Tuesday, November 4, 2008
A Front Seat for History
Election '08 is finally here. And Obama is, right now, in the lead. He's winning the cities; McCain is taking the counties But me thinks Obama will take the crown with ease...he's taking too many states that have been Red for at least a decade. I have been at two different parties -- one on the Upper West Side; another on the Upper East. All are eager for Obama to get on with the job of running this country (although he has a rather difficult task ahead of him sorting out this mess of an economy).
Monday, September 8, 2008
Twin Peaks
South African documentary photographer, Brent Stirton won the 2008 Visa d'Or Award for Feature photography at Visa pour l'Image in Perpignan, France on Friday night. It was another in a series of accolades for his acclaimed project on the slaughter of gorillas in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
In this interview with Photo District News, he also comes out as the photographer of Brangelina's twins. According to Stirton, "photojournalism is about education for change and [selling pics of the twins for upwards of $15 million] is about finance for change."
Have a listen to what else he has to say about it:
http://www.pdnpulse.com/2008/09/video-brent-sti.html
In this interview with Photo District News, he also comes out as the photographer of Brangelina's twins. According to Stirton, "photojournalism is about education for change and [selling pics of the twins for upwards of $15 million] is about finance for change."
Have a listen to what else he has to say about it:
http://www.pdnpulse.com/2008/09/video-brent-sti.html
Sunday, September 7, 2008
Girl, Interrupted
Please refer all complaints for the thinning out of blog postings until May 2009 to Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism where I'm completing my MA in Arts and Culture Journalism.
Sunday, August 17, 2008
The Bellini, Reinvented
Went for lunch to Blue Hill at Stone Barns in Tarrytown. The food was good, not amazing...but in their defense they only offer a tasting menu in August. However, the White Peach Sangria, made with Riesling was sublime. Make your reservation two months in advance http://www.bluehillstonebarns.com
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Is this legal?
I was walking along the West Side Highway earlier, minding my own business, when I came upon this "play ground" at 23rd St. that looked to me like a mixture between the Baba Papa dolls I was obsessed with as a child and the (er..hum) adult toy in the drawer next to my bed. If Toys in Babeland isn't sponsoring this space, maybe they should?
Sunday, August 10, 2008
If You Forget Me
If You Forget Me
I want you to know
one thing.
You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.
Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.
If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.
If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.
But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine.
~ Pablo Neruda
I want you to know
one thing.
You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.
Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.
If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.
If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.
But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine.
~ Pablo Neruda
Saturday, August 9, 2008
Day-Glo No No
You always know that fashion has gone too far when one's gay friends declare a trend "a bit much." And so it has been with my glow-in-the dark pedicure from One Plus One on 1st St. and 1st Ave.
Saturday, August 2, 2008
Nothing is Impossible
The New Yorker called it "Thrilling," the New York Times "Exhilirating. I wanted to get up from my seat and get lost in Philippe Petit's poetic world in the documentary Man on Wire.
In 1974, Philippe (with a little help from a motley crew of co-conspirators) strung a cable between the Twin Towers and danced across it. It was his gift to New Yorkers on their way to work on August 7, just as it was a gift to the French when he performed his aerial ballet between the rooftops of Notre Dame, and the Australians as he skipped across the high wire off the Sydney Harbor Bridge. Of course the Americans wanted to know "Why?" And Philippe responded: "There is no why?" He thought it was a beautiful thing to do and he was right. I saw Philippe once. He came to Paul Auster's 60th Birthday party at the Rose Bar at the Gramercy Park Hotel. He wore his signature black turtleneck and trousers and for a time I didn't know who he was. But when he walked up to Paul and gave him what looked like a small rock, wrapped up in newspaper and tied up with string I had to know his name.
This documentary, written and directed by James Marsh, is a must see.
Great interview with James here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRz8x3erGPg&feature=related
In 1974, Philippe (with a little help from a motley crew of co-conspirators) strung a cable between the Twin Towers and danced across it. It was his gift to New Yorkers on their way to work on August 7, just as it was a gift to the French when he performed his aerial ballet between the rooftops of Notre Dame, and the Australians as he skipped across the high wire off the Sydney Harbor Bridge. Of course the Americans wanted to know "Why?" And Philippe responded: "There is no why?" He thought it was a beautiful thing to do and he was right. I saw Philippe once. He came to Paul Auster's 60th Birthday party at the Rose Bar at the Gramercy Park Hotel. He wore his signature black turtleneck and trousers and for a time I didn't know who he was. But when he walked up to Paul and gave him what looked like a small rock, wrapped up in newspaper and tied up with string I had to know his name.
This documentary, written and directed by James Marsh, is a must see.
Great interview with James here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRz8x3erGPg&feature=related
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Koons at Sunset
If you haven't been up to the roof at the Met to see Jeff Koons' whimsical POP sculptures, choose a Friday or Saturday night and make a sunset drink of it. There are cocktails on offer named after the works -- Balloon Dog/yellow (top), Sacred Heart/Red/Gold and Coloring Book (bottom, above).
The very idea that Koons became a commodities trader in the early '80s (after spending a few years at the membership desk at MoMa) to finance his art is fascinating. How smart this man is. Definitely worth drinking to.
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Austerisms
I interviewed Paul Auster at his home in Park Slope, Brooklyn today. Here are a few of his thoughts:
NR: Your latest novel, Man in the Dark feels so visual. Why is that?
PA: Good. I’ve always been striving to achieve that effect. I’ve always wanted to write a book whose language would be so transparent that the reader would forget that the medium is words and just be inside the story.
NR: Can you take a break from your work, say to travel?
PA: The problem with leaving a book is that you stop believing in it. There’s some kind of state that you get yourself into when you’re working where everything that is imaginary becomes real. But as soon as you step back from that, the illusion bursts, and you have to work yourself back into it and it takes time. When I traveled over the summer, I just clung desperately to what the next sentence was going to be, I tried to keep it in my head, but when I got back it took me a good ten days or so to feel the rhythm of it.
NR: Are you ever influenced by what you read while you write?
PA: I never read fiction while I write fiction. I just can’t. I find that living in my imaginary universe all day, I need to get into the real world. Somehow it’s a stabilizing force. When I’m reading I’m reading for the most part biography, history, books about science, politics but not fiction. Between novels I try to catch up.
NR: Who do you read?
PA: Well, there are certain people that I read faithfully and I suppose these are the ones that mean the most to me. He died recently but Ryszard Kapuscinski is a writer who I read faithfully. Everytime he published a book I would go out and buy it. JM Coetzee. Everytime he publishes a book, I go out and I read it. Don DeLillo, I read every one of his books. Peter Carey, I’ve read every one of his books.
NR: He's dead, but what about Hawthorne.
I’ve read all of Hawthorne. He’s…I don’t know why he’s so important to me but I just love his work. I love his mind. I love what he did for American literature. He is just a stupendously great writer. Did you ever see the little book I put together for New York Review Books, the Hawthorne. It’s called Twenty Days with Julie and Little Bunny by Papa. And it’s something from Hawthorne’s notebooks. But it’s a self-contained text. About 50 or 60 pages. I wrote along essay introducing it. It’s in my collected prose. Hawthorne at Home. It was when Hawthorne move to the Berkshires in 1861. He had published The Scarlett Letter the year before and House of the Seven Gables had just come out and so he was at the top moment of his life as a writer and as a father and a husband. He was about 47 years old and for the first time in his life he was making his living through writing. And he and his wife rented a house in Lennox and they had two children, Oona, a girl, and Julian, a boy. They were about 7 and 5 and then they had a baby not long after they moved in. Rose. When Rose was born, Hawthorne’s wife Sophia took the two girls to the outskirts of Boston to visit her parents for two weeks. And Hawthorne was left alone in the house with this 5-year-old boy. There was some cook who came into the house to do work but essentially he was in charge of taking care of the kid. And I think it’s the first account in history of a man taking care of a child alone. He kept a very meticulous diary, day by day, of what he and the boy did. And how annoying the boy was and how he never stopped pestering him with his questions and his antics and what’s very moving about this piece to is that this is when he and Melville became friends and now Mellville who was living just six miles down the road in Pittsfield, finishing Moby Dick. I mean it was quite a moment. And there’s a great passage of Melville coming to visit and the two of them sitting up late into the night, smoking cigars and drinking and just talking about everything. It’s a great moment in American literature that passage. That’s one element of Hawthorne. The part that nobody knows. The very droll and bemused person. He was a writer of tremendous depth and psychological acuity. And in a sense I think unlike Hemingway who said all American literature comes out of one book – Huckleberry Finn – I beg to differ. I think it’s The Scarlett Letter which was published 30-something years before Huckleberry Finn.
NR: Man in the Dark is your most political book since Leviathan. What are your political views?
PA: Can I say this in one sentence? One wants humanity to be better. I think it’s within our capabilities to do better, so I keep hoping. I’m ever in despair and yet I keep hoping that things will get better.
