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Jerry West displays on the life and legacy of Kobe Bryant

Jerry West reflects on the life and legacy of Kobe Bryant

Jerry West may be the man whose silhouette adorns the National Basketball Association logo, but he’s also the man responsible for turning Kobe Bryant into a Los Angeles Laker.

The eight-time NBA champion spoke to CNBC’s The News with Shepard Smith about his relationship with the former Lakers superstar and his thoughts on his late boyfriend, who will be inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame on Saturday.

“I will remember [Bryant] as someone I loved like a brother. The playful moments with him, some of the fun things and the exchanges we had. Watching him start what he became, “West told CNBC.

Bryant, 41, his daughter Gianna, 13, and seven other people died in a helicopter crash near Calabasas, California on January 26, 2020.

West, a former player and 14-time NBA All-Star, coached the Lakers and eventually moved to the team’s front office. He stood behind the Lakers dynasty in the 1980s and is the proud owner of nine championship rings in his life. He is also the man credited with bringing Bryant to the Lakers after organizing a draft day deal with the Charlotte Hornets.

West recognized Bryant’s talent for basketball early on and did not shy away from the 17-year-old, even though he only played in high school.

Jerry West and Kobe Bryant salute before the game between the Golden State Warriors and the Los Angeles Lakers on December 18, 2017 at the STAPLES Center in Los Angeles, California.

Andrew D. Bernstein | NBAE via Getty Images

“We just fell in love with him. From the time we coached him in Los Angeles, and especially the second time we coached him … from then on, it’s been like, I love the way you get we this guy? “

The two developed a bond over the years. West said his son would drive around Bryant and his wife would cook him Italian food for dinner.

“He was one of the greatest players we have ever seen, but he was also one of the brightest players we have ever seen,” said West.

While Bryant achieved so much on the court, West also took pride in his extrajudicial contributions, especially when it came to helping women’s basketball.

Bryant helped give voice to the Women’s National Basketball Association and its players, and often attended games with his daughter.

“He was a bright light” for women basketball players, West said. “Whatever he did turned to gold and I think he was as a person.”

On Saturday, Bryant’s idol Michael Jordan will induct him into the Hall of Fame. From a young age, Bryant looked up to Jordan and even tried to model his game after him.

“This is going to be a historic night to honor a legendary player who is no longer with us and it just doesn’t seem right to be honest,” said West. “To have his idol there to introduce him … I think we all feel a little bit robbed.”

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Business

Second Life for Delivery Containers: Promoting Bao Buns and Baked Items

Second Life for Shipping Containers: Selling Bao Buns and Baked Goods

Craig Baker posted photos of orange, turquoise, and pink shipping containers on Instagram to promote publicity for his food hall in downtown Indianapolis. They may seem strange to promote a grocery store and culinary incubator, but the steel boxes piqued the curiosity of the locals.

“They’re very similar to Legos, aren’t they?” Mr Baker, an entrepreneur and chef, said about the shipping containers at the AMP, a craft market and former supply garage where vendors sell PB&J sandwiches, Ethiopian cold brew coffee, and chocolate-covered strawberries covered with edible glitter.

“We’re building our own little village in a huge garage,” he said of the 40,000-square-foot space, which also includes a full-service restaurant, open-air bar, prep kitchen, and stage. “People want to see what you’ve built.”

Shipping containers have been heralded as a trend in home decor where they are used for modular homes, but they are also convincing commercial planners who have used them to liven up the bars, cafes and restaurants within developments anchored by food halls. In industrial areas or port cities, the containers give projects a sense of community, which is vital in a pandemic when retailers and restaurants close their doors.

However, the shipping containers also pose challenges for developers, including indoor customization and safety for guests and staff during a pandemic.

Most food halls rely on shipping containers to populate the stalls, but some also use them as canvas for art installations or as common areas. As the grocery halls proliferate, builders are adopting a pioneering design to stand out from the packaging and avoid a sterile cafeteria.

“Grocery halls are a dozen these days; Lots of them do exactly the same thing, ”said David Weitz, co-founder of Carpe Real Estate Partners, who this month opened Oasis, a food and entertainment center built on the site of a former marine engine repair company in Miami’s artistic Wynwood neighborhood. Six yellow, pink, and lavender shipping containers are used to sell bao rolls and gyros, while 16 more make up a 75-foot tall central tower bar painted in the same colors by Spanish artist Antonyo Marest.

