As the World Turns

I watched them build this number, and I was a little dubious about the heavy-handed "African-ness" of the mode. Now, as they begin to fill the apartments, I've had a change of heart. I think The Kalahari (on W. 116th) is tremendous (also eco-friendly). I wish more people were embracing masonry this way, making vibrant architectual textiles.

This Androgynous Baby is Damn Lucky

To Sir, With Love.

So it's official, apparently ... Beyonce will sing the first song to which Barack and Michelle Obama will dance as President and First Lady of The United States of America. All jokes about "Single Ladies" aside (although if Hillary danced to it afterwards ... Jehova, words can't describe), I have my vote on Sasha Fierce's anthem for the new America. I discovered this song while first exploring her album, shortly after it came out, and fell in a sort of fantasy love for it. It's beautiful and catchy and everything you'd like to tell that special someone, if only they existed.

With that said, I would very much like to dedicate this to President Obama and his bad-ass Lady. Admittedly, part of me is incredibly jealous of Michelle, because I can acknowledge that she's found the perfect man. I'm even more jealous when I realize that she's willing to share him with her country....

In any event, Mrs. HOVA has released a video for the song in question. Unfortunately, it won't embed... henceforth: here you go

Depeche Mode—Big Trail

Startling but really quite nice.

Depeche Mode—"I bought it for you in the Young Miss Department. It was very expensive."

If We Were In a Western

I just read a Scarlett Johanssen quote. She was being asked about dream roles or something. She said that every actor hopes to be in a Western (really?). She claims that she would play a madam at one of those saloon/whorehouse places, because "there's only so long people want to see me in a corset . . . blah blah blah." It led me to thinking. There are just a few plum roles for broads in frontier pictures (other than The Harvey Girls): Hooker with a Heart of Gold, Madam with a Heart Buried Beneath Years of Rough Men and Settling Dust, Virtuous, "Roman" Homesteading Wife. What role would you choose? The madam and wife have meat and purpose, are fodder for fine writing. But I still want to play the Hooker with a Heart of Gold (oh well) (blame Bob Dylan) (and Niel Young) (and Daniel Defoe).

Funny For Friday

Account for it here . . .

The Girl Can't Help It

I was not going to feel the need to actually defend Memphis against Hamilton Nolan and company. I was going to let it go the way of yesterday's news. But . . . this morning, wending my way to the train, it all came over me anew. You see, recently I've made a concerted effort to be less of a cynic. I don't think my old contempts were natural; they were a pose of youth. The opening and softening of my opinions and sensibilities has been revelatory, quite pleasant. However, even I was shocked at the "softness" of the thoughts occurring to me this A.M.: Memphians have poetical souls. Only poetically-souled people could love a dying city. The phrase "poetical souls" was a particular surprise. But there you have it.

Memphis is a tricky place. The crime rate is high, the gap between rich and poor enormous, the city government wicked and farcical. Much appears to be decaying about one, out of use, out of order, a lover struck with plague. But—partially because of, not in spite of its troubles—the place is full of human beauty and richness (if you don't trust the biased natives, just ask Jim Jarmusch or Cat Power). None of this artfulness is an accident. It is the product of the incredible highs and lows, near magical forces at work. It is the product of poetry, Memphian soulfulness. SOUL MUSIC!!!!! I may live in Brooklyn now, because it's where a young artist ought to be, but it's not for lack of love for my hometown or the glorious friends that I have there (Pillow and Alpha!). Look across this country and you will find so many places loved by poets, loved because of their inherent flaws and feats, downs and ups, loved without hope or promise. Where are you from Hamilton Nolan? What do you love? Are you one of those people who only love clean, easy, hermetically sealed places? Soulless places? Harrumph!

It would be pedantic of me to make a list of all of the great soul records made in Memphis, for there are many many many, but I will provide a snippet sampler (Otis at Monterey!):

Truth in Advertising For Friday

Nightcap

With the nastiness that's been floating around today, let's put ourselves to bed on a happier note. Sweet dreams ya'll.

