Up with People

On January 16th, I will buy a ticket for to see Notorious. Petrova got wind of the thing ages ago, when she came across the set in New York. She asked a P.A. what scene they were filming; he replied, "the first time they hear 'Juicy' in the club." The phrase, "the first time they hear 'Juicy' in the club" has been a touchstone for me ever since, a call for excellence. I expect it to be some amalgam of Scarface, Showgirls (Oh Kim, I love your nails. . .), Poetic Justice, and Choices II. Even the preview gets me palpitating . . .

Folk Art Movement for Post-Christmas

"What's Wrong with Vogue?"—I'll tell you.

This article from today's Times asks that very question, and, as an answer, mentions staleness and dull socials. The author stands up for Anna Wintour (defending her against silly rumors), which I dig, but no solution is offered to right said "wrongness."

I've read Vogue as long as I can remember. Certain issues from the early and mid-nineties are forever fixed in my brain. It is not so interesting as it was then (though back then, in terms of "interest," we also had Liz Tilberis's superior, cerebral Harper's Bazaar), nor am I as receptive to its particular brand of information. But Vogue still has standards and history on its side. It needs no new editor, no massive redesign. It needs a dose of nonreality. Socials are dull. Actresses are not particularly stylish. Stylists are not particularly smart. Disney teen kulture is the cashiest cash cow on the block, its fictional high school students ruling the rugged wasteland. This real horizon is dim and doomy. I say that Vogue ought to circumvent these ugly truths, and be transportative, unreal, other, theatrical, mysterious. Now, more than ever, we need Vogue to project something sublime, to allow us to travel. Maybe they could weave stories, instead of deifying boring demi-celebrities. Maybe they could publish something a bit more inspiring than a long, expensive, constipated advertisement (peppered with good articles). Maybe they could serialize novels and hire more artists and document travels to places other than spas . . . or maybe fashion magazines are dull by nature, a prissy, limited unrevivable medium. 

Love in this Club

The A&P staff rang in 2009 in the correctest way—with a bottle of Veuve Clicquot Rosé and a round of harmonic sighing. I have never experienced a New Year's Eve in which revellers expressed such aggression against the passing year, as the countdown started there were cries of "Fuck you, 2008!" Maybe this extreme urgency for change (we also witnessed it leading up to the general election) is healthy and maybe it's not. We chose to remain apathetic, and had a pretty grand time. 

I'm OK. You're OK.

"She is literally the Polaroid of perfection!"—perhaps the deepest, most puzzling lyrical description down our way. 

Up with People

I have a confession. In some "foggy London Towne" of early 2008, I told Pillow that I thought it would be "like really fun" to slip into another Great Depression ( . . . or maybe I said "like really sexy"). Oy. Clearly I was mistaken. Newsflash!—poverty is B-L-E-A-K. And Christmas was especially dismal. I tried to lighten up with posts about fictional consumption, fantastic, impossible gifts. 

In 2009, I'm going to document actual consumption, the spoils of the depressed. 

To begin, I will buy some disposable cameras. I love the exchange implied by the object. I love the objecthood of the camera, of the printed pictures one receives in return for it. Also (and this is really naughty), I kind of want to celebrate disposability just to be contrary, just to remark old-fashioned, piggy, 20th century American sloth and waste.

Oh Formats!

I am not a particular fan of the top-ten list. I watch Letterman for the double-breasted suits and passive aggression. I read Artforum for the ads (or not really at all). I simply ignore the Times's end-of-term lists, because they involve extreme predictability and the possible misuse of the words hipster, fedora, and Downtown (found throughout the fluff of the Papier of Record). All the same—my-oh-my—I feel the need, in the gloaming of '08, to make a list of favorite somethings, if only to remind myself that at least ten good things happened this year.

10. The Snuggie—The blanket with sleeves!TM 

9. Spicy Ripped Beef Soup with Glass Noodles at Kunjip Korean BBQ on 32nd Street. 

8./7.5/7.25. In Film: The Duchess (here, a scene from a ghostly, wonderful Korean bootleg). Amanda Foreman's biography of the Duchess of Devonshire is a favorite, and, before viewing it, I was mighty skeptical of the film adaptation, which stars one tremendously overexposed English Rose. It is, in fact, transportative and utterly feeling. Ms. Knightley's performance is magnificent, and I'm afraid I can't complain about her Chanel campaigns and possible eating disorder any longer (which is cool, because bitching about actresses is so very 2008). Reprise, or, more specifically, the beautiful Scandos of Reprise. And Film Forum's October run of Max Ophul's Lola Montez, the best moving photograph in all of the land and a much needed dose of 1848 cum 1955.

