Twenty Third & Seventh

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.

MAC does Warhol

My favourite cosmetics producer, the manufacturer of my 'secret' concealer and foundation, MAC, are doing a Warhol inspired range.  We will not miss out on this one like we did the LiZa palette.  I recall reading that Andy had his lips stained with the substance used to keep the lips on corpses red for viewing, a permanent dye.  Here's betting they don't include that one in the range!

This article is worth reading for more than makeup news, it contains a relatively thoughtful survey of Andy's massive influence on the world we occupy today.  I absolutely disagree with them on the point about coloured camouflage prints, that trend emerged when army disposal stores started stocking the post Gulf War fatigues.  Otherwise, all good. Hop on over to the The Toronto Star for some thought fuel.

extract:

Fifteen minutes of fame. Warhol's quote is this: "In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes." In the television world of American Idol, The Surreal Life (it featured forgotten actors and, again, Warhol-style portraits on the set) and The Bachelor, it's true, as it is in the Internet world of blogs and My Space. Warhol was doing reality television with his first TV programs, says Vincent Freland, who worked for Warhol for 20 years and is now the agent for the artist's paintings and drawings. "He understood the media better than anybody else. He was a visionary," says Freland. "He's probably more famous now than when he was alive. As he said, `death and money change everything.'"

The modern slacker. Warhol looked bored, disaffected in public, but worked like a CEO and left a vast fortune at his death. "I met him many times, though he was not a friend," said Thomas Sokolowski, director of the Andy Warhol Museum. "At his Factory (Warhol's studio), people were partying, taking drugs, watching movies, having sex in the bathrooms, and Andy Warhol was sitting there working — silk screening, making films. He was constantly working. He was one of the most productive artists of all time, constantly reinventing himself."

Algonquin Attempts to Trump Chelsea

Oh, how terribly boho- the Algonquin has a Hotel cat.  Why, the cat even answers email.  None of this can compare to Hotel Chelsea where cats come in one's window at night, presumably hunting the complimentary mice that come with the room.

If people want wildlife at reception the Chelsea has Stanley... The poor old Algonquin, nothing more than a relic of past glories while the Chelsea remains vibrant with creative energy.

[pictured: one of the cats who visited my room at the Chelsea.]

Channeling the Cat's Meow- NYT

By BROOKE HAUSER
Published: July 9, 2006

AT the Algonquin Hotel there is a popular saying: "Dogs have owners. Cats have staff." In the case of a fleecy, blue-eyed Birman named Matilda II, the hotel's current cat-in-residence, that staff now includes a ghostwriter.

Matilda, 10 years old, is the most recent of a long line of felines that have had carte blanche at the hotel since the 1930's.

She is, however, the first of the hotel's cats to have her own e-mail address: matildaalgonquincat @algonquinhotel.com. And for the last 18 months, the task of answering Matilda's fan mail from around the world has been left to someone with opposable thumbs. That would be Alice de Almeida, the executive assistant to the general manager, Bill Liles. (He, sad to say, is allergic to cats.)

When Ms. de Almeida, 60, was hired for the job at the Algonquin, she had no idea that one of her main duties would be to act as the mouthpiece for a mouser. But after two decades of doing administrative work at hotels in Manhattan, including the Peninsula and the Parker Meridian, she jumped at the chance.

"I thought it was just great that the hotel had a cat," said Ms. de Almeida, whose desk features photographs of her own rescued strays: Puddy Tat, Al E. Kat, Spitz, Einstein and Rags. "And then when I found out that I was actually her voice, I died and went to heaven."

Sienna Sickbag

From The New York Daily News, it's hard to guess what depths of bad taste this film could yet plummet.  At least Sienna isn't rolling around on the grave a la Esther.

Sienna Miller and Jude Law were recently in Santa Barbara, so the on-again couple paid a visit to the nearby grave of Edie Sedgwick, the Warhol muse Miller plays in "Factory Girl." Law filmed his beloved tearfully placing flowers on the tombstone of the It-girl. "The footage was so beautiful, I may run it during the credits," "Factory Girl" director George Hickenlooper tells us …

Chelsea People in the News- Brett Whiteley

This extended interview with Clive James contains the consideration of former Chelsea resident, Brett Whiteley reproduced below. The Whiteleys lived at the Chelsea in the early 70s.  Significant Whiteley work can be seen at the reception desk.

