Roth on Friedkin
Remembering William Friedkin: Directors Eli Roth, Guillermo Del Toro & Scott Derrickson, ‘The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial’ Star Kiefer Sutherland Pay Tribute
By Greg Evans
Refresh for updates… Horror film director Eli Roth (Hostel, Cabin Fever) is among the colleagues, friends and fans paying tribute to the late William Friedkin, the great director of The Exorcist and The French Connection who died today.
“RIP to the legend William Friedkin,” Roth wrote on Instagram. “One of the most impactful directors of all time and certainly set the course of my life in a different direction with The Exorcist. He was so incredibly nice and supportive the few times I was lucky enough to meet him. Watch Sorcerer if you’ve never seen it. He was one of a kind. Legend.”
William Friedkin Gone
William Friedkin, ‘The Exorcist’ Director, Dies at 87
By Carmel Dagan
Director William Friedkin, best known for his Oscar-winning “The French Connection” and blockbuster “The Exorcist,” died Monday in Los Angeles. He was 87.
His death was confirmed by Chapman University dean Stephen Galloway, a friend of Friedkin’s wife Sherry Lansing.
His final film, “The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial,” starring Kiefer Sutherland, is set to premiere at the Venice Film Festival.
Along with Peter Bogdanovich, Francis Ford Coppola and Hal Ashby, Friedkin rose to A-list status in the 1970s, part of a new generation of vibrant, risk-taking filmmakers. Combining his experience in television, particularly in documentary film, with a cutting-edge style of editing, Friedkin brought a great deal of energy to the horror and police thriller genres in which he specialized.
More Sex = More Memories
A better love life could save your memory during old age
Does a poor sex life lead to memory decline? Researchers at Penn State have discovered a potential connection between low sexual satisfaction during middle age and future cognitive decline.
The study, which focused on erectile function, sexual satisfaction, and cognition in men between 56 and 68 years-old, found that decreases in sexual satisfaction and incidents of erectile function displayed a connection with signs of memory loss later in life.
“What was unique about our approach is that we measured memory function and sexual function at each point in the longitudinal study, so we could look at how they changed together over time,” says Martin Sliwinski, professor of human development and family studies at Penn State and co-author on the study, in a university release.
Tulare Returned
A Vast Lake Has Captivated California Where Farms Stood a Year Ago
Tulare Lake re-emerged after intense storms battered the state this winter, and will likely remain in the Central Valley for months — and maybe years — to come.
By Shawn Hubler / Photographs by Mark Abramson
It sounds like the sea and approaches the size of Lake Tahoe. Its wind-driven waves are unexpectedly silky and warm. Tulare Lake seems to go on forever on the immense brown and green flat of California’s Central Valley, shimmering like a great blue mirage.
Three months have passed since the lake, which dates to the Ice Age, re-emerged in the basin that once held the largest body of freshwater west of the Mississippi River. Dammed dry by humans, it has periodically attempted a comeback, though rarely with the force seen after this winter’s storms.
First a trickle, then a flood, the water that coursed into the lake bed over a handful of months swallowed one of the nation’s largest and most valuable stretches of cropland in about the time it takes to grow a tomato. Thirty square miles, then 50. Then 100. Then more.
Cult of the Dead Cow Now
Hacking group plans system to encrypt social media and other apps
Story by Joseph Menn
SAN FRANCISCO — Once known for distributing hacking tools and shaming software companies into improving their security, a famed group of technology activists is now working to develop a system that will allow the creation of messaging and social networking apps that won’t keep hold of users’ personal data.
The group, Cult of the Dead Cow, has developed a coding framework that can be used by app developers who are willing to embrace strong encryption and forsake revenue from advertising that is targeted to individuals based on detailed profiles gleaned from the data most apps now routinely collect.
The team is building on the work of such free products as Signal, which offers strong encryption for text messages and voice calls, and Tor, which offers anonymous web surfing by routing traffic through a series of servers to disguise the location of the person conducting the search.