Hamilton Nolan, YOU'RE a Hellhole!

. . . known Memphis-biggot Hamilton Nolan says our fair River City is a "hellhole" (link in Pillow's post below). Here's what else he has to say, on a blog called Hamilton Nolan Says Smart Shit (horrors!!).

FOR SHAME!

Thursday's sharp stick in the eye goes to Gawker's Hamilton Nolan, for being an ignorant shit-talker. Boo on you Hamilton, boo on you.

Unsettlement

There's an airplane in the Hudson right now. These passenger's accounts are pretty frightening.

Evening Update: The news reports now are even more difficult to digest. The plane is teathered at the battery and not a soul was harmed (barring a few cases of hypothermia), but any information about machines flying near the island is deeply unwelcome.

Best Thing Going (For Thursday)

Right here.

Remembrance For Thursday

Pimp Squad Clique

This photograph has cleared things up. Unlike some people, Paris Hilton doesn't take herself too seriously. She crafts a Big-in-Japan, cartoon blondness for effect. And after a bitter decade, I finally feel in on the joke. I can't hate. Not even a little bit.

They pander to me and I . . . like it?

A surprising redesign that has been pleasing me immensely--what do you think?

Actressville

Oh god! Oh God! I promised that I would stop ragging on Gwyneth and her lifestyle e-newsletter, GOOP. I even kept my mouth shut when she hurled insults at me last week. But today she sent round a report on NYC restaurants and hotels that ranged from obvious (yes, we all like Balthazar and Pearl's) to obvious (and gross too!--Cookshop is foul-town. I had the barfiest Rabbit trio there a few months back.). I know that she's from Manhattan and that most travellers consider Manhattan to be the whole of the city. But there are four other boroughs, and I, for one, could never profile the food in this town without mentioning them all (farm freshness in Brooklyn; the whole of Asia in Queens; delis in the Bronx; pizza on Staten Island). I'm a little confused. Sometimes she seems to broadly market her advice, and sometimes she seems only to be addressing those of us who need a place to crash for $700 a night while we renovate our West Village carriage houses. This is the deafest, most blithely moneyed of all of her missives. In this climate--totes inapropes!

New New (read this magazine with me)

New York Magazine, of which I've been a pretty big fan since 1995 when I was stuck in a walk in closet of some glass-walled condo in Florida because of a big hurricane and read an issue with JFK, Jr. on the cover, has published some sort of "newness" portfolio this week. This, at once, makes sense to me and irritates me (but I'm a hoary 23-year-old curmudgeon). There is a great little article about our friend Antony Hegarty, who is not "new" himself, but has a "new" record. I sang a couple of these songs with him and found them so sweet and resonant and plaintive and Irish. The author does a marvelous job of illustrating his high-pitched, smart smart politesse. (Miranda July aside) I am also inclined to like Tao Lin, a profiled young writer, who comes off as charmingly anti-social. And, of course, I'm a big fan of Jason Furman's (pudgy-hot preppy de jour). Also, a fellow named Bradford Plumer writes an exciting set of solutions (imagine that) to universal problems. A lot of the other folks featured are kind of dull, and the magazine, in turn, clueless about my generation (quell suprise). Only two pieces made me eat my bonnet: an interview with a band called "Vivian Girls" and a few paragraphs about Santos' Party House. The trio of instrument-playing floozies spews hate-speech about synthesizers, and Santos has been worrying me because it feels so shrill and twee and EXHAUSTING and FAR too young (and I think nightlife should always involve a little aloofness).

The thing is . . . A&P likes (mostly) old stuff.

Happy 50th, Motortown Records

I promise that I will learn how to properly post songs this weekend. In the meantime, someone else's "crafty" video presentation of Mary Wells's "Two Lovers"—

Folk Art Culled From Google Image Search of Steve Miller For Wednesday

Belarusian Heat

Can you conceive of anything sexier than James Bond and Liev Schreiber fighting Nazis in gutsy, homegrown, hand to hand, Jewish-women-and-children-defending combat? Yeah, we can't either.