The Oasis is one of a dozen grocery halls that use shipping containers and one of several to open this year along with AMP in Indianapolis and BLVD MRKT near Los Angeles. The United States has 242 food halls, a jump from 222 at the start of the pandemic, and cities have relied on their creative concepts and communal dining spaces to revitalize dormant neighborhoods. At least 190 more are in the works, according to a report by Cushman & Wakefield.

The trend started in 2013 with Downtown Container Park, a project conceived by Tony Hsieh, Zappos’ CEO who passed away last November. The development, which was central to the revitalization of downtown Las Vegas worth $ 350 million, inspired other developers like Barney Santos, who after seven years of planning, will open BLVD MRKT in the predominantly Latin American neighborhood of Montebello this summer.

“I remember seeing the container park and feeling so inspired by the design,” said Santos of the development in Las Vegas. “I wanted to recreate that experience in my neighborhood to do something that no one would expect.”

Developers like Mr Santos said using shipping containers is more of a design choice than a cost-saving one. Used shipping containers cost $ 2,000 to $ 3,000, but builders can expect to pay five times that amount to add windows, doors, support structures, and kitchen and other equipment to pass local health inspections. This makes the cost comparable to installing normal food stands.

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May 11, 2021 at 8:17 p.m. ET

For business owners, opening a grocery stand in a shipping container means they can add flourishing accents to personalize their space. In many indoor dining rooms, the stalls often look the same apart from a few differences in the signage. “The creativity that opens up is the strangest,” said Baker, the AMP’s project manager. “You give them a canvas and say, ‘Look, this is your place. What do you do with it? ‘”

That coincided with Joanna Wilson, the owner of an AMP dessert shop, Punkin’s Pies. Ms. Wilson picked colors that matched her brand, adding black and white floors and awnings to the pink shipping container, as well as a sparkling chandelier that shines like her glittering strawberries.

The semi-enclosed space also allows her to stow most of her kitchen equipment. “I try to make it look dainty and neat,” said Ms. Wilson. “I don’t like showing off my fridge, microwave, and kitchen area.”

The design choice makes sense in large port cities like Long Beach, California, where developer Howard CDM built SteelCraft, one of the earlier incarnations of a shipping container restaurant.

“There are shipping containers everywhere,” said Kimberly Gros, founder of SteelCraft, which operates two other Southern California locations at Garden Grove and Bellflower, said Kimberly Gros. “So we thought we were going to create a structure that is different and that is really connected to us.”

The reuse of materials appeals to many consumers from both an ecological and an aesthetic point of view. “I think if you take an item and undermine your original intent and create a whole new use for that item, it’s always interesting,” said Erik Rutter, co-founder of Carpe Real Estate Partners.

In interiors like the AMP, light tones enliven an otherwise gray room and at the same time preserve an industrial feel. “The color palette for the containers is really popping,” said Mr. Baker.

However, there are some limitations to the use of shipping containers in food-centric destinations. Some developers recommend sticking to outdoor applications to avoid complex retrofitting. In an outside environment, furnace ventilation can be done directly from the furnace hood through the roof, which is the most common setting. However, with a food hall at the base of a 50-story building, the process becomes more complicated because the ventilation has to be increased by 50 stories, Carpe’s Weitz said.

Most developers have sticked to outdoor use, but some food halls in the Midwest, such as AMP, Detroit Shipping Company, and Parlor Food Hall in Kansas City, Missouri, have placed them indoors. Design experts say the key is sticking to indoor bakeries and other light cooking applications rather than a store that requires a deep fryer, for example. Because of this, the AMP used shipping containers for companies with limited cooking requirements and conventional stands for those who needed more, said John Albrecht, director of the DKGR architectural firm that designed the AMP.

Dealing with the pandemic is also more of a challenge for indoor food halls, where diners often battle for coveted seats. Most have pushed take-out and delivery services and reconfigured their seating to allow social distancing, said Phil Colicchio, co-head of the Cushman & Wakefield food and beverage advisory group.