The latest effort, to be detailed at the massive annual Def Con hacking conference in Las Vegas next week, seeks to provide a foundation for messaging, file sharing and even social networking apps without harvesting any data, all secured by the kind of end-to-end encryption that makes interception hard even for governments.
James Larkin Gone
Backpage Founder, Alt-Weekly Entrepreneur, and Free Speech Warrior James Larkin Has Died
Larkin, 74, took his own life on Monday, just a little over a week before he was slated to stand trial for his role in running the web-classifieds platform Backpage.
Entrepreneur, journalist, and First Amendment warrior James Larkin has died, just a little over a week before he was slated to stand trial for his role in running the web-classifieds platform Backpage. Larkin, 74, took his own life on Monday.
A native of Maricopa County, Arizona, he leaves behind a wife and six children, as well as a string of newspapers and a legacy of fighting for free speech.
With journalist Michael Lacey, Larkin built the Phoenix New Times from an anti-war student newspaper into a broad—and still-thriving—record of Maricopa County culture and politics. New Times didn’t shy away from honest reporting on local law enforcement and power figures—including Sen. John McCain and his wife Cindy—or on controversial issues like abortion, immigrant rights, or the 1976 murder of Arizona Republic reporter Don Bolles.
“I had just come back from school in Mexico City and had been exposed to the Mexican student movement in the late 60’s and early 70’s and they were really serious radicals, serious revolutionaries, and a lot of them were killed in the ensuing years, murdered by the Mexican government. I realized that politics were serious,” Larkin told Reason in 2018. “I felt that the paper…really had an opportunity to be politically powerful.”
Babylon Growing
Revisiting My Rastafari Childhood
Babylon was everything forbidden, and looming all around us—and my father tried to protect us from it at all costs.
The first time I left Jamaica, I was seventeen. I’d graduated from high school two years before, and while trying to get myself to college I’d been scouted as a model. And so I found myself at the Wilhelmina Models office in Miami, surrounded by South Beach’s finest glass windows with all my glass hopes, face to face with a famous one-named model who was now in her sixties. When her gaze halted at my dreadlocks, I shouldn’t have been surprised at what came next.
“Can you cut the dreads?” she asked, as she flipped through my portfolio, her soft accent blunting the impact of the words.
Back home in Kingston, hair stylists would leave my dreadlocks untouched, tied up in a ponytail with my good black ribbon, deciding that the problem of my hair was insolvable.
“Sorry,” I said. “My father won’t allow me.”
She glanced over at the agent who had brought me in.
“It’s her religion,” he explained. “Her father is Rastafarian. Very strict.”
The road between my father and me was woven in my hair, long spools of dreadlocks tethering me to him, across time, across space. Everywhere I went, I wore his mark, a sign to the bredren in his Rastafari circle that he had his house under control. Once, when I was feeling brave, I had asked my father why he chose Rastafari for himself, for us. “I and I don’t choose Rasta,” he told me, using the plural “I” because Jah’s spirit is always with a Rasta bredren. “I and I was born Rasta.” I turned his reply over in my mouth like a coin.
Pee-Wee Gone
Paul Reubens dead: Pee-wee Herman actor was 70
By Brooke Steinberg, Eric Hegedus and Nadine DeNinno
Paul Reubens, the actor who made millions around the world laugh with his Pee-wee Herman character, has died. He was 70.
“Last night we said farewell to Paul Reubens, an iconic American actor, comedian, writer and producer whose beloved character Pee-wee Herman delighted generations of children and adults with his positivity, whimsy and belief in the importance of kindness,” his reps said in a statement to The Post.
The cause of death was cancer, according to the statement.
“Paul bravely and privately fought cancer for years with his trademark tenacity and wit. A gifted and prolific talent, he will forever live in the comedy pantheon and in our hearts as a treasured friend and man of remarkable character and generosity of spirit.”