Man in the Dark is published August 19.
NR: Your latest novel, Man in the Dark feels so visual. Why is that?
PA: Good. I’ve always been striving to achieve that effect. I’ve always wanted to write a book whose language would be so transparent that the reader would forget that the medium is words and just be inside the story.
NR: Can you take a break from your work, say to travel?
PA: The problem with leaving a book is that you stop believing in it. There’s some kind of state that you get yourself into when you’re working where everything that is imaginary becomes real. But as soon as you step back from that, the illusion bursts, and you have to work yourself back into it and it takes time. When I traveled over the summer, I just clung desperately to what the next sentence was going to be, I tried to keep it in my head, but when I got back it took me a good ten days or so to feel the rhythm of it.
NR: Are you ever influenced by what you read while you write?
PA: I never read fiction while I write fiction. I just can’t. I find that living in my imaginary universe all day, I need to get into the real world. Somehow it’s a stabilizing force. When I’m reading I’m reading for the most part biography, history, books about science, politics but not fiction. Between novels I try to catch up.
NR: Who do you read?
PA: Well, there are certain people that I read faithfully and I suppose these are the ones that mean the most to me. He died recently but Ryszard Kapuscinski is a writer who I read faithfully. Everytime he published a book I would go out and buy it. JM Coetzee. Everytime he publishes a book, I go out and I read it. Don DeLillo, I read every one of his books. Peter Carey, I’ve read every one of his books.
NR: He's dead, but what about Hawthorne.
I’ve read all of Hawthorne. He’s…I don’t know why he’s so important to me but I just love his work. I love his mind. I love what he did for American literature. He is just a stupendously great writer. Did you ever see the little book I put together for New York Review Books, the Hawthorne. It’s called Twenty Days with Julie and Little Bunny by Papa. And it’s something from Hawthorne’s notebooks. But it’s a self-contained text. About 50 or 60 pages. I wrote along essay introducing it. It’s in my collected prose. Hawthorne at Home. It was when Hawthorne move to the Berkshires in 1861. He had published The Scarlett Letter the year before and House of the Seven Gables had just come out and so he was at the top moment of his life as a writer and as a father and a husband. He was about 47 years old and for the first time in his life he was making his living through writing. And he and his wife rented a house in Lennox and they had two children, Oona, a girl, and Julian, a boy. They were about 7 and 5 and then they had a baby not long after they moved in. Rose. When Rose was born, Hawthorne’s wife Sophia took the two girls to the outskirts of Boston to visit her parents for two weeks. And Hawthorne was left alone in the house with this 5-year-old boy. There was some cook who came into the house to do work but essentially he was in charge of taking care of the kid. And I think it’s the first account in history of a man taking care of a child alone. He kept a very meticulous diary, day by day, of what he and the boy did. And how annoying the boy was and how he never stopped pestering him with his questions and his antics and what’s very moving about this piece to is that this is when he and Melville became friends and now Mellville who was living just six miles down the road in Pittsfield, finishing Moby Dick. I mean it was quite a moment. And there’s a great passage of Melville coming to visit and the two of them sitting up late into the night, smoking cigars and drinking and just talking about everything. It’s a great moment in American literature that passage. That’s one element of Hawthorne. The part that nobody knows. The very droll and bemused person. He was a writer of tremendous depth and psychological acuity. And in a sense I think unlike Hemingway who said all American literature comes out of one book – Huckleberry Finn – I beg to differ. I think it’s The Scarlett Letter which was published 30-something years before Huckleberry Finn.
NR: Man in the Dark is your most political book since Leviathan. What are your political views?
PA: Can I say this in one sentence? One wants humanity to be better. I think it’s within our capabilities to do better, so I keep hoping. I’m ever in despair and yet I keep hoping that things will get better.
Man in the Dark is published August 19.
Monday, July 14, 2008
Obama on Iraq
An Op-Ed in today's New York Times that is well worth the read:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/14/opinion/14obama.html?hp
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/14/opinion/14obama.html?hp
Friday, July 4, 2008
Art Activism: Now as Then
Artist and activist Filip Noterdaeme sent out hundreds of flyers to protest the "absurdity of commerce infiltrating an art museum" in response to the Louis Vuitton store at the center of the
© MURAKAMI exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum. The Louis Vuitton handbags are the result of a collaboration between Japanese artist Takashi Murakami and Louis Vuitton creative director, Marc Jacobs. Filip, the director of HoMu (the Homeless Museum of Art) added his own thumbprint, embedding the Brooklyn Museum's logo and the HOMU logo (in the form of a howling coyote) in the design of his flyers.
No word as to whether anyone actually walked into the store to demand their discount.
Shortly after I saw Filip's flyer I went to see the brilliant documentary on Louise Bourgeois called The Spider, The Mistress and The Tangerine . In it, their is an interview with the gorilla suited Guerrilla Girls, artists who began to protest in 1985 when the Museum of Modern Art in New York opened an exhibition titled "An International Survey of Painting and Sculpture." It was supposed to be an up-to-the minute summary of the most significant contemporary art in the world. Out of 169 artists, only 13 were women. All the artists were white, either from Europe or the US. See their hilarious poster (above) called The Advantages of Being a Women Artist.
Monday, June 30, 2008
Surf n' Turf
We spent a large part of the weekend on this hammock overlooking Fort Pond in Montauk. I cannot say for sure that this is a repeatable experience. The Surf Lodge is, without a doubt, about to become the ne plus ultra of party spots in the Hamptons for the summer.
If you do try it out, order at least two Montauk Storms, The Surf Lodge's outstanding, extra-gingery take on the Dark & Stormy.
http://www.thesurflodge.com/index.html
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Soccer 1, Mugabe 0
Writing about Robert Mugabe's violent refusal to let Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of the Movement for Democratic Change take his position as voted in president in the New York Times today, Peter Godwin says:
"Of course, South Africa could use its economic power to draw Mr. Mugabe’s rule to an end in weeks rather than months. Yet Mr. Mbeki has steadfastly refused to act, providing a protective cloak for Mr. Mugabe’s repression. And just a few weeks ago, even as opposition members were being tortured, Mr. Mbeki visited Zimbabwe, allowing himself to be garlanded at the airport and displayed on state-run TV with a broadly grinning Mr. Mugabe. In the United Nations Security Council, where South Africa currently has a seat, Mr. Mbeki has opposed attempts to put the political situation in Zimbabwe on the agenda."
And, in the light of South Africa's plans to use the World Cup 2010 as its "coming out party": "Maybe Zimbabwe should become to the South Africa-hosted World Cup what Tibet has been to the Beijing Olympics — the pungent albatross that spoils every press conference and mars every presentation with its insistent odor."
Read the rest here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/24/opinion/24godwin.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
"Of course, South Africa could use its economic power to draw Mr. Mugabe’s rule to an end in weeks rather than months. Yet Mr. Mbeki has steadfastly refused to act, providing a protective cloak for Mr. Mugabe’s repression. And just a few weeks ago, even as opposition members were being tortured, Mr. Mbeki visited Zimbabwe, allowing himself to be garlanded at the airport and displayed on state-run TV with a broadly grinning Mr. Mugabe. In the United Nations Security Council, where South Africa currently has a seat, Mr. Mbeki has opposed attempts to put the political situation in Zimbabwe on the agenda."
And, in the light of South Africa's plans to use the World Cup 2010 as its "coming out party": "Maybe Zimbabwe should become to the South Africa-hosted World Cup what Tibet has been to the Beijing Olympics — the pungent albatross that spoils every press conference and mars every presentation with its insistent odor."
Read the rest here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/24/opinion/24godwin.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Life at Page Six
My interview with Ann Leary "Secrets of an A-List Marriage" ran in Page Six Magazine today. Take a read
http://www.nypost.com/pagesixmag/issues/20080622/Real+Life+Ann+Leary+Reveals+Secrets+List+Marriage
http://www.nypost.com/pagesixmag/issues/20080622/Real+Life+Ann+Leary+Reveals+Secrets+List+Marriage
Saturday, June 21, 2008
The Antidote to Construction Fury...
I saw this sign while walking in past one of the NYU buildings in the West Village today. No doubt it's a noble endeavor, but I can't help wondering if there's a second agenda here: Perhaps, the thinking went, if they make this about the environment, they won't incite as much anger in the students, residents and neighbors when the construction takes months longer than it should. It always does.
Friday, June 20, 2008
Morbid Fascination
Spotted at the ICP final year show. Art everywhere...on the walls and even on someone's back.