Stories Time

Holy moly, I have so much to say about Kalup Linzy. A day late and a dollar short, I know. Evidently there are some downsides to never really paying attention to contemporary art: I might overlook some really beautiful contemporary art. I knew of Linzy's acclaim and of the title of his (almost) one-man soap opera, All My Churen (2003). But, strike me down, I'd never bothered to see the damn thing. I've only caught excerpts on Youtube this morning, but I'm generally floored. At A&P, we are sentimental, expert, addict television-watchers. And I am so moved by Linzy's construction of a television show about people who watch television shows (stories). There is an incredible comic-tragic symbiosis between lived facts and screened fictions; they bend toward and apart from each other like uneasy relatives. Uneasy relatives (and lovers) are in fact the characters that Linzy plays--black, Southern, gay inversions of television stars, different and the same. Unlike, say, Ryan Trecartin, Linzy makes strange from unstrange, does not use drugged, fantastical, dream-world tropes; instead, his are something like fine Youtube videos--homemade, straightforward, not filmic.Though Linzy lives in Brooklyn and has been on the receiving end of some tony fellowships and grants, he seems to work on the periphery of the art world, over and beyond it (not around it).

Below is an excerpt from All My Churen and a very brief gallery satire that isn't even trying to be accurate. Or is it? I imagine that Linzy is playing a frustrated gallery employee, made ill by the pressures and expectations of her exacting lady boss (hmmm . . .).

Verses

Celery
Ogden Nash

Celery, raw
Develops the jaw,
But celery, stewed,
Is more quietly chewed.
(c. 1931)

A friend told me this weekend that celery is the world's only negative calorie food. One burns calories while digesting it or something . . .

Album Cover For Tuesday

Mavis Staples's Only For The Lonely (has a pretty swell title too).

The Best Thing Going (For Tuesday)

This blog is genius housewivery, an exploration of "the magic of glamour in its many manifestations," not at all self-aware (which I sort of envy). What do you think?

School Ties

I don't know if you watch Gossip Girl. For better or worse, I generally do each week. In the midst of its second season, the writers have come to a thrilling climax . . . impasse? Star-crossed lover leads Dan and Serena (continually outshone by the caddish and human Blair and Chuck) evidently share a half-sibling. Their parents were rock star and groupie in the long-ago olden-days of grunge, and now, in the gloaming of the aughtsies, as gallerist and icy socialite, they have found each other again and (among other things) brought to light a secret lovechild situation. At the end of last night's episode, we were led to believe that both couples, Dan and Serena and Papa Dan and Mama Serena, would be making a go of it (at the same time!). I think this is all very brave. Let's see what "The Last Time I Saw Richard" thinks.

Theater Games

Newsies

A few things potentially more important than nail polish--

--The Post has provided us with another phrase for everyday use: "sex foul."

--A&P has Mrs. Clinton on the collective mind.

--The Palestinian death toll in Gaza now tops 300 (well over half are civilians). Israeli losses are 13 (ALL soldiers). I have been bereft about the ugly crimes committed by our government in the name of "our safety," driven mad by our lack of agency, by how capable of variously trouncing human rights and other nations' sovereignty without the input of American citizens or allies the Bush administration (over the past eight years) or the C.I.A. (always) have been. I feel similarly about Israel. I am thoroughly disgusted by their military brutishness and religious self-importance. I am ashamed by any association. For me, this single-minded, warring state is more "German" than Jewish.

