I'm OK. You're OK.

A Song For You

Best Thing Going (For Tuesday)

It appears that there was a glorious(-seeming) t.v. pilot called 111 Gramercy Park filmed in 2003, and never picked up. Some kind of American Upstairs, Downstairs? And look! Tippi Hedren, Frank Langella, and Joel Grey were in it! And look! You can watch (some of) the pilot on the YouTube! I haven't yet, because I'm at la oficina. But I feel I can recommend it alls the same.

And b.t.dubs.--this accompanying image is unrelated to above unaired series pilot. I Google-Image-Searched "111 Gramercy Park," and boom. Do you think it's the spa at that Schrager-rape of the G.P.H.? I might actually love the mural...

Love In This Club: Roye'l

He's a fresh alternative, blending styles from the past, the present, and the future. Watch, and tell me you don't wish he was singing this about you:

The Best Thing Going (For Monday)

Verses

"The Tennis Court Oath" (1957)
John Ashberry

What had you been thinking about
the face studiously bloodied
heaven blotted region
I go on loving you like water but
there is a terrible breath in the way all of this
You were not elected president, yet won the race
All the way through fog and drizzle
When you read it was sincere the coasts
stammered with unintentional villages the
horse strains fatigued I guess . . . the calls . . .
I worry

the water beetle head
why of course reflecting all
then you redid you were breathing
I thought going down to mail this
of the kettle you jabbered as easily in the yard
you come through but
are incomparable the lovely tent
mystery you don’t want surrounded the real
you dance
in the spring there was clouds

The mulatress approached in the hall—the
lettering easily visible along the edge of the Times
in a moment the bell would ring but there was time
for the carnation laughed here are a couple of “other”

to one in yon house
The doctor and Philip had come over the road
Turning in toward the corner of the wall his hat on
reading it carelessly as if to tell you your fears were justified
the blood shifted you know those walls
wind off the earth had made him shrink
undeniably an oboe now the young
were there there was candy
to decide the sharp edge of the garment
like a particular cry not intervening called the dog “he’s coming! he’s coming” with an emotion felt it sink into peace
there was no turning back but the end was in sight
he chose this moment to ask her in detail about her family and the others

The person. pleaded—“have more of these

not stripes on the tunic—or the porch chairs
will teach you about men—what it means”
to be one in a million pink stripe
and now could go away the three approached the doghouse

the reef. Your daughter’s

dream of my son understand prejudice
darkness in the hole
the patient finished
They could all go home now the hole was dark
lilacs blowing across his face glad he brought you

End of Term

I, somewhat like Kanye West, may never cease thinking of time academically. And late April brings that breathless, it's-almost-end-of-term/beginning-of-deep, unknown summer feeling that simply must be met by a certain species of ethereal club-jam, a "dance song that can make you break down and cry." Last year it was Usher and Young Jeezy's "Love in This Club," a track so heavy we had to name a recurring A&P segment after it. This year--right on sched.--comes "Knock You Down," a collaboration between Keri Hilson, an all-around fantastic dame, who earned writing credits on Brit's Blackout and starred in the "Love in This Club" video, Ne-yo, and Kanye. And Lo--I cannot stop listening. It is layered and icy, ready for consumption.

I recall something Kelefa Sanneh wrote about the Timbaland/Danja beats on Timberlake's Futuresex/Lovesounds in 2006, "they sound like The Limelight imploding." And (as usual!) he's right. There is a sort of deconstruction of house music happening in these middle/late aughts and in this tune that I dig dig dig. Along with it's tripped trance beat, the lyrics spoken and sung by all three counterparts in "Knock You Down" create a very real conflict. There are shifts in tense. Keri and Ne-yo seem to conjure a dizzy, present love. Kanye seems to be writing a eulogy:

let the hour glass pass right into ashes.
let the wind blow the ashes right before my glasses.
so i wrote this love letter right before my classes.

Isn't this sort of 'yes and no' exactly what makes contemporary pop music so poetical?