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
A Cafe That's as Good as a Holiday
Albertus Swanepoel invited me to join him and Marianne Fassler and her husband Charles Bothner for dinner (see picture above) at the New Leaf Cafe in Fort Tryon Park near the Cloisters. I took the A train from midtown to 190th Street and it took me no more than a half hour to get up there. When I exited the subway station, it was as if I had taken a vacation a million miles away. The area is manicured and peacefully silent. No honking horns or sirens. And very few cars on the road. I walked through the grand gates into Fort Tryon Park which is just beautiful--lush and green. It had just finished raining and the sun was slowly setting as I meandered along the path to the restaurant, a charming 1930s stone structure nestled between the Cloisters and the park's main entrance.
The New York Restoration Project, which is headed up by Bette Midler, bid on and won the contract to operate the concession in Fort Tryon Park in 2001. The New Leaf Café is a for-profit restaurant operated by a not-for-profit, so you can eat with the knowledge that all net proceeds support the restoration and maintenance of Fort Tryon Park. And the food is delicious. I had an artichoke and fresh mozzarella salad to start and a delicious duck as a main. We all dived into the chocolate souffle.
For reservations call 212-568-5323.
Sunday, June 15, 2008
The Affordable Art Fair
I fell in love with this affordable-for-some oil on canvas painting by Martin La Rosa, an Argentinian contemporary artist who references the Dutch masters like Vermeer in his work. Some of his painting are still lifes with the paintings--like Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring tucked into a glass on the table next to the fruit (Views of Delft. I liked this simple painting that was going for $6000.
The fair was on at the Metropolitan Pavilion on 18th Street between 6th and 7th Ave. Hopefully it returns next year.
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
How Cool Is This?
Veuve Clicquot hosted polo on Governor's Island this past Saturday for the first time in 70 years. It took just two minutes on the Governor's Island ferry to get to this little green oasis surrounded by Manhattan's skyline. Pretty impressive. Pack a picnic basket and head out there. The ferry is next door to the Staten Island Ferry. Picture is courtesy of Veuve Clicquot
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
Keith and the Street
We were walking home tonight and at the corner of Prince Str. and Broadway, P turned to me and asked if the geometric patterned scratched into the concrete we were standing on could be Keith Haring. Could be. Had he not succumbed to AIDS at age 31, Haring would have turned 50 this year. I remember another time, walking home with A, when we passed Billy's Antiques & Props on Houston and saw Haring's iconic anti-apartheid statement. I should have taken it home with me.
If you're a fan, visit Skarstedt Gallery on the Upper East Side to view a 14-piece tribute to the artist. Look out for the early chalk drawing that Haring posted illegally on a blank advertising board in a New York subway station. Tues.–Sat. 10 am–6 pm, until June 28, at Skarstedt Gallery: 20 E. 79th St., skarstedt.com, 212-737-2060.
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
A MEDITATION ON SOUTH AFRICAN CITIZENSHIP
A magnificent poem capturing the horrific shock and despair at the xenophobic attacks in Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban:
If being a South African means beating on the red door of a shack and demanding to see a green identity book – the dompas of citizenship, then I am a foreigner.
If being a South African means dragging a woman into the road to push up her skirt and drive my boot between her legs, then I am a foreigner.
If being a South African means sharpening my machete to split the skull of a man returning home from work, then I am a foreigner.
If being a South African means ripping an infant from the swaddling on its mother’s back to spit in its face wizened by terror, then I am a foreigner.
If being a South African means dropping concrete blocks on that mother’s head until it bursts like a ripe watermelon on the dry dust of my street, then I am a foreigner.
If being a South African means arrogating the roles of policeman, prosecutor, judge and executioner, then I am a foreigner.
If being a South African means hanging over my garden fence and watching the smooth skin of a man blister as he burns a live, then I am a foreigner.
For that skin was an infant’s once, caressed by a mother’s marvelling hand.
That skins is a man’s, and a lover’s hand passed over it, marvelling at its smoothness. That skin is a father’s, reached for in the night by a child afraid of the dark.
That burning skin was a man’s and if being a South African means I cannot feel that skin as my own
Then I am a foreigner.
-- Margie Orford, South African poet and author
If being a South African means beating on the red door of a shack and demanding to see a green identity book – the dompas of citizenship, then I am a foreigner.
If being a South African means dragging a woman into the road to push up her skirt and drive my boot between her legs, then I am a foreigner.
If being a South African means sharpening my machete to split the skull of a man returning home from work, then I am a foreigner.
If being a South African means ripping an infant from the swaddling on its mother’s back to spit in its face wizened by terror, then I am a foreigner.
If being a South African means dropping concrete blocks on that mother’s head until it bursts like a ripe watermelon on the dry dust of my street, then I am a foreigner.
If being a South African means arrogating the roles of policeman, prosecutor, judge and executioner, then I am a foreigner.
If being a South African means hanging over my garden fence and watching the smooth skin of a man blister as he burns a live, then I am a foreigner.
For that skin was an infant’s once, caressed by a mother’s marvelling hand.
That skins is a man’s, and a lover’s hand passed over it, marvelling at its smoothness. That skin is a father’s, reached for in the night by a child afraid of the dark.
That burning skin was a man’s and if being a South African means I cannot feel that skin as my own
Then I am a foreigner.
-- Margie Orford, South African poet and author
Sunday, May 25, 2008
Hitting the Wall
Quick! You still have two days to see Cai Guo-Qiang's retrospective "I want to believe" at the Guggenheim. I loved the installations, from the arrow-riddled tigers and boat to the wooden wreck in a sea of smashed porcelain. But most of all I loved the pack of wolves running into the glass wall, a piece that was made at the time that the Berlin wall fell, but also one that speaks to the lemming in each of us. Genius.
Friday, May 23, 2008
A Tale of Three Suppers
Tuesday: I went to Sanctuary T on West Broadway and Grand for dinner. This is a novel take on a tea store...it's a tea eatery. The food is light, healthy and delicious, but portions lean toward haute cuisine. Absolute must-haves include the wild black cod slow cooked in Lychee Tea served over a bed of asparagus, feta cheese & saffron sauce for $17, and the molten chocolate soufflé cake with chai ice cream and curried caramel sauce for $10.
Wednesday: A light salad Nicoise for about $13 at my stomping ground, The Pink Pony on Ludlow Street. Always so good. I alternate between this salad and the heart of palm with chicken.
Thursday: After an art exhibition in Chelsea, I went to Pepe Giallo on 10th Ave. between 24th and 25th Streets. Veal Scaloppini with spinach for $9.95. Can't beat it.
Wednesday: A light salad Nicoise for about $13 at my stomping ground, The Pink Pony on Ludlow Street. Always so good. I alternate between this salad and the heart of palm with chicken.
Thursday: After an art exhibition in Chelsea, I went to Pepe Giallo on 10th Ave. between 24th and 25th Streets. Veal Scaloppini with spinach for $9.95. Can't beat it.
Sunday, May 11, 2008
Quick Escape: City Island
I spent the night last night at Le Refuge Inn, the only place (seriously) to get a bed on City Island. It never fails to amaze me how easy it is to escape the skyscrapers. It takes exactly one hour to reach this historic seaport community located just beyond Pelham Bay Park in the Bronx and surrounded by the waters of the Long Island Sound and Eastchester Bay. And how strange to say, "I spent the weekend in the Bronx."
But we're not talking rappers and drug busts. City Island is a tiny strip of land surrounded by water. There are fish restaurants like Johnny's and Tony's and Sammy's and quaint houses. Le Refuge is an old Victorian-style B&B owned by a Frenchman named Pierre Saint-Denis and filled with interesting antiques. Rooms are a bargain for $135 including a continental breakfast. They also serve dinner -- French cuisine -- are Zagat rated. And if you do what we did -- go down to the harbor for dinner -- the whole thing will cost you $150! (I ate fresh shrimp cocktail, steamed clams, red snapper, corn on the cob, and an old-fashioned soft serve ice cream). Of course all sorts of heart-stopping deep-fried fare is also on offer.
Check it out: www.cityisland.com
And for accomodation: www.lerefugeinn.com
But we're not talking rappers and drug busts. City Island is a tiny strip of land surrounded by water. There are fish restaurants like Johnny's and Tony's and Sammy's and quaint houses. Le Refuge is an old Victorian-style B&B owned by a Frenchman named Pierre Saint-Denis and filled with interesting antiques. Rooms are a bargain for $135 including a continental breakfast. They also serve dinner -- French cuisine -- are Zagat rated. And if you do what we did -- go down to the harbor for dinner -- the whole thing will cost you $150! (I ate fresh shrimp cocktail, steamed clams, red snapper, corn on the cob, and an old-fashioned soft serve ice cream). Of course all sorts of heart-stopping deep-fried fare is also on offer.
Check it out: www.cityisland.com
And for accomodation: www.lerefugeinn.com
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Q: Why do we go after the ones who run away?
A: Immaturity.
I saw Dangerous Liaisons on Broadway, starring Laura Linney and Ben Daniels (making his marvelous Malkovich-ian debut). Also making her Broadway debut: Mamie Gummer, who is going to have to work very hard to step out from under her mom, Meryl Streep's, shadow. I think Mamie will ultimately be a wonderful actress. She's young and she needs practice, but she certainly has some magic already.
