SAVAGENYC

2011-09-20T14:43:00.000-07:00

AN IMPORTANT MESSAGE FROM JOAN JETT:

Hello. I'm Joan Jett. If you enjoyed today's performance, you might also be interested in SAVAGENYC, a weekly gathering at Veronica People's Club in Long Island City. That's where SAVAGENYC spins Punk Rock, Garage, Post-Punk, Indie Rock, New Wave, Disco, as well as Yacht Rock and Ann-Margaret. It's free, and Mama's Pop-Up Store is in the House, doling out vegan Soul Food. 8 p.m. - 3 a.m. 105 Franklin Street (Corner of Greenpoint Avenue) Long Island City, New York 11222-2252. Log on to savagenyc for more info...

IN LIVING STEREO TOMORROW NIGHT 105 FRANKLIN St. GREENPOINT

2011-09-17T13:50:00.000-07:00

SAVAGENYC SPINS THIS WEDNESDAY 09/21/11 @ Veronica People's Club: APPROVED BY GRAMMY-AWARD WINNING SUPERGROUP T.V. ON THE RADIO! READ MORE ABOUT V.P.C. Read More About V.P.C. here: http://nymag.com/nightlife/wheretodrink/2011/music-venues/

LA GRAFFITI LEGEND RETNA DEBUTS ONE-MAN SHOW IN NEW YORK: LESS BOMBAST, MORE MYSTERY

2011-03-02T16:36:00.000-08:00

by SAVAGENYC

RETNA, an LA-based graffiti phenom, who has tagged trains, buildings, Billboards and rooftops world-wide, set his sites on Soho (and possibly Sotheby’s) last month, with his first one-man show at the 560 Washington Street Gallery, a hangar-sized, industrial cavern lodged amidst UPS loading docks and MTA parking garages, right off the West Side Highway. On opening night, the gallery evoked the dark, catacomb-like structure of a subterranean Mayan temple, providing a uniquely inspired context for the intricate but large-scale works, which depict a type of parallel-universe hieroglyphics, violently rendered in black, red and white ink, on neutral, or pitch-black fields of wall-size paper. The show also includes large-scale sculptural work by RETNA, depicting oversize fragments of a similar, inscrutable script, or calligraphy.

RETNA, whose real name is Marquis Lewis, departs from his street-art contemporaries by eschewing the current trend of satirizing contemporary culture---there are no skewed, oversize graphic stencils trafficking in images of urban guerilla warfare; no Warhol-ized celebrity bombast; indeed, there’s an almost monk-like quality to RETNA’s haunting sculptural objects and runic works on paper. Because of their ceiling-to floor, wall-size intensity, the overall effect is akin to entering some underground maze or space-age Stonehenge. One half expected to hear a Druid-like chanting rise up over the DJ’s pounding disco music at last month’s opening party.

By selecting RETNA for this supersize exhibition, curators Vladimir Roisten Roitfeld and Andy Morbidia are beginning to display real diversity in their curatorial vision. The exhibition’s gala opening, which kicked off NYC’s 2011 Fashion Week, was all the more surprising for its subtlety, sophistication and lack of “shock value”, the latter of which one comes to expect from super-hyped, buzz-worthy “destination openings” linked to the fashion-fearing contemporary art world. There were no iridescent colors, no billboard-size social commentaries in the form of skewed corporate logos, a la Banksy, no shrink-wrapped building exteriors ablaze with saturated images randomly selected from media-suffused PoMo culture.

Of course, it was a bit hard to get a really good look at the art, brilliantly mounted in this remarkable space, given the buzz surrounding the opening---the gallery was filled to capacity with models, aristocrats, fashionistas and wannabees (like yours truly).

Although the show merited a second look when the space was less crowded---the show, I’m surprised to learn, is already closed! But if you’re planning to be in Tel Aviv in April, RETNA will be part of a group show there.

RETNA: The Hallelujah World Tour New York
February 10 through February 21 2011
560 Washington Street
New York, New York
www.valmorbida.com/artists/retna/

PIGOZZI'S POP-ART PALETTE IS BEHIND THE WHEEL AT LIMOLAND

2010-08-23T09:02:00.000-07:00

(NEW YORK) What would a men's fashion line, designed by the "Page Six" staple Jean "Johnny" Pigozzi look like? Silk pajamas? Smoking jackets? Opera pumps?