A post to his official Instagram account included a quote from Reubens directly to be shared with his fans after his passing: “Please accept my apology for not going public with what I’ve been facing the last six years. I have always felt a huge amount of love and respect from my friends, fans and supporters. I have loved you all so much and enjoyed making art for you.”
Caicedo!
Riding The Zephyr
What It’s Like to Watch America Roll by on the California Zephyr
Transcontinental, (almost) 3,000 miles from home
BY ROBERT ANNIS
I first learned about the California Zephyr from a song by Ben Gibbard and Jay Farrar, who, in turn, were paraphrasing Jack Kerouac’s novel Big Sur: “Now I’m transcontinental, 3,000 miles from my home,” Gibbard sings in his, as my buddy Scott Zuppardo describes, “nasally sweetness.” “I’m on the California Zephyr, watching America roll by.” It sounded blissful.
Today, the California Zephyr route is considered by many to be America’s most beautiful train ride. Beginning in Chicago, and over the course of 52 hours, it chugs through the middle of the country, traversing some of its most beautiful scenery before reaching its final stop in Emeryville, California. From there, passengers can take a bus to San Francisco.
I’ve always been curious about train travel, but it’s the kind of cross country-trip I would typically reserve for my camper van. A direct flight from my hometown of Indianapolis to the West Coast only takes about six hours, and while I can grit my teeth and get through it if I have to, I don’t like to be confined in a space for any length of time. How would I manage nearly two-and-a-half days on a train?
Ru$h
Parents Hire $4,000 Sorority Consultants to Help Daughters Dress and Impress During Rush
Getting into sororities is nearly as tough as entry to top universities; ‘Be trendy but not too trendy, modest but not too modest, fit in but be unique’
By Tara Weiss
Sorority rush at the University of Georgia kicks off in August, a lousy time to wear makeup.
“You need to do it in a way that’s appropriate in southern humidity or else you’re going to have orange rivers running down your face,” said Trisha Addicks. She recommends keeping a “rush bag” with deodorant, portable fan, water and face powder.
That’s the kind of practical advice Addicks gives clients of her Georgia-based sorority-consulting firm, It’s All Greek to Me. Showing up in Dr. Martens combat boots, as one client asked about, might not be putting your best foot forward in some sorority circles, she said: “During rush, you’re not going to be confident if you’re wearing them, and everybody else is wearing espadrilles.”
Addicks offers a $600 seminar for women and their mothers to learn the basics about getting into a sorority; $3,500 buys unlimited access to sorority mentors who advise aspirants through every step. She is part of an industry emerging in recent years that sells tips and emotional support to women who want to avoid missteps that threaten first impressions. Sorority consultants cover such topics as what to wear, how to act, what to say and the wisdom of scrubbing potentially off-putting social media posts.
When Jaws Gets Wired
COCAINE SHARK
Drug-addled ‘cocaine sharks’ may be gobbling ‘bales of narcotics’ dumped off Florida coast – study reveals ‘crazy brain’
by Charlotte Edwards, Assistant Technology and Science Editor
EXPERTS have suspected that sharks off the coast of Florida are coming into contact with large amounts of cocaine that’s getting dumped into the ocean.
Hauls of cocaine are said to be dropped in the ocean either to let smugglers collect them or as an attempt for criminals to escape law enforcement.
Large batches of the drug have been known to wash up on Florida beaches.
Marine biologist Tom Hird, who’s better known by his YouTube nickname The Blowfish, wanted to see whether sharks off the coast of Florida were consuming the substance, according to Live Science,
Space Nookie
Sex in SPACE: Scientists call for urgent research on the consequences of joining the ‘Karman line club’ – as they claim intercourse will happen between space tourists within 10 years
By SHIVALI BEST
From Star Trek to Passengers, sex in space has been depicted in science fiction blockbusters for years.
And while NASA categorically insists that ‘no humans have had sex in space’, that could soon change with the proliferation of space tourism.
Private space firms including Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin and Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic are now offering civilians the chance to venture into space, albeit for a hefty price.