In 2007, at the tail end of a blissed acid-trip in Oaxaca, on the roof of our hotel, P.M.C. and I were leading each other through a tour of Beyoncé. He had recently fallen in love with B'Day (in Ponza of all fantastic places), which I did not know (beyond requisite singles), and I had long loved Dangerously in Love, an album of SUCH merits, unknown to him. I played "Me, Myself, & I," a break-up song full of declarations of independence. He recoiled, went grey, shook his head, "No, no. I don't like this. You see. Can't you hear it? She doesn't mean what she says." P.M.C., who I trust implicitly in the sensory realms, was so very correct in his hallucinatory pang of an assessment. The essential bit of that track is the eerie, sad conflict between the tough lyrics and the lovesick, girlish delivery (the utter opposite of her potent anger/power in B'Day's reflexive "Irreplaceable").

These happy and sad, impish and powerful ballads of the millennium reflect our own pressing confusions about sex and love and gender and patria, especially when combined with one of those spooky, "imploding" machine beats. Future Perfect (ha). End of term.

Folk Art For Thursday

Cartoons

"She certainly exhibited talent early on, before she messed up her life."
-The Hollywood Reporter's Martin Grove on Lindsay Lohan.

Everyone Falls in Love Sometimes

At times I've been asked by people (OK, Able) as to why I don't fraternize that often with the packs of Honda civic driving thick-browed b-boys that I know from Staten Island and I genuinely don't have an answer for them (her) except for that it feels boring even when I don't want it to.

Last night I was on my way home and there were four teenage girls from the DR, one of whom was wearing a neon green halter top in my subway car. Halter top was hanging onto a pole and singing along to her iPod which is generally a Very Bad Thing that happens on the subway but this time it wasn't mostly because she actually didn't have a bad voice and she was singing my favorite song from the first CD I ever bought.

The other three, who were seated, were passing around a bottle of Hennesy. They'd offered some to halter top but she turned it down which was good because nobody on the train was going to let her have any more anyway.

They made me feel lonely, sad, and old as teenagers who aren't black, tall, and carrying lacrosse sticks tend to do or they actually do as well but that's a different story for another time. But they also made me feel nostalgic for a different train I used to ride almost ten years ago where I likely could have been listening to the same song on my Discman and swigging pretend grown up liquor (probably Alize.) That train was known to me as the party train and I rode it from Huguenot to the Nassau stop where packs of the underage and vaguely ethnic would deboard and walk three blocks to a concrete box by the Arthur Kill known as Club Cylo.

I wish I remembered more about the place other than where it was and that people were date raped there but let's be honest, I was probably blacked out and that's why we have the Internet. I happened upon a youtube that someone inexplicably felt the need to share and I appreciate that. Looks like you could smoke there and that there were simultenous "Millennium" and "Summer Sizzle" parties. Anyway, watch this and tell me, honestly, if there's a single guy here you would fuck even if they grew up to go to Baruch and quit gelling their hair.

Cake Cake Cake

"Well, I had to fly out to LA for an exercise segment with her and I went to Bloomingdales and I got some cute work-out outfits. Then I finally go to meet her to do the segment and she gives me a hug and she looks me up and down and she says, 'Kathie. You're beautiful. But your body...no cheese,' so that's when I quit eating cheese forever."


-Kathie Lee on Victoria Principal

Merry Birthday!!

It's (kind of) spring, which brings us two things: Able's birthday and a marked turn in television tastes. In the colder months I tend to watch a lot of period pieces, history channel documentaries, and smart comedies. As the weather warms my taste (like my mood) moves towards the carefree, the base, the downright tasteless. Many a spring day during the college years was spent lolling around town and parking it on Able's couch to watch Cops and Dog the Bounty Hunter. Anyway, here's to spring and here's to Able; I'm endlessly happy that you were born. No ice in paradise!

Whatever Nevermind

Peter Schjeldahl's review of the New Museum's dread baby salon, "The Generational: Younger Than Jesus" is a whole lotta' incisiveness.

Peter S., we millennials are humbly yours.

and btw--i really dig the omg obelisk

I'm Every Woman

Easter Parade

Founding Fathers: Marjory, the Trash Heap

Mostly, I was thinking about Marjory from Fraggle Rock today because I'm pretty sure she's what my insides look like. But then I also remembered that Marjory was damn amazing. She was telepathic, telekinetic, could sink into the ground to take a nap, didn't abide by Western rules of cleanliness, and was the oracle of Fraggle Rock. The trash heap has spoken!

Kindred Spirits

Woody Harrelson was recently involved in (another) scuffle with a paparazzo at the aeropuerto in NYC. Yesterday, he issued a statement explaining his behavior:

I wrapped a movie called `Zombieland,' in which I was constantly under assault by zombies, then flew to New York, still very much in character. With my daughter at the airport I was startled by a paparazzo who I quite understandably mistook for a zombie.