Although Pigozzi describes his menswear line as "clothing for rich old men," we noticed he can't seem to help himself but design youthful, hip and forward-thinking sportswear worthy of Rei Kawakubo or Yohji Yamamoto.

Pigozzi's design empire, LimoLand, has just established its US flagship with an energetic but straight-shooting menswear shop in Manhattan's Meat Packing District.

Pigozzi, who describes himself as a venture capitalist, philanthropist and environmental activist, pulls the rug out from under his earnestly-sewn counterparts on Washington Street, debuting LimoLand's in an unobtrusive but well-appointed space near such skinny-jean Meccas as Helmut Lang and Paige Premium Denim.

LimoLand's aesthetic, riffing on subcultures as diverse as hip-hop, Manga and, according to Interview, "Caddyshack", delivers a much-needed jolt of youthfulness and spontanaeity amidst NYC's overly precious and couture-y menswear scene.

While Pigozzi incorporates international pop-culture tropes, busy patterns and a bold palette into his menswear line, LimoLand is no mere KidRobot clone. Many individual pieces are classic wardrobe staples, tweaked with subtle innovations like florescent lining or retro top-stitching.
Outerwear and accessories, in particular, reflect Pignozzi's unique aesthetic: classic, utilitarian silhouettes, tweaked with just a touch of anarchy. Pignozzi has collaborated with venerable institutions like Crescent Down, Yoshida-Porter, and Penfield to yield some classic pieces.

Prices are pretty reasonable, relatively speaking: two-in-one jackets (reversible and/or with removable liners which can be worn as separate jackets) run anywhere from $250 to $380, and shirts go for, at most, around $150-$160. If that sounds high, bargains do abound throughout the store, and if one chooses to spend $35 instead of $300, one will still come away with something pretty unique. For about the same price you'd pay for a generic camel-hair top coat from J. Crew, or Burlington Coat Factory, for that matter, one can get truly unique limited-edition items that will become lifelong wardrobe staples.

One standout, LimoLand's sober but energetic CANVAS TOTE, created in collaboration with the Japanese accessories company Yoshida Porter, is a masterpiece of utilitarian design, but rendered in kelly green canvas with neon yellow waterproof lining.

The Inimitable Lucy

2010-07-02T23:23:00.000-07:00

I LOVE LUCY (Photo Credit: Bob Arihood)

Tammy Grimes

2010-06-29T15:03:00.000-07:00

Miss Tammy Grimes Live In Chelsea LAST CHANCE

Tammy Grimes in an undated photo (Photo Credit: Corbis) 

(NEW YORK)- Tony Award-winning performer Tammy Grimes wraps up a one-woman show this week at The Metropolitan Room, on West Twenty-Second Street, in Manhattan. In "Miss Tammy Grimes: Favorite Songs and Stories", Grimes has assembled an eclectic variety of songs, interwoven with droll anecdotes culled from a life in the theater.

If you wish you could have been around to witness Lotte Lenya mutter out dark cabaret songs in Weimar-era Berlin, or to experience Elsa Lanchester belt bawdy beer-hall standards, live, in a seedy London tavern, don't miss this unique opportunity to witness these underground icons' rightful heir - Tammy Grimes is the Lotte Lenya of our time, with more than a little Elsa thrown in for good
measure.
(READ MORE)

Underground icon and cabaret star Lotte Lenya as the infamous Rosa Klebb in "From Russia With Love " (1963).

Photo Credit: Paramount Pictures

British cabaret star and horror legend Elsa Lanchester, around 1939

Photo Credit: British Film Archives

With "Favorite Songs and Stories", Grimes returns to her NYC cabaret roots, introducing one comic standard, "Rose of Washington Square", with reminiscences recounting her discovery, in the late '50s, by Noel Coward, who, after seeing her perform at a cabaret called "Downstairs at the Upstairs", immediately cast her in his play "Look After Lulu!" 

Grimes says her good friend, the late actor Roddy McDowell, urged Mr. Coward not to miss Grimes's legendary cabaret show, and, following her role in "Look After Lulu!", Grimes went on to share an important number of milestones with Coward, including a 1970 Tony Award for her performance as Amanda in "Private Lives".