7. The James Brown estate viewing and auction at Christie's.

6. Leona Lewis's "Bleeding Love" and Usher's "Love in This Club," two of the best pop singles of the year, one, a pretty ballad with an unexpectedly evocative, difficult chorus, the other, a shallow, smarmy ballad with a sweet, peace and people-loving subtext. 

5. Asa Ames: Occupation Sculpturing, the small, bewitching show of twelve wooden sculptures sat in state in a dimmed, black gallery at The American Folk Art Museum through the summer, a trusty friend that bore much revisiting. 

4. A.M. in New York: Live with Regis and Kelly, The Tyra Banks Show, The View.

3. Ditmas Park

2. Hillary Clinton

1. Barack Obama 

And this didn't even cover it. I could have mentioned The Olympics or The Spitzer Scandale or Memphis Basketball or the Russian and Turkish Baths on E. 10th Street or fresh sage or dried strawberries or Mad Men (good to know).

Come and Get Your Love: Hombres de los 70s

Tanned, chiseled, and a little shaggy—All-American Olympian Bruce Jenner beats Michael "butterface" Phelps any damn day.

Founding Fathers: Jackie Harris

A New Gay Squire

Forgive the video bombardment, but I've made such a major discovery this afternoon. I often say really nego shit about Australians. I hate their accents, and, though I've never been, I think their land mass is really boring. But . . . they tend to be quite funny, being that there is so much Australian business worth having a laugh over. I'd read a bit about this fellow Chris Lilley and his programme, Summer Heights High, a Chris Guest-ish mockumentary starring him (as three krazy kharacters) and a legion of real teachers and kids. I finally watched it (on HBO On-Demand), and am over the moon (as I usually am about On-Demand televisions)! I've embedded two videos. The first is Lilley's drama instructor, Mr. G. The second is Lilley's private school exchange student, Ja'mie. The third character Lilley plays is an illiterate, Polynesian bully called Jonah. I find Jonah sort of sad (though well conceived); so I haven't included a scene of his. The slang is fantastically funny, and the recurring issues of Asian race relations and general Aussie trashiness are utterly diverting. Watch these and the available first seven episodes whenever you have the chance.

A Song For You

Libby Holman's most proper rendition of Cole Porter's "Love For Sale" (1930)--a bit doleful, but isn't that what December is all about?

Schul for Scandal

Caught in the midst of this holiday mess mess, I've yet to address the Madoff "make off." Even Papa Able has lost a little in the fracas, and we have been following the developments closely. There is an unsettling something about the whole affair, a comeuppance of the Jew-as-Nouveau-WASP. Bernie's fleecing flys in the face of the post-war justice-seeking that has defined the contemporary, moneyed Jewish intelligentsia. Though devastating to so many (so many philanthropic organizations to boot), this 50 billion dollar scam has begun a tough, but necessary dialogue about the real and perceived self, the liberal cum conservative Jew. The Post has shone throughout, but I say, in this matter, we answer to a higher authority, The Forward. This article titled, "Sconces and Scrapbooks: A Visit to the Madoffs" (Genius! Genius! Genius!), is a must read. More soon.

I'm okay ... I'm okay, right?!

Ladies, if I may, Baldy Bear's coming back to town ... I needs to vent, the best way I know how...:

Come and Get Your Love--Hombres de los 70s

James Caan (pictured with Ali McGraw in '72), a king among 1970s mensfolks--the violent Paul Newman, the groovy gangster, the alpha-male with velvet lapels ("smokin'! hot pants!").

Chanukah Lessons and Carols

The first day of Chanukah has been spent thusly: riding the dog (that's Depression Era speak for Greyhound bus) from Port Authority to my Mother's Old Kentucky Home in Upstate New York, where I've been met with a Christmas tree and a feast of roast pork loin with pickled peaches. Obviously, I've never felt the need to keep Kosher, and given the choice of holidays (being both demi-Jew and demi-Catholic), I keep Christmas and Yom Kippur--the rest are forgettable. However, today we learned a few choice things (and why not credit the Festival of Lights and Yahweh's abiding holy-day spirit?).