But perhaps the biggest fight for developing containers to be guided by ships is to stay more open. “The concern is that the more you walk this path, the more similar the rooms are,” said Trip Schneck, also co-head of the Cushman & Wakefield food and beverage group.

Expect shipping containers to continue to develop, especially as cities identify more industrial areas in need of revitalization. But it won’t be long before architects identify the next big thing, said Martin D. Howard, president of Howard CDM.

“Brilliant thinkers and creative minds will find other ways to make it interesting for people to come out and eat and drink and have a good time,” he said.

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Entertainment

Learn how to Breathe New Life Into Martha Graham’s Dances? Infuse Them With Artwork.

How to Breathe New Life Into Martha Graham’s Dances? Infuse Them With Art.

If the pandemic taught Janet Eilber anything, it is: “I’m always reminded how powerful Martha’s work is,” she said, “when we mess with it.”

As Artistic Director of the Martha Graham Dance Company, Eilber has long been experimenting with ways to redesign the work of the choreographer – even before the pandemic forced the dance world to go digital. What she learned is that the works of Graham, a leader in modern dance in the mid-20th century, don’t collapse under pressure. They keep their purity; In some cases, they become even more powerful.

With Eilber’s latest digital adventure, a collaboration with the Hauser & Wirth art gallery, she is now looking for ways to combine the choreographer’s work with the present: How can Graham’s essential modernity find a new meaning in an environment of contemporary visual art?

On Friday, the Graham Company concludes its 95th season with GrahamFest95, a three-day virtual showcase of livestream performances of classic and recent works, along with the premiere of four films pairing dances by Graham and Robert Cohan with four of the gallery’s artists : Rita Ackermann, Mary Heilmann, Luchita Hurtado and Rashid Johnson.

It helps that Madeline Warren, Senior Director at Hauser & Wirth, is also Eilber’s daughter. They coordinated the project together. “She grew up knowing Graham worked,” Eilber said. “Between the two of us, we found dances that are seriously related to her works of art.”

Marc Payot, partner and president of Hauser & Wirth, has only seen rough cuts of the films that contain cinematography and digital design by Alex Munro. Nonetheless, Payot said: “The movement and the dance are really in dialogue with what is there, even if it was created yesterday. It is incredibly interesting how the dance becomes much more contemporary or vice versa. “

For the films, the artwork is used as the setting for the dances, which were filmed on a green screen in the Graham studios. Instead of projecting the painting as a background, Eilber hopes to create a digital environment that envelops the dancer in a haunting manner. As she said, “We tried to find things that you can’t do on stage.”

Heilmann’s choice was obvious: their use of lines and colors is closely related to Graham’s “Satyric Festival Song”. In this playful 1932 solo, which was originally part of a suite called Dance Songs, the costume is a vibrant black and green striped dress designed by Graham himself. In it, the dancer – her body full of angles and wobbling movements – vibrates across the stage, just as Heilmann’s lines in paintings such as “Surfing on Acid” have an electric enthusiasm.

In the video with dancer Xin Ying, the approach aims to capture the feeling of strangeness and fun. “This little character could be floating in space,” said Eilber. “It could just be anywhere. And any size! It could be really small at one point and it could get very big. It can be a real fall down the rabbit hole. “

Xin also appears with Lloyd Knight in a duet from “Dark Meadow,” a 1946 work partly inspired by Graham’s love for the Southwest. The original set is from Isamu Noguchi; Hurtado, who died last year, was a friend of this artist who designed many of Graham’s dances. “Martha’s Noguchi set is an abstraction of this landscape,” said Eilber. “So we want to replace it with the abstraction of Luchita’s landscapes, which clearly relate to the space and light of the southwest, or with works that could become landscapes with the dancers.”

“Immediate Tragedy”, a lost solo from 1937, which was reinterpreted through archive material, was combined with works of art by Ackermann from her “Mama” series. Ackermann finds a connection to what she sees as Graham’s choreography concerns: weight versus weightlessness. “I’m looking for a similar contradiction and a similar emotional response in the gestural movement of my pictures,” she said. “Your choreography also draws lines related to speed – fast and slow. Both are the basis of my drawings. “

Eilber tells the solo and his message – “to stay upright at all costs”, as Graham wrote in a letter to his composer Henry Cowell – with Ackermann’s way of embedding figurative drawings, often of young girls, in their work. As she paints over them, their bodies or parts of them are recognizable to varying degrees. For Eilber these images and the message of the solo speak “for female roles”, she said. “It is the role of women in humankind in challenging situations or just our role in mortality, birth and death.”

