Comedy is having a moment. You can’t really talk about the vaunted New Golden Platinum Age of Television without reference to Louis C.K., Amy Schumer or Amy Poehler. Political discourse takes cues from Jon Stewart and John Oliver. The Internet, which drives the world, is three-quarters comedy (figure approximate). Tina Fey and Mindy Kaling write memoirs that also serve as manifestos, and the Children of Apatow sew their seeds through the culture, on multiple platforms.We are also in a time when

The Bone ClocksBy David Mitchell (Random House)Count on David Mitchell ― whose novels regularly suggest a Borgesian library ― to invoke one of the most famous literary labyrinths of all in “The Bone Clocks,” his extraordinary new novel:“Half way along our journey to life’s end I found myself astray in a dark wood,” admits one of Mitchell’s protagonists ― invoking the opening of Dante’s “The Divine Comedy” to describe his midlife crisis, which prominently features the decline of his once-promisin

Half of What I Say is MeaninglessBy Joseph Bathanti (Mercer University Press)It’s 1976, and Joseph Bathanti, former North Carolina poet laureate, is leaving his native Pittsburgh in a 1969 VW Beetle that lacks a reverse gear. He is 23 and heading to the mythic South to work as a VISTA volunteer.In this land of extemporaneous prayer and exotic inflections (“On was own.” “Can’t was caint.”), life instantly begins to revise itself for the young transplant. “I was,” he writes in a new collection of

New Culture Minister Kim Jong-deok said Wednesday that hallyu was bound to lose its appeal unless it moves on from its current cookie-cutter style and content. “Hallyu is now driven mostly by (the popularity of a small bunch of) entertainers (the so-called hallyu stars,)” he told a group of reporters in Seoul on Wednesday. But that’s not a sustainable strategy.Speaking at his first press conference since taking office on Aug. 21, the minister stressed the need for genuine cultural exchange and c

‘Istanbul in Gyeongju 2014’ takes visitors to historic places in Istanbul; presents diverse Turkish cultural performances

Alexy Levykin has dedicated most of his life to the preservation of Russian history.As a former supervisor of studies at the Moscow Kremlin Museum for nearly 10 years and now the director of The State Historical Museum, Levykin is a firm believer that museums are gateways to both the past and the future. “The human memory is the guarantor of preservation and development of personality,” he said. “The museum is a place where it is necessary to go periodically and discover something new every time

Annual Culture Communication Forum discusses Korea through multinational lens

Aside from being the largest museum in the Western Hemisphere, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City is one of the most renowned and best-known museums in the world, attracting more than 6.2 million visitors every year. As the Met’s chief audience development officer, Donna Williams says she has had a number of opportunities to work closely with her local Korean-American community, adding that the establishment of its Asia Wing has “built a very big connection” with it. “We had this wo

SACRAMENTO ― Thanks to California’s chronic drought and watering restrictions, there’s no shortage of dry, dusty-brown lawns. And that’s led to a growth in business for a remedy that doesn’t involve wasting water or risking fines: lawn painting.Using nontoxic, emerald-hued paints, lawn painters can transform even completely dead lawns to look about as lush as a golf green.On a recent summer afternoon, David Bartlett, owner of Xtreme Green Grass, stood on the yellowing grass of a Folsom home, a b

SEATTLE ― As an eager, if nervous, ninth-grader, Anya Meleshuk allowed several older girls to blindfold her one afternoon, put her in a car and drive her to a park where she was told to “propose” to a stranger. Later, dressed in fairy wings, she downed a dozen flavors of ice cream while her friends watched, and went home afterward feeling as if she had been accepted, initiated into Garfield High School, where such “froshing” has a storied history.Many alumni cherish similar memories and were out

LOS ANGELES ― They rumble by night, these bikers.Dressed in heavy leather jackets and gloves, long hair streaming from under their helmets, they straddle smoking black-and-chrome motorcycles, waiting for the signal.Finally, it comes: “All right, ladies. Let’s ride!”On a hot Tuesday night, Stacie B. London had come to Silver Lake’s Casbah Cafe to meet her East Side Moto Babes riding club for their weekly cruise.London is one of a growing number of women who have taken up the sport with vigor. Mor