With this new era of spaceflight, David Cullen, Professor of Bioanalytical Technology at Cranfield University, is calling for urgent research into the consequences of sex in space.
‘My colleagues and I believe that space tourism companies haven’t adequately prepared for the consequences of people joining what we could call the “Kármán line club”,’ he wrote in an article for The Conversation.
The Kármán line is a boundary 62 miles above sea level that marks the beginning of space.
Dino Dogs
Humans’ ancestors, dogs, bats may have coexisted with dinosaurs – study
Primates, whom humans evolved from, rabbits and hares, dogs and cats were shown to have evolved just before the mass extinction, so they coexisted with dinosaurs.
Scientists have spent a long time debating whether early humans may have been present before non-avian dinosaurs went extinct, but a new study published on June 27 may finalize the debate.
The peer-reviewed research, published in the academic journal Current Biology, used statistical analysis of fossils to determine whether placental mammals lived before dinosaurs’ extinctions.
Fossils of placental mammals have been found in rocks that date less than 66 million years, after the time when an asteroid hit the earth causing mass extinctions. It is based on this that the researchers believe that a group of placental mammals evolved after the mass extinction. However, some fossils have been found that pre-date the asteroid event, suggesting that the placental mammals coexisted with dinosaurs and diversified, surviving and evolving after the asteroid.
Apparently, Ice Cream Now Sucks
How America fell out of love with ice cream
America’s age-old love affair with ice cream appears to be winding down.
Consumption of regular dairy ice cream, which does not include frozen yogurt, sherbet or non- and low-fat ice creams, has been falling for years, according to the US Department of Agriculture.
In 1986, the average American ate 18 pounds of regular ice cream, according to the USDA. By 2021, the most recent year of the data, that was down a third to just 12 pounds per person.
For years, ice cream was more than a frozen dessert: It was a lifeline for American brewers during Prohibition and a means to boost morale among troops during World War II. By the 1950s, the sweet, creamy treat had become an American treasure.
But like full-fat milk, soda, red meat and other former heroes of the American diet, ice cream has been scrutinized for its impact on health and the environment. After peaking in the 1940s, per capita availability of regular ice cream started to decline in the 1990s and through the 2000s as health-conscious consumers — including a member of the Baskin Robbins family — turned on the sugary, fatty food, or started treating it as an occasional, pricey treat.
King Midas def. The Serbinator
Carlos Alcaraz ends Novak Djokovic’s 10-year Centre Court reign in epic five-set Wimbledon final as Serb has meltdown
by Dave Kidd
IN front of two future monarchs, the King of Wimbledon was spectacularly dethroned by Carlos Alcaraz in a five-set epic.
Novak Djokovic’s 46-match winning streak on Centre Court – dating 10 years, and his run of four successive men’s singles titles at the All England Club, was halted by a 1-6 7-6 6-1 3-6 6-4 victory for the brilliant 20-year-old Spaniard.
With his flamboyant showmanship and breathtaking shot-making, world No 1 Alcaraz illuminates tennis as his compatriot Seve Ballesteros once lit up golf courses.
Prince William and Prince George were in the Royal Box, while Brad Pitt was sat in front of the media seats – yet the housewives of Middle England had eyes only for Alcaraz, as he was roared on to victory against the 23-time Grand Slam champion.
Jane Birkin Gone
Jane Birkin, Singer, Actress and Inspiration Behind the Hermès Bag, Dead at 76
The British-born French icon behind the song “Je T’Aime… Moi Non Plus” died on Sunday, the French Ministry of Culture confirmed
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Jane Birkin has died at age 76.
The British-born singer and actress died on Sunday, the French Ministry of Culture confirmed in a tweet, calling her a “timeless French-speaking icon.”
Despite her British roots, the singer became a fashion icon in France in the 1960s and ‘70s, inspiring the creation of one of the most expensive and highly sought-after luxury bags in the world — the Birkin bag by French luxury design house Hermès.
