Like Orpheus, Michael Jackson was destroyed by his fans
(Germaine Greer in The Guardian)

[just read that Milan's Corriere della Sera asked maestro Riccardo Muti what he had to say about the singer's death.]

T=c²yn

Quick mention before it's all over of The Oxford C.S. Lewis Society hosting a two-day international colloquium on C.S. Lewis’ Perelandra with performances (June 26/27) of Donald Swann's (of Flanders and Swann the musical revue satirists) practically unperformed 1964 opera. Spot on BBC Radio 3's Music Matters (37 min into programme) plus as always other goodies (Leonard Bernstein) in the ear bag.

Kurt Weill's 1936 musical Johnny Johnson receives a rare outing every Sunday afternoon until July 12 at Sadlers Wells.
Weill's Lost in the Stars has a staged reading at the South Bank (June 23 and 24)
Ornette Coleman's curatorship of the Meltdown festival continues there as well.

Twitterers take on Ulysses
Nightwaves discussion on whether James Joyce's epic 20th century classic novel Ulysses is an elitist literary tome or the true novel for the common man. And a preview spot on Gay Icons (National Portrait Gallery, July 2)
Jake Arnott on Joe Meek (of the Telstar film)

Revealed: The 15 people who will define the future of arts in Britain - I was 9 and a half but the dimensions didn't fit the page. Not to mention the chap who was 21 and seven eigths...
A new generation of architects forge a fresh approach to planning for the 21st century
Society set up to offer support to designers whose work has been demolished

Richard Wentworth's new sculpture show Boule to Braid opens at the Lisson Gallery June 24
And artist Conrad Shawcross somewhere mid-stream. His first solo show New York show Control is currently at New York's Location One.

A crowd gathers as MPs'expenses claims prove surprise web hit
MPs even claimed for Second Life
Live like an MP! Win a completely free floating duck house!

Iraq war inquiry could reveal secrets, lies and the rush to war. But it will all be held in secret and conducted by those responsible for it all in the first place. Mud, mud, glorious mud nothing quite like it for cooling the blood. But they'll always be the whitewash. Don't forget the Shout!
For the Iranian-born comedian Shappi Khorsandi, the current turmoil in Tehran brings back poignant memories

ICA Films releases this week the two disc DVD box set of Luis Buñuel’s masterpiece of erotica Belle De Jour and Portuguese centenarian director Manoel de Oliveira’s imagined sequel Belle Toujours- the first film of his to see the light of a cinema let alone that of a DVD in the UK for over 15 years!

got my tweed pressed, got my best vest, all i need now is

Marking the fifth anniversary of the Iraq war BBC Four is repeating the extraordinary 3-hour doco The Fallen: Legacy of Iraq (5 days left to watch) in which friends and family of those who died during the Iraq conflict talk about their relatives who died. Whether your views are pro or pacifist for war this doco proves compelling for all.
Frontline Iraq (3 episodes)

The TV satire on UK politics Bremner, Bird and Fortune is back for another series on Channel Four.
Political writers and satirists asked for their take on the turmoil at Gordon Brown's No 10
And Michel Gondry returns Flight of the Conchords to its former glory on BBC Four.

Tony Robinson interview for the DVD reissue of Blackadder
How Blackadder changed the history of television comedy

When Charlotte Jones, age eight, wrote a stern letter of complaint to The Guardian, they asked her in to help edit for a day.
Blogger loses hidden identity fight

BBC Radio 3's The Verb (4 days left to listen) has the band The Leisure Society, nominated for an Ivor Novello Award discuss their song The Last of the Melting Snow.
Rebecca Lenkiewicz reads her new short story written specially for this programme about a lost soul called Lucian Dark, who’s condemned to wander the streets of London for 500 years. Beauty that can seem so far can so close be.
And a discussion of history of Concrete Poetry - the poetic movement which believes that the visual appearance of a poem is as important as what it says.
Poor. Old. Tired. Horse is has opened at the ICA

Sky will use live TV drama to broadcast six debut plays by leading British writers

Charlie Winston spent much of the past few years as a struggling musician in Britain, gigging in pubs, busking on bridges - and remaining almost entirely unknown.
He has spent just six months in France and is already a national superstar

This weekend 615 people discovered they are among those who have been selected by computer to take their place for one hour as Antony Gormley's "living monument" on the empty fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square.
'Poo' scientist to take over Trafalgar Square plinth
Take a stuffy old institution. Remix. Add wit. It's Banksy v the museum
Futurism has opened at Tate Modern but art critic Andrew Graham-Dixon didn't sound that impressed on BBC Radio 3's Nightwaves.
Women of the futurists

London Shop Fronts and
Store fronts in New York: Baby Watson cheesecake and kosher chewing gum
New York Times review of the book.