This production was astounding. The set and the costumes were magnificent and the transitions between scenes flawless. (Some say that's the true measure of a great director). There was crackling sexual tension on the stage, and just the right amount of gratuitous sex scenes.The director, Rufus Norris, used to be an actor himself which might speak to his smooth direction. And the dialogue. Oh. The dialogue. Perfection.
In fact, I was inspired,right after the play, to go straight to Kim's DVDs on St Marks Place to hire Dangerous Liaisons starring John Malkovich, Glenn Close, Michele Pfeiffer, Uma Thurman and Keanu Reeves. It was exceptional.
I saw Dangerous Liaisons on Broadway, starring Laura Linney and Ben Daniels (making his marvelous Malkovich-ian debut). Also making her Broadway debut: Mamie Gummer, who is going to have to work very hard to step out from under her mom, Meryl Streep's, shadow. I think Mamie will ultimately be a wonderful actress. She's young and she needs practice, but she certainly has some magic already.
This production was astounding. The set and the costumes were magnificent and the transitions between scenes flawless. (Some say that's the true measure of a great director). There was crackling sexual tension on the stage, and just the right amount of gratuitous sex scenes.The director, Rufus Norris, used to be an actor himself which might speak to his smooth direction. And the dialogue. Oh. The dialogue. Perfection.
In fact, I was inspired,right after the play, to go straight to Kim's DVDs on St Marks Place to hire Dangerous Liaisons starring John Malkovich, Glenn Close, Michele Pfeiffer, Uma Thurman and Keanu Reeves. It was exceptional.
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Madonna: Unplugged
The interview with Madonna in this week's New York magazine is a triumph. Finally some conscious editorial, a celebrity who has the guts to go there:
Logan Hill: You’re now something of an expert on Malawi. But when the activist Victoria Keelan first called you about getting involved, you said, “I don’t even know where that is.” And she hung up on you. Not too many people hang up on you, do they?
Madonna: I thought that was rather cheeky. She found me quite impertinent in the beginning. Like, “You’re asking the stupidest questions—do you want to help or not?” And she was absolutely correct.
LH: The documentary catches your son David on film before you tried to adopt him. What was that first meeting like?
M: He was basically going to the bathroom on himself. Of course, next day you come back with a truckload of Pampers. It sounds corny, but he just has these big, bright, intelligent, so-aware eyes, and I felt a connection to him.
LH: Tell me about your documentary’s director, Nathan Rissman. This is his first film. He’s a friend?
M: He’s the husband of my nanny, to tell you the truth. When Nathan showed up, it’s like, “Well, he just can’t hang around, he’s got to have a job.” He would make QuickTime movies of my children and e-mail them to me when I was on trips. They were so clever. So when this project came up, it just seemed like a no-brainer. He did everything from gardening to manning the camera for behind-the-scenes B-roll footage. Never did he say, “I’m not going to Starbucks—I’m too good for that.”
Read the whole thing here:
http://nymag.com/movies/profiles/46189/
Logan Hill: You’re now something of an expert on Malawi. But when the activist Victoria Keelan first called you about getting involved, you said, “I don’t even know where that is.” And she hung up on you. Not too many people hang up on you, do they?
Madonna: I thought that was rather cheeky. She found me quite impertinent in the beginning. Like, “You’re asking the stupidest questions—do you want to help or not?” And she was absolutely correct.
LH: The documentary catches your son David on film before you tried to adopt him. What was that first meeting like?
M: He was basically going to the bathroom on himself. Of course, next day you come back with a truckload of Pampers. It sounds corny, but he just has these big, bright, intelligent, so-aware eyes, and I felt a connection to him.
LH: Tell me about your documentary’s director, Nathan Rissman. This is his first film. He’s a friend?
M: He’s the husband of my nanny, to tell you the truth. When Nathan showed up, it’s like, “Well, he just can’t hang around, he’s got to have a job.” He would make QuickTime movies of my children and e-mail them to me when I was on trips. They were so clever. So when this project came up, it just seemed like a no-brainer. He did everything from gardening to manning the camera for behind-the-scenes B-roll footage. Never did he say, “I’m not going to Starbucks—I’m too good for that.”
Read the whole thing here:
http://nymag.com/movies/profiles/46189/
Sunday, April 6, 2008
Sundays at Sunny's
Sunny's Waterfront Bar in Red Hook hosts a reading series, moderated by the author Gabriel Cohen. This past Sunday, Cohen read from his memoir Storms Can't Hurt the Sky: A Buddhist Path Through Divorce. I've read the book. It's great. Kinda like Eat, Pray, Love written from a male perspective. Or what happened to Elizabeth Gilbert's husband after she left for Italy?
In my fantasy world, he could have, like Gabriel Cohen, found himself at a Buddhist talk on How to Deal with Anger at a yoga studio in Park Slope.
In my fantasy world, he could have, like Gabriel Cohen, found himself at a Buddhist talk on How to Deal with Anger at a yoga studio in Park Slope.
The Other Secret
"The 'secret' of life that we are all looking for is just this: to develop through sitting and daily life practice the power and courage to return to that which we have spent a lifetime hiding from, to rest in the bodily experience of the present moment--even if it is a feeling of being humiliated, of failing, of abandonment, of unfairness." -- Charlotte Joko Beck
Monday, March 31, 2008
Pssst... Designer Shoes For Less
There's nothing like a recession to make a girl generous, so here is my secret to affordable designer shoes in New York:
On 1st Avenue between 13th and 14th Street, you'll find a storefront that looks more Turkish bazaar than Harper's Bazaar, but don't be fooled. Inside Gabay's (which is owned by Turkish Jews, by the way), you'll find "It" bags and shoes marked down by 80 percent. Gabay's buys the over runs from Bergdorf Goodman and carries everything from Manolo Blahnik and Christian Louboutin to Prada, Jil Sander, Derek Lam, Marc Jacobs...you get the picture. If you're lucky, you may even find Lanvin, Chanel or Azzedine Alaia. Last week I walked out with a cute pair of patent flats by Bettye Muller that were marked down from $500 to $100. Now that's what I call a recession special. Happy shopping!
On 1st Avenue between 13th and 14th Street, you'll find a storefront that looks more Turkish bazaar than Harper's Bazaar, but don't be fooled. Inside Gabay's (which is owned by Turkish Jews, by the way), you'll find "It" bags and shoes marked down by 80 percent. Gabay's buys the over runs from Bergdorf Goodman and carries everything from Manolo Blahnik and Christian Louboutin to Prada, Jil Sander, Derek Lam, Marc Jacobs...you get the picture. If you're lucky, you may even find Lanvin, Chanel or Azzedine Alaia. Last week I walked out with a cute pair of patent flats by Bettye Muller that were marked down from $500 to $100. Now that's what I call a recession special. Happy shopping!
Saturday, March 29, 2008
Answer To A Foodie's Prayer...
My first travel piece runs in the Travel section of the New York Times today.
"Yay!" would be a massive understatement:
http://travel.nytimes.com/2008/03/30/travel/30surfacing.html?ref=travel
I also have a feature in Page Six Magazine in the New York Post, but I can't post that here as they're not digital (weird, I know). Feels good though, to have knocked both in one Sunday.
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
The Seagull
Alan Cumming is marvelous as Boris Alexeyevich Trigorin in Chekhov's The Seagull, directed by Viacheslav Dolgachev. And Kelli Garner (she plays Nina Mikhailovna) is one to watch. You may remember her as Margo from the film Lars and the Real Girl. She is the picture of innocence in her lace dresses. The Seagull is such a timeless story, but I didn't like Diane Wiest in the role of Irina Nikolayevna. She seemed too old to be believable as the woman who manages to keep her man in the face of youth's bloom. My sister said she saw the play in Central Park a few years ago with Meryl Streep in the role. Now that would have been interesting.
I read a funny story about a lunch where Chekhov when to see Leo Tolstoy to get feedback on his play. Tolstoy spoke about everything but the play and as the lunch dragged on, Chekhov began to despair that his mentor didn't like his work. Eventually he plucked up the courage to ask him what he thought of the play and he said: "It's almost as bad as Shakespeare." Hear, hear.
The Seagull has extended its run for another few weeks at the Classic Stage Company.
I read a funny story about a lunch where Chekhov when to see Leo Tolstoy to get feedback on his play. Tolstoy spoke about everything but the play and as the lunch dragged on, Chekhov began to despair that his mentor didn't like his work. Eventually he plucked up the courage to ask him what he thought of the play and he said: "It's almost as bad as Shakespeare." Hear, hear.
The Seagull has extended its run for another few weeks at the Classic Stage Company.