Lava Tube, Cool
Hawaii has the longest lava tube in the world. It’s in this guy’s backyard.
A world of caves exists beneath Hawaii’s surface that’s still relatively unknown. It’s been estimated that the islands are home to more than 800 caves. Some are big, some are small, some are underwater, and others are expansive networks of open lava tubes beneath volcanoes — but only a few are accessible to the public.
Of all the islands, the Big Island of Hawaii is the most renowned for its caves, such as Nahuku and Kaumana. But the most distinguished is on the east side of the island in the district of Puna, where Kazumura Cave can be found.
Kazumura Cave is the longest lava cave in the world. More than 40 miles long, it descends the east side of the Kilauea volcano to a depth of 3,614 feet. Lava once flowed through this ancient tube system that was active during the Ailaau eruption in the 15th century. Its name, Kazumura, comes from 1966 when one of its entrances (possibly owned by the Kazumuras) was designated as a fallout shelter.
Escape From Planet Algorithm
Lessons From a ’90s CD Collection
What one man learned from revisiting his old CDs decades later
BY MIKE DUNPHY
“If I could just afford one new CD a week, I’d be a happy man,” I declared to a coworker at Pure Pop Records in Burlington, Vermont, where I worked between 1995 and 1998. In the first years of my 20s, this goal represented the peak of my aspirations, and the fluke of fortune that won me employment at the hip, indie, basement record store — right out of High Fidelity — made the achievement possible.
Then I joined the Peace Corps and by September 1998 had landed in a tiny Estonian village to teach English for the next two years. The CD collection of about 600 I’d amassed from Pure Pop’s employee discount, promotional copies and trades could not make the journey, save a fistful of “desert island discs” slipped into a Case Logic and a backpack.
The rest of the collection took its own journey, staying tucked away in a variety of storage areas as I pursued collecting countries over the next two decades. In fact, most remained under literal wraps until 2023, when I finally was able to bring it all back home. By this point, the collection was much reduced. Many boxes had disappeared, some storage locations were forgotten or no longer existed, others discs were gifted and sold, and one box simply melted in the attic heat into plastic abstract art. Nevertheless, the 250 survivors now stand tall in the corner of my living room — the first time in 25 years.
Milan Kundera Gone
In Memory of Milan Kundera
On the passing of the great Czech writer and dissident
BY MAXIM D. SHRAYER
In the spring of 1993, I was working at the Slavonic Library in Prague with the remains of the rich collections of the former RZIA (Russian Historical Archive Abroad), which the Soviet liberators had pillaged back in 1945. Every day I would take a long lunch break and wander around the old city, stopping now at a wine bar, now at a secondhand bookstore. Once, in the middle of May, I came upon a copy of Milan Kundera’s 1961 poetry collection, Poslední máj (The Last May). The title of Kundera’s collection was a doleful homage to the long romantic (and to some, Byronic) poem “Máj” by Karel Hynek Mácha, an icon of Czech national culture then bursting through the Habsburg seams. But Kundera’s title could also be read as a gesture of melancholy—mourning the Prague Spring and the parting with the poet’s homeland—well in advance of 1968 and the Soviet tanks rolling through the streets of the city of Golem.
Kundera’s collection was inscribed to an unknown Czech lady—almost like a Prague-set novella that Stefan Zweig had forgotten to write. I purchased the volume, and it now occupies a place of honor in my rare books collection alongside the Nabokovs and Bunins and the other spoils of expatriate writing from Eastern and Central Europe. As I think of Milan Kundera’s passing in Paris at the age of 94, I remember my first encounter with his work back when I was a 19-year-old Moscow refusenik, and the shock of discovering that such a literary sensibility could actually emerge directly from the Soviet system.
The Ber Word
This is the ultimate curse word, according to science: Mathematician creates entirely new offensive term using computer algorithm
A mathematician has created an entirely new curse word based on a list of 186 offensive terms – and she said it is ‘the world’s ultimate swear word.
