I'm loving it.
(part one----rangy, rah-rah---am fan of Coors commercials)

I almost got 'God Bless America' printed below my address on the new set of cheques I ordered ayer (chose a waving flag instead). It's in the air, has been for a long minute (G-d and The U.S.A.). All of the sinister xenophobic (even vaguely White Power) implications/warpings/repurposings of stock, regular American patriotism (it's style, it's proclamation) in the last decade have faded (for obvious reasons). And it feels great!
And beyond the flag motif, is THE BRAND, The McDonald's, The Coca-Cola, The Disney, The Wal-Mart---these logos and slogans and whole adverts and store designs and product ranges....lifestylez---in an unremittingly complicated way----are also grand emblems of (U.S.) America and our Americaness, better/worse, sickness/health(?).
I often complain (sorry) about how the poorly stocked, strangely constructed chain megastores and restaurants of New York City (as well as my lack of truck to haul goods with) make me feel unAmerican, not in America, with its promise of big/easy/everything at once, and it bums me out.
Like in Clueless-----
"No shit you guys got coke here?!"
"Well, yeah---it's America..."------
Constant, present availability of new and various (also same, typical, universalized...) goods, franchises one just like the next, parking, air-conditioning, free samples happen here like nowhere else. And to love the flow of product and product-image is like self-love (another American talent/export/thing worth celebrating). And when done proper, self-love is not delusional; it's our stiff-upper-lip. It's our way of reconciling with forward momentum, acknowledging that nothing is wholly good; nothing is wholly wicked; that we're lucky too.....
Global-titan McDonald's originated as a single burger joint in San Bernardino in 1940! Whatever one might think of cheap meat, chemical flavors, Globalism, the Corporate model full stop, it must be noted that such growth, such ingenuity and subsequent power, is impressive, important, inherently American and a big deal. We pursue happiness, money and an idea of happiness, a McFlurry, a cartoon princess, an imprint everywhere.
I feel a little clever and powerful when I hold the symbols, the mini-carton of fries, the can of Cola, the Hannah Montana beach towel.
Irony got so busted and dumb; it seems not a proper descriptor for how we might celebrate the emblems of corporate America. Outside parties might rightly perceive irony in it, but I assure you I love these new Coors commercials straight-up, because they're not nerdy, smarmy and self-loathing. They are self-loving (and good-looking).

earth dad? space dad?

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Why is this 24-yr-old getting Botox to the head?!

SILVER (GOLDEN) SURFER


After two weeks' protest, I'm ready to admit that "California Gurls" is a good song, the best summ-summer single released thus far (where you at Sean Kingston?!).
The problems I have with that (her) 'one of the emo-punk bois' brand of nasal singing are pointless, or beside the/a/any point; the KIDS can't get enough, so.....
A few of Perry's lines are lazy, not polished (or, alternatively, loose) enough like, "We're undeniable" and "Fine, fresh, fierce/We've got it on lock" just both seem too vague and missing the mark, missing opportunities to actually describe.
But that line, "You can travel the wuh-orld/But nothing comes close to the Golden Coast" is genius and bright and sonically uplifting. The whole is rather uplifting, like literally lifting-of-ones-feet-off-pavement or dancefloor.
---And "California Gurls" (is she talking about Big Star with that spelling?) is fun!
What a bummer that Lady Gaga has decided to not be fun (Weimar--right now, really?!)....and Ke$ha's trying too hard to be hard (or hip in the manner of ten years ago) to be fun, same with Miley.....etc...
Meanwhile, Perry is looking better-than-ever in Spice Girls rubber dresses and likening SoCal to a game of Candyland (a smart way to discuss airy, nuts projections-of-California). I'm finally getting why/how she comes off like a cartoon:

Asia! Virtual Reality! Comics!--$.
Celebrate!