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
The Bear Stearns Discount
This story in the Styles section of the New York Times this past Sunday summed up the mood here far better than I could:
"THE collapse of a major financial institution is usually an occasion for hand-wringing and tut-tutting over potential job losses, lower consumer spending and missed mortgage payments.
In New York City, it’s also seen as an opportunity.
For many of the city’s middle class, especially those in the creative class, who have felt sidelined as the city seemed to become a high-priced playground for Wall Street bankers, the implosion of the brokerage house Bear Stearns raises a tantalizing possibility: participation in an economy they have been largely shut out of."
Read the full story here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/23/fashion/23envy.html?_r=1&ref=style&oref=slogin
***Today marks my first anniversary of Ms Rubin Reports***
"THE collapse of a major financial institution is usually an occasion for hand-wringing and tut-tutting over potential job losses, lower consumer spending and missed mortgage payments.
In New York City, it’s also seen as an opportunity.
For many of the city’s middle class, especially those in the creative class, who have felt sidelined as the city seemed to become a high-priced playground for Wall Street bankers, the implosion of the brokerage house Bear Stearns raises a tantalizing possibility: participation in an economy they have been largely shut out of."
Read the full story here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/23/fashion/23envy.html?_r=1&ref=style&oref=slogin
***Today marks my first anniversary of Ms Rubin Reports***
Monday, March 24, 2008
Divorce and Buddhism
Storms Can't Hurt The Sky: A Buddhist Path Through Divorce is Gabriel Cohen's excellent memoir-come-self-help book chronicling his journey to the other side of anger after his wife walked out one day and never came back. This is possibly the male answer to Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love. Did anyone stop and think about the husband she left behind? Well if he was anything like Cohen, he may have stayed in New York and attended a talk about anger given by a Buddhist teacher and then gone on his own spiritual path. Like Eat, Pray, Love you don't have to have had the experience yourself to relate and get inspired. This book has taught me much and I've never been anywhere near a divorce. Read it, even if you do get quizzical looks on the subway.
Cohen will read from Storms Can't Hurt The Sky at Sunny's Waterfront Bar in Red Hook on April 6. He is the man behind the Sundays at Sunny's reading series, so it should be a good one. Get there early for the free Italian pastries.
Cohen will read from Storms Can't Hurt The Sky at Sunny's Waterfront Bar in Red Hook on April 6. He is the man behind the Sundays at Sunny's reading series, so it should be a good one. Get there early for the free Italian pastries.
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Friendship Against All Odds
I went to see Two Men Talking at the Barrow Street Theater in the West Village last night. Paul Browde and Murray Nossel, the two men talking, hail from Johannesburg. This is unscripted theater where Paul and Murray confront issues in their lives that would make the average person's toes curl. The two men went to King David High School and Wits University. And then each faced their homosexuality, came out and moved to New York City. Except since 1974, when each man was 14 and they were paired off by their teacher to tell one another a story, they hadn't spoken. (They'll tell you why). These were parallel journeys. Paul, only a few years after coming out, became HIV+. He is now a psychiatrist with a practice on 102nd Street, and he openly declares his status. (He tells me that even from his empowered and privileged standpoint, he still feels the stigma).
Murray met Paul when Paul's French-Canadian boyfriend was hired to direct Murray's play. Murray is a qualified but non-practicing clinical psychologist and an Oscar-nominated film maker. These days he's a full time story teller, offering the art to corporations through his company Narrative Inc.
Imagine their surprise -- to discover one another again, in a different time, a different place, a different sexuality. The two have been best friends ever since. Paul introduced Murray to his partner of 15 years, also a doctor living with HIV. And Two Men Talking has been performed around the world for the past 10 years. When they took the play to South Africa, King David High School wouldn't allow them to perform it for the students (yawn), but Paul and Murray took it into the Soweto and Alexandra townships and into Aids organizations in the Western Cape.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu, had this to say: "Storytelling is a powerful medium for communication. Especially in situations where the message is too painful, too embarrassing, too secret to speak it. Storytelling can then become a journey to the truth. Paul Browde and Murray Nossel have been telling their story on stage to acclaim. They speak of being gay, homophobia, racism and HIV/AIDS, subjects that should be acknowledged and discussed but which are too often avoided or denied."
Murray and Paul joined us for dinner after the show. At the end of the evening, Murray said: "Paul and I will do Two Men Talking until one of us dies."
In New York, the show runs at the Barrow Theater on 7th Avenue and Barrow Street until May 3. See it.
Murray met Paul when Paul's French-Canadian boyfriend was hired to direct Murray's play. Murray is a qualified but non-practicing clinical psychologist and an Oscar-nominated film maker. These days he's a full time story teller, offering the art to corporations through his company Narrative Inc.
Imagine their surprise -- to discover one another again, in a different time, a different place, a different sexuality. The two have been best friends ever since. Paul introduced Murray to his partner of 15 years, also a doctor living with HIV. And Two Men Talking has been performed around the world for the past 10 years. When they took the play to South Africa, King David High School wouldn't allow them to perform it for the students (yawn), but Paul and Murray took it into the Soweto and Alexandra townships and into Aids organizations in the Western Cape.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu, had this to say: "Storytelling is a powerful medium for communication. Especially in situations where the message is too painful, too embarrassing, too secret to speak it. Storytelling can then become a journey to the truth. Paul Browde and Murray Nossel have been telling their story on stage to acclaim. They speak of being gay, homophobia, racism and HIV/AIDS, subjects that should be acknowledged and discussed but which are too often avoided or denied."
Murray and Paul joined us for dinner after the show. At the end of the evening, Murray said: "Paul and I will do Two Men Talking until one of us dies."
In New York, the show runs at the Barrow Theater on 7th Avenue and Barrow Street until May 3. See it.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
America's Swart Gevaar
An excellent opinion piece here in yesterday's New York Times by Roger Cohen who spent some of his childhood in Muizenburg. (His parents immigrated to London).
"Fear, shadowy as the sharks beyond the nets at Muizenberg, was never quite absent from our sunlit African sojourns. My own was formed of disorientation: I was not quite of the system because my parents had emigrated from Johannesburg to London. So, on return visits, I wandered into blacks-only public toilet or sat on a blacks-only bench.
Blacks only — and I was white. Apartheid entered my consciousness as a kind of self-humiliation. The black women who bathed me as an infant touched my skin, but their world was untouchable.
Only later did a cruel system come into focus. I see white men, gin and tonics on their breath, red meat on their plates, beneath the jacarandas of Johannesburg, sneering at the impossibility of desiring a black woman."
Using his experience of apartheid South Africa and the fact that it is no more, he draws a comparison to Barack Obama's recent speech on race.
"It takes bravery, and perhaps an unusual black-white vantage point, to navigate these places where hurt is profound, incomprehension the rule, just as it takes courage to say, as Obama did, that black “anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.”
Read the full piece here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/20/opinion/20cohen.html?em&ex=1206158400&en=f37f26e473175c8d&ei=5087%0A
"Fear, shadowy as the sharks beyond the nets at Muizenberg, was never quite absent from our sunlit African sojourns. My own was formed of disorientation: I was not quite of the system because my parents had emigrated from Johannesburg to London. So, on return visits, I wandered into blacks-only public toilet or sat on a blacks-only bench.
Blacks only — and I was white. Apartheid entered my consciousness as a kind of self-humiliation. The black women who bathed me as an infant touched my skin, but their world was untouchable.
Only later did a cruel system come into focus. I see white men, gin and tonics on their breath, red meat on their plates, beneath the jacarandas of Johannesburg, sneering at the impossibility of desiring a black woman."
Using his experience of apartheid South Africa and the fact that it is no more, he draws a comparison to Barack Obama's recent speech on race.
"It takes bravery, and perhaps an unusual black-white vantage point, to navigate these places where hurt is profound, incomprehension the rule, just as it takes courage to say, as Obama did, that black “anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.”
Read the full piece here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/20/opinion/20cohen.html?em&ex=1206158400&en=f37f26e473175c8d&ei=5087%0A
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Online Dating and Diller
Is it very bad that I have more faith in match.com since I found out that Barry Diller owns it?
(Not that Diller's doing so well right now if this feature in the NYT is anything to go by: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/16/business/media/16diller.html?scp=2&sq=Barry+Diller&st=nyt). Perhaps I'm confusing Diller with his wife, the fashion designer Diane von Furstenburg. After all, if she can create the perfect dress for every body, surely he can do something about my missing Mr Right, right?
But back to match.com, because that's really what you want to know about. First things first: I am not going into juicy details about my dating life here. What I will say is this: I wish online dating hadn't become the norm, but in a city like New York it has. (Alternative is being a de facto nun for months and months on end). However, I do like the ego boost it supplies should a potential "thing" not reach fruition. You can literally pick yourself up, dust yourself off and be back on the dating bronco within 24 hours (not always recommended). I've periodically returned to the Internet (usually when said nun status is starting to set in). I've tried J.date, but it's too conservative for me. Nerve.com...cute guys, but not ambitious enough for me. Match.com has been the most satisfying so far (if satisfaction can be measured purely in like-mindedness...I have yet to have a relationship via match.com that actually sticks). There's an old New Yorker cartoon that sums up online dating for me, even though it has nothing to so with it: A woman is trying to read while her cat begs for attention at her ankles. Book in hand, she is looking down at the cat. She says: "You were stray once and you could be stray again." Ouch. Online etiquette does not dictate that any follow up at all is necessary. After all, there are many stray cats on the world wide web.