Grimes has assembled her show from a wide variety of genres, but the stand-outs, aside from well-known Broadway classics like "Pirate Jenny (Brecht, Blitzstein and Weill)" and "I Ain't Down Yet" (Meredith Wilson), are her somewhat obscure cabaret numbers from the fifties and sixties, such as "Ring Them Bells" (Kander and Ebb), and "More Than One Man in Her Life" (Dulchin and Valenti).

"Favorite Songs and Stories" is scheduled to close on June 30, but from the packed room and the enthusiastic reaction of the audience, it's a good bet the show could be extended, or brought back soon.

Expect to see a number of familiar faces from stage and screen in the audience.

Last Friday, Katherine Helmond from TV's "Soap" was in the audience, singing along to every word, as was Marcia Rodd, the actress best-known for starring as Irene, Archie Bunker's spirited Irish barmaid from "All and the Family". Unfortunately I missed Rex Reed, who was in attendance the previous night. If you can get Table One, a perfectly situated booth with a view of the entire room, do it---you'll see so many 1980s TV stars you'll go nuts, if you're a geek -, like me.

Grimes is a kid of eminence grise in the theatre world, as well as a brilliant character actress who has appeared in everything from "Slaves of New York" to "The Love Boat", to "High Art", to her own ABC Sitcom, "The Tammy Grimes Show", which ran for one month in the mid-sixties.

In 1961, Grimes won the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical, for the title character, Molly Brown, in Meredith Wilson's "The Unsinkable Molly Brown", a role she originated. Grimes again won the Tony for Best Actress in a Play for the role of Amanda in Noel Coward's "Private Lives". She also reportedly turned down the role of Samantha in "Bewitched", and, according to Grimes, was the lead contender for the role of Holly Gollightly in "Breakfast at Tiffany's", a role, she recalls in the show, promised her by "Tiffany's" author Truman Capote.

Grimes's new show, "Miss Tammy Grimes's favorite songs and stories", Grimes assembles a collection of songs from a surprising variety of genres, from cabaret gems, to Broadway classics ("Pirate Jenny" by Brecht/Blitzstein and Kurt Weill), to folk-rock ballads("Martha", by Tom Waits), to C&W ("He Went To Paris" by Jimmy Buffett"), and back to Broadway ("I Ain't Down Yet" by Meredith Wilson and "Tale Of The Oyster" by Cole Porter).

The set list, Grimes explains on stage, is compiled with help from Grimes's third husband, the late Richard Jameson Bell, an engineer who Grimes describes as "the smartest man she ever met", and "the great love of her life". In her explanation of the show's song list, Grimes makes several dry, witty digressions about her other husbands, such as the actor Christopher Plummer, with whom she had a daughter, "Pulp Fiction" psycho Amanda Plummer. In discussing her first ex-husband, Grimes describes the Academy-Award winning actor "a beautiful man, who is still a beautiful man". Of her daughter Amanda, a notorious Hollywood hell-raiser, she asks the audience, should they see her, to pleae have her "call Mommy sometime". Grimes's second husband, actor Jeremy Slate, according to Grimes, "would stray from his finer sense of judgement from time to time", "by doing things like jogging nude through the Disney lot", Grimes explains. "Well, not entirely nude," Grimes adds: "he was wearing sneakers and a Donald Duck mask,".

This beautifully calibrated cabaret show transitions almost imperceptibly from laugh-out loud funny, to sad, to haunting, to even terrifying, as when Grimes unleashes her considerable vocal power to deliver a blacker-than-pitch "Pirate Jenny" from "Threepenny Opera".

Grimes performs the kinder, gentler and sadder folk songs and country songs with much delicacy and wistfulness, but she never descends into sentimentality. Her vaguely peculiar, Boston Brahmin-style diction, and her exquisitely presice enunciation lend her song portrayals an air of distinction and gentility, and her performance harkens back to a more artistic and literary era, when popular culture was seen as a means of self-improvement, as well as entertainment. In fact, Andy Warhol once said of Grimes that she had the most recognizable voice in the world, and he got her to admit that she was the voice behind a series of popular radio advertisements playing in NYC throughout the sixties.

According to The New York Times, Grimes is working on a massive memoir recounting her sixty-year career in theatre and film; for the abriged version, complete with music, go see this beautifully designed show at The Metropolitan Room.

Miss Tammy Grimes
Favorite Songs & Stories
June 29 & 30
All Shows at 7:00 pm
Metropolitan Room
34 West Twenty-Second Street
Reservations (212) 206-0440
or at www.metropolitanroom.com

Great Minds Think Alike?