This article refers to Whiteley's London years, before his Chelsea residency.

"The house had once belonged to the pre-Raphaelite crowd-pleaser William Holman Hunt," James says. "The bunch of recent arrivals I was with all moved into the ground floor and started being poor. Brett lived in a studio in the back yard: he had obviously already left poverty behind.

"He had all the signs of success, including a blindingly beautiful wife, Wendy. Forty years on I know enough about the harsh economics of a painter's life to know that Brett might not have been that well off but he certainly got invited out. It was a tough moment for the rest of us when Brett and Wendy emerged from the studio on the way to dinner with Sir Kenneth Clark (England's leading art historian and academic)," he says.

"Brett, with his bright blond tea-cosy of a hairstyle, a kind of golden helmet, was almost as lovely as his wife. But Brett was no snob and seemed not to mind when I spent hours drinking his beer while explaining to him that technique in the arts was a side issue.

"Brett countered with the argument that one of the reasons Matisse could leave out so much was that he knew exactly how to put everything in. This was a perfectly true statement, but I was years away from realising how true because I had never had to sit down and keep reshaping a sentence while the light changed on the verb.

"One of the things I most regret about my acquaintanceship with Brett Whiteley was that when he carried out his plans to visit the National Gallery before dawn - Sir Kenneth had made a phone call - I was too hung over to join him on his expedition to watch the sun come up on the Piero della Francescas."

Who would wish to live through that wasteful, youthful world again, James wonders. "Another regret is that I agreed to him doing a triptych of nude lovers based on one of my poems, which he was generous enough to admire. I thought I recognised Wendy in the complicated and lascivious flourish of black ink on the white paper. The images of her, I thought, were a lot more interesting than my words.

"When the images were framed at Brett's expense - Wendy looked at me very sharply for that, quite rightly so - he made me a present of them, and I lugged them around for years until I finally left them with a startled landlady in Cambridge in compensation for being late with the rent. Unless she burned them, I expect they will turn up one day and fetch a huge price: not because of my lines but because of Brett's line. And that's just how it should be."

Cohen on PBS

Leonard Cohen was on PBS Newshour today Australian time.  Yes, we see it slightly delayed here and I'll watch it if it's on.  The timelag means that I watched the US episode screened 'yesterday' with a few hours delay, late 'today'.  [If you're confused you just sampled what it's like to live in my head]

Aside from keeping me conversant in American politics,  it often rewards with the cultural pieces and occasional Gore Vidal essay.

The interview can be found in MP3 format at the Newshour Leonard Cohen Page.

The following URL might be helpful? 

http://www-tc.pbs.org/newshour/rss/media/2006/06/28/20060628_cohen28.mp3 for downloading the interview.

No mention is made of unmade beds or waiting limos.

from the PBS site:

Thousands
by Leonard Cohen

Out of the thousands
who are known or want to be known as poets,
maybe one or two are genuine
and the rest are fakes,
hanging around the sacred precincts,
trying to look like the real thing.
Needless to say,
I am one of the fakes
and this is my story.

Peter Blake and a New Take on AndyW

I've lifted this wholesale, it's Australian public property.  Highlighted in blue is one of the most provocative things said about Warhol subsequent to his death.  I have a couple of responses but I'm saving them for now, the proposition warrants consideration.

Australian Broadcasting Corporation

TV PROGRAM TRANSCRIPT

LOCATION: http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2006/s1672358.htm

Broadcast: 26/06/2006

Pop art icon continues to wow the critics

Reporter: Mark Bannerman

KERRY O'BRIEN: Now to the man who's been called the "father of Pop Art", Peter Blake. Long before Andy Warhol arrived on the scene, Blake realised celebrities and industrial design could have their place in art. In the 1960s he was so hip that when it came time for the Beatles to make a cover for their psychedelic masterpiece 'Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band', they called on him. And , or Sir Peter as he's now called, has continued to produce art for numerous pop bands and art galleries ever since. Mark Bannerman reports.

MARK BANNERMAN, REPORTER: Say the words "pop art" and one man comes to mind. His name - Andy Warhol. But if Warhol perfected the form, you may be surprised to know, the true father of Pop Art came from the other side of the Atlantic. His name, Peter Blake.

SIR PETER BLAKE, ARTIST: My interpretation would be that there was a dinner party in London with a group of young artists, a critic called Lawrance Adderway, and that at that dinner party he invented the phrase to describe the work I was doing at that point. I mean, that's my story. There would be a million other stories.

