Newmark's Door

The Byrds.

Is this really "crippling'?

But for older artists in their seventies and above, the insurance can cost between 10 and 15 per cent of their performance fee, meaning up to £15,000 of their £100,000 income. For a big band earning £3 million for a stadium show, that’s an eye-watering £450,000 spent on insurance.

Just a minute of instruction from the great lead of Dire Straits.

Here's an additional four minutes. And here's six more.

(Links via Michael G.)

And it's not that adults are stupid. They're just following what was for years medical advice.

I don't know anything about the subject but this sure sounds like an authoritative takedown.

Good news: from 3.1% to .0017%. Events with that probability of occurring usually don't.

It's my perception that for a long time regular K-12 schools have underserved the best students. Here's a reading list from the Center for Educational Progress that might well help parents and others cope.

Well, this promise clearly puts all the rest of his promises--economics, foreign affairs, culture--in the shade.

(Here's the website referenced in the piece that shows whether your local McDonald's ice cream machines are working.)

Argument that a key to SNL's success is the chance that on any given night the show might bomb. In other words, unpredictability.

All these examples of badness highlight the dynamism that powers SNL: the sense of real risk, the constant threat that a show won’t work.

Which is interesting because years ago I read a piece that claimed what made Johnny Carson so successful what the perception that on any given night there was a small chance that something wild and wonderful would happen. Examples: Ed Ames and the tomahawk, Burt Reynolds and shaving cream down the pants, and Carson finding out that Rickles broke his cigarette box.

And I also read a piece that claimed that the success of the Rat Pack in the 60s was its unpredictability. (I can't find that piece now but this Washington Post piece references the Pack's "unpredictable performances".)

Interesting speculation.