For Xin, who will perform the work, the strict and passionate solo feels particularly timely – certainly because of the pandemic, but now even more as a result of the recent attacks on Asians. “I’ve never felt emotionally ready for the piece up until that point,” she said. “It’s like you want to go somewhere, and it’s hard and scary, but you have to go. They do not know what is safe and what is not. “

The latest collaboration is Lloyd, a solo by Cohan, a former dancer with the Graham Company who founded Place, a prestigious contemporary dance school in London, who died in January. Instead, Knight appears with a painting by Johnson from his series “Anxious Red”. It re-embodies the tension and trauma of the solo and reflects the feeling of the present moment. The aggressive and disturbing images come to life in a glowing blood red that is both rich and terrifying. Johnson began creating the work, an extension of his Anxious Men series, in March last year when the shutdown occurred.

“It was about fear, a little ignorance, a reluctance to project too far into the future,” said Johnson, “because there were just so many question marks about what the next steps were.”

Although not a dancer, Johnson said that as an artist, he views his process as a dance; As a young man, he was drawn to urban dancing and breaking. Now his approach often refers to “the circular motion that occurs in breakdancing to set up a stage, walk around, and make full, robust movements with my body,” he said. “So I’m very aware of the physicality or the physical aspect of how performative a painting can be. I’ve never been a painter who really values ​​some kind of wrist gesture. It is often a series of movements that I use to bring an image to life. “

The movement in his painting – alongside Knight’s dance – emphasizes the gripping tension of fear. In the stark, haunted work, Knight, only wearing a pair of tight panties, turns in the direction and pauses to play certain poses that are “almost like seizures in a way,” he said. “It’s a complete build up to the point where in the end I just shiver and spin uncontrollably until I can’t take it anymore.”

In the solo, based on drawings by Andreas Vesalius from the 17th century, Cohan wanted to show what was under the skin. to reveal in a sense how difficult it is for a body to hold on. “It’s like a statue that is slowly crumbling on the spot,” said Eilber.

During the shoot, Knight, who rehearsed the solo with Cohan before his death, was transformed: “I have to take myself mentally,” he said. “When I was in this open space – on the stage with the lights – I fully understood what Bob wanted: I felt alone.”

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Entertainment

The Telling of DMX’s Life Story

The Telling of DMX’s Life Story

In the late 1990s, there was no rapper more popular than DMX, who drove a string of energetic and serious hits to the top of the Billboard album charts with each of their first five albums.

The life he lived – from abusive childhood to addictive adulthood – was rugged, stormy, and distinctive. He died Friday at the age of 50 after suffering “catastrophic cardiac arrest” a week earlier.

This week’s Popcast talked about the highs and valleys of DMX’s career, the intense power of his music and religious passion, and what it was like to interview him.

Guest:

  • Smokey Fontaine, the co-author of the 2002 book EARL: The Autobiography of DMX with DMX; a former music editor for The Source magazine; and the current editor-in-chief of the Apple App Store.

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Business

Classes for profitable life post-Covid

Lessons for successful life post-Covid

The role of Matthew McConaughey, which CNBC seems to be most advising, is his role in “The Wolf of Wall Street” as broker and salesman Mark Hanna and his “Fugazi” speech before the Leonardo DiCaprio incarnation of the real “Wolf” Jordan Belfort.

In the movie, “Fugayzi, Fugazi. It’s a Whazy. It’s a Woozie. It’s Fairy Dust” is what counts as a valuable guide. However, the actor has been known to give more down-to-earth advice in real life, whether it be through a graduate speech or through his recent memoir, Greenlights.

McConaughey recently came to CNBC during the @ Work Summit to discuss basic life lessons he learned during the Covid year. He believes this will be important to our culture as more people get back to work and interact with others on a regular basis – with disagreements that are sure to remain a part of life after the pandemic. We should all be ready to gain a better understanding of the opposing views, says McConaughey.