But hope springs eternal, especially when there's chemistry. Though chemistry also is not always enough. The last guy I dated had this to say about my DVF wrap dress:
Him: I like your dress.
Me: Thank you.
Him (reaching across the table to finger the fabric at my wrist): The pattern...it looks a bit like a Metro card. (Note to South African friends: This is not a compliment. The Metro card is badly designed and it is yellow and black. No one in their right mind would buy a dress that looked like one and no woman wants to be told that her dress looks like a ticket to the Underground. Hmmmn, just realized the Freudian double entendre here.).
(Not that Diller's doing so well right now if this feature in the NYT is anything to go by: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/16/business/media/16diller.html?scp=2&sq=Barry+Diller&st=nyt). Perhaps I'm confusing Diller with his wife, the fashion designer Diane von Furstenburg. After all, if she can create the perfect dress for every body, surely he can do something about my missing Mr Right, right?
But back to match.com, because that's really what you want to know about. First things first: I am not going into juicy details about my dating life here. What I will say is this: I wish online dating hadn't become the norm, but in a city like New York it has. (Alternative is being a de facto nun for months and months on end). However, I do like the ego boost it supplies should a potential "thing" not reach fruition. You can literally pick yourself up, dust yourself off and be back on the dating bronco within 24 hours (not always recommended). I've periodically returned to the Internet (usually when said nun status is starting to set in). I've tried J.date, but it's too conservative for me. Nerve.com...cute guys, but not ambitious enough for me. Match.com has been the most satisfying so far (if satisfaction can be measured purely in like-mindedness...I have yet to have a relationship via match.com that actually sticks). There's an old New Yorker cartoon that sums up online dating for me, even though it has nothing to so with it: A woman is trying to read while her cat begs for attention at her ankles. Book in hand, she is looking down at the cat. She says: "You were stray once and you could be stray again." Ouch. Online etiquette does not dictate that any follow up at all is necessary. After all, there are many stray cats on the world wide web.
But hope springs eternal, especially when there's chemistry. Though chemistry also is not always enough. The last guy I dated had this to say about my DVF wrap dress:
Him: I like your dress.
Me: Thank you.
Him (reaching across the table to finger the fabric at my wrist): The pattern...it looks a bit like a Metro card. (Note to South African friends: This is not a compliment. The Metro card is badly designed and it is yellow and black. No one in their right mind would buy a dress that looked like one and no woman wants to be told that her dress looks like a ticket to the Underground. Hmmmn, just realized the Freudian double entendre here.).
Elephantitis of the Emotions
My friend Brent Greenblatt and I went to the Whitney Biennial two Saturdays ago. As always, it is an eclectic and sometimes difficult to understand collection of contemporary pieces by American artists, but what stood out for me was the crossover of art and documentary. Everything from Spike Lee's excellent documentary about the aftermath of hurricane Katrina When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts, which was originally shown on HBO, to a beautiful piece by the artist Javier Téllez titled Letter on the Blind For the Use of Those Who See. This gorgeous black and white video could have been filmed by Jean Luc Godard. Téllez's art gives a voice to the marginalised (how cool is that?). It's his way of offering us an out from our false assumptions. In this video, the artist re-created the Indian parable "The Blind Men and the Elephant," filming six blind men as they touch a real live elephant who is standing in the middle of the McCarren Park swimming pool in Williamsburg (now emptied of water and often used as a concert venue for Indie rock bands). The idea is to show that "every being experiences the same thing in a unique way." It was a great lesson in how different people open themselves up (or not) to the same experience. Some of the men lightly touched the majestic (and patient) animal, one man folded up his stick and touched the elephant with his entire body. An embrace. Enormously moving.
Marianne Fassler, who was here last week and also deeply touched by this video, felt that is was addressing the idea of "the elephant in the room": We would never ask a blind person to tell us what they see. True. (She pointed out that elephants were something of a mini-theme at this year's biennal. Another installation upstairs saw just elephant feet and a tusk, and where the rest of the elephant should have been, simply the words "Iraqi Oil".
The Whitney Biennale is on for some time. See it if you get the chance.
http://www.whitney.org/www/2008biennial/www/?section=artists&page=artist_tellez
Marianne Fassler, who was here last week and also deeply touched by this video, felt that is was addressing the idea of "the elephant in the room": We would never ask a blind person to tell us what they see. True. (She pointed out that elephants were something of a mini-theme at this year's biennal. Another installation upstairs saw just elephant feet and a tusk, and where the rest of the elephant should have been, simply the words "Iraqi Oil".
The Whitney Biennale is on for some time. See it if you get the chance.
http://www.whitney.org/www/2008biennial/www/?section=artists&page=artist_tellez
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
A Jew for President?
Fran Lebowitz in New York Magazine had the following to say: "...it's never going to happen. Because people don't like Jews. You must have noticed that by now. And I will also tell you, as a Jew, I don't want there to be a Jewish president. We have enough problems. Imagine if they could blame this on us too."
Sunday, March 9, 2008
It's Always Been About the Hair
The actress Jean E. Taylor came into my friend Aliza's Greenpoint living room last night (that's Greenpoint in Brooklyn, not Greenpoint in Cape Town) and turned it into an alternate universe. The Wild Hair Living Room Tour is an example of "basement art making," she says. "Exploring how possibility may emerge from a gloomy sense of nothing, we discovered scrap cardboard and string to be handy tools for constructing the world of our piece."
With a roll of tape, a doctor's coat, a chalkboard, and the aforementioned string and cardboard, Taylor (Ophelia disguised as a museum docent) began her highly entertaining "lecture" about the Wild Hare as part of the so-called Museum of Natural History's Outreach Program. This soon morphed into a tale of Wild Hair (read: non-conformists) and Dark Castles...a fairy tale about a thwarted love affair between a prince and a maiden, a dark place filled with immoral people and a young woman who needs to find the courage to step into the unknown. Of course this was all a metaphor for much deeper stuff.
Taylor is an energetic and talented performer and there is something about theater inside a living room that takes away the sometimes unbearable intimacy that I usually feel in a much larger theater. Or perhaps because it's in the living room there is no need to feel that intimacy as something "other".
At the end of the performance, there was a video made where the audience was asked to share an experience of being a "Wild Hair". Of course I had to get involved...told my story of leaving Elle (Dark Castle) when most thought I had a dream job. No regrets there.
For more info: http://wildhairlivingroomtour.com/index.php
With a roll of tape, a doctor's coat, a chalkboard, and the aforementioned string and cardboard, Taylor (Ophelia disguised as a museum docent) began her highly entertaining "lecture" about the Wild Hare as part of the so-called Museum of Natural History's Outreach Program. This soon morphed into a tale of Wild Hair (read: non-conformists) and Dark Castles...a fairy tale about a thwarted love affair between a prince and a maiden, a dark place filled with immoral people and a young woman who needs to find the courage to step into the unknown. Of course this was all a metaphor for much deeper stuff.
Taylor is an energetic and talented performer and there is something about theater inside a living room that takes away the sometimes unbearable intimacy that I usually feel in a much larger theater. Or perhaps because it's in the living room there is no need to feel that intimacy as something "other".
At the end of the performance, there was a video made where the audience was asked to share an experience of being a "Wild Hair". Of course I had to get involved...told my story of leaving Elle (Dark Castle) when most thought I had a dream job. No regrets there.
For more info: http://wildhairlivingroomtour.com/index.php
Friday, February 29, 2008
Hussein: What's in a Name?
When I was in South Africa recently, there was great hysteria amongst the Jewish community (ok, my family), brought on by an e-mail that was being sent around on the Internet claiming that Barack Hussein Obama was a Muslim. I tried to explain to my mother that even if Obama was a Muslim (which he isn't), it didn't make him a militant suicide bomber. She regarded me suspiciously, wanting to believe. In Vanity Fair's Hollywood Issue a profile on Obama addresses these accusations thus: Todd S. Purdum writes that Obama told me [him] that he could only laugh at the false press accounts that portray Soetoro [Obama's stepfather] as some kind of radical Muslim who had sent him to an Islamic school. "I mean, you know, his big thing was Johnny Walker Black, Andy Williams records," Obama said. "I still remember 'Moon River.' He'd be playing it, sipping, and playing tennis at the country club. That was his whole thing."