Aside from the lost rock doves bobbing about, Port Authority is a den of misery and rot, a most certain hellmouth. I spent a good part of the morning waiting in its bowels in an interminable line behind some kind of pixie-haired sociopath who was babbling (also interminably) to two sweet, sad boys. She spun a morbid tale of Christmas 2007, wherein she and her father played an ugly trick on her kid sister. Kid sister Kathy, aged 15, had wanted a cellphone since her 13th birthday, had begged and begged. All of her friends and enemies and teachers and relatives and acquaintances and future acquaintances and future non-acquaintances had one (or two!). Pops and pixie thought it would be a gas if they wrapped up an old cellphone, placed it under the tree and, come Christmas morning, let her believe (for one bright moment) that she had been granted a Christmas wish, only to dash it with a cruel and clumsy, "Psych! We didn't buy you a plan!" When she opened the package, Kathy was indeed ecstatic. She ran about the den kissing and hugging everyone. Then mother began to weep, running from the room crying "I'll have no part in this!" Kathy looked about stunned, confused, ultimately devastated; she locked herself away for hours. And this morning, as she told the story, this monster was still laughing, saying "she's so fucking spoiled." Spoiled? I think it's a perfectly normal reaction. I think, come Christmas 2008, if I was Kathy, raised in an environment of mistrust and false love, I'd be a barefoot, pregnant meth-cooker. To be limited and excluded by your own family's narrow means is no shame, but it is certainly no joke either. Yet as I stood dumbstruck, smarting for Kathy, I spyed an angel, a young gent with the gerth of a defensive lineman holding a wreath of red carnations. The gold banner of text across the center read: BUTTERHEAD.

You see, the Lord Giveth, and He taketh away. The ride north through snow (with a touch of sun) was beautiful, but also bleak (I think I saw a Red Lobster converted into a motor inn).

Verses (Merry X-Mas edition)

Maybe Next Year (The X-Mas Song)
Meiko
(note: I strongly recommend everyone reading downloads it. It has a strong L.O.V.E. quality.)

I don't think Santa's coming this year 'cause I've been a bad
A bad girl

I've made my bed now I'm lying in it without a care
A care in the world

And I took his heart
I tore it apart
I left him outside in the cold

I shot him down in the middle of town
I left him outside in the snow

I won't have no presents this year 'cause I've been a bad
A bad girl

I've made my bed now I'm lying in it without a care
A care in the world

And he took me in
He made me sin and I never wanna go back again

So I took him in
I made it all in
No
I never wanna go back again

Maybe next year I'll be good
Maybe next year I'll be better

Speak On It

I just wanna be a domestic animal!

Come and Get Your Love--Hombres de los 70s

Contrary to Gus Van Sant's vision of men in the 1970s (note: multiple perm offenses perpetrated against Hollywood's beautiful-est young actors in new film Milk), we think they were really onto something in the appeal department back then—as evidenced by Robert Redford in Jeremiah Johnson (1972), or in a better-coiffed period piece, Almost Famous (2000), which features Jason Lee (recently estranged from his wife!!) and known dastard Billy Crudup playing scrappy rock stars. All of these are of the frontiersman/Allman Bros. variety. But there are many types of covetable, groovy menfolk from that fitful era . . . this will be a recurring segment!

Merry Xmas, part I

It's really a shitty shame we live in a world of unembeddable videos...
regardless, merry xmas...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40qTXlNJj9s

Spot the Sublime

Still from the 1932 film version of The Most Dangerous Game.

Video Store

One more gift from our holiday journey to the tip of Manahatta—

I first saw this film years ago on television. I loved it, thought it truly stylish, and passed it on to P.M.C., who brought it up as we tipsily shuffled past the shuttered (but transparent) office buildings Tuesday night. I then read a mention of it in this v. bizarre ELLE article (do read it friends, I need your opinions). So, I tucked in and watched it once more last night. It is still really damn stylish, a thrilling lesson in 1986. We love the way everybody and every place looks, but we are a little confounded by the relationship between Basinger and Rourke (two people since proven to be bonafide lunatics and bonafide fine actors). I mean, his "sexually adventurous" financier is really just a mentally ill underminer, right? Again, do watch this friends (the whole thing if possible). I need your opinions. Aside from aesthetics, I'm bewildered.