And somewhere between his “wolf” character and a person trying to prepare for a post-pandemic world amid a booming stock market and expanding economy, he told CNBC from his Airstream trailer that in 2021 it would still be okay, Chasing after success – if done right. “I’m for money and I’m for fame, but how we get these things, how we treat others, how we treat ourselves, fills the soul’s account along the way and that’s a long-term ROI that I think CEOs need Double-down on more. ”

Here are some of the better life ideas McConaughey shared with CNBC’s Carl Quintanilla. (And for film buffs, check out the full video above if you want to know how that “Fugazi” speech became a piece of film history.)

1. Don’t go back to what you were before Covid.

As the world enters a post-pandemic reality, the actor and writer says we should all use 2020 to reassess what’s important to us rather than going back to who we were and what we believed before.

“If we turn the page and get our freedoms back into engagement, we’re not going to snap back. Hopefully that last year when we were forced to reevaluate what the hell is important to us in our own lives, Hopefully we will take these re-evaluations out of this year and evolve as people, including individuals, “he told CNBC.

It doesn’t mean instant change, but it means reflection.

“Hey, the first day may not have to be all right for everyone. No! We’re all coming out of our own independent world and reuniting, so let’s sit down. Maybe it has to be the first week back, let’s sit down and talk about what we’ve learned. ”

Oscar-winning actor Matthew McConaughey addresses the University of Houston at TDECU Stadium on May 15, 2015 in Houston, Texas.

Bob Levey / Getty Images

More than ever, it is a radical challenge to come together in the middle. Do you want to be radical? Come to the middle, I dare you!

Taking the time to reflect on how you have changed for the better over the past year will not only help you individually but also help you understand your place in this new world.

“”[2020] was there for a reason, there was hardship for a reason, there was sacrifice for a reason, there was a reason to learn. Let’s turn a page, not necessarily in the same chapter. Let’s turn a page and start a new chapter, “he said.

2. Learn to accept those we may disagree with.

Last year was again marked by increased polarization, for example in relation to politics and vaccines, and the conflicts have created divisions, but rarely growth. McConaughey says it doesn’t have to be that way.

“We can get away [from conflict] I still disagree, but basically, mostly, you and I are connected. You and I can still be connected even if we have opposing views and say we have similar expectations of each other; civil, bourgeois. We don’t do that right now, we illegitimate people and there is no way that can be the way forward. ”

In order to learn to accept conflict as legitimate, we must learn to accept opposing views.

3. Find common ground through facts.

Put simply, Americans must learn to agree on facts.

“We’re mistaken about what facts are. We don’t even argue about the same reality right now. So if we can agree on facts, I think we can build trust. Trust in facts can lead to trust in others, and then trust in us. ”

McConaughey believes that due to distrust of the media and leadership, we have trouble trusting ourselves. Learning to argue from the same facts will help. “If we can agree on facts, I believe we can build trust. Trusting facts can lead to us trusting others and then trusting ourselves.”

4. Be a meet-you-in-the-middle centrist.

McConaughey dared the American people:

“We have a misnomer for centricity. We need to remember that unity is not unity. I’m meeting you in the middle of the centrist. That has always been called, ‘Oh, that’s the gray area of ​​compromise, that is you ‘perceived. ” It is about nothing. ‘More than ever, coming together in the middle is a radical challenge. Do you want to be radical? Come to the middle, I dare you! ”

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Drag Star Sasha Velour Lip-Syncs for Her Operatic Life

Drag Star Sasha Velour Lip-Syncs for Her Operatic Life

Opera is about noises that roar from someone’s throat. Lip syncing is the opposite. While opera lovers have long been known to silently record in the privacy of their home, can there be a real opera performance based on having a say?

Can a lip-sync be an opera star?

Absolutely, according to the composer Angélica Negrón, who created the filmed short opera “The Island We Made” in collaboration with the director Matthew Placek and the drag queen Sasha Velor, a winner of “RuPaul’s Drag Race” and lip-synching.

“The idea of ​​lip-synching – of someone impersonating someone else’s voice – was something that was essential to the story we want to tell,” Negrón said in a recent interview.

