Twenty Third & Seventh

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. 

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."