Is this the end of the vuvuzela? After a month of daytime drinking and armchair refereeing across the world, the FIFA World Cup is finally drawing to a close this week with the final game between the Netherlands and Spain. With the Americans and all African teams long since out of the running, it's time to scramble and pick a side to take before the final showdown. Helpful hint: unless you have money riding on the game, we give you permission to root for whichever team has the most attractive players, or comes from the country you'd most like to see on your next vacation. What can we say, if it works, it works!
Spain and The Netherlands
play the final game on Sunday, July 11.
He may be gone, but actor and lesser-known artist Dennis Hopper is not at all forgotten. Jeffrey Deitch's debut show as the director of Los Angeles' Museum of Contemporary Art will be a survey of the late Hopper's works and will be curated by fellow artist and acclaimed director Julian Schnabel. "Dennis is a very inspiring figure for me,"
Deitch told the Los Angeles Times of the subject of his first MOCA exhibition,
Dennis Hopper: Double Standard. "The American art world often likes to put artists into boxes. You're an artist, not a filmmaker. You're a photographer, not a painter. But Dennis shows you can blur those boundaries, which is very current and exciting." Despite Deitch and Schnabel's efforts to finish before Hopper passed on, the actor will not be there for the opening this week. But he did help select the abstract expressionist pieces included, from his iconic '60s photographs to more recent sculptural installations.
Dennis Hopper: Double Standard opens at the Museum of Contemporary Art on Sunday, July 11.
Imagine, if you will, that in the midst of his presidential schedule Barack Obama somehow found time to keep a diary. Now imagine that this diary fell into the hands of a conservative radio commentator. Major, right?
All The President's Men it isn't, but, Laura Ingraham's
The Obama Diaries will, inevitably, make more than its fair share of headlines. Proving that her imagination is as active as her conservative fanbase, the right-wing talking head has come up with the supposed diaries of the president and his inner circle, spoofing everything from his relentless branding to the first lady's "fabulosity." With plenty of controversial snippets to go around ("[Michelle Obama is] kind of like a black Hillary Clinton. I mean that in a good way," Ingraham writes in a section of Joe Biden's "diary"),
The Obama Diaries is bound to be the first thing you hear about when you flip on any cable news channel this week. Oh, boy.
The Obama Diaries
comes out on Tuesday, July 13.
Now that we've all gotten our fill of the World Cup, there's no better time to get back into something a little closer to home with the great American pastime, baseball. This week baseball's MVPs will all travel to Anaheim for the annual All-Star Game, pitting the best of the best from the American League and the National League against each other. Besides being a great excuse to load up on peanuts and Cracker Jacks, who isn't curious to see what happens when the likes of Ichiro, Derek Jeter, and David Ortiz all end up on one team?
The All-Star Game will be played at TK on Tuesday, July 13.
In a collaborative effort, New York's Museum of Modern Art partnered with the Art Institute of Chicago to pay homage to the four short years of Henri Matisse's career between his return from Morocco in 1913 and his leaving for Nice in 1917. It was during that time that the post-impressionist painter produced some of his more outstanding and experimental works that strayed from his signature bright colors and relatively distinct forms. Though his projects from the period have largely been cast off as an aberration of his life's works,
Matisse: Radical Invention, 1913–1917, opening at MoMA this week, shows there's more than meets the eye with the artists work from this short shift. After a successful run at the Art Institute of Chicago from March 20 through June 20, the exhibition of 120 paintings, sculptures, drawings, and prints, is making it to the East Coast through October 11, 2010. "The show's remarkable example (and first-rate catalog) suggests a profound understanding: Great artists know that the world is always already in the process of unraveling," the Los Angeles Times reviews. "During the epic convulsion of World War I, Matisse made sure his
radical inventiveness was commensurate to the gravity of the circumstance."
Matisse: Radical Invention, 1913-1917 opens at the Museum of Modern Art on Wednesday, July 14.
