How to make staff meetings more effective

In a statement, Dayna Frank, NIVA’s president, and the owner and CEO of First Avenue Productions, said: “Since the pandemic shuttered our industry almost a year ago, our buildings and our co-workers have been paused, unutilized, and struggling. These vaccines are our best chance at putting Covid-19 behind us, and our experiences organizing events and managing crowds now put us in the unique position of being the best prepared and most qualified industry to support the vaccination effort and get this country on the road to recovery.” … [Read more...] about NIVA, AEG, Live Nation, More Offer Venues and Staff to Help Covid-19 Vaccination Efforts

The Taiwanese-American says she’s proud of the way the show portrays the cast, adding that the fashion and fights are really just a front for deeper conversations. “I think that while the show leads with glitz and glamor, and that is maybe the clickbait or hook, it really retains [the audience] with heart and laughter,” says Chiu, who also serves as a producer on the series. “I’ve taken a couple of hits, as you can see on the show [and] it certainly pushed my personality in a way that, you know, creates more entertainment value, but it was both a necessary evil and also a fun and wild adventure for a greater purpose. I wanted to incorporate more voices and faces that represent Asian perspectives, values, morals, traditions [and] pressures into pop culture, and into the pop-culture discussion in America.” … [Read more...] about Netflix’s ‘Bling Empire’ Is a Celebration of Culture — Clad in Couture

And there’s no state and local aid. We didn’t take away from state and local aid; the Republicans just wouldn’t fit it in there. But I don’t feel like our priority somehow hurt others or I wouldn’t have supported it. It’s just that they didn’t want to go for certain things and we’re going to have to do that next year. But I think [the SOS Act] is one of the few things that was basically put together in July that got in there. … [Read more...] about ‘We Saved the Music’: Amy Klobuchar on Getting $15 Billion for Venues Into Stimulus Bill

“No, you’re not,” says Bree Mills, from her chair in her office. Via Zoom, she’s directing Deville in Future Darkly: Pandemic, the latest installment in the pornography production company Adult Time’s series of dystopian sci-fi films. “We are all shooting with our masks on, but we are not masturbating with the masks on,” says Mills. Deville nods and proceeds to enthusiastically masturbate in front of the camera, manned by two crew members, shooting one X-rated version of the scene and one R-rated version for release on YouTube, her nude body concealed underneath a sheet. Just moments earlier, she, the two crew members, and Mills were making small talk about going camping, the weirdest places Deville has had sex on camera (it’s a tie between a glacier and on the back of a truck in the middle of the Mojave) and an airplane passing by her home overhead. “One of the most important things to know about being on an adult set,” Mills … [Read more...] about Behind the Scenes of a Covid-Themed Zoom Porn

If these people who have taken an oath to protect and serve take on that true status of being a hero and not an overseer—not a guard, but a protector, a servant—and go back to that moment where they were just kids, where we just got along…Some people confuse my poem and say, “Well, you know, when you were a kid, there were still bad things going on.” Yes, of course. There were always bad things going on; there will always be bad things going on. But there were moments where we were removed from those things, and we just existed. How do we get to that point? As my brother, who’s now an officer, my sister, who’s now an officer, my Black brother, my white brother, my white sister, how do you remember [so that you can] get back to that humanity, to that moment when we just got along together? That childlike pureness is still somewhere within us, and if somehow we can all tap into that, maybe we can find our way back to each other. So, maybe … [Read more...] about ‘Cops And Robbers’ Directors Arnon Manor & Timothy Ware-Hill Call For Return To “Childlike Pureness” With Animated Short, Meditating On Racially-Motivated Police Violence