Imperial Pour fundraiser offers wine, art with a sip of culture
L ocals will have an opportunity to sip on hand-selected wines and learn some history next week at the Imperial Calcasieu Museum's The Imperial Pour.
From 6-8 p.m. on June 27, ICM is offering an inaugural artful wine-tasting experience.
Guests will be treated to six wine pours and pairings, curated by Ryan Kennedy, a Lake Charles-based sommelier. While sipping, they can enjoy after-hours access to the exhibitions on display at the museum: 'Through the Lines,' 'El Nuevo Constante: Shipwrecked' and 'The Conde Antique Corkscrew Collection.'
'Through the Lines' features pieces from ICM's permanent collection, which showcases foundational Louisiana artists like John James Audubon, Boyd Cruise and Angela Gregory. 'El Nuevo Constante: Shipwrecked' is a historical collection that includes recovered artifacts from a Spanish merchant vessel that sank near the coast in 1766.
'Te Conde Antique Corkscrew Collection' is a one-night-only first look at a collection of 'ornate and rare' historic corkscrews, said ICM creative specialist Anna Alamond.
'These exhibitions offer a meaningful backdrop to the evening, blending art, history and heritage in true Southwest Louisiana spirit,' she said.
The Imperial Pour was conceived by a desire to share the love of art, history and community ties with Southwest Louisiana.
'We wanted to create a moment to come together, celebrate our rich cultural heritage, and raise a glass to the people who support and sustain it,' she said.
Out of the more than 200 antique corkscrews that will be on display, Alamond said five standouts will be featured in a silent auction, such as a mother-of-pearl perfume corkscrew, a Civil War-era bullet mold/corkscrew combo built and 'The Surprise, a playful perpetual motion piece that lives up to its name', she said.
The proceeds from the auction and the event admission support ICM's arts and humanities programming and keep the museum's mission, Alamond said.
'The Imperial Calcasieu Museum is all about shining a spotlight on local art and history, but more than that, we aim to spark passion and curiosity in the stories and artifacts we all share here in Southwest Louisiana. Through our exhibitions and programs, we want people to connect deeply with our community's culture and heritage, find something or someone who resonates deeply or connects them to another.'
Tickets are $75 and limited to those 21 years and older.
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USA Today
19 hours ago
- USA Today
America's fascination with the kiss cam: For better or worse, it's here to stay
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The couple seen on the screen "could have saved themselves from worldwide derision had they waved and looked like, 'This is no big deal,'" Schwartz said. "But they took the second instinct, which was to flee. And that was the funny one." 'It could have been a vanilla, fleeting moment,' Resnick agreed. 'However, their reaction told a story." The episode illustrated how kiss cams have provoked occasional embarrassment and controversy since their debut. In addition to outing potential infidelities, their use in the past has been accused of pressuring unwilling participants to take part and shamed for promoting homophobia by showing same-sex couples for laughs. It also showed the hazards of baring private matters in public in the age of kiss cams, smartphones and social media. 'The expectation of privacy at a public event has never existed, and today, with camera ubiquity, it's preposterous for anyone to take that position,' Resnick said. More often, though, kiss cams offer those attending live events the chance to score a cameo in their own experience, claiming part or even all of those 15 seconds of fame once foretold for all of us. The power of those moments, Resnick said, lies in their organic nature. 'Authenticity can't be staged in real time,' he said. 'It resonates in the social zeitgeist.' Kiss cams 'an important metric' of acceptance The kiss cam's evolution hasn't been without its stumbles. In 2015, Syracuse University discontinued its kiss cam feature after a letter to the local newspaper cited a pair of troubling instances at the football team's game against Wake Forest. Steve Port of Manlius, N.Y., wrote that the kiss cam segment had twice featured young women who expressed unwillingness to participate but were forced to anyway, either by their male counterpart or by surrounding students. Meanwhile, a dozen or so years have passed since some major league sports franchises were accused of promoting homophobia by using kiss cams to poke fun at other teams. In those cases, after featuring a series of smooching male-female couples, the kiss cam segments ended by focusing on two of the home team's rival players, or even fans – suggesting they might kiss, and that doing so would be comedic. As a fan of the NFL's Jacksonville Jaguars complained after such a segment in a 2013 letter to team owner Shahid Khan, initially reported by Outsports: 'Hilarious, right? No, and the message is clear. Jaguars are heterosexual and approved. The opponent is 'gay,' disapproved and the butt of a crude joke.' A year earlier, pitcher Brandon McCarthy of Major League Baseball's Oakland A's had similarly condemned the practice after a game against the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. 'They put two guys on the 'Kiss Cam' tonight,' McCarthy posted on the social platform now known as X. 