WATCH: Stage Metamorphoses
Posted on October 12, 2017 - 5:15pm
Arts + Letters
The Longest-Running Friendship in Comics
Comics writers aren’t generally household names these days, but Matt Groening is close. For those who can’t quite place the name, say, “The guy who made The Simpsons,” and they’ll usually respond, “Oh, yeah!”
Posted on October 6, 2017 - 2:08pm
Debugging the Novel
When Vikram Chandra started writing his best-selling novel, Sacred Games (2006), he knew it was going to be a big book. And he was right: All told, the novel is 947 pages, includes over 100 characters, and spans a 60-year timeline. To make the writing process smoother, Chandra set out to find a software program he could use to store, organize, and keep track of the details of his novel. But no off-the-shelf program met his needs.
From the Fall 2017 Bugged issue of California.
Five Questions for National Geographic Photographer Anand Varma
1 Some people would say you have the best job in the world, shooting photographs for National Geographic. How did you get from Cal to where you are now?
From the Fall 2017 Bugged issue of California.
Five Questions for Joyce Carol Oates
1 There may be one thing that you and Donald Trump agree on: Both of you seem to love Twitter. Since October 5, 2012, you have tweeted nearly 58,000 times and have a staggering 180,000 followers. Why do you find Twitter such a compelling medium for self-expression?
From the Fall 2017 Bugged issue of California.
Programming Art: Ian Cheng’s ‘Emissary’ at the Museum of Modern Art
How to describe artist Ian Cheng’s current exhibit at MoMA PS 1, a Brooklyn-based branch of the world-famous Museum of Modern Art in New York City? Imagine a projection on the wall, as wide as a tractor trailer, depicting chaos … with a story.
Posted on September 18, 2017 - 1:03pm
An Entomological Etymology
Over the centuries, bug has become an astonishingly versatile little word, with roughly six common meanings and 170 slang uses. But why? Where did the word come from and how did it manage to so infest the English language?
The question was buggin’ me, so I called up Geoffrey Nunberg, renowned linguist and professor at the Berkeley School of Information, to see what he could tell me.
From the Fall 2017 Bugged issue of California.
A Disruption in The Force: Peter Nicks’s New Documentary Has a Hella Big Plot Twist
Pete Nicks thought he knew what he was getting into when he started filming the Oakland Police Department in the fall of 2014. The department had long been under the thumb of a federal judge due to a series of lawsuits exposing poor management and pervasive abuses, but the OPD had a new chief who seemed poised to reform the troubled department.
Posted on September 6, 2017 - 1:23pm
The Role of Race in Race Roles: Amir Talai in An Octoroon
Actor Amir Talai says his mass communications courses at UC Berkeley taught him to think about how the choices he makes affect society. In particular, he considers whether the roles he’s offered may perpetuate negative stereotypes.
Posted on July 26, 2017 - 4:48pm
Janos Wilder: A Chef’s Journey from Pizza to Paris by Way of Tucson
When UNESCO named Tucson, Arizona a World City of Gastronomy in Dec. 2015, the first U.S. city so named, it put this small desert city on the global map. It also gave a boost to one of its top chefs, Janos Wilder.
Posted on July 11, 2017 - 1:04pm
Spirited Away: the Life of the Ghostwriter
The year was 1986, and Barbara Feinman Todd was a writer in disguise. Her mission? To crash a party— the 45th wedding anniversary of the director of the CIA, being held at the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C. No press was allowed, but it was her job to find out who the guests were.
From the Summer 2017 Adaptation issue of California.
Five Questions for UC Berkeley Librarian Jeffrey MacKie-Mason
1 How did you become the university librarian?
From the Summer 2017 Adaptation issue of California.
This Berkeley Painter Is the Best Surrealist You’ve Never Heard Of
This summer, the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA) will be presenting the first US museum retrospective of artist Charles Howard’s work since 1946, charting the trajectory of his career from the early 1920s to the 1960s. Howard was a prominent figure in the surrealist and abstract art movements, and brought together the European and American movements of his time.
Posted on June 15, 2017 - 3:29pm
WATCH: Flashback to When the New US Poet Laureate Read at Cal
In describing poet Tracy K. Smith’s work, Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden says: “Her work travels the world and takes on its voices; brings history and memory to life; calls on the power of literature as well as science, religion and pop culture. With directness and deftness, she contends with the heavens or plumbs our inner depths—all to better understand what makes us most human.” Hayden named Smith the 22nd U.S. poet laureate this Wednesday.
Posted on June 14, 2017 - 3:56pm
Vijay Iyer Jazzes Up the Ojai at Berkeley Music Festival
A couples counselor could have warned Vijay Iyer that the relationship was doomed, but he needed to figure it out for himself. When he arrived at UC Berkeley in the summer of 1992 to start a graduate program in physics, Iyer was also nursing a simmering passion for jazz. The pianist quickly started connecting with some of the Bay Area’s leading improvisers, and after two years, he found himself in something of a crisis—uninspired by his academic courses while increasingly drawn to intensive jazz sessions.
Posted on June 5, 2017 - 11:31am
Pages
