By Dale King South Palm Beach County’s cultural arts scene is getting a new theatrical and general use venue. Gary Waldman and Jamison Troutman of Florida Theater Productions Inc. will open the Delray Square Performing Arts Center tonight with a reprise of their Sounds of Simon show, a compilation of Paul Simon songs that enjoyed a couple of runs last year at the Cultural … [Read more...]
Sundays: Loving the machines
By Myles Ludwig This is a query, not a criticism. I’m wondering why we find ourselves living in the Republic of Technology, as Daniel Boorstin called it, a sovereign state with its own rules, a state in which privacy has become a philosophical issue, rather than practical one, a privilege to opt out of rather than a right to opt in. A state in which my U-verse is my … [Read more...]
Sundays: The end of advertising
By Myles Ludwig I like to stay just ahead of the knuckleball. So before the minions of Hypostan begin their campaign to whisk up a kind of consumerist Cool Whippy enthusiasm for the TV commercials interrupting the Super Bowl game — and overshadowing the game itself — I’d like to throw a pitch against American advertising in general, and broadcasting ads in particular. … [Read more...]
Sundays: Here, in my head, be dragons
By Myles Ludwig I worry that I’m losing my mind. I worry that the indefinable, ungraspable spirit that somehow, magically, animates my character, clicks on my personality, is slipping away, cell by cell, molecule by molecule, quark by quark, that my synapses are plaquing up and starting to slow down the everyday neural transmissions. For a writer, it’s one of the worst … [Read more...]
Sundays: Engineering a better human
By Myles Ludwig Computo ergo sum: I compute, therefore I am. Old Monsieur Descartes would likely be writhing in his grave had he known what his defining formula for human existence has become and how irrelevant it might be coming. I’m not suggesting that thinking, as such, will lose its place as an especially juicy characteristic of mankind (and womankind as well, of course), … [Read more...]
Sundays: What we hath wrought
By Myles Ludwig Everything falls apart. Guaranteed. Here we stand on the threshold of the Age of Entropy rather than what we hoped might look like a renewal of the Age of Good and Plenty. And the view ain’t pretty. Entropy abounds. Find its ugly Medusa head of snakes in the electronic looting of Target; the bureaucratic, who me? boondoggle that crashed the Obamacare Website: … [Read more...]
Sundays: What made, and didn’t make, the Cloud in 2013
By Myles Ludwig The annual list of best and worst seems lame. I prefer a listicle of the Liked, UnLiked, ReLiked, Archived, Deleted, Spammed and Trashed. It seems more appropriate. As the pope noted, who am I to judge? But if not me, then who? Liked Edward Snowden Pope Francis Claire Danes Don Jon and Barbara Sugarman Michelle Obama Justin Timberlake Kate … [Read more...]
Violinist Perlman to open Festival of the Arts Boca
BOCA RATON -- Violin virtuoso Itzhak Perlman will open the 8th Annual Festival of the Arts Boca in early March, festival officials said today. The legendary Israeli-born violinist is one of the best-known classical musicians in the world, and is an annual visitor to South Florida, giving three recitals this week in West Palm Beach and Miami. He also appeared twice previously … [Read more...]
News briefs: Four Arts’ Duggan to retire; FAU prof wins Knight grant
Ervin Duggan, president of The Society of the Four Arts since 2000, announced Friday he will retire after the current season. Duggan will remain with the Four Arts through June, after which he and his wife, Julia, will retire to North Carolina. Former president and CEO of the Public Broadcasting System, Duggan is credited with recognizing the potential for the Society to … [Read more...]
Sundays: The end of an idea
By Myles Ludwig I am wondering if America’s grand illusions have become America’s grandiose delusions. Have we passed the best-used-by date of that lovely and sacrosanct idea of American Exceptionalism: An idea so long the comforting quilt of nationalistic narcissism that warmed past generations, a vanity that expressed itself in the political rationale for genocide in the … [Read more...]