TRUE


I've also been loving (with not a bit of hemming and hawing) T.I. and Keri Hilson's "Got Your Back." For those (us!) who watch BET's brilliant, wholesome and glamorous (wholesome and glamorous!) self-help/lifestyle reality program, Tiny & Toya, this track is a not-at-all veiled serenade to/of/for Tameka "Tiny" Cottle, Tip's real lady love, mother of his children, former member of Xscape.
Though his profile is Mechanicsville (?) Rude Boy, young and scrappy, Tip has made LOVE songs in the past, most notably his rolling-on-a-Gulfstream collaboration with Justin Timberlake, "Let Me Talk To You/My Love," and "Whatever You Like," an I'll-cover-you-in-swag song off, pre-prison Paper Trail. But both tracks happened before I watched Tiny's show, and, in turn, before I knew about what a beautiful family life Tip has, how epic his own, true-life LOVE narrative really is.....like this season on Tiny & Toya we saw Tip spontaneously (from the chokey) have tropical flower arrangements and Gucci bags and shoes delivered to Tiny every thirty minutes for a whole afternoon, each one brought with different hand-written LOVE notes....what a Prince (and she deserves it----is just the calmest, kindest, coolest woman).
So, in Summer 2010, sentence complete, their wedding approaching, with breezy, beautiful paparazzi pictures of them in Paris and Los Angeles, at cafe tables, in convertibles, smiling like teens roaming the halls hand-in-hand circulating, "Got Your Back" reads more real and sweet-hearted, more whole, than any previous effort of its kind.
And Keri Hilson (who is so great) is an appropriate stand-in for Tiny; they are both female singer-songwriters belonging to a groundbreaking generation of self-made, Atlanta creative-millionaires------strong, smart women. This song feels like such the antidote to yr typical cold, careless depictions of women in hip hop. It's a spell of true romance, true love, true, true, true (with bells [swag] on).

thoughtful

mendoza y'all

yess

borders

"Lucy Liu Looks Like A Gorgeous Italian Wedding Cake."

Albrecht Durer, title page from The Apocalypse, 1498, woodcut.

DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER-----great American, Jimmy Dean, goes home to the Earth/Lord

E! Obit.

I wanted to create a triptych or something out of these, but they're all amazing. The progression, the wardrobe... just look at them all. I need them as posters throughout my apartment. Please try to pretend she's not at a Mets game...

Three Wallace Stevens poems from late 40s (three lines redacted)—



'Arrival at the Waldorf'

Home from Guatemala, back at the Waldorf.
This arrival in the wild country of the soul,
All approaches gone, being completely there,

Where the wild poem is a substitute
For the woman one loves or ought to love,
One wild rhapsody a fake for another.

You touch the hotel the way you touch moonlight
Or sunlight and you hum and the orchestra
Hums and you say "The world in a verse,

A generation sealed, men remoter than mountains,
Women invisible in music and motion and color,"
After that alien, point-blank, green and actual Guatemala.



'The Dove in the Belly'

The whole of appearance is a toy. For this,
The dove in the belly builds his nest and coos.

Selah, tempestuous bird. How is it that
The rivers shine and hold their mirrors up,

Like excellence collecting excellence?
How is that the wooden trees stand up

And live and heap their panniers of green
And hold them round the sultry day? Why should

These mountains being high be, also, bright,
Fetched up with snow that never falls to earth?

And this great esplanade of corn, miles wide,
Is something wished for made effectual

And something more. And the people in costumes
have that within them right for terraces—oh brave salut!

Deep dove, placate you in your hiddenness.



'So-and-So Reclining on Her Couch'

On her side, reclining on her elbow,
The mechanism, this apparition,
Suppose we call it Projection A.

She floats in the air at the level of
The eye, completely anonymous,
Born, as she was, at twenty-one,

Without lineage or language, only
The curving of her hip, as motionless gesture.

If just above her head there hung,
Suspended in air, the slightest crown
Of Gothic prong and practick bright,

The suspension, as in solid space,
The suspending hand withdrawn, would be
An invisible gesture. Let this be called

Projection B. To get at the thing
Without gestures is to get at it as
Idea. She floats in the contention, the flux

Between the thing as idea and
The idea as thing. She is half who made her.
This is the final Projection, C.

