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If you’re anything like me, January 11th isn’t just the day the renowned beer-brewers John Molson and Carl Jacobsen died—it’s also the time when your willpower begins to crumble, like the perfectly baked shortbread you’ve been dreaming of, and your New Year’s resolution to be in the best shape of your life falls by the wayside. It’s probably not surprising that, as a photo researcher, I respond best to visual motivational aids. Assuming that many of you who visit Photo Booth are similarly inspired, I’ve put together a slide show of historical photographs of physical activity to help get us all over the hump and keep our resolutions strong for at least a little longer.
- Jame Pomerantz. Click-through for more: http://nyr.kr/TP2eQs
(Source: newyorker.com)
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"If I were built, the house I built would have a library, a lounge, a study, a ballroom, a conservatory, a hall, and a billiard room. It would have all the rooms in the original Clue board game, and on the second Wednesday of every month I would invite friends over to play a live-action game of Clue. I’d invent a new character for myself, Doctor Muscles. No one would actually get killed, and afterward we’d eat camembert and drink cocktails with our shirts off…"
— Shouts & Murmurs: “If I Were Built…”, by Andrew Palmer and Brian Platzer. Continue reading: http://nyr.kr/THLniO(Source: newyorker.com)
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Cartoon by Bruce Eric Kaplan. For more from this week’s issue: http://nyr.kr/QC7iID
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What Makes British People Happy: Sex, Exercise, Going to the Theatre (!)
Still, the study raises a larger question: Is the purpose of theatre really to increase happiness? Ask Anton Chekhov, Samuel Beckett, Stephen Sondheim, or Sophocles, and you’d probably get a no. Often, the job of theatre can be to inspire quiet contemplation, or righteous anger, or pangs of self-awareness, or dizzying ambivalence. If you’re lucky, you might exit the theatre still piecing together your worldview, now that Tony Kushner or Larry Kramer has eloquently shredded it.
- Sex and exercise are understandable, but Michael Schulman wonders what it is about theatre that makes British people happy: http://nyr.kr/sHLTDG