Nail Color For Tuesday

Between poverty and lack of protein, my fingertips have been suffering. Once was the time when they shone like beacons. Short, square navy blue nails--I invented them (true story). Taupe, turquoise, 40s Polynesian coral . . . also me. For the time being, I'll assuage my sense of loss (and frustration, at the continual theft of my estilo by magazines and their minions) with reports about my favorite lacquers, like Essie's Heavenly Sunset. I'm a great fan of what I call the dusty or winter pinks, sort of grey and unaesthetic, redolent of potpourri, the pharmacy, oversize blazers, aerosol cans. This one is relatively perfect.

High Times, Hard Times--the year 2001

Thank you Sister Pillow for offering us a stirring alien love/unlove song from the planet 2001. Let's continue that close study of the early aughties. It goes without saying that we love all of the collaborations between Aaliyah and Timbaland. She was the proper siren for his Middle Eastern infusions, calling forth the exotic in each tune. "More Than a Woman," released a few months after her untimely death in August of 2001, was essentially a eulogy. At my Memphis high school there was a black lesbian subculture dedicated to honoring her memory (with memorial tall tees, jewelry, hats, folders, binders, posters, backpacks . . .).

Up With People

I promised to write this segment about actual consumption, affordable things, Forum-life in the Good Depression, but I can't be bothered. Look at these shoes! I don't really like shoes. I'd like to be barefoot permanently, and I'm quite suspicious of the cultural tendency to pin "shoe mania" on dames. I would, however, shod myself without any grumbling if I could afford Giuseppe Zanotti's $658 stripper platforms, a genre of shoe I've always admired for its gross, fetid, body-glitter-and-country-buffet glamour (especially in traditional Lucite styles!). Get on board.

Local Motion

No to be too much of diarist, but I've had a weekend that demands recuperation. Little Eva's 1962 offering, "The Loco-motion," does the trick. My first clear memory of the song (it seems to be one of those tunes with which we have an inborn familiarity) was from a mildly traumatic jazz and tap class that I attended for a few months in a church basement aged eight (at a shlubby friend's behest). We shuffle-ball-changed a lot, and we had these awkward solos, the sort where all of the girls gather in a corner and each get a chance to leap/free dance across the floor. Sometimes the teacher would ask us to "vamp" or "model-walk." Sometimes we would practice bonafide choreographed numbers, one, a precious tap dance to Elvis's "Teddy Bear," and the other, a sort of conga-line set to "The Loco-motion." The teacher had a dickens of a time choosing which version, Little Eva or Kylie Minogue, we would ultimately perform alongside; so we rehearsed with both. I skipped that performance and never returned to the class—partially because the instructor had asked that we wear "Christmas sweatshirts" on stage and partially because I had a "date" with Niel Bartlett that night.

Ever since, I had a not pleasant or unpleasant, relatively peripheral relationship with the song, though I was pretty interested in the paternalistic story of her "discovery" by domestic employer, Carole King. Only recently have I begun to hear it unfettered by it's own "oldie-ness," it's childhood jazz and tap class appeal. "The Loco-motion" is loose and soulful and and reservedly optimistic, urging the listener to chug forward, to simply accept the natural tilt of things, claiming "I know you'll get to like it if you give it a chance now." It's a bit of a quarter-life anthem. Here, an abreviated version from a 1963 appearance on Shindig—

Theater Games

Belles Lettres

"The Holy Longing"

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Tell a wise person, or else keep silent,

because the mass man will mock it right away.

I praise what is truly alive,

what longs to be burned to death.

In the calm water of the love-nights,

where you were begotten, where you have begotten,

a strange feeling comes over you,

when you see the silent candle burning.

Now you are no longer caught in the obsession with darkness,

and a desire for higher love-making sweeps you upward.

Distance does not make you falter.

Now, arriving in magic, flying,

and finally, insane for the light,

you are the butterfly and you are gone.

And so long as you haven't experienced this: to die and so to grow,

you are only a troubled guest on the dark earth.

"One day with the top down is better than a lifetime in a box!"

Art Brut

A friend, while passing the time by google image searching "Memphis rap," stumbled upon this moving piece. 

A Song For You