MARK BANNERMAN: That's your story and you're sticking to it?

SIR PETER BLAKE: Sticking to it, and it's true.

MARK BANNERMAN: Controversial this may be, but Peter Blake has some major supporters. In the late '50s and early 1960s, Blake's work was deemed so groundbreaking the film director Ken Russell made him the centrepiece of this documentary called 'Pop Goes the Easel'. The emphasis on 'pop'.

SIR PETER BLAKE: Well, what I was trying to do, and it didn't succeed, if you think of an art equivalent to music, you've got classical music, you've got Beethoven and Mozart. At the other end of the spectrum or in a different area, you've got pop music. But what I wanted to do was an art equivalent. If a girl liked Elvis to listen to, I hoped that she would like my painting of Elvis.

SIR PETER BLAKE (ARCHIVAL FOOTAGE): This is a Kim Novak wall. I've done other walls...the Everly Brothers, Superman and Shirley Temple.

MARK BANNERMAN: If making art accessible to the people seems innocent enough, that's not the way it was seen 40 years ago. With their do-it-yourself quality, Pop Art paintings like these created outrage. But there was a sense in which Pop Art was something that apparently almost anyone could do, and it was a kind of a con, was that ever put to you?

SIR PETER BLAKE: Well, again, that wasn't what I was doing. I mean, you could accuse Andy Warhol of that, for instance. I mean, you could say, "Well, there's no reason for instance, why the Warhol industry ever had to stop when he died." Because the technicians could still make it. There must be a library of images that he left and quite often he didn't sign his pieces anyway. So that industry could go on.

MARK BANNERMAN: And that, of course, begs a major question about Andy Warhol. What's your view of him as an artist now, all this time on?

SIR PETER BLAKE: He was, of all people, he was very subversive, I think probably quite cruel. He was incredibly clever.

MARK BANNERMAN: Do you think he was clinical?

SIR PETER BLAKE: Yeah, very.

MARK BANNERMAN: That disturbed you in a way?

SIR PETER BLAKE: It doesn't now, now I can understand - I suppose at the time, too, I was perhaps a little bit jealous of their fame and financial success.

MARK BANNERMAN: Jealous he may have been, but with Swinging London at its peak, Peter Blake was about to be offered a job Warhol might have killed for. The Beatles didn't want Blake to simply paint their portrait, they wanted him to do the cover artwork for their soon to be released masterpiece 'Sergeant Pepper's. The record was set up around a fictional band preparing to play a pretend concert. Peter Blake had a cover in mind.

SIR PETER BLAKE: I think what I brought to it was the idea that by building the whole thing in the studio, life-size, we could make a crowd that could be their ideal crowd. They could choose who they wanted their fans to be.

MARK BANNERMAN: Oh I see, so that was going to be the audience, in effect?

SIR PETER BLAKE: Yes.

MARK BANNERMAN: So, in that sense, how much of it was their idea and how much of it was yours? They sort of gave you the brief and you had to come up with that audience.

SIR PETER BLAKE: Paul thinks it was all his idea. He'll claim the ground. If I don't claim what I did, he would assume he did it all and I think he believes that in a funny way. But I think my big contribution was this idea of the crowd and actually making it, making it happen.

MARK BANNERMAN: For many artists 'Sergeant Pepper's could have been the high point and the beginning of an endless decline. Not so for the now Sir Peter Blake. There have been many more record covers amidst a massive body of work. There had to be a Brian Wilson here, didn't there?

SIR PETER BLAKE: There was always going to be Brian Wilson.

MARK BANNERMAN: But if Sir Peter likes to keep pop at the centre of his work, he also knows like the stars he displays, he is ageing.

SIR PETER BLAKE: I'm 74 on Friday and there is a kind of countdown, I think, and I'm very conscious of that. In fact, the date on my birthday, I've decided I'm moving into my late period and so I'm going to have a stencil made that says, "Peter Blake, late period." And everything from then...it gives me carte blanche to be barmy like Picasso's late work. So who knows what will happen. I mean it's exciting now.

MARK BANNERMAN: Who knows, indeed. Sir Peter's latest project has been to redesign The Who's record cover for their new concert album. And while we're asking questions, there is one final one I wanted to hear the answer to, even if it is perhaps a little premature. So tell me this, what do you want them to say to sum you up when you're gone?