2010-05-09T21:37:00.000-07:00

(NEW YORK) According to Gothamist, Anne Hathaway's boyfriend made off with a big chunk of original Mr. Brainwash artwork this weekend. I hope this news item will add to MBW's market value.
Savagenyc appropriated several early MBW murals from East Second Street a few years ago, and we're not sure what to do with them.

Read More

Was Banksy Really Randy Quaid All Along?

2010-04-29T01:54:00.000-07:00

After having just seen "Exit Through the Gift Shop", a highly entertaining documentary about the secretive and world-famous street artist Banksy, I was expecting him to look more like ...this guy, but without the mask.

However, according to an article from two years ago in the London Daily Mail, he actually looks more like...this.

Not that we have any evidence an unmasked Subcomandante Marcos wouldn't not look like Randy Quaid, but would you be surprised if the enigmatic Zapatista turned out to look more like this than this?
Would it change your level of interest in the Mexican rebel movement?
Banksy's a handsome-enough dude, not what you were expecting, perhaps. But maybe this "expose" was just another ruse planted in the media by Banksy himself, to throw off suspicions about his identity.

Like the time he agreed to have a televised dinner with Joan Collins at her home estate near Bristol, and sent an actor in his place.

The actor hired for the Joan Collins dinner certainly looks much more in keeping with what I presume most people would expect Banksy to look like, but who knows? Maybe the Randy Quaid/Patrick Dempsey hybrid
"exposed" by The Daily Mail is just the real Banksy's Allen Midgette?.

In Wake Of Pogan Trial, NYPD Reportedly Confiscates "Hundreds" Of Bikes On Houston Street In The Name Of National Security

2010-04-23T01:59:00.000-07:00

April 22, 2010
(NEW YORK) According to several New York City news blogs, the NYPD has gone on an unprecedented bike-confiscation rampage on Houston Street, in Manhattan's East Village/LES, clipping U-locks and confiscating bikes by the dozen, without warning. Locks are being clipped, and bikes are being hurled into flatbed NYPD trucks, say online journalists and eyewitnesses.
According to sources, no information has been given by the NYPD as to how bike owners will reclaim their property.
Blog posts also claim the confiscations came without warning, leaving East Village/LES bike owners bereft of their predominant means of transportation.
According to the blog ThisIsFYF,the massive bike-confiscation initiative is defended by the NYPD as a counter-terrorism measure in connection with President Obama's speech, on Thursday, at Cooper Union, eight blocks north of Houston. According to ThisIsFYF , bikes are being removed because they might actually be pipe bombs disguised as bikes.
Online critics of the NYPD's latest bike-confiscation initiative were quick to note that bicycle pipe bombs were probably much less a threat than car/truck bombs, so, they asked: why weren't the cars and trucks parked near Cooper Union also "confiscated" as a preventative counter-terrorism measure?
Other online news sources hinted at a darker motive for this latest salvo from the NYPD in the NYC/NYPD bike war: the ongoing trial of former NYPD officer Patrick Pogan, who faces charges in connection to his alleged assault of a cyclist during a Critical Mass rally several years ago, in Times Square.
Is the bike confiscation on East Houston "retaliation" for the trial that former NYPD officer Pogan is facing
these days on Centre Street? Streetsblog has an astute analyisis.

"Shutter Island" review (Massive Spoiler Alert 4 Months Too Late)

2010-04-04T20:39:00.000-07:00

Sunday, April 4 2010

Just saw "Shutter Island", finally. Wow! What's to say? Read on, dear reader...
NB: THIS REVIEW WAS "TEXTED" TO THE FOLLOWING BLOG VIA CELL PHONE...PLEASE FORGIVE ANY INADVERTENT SPELLING ERRORS AND/OR GRAMMAR GLITCHES.
THANK YOU,
EVA HURBERGER, MD, MSW

What a turgid bore of a disappointment this film turned out to be!

As it turns out, I was walking south on Madison Avenue today (Easter Sunday 2010), and I ended up walking right behind Woody Allen and Soon-Yi (sp?).
I wanted to tell the Woodeth that I had just seen Scorsese's latest and that said film SUCKED. But I didn't.
I shoulda.

Whatever happened to the quick, tight, clever Scorsese, who had a great NY sense of humor, who directed the classic "After Hours" and the ultimate B-movie remake of all time, "Cape Fear"?

