Bill Amend is scaling FoxTrot back to Sundays only (leaving more time for World of Warcraft, though he claims he’ll be doing stuff outside of the house) and will be greatly missed. I was going to do an exhaustive round-up of comics page changes from various newspapers (most publish an explanation picked up by Google news search). Editor & Publisher already did the legwork though (which is nice since I’d rather someone got paid to do this sort of thing). Several papers are testing out new strips before giving them a permanent home. “Lio” by Mark Tatulli of Universal (surreally good) and “Pearls Before Swine” by Stephan Pastis of United Media (also good!) are two of the big winners. The Seattle Times is making numerous changes and keeping “Lio” on permanently is one of them.
If you’re in the mood for some musical nostalgia this week, Stanford’s radio station, KZSU, will be celebrating its 60th anniversary by dedicating one hour for each decade. The fun begins noon this Thursday with 1947 and keeps rolling until Saturday. Internet streams are available.
Waltz your way to health in Viennese 3/4 time. There are two kinds of waltz, American and Viennese. American, the slower of the two, is “great for toning and strengthening muscles.” But for a real aerobic workout, Viennese style will challenge most athletes with 56 to 61 bars per minute and a step for every beat, faster than the jitterbug. There’s scientific research backing up the dance studio owners’ claims of health benefits: 110 heart-failure patients who waltzed three times a week for eight weeks demonstrated comparable cardiopulmonary function to others who rode a bike or walked on a treadmill.
The Metropolitan Opera kicked off their live opera broadcasts in movie theaters on Saturday with a trimmed down, English version of The Magic Flute. The NY Times reports on a number of sold out theaters in the U.S., Canada, Great Britain and Norway. Applause and tubs of popcorn ruled the day. Some brought along their kids, similar to the audience in person at the Met as this production was designed to lure a younger crowd with its short format and Julie Taymor direction. Although the performance was not shown in the Seattle area, upcoming ones are scheduled at Bella Bottega cinema in Redmond, WA.
A happy, safe and healthy 2007 to you and yours!
I confess I’m still not used to seeing color photographs in the print edition of the New York Times (it doesn’t seem to help that I primarily read it online in color anyway). On Tuesday morning readers of the Wall Street Journal may be in for a shock when the paper unveils a complete redesign. The width is going from 60 to 48 inches and the smaller size means “shorter stories, bullet points, and infographics.” However there will also be more “in-depth, analysis-type stories,” as breaking news is left to the online version. A smaller redesign in 2002 was viewed by some as a sacrilege. Publisher L. Gordon Crovitz claims he’s ready for old-timer reactions, saying he’s “girded for the letters of complaints written with quills on parchment.” Newspaper designer Mario Garcia likened the project to having been asked to “repaint the Sistine Chapel.” (via Romenesko)
The Asian Counseling & Referral Service Food Bank is one of King County, WA’s most-used food banks and it’s the only one in Washington that regularly distributes foods for Asian and Pacific Islander diets. At some point after Dec 22nd, when the food bank closed for the holidays, burglars took a substantial amount of provisions from the food bank trailer at 919 S. King St. The theft included 40 bags of rice (50 lbs each), 25 crates worth of frozen chickens, salmon, beef and pork, and many pounds of toiletries. A box of chocolates was consumed on site. Jerks.
What does the San Francisco Ballet do with a cast of a hundred kids in between matinee and evening Nutcracker performances? They get sent off to “Club Nut” which sounds like one of those slumber parties where no one sleeps. The kids hang out in a large studio in the SF Ballet building with free food, craft projects, Christmas videos, cards, Twister, and volunteer adult chaperones. At the appropriate time the young performers are escorted across the street to the Opera House to get in costume and wait for their cues.
Jamie Oliver invented a funky looking shaker bottle with a ceramic ball inside for bashing herbs and spices for marinades and rubs. The Flavour Shaker is essentially a mortar and pestle replacement, supposedly faster and less messy. I haven’t seen one “live” yet but Oil & Vinegar (which, btw, for you local foodie folks, is now open in Bellevue Square) is carrying it in the U.S.
Out in Stanwood, Washington a small group of Orthodox Christian nuns creates beeswax candles, each carefully hand-poured or dipped. Their enterprise began with the production of paraffin candles, the most common type found these days. The toxic fumes from the paraffin, a petroleum by-product, forced them to consider an alternative and beeswax was the natural replacement. The sisters spent six months searching for the right cotton wick to create a votive candle that can burn for 18 hours. And they discovered that beeswax actually cleans the air instead of polluting it and is often recommended for people with allergies and asthma. I can see the residue on the surfaces near where we burned paraffin candles during our power outage and am considering switching to beeswax and soy candles. Quiet Light Candles, run by the four nuns and two volunteers, has a store that is open on Saturdays and online shopping (they use Paypal!).