If pregnancy were a musical composition, finding out whether you're having a boy or a girl would be the coda. Indeed, "Do you know what you're having?" is probably the question lobbed most frequently at pregnant women, right up there with, "When are you due?" So news that a Canadian couple is raising their third child "genderless" in what amounts to a grand social experiment has set parental tongues a-wagging.
Gender is so central to parents' concept of their unborn children that most moms- and dads-to-be can't even wait until delivery day to learn what they're having. A 2007 Gallup poll found that 66% of 18-to-34-year-olds said they would choose to learn their baby's sex before seeing their newborn's birthday suit for the first time.
Yet Kathy Witterick and her husband, David Stocker, have kept their baby Storm's gender a secret. The only people who know are one family friend and Storm's older brothers, Jazz, 5, and Kio, 2. (Not surprisingly, the two midwives who delivered Storm on New Year's Day are in the know as well.)
A lengthy feature last week in the Toronto Star profiled the family and their quest to raise their baby unfettered by the rules of pinks and blues. The couple began by sending out an email after Storm's birth: "We've decided not to share Storm's sex for now — a tribute to freedom and choice in place of limitation, a stand up to what the world could become in Storm's lifetime (a more progressive place? ...)."...
I still have a hangover from The Hangover Part II. Initially it went down a lot like 2009's The Hangover, which is to say, tasteless and comically potent. Three men again retrace their missteps of their blacked out previous night, looking for a missing member of a wedding party as the ceremony approaches. Set in Thailand, the sequel is darker and tawdrier than the original and not quite as uproarious. Aiming for replication, it can't help being mannered. Every dirty word arrives with a sense of calculated bravado; every gander at flapping male genitalia might as well be accompanied by trumpets.
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LOS ANGELES—To the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, Revok is a renowned artist whose bright, sprawling work is worthy of display in its latest exhibit. To the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, Revok is Jason Williams, also known as inmate No. 2714221. Last month, Mr. Williams was sentenced to 180 days in county jail as a result of a probation violation from a graffiti incident, just days after the opening of a major museum exhibit dedicated to "street art" that features his work. Unable to post his $320,000 bail, Mr. Williams sat in jail for four days before the sentencing. It may be illegal on the street, but inside the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, a new exhibit celebrates the history of graffiti, featuring work by artists like Banksy and Shepard Fairey. WSJ's Tammy Audi reports. Law-enforcement officials around the country are prosecuting graffiti artists with harsher sentences than ever, pushing for felony charges, real prison time and restitution payments as they seek to wipe graffiti from the streets. At the same time, the art world and corporations are embracing the form like never before. "You can make a case that graffiti and street art is the most influential art movement since the great innovations of the '60s," says Jeffrey Deitch, director of the L.A. museum, known as MOCA. "Before this show, no American museum had ever done an ambitious historical exhibition."...Work by artists Revok and Rime is part of an exhibition at MOCA in Los Angeles. The artist known as Revok is in an L.A. jail on charges related to a graffiti incident.