I found "Shutter Island" dull and overwrought; it was not the campy B-thriller I thought it was going to be.
Uli Edel's "Body of Evidence" was more fun than this, by far.

I kept thinking, as I pedalled home in the dark (along the Hudson River [a much more scary ride than Scorcese's engorged opus]), the film could have been...tighter. And more witty, and full of more surprise.

Also, I thought that if the film was supposed to be an homage, of sorts, to scary B-movies about the insane, it should have been funnier, like "High Anxiety" or "The Tennant" or "Rosemary's Baby", something like that.
It should have been a bit more tongue-in-cheek.

Instead, it's supremely overwrought, and takes itself wayyyy too seriously.

I don't necessarily blame Scorcese, although he uses tons of crane shots (inside) and overhead POVs and slow tracking shots, etc, which make the movie a a bit too "serious" for a B-movie homage.
Far better was "Cape Fear" a TRUE B-movie. Also, Scorcese's acrobatic camera work in this film seems oddly "staged" for special scenes, rather than locked into the film's pacing.
It's as if someone less talented than Scorcese directed most of the movie, but called in the grand auteur for those special scenes.
In "After Hours", you couldn't really figure out what you loved so much about the movie until you watched it a second or third time.
The writing in "After Hours" was brilliant, but it was also a perfect match for Scorcese's directorial style at the time: fluid, canny, and full
of surprises.

But back to "Shutter Island".
It's a B-movie, supposedly, so there shouldn't be so much maudlin emotion and crying and back-story. Can you see Robert Mitchum crying?
Even when he's just killed his wife, after she kills his kids?

The element that sinks "Shutter Island" is the writing. You can only make a B-movie with a tight storyline, and surprises.
I haven't read Lehane's novel, but it's seems convoluted and hokey and derivative, more of a "Silence of the Lambs" ripoff than a tight,
noirish thriller.

Of course there's a whole alter-ego premise, as Leo's character is supposed to be a cop investigating the disappearance of a patient
at a mental hospital (although he's actually an inmate at the hospital, which was pretty obvious from the reviews when the movie first opened).

But if you're going to create an insane alter-ego for your protagonist, why not come up with some more clever parallels between the protagonist's
situation and that of his alter-ego? Instead, Lehane has his central protagonist come up with all of these arbitrary and complex delusions
exculpating the character from the crime he committed to get him locked up in the insane asylum.

Leo's character shoots his wife after she drowns her kids, so why all of this hogwash about Leo's character trying to find the
fellow asylum inmate who supposedly killed her by setting a fire? It's kind of muddled and unimaginative and grasping, as if the writer is trying to
figure out where he's going with the story as the narrative unfolds.
Couldn't Leo's cop character have been looking for the inmate at the asylum who "shot" his wife?
Why a fire? I guess it's to throw off suspicion about
Leo's character, since he's a cop who's always armed?

The other thing that bugged my about the movie was all of the verbal exposition. Didn't Lehane, or the scriptwriter learn that basic rule which
obliges writers to reveal plot twists by actions, as opposed to having characters explain said plot twists in long, dull monologues?

Maybe Joe Esterhaus should have written the script. If Esterhaus (if he's still alive) had written the script, it would have no doubt been
a lot leaner and probably funnier, as well (although it may have been unintentionally funny, but most great B-movies are unintentionally funny).

Great conspiracy movies with twist endings are few and far between, but when they work, it's a true revelation.
And seeing "Shutter Island" really makes me realized how spoiled I am by all of the foreign films and indie movies I've seen in recent years.
It seems that the larger the budget for American movies, the more inclined they are to suck!
A good example of a "Shutter Island"-type movie which actually works is "Los Otros" by the Spanish director Alejandro Amenabar, and even his film
"Abre Los Ojos". In both of these films, damaged characters live in delusional states until reality is forced upon them. Another film which comes to mind is
Francois Ozon's "Sous le Sable", in which a woman believes her suicide-victim husband is simply missing.
Why are foreign films so much better than American films?

The reviewer in "The Guardian" hit the nail squarely on the head when he wrote that a true B-movie adaptation of "Shutter Island" would have been
a lot "leaner" and wouldn't have run to two and a half hours.

The performers were all quite good, with one actress really standing out: the woman who played Mrs. Kerns, a patient at the hospital who was
convicted of an ax murder.

