Arts and Culture

The Nose has this odd habit of covering basically every new Taylor Swift single/video. And so there's a new Taylor Swift single/video. And so The Nose is covering it.

And: As this is the way the world works now, a Facebook post has started a backlash against Frank Pepe Pizzeria over... politics. Sigh.

And finally: In the great tradition of A Bug's Life/Antz, Deep Impact/Armageddon, and The Prestige/The Illusionist, this year gives us Yesterday/Blinded by the Light. This week's Nose has seen the latter, a coming-of-age story about the music of Bruce Springsteen and a British-Pakistani teenager whose life is forever changed by it.

The Connecticut State Library has been awarded a grant of over $263,000 from the National Digital Newspaper Program, a partnership between the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress. The grant will be used to digitize Connecticut newspapers, and make them available online.

Not only is Charles Ives a revered American composer, but he is also Connecticut's native son. This hour, we take an in-depth look at Ives’ life and profound musical output, and we ask: What is his legacy today? 

Ocean Vuong grew up in a Hartford that many of us don’t pay attention to. His family emigrated from Vietnam when he was two years old, and he came to know the area through the nail salons and tobacco fields where he and his mother worked. All the while, they struggled to create joy for themselves in the context of xenophobia, racism, and trauma from an American-led war that still weaves itself into our ways of knowing and living. 

His first novel, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, documents an American story that’s often erased — that of immigrant, war-torn, non-white, working-class life. 

Tracking, rewinding, ejecting, collecting - VHS broke ground in home entertainment like never before. The culture of VHS and its enormous best friend, the VCR, were kings of consumer media for decades. Despite the last VCR and VHS being manufactured just three years ago, videotapes are still consumed, collected, and in some cases, sold(!) across the country. But why?

We've got no guests today. So much of the burden of making today's show any good at all rests with, well: you.

We can talk about pretty much whatever you want. The economy. Plastic bags. Greenland. The Little League Classic. 2020. Or 2020. Or 2020. Or 2020.

Everything's canceled, more or less. The movie The Hunt was canceled before anybody got to see it. People talked about canceling the movie Adam before anybody got to see it. Sarah Silverman was canceled, from a movie anyway, for something she did -- on television -- 12 years ago. The OA was canceled, but people maybe don't believe that it was canceled? And we're apparently on a path toward canceling... the Dewey decimal system?

And: Amazon Prime's new superhero series, The Boys, imagines a world where something like the Marvel Cinematic Universe is real... and something like the Marvel corporation exists too.

Shakespeare in the Park starts tonight in New Haven. Shakespeare & Company in the Berkshires has a new workshop production of Coriolanus opening next week. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens didn't think Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare's works. The BBC has a multi-camera, filmed-in-front-of-a-live-studio-audience Shakespeare sitcom.

This hour: lots of little looks at this summer's best Shakespeare stuff.

After 50 years, the Woodstock Music and Art Fair is remembered for the crowd of some 450,000, the fields of mud from the intermittent rain, the historic rock 'n' roll performances by musicians that went on to become legends, and the festival’s logo: a white bird perched on a blue and green guitar neck against a red background. 

Two things arrived this week that the world probably didn't previously know it needed: The Impossible Whopper and "the definitive Nicolas Cage interview." The Nose taste tests one of them live on the air and discusses both. I'll leave it a mystery which is which.

Plus, a look at two movies: the Charlize Theron-Seth Rogen rom-com Long Shot (now available on iTunes/Amazon/DVD/Blu-ray/etc.) and the Cambridge Analytica documentary The Great Hack (out now on Netflix).

President Donald Trump likes getting a reaction from his base, though maybe not the one he’s getting this week. After Trump expressed support for certain gun control measures, some of his staunchest allies in the gun rights community say they may abandon a man they once saw as their best hope for expanding gun rights.

If you ever drive across the country, you’ll notice there is a surprising amount of World’s Largest attractions.

West Virginia has the world’s largest teapot, California has the world’s largest yo-yo and Arkansas, for whatever reason, has the world’s largest Spinach can. This hour we talk to the man who brought the world’s tallest Uncle Sam to Danbury, Connecticut. 

The music begins - it's coming. I see it. The ice cream truck is here! Can I have some money? HURRY! We're gonna miss it. 

Constantin Mutu was four-months-old when he was separated from his father, Vasily. The elder Mutu was arrested while seeking asylum at the southern border. So far, Constantin is the youngest child to be separated from his family.

Dr. Joseph Cyr, a surgeon with the Royal Canadian Navy, had to think quick when his ship came upon a rickety boat with mangled and bloody bodies at the height of the Korean War in 1951. As the only doctor on board, he quickly moved to operate on 19 men, all of them his enemies in this war. All survived, making the young doctor a hero.

Except he wasn't really a doctor. 

Why do we expect women to clean up everybody's messes all the time? The Cut's Lisa Miller thinks it just might be because of... purses:

Women's bags [...] allow us -- like sherpas or packhorses -- to lug around the tool kits of servitude. A woman is expected to be prepared for every eventuality, and culture has formalized that expectation. Online, lists of necessities proliferate: 12, 14, 17, 19, 30 things a woman should keep in her purse. Almost all include tissues, breath mints, hand sanitizer, and tampons -- but also "a condom, because this is her responsibility, too."

On September 3rd of 2019, Random House will release what is likely the very last Dr. Seuss book there'll ever be: Dr. Seuss's Horse Museum. The work, initially just a manuscript and pile of incomplete sketches, was found buried in a box in the late author's California home in 2013. Since then, artists intimately familiar with Seuss's style of drawing have managed to fill in the gaps and finish the book.

Hartford native Sol LeWitt was one of the giants of conceptualist and minimalist art.

As an artist, he abandoned the long histories of painting and drawing and sculpture in favor of his Wall Drawings and Structures.

And as an art figure, he abandoned the conventions of celebrity and resisted ever even having his picture taken.

This hour, a look at Connecticut's own Sol LeWitt.

In 1953 American illustrator Norman Rockwell moved from Arlington, Vermont, to the small town of Stockbridge, Massachusetts, on the Western edge of the Berkshires. While there, Rockwell developed a relationship with a prominent psychotherapist who came to influence the artist’s work. Their relationship is the subject of a new exhibit at the Norman Rockwell Museum: “Inspired: Norman Rockwell and Erik Erikson.” 

Last weekend, Marvel unveiled its plans for Phase Four of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (along with a few hints and winks and nods about Phase Five -- which is mostly notable 'cause it means they're planning a Phase Five).

And we're currently in the middle of a year when, when it's all said and done, the top eight highest-grossing movies may well have all come from Disney or Marvel or both. The top eight. That's not a typo. Here, look:

A new report paints a picture of the arts in Greater Hartford, a scene that’s both colorful and rocky.

This hour, we learn about the Greater Hartford Arts Landscape Study, and consider efforts to better support the region’s artists.

We also look back on the early years of hip-hop and breaking (a.k.a. breakdancing) in Connecticut, and hear how some young people are learning and performing these styles today. 

Summer is the time we look forward to reading -- or rereading -- our favorite books.  

It's been called a "glorified game of toss" and "World of Warcraft for extroverts." But has Ultimate Frisbee quietly become a real sport?

It is, apparently, a likely Olympic sport. Which would, apparently, maybe be bad for Ultimate.

Connecticut-based architect Cesar Pelli died Friday. 

His work is world-renowned – breaking out after being picked to redesign the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan.

There's kind of a lot going on this week: There's rumored to be a new 007. The Emmy nominations are out. There's a new dating trend called 'Caspering.' Farhad Manjoo thinks we should all use the singular 'they.' 1.7 million people want to raid Area 51. Anthony Fantano (or an animated version of Anthony Fantano, really) is in the new "Old Town Road" video. During the New York City blackout, Star Wars fans helped direct traffic... with their lightsabers. And: The Cats trailer is out, and it's maybe kind of, uh, horrifying?