Addendum

In the midst of our Massachsetts cum Financial District Christmas Adventure, my dear P.M.C. suggested an adendum to this Timberlake post of last week. I had already spent several days reading and re-reading it uncomfortably, knowing that I had made the hypothetical anti-Timberlake argument much more effectively than my chosen pro-Timberlake argument. The whole felt over-long and wishy-washy. Well, (and I can't take any responsibility for this bit of brilliance) I revisited the track "Señorita" from Justified, the 2003 first solo record from which I drew "Cry Me a River" for the earlier post. "Señorita" was not the first single, though I misremembered it as such. It was the very first track of an album that I unwrapped and began to play in the record store parking lot and many subsequent parking lots thereafter (in Memphis, at seventeen, parking lots are muy importante). The song is loose and confident, a gilded example of the perfect pairing of Pharrell and Timberlake, at dual zeniths when it was recorded. In it, Timberlake initiates a male and female call and response by singng both male and female parts, making a clever, secure sort of joke with/about his famous falsetto. Listen and mull the politics—it's all the reason we need for his success. Justin has humor on his side, a sparkling comic actor in a terribly self-serious landscape of pop music (imagine what might happen if you dared to laugh at Prince).

Am I Angry?

It's a commonly recognized fact amongst my loved ones and a smattering of therapists in Memphis and Greater Boston that Able is incapable of expressing anger. I can get tragic with the best of them. And once, I keyed a someone's Beemer (with a little help from Pillow and Veuve-Cliquot). But neither weeping a lot, nor attacking a vehicle serepticiously are actual straight-forward, healthy ways of expressing one's darker emoticons (>:-< . . . ?). Clearly I'm not above it; rather, I'm downright jealous of those not imbued with my bizarro, antiquated fear of being unladylike and displacing matter and energy (or something). Today, a little punchy as the work day wears on, I find a few things have gotten me going: 

1. This monstrous baby-child working next to me keeps excusing herself from the desk to go to the bathroom and DOUSE herself in body spray. I may be sick all over this joint before long.

 and 

2. I overheard that this fellow I have a crush on (also in la officina), a well mannered, prepston good ole' of the variety I rarely see since my Northern transplantation, is engaged to be married to some trick who is taking him skiing for Christmas, or she was, but then he had foot surgery and now he's on crutches and he can't ski and did I mention that crutches really do something for me in this WWII nurse and soldier kind of way?! I mean, no bigs, it's just a crush. I wouldn't mind if he was married, but there's something about engagements that makes me boil. They're so sober, earnest, ringy . . . glitter, purple . . .? 

If I told this child that her body spray is gross, I would sound really classist, and if I got visibly upset about a stranger's whole perogative to get married to a person that he actually knows I would be a lunatic. Here's to not doing a thing about it . . . better luck in 2009?

Santa Baby

I want this late (1932) Bonnard painting. It's at MoMA. Thanks.

I'm OK. You're OK.

Most glorious segment of most glorious early HBO confection:

Santa Baby

One more stop at Newel on 53rd street (if you please)--I want Inventory Number 036705, Russian Neoclassical mahogany side table with brass gallery over a frieze drawer and splayed legs joined by a fan parquetry inlaid stretcher. Без перевода.

Verses

Excerpt from the website of Duet35, the #1 karaoke bar in Koreatown--

Since we opened in 1997,
we've seen many people became crazy about Karaoke!

Having birthday parties, bachelor's parties and just having fun would be the best usage.

Everyone can be "Britney Spears"
and everyone can be "John Toravolta."

Folk Art for Wintry Mix Tuesday (and What Comes of Image Searching Kiyonaga Woodblock Prints)

New Administration Unveils First Weapon of Mass Peace

Santa Baby

I want Inventory Number: 051785, French Art Deco black laquered sleigh back recamier with white satin upholstery and Inventory Number: 035746, Pair of French Art Deco gilt and cream carved swag and fringe design bracket console tables, both at Newel, 53rd street. Merci.