Bravo Reality Star Debuts CARNIVALE for 2010 NYC Fashion Week

2010-02-21T23:15:00.000-08:00

Annabelle /Autumn Winter 2010 CARNIVALE

(NEW YORK) Anna McCraney, winner of Bravo's The Fashion Show, presented her FW 2010 collection, CARNIVALE, Saturday night at Collective Hardware on the Bowery.

Yes, the pics are a little...artsy. Sorry. My camera died right before the show started, so I borrowed my friend's iPhone, which has no flash, and the models were walking pretty fast, so, using available light, with movement, usually ends up...artsy. But I think you can get the show's vibe with these images; just pretend Deborah Turbeville shot them.

Interesting that Turbeville's name comes to mind----because McCraney's collection was totally Deborah Turbeville: skeletal models (seriously skeletal), crimped, red hair, '30s make-up, and the occasional walking stick. It was kind of like watching The Bob Newhart Show, if Fassbinder, or Hans-Jurgen Syberberg had suddenly stepped in to replace Newhart's director (Peter Bonerz, according to IMDB).

According to press notes, McCraney's collection was inspired by "traveling carnivals" of the early 1900s, but that theme didn't seem too evident in the garments themselves; the slinky dresses and low-cut jumpsuits seemed fairly straightforward '70s cocktail wear, although the models' hair and maquilage did reflect a certain Weimar-era aesthetic, if that has anything to do with traveling carnivals. I guess it does?

The staging was pretty traditional, unlike Susan Cionciolo's show on Thursday (see below), where the media became the message and the message became the media.

Carnivale was presented at a small gallery-type space on the Bowery, with a bar in front (not free, by the way), and rows of chairs in the back of the space, divided by a floor-level catwalk.

Not being a professional fashion journalist, I thought the staging was tight, if, alas, the clothes were a bit underwhelming: the great music selection (from Viennese waltzes to Le Tigre) set a ragged, '80s downtown vibe, and the models were interesting. In fact, one onlooker, a friend of the designer, told SAVAGENYC that this show was the first time McCraney had used professional models.
The investment seems to have paid off.

Clothes? What can I say? Lots of loose, slinky short dresses. Many off-the-shoulder, in evening-wear fabrics, with a general palette limited to black, sapphire, crimson, gray and gold-ish beige. Maybe some paisley prints here and there. Accessories were pretty minimal: one giant, cable-knit scarf stood out, and it seemed like there were a lot of '20s-era pearls, worn long and low.

Unfortunately, not too many of the individual pieces struck much of a chord.

There was one long-sleeved black turtleneck dress which had a gray applique affixed to its front which looked vaguely Medieval, but when we piped up about this outfit our neighbor told us Martine Sitbon had done it 2 years ago.

The best part of fashion week is the audience, where the real fashion show is going on, and it occurred to this blogger that the guys were making as much an effort as the ladies, with fascinating results. One fashion critic called the general vibe given off by the dudes as "gray grunge", which seemed a pretty apt description of all the distressed herringbone, cashmere, and windowpane plaid setting off work boots, vintage French eyewear from the '70s, and more razor stubble than you could find at St. Mark's Royal Barber Shop on a Saturday morning.

Ladies looked good, also: flat-ironed blonde hair everywhere, as ubiquitous as iPhones, lots of 'important' shoes and a surprising number of...mink stoles?
The ladies who weren't trying too hard looked the best, offering awkward sweaters, denim skirts, leggings and dune boots which could only have come from Bedford Avenue's infamous Salvation Army store.

Looking at McCraney's blog from Bravo's The Fashion Show, it's hard to fathom how this designer could have come up with such a dud of a show.
On Bravo's website, McCraney proved herself to be a master at coming up with surprising juxtapositions of fabrication, pattern and silhouette, but that anarchic aesthetic didn't come through in this too-safe show.

If McCraney's show left viewers hungering for more edgy fashion, the unofficial "after-party" at St. Jerome's bar on Rivington brought out enough East London-style punks to staff a whole slate of Bravo fashion competitions.

After McCraney's show, SAVAGENYC was approached by "Niko", a party promoter at St. Jerome's pub on Rivington Street. Niko was with someone who looked exactly like Ian Anderson from Joy Division. Cool! We were intrigued by the pair's aggresively Warhol-meets-Pete Doherty aesthