Verses

If someone asked me today, "Ricky, what are you afraid of?" I would answer "the blood that runs through the streets of countries at war...child slavery, terrorism...the cynicism of some people in positions of power, the misinterpretation of faith." But fear of my truth? Not at all! On the contrary, It fills me with strength and courage.

----Ricky Martin, @ rickymartin.com, hoy

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No More Dramas (Addendum)

Yesterday's come-down was inevitable, but brief. In fact, I've found that there's a quite easy answer to the problem of "what to do at 24 in order to be a happy grown-up"--look good. As warm and wholesome and earthy as the Zizney Reunion (see below) was, we are left with an overwhelming urge to simplify, to focus on the surfaces of things, people (us), our bodies. Drinking more water (and less booze), sleeping proper amounts, eating vitamins, brushing our hair, working out, applying masques and eye serums and sunscreen, wearing lipstick and (gasp) heels and perfume. These are the keys to our future happiness. The rest (work and school and SUCCESS) will follow suit. I'm sure of it. Yup.

So it's only fitting that I'm ready to deal with Lady GaGa, who I've been holding at arms length for months now. Pillow nodded to The Fame last year. And, though she always leads me to the finest pops (Hello Blackout!), I couldn't get into GaGa. She put me in mind of all of the bottle-serviced douchebags I used to know. And then I saw her in interviews. Such an idiot, putting on a weak, Anglo-y accent and spouting stuff about Bohemianism and New York and the Scene and drugs and garrets in not-so-proper or clever English.

I've recently become enamored of a few of the tracks. They sound quite good. They stick. But ain't she a mess? The record is all pure, unadulterated vapidity (except for the dead-on "Like It Rough"). If she was winkingly posing as the gnarliest coked-out party girl in NYC, binging in the face of the Recession and the "Death of Downtown," then she would be a total genius. Instead, she's putting on this pseudo-intellectual show (like any defensive, self-conscious loser from Sacred Heart would) and saying she's from the future? What? Lady GaGa's pitch is like one of those poster-boards scrawled with confused, tinny adjectives that gay fay-shun show producers place backstage to motivate the models, to instruct them in the seasonal inspiration/angle they're meant to describe by, you know, walking.

So, I'll take the songs, exactly the soundtrack I need for my new drive toward brainlessness and sheen, and ignore the hype. I've embedded a non-music video YouTube of "Paparazzi" that S-P-E-L-L-S out the silliness and incoherence of her lyrics and one of "Like It Rough," my fave. Enjoi. And take care of yourself.

Zac Efron, will you still be famous when we're married?

Memorial Day Long Weekend. We (Pillow has arrived en La Nueva--our cable reality-inspiring [see: Crackpoint, the series] codependency has resumed!) moved apartments, saw 17 Again, and ate mushrooms in a perfect, man-made sycamore and cedar grove (that we now call Zizney/The Zizney/The Zizney Reunion/The Zizney Family Reunion) on the East side of Central Park.

First, Zac Efron is stunning. Stunning. When, at the romantic climax of 17 Again (an all around sort of perfect movie), our boy morphs back into a pilly, saggy, age-appropriate Matthew Perry one's heart sinks, one cries out in anguish, "where did he go, this beating heart of the film, this beating heart of my heart?!" And it's really endless isn't it?--our appetite for new and young and next and almost. It's pure thrills to see a breakout happening in realish time, and evidently, at 24, I'm just as susceptible to that combination of beauty, charisma, and publicity as I was at 4 or 9 or 15. For a brief moment, Pillow and I fought over the grown Disney prince. But, upon further consideration, I realized that he (a Jew) may not be so interested in dating Jewish. And it follows (from all I know of my generation of male Heebs) that after his fling with a fetishized/objectified Asian chick, he'll be ready to put a ring on a worshipped/feared blonde WASP chick (...and none better than our very own!). Semantics. Anyway, the air buzzed with Zac Efron as we strolled and trained from 3rd and 9th to our new nook in Flatbush.

It was still buzzing when we took our drug and cream cheese bagel sammiches to the Park around noon on Memorial proper. The grove (the third location we scouted for our triparoo) was a shifting patchwork of shade and sun, cool and warm velvet grass with a view of some incredibly beautiful and flat/picture-planey evergreens. Pillow noted a "Disney mist" that lay just above the clearing floor. I, having picked up a habit of attaching "z's" to things from our Petrova, called it a "Zizney mist." We laughed for about five minutes and were off. The synthesis of Disney and phychedelia has been central to my work on Britney Spears--Pillow expressed my own same thoughts at random, as usual. And there we were, full of Zac's pervasive/suasive image and mushrooms and sun and birds and our nice outfits and a high-keyed mist and so many families. We felt so kindly and courtly. We sat/lay beneath the largest sycamore flanked by a large local/French-speaking (?) Jewish clan, an extended, hearty, sporting Austrian family, and a pair of fancy-looking Brit twins, one of whom had a retired model wife and a new newborn in tow. Precious. Warm. International grandparents! A gem of a Zizney Family Reunion. Such good feelings, such feelings about the FUTURE (and the poetics of landscape design). The Zizney may well have been our conjoined lawns in Tuxedo years hence (where we'll smell and dig in the rich, dewy ground with our children). It was simply, where we belong.

But, of course, despite all of the bliss of yesterday, today has been a little tricky. We hallucinated a view of our cozy thirties and forties, et cetera, but not a way, not a path, not an answer for the here and now, the crisis-y quarter-life. HOW and WHEN will we arrive at this "Brigadoon" called Zizney? And will Zac Efron still be famous when we get there? Ugh.

Elba

Oh fay-shun. You look like rainy exile.

Last night, despite drizzle and reports of a flagging guest list, The Costume Institute Ball at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Anna Wintour's Great Big Themed Fay-shun Museum Corporation Party) went off as it tends to, in a stupid, spring flash. This year: "The Model as Muse," another show that exemplifies this long-curdled era of servitude to luxury industries at the Costume Institute (the directorship of which was my childhood dream). If I'd been asked to curate an exhibition it might have worked in tandem with the fantastic "Pictures Generation" show, a study of artists' clothes and/or gender-neutral/gender-ironic outfitting in the 70s and 80s, or a show about cooperative clothes, fashion and Utopian socialism, fashion and communism. Oh well.

What this barbecue is good for is a fat folio of red carpet snaps, much more sophisticated and absorbing than most. As far as those go, I find that Marc Jacobs behaved hatefully (except maybe for that crazy, cartoon Poiret situation he put on Blair Waldorf?). And not to harp on GG stars, but is Serena wearing a bonafide "scripper gown"? Mostly, folks looked great. And I am so pleased about the return of Fortuny, and approving of their chosen "muse," the super lovely Natalia Vodianova.