The arrangement contains the desire of
The artist. But one confides in what has no
Concealed creator. One walks easily

The unpainted shore, accepts the world
As anything but sculpture. Good-bye,
Mrs. Pappadopoulos, and thanks.

¡COPA MUNDIAL!

'LINDSAY'S BRACELET WENT OFF'

This is a job I want (prayer works)-------resuscitating (rebranding) Versace, which has reported stunning profit losses several quarters running, and generally seemed to ungrip its place at the head of the table, at the front of our minds, lost at/about/within the Information Economy.

Italian houses are (ought to be) all about families. I love Donatella and think her creative potential continues to be strong (remember that beautiful Spring '06 post-rehab collection that was all Sedona and Palm Springs?). I think my role would principally be a marketing one...where a younger eye toward brand/house history and American pop ($$$) might guide Versace to make the right kind of noise (and then bucks).
I wouldn't for a second want the brand to stop being about her (or, of course, Gianni's) kind of LOUD, SEXED, FESTOONED, AND PLASTIC LUXE dressing and living and looking. Versace isn't hip or hippie ever in the least, and a shift in that direction would be disastrous. Versace is brilliantly aligned with that Elvis Presley idea of female beauty where a full face of make-up, a big head of blown out hair and a mess of cleavage are essentials. Donatella believes in her woman; she is her woman. And not only does she have a real, direct, held-to point of view (a design must), but one that happens to be eternally saleable, rather permanent....there is a market for looking like an Ibiza-frequenter for miles and miles. And, I'm shocked that right now of all nows, the label is suffering. Because this-here is a time for discotheque, for the Guido and the Euro-at-large, for metallics and tans and big prints. Also, audiences are beyond primed to remember Gianni's early 90s working relationships with glAmazons...
Versace has a major logo. The Medusa medallion (...beyond a logo, really) and Greek key and classic Gianni prints belong everywhere on every thing and one. They are potent gestures toward a conglomerated Ancient and 20th century (and papal?) information---the Roman appropriation of Greekness, the Romanization of that Greekness, garishness and war plumage, war entitlement, gold coin, white marble, spectacle, appetite, the first mafia, Nero, Miami in the 80s, crashing yachts, golden-gated driveways, *R*I*C*O*, Biggie Biggie Biggie, HOT DAMNING DECADENCE. All of this is within the brand, powerfully suggested by the brand insignias.
Versace can turn around via its own archive, a reissue, a return-to. Easy does it.

They ought to push and standardize their handbag and luggage range----Greek key embossment with gold (and sometimes bejewelled) Medusa hardware and a lot of structure (no slouch) in many vivid colors and rare skins, not in the one-off seasonal collaboration mode of Marc Jacobs at Vuitton, but consistently (broadly within a set of limits) and with an air of custom-ness befitting top-notch leathergoods. I think one-off seasonal collaborations would be brilliant for jewelry, watches, and scarf prints. Versus should get a splashy-hire, a new (baby new) name at helm, and maybe push teen celebrities in ads and at shows. Great big attention should be paid to Hip Hop, its history/present/future, its stars and channels toward consumers--as I suggested above, Biggie in a Versace silk shirt (such a picture hangs at Juniors' main campus) goes a long way in this 90s redux environment...people need reminding. Christina Aguilera has always been dressed by Donatella, and I like the idea of sticking with/by music people; traditonal-trajectory, Oscar-calibur Hollywood (like Gwyneth Paltrow and Nicole Kidman) is so (white and) boring (actors and present-day films often so unstylish). Reality stars (Real Life Stars), Hollywood via tabloids (and Twilight), people famous-everywhere-but-America-(yet), MODELS, and popular musicians are the way...
Much of the rebranding would be about shaping and solidifying the Versace legacy, Gianni's and Donatella's, assuring recognition of THE IDEA of Versace...
how fun!