Word: backgrounder
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Broadway songwriters usually like to stay in the background and let others do the singing. But Stephen Sondheim, the acclaimed composer and lyricist of shows from West Side Story to Into the Woods, has just released a new CD, Sondheim Sings (PS Classics), made up of early recordings on which he performs his songs. He talked with TIME's theater critic Richard Zoglin...
...strips, the period when "Gasoline Alley" had just started to appear as a four panel strip after beginning in 1919 as a series of single gag panels. Gorgeously designed and printed on heavy, off-white paper Walt and Skeezix also comes with a rich trove of photos and archival background material, making this weighty brick of a book a revelation. "Gasoline Alley" clearly belongs in the cannon as a deeply American masterwork of cartooning...
...Skeezix, the cast of central characters includes Avery, the penny-pincher, Bill the affable mechanic, and Doc, "adviser to the alley both as to physical ailments and mechanical ills." Women, at least at first, have only minor roles, with two exceptions. Mrs. Blossom, an attractive young lady of mysterious background appears halfway through this first volume to create some tension with the determined bachelor Walt. These sorts of plot developments - another involves a phony oil futures huckster - give the strip a narrative drive that take it well beyond a mere joke a day about cars and kids and into soap...
Meanwhile, liberal activist groups are not exactly sitting idle. At the Alliance for Justice, a Washington-based coalition of more than 70 organizations, staff members have been examining speeches, judicial opinions and background information on about 15 potential nominees. People for the American Way has a 2,500-sq.-ft. "war room" in Washington with 40 computer workstations and 75 phones to help its staff members stay in touch with local activists across the country. An e-mail with an embedded hyperlink flashed from the room to 400,000 people around the U.S. last week. "If Bush gives his base...
...Nominee?s Paperwork: The nominee completes paperwork concerning finances and personal background...