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And today on Salon.com, there is a longer discussion. Take a look: http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2008/02/28/hussein/
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And today on Salon.com, there is a longer discussion. Take a look: http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2008/02/28/hussein/
Thursday, February 28, 2008
A Different Shoulder to Rub
I mingled with the literati at the National Arts Club last night where the finalists for the LA Times Book Award were announced. Made me think that I should get myself a job in book publishing (that's not to say I don't have a book in me). Thinking went like this: If magazine journalism has become just like selling thanks to the rampant consumerism of our time then I am nothing but a sales person. And if I'm nothing but a sales person, what is the one thing I wouldn't mind selling? Other people's novels. I'm looking into it.
By the way, the National Arts Club is a fascinating place. It is housed in the historic Tilden Mansion (15 Gramercy Park) and has been there since 1898.
Architect Philip Johnson called the mansion, "among the most beautiful in New York."
The awards will be announced in April.
And the nominees are....
Fiction
Junot Diaz, THE BRIEF WONDROUS LIFE OF OSCAR WAO (Riverhead)
Andrew O'Hagan, BE NEAR ME (Harcourt)
Stewart O'Nan, LAST NIGHT AT THE LOBSTER (Viking)
Per Petterson, OUT STEALING HORSES (Graywolf)
Marianne Wiggins, THE SHADOW CATCHER (Simon & Schuster)
ART SEIDENBAUM AWARD FOR FIRST FICTION
Antonia Arslan (Translated by Geoffrey Brock), SKYLARK FARM (Knopf)
Rebecca Curtis, TWENTY GRAND AND OTHER TALES OF LOVE AND MONEY (Harper)
Pamela Erens, THE UNDERSTORY (Ironweed Press)
Ellen Litman, THE LAST CHICKEN IN AMERICA (W.W. Norton)
Dinaw Mengestu, THE BEAUTIFUL THINGS THAT HEAVEN BEARS (Riverhead)
Biography
Nancy Isenberg, FALLEN FOUNDER: THE LIFE OF AARON BURR (Viking)
Tim Jeal, STANLEY: THE IMPOSSIBLE LIFE OF AFRICA'S GREATEST EXPLORER (Yale)
Simon Sebag Montefiore, YOUNG STALIN (Knopf)
Robert Morgan: BOONE: A BIOGRAPHY (Algonquin)
Michael J. Neufeld, VON BRAUN: DREAMER OF SPACE, ENGINEER OF WAR (Knopf)
Current Events
Ishmael Beah, A LONG WAY GONE; MEMOIRS OF A BOY SOLDIER (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
Tom Bissell, THE FATHER OF ALL THINGS: A MARINE, HIS SON, AND THE LEGACY OF VIETNAM (Pantheon)
Ronald Brownstein, THE SECOND CIVIL WAR: HOW EXTREME PARTISANSHIP HAS PARALYZED WASHINGTON AND POLARIZED AMERICA (Penguin Press)
Naomi Klein, THE SHOCK DOCTRINE: THE RISE OF DISASTER CAPITALISM (Metropolitan)
Elizabeth D. Samet, SOLDIER'S HEART: READING LITERATURE THROUGH PEACE AND WAR AT WEST POINT (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
By the way, the National Arts Club is a fascinating place. It is housed in the historic Tilden Mansion (15 Gramercy Park) and has been there since 1898.
Architect Philip Johnson called the mansion, "among the most beautiful in New York."
The awards will be announced in April.
And the nominees are....
Fiction
Junot Diaz, THE BRIEF WONDROUS LIFE OF OSCAR WAO (Riverhead)
Andrew O'Hagan, BE NEAR ME (Harcourt)
Stewart O'Nan, LAST NIGHT AT THE LOBSTER (Viking)
Per Petterson, OUT STEALING HORSES (Graywolf)
Marianne Wiggins, THE SHADOW CATCHER (Simon & Schuster)
ART SEIDENBAUM AWARD FOR FIRST FICTION
Antonia Arslan (Translated by Geoffrey Brock), SKYLARK FARM (Knopf)
Rebecca Curtis, TWENTY GRAND AND OTHER TALES OF LOVE AND MONEY (Harper)
Pamela Erens, THE UNDERSTORY (Ironweed Press)
Ellen Litman, THE LAST CHICKEN IN AMERICA (W.W. Norton)
Dinaw Mengestu, THE BEAUTIFUL THINGS THAT HEAVEN BEARS (Riverhead)
Biography
Nancy Isenberg, FALLEN FOUNDER: THE LIFE OF AARON BURR (Viking)
Tim Jeal, STANLEY: THE IMPOSSIBLE LIFE OF AFRICA'S GREATEST EXPLORER (Yale)
Simon Sebag Montefiore, YOUNG STALIN (Knopf)
Robert Morgan: BOONE: A BIOGRAPHY (Algonquin)
Michael J. Neufeld, VON BRAUN: DREAMER OF SPACE, ENGINEER OF WAR (Knopf)
Current Events
Ishmael Beah, A LONG WAY GONE; MEMOIRS OF A BOY SOLDIER (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
Tom Bissell, THE FATHER OF ALL THINGS: A MARINE, HIS SON, AND THE LEGACY OF VIETNAM (Pantheon)
Ronald Brownstein, THE SECOND CIVIL WAR: HOW EXTREME PARTISANSHIP HAS PARALYZED WASHINGTON AND POLARIZED AMERICA (Penguin Press)
Naomi Klein, THE SHOCK DOCTRINE: THE RISE OF DISASTER CAPITALISM (Metropolitan)
Elizabeth D. Samet, SOLDIER'S HEART: READING LITERATURE THROUGH PEACE AND WAR AT WEST POINT (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Sibling Revelry
I was invited to a screening of That Other Boleyn Girl, which I couldn't make, but I did cut out of my master class in fiction to attend the lavish dinner that followed at Christie's. I mean who wouldn't cut class for a chance to view Natalie Portman, in a floor-length velvet gown, up close and Meryl Streep's daughter Mamie Gummer. Plus, the table decor featured macabre miniature guillotines with trick blades that stopped short of chopping off your digits. "Off with her fingers!"
Monday, February 25, 2008
Indie Love at the Oscars
Didn't you just love all the gushy sentimentalism at last night's 80th Academy Awards ceremony? From Juno screenwriter, Diablo Cody thanking her parents for loving her just as she is, to the short documentary winners' urging that you can fulfill your dreams. Most priceless is this "morning after the Oscars" picture on Cody's Myspace blog.
TARGET=_BLANK > here
TARGET=_BLANK > here
Saturday, February 23, 2008
Healing the Art World
Filip Noterdaeme, my art lecturer, who is also the artist, activist, educator and director of HoMu, the Homeless Museum of Art, took me for tea to Bouley Bakery in Tribeca this past Wednesday. We bought our coffees and our mini pastries (although we eyed those illegal Ispahans that Bouley still carries despite being accused of copying them from some other baker-genius) and were forced to go downstairs and take them in between a raw fish counter and a wine cellar. It was a most bizarre place.
Filip told me about his upcoming performance art project (although he assures me that this is not a performance, "I'm serious about it," he says): "I want to heal the art world one person at a time -- weather permitting."
Filip will take to the streets of Manhattan this Spring with his booth that resembles the one that Lucy uses in Charlie Brown. It is labeled "The Homeless Museum of Art -- The Director is IN" and indeed you will find Noterdaeme there to give counseling sessions to the willing.
Filip told me that he was at his least creative when he was doing yoga and therapy, but he didn't discount therapy the way Rilke does. He says it's about controlled madness. For more info go to www.homu.com
Filip told me about his upcoming performance art project (although he assures me that this is not a performance, "I'm serious about it," he says): "I want to heal the art world one person at a time -- weather permitting."
Filip will take to the streets of Manhattan this Spring with his booth that resembles the one that Lucy uses in Charlie Brown. It is labeled "The Homeless Museum of Art -- The Director is IN" and indeed you will find Noterdaeme there to give counseling sessions to the willing.
Filip told me that he was at his least creative when he was doing yoga and therapy, but he didn't discount therapy the way Rilke does. He says it's about controlled madness. For more info go to www.homu.com
On Letting Go
How is a magazine editor supposed to deal with the below? One might say that the three rules of magazine editing are judging, controlling (managing), and being on trend (or right).
"There are only three things you need to let go of:
judging, controlling, and being right.
Release these three and you will have the whole mind
and twinkly heart of a child. It really is that simple."
-Hugh Prather, The Little Book of Letting Go
"There are only three things you need to let go of:
judging, controlling, and being right.
Release these three and you will have the whole mind
and twinkly heart of a child. It really is that simple."
-Hugh Prather, The Little Book of Letting Go
Friday, February 22, 2008
Peter Akinti, Debut Author
I met Peter Akinti in September 2007 at the Brooklyn Book Festival. Days later we had a drink in Harlem before he got onto a bus headed to Jena, Louisiana to see what the race riots were all about. He still says he wishes I'd gotten on that bus with him... And I still laugh at the thought of a white South African being anything other than problematic on that particular journey.