The Oscars of sports—and a bit of an oxymoron—goes live this week as
Saturday Night Live's Seth Meyers takes some time away from the "Weekend Update" desk to host the 18th annual ESPY Awards, which stands for "Excellence in Sports Performance Yearly." "If you asked anyone I played sports with as a kid they would tell you the only way Seth was making it to the ESPYs was as a host or presenter," Meyers, who presented last year with fellow
SNLer Andy Samberg,
joked to Access Hollywood of the gig. In addition to Meyers, ESPN's annual festivities include a bevy of your favorite athletes and the A-listers who love them—stars from Zac Efron to Will Ferrell to Samuel L. Jackson will be on hand to help present the awards from Los Angeles' Nokia Theater. Former host and his year's nominee newly announced Miami Heat player LeBron James is sure to be the focus of much of Meyers' banter. "I really like the idea of an entire hour of television being dedicated to a person naming one team," Meyers
joked to the Associated Press. But in all seriousness, he is a bit nervous. "What I'm most anxious about is, I've certainly joked about athletes before but never when they're actually physically there."
The 2010 ESPYs air on Wednesday, July 14 on ESPN at 9 p.m. EST on Wednesday, July 14.
If you're the type of person who crafts a soundtrack for every relationship, break-up, and make-up, Rob Sheffield has the book for you. The rock journalist, frequent VH1 talking head, and author of
Love is a Mixtape is back with
Talking to Girls About Duran Duran: One Young Man's Quest for True Love and a Cooler Haircut, a memoir of his New Wave-influenced teenage years. Looking back on the days when he worshipped Morrissey as a kind of deity and scrambled to crack the code of the teenage female mind, Sheffield both encapsulates the horror of the teenage experience and the bizarre pop cultural landscape of the '80s with equal parts dry wit and brutal honesty. A sometimes cringe-worthy trip down memory lane,
Talking to Girls About Duran Duran may be just what it takes to bring the Flock of Seagulls haircut back into vogue.
Talking to Girls About Duran Duran: One Young Man's Quest for True Love and a Cooler Haircut hits shelves on Thursday, July 15.
Harry Potter geeks of the world, it's that time of year where you can proudly take off your invisibility cloaks: Infinitus, the annual symposium for Harry Potter superfans, is back. 2010 is a momentous year for those of us who are still convinced that our letter from Hogwarts is coming any day now—the symposium will now be held in Orlando near the newly opened Wizard World of Harry Potter theme park, which features rides based on the books such as Flight of the Hippogriff. Infinitus kicks off with an old-fashioned game of Wizard Chess, and will later host "
Night of a Thousand Wizards", in which all the symposium's would-be Wizards get special access to the park. We'll hold off on any "magic is in the air" jokes for now.
Infinitus takes place from Thursday, July 15 through Sunday, July 18 in Orlando, Florida.
Besides their beloved Birkin bag and bangles, French designer Hermès' signature silk scarves have long been a representation of Paris' chic style. In her new book,
The Hermès Scarf: History & Mystique, French author Nadine Coleno assembles a beautiful selection of the gorgeous accessories spanning seven decades. Since the House of Hermès produced its first scarf in 1937, more than two thousand different designs have been made, ranging from the classic equestrian themes to more contemporary floral motifs. In her new hardcover book perfect for any fashionista's coffee table, Coleno explains how the scarves are crafted—from their creative inception to their placement in the most fashionable stores around the world.
The Hermès Scarf: History & Mystique by Nadine Coleno hits bookstores on Thursday, July 15.
While Paris is still cleaning up its catwalks after the most highly adorned garments took the spotlight at Haute Couture Fashion Week, the southern sun in Miami is now taking center stage for Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Swim. As many of us continue to weather the unbearable heat, the annual style celebration showcases the best beachwear for the 2011 season. From Trina Turk to Mara Hoffman to True Religion, designers send their more daring bikinis and innovative looks that are pool and ocean friendly. And what better place to do it than South Beach?
Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Miami Swim begins on Thursday, July 15.