Werner Herzog maverick German film-maker, 66, on snakes, soup and spontaneity

Universal Pictures launches niche UK DVD label - Anvil! The Story of Anvil is one of their first DVDs.
British director Nick Broomfield is releasing his new film on direct action, A Time Comes, available for free online. The 20 minute film tells the story of the Kingsnorth Six, a group of Greenpeace volunteers who, in protest against government plans to build new coal plants across Britain, climbed the 220m chimney at a coal-fired power station in Kent in 2007.
on the Greenpeace website
Refugee Week on BFI Southbank (16 to 21 Jun) "a nationwide fixture brings music, art, and other events focusing on the refugee experience, as well as films that help convey the pain, horror and human rights abuses endured by displaced peoples. Leading the way, the BFI's season is curated by young refugees and includes films like sweatshop documentary Made In LA, which depicts Latina workers battling for labour rights, The Fortress, exposing Swiss treatment of asylum seekers, and Oscar-nominated The Betrayal, on the life of a Laotian family in Brooklyn."

World Naked Bike Ride

Grange Park Opera hosts David Fielding's X-rated production of Eliogabalo (Francesco Cavalli's 1668 opera) - New York's experimental Wooster Group just riffed and rapped on Cavalli's La Didone.

And 2 must-hear radio items:
BBC Radio 4's Archive on 4- Fred Gaisberg: The First A and R Man who left Washington, D.C. and in 1898 arrived in London setting up his enterprise in a poky Covent Garden room. He was the first to record Caruso and the first to record the court music of the Chinese and Japanese Emperors but was initially held in great suspicion by both performers and 'the market'.
Sound Revolutions: A Biography of Fred Gaisberg (Paperback) by Jerrold Northrop Moore (Sanctuary Publishing)
Telstar (Nick Moran's film of his play) telling the story of Brit recording maverick Joe Meek opens next week with great performances all round, and whilst the film never 'flies' leaving its 'stage world', this sad tale cannot help affecting the viewer about the worlds of creativity and conformity. Also worth checking out the doco A Life in the Death of Joe Meek (2008 Raindance Film Fest).

BBC Radio 3's Reith Lectures- A New Citizenship: Professor Michael Sandel delivers four lectures about the prospects of a new politics of the common good.(2nd lecture on Saturday) When should we use markets. It's not enough to think about efficiency but the right way of valuing goods. Debate case by case the moral meaning of these goods and not indulge in market triumphalism; in having that debate now lies the hope for moral and civic renewal.

my kingdom for a runcible spoon

Tonight at the Palazzo Zenobioin in Venice is the last night to catch Margaret Leng Tan giving the world premiere of an Allan Kaprow piece as part of a 3-day program dedicated to John Cage and Kaprow. The sneak preview of the score and the performance I was luckily granted boded well for the evening.
Margaret on YouTube
Her DVD

Boris Johnson's piano plan hit the right note for London?
The novelist Susan Hill argues on Start the Week that we have failed to teach our children how to appreciate silence. Silence, Please is in the June edition of Standpoint magazine.

Blood, oil and designer rugs: the world's top artists get set for the Venice Biennial
Video art triumphs at the Venice Biennale
Steve McQueen presents a new 30 minute film Giardini (timed entry and restricted seating for the British Pavilion)
Steve McQueen preview in The Telegraph
The Guardian's Adrian Searle gives an atmospheric 8 min audio review
Front Row talks to UAE pavilion curator Tirdad Zolghadr and to Dubai-born artist Lamya Gargash about her photographs of one-star hotels in the Emirates.
Meet the British (BBC4) are films made by the government between the end of the war and the 1980s in order to promote Britain abroad.
Last days of Kuniyoshi at the Royal Academy of Arts until 7 June

'Birdsong' radio station taken off air
Where have all our birds gone?

Yet another minister quits Gordon Brown's UK Government but last week the Prime Minister found time to phone Simon Cowell to check up on Susan Boyle
Who's to blame for Susan Boyle's distress?
Her sadness - and our shame
"I hate this show" she screams before going to rehab

Sugar (from Half Nelson writer-directors Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden) opens in London today. GreenCine's New York podcast interview


Roberto Benigni brings the beauty of Dante to North America in TuttoDante
BBC bosses almost lost faith in 'disgusting' Monty Python
Trash the blue or green screen for Stephen Colbert who lands in Iraq reality for his new shows. Some of us like being color coordinated, though.

And for something completely different classical tenor Mark Padmore on the enduring appeal of Britain's musical bard of bleakness, John Dowland
Simon Schama celebrates the life and work of love poet John Donne
The Telegraph interview

The Guardian on why Wildworks staging the end of the world in Devonport's docks
The Trial of Charles I on BBC Radio 4's In Our Time (June 4)
Interview with Stephen Daldry (The Film Programme) coinciding with the DVD release of The Reader
Lawrence Anthony tells the story of how he took on a herd of traumatised elephants in his book The Elephant Whisperer. And Jerry Springer on his West End debut on BBC Radio 4's Midweek. Now there's an aural segue.
A discussion with the neuroscientist author of a book imagining forty different scenarios for the afterlife, and with Brian Eno, who has written a musical score for a live performance of Tales from the Afterlife.

meanwhile, I will try to compose my pensées...