Yes. Perfect. No better explanation. Seriously, there is many a day when I go out in public and the only way to explain my crazy aversion to other people is that I mistake them for zombies. Thanks, Woody.

If I Were A Bee, I Think I Could Understand

This is from season 1 of Isabella Rossellini's Green Porno series. It covers the mating rituals of insects—

...And Season 2 is under way.

Church

For your Pesach/Easter spiritual efforts, Lil' Kim (on Marc Jacobs, folk art, and her 2006 prison-stint)--

"He's one of my best friends and was actually a huge supporter when I was in prison. He wrote me every week! I decided to buy a coloring book–I'm a huge Bratz fan–and I painted the Bratz and made them all wear Marc Jacobs, and sent it to him. He blew it up and framed it, and now it's hanging in his house. So Marc Jacobs is the best."

Best Thing Going (For Friday)

Achewood, an online comic detailing the random exploits of a bunch of cats, stuffed animals, and robots, often with no real punch line to speak of. These are a few of my favorite:

Folk Art For Thursday

Crime scene photo of a bloody phone found in Vince Shlomi's hotel room, following his rumble with a cannibalistic courtesan. The phone appears to be covered in a spattering of my mom's orange lipstick from the 80's rather than blood, but what do I know.

Hedges for Thursday

La Alahambra, Granada (1333-53)

I've been poring over a book about Mughal decoration, which has a sort of vibrancy and sweetness that must be related to flowers and shells (and reads like proper Toile or Shaker staircases --essentially, Spring and Summer). La Alahambra's Court of the Lions afforded my first school lessons in the genteel (and warm!) genius of Islamic design elements. But this view, which is a good deal more like a film set of Shakespeare's Verona or Mantua than a white and laquered Moorish pleasure garden, puts me in mind of Coney Island's seaside apartment courtyards with their funny, abrupt, Mid-Century modern shrubbery. Forgive my dippy relational aesthetics--I'm just glad for the change of season.

Best Thing Going (For Wednesday)

Much to A&P's chagrin, the Mid-South Fair, Memphian mecca for pronto pups, fried oreos, airbrushed t-shirts, and lovely, lovely livestock, was shuttered last year. But a friend tipped me off to the site for Dallas's still-kicking version of the same, Big Tex, which (in typical Texan fashion) is clearly much bigger and moneyed-er than our little festering festival of yore. Here is a list of featured foods. It is every kind of good...FRIED DINNER ROLL!

Love in this Club

Apple Trees (currently blooming general [or really occasional] all over New Amsterdam).

Kindred Spirits

I swear I didn't make this video. The real beauty starts 'round 00:02:08.

Early Color Photograph for Tuesday

James Clerk Maxwell
Tartan Ribbon
(c. 1855)

I love a textile, however broad or narrow, and I love a photographed textile however canny or accidental. This guy is clearly of the canny sort, being that the ribbon is the only object imaged at the center of an otherwise empty composition (you know, deliberate). I love its "prize" shape. And I especially love the work's material proximity to dyed cloth, the watery jewel tones sunken into rag. Britain in 1855 was growing fat on colorful Indian silks and cottons, and this little print seems quite the emblem for its moment.

Gut Titel

We Should Probably Address Chester French

Because starting real soon, the rest of 2009 will be spent listening to them. It will be unavoidable. Perhaps I'm jumping the gun, but I feel in my bones that I'm right. Their songs will soon play on every radio station in the country every hour on the hour. Drunk wenches will soon scream "IT'S MY SAWNG!" in every bar in the country (every hour on the hour). So we should probably get a word in with Chester French while we still can, because I have a feeling they won't be shutting up until their Time Square New Year's Eve performance.

So, here's the deal, Chester French: you're two talented and dreamy intellectual fucks who both know you're extremely smart and dreamy and talented, and can thus be as weird and obnoxious and esoteric as you want. I've seen your interviews. I know your kind. I've fallen for a few of you in my day. You're going to blow up the music scene real soon, craftily weaseling your way into the American lexicon, and I, Alpha, will be bopping along to every bit of it, because you're talented and dreamy and obnoxious and esoteric, and that is an unstoppable mix. So good for you. Enjoy your year. Call me.

I'm OK. You're OK.

Best Thing Going (For Monday)

Nagi Noda.