The Coolest People in the Arts: 250 Anecdotes and Stories

This is a short, quick, and easy read.

Most of these anecdotes are probably just OK (humor is hard!), but there should be at least one or two that you will want to tell your friends.

Anecdotes are retold in my own words to avoid plagiarism.

Most of these anecdotes are meant to be funny, but some are meant to be thought-provoking.

Some Samples:

- Johnny Brewton is the creator behind the zine X-Ray, each issue of which consists of 226 copies, each one at least slightly different. It was definitely an artistic project, and lifetime subscribers included the J. Paul Getty Museum, the rare book department of S.U.N.Y. at Buffalo, and the University of Wisconsin. One contributor was Hunter S. Thompson, who helped create the cover of X-Ray #4 by putting on lipstick and kissing a few copies and by shooting a bullet through every copy. (The cover was a photograph of Marilyn Chambers holding a box of Ivory Snow.) Another contributor to X-Ray was Charles Bukowski, who impressed Mr. Brewton with his work ethic: Mr. Brewton wrote Mr. Bukowski on a Monday requesting some poems, and by that Saturday -- not even a week later -- he received an envelope containing some poems. Mr. Brewton says about Mr. Bukowski, "I was amazed at how generous he was -- he really gave back a lot and supported small presses; he taught me a lot about professionalism and deadlines. He was always on time." Yet another contributor was Timothy Leary. Mr. Leary's publicist, however, in a phone conversation told Mr. Brewton, "Mr. Leary has to charge one dollar per word for articles and stories. Are you sure you want to do this?" Because the zine made basically zero money, Mr. Brewton sarcastically replied, "That fits my budget perfectly! I'll buy one word." The publicist asked, "Which word do you want?" Mr. Brewton replied, "I don't know. Have Mr. Leary decide." The publicist spoke to Mr. Leary, and Mr. Brewton overheard Mr. Leary say, "That's great! Yes! I pick the word 'Chaos' -- that's my piece!" Mr. Brewton titled the work "A One Word Dosage from Dr. Timothy Leary" and put a card saying "Chaos" inside a pill envelope -- each of the 226 copies of the issue contained the one-word contribution.

- In her autobiography, I'm Not Making This Up, You Know, Anna Russell writes that sometimes during performances she used to wear a gown that had "a big pouffe of tulle at the back of the skirt, making a little train." During an appearance in San Francisco, her accompanist accidentally stepped on the train, pulling out the long length of tulle. Much later, during an appearance in London, Ms. Russell was wearing the same dress, but she had a new accompanist, whom she forgot to warn about her train. Once again, her accompanist accidentally stepped on her train, pulling out the long length of tulle. After the performance, an American sailor came backstage and said that he enjoyed her work, but he especially enjoyed the part at the end, when her accompanist stepped on her train. Ms. Russell explained that that had been an accident, not part of the show, but the sailor replied, "The h*ll it was an accident. I saw you do it in San Francisco."

- American dance pioneer Ted Shawn came up with an original way to stop obesity in the United States. Simply require everyone to stand for one hour per year naked in public -- vanity would soon make obesity vanish.