'What hilarity!! (by hilarity I mean offensive homophobia). Enough with this stupid trend.' Later, McCarthy — now sporting director for the USL Championship's Phoenix Rising FC — told the San Francisco Chronicle: "If there are gay people who are coming to a game and seeing something like that, you can't assume they're comfortable with it. If you're even making a small group of people ... feel like outcasts, then you're going against what makes your model successful." Before long, franchises were striving to be more inclusive, and in 2015, MLB's New York Mets told the Huffington Post they would no longer feature opposing players in their kiss cam segments; that same year, the Dodgers included a gay couple in its kiss cam. 'Kiss cams are an important metric in measuring how acceptable certain people are in a given community,' said Stephanie Bonvissuto, an adjunct assistant professor of women's and gender studies at Hunter College and Brooklyn College, both part of the City University of New York system. In early 2017, the Ad Council's 'Love Has No Labels' campaign produced a commercial featuring kiss cam footage from that year's NFL Pro Bowl in Orlando, Florida, where 49 people had been killed seven months earlier in a mass shooting at gay nightclub Pulse. 'Kiss Cams have been a part of sports culture for years,' the opening text read, but at that game, it continued, they 'became part of something bigger.' The images showed pairs of individuals, outlined by a heart, broadcast on Camping World Stadium's giant screens. Friends were featured. So, too, were same-sex and interracial couples. Then the camera zoomed in on two women in the stands, one of them wearing a shirt reading 'Orlando survivor.' The two turned and kissed, to the crowd's delight. Still, Bonvissuto said it's still rare to see LGBTQ couples featured on kiss cams beyond Pride Night events. While cautioning that she hasn't seen any statistics on such representation, she said the footage she's viewed largely features white, able-bodied and seemingly cisgender individuals. 'Kiss cams act as a means to exclude certain people,' she said. 'They're incredibly important in thinking about representation — who we're seeing and not seeing.' 'Socially acceptable' voyeurism But for the most part, kiss cams have offered streams of harmless fun, fodder for highlight and blooper reels and glimpses into the relationships of everyone from fellow citizens to celebrities and sitting and former U.S. presidents. Kiss cams, said BYU's Darowski, offer audiences the constant thrill of knowing they could be onscreen combined with 'a socially acceptable, safe form of voyeurism that is traditionally taboo.' The presumed authenticity of couples' raw, unrehearsed reactions is key, too, he said. 'So much of our entertainment is highly mediated, edited and packaged for our consumption,' he said. It doesn't always play out as planned – and not all of it is necessarily genuine, thanks to some sports teams' creative minds. Many couples share crowd-pleasing kisses. Others, not so much. Some, snubbed by their companions, stomp off in a huff or peck adjacent fans instead, while youthful pairs looking to lock lips are thwarted by chaperoning adults. Whether any of it is staged doesn't matter much. Fans and audiences alike have enjoyed their moment in the limelight. Resnick, of 15 Seconds of Fame, recalled a moment in June 2024 after a Dallas Mavericks loss in game five of the NBA Finals. The arena cameras zeroed on a fan tearful over the outcome. While it wasn't part of the kiss cam feature, 'the minute he saw himself on the Jumbotron, he smiled and kissed the girl (who was) with him,' Resnick said. 'That's all you need to know about what those 15 seconds mean to fans.'
Business Insider
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MrBeast's plan to reach a new generation of fans
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San Francisco Chronicle
a day ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
Woman caught in Coldplay ‘Kiss Cam' embrace resigns from tech company
A senior human resources executive at a New York-based tech firm has stepped down after a moment of unintentional viral fame at a Coldplay concert exposed her in a compromising embrace with the company's CEO. Kristin Cabot, formerly chief people officer at Astronomer, resigned this week following the abrupt departure of CEO Andy Byron, who had quit after initially being placed on leave. The resignations come in the wake of a July 16 Coldplay concert at Gillette Stadium in the Boston suburb of Foxborough, where the pair were unexpectedly caught on the venue's kiss cam. 'Kristin Cabot is no longer with Astronomer, she has resigned,' company spokesperson Taylor Jones confirmed in a brief statement. The footage, now widely shared online, shows Byron and Cabot smiling and leaning into one another before reacting in panic upon seeing themselves on the Jumbotron. Cabot recoils, hands to her face, while Byron ducks out of the frame. 'Either they're having an affair or they're just very shy,' Coldplay frontman Chris Martin, narrating the moment, quipped. Astronomer soon confirmed their identities and launched an internal investigation. Their profiles were quietly removed from the company website, along with a news release announcing Cabot's hiring. While the episode marked a corporate scandal for Astronomer, it had an unexpected upside for Coldplay; the band's streaming numbers jumped by 25% in the days following the incident, according to Luminate. 'While I would never have wished for it to happen like this,' interim CEO Pete DeJoy reflected in a LinkedIn post, 'Astronomer is now a household name.'
