, it now appears that the Carters may have to explore other options.

The Boston Herald reports that 32-year-old business owner Veronica Alexandra has been operating under the name as part of her local wedding planning company. And though her brand may receive more attention stemming from its name, Alexandra admitted to the outlet that she “highly respects” the international pop stars.

Prior to the couple’s disappointing news, one lawyer thought their legal attempt was a savvy business move to protect Blue Ivy from exploitation and to keep her name off the market for a few years.

Jeff Goldblum's PayPal Ads

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Wasp Named After Lady Gaga

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From The Observer by Quentin Wheeler

A new species of parasitoid wasp of the family Braconidae from Thailand has been named "in honour of popular singer and performer Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, known professionally as Lady Gaga". The species is known from a single female specimen collected along a nature trail at 507 metres elevation in the Chae Son National Park.