Sophie Maclean, a student at Kings College London, found ‘banger’ is the supreme offensive term, or ‘ber’ for short.
The researcher fed a list of popular ‘bad words’ to a computer model, which then found the supreme word begins with the letter ‘b,’ has four letters and ends in ‘-er.’
Mclean found that when no inputs were given, the model made up words like ‘ditwat.’
Maclean told BBC Science Focus: ‘I think neither is as satisfying as a ‘f*ck’ when you’ve stubbed your toe, or a ‘sh*t’ when you realize you’ve forgotten your parent’s birthday. But both feel like they could be quite good insults for people.’
The mathematician used a Markov chain in this work, which is a model describing a sequence of possible events in which the probability of each event depends only on the state attained in the previous event.’
Senator Motherf*cker
Comic Tom Segura Has Bizarre Run-In With a Notable Senator And His Fascination With Term Motherf*cker
Comedian Tom Segura recalled a bizarre encounter he allegedly had with Senator and part-time podcaster Ted Cruz while out for a walk in his neighborhood.
Segura shared the story as part of his new special Sledgehammer which premiered on Netflix on July 4th. Segura and his wife, fellow comedian Christina Pazsitzky, moved to Texas in the last few years and he revealed that one of their neighbors just so happens to be Cruz.
“Here’s what’s wild. A current or former United States Senator, I shall not say, whom lives in my neighborhood. Everybody talks about him. I know which house is his. I’d never met him. Now I’m home from tour and I decide to start my day with a morning walk, a casual walk. You know, I have some coffee, let’s get the day started. I go for a walk,” Segura said.
Bad Ass Keith
9yo to 60mph
Where 9-Year-Olds Do 60 M.P.H.
For kids who dream of racing professionally, steering go-karts around a twisting track is where it all begins.
Photographs by Scott Rossi / Text by Maria Jimenez Moya
On the second day of the Texas Grand Prix, motors were roaring. As mechanics tinkered with vehicles, drivers talked strategy with their coaches and tried to memorize the curves of the racetrack at the Speedsportz Racing Park outside Houston. “I imagine it in my brain,” said Mikey Collins as he waited for his heat to start on the last weekend in April. “I envision it and try to do laps.”
Mikey isn’t a professional racecar driver, yet — he’s only 9. And the vehicle he would soon climb into was a go-kart. But for lots of kids who dream of racing professionally, this is where it all starts: steering go-karts around a twisting track at 60 to 70 miles an hour, flying just inches over the ground.
Like lots of drivers, Mikey started young, when he was just 5, on his local track in Orlando, Fla. He was hooked. “I like competitive stuff,” he says. “Anything that has to do with passing and trying to take the lead.” Kids who get serious about the sport continue on to national races like the one in Texas: days-long competitions in which dozens of drivers compete in heats against other kids in their age group.
Boom Box and Fire
Long Live The Dog
The ‘It’ Restaurant Order This Summer? A Hot Dog
Chefs around the country are going large with the garnishes. Eat up this guide to America’s most extravagant and irresistible hot dogs, with recipes to recreate them at home this July 4th weekend.
By Pervaiz Shallwani
FEW DISHES are more recognizably Filipino than sisig, a sizzling platter of minced pig parts tossed in garlic, citrus and chiles. And perhaps no food is more manifestly American than the hot dog, a vehicle for endless interpretation.
So when chef Chance Anies set out to expand the menu at Tabachoy, his Philadelphia restaurant showcasing the Filipino-American food of his childhood, he hit upon the Sisig Dog, built to satisfy all his customers. “Filipinos know sisig, locals know hot dogs,” Anies said. He sourced Martin brand hot dogs, an American-made version of the style of frank popular in the Philippines. “They are bright red,” Anies said. “The color is artificial, but I felt like if we’re doing a Filipino hot dog, we need a Filipino hot dog.”
The result is a multiple-napkin, meat-on-meat beast: a blistered crimson dog in a toasted bun, slathered in curry mayo and topped with rich pork-belly sisig, a pickled carrot and green-papaya salad, with a final scattering of fried shallots and chopped scallions.