Melancholy and meditative, “The Island We Made” not only tells a story, but also implies a mood. The music is a mixture of electronic ambient sound, which is pierced by glittering harp impulses. Sliding between three actors suggesting three generations – a daughter, a mother, and a grandmother – Velor is studded with jewels and wearing a flowing lemon-colored dress while she prepares tea. As a kind of space goddess, she moves her mouth to the ethereal soprano voice of Eliza Bagg, who sings Negrón’s poetic text: “The back seat, my bed, this house, your face; you called me, protected me. “

“A drag queen is partly an idea, partly a person,” said Velor. “And the idea part is an idea of ​​fluidity and understanding and humanity beyond labels, to be very broad. And I felt like that was some kind of spirit of love that this song, this lip-syncing, was going to be about. “

Velor, Negrón and Placek participated in a video call along with Sarah Williams, New Works Director for Opera Philadelphia. She commissioned “The Island We Made” and hosted the 10-minute work on her streaming platform until November. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.

SARAH WILLIAMS During the summer we tried to figure things out as a company. Is this how we get dark and do we survive? Or can we stay active? And I designed the series of digital assignments. I identified four composers, including Angélica, and she told me what she had in mind. I said, “If you could make it big, what about?” And she said, “Sasha Velor. Am I crazy? “I said,” Absolutely, but so am I. Let’s go. “

ANGELICA NEGRON A big part of that for me was getting the voice right with the drag queen. I had a very clear picture of Eliza Bagg’s voice along with Sasha’s lips.

SASHA VELOR When you’re pulling, lip syncing is so common, but you don’t necessarily have to think about it and all the force and tension it represents. But when we talked about this project, it was clear that it serves as a metaphor for how we sometimes create space for other people’s voices and experiences – to try to capture someone and reflect on them in our own way.

black The song really came out of my conversations with Matthew and Sasha. Matthew has a knack for getting juicy things out of people and we got personal very quickly. We have found that there is something about mothers, about women who educate and shape us. We’ve also talked a lot about the silence, which can be really deafening, which defines a lot and shapes much of our lives.

MATTHEW PLACEK Angélica had the same idea as me: to understand the limits of relationships. And then we started talking about the figure of Mother and Saschas as a kind of heavenly being. We talked about mothers and our mothers, as anyone can, and I got the feeling, damn it, mothers suck. They are damned if they do and damned if they don’t. As much as I live for my mother, I blame her for way too much. And it’s unfair.

black One of the things I really love about Matthew’s vision is that there are these symbols, these metaphors, these very concrete things that are progressive, but there is no narrative thread in which to say, “Here it goes so, and this is about that. “There are certainly a number of things that are part of it that are not exactly related to the experiences I shared with him. Seeing what he does to other symbols that are unrelated to my childhood, upbringing or relationships, and drawing new meanings from my lived experience – I think that’s what great art does.

CAKE The peanut butter and graham crackers are about my mom or part of my mom.

VELOR My dad thinks I insisted on peanut butter and crackers and that it was a reference to my childhood. So this is a good example of how these things take on new meanings.

We wanted me to be a little bit otherworldly, a little bit spiritual – like a goddess of weirdness who brings that understanding to someone in different ways throughout her life. There was a moment when we talked about really getting otherworldly, like some crazy alien face; I could kind of see it in the 70’s house. But Matthew encouraged me to take it on a human level too. Because I’m not just an idea; I am a real person too. I have my own relationship with my mother. I channel and create space for all these different relationships and also bring in my own experiences.

black Usually I start from a sound associated with a memory, often associated with a place, often associated with a person. In this case, I had the picture of my mother cleaning the house when I was young. And she was going to blow up those ’80s ballads by Puerto Rican singers, and there was one song that I remember like the world was going to end. And very domestic things happen while my mom is throwing this song out.

I love micro-sampling, take like a second or something even smaller and then process it and manipulate it and recontextualize it and see what happens. So that was the starting point for this song: a micro-sample from one of those songs that was my childhood soundtrack.