Akinti began his novel Forest Gate just before we met. It has nothing to do with Jena, but everything to do with race -- this time though it's race issues in the U.K that are looked at. In early January this year, it was acquired by Jonathan Cape. It will be published in a year from now. Look out for this new voice.
http://www.thebookseller.com/news/53274-teen-suicide-novel-to-cape.html
Akinti began his novel Forest Gate just before we met. It has nothing to do with Jena, but everything to do with race -- this time though it's race issues in the U.K that are looked at. In early January this year, it was acquired by Jonathan Cape. It will be published in a year from now. Look out for this new voice.
http://www.thebookseller.com/news/53274-teen-suicide-novel-to-cape.html
Brent Stirton, Photographer
Brent Stirton, the great love of my twenties, recently won 1st prize Contemporary Issues Singles at the 2007 World Press Photo Awards for his photos of the evacuation of dead Mountain Gorillas discovered in Virunga National Park in Eastern Congo. The story broke in August last year in Newsweek. Take a look at the winning photograph and more of Stirton's phenomenal work at http://www.brentstirton.com/feature-gorillas.php
Reading Like a Writer
I am reading Francine Prose's book Reading Like a Writer. I am fascinated by people who have surnames that foreshadow their future career. I once heard about a guy who had a surname that portended his bisexuality: Waddilove.
But that's not why I am reading Prose's excellent book. I am studying sentence structure. And she has made that very, very simple.
I like what she says here: "You will do yourself a disservice if you confine your reading to the rising star whose six-figure, two-book contract might seem to indicate where your own work should be heading. I'm not saying you shouldn't read such writers, some of whom are excellent and deserving of celebrity. I'm only pointing out that they represent the dot at the end of the long, glorious, complex sentence in which literature has been written."
But that's not why I am reading Prose's excellent book. I am studying sentence structure. And she has made that very, very simple.
I like what she says here: "You will do yourself a disservice if you confine your reading to the rising star whose six-figure, two-book contract might seem to indicate where your own work should be heading. I'm not saying you shouldn't read such writers, some of whom are excellent and deserving of celebrity. I'm only pointing out that they represent the dot at the end of the long, glorious, complex sentence in which literature has been written."
Wednesday, January 2, 2008
Inside the Media Echo Chamber
When I look back on the year that was, there is something I wish I hadn’t been party to. April 16 2007 was the day that Seung-Hui Cho, 23, killed 32 students and professors at Virginia Tech and then turned his gun on himself. I had just begun a freelance project for a news website. I was there to create original content, but first there was a period of training so that I could learn how to post my stories and visual packages online.
On that day, at about 5pm, I was asked to work late. At 7pm my editor called to tell me to expect a slide show of images. “As soon as you get them, post them live and then go back and write captions for each image,” he instructed. The images were stills taken from the video that Cho had sent to NBC before he opened fire at his college — a video that NBC had aired. On the website it was business as usual to report on this event and in “just following orders”, I became responsible for spreading those poisonous images across the Internet.
Certainly I was not alone. A writer on salon.com called news organisations like the one I was working at “the media echo chamber”, to describe how they “dutifully printed and broadcast everything straight from the mouths of high-profile violent offenders and felons alike, calling it ‘news’”. That night, when I went through image after image of an obviously disturbed and now already dead young man, scowling and pointing his gun into my face, I felt extremely uneasy, but I didn’t stop. I was doing my job.
I couldn’t sleep when I got home, not least of all because the assignment had left me with a mild dose of post-traumatic stress. Each time I closed my eyes I saw the black barrel of Cho’s gun and heard his gruff, strangled threats.
By the time I got to my desk the next day, pale and a little shaky, the news organisation had handed the mouthpiece over to its resident psychologist, who was quickly saving the day by saying how harmful it was for the national psyche (international, really, considering that it’s the “World Wide Web”) to have to stare at Cho’s violent diary of death. Of course, by this time the entire media echo chamber had cut down its coverage to just the tamest photograph of Cho, finally understanding that for a sociopath, anonymity is worse than death.
But the damage was done. As the essay on salon.com says, the media had collectively convinced “other disenfranchised citizens that the best way to get your voice heard is by doing something ‘newsworthy’ in the fine tradition of John Hinkley jnr, Ted “Unabomber” Kaczynski, Mohammed Atta and other celebrated sociopaths, terrorists and misfits”.
A few hours later, when one of my senior editors asked me to go down to Korea Town (a neighbourhood in Manhattan that’s bordered by 31st and 36th Streets and Fifth and Sixth Avenues) and ask Koreans and Korean-Americans how they felt about being Korean in light of Cho’s disastrous deed, I finally found my voice and declined. I can’t say that taking this stand served me particularly well at work — I was viewed after that as a little prickly and criticised by more hardcore news types as “not a real journalist” — but I was glad I turned it down.
I have since moved on from the news organisation — I eventually lost my mojo entirely when, during the civil war in Gaza, our features meetings were all about Paris Hilton’s sojourn in jail — but the small role I played in spreading Cho’s hate-filled message has stuck with me.
Last week, in the Associated Press’s annual vote, the Virginia Tech killings were chosen as the top story of 2007 by US editors and news directors. The mortgage crisis, which unsettled the US housing market, was second; the war in Iraq, third.
Virginia Tech was the worst mass shooting in modern US history and news coverage has prompted colleges to reassess their emergency response systems, but voting it in at number one when the US is still in Iraq and more journalists have been killed trying to cover that war than ever before seems to smack of industry self-congratulation.
But after a year like this, I guess we should all be grateful that the triumvirate of tarts — Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears or Paris Hilton — didn’t make the top three.
This column first appeared in the Sunday Times, South Africa in the Made in Manhattan column
On that day, at about 5pm, I was asked to work late. At 7pm my editor called to tell me to expect a slide show of images. “As soon as you get them, post them live and then go back and write captions for each image,” he instructed. The images were stills taken from the video that Cho had sent to NBC before he opened fire at his college — a video that NBC had aired. On the website it was business as usual to report on this event and in “just following orders”, I became responsible for spreading those poisonous images across the Internet.
Certainly I was not alone. A writer on salon.com called news organisations like the one I was working at “the media echo chamber”, to describe how they “dutifully printed and broadcast everything straight from the mouths of high-profile violent offenders and felons alike, calling it ‘news’”. That night, when I went through image after image of an obviously disturbed and now already dead young man, scowling and pointing his gun into my face, I felt extremely uneasy, but I didn’t stop. I was doing my job.
I couldn’t sleep when I got home, not least of all because the assignment had left me with a mild dose of post-traumatic stress. Each time I closed my eyes I saw the black barrel of Cho’s gun and heard his gruff, strangled threats.
By the time I got to my desk the next day, pale and a little shaky, the news organisation had handed the mouthpiece over to its resident psychologist, who was quickly saving the day by saying how harmful it was for the national psyche (international, really, considering that it’s the “World Wide Web”) to have to stare at Cho’s violent diary of death. Of course, by this time the entire media echo chamber had cut down its coverage to just the tamest photograph of Cho, finally understanding that for a sociopath, anonymity is worse than death.
But the damage was done. As the essay on salon.com says, the media had collectively convinced “other disenfranchised citizens that the best way to get your voice heard is by doing something ‘newsworthy’ in the fine tradition of John Hinkley jnr, Ted “Unabomber” Kaczynski, Mohammed Atta and other celebrated sociopaths, terrorists and misfits”.
A few hours later, when one of my senior editors asked me to go down to Korea Town (a neighbourhood in Manhattan that’s bordered by 31st and 36th Streets and Fifth and Sixth Avenues) and ask Koreans and Korean-Americans how they felt about being Korean in light of Cho’s disastrous deed, I finally found my voice and declined. I can’t say that taking this stand served me particularly well at work — I was viewed after that as a little prickly and criticised by more hardcore news types as “not a real journalist” — but I was glad I turned it down.
I have since moved on from the news organisation — I eventually lost my mojo entirely when, during the civil war in Gaza, our features meetings were all about Paris Hilton’s sojourn in jail — but the small role I played in spreading Cho’s hate-filled message has stuck with me.
Last week, in the Associated Press’s annual vote, the Virginia Tech killings were chosen as the top story of 2007 by US editors and news directors. The mortgage crisis, which unsettled the US housing market, was second; the war in Iraq, third.
Virginia Tech was the worst mass shooting in modern US history and news coverage has prompted colleges to reassess their emergency response systems, but voting it in at number one when the US is still in Iraq and more journalists have been killed trying to cover that war than ever before seems to smack of industry self-congratulation.
But after a year like this, I guess we should all be grateful that the triumvirate of tarts — Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears or Paris Hilton — didn’t make the top three.
This column first appeared in the Sunday Times, South Africa in the Made in Manhattan column
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