While that might sound a little over-the-top, it’s certainly not the most extravagant dog on offer these days. Consider the $29 version at the fine-dining restaurant Mischa, in Manhattan—or, for sheer audaciousness, the Slider Dog brought to Cleveland’s Progressive Field by local bar and restaurant Happy Dog, which comes loaded with Froot Loops, pimento mac and cheese, and bacon.
Octopus Farming. Really.
‘A symbol of what humans shouldn’t be doing’: the new world of octopus farming
Plans for the world’s first commercial octopus farm are well advanced – just as science discovers more about this curious, intelligent and affectionate animal. Can it be done ethically?
by Ashifa Kassam in O Grove, Pontevedra
he sterile boardroom, much of it taken up by a lengthy white table, is at the heart of the sprawling building in northern Spain. The corporate chatter that fills this room these days, however, is dominated by the scene playing out one floor below, where about 50 adult male octopuses are in a tank the size of a budget hotel room.
A handful of the octopuses – the fifth generation to be born in this Spanish multinational’s concrete-and-glass office and research centre – skim through the shallow waters, some brushing up against each other while others tuck into the tank’s barren corners. A low-intensity light casts a pale glow as researchers lay the groundwork for one of the world’s most….
Cormac McCarthy Gone
Cormac McCarthy shaped a generation of writers like me — even when we didn’t admit it
BY JOHN WRAY
For the entirety of my writing life, Cormac McCarthy has been a mountain. Some of the novelists of my generation found the mountain beautiful; others found it oppressive. But virtually all of us, whatever our position or attitude, existed in its shade.
In spite of the enormity of his shadow, however, I’ve never before written about the author of so many novels I’ve studied and admired. In the two decades since my first book was published, I’ve fielded the boilerplate question about my influences no end of times, name-checking an almost absurdly ragtag crew: Shirley Hazzard, Denis Johnson, William S. Burroughs, Amos Tutuola, Lydia Davis, Toni Morrison, John Berger, Ursula K. Le Guin — even, just a few weeks ago, whoever ghost-wrote David Lee Roth’s memoir, “Crazy From the Heat.” But one name I’ve conspicuously avoided all these years has been that of McCarthy, who died last week at 89. Why on earth is that?
Bacon Goes Public
An IPO for a Painting? This $55 Million Masterpiece Is Going Public
A portrait by British painter Francis Bacon will be publicly listed this summer, even as rising interest rates blur the case for investing in art
By Carol Ryan
What would the late painter Francis Bacon make of it all? A portrait of his lover is about to make its stock-market debut, giving the average Joe access to the rarefied world of serious art collecting.
One catch is that the megarich may have enjoyed the best spoils already.
A company named Artex is launching a roughly $55 million initial public offering of Bacon’s “Three Studies for a Portrait of George Dyer,” painted shortly after the couple met in 1963. Shares in the portrait will be sold for around $100 a piece and will list on a specially created art stock exchange based in Liechtenstein, giving regular investors the ability to buy and sell shares in a famous artwork on a stock exchange for the first time.
Church Repurposing
In Europe’s empty churches, prayer and confessions make way for drinking and dancing
BY RAF CASERT
MECHELEN, Belgium (AP) — The confessionals where generations of Belgians admitted their sins stood stacked in a corner of what was once Sacred Heart Church, proof the stalls — as well as the Roman Catholic house of worship — had outlived their purpose.
The building is to close down for two years while a cafe and concert stage are added, with plans to turn the church into “a new cultural hot spot in the heart of Mechelen,” almost within earshot of where Belgium’s archbishop lives. Around the corner, a former Franciscan church is now a luxury hotel where music star Stromae spent his wedding night amid the stained-glass windows.
Across Europe, the continent that nurtured Christianity for most of two millennia, churches, convents and chapels stand empty and increasingly derelict as faith and church attendance shriveled over the past half century.