I also had Matthew’s aesthetic in mind, and thought a lot about the spaces between notes and the silence – just the physical, very visceral feeling of silence. I wanted the song to feel like a hug. And then there was the harp, which I prefer to write for, to emphasize this lullaby quality.

I didn’t sit down to write a poem and then bring music to it. Sometimes when I was modeling a sound, the word showed up when that makes sense. And at the same time as I heard Eliza’s voice, I imagined Sasha’s lips moving.

WILLIAMS It’s been a little over a week now. And I am very happy to say that it was the biggest opening weekend of all of our work on our digital channel. Larger than “Traviata”.

black For the past three years I’ve been writing songs for drag queens and viewing it as an opera, a bigger project. I still don’t know exactly what it will look like.

I often have the question: why do you call this an opera? And it’s really hard for me to put into words what opera is to me, but my first instinct is to say why it isn’t called opera. There is a great power not to apologize when calling something opera and taking place in the operatic world, which is traditionally and historically built for people who don’t look like me and don’t have stories like my personal story. And I think it’s time It is past.

So your collaboration could have a future?

black This is the dream.

VELOR Oh yes, absolutely.

CAKE I would follow these two off a cliff.

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Texas Roadhouse founder Kent Taylor dies at 65 after taking life following put up Covid battle

Texas Roadhouse founder Kent Taylor dies at 65 after taking life following post Covid struggle

A man walks past a Texas Roadhouse restaurant in Arvada, Colorado.

Matthew Staver | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Texas Roadhouse’s founder and CEO Kent Taylor died Thursday, the restaurant chain announced on its Facebook page. He was 65 years old.

Taylor died of suicide after battling post-Covid-19 symptoms, including severe tinnitus, the family said in a statement issued by the company. Tinnitus is typically described as ringing in the ear.

“Kent Taylor committed suicide this week following a battle with symptoms after Covid, including severe tinnitus,” the family said. “Kent fought and fought hard like the former course champion he was, but the suffering that had become so much worse over the past few days became unbearable.”

Taylor’s family said Taylor recently committed to funding a clinical trial to help military personnel with tinnitus.

“We will miss you, Kent. Because of you and your dream of Texas Roadhouse, we can say that we (love) our jobs every day,” the company wrote on Friday in a Facebook post.

The Louisville-based restaurant company announced Friday that President Jerry Morgan would be named CEO after Taylor’s death.

“While you never expect the loss of a visionary like Kent, our succession plan, which Kent led, gives us great confidence,” said Greg Moore, lead director of Texas Roadhouse.

Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer tweeted Thursday that the city had “lost a loved and unique citizen.”

“Kent’s kind and generous spirit has been his constant driving force, whether he’s quietly helping a friend or building one of America’s largest companies in @texasroadhouse,” wrote Fisher. “He was a sole proprietorship who embodied the values ​​of never giving up and putting others first.”

If you or someone you know has thoughts of suicide or self-harm, please contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at this link or by calling 1-800-273-TALK. The hotline is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

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Health

Listed here are the states with the longest and shortest life expectations, in response to the CDC

Here are the states with the longest and shortest life expectancies, according to the CDC

A soybean farmer in Mississippi County, Arkansas.

The Washington Post | Getty Images

If you were born in the South, you likely have a shorter life expectancy than the rest of the United States. This comes from newly released data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Thursday.

The results, published in the National Vital Statistics Reports, examined the country-level mortality and population estimates starting in 2018, as well as the country-specific death and population numbers of elderly Medicare beneficiaries that year.

The CDC found that Americans are expected to live 78.7 years at birth, although women were more likely to survive males by 5 years across the country, according to the report. The states in the south fared worse than their northeastern and western counterparts.

West Virginia, Mississippi, Alabama, Kentucky, Tennessee, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Arkansas, South Carolina, and Missouri ranked the bottom ten states in terms of life expectancy, the CDC found. West Virginia, with a life expectancy of 74.4 years, was the lowest for both men and women.

“With a few exceptions, the states with the largest sex differences are those with lower life expectancy at birth, while the smallest gender differences are mainly found in states with higher life expectancy,” CDC researchers wrote in the report.

Meanwhile, at 81 years of age, Hawaii took the top spot for the state with the highest life expectancy. Aloha state was followed by California, New York, Minnesota, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Washington, Colorado, New Jersey, and Rhode Island to round out the top ten states that have lived longest.