SIR PETER BLAKE: Well, um, if it can only be one phrase I I'd like it to be that "he made magic", which isn't really about the pop art so much, but I think "he made magic" would be a good one.

MARK BANNERMAN: Not a bad epitaph.

SIR PETER BLAKE: It would be a nice one.

KERRY O'BRIEN: Mark Bannerman with Sir Peter Blake, now officially barmy

M for Marilyn Monroe - Peter Blake

Chelsea People in the News- Ed Hamilton.

Ed Hamilton, frequent contributor to the corporate crypto-propaganda blog Living with Legends has had his remarkable piece on Stormé Delarverié and the New York drag summit published at the Huffington Post.  If you haven't read it yet, hop on over.  It's a clever little piece that picks up on many of the dilemmas facing GLBT populations today.  I was left contrasting the living legend that is Storme with the recent assault on Kevin Aviance and wondering if we've really come as far as we would like to think.   

Aviance

Film Commentary- 'Oz'

We watched a fascinating film from the 1970s renaissance in Australian cinema called Oz [20th Century Oz in the US] last night.

Oz, released in 1976, is a glam-rock road movie that could sit comfortably with other classics such as the Rocky Horror Picture Show or the Phantom of the Paradise.  Oz is a no budget film that retells the Wizard of Oz story against a dramatically different backdrop.

Borrowing from IMDB:

Dorothy is a sixteen-year-old groupie riding with a rock band when, suddenly, the van is in a road accident, and she hits her head. She wakes up in a fantasy world as gritty and realistic as the one she came from and learns she killed a young thug in the process. A gay clothier called the Good Fairy gives her a pair of red shoes as a reward to help her see the last concert of the Wizard, an androgynous rock singer. She is pursed by the thug's brother who attempts to rape her on several occasions. She also meets a dumb surfer, a heartless mechanic, and a cowardly biker.

This film screams to be seen on the cult circuit where, I believe, it was once paired as a double feature with RHPS.  For the Rocky Horror trainspotters, there are several connections to the original Australian stagings of the Rocky Horror Show and the influence of the show is most apparent, particularly in the costuming.  The Bowie-esque Wizard is a sight to behold.  Extra fun can be had with the awful fashions to be seen. Oz provides a glimpse at how Australia looked, sounded and felt in 1976, when we still had a certain naive charm...

Below, commentary I submitted to IMDB is reproduced in a wilfull ignorance of having handed over my copyright to them.

I imagine that people outside Australia who are interested to see Oz will be rewarded for being resourceful- I have a permanent copy in my collection.

Wow!  An amazing, lost piece of Australiana AND a lost 70s glam-rock film rolled into one. This film warrants viewing simply to see what can be done with next to no budget but a lot of enthusiasm. As a retelling of the Oz story, the film borders on becoming too obvious but it is saved by it's eccentricities. The chance for a glimpse at how glam rock manifested in Australia will delight fans of the genre. This film used to be double featured with the Rocky Horror Picture Show, an indicator of the type of film that Oz is. While not as frivolous or well constructed as RHPS it's hard not to have fun with Oz.

Surprisingly, Oz has aged well, perhaps a by-product of how determinedly set in the real Australia of 1976 it is. The passage of history shows that many of the ideas being explored would eventually enter the mainstream. The willingness of the film to give prominence to gay characters is notable, especially as it dates to the 'revolution' period for the Australian gay rights push.

The performances range from flinchingly amateur to finely nuanced brilliance. The direction is lacking in subtlety and much of the dialogue may have benefited from an extra draft or two. Somehow, these flaws add to the appeal of the film which is mercifully unpretentious. Much like Australia in the 1970s this film has a certain naive charm.

There are several connections to the original Australian stagings of the Rocky Horror Show which will keep obsessives on their toes.

Oz is most certainly a minor classic and a potential cult favourite worthy of review. Laugh at the atrocious 70s fashion, swing along with the AusRock soundtrack, leave ANY expectations at the door and Oz is likely to delight

Link: Oz at IMDB

the Legendary Storme

Our compadres at Living with Legends are featuring a profile of proto-drag king and Stonewall veteran Storme Delarverié.  Storme, an imposing figure with a heart of gold, lives at Hotel Chelsea where she is frequently to be found adding to the lobby ambience.

Click on over to Legends for the Storme profile.