Twenty Third & Seventh

The Strain Begins To Show On Sienna Miller

Link: The Strain Begins To Show On Sienna Miller

Oh, spare me.  The child is on drugs and out of control.  That's really not an especially interesting gesture at this point in history.  Some of this has to be planted pre-publicity. I have a feeling that Edie is going to be greatly dishonoured by this film.  Stanley should never have let anything starring Guy Pearce be shot on premises.  Can the old girl stand up to mass-market 'Chelsea pilgrimages'?

I guess she has survived worse...  I've seen how people who shouldn't be at the Chelsea react.  They know that the building wants them out and inevitably comply.

Svelte starlet Sienna Miller was looking skinnier than usual as she strolled through a London park this week.

The actress has had to shed weight for her new role playing Edie Sedgwick, Andy Warhol’s anorexic muse in up-coming film ‘Factory Girl’, this has fuelled already increasing concerns for her well-being when she revealed her rapidly-decreasing  IQ frame!

Bohemia is Dead? On the PoMo-ing of Sydney.

Five star reading from the locals this morning. Elizabeth Farrelly is a writer who does a lot around the built environment and development issues.  This slightlyy melancholic piece in which she tries to force memories of a realer Sydney from our denial addled brains is recommended for anyone living where fringe communities are under pressure. This was a more interesting city until the yuppie plague began. 

Love song to the gritty city

From wharves to warehouses, there is much to admire in our dirty old town, writes Elizabeth Farrelly.

We know this, really. We know that cleaned-up sani-town is dull even for tourists, certainly dull for locals; that The Rocks and the Cross, Darling Harbour and Walsh Bay were all more interesting back when they were real, working places. And that in our ruthless overcleansing we have lost some subtle but irreplaceable flavour, something essentially ours that, just maybe, we could have kept.

All this sucks the blood from a town. And yet, even as we regret it, we go on doing it. Urban cleansing is full steam ahead in the Cross, where not only the hookers and the hooked are disappearing from the expensively repaved streets, but also the underfed artists and emigre bohemians, who made Australia's most densely packed urban quarter what it was.

When a city's artist, or bohemian, or Aboriginal communities get moved on, they don't simply reassemble somewhere else, in suburban Ashfield or Botany. Deprived of the special inner-city conditions that sustained them (such as density, access or value) they simply cease to exist. The individuals may survive but the communities, and the richness they offer a city, die.

Model Prisoner?

Link: Catwalk queen's catfight arrest - People - Entertainment - smh.com.au.

Naomi would look so fierce in that fetching shade of guantamo bay orange so favoured by US correctional authorities.

We saw Naomi at Soho House in Manhattan.  She was dull, she did nothing outrageous at all.  Paul Macartney was much more fun to mock from a distance...  I genuinely loathe him!

Living with Legends: Hotel Chelsea Blog: More Bohemian Theme Hotels

Link: Living with Legends: Hotel Chelsea Blog: More Bohemian Theme Hotels.

More scoops at Living with Legends.  As usual, the mainstream are catching up with what we've been doing for years- walking in the footsteps of legends.

Eggs! Eggs! Babs, I want some Eggs!

Link: Egg-squisite

If you find eggs immediately funny you might enjoy this piece on exotic egg eating.  Mama Edie would have wet herself for the ancient Chinese eggs.

Bad boy for love: Rose Tattoo rock monster Pete Wells dies - National

Link: Bad boy for love: Rose Tattoo rock monster Pete Wells dies - National.

We've lost one of the respected elders of AusRock.  Anybody who is anybody in Sydney had their tattoo work done by Pete, myself included.

Hotel Chelsea newsmakers- in which we simply feed off Living with Legends Hard Work.

Today's best reading is at Living with Legends.  Ed Hamilton reviews BRUCE LEVINGSTON’S FIFTH ANIVERSARY GALA at the Lincoln Center.  You'll find lots of Chelsea boldface names ranging from the over half a century of cultural dissidence.

Ethan Hawke came out in a semi-sparkly suit with peach shirt and delivered a stirring rendition of the [Ginsberg] piece, which is about the poet standing in the middle of Kansas, meditating on the end of war.  Ethan used a soft reading voice, but he was able to make it boom when, halfway through, he spoke like God on High, calling down the prophets of old into the vortex of Kansas to stand with him in proclaiming an end to war. (Unfortunately, this works about as well now as it did back in 1966 when Ginsberg wrote the poem.)

Dusty the Musical

Some good reading about Dusty Springfield at the [UK] Independent Online.

Included is news of Kristin Chenoweth to play Dusty in a bio-pic directed by Ang Lee.   That has confused me.  Kristn in big wigs? YES! Ang Lee taking on Dusty? NO!  Being disinterred and paraded as a gay icon for the fawning liberals of the better end of Chelsea is the last thing Dusty would have wanted. 

This Dusty will be a victim of an oppressive straight world, tortured by the love that dare not speak it's name.  It's quite perfect, the homo dies in the end, audiences like that.  It can be called Brokeback Mascara and Kristin can have an Oscar for pretending to be a lesbian...

Meanwhile, Mme Bedsore is becoming increasingly excited about seeing the newly developed musical DUSTY on Thursday night.  All signs are that this is going to be lots of fun and that it will probably open in NY for next Tony's season.

Dusty- the Musical Website.

Tamsin Carrol- a fine actor, as Dusty. Remember her name, we have an open market in actors [!] between Aus and USA under the Free Trade Agreement.

"I think Dusty became a gay icon because of the extreme artificiality and formality of her persona," suggests Camille Paglia, cultural critic. "I think there was that element of pushing her energies to the absolute limit that the gay audience usually esteems in a major star. You can see Dusty's power if you compare her with Madonna who is one of the great pop divas of our own time, but who strangely lacks the ability to bond with a live audience or to open herself emotionally. With Dusty there's a sense of passion, not only passion as emotion but passion as in the passion of Christ. It's almost as if she's tortured by her gift.

OMFUG?

Well then... here's one of those questions that deepen the mysteries of the universe. 

Does anybody know what the OMFUG underneath CBGBs stands for? I've been told Original Music For Underground Gourmands.  I don't believe that for a moment- that's what tourists and those not in on the joke are told. I can see the MF in there. I really don't imagine 'gourmand' was a widely used word in the original GBGBs scene. New Yorkers would probably put UG for underground.

I'm not buying.  Does anyone out there know more?

Manhattan Wildlife or 'Stupid Tourists!'

The first time that I saw a squirrel in New York I was enchanted.  Yes, I was surprised, a lot of things in New York are surprising; but I should really have been prepared for the squirrels. 

"Look! It's a squirrel", I gasped to a long term New Yorker.

We were on 19th, somewhere down around 5th, and my guide wasn't stopping to look at squirrels.  I, on the other hand, was now tittering at the squirrel about how cute he was and what a lovely big tail he had.

"Come along dear, we don't talk to squirrels on the street in this neigbourhood." 

I stood corrected. 

A few weeks later I would see an example of the notorious New York mega-rats.  I was walking back to Hotel Chelsea from TriBeCa enjoying playing at big, tough leather clad flaneur in New York.  Any facade of neuvo-butch was quickly dropped when the rat stepped into my path. 

I hope never to see another creature quite so repulsive as this rat ever again.  It was quite large enough to seem to present an immediate threat.  The look of utter defiance that it fixed me with was pure New York attitude, De Niro in Taxi Driver stuff.  It clearly had no fear of me and stood effectively blocking the footpath.

Being a meek and ultimately self-preserving hick from Sydney, I stepped onto the street and let the rat have the footpath.