The CDC’s most recent life expectancy figures come just under a month after the agency released a preliminary report in February that found life expectancy fell by one year during the pandemic in the first half of 2020 – the biggest drop since Second World War.

According to this report, the CDC projected a life expectancy at birth for Americans of 77.8 years in 2020.

– Reuters contributed to this report.

Categories
World News

In Oprah Interview, Meghan Says Life as Royal Made Her Suicidal

In Oprah Interview, Meghan Says Life as Royal Made Her Suicidal

And yet the couple sat there in comfortable wicker chairs outside at a low round table belonging to perhaps the nation’s most famous television presenter. Ms. Winfrey’s list of celebrity interviews includes Michael Jackson, Barack Obama, Kim Kardashian, and Donald J. Trump – and she is known for considering little taboo (in 1993, she asked an undaunted Mr. Jackson if he was a virgin ). .

However, Meghan used the interview as an opportunity to regain her own narrative after claiming her reputation was distorted by a starved tabloid press fed falsehoods by jealous palace courtiers.

Even Meghan’s choice of wardrobe seemed designed to telegraph the message of a fresh start. Her elegant black dress, designed by Giorgio Armani, featured a striking lotus flower design, which, according to her employees, symbolized revival and the will to live. She also wore a diamond tennis bracelet that once belonged to Diana.

But the couple’s efforts to revive their public image did not go unchallenged at home. In the days leading up to the show, new allegations surfaced that Meghan had bullied employees, moved junior aides to tears and evicted two personal assistants from the palace. Meghan dismissed the claims as a character assassination attempt, while Buckingham Palace said it would investigate.

“What is happening is a major battle for control of the narrative,” said Peter Hunt, a former royal correspondent for the BBC. “What is our firm verdict on why Harry and Meghan left the royal family? Do we accept two hours of Oprah or do we believe these bullying charges? “

Early headlines in UK tabloids suggested Meghan’s bombs will reverberate for weeks. “I wanted to kill myself,” read a headline on The Daily Mail’s website. “I felt suicidal,” said a headline on The Sun’s website.

Meghan has no shortage of defenders. Patrick J. Adams, an actor who worked with her on the television series “Suits”, described her on Twitter last week as “deep in morals and with a strong work ethic”. The royal family, Mr Adams said, has been “obscene” in promoting allegations of bullying against them.

Categories
Entertainment

‘Tom Stoppard’ Tells of an Monumental Life Spent in Fixed Movement

‘Tom Stoppard’ Tells of an Enormous Life Spent in Constant Motion

The way the cricket bat taps a ball and makes it sail an unlikely distance becomes a metaphor for writing in Stoppard’s hands. No living playwright has produced such a beautiful sound so regularly (snaps his tongue to make the noise).

[ Read Charles McGrath’s profile of Hermione Lee. ]

The adjective “Stoppardian” – to use elegant wit while addressing philosophical concerns – was added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 1978. His pieces are trees in which he precariously climbs on every limb. These trees sway. There is electricity in the air, like before a summer thunderstorm.

Stoppard’s best-known pieces are “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead”, “The Real Thing”, “Arcadia” and “The Coast of Utopia”. (His most recent work, “Leopoldstadt”, is closed for the time being due to Covid-19.) He co-wrote the script for “Shakespeare in Love” and has written or edited dozens of other scripts. He has written a novel and written a number of screenplays for radio and television.

At 83, he had an enormous life. In the astute and authoritative new biography “Tom Stoppard: A Life”, Hermione Lee wrestles everything aside. Sometimes you can feel that she is chasing a fox through a forest. Stoppard is constantly on the move – he flies back and forth across the Atlantic, takes care of the many revivals of his pieces, keeps the plates moving, agitates on behalf of dissidents, artists and political prisoners in Eastern Europe, gives lectures, accepts prizes, repairs scripts, lavish parties, friendships with Pinter, Vaclav Havel, Steven Spielberg, Mick Jagger and others. It was an enchanted life lived by a bewitching man. Tall, dashing, with big eyes, shaggy hair; for women, Stoppard was a walking stimulus package.