Context & Continuity

Holy Smokes! Stoppard + Pink Floyd + BBC = ? (It doesn't matter because I'm all in.)

Folks!  We have reason to celebrate:

We already know that,in his play Rock 'n Roll, Syd Barrett appeared off stage and played an important hinge in the story.  We also know that Stoppard has written quite a bit for the BBC, both original works and adaptations of his plays.  Maybe you know that this year is the 40th anniversary of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon.  --You can see where this is going, right? 

Yes, you are correct:  Stoppard has written a radio play based on Dark Side of the Moon that was commissioned by BBC 2 to commemorate the albums anniversary.  According the the Telegraph, it took Stoppard four decades to get around to writing this work.  (I'm a bit skeptical of that.) 

Haven't heard enough to be convinced, Bill Nighy and Rufus Sewell will perform in the production that will be aired in August of this year.  [more here on all that]

Now, some of you might be aksing your self, "Well that's just great, but how am I supposed to enjoy it?"  Well, there are probably several options available to you. 

• Listen to the program live, over the internet.
• Wait for someone to post a .tor of the program to the net. 

That's right, most of Stoppard's radio work is available that way now.  And, given my own enthusiasm and technical chops, I might be able to aid and abet the cause.  --Of course, I wouldn't put it past the BBC just to post the file themselves for on-deman listeners. 

Whatever the case, please be assured that you humble servant will keep you up-to-date on time, coordinates and availability. 

By the way, if you haven't seen Stoppard's adaptation of Parade's End, do try and catch up with it.  Rebecca Hall was stunning as Sylvia Tietjens and Benedict Cumberbatch was superb as Christopher Tietjens.  I think that Ms. Hall outshined Mr. Cumberbatch but that's a function of the characters and the story, not a reflection on their acting skills. 

And... (I feel as if I'm playing "catch up" as I haven't posted for so long) ... please make an effort to see Anna Karenina.  I made the mistake of not seeing it in the theater, but even on the small screen it was very impressive.  Stoppard wrote the screenplay which was excellent of course, but Joe Wright should receive special kudos for coming up with the idea of staging scenes with the White Russian Aristocracy in a theater and the scenes with Peasants in a "realistic" setting.  The staging was an absolutely perfect way to highlight / communicate that the aristocracry were leading a "make-believe" or artificial life.  So, given the setting of the movie and this tension created between the aristocracy and proletariat, the movie seems like a prelude to Stoppard's Coast of Utopia.  As I'm prone to exageration and superlatives, you shouldn't be surprise when I writing something along the lines of:  Anna Karenina is to The Coast of Utopia as Das Rheingold is to Der Ring des Nibelungen.  Well, maybe a little bit. 

Ada Louise Huxtable: Of Blessed Memory...

As very long time ago, in an office near the top of Three Park Avenue, a group of people were busy publishing a new book by Paul Goldberger, the "new" architecture critic of the NYTimes.  The book was entitled On The Rise and the publishing company was New York Times Books.  Everyone was quite excited about the book and it turned out to be a good one.  But I do remember one editor remarking to the other, "Yes, he's quite good but he's no Ada Louise Huxtable."

If nothing else, Goldberger deserved a lifetime achievement award for just sitting down in Ms. Huxtable's chair.  As it stands, he too has won a Pulitzer prize and has put together an impressive career.  But he'll never be Ada Louise Huxtable because she was the very first and that's a position no one else can assume.  But to write that Huxtable was "just" the first short changes her an entire treasury of accomplishments that others have better summarized elsewhere. 

The only point I want to make here, in my own humble space, is that Ms. Huxtable -- through a unique combination of will, talent, and taste -- elevated the consideration of contemporary architecture from engineering to art.  If it had not been for Huxtable (and her esteemable successor) the conversations about the AT&T building, Pan Am building, Seagram building and many others -- they never would have taken place at all. 

When I went to school in Cambridge, Mass., I met a fellow named Tom Pecoraro, also of blessed memory.  Tom had a test he administered a personality test to everyone he met for the first time:  "Do you prefer the Empire State Building or the Chrysler Building?"  Without Ms. Huxtable, Tom wouldhave had to ask us if we were Gershwin or Porter people or something else entirely.

Thank you so much, Ms. Huxtable. 

Gangnam Style: Thoughtfulness...

Because a public relations person has to find an excuse...  Herewith a technical analysis...

The notorious video was posted on 7.15.12.  Here's a look at embeds for the video:

In other words, PSY hasn't jumped the shark just yet.

I'm Sorry: All About Corporate Apologies.

Wharton Review has published a fascinating story on corporate apologies.  For example...

Companies must use their apologies carefully, Wharton marketing professor Stephen Hoch cautioned in the 2002 Knowledge@Wharton article referenced earlier. When a company is apologizing for a mistake to a group of people, such as customers, who know about the mistake, then the “right way to do it is to spill your guts, lay the negatives on the table and then try to refute those negatives,” he noted. It’s a kind of “boomerang approach, turning the negative into a positive …” Yet, he advised against firms apologizing to all and sundry, since they tend to deal with heterogeneous sets of customers. “In fact, a massive apology can be risky.”

Highly recommended. 

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Business Leadership: It's Getting Younger All the Time

Thought you might be interested in this infographic.  As boomers get older and start to retire, then leadership will be confered onto Millennials at an unprecedented pace.