Twenty Third & Seventh

Hotel Chelsea Sordid Sex Shock

Apparently this woman shagged a Hotel Chelsea bellhop.  Gawker and Legends are already on the case. 

A few things concern me- there ain't no bell and the staff don't 'hop' for nobody!  If you're priviliged to get help with your luggage a large tip is suggested, it will be rewarded in invaluable local guidance.  More to the [utter lack of] point, I wouldn't be shagging the Chelsea staff in even the most desperate of circumstances.  Perhaps they have new staff.

george michael is in trouble again. couldn't happen to a more deserving ponce! After all the shit he has given Boy George for being 'too gay' over the years I'd be happy to see his career destroyed.  There is, IMO, absolutely no excuse for public sex of this kind in this day and age.  As Boy so wisely observed-- 'can't he use a computer'?

why do banks take 48 hours to process a payment TO a credit card while they can deduct money instantaneously?

can anybody explain the difference between an incursion and an invasion? if a tank rolled into my neighborhood i think the semantics would become secondary.

we hear reports that visitor rooms at the Chelsea have gone up in price.  a correspondent writes:

they have now gone from $250.00 to $275.00  Man oh man.  They are pricing out all the people
who made that hotel what it was!  Pretty soon the only people staying there will be rich boring tourists or Britney Spears.

and we're inclined to agree.  Negotiate like a New Yorker is my advice, it worked in knocking the price down for us.  Just be prepared for a stark room!

Liza Minnelli playing a whacked-out masturbation therapist is a freaky thought

I am My Own Wife is headed my way in the original production.  This review from the .au press has a major spoiler- be careful.

Still depressed at the idea that CBGBs will be gone forever.  An example of what happens when one becomes a parody of one's self.

Second Life is an overwhelmingly expansive and conceptually dense virtual world allegedly taking the world by storm.  It's worth a look.  I suspect that I'm a bit too old to grasp the paradigm.

Of the 147 million Americans on the Internet, 12 million have blogs.

Stupid Tourists

Well...  I just finished watching a doco The Legend Of Pastor Bill about a mad evengelist working in what was described as one of the worse parts of Brooklyn. 

The data about shootings, rapes and such was disturbing to say the least.  Pastor Bill himself was mugged and shot in the head twice during the course of the program.  Amazingly, he survived the shooting to continue his [dubious] evangelism.

The most interesting bit is that the shooting was in exactly the part of Brooklyn that I decided, relatively randomly, to get off the train to explore because it looked 'interesting'. 

I'm left to wonder whether the level of danger was exaggerated in the program or whether I was just lucky, I had absolutely no trouble.  Certainly, I was aware that it was a neighbourhood that warranted some caution and I was very careful not to stray too far from the station and toward the projects but...   

STUPID TOURISTS!

Gooey Nostalgia

Yep, I've been sucked into the vortex known as YouTube, the range of things to watch is stupefying.  This one is prompt for a melancholy nostalgia, Culture Club's final Sydney show in 1984 when they were at the peak of their popularity.  Sydney had known no comparable hysteria since the Beatles toured.  I was a dangerously young man and at this concert in the fifth row.  I still consider this to be the night that my youth ended and I was catapulted into the realm of adultdom, nothing would ever seem as magikal again.

From YouTube.com, this was enough to make me cloudy with longing for the old girl...

Only in New York...

From: the Sydney Morning Herald.  It's time for Chelsea residents to lobby Stanley for avant-garde toilet paper!

It's new, it's avant-garde. Is the world ready for dark toilet paper, asks Penelope Green.

An ink-and-gold Manhattan nightclub, Double Seven, recently carried new accessories in the men's and women's bathrooms: rolls of black toilet paper. You could hardly see them through the gloom, as the club's bathrooms are tiled in black, have black toilets and sinks, and are lit by candles.

Laurie Black, a customer relations manager who was there having a drink with her boss, tugged out a length of the stuff and squinted.

"It doesn't jump out," she said. "You'd think, wow, black toilet paper. Am I going to use this?"

Good question. Can toilet paper make it as an object of design, a touchstone of chic?

Paulo Miguel Pereira da Silva is the president of a Portuguese company called Renova, which has begun testing Renova Black at New York hot spots such as Frederick's Bar and Lounge and La Esquina.

Da Silva says black was an intuitive choice for toilet paper because it signals "avant-garde creative work". "In a design sense, black means irreverence, maybe touching a bit on the core nature of art, which is to break rules and set new ones. Culturally, deep down, Renova Black invites people to break down whatever might be limiting as common sense ideas."

Oprah not a Lesbian Shock

In shocking news reported at the Sydney Morning Herald, it transpires that Oprah is not a big lesbian. 

Oprah Winfrey and her friend Gayle King want to be clear - they are not gay.

In the August issue of O, the Oprah Magazine, the US talk-show host explains that some people misunderstand her close friendship with King.

"I understand why people think we're gay," she says. "There isn't a definition in our culture for this kind of bond between women. So I get why people have to label it - how can you be this close without it being sexual?"

Meanwhile, we're unspeakably shocked to read that ex Savage Garden ponce, Darren Hayes  is a happily gay-marriaged homo.

Last week Darren Hayes, the former Savage Garden frontman, parted ways with his Australian label, Sony BMG. This week he has announced he has married his British boyfriend, Richard Cullen.

Hayes, who wed his university sweetheart, Colby Taylor, in 1995 and separated in 1999, has pirouetted around the question of gaydom for a while.

Sienna-saga.

The prospects of Factory Girl being a major turkey seem greater every day.  We read that the Edie's Screen Test scene is to be reshot.

In some senses, I want this movie to succeed so that my signed and numbered by Billy Name still of Edie being screen tested [pictured] appreciates to reflect it's real significance.

Utter Humiliation

This evening I went to see [hear?] the Sydney production of Urinetown.  It was great fun and I shall probably have more to say in the morning.  For now a story about how I can get myself into awful trouble.

As I was returning to my seat after Interval, I decided to be very brave and try to take a shortcut via the fire escapes.  In theory, I should know where I'm going in the theatre in question.  It is a very new theatre but this was, perhaps, my fifth visit. 

The people who know about my sense of direction are laughing already.

Somehow, I followed the cement passages to where I thought I should be and walked straight out onto upper rear stage where the band / orchestra was located. 

I panicked and froze.  The stage lights temporarily blinded me. All I could see was a woman in the front rows pointing at me.  Rabbit in headlights. Rabbit in headlights.

I thought about it for a moment and said to the lead pianist, "I beg your pardon, I'm lost".  I learned the power of saying "I'm lost" and looking at people pathetically in NY.

With absolute composure I turned around as if one one wanders onstage frequently and at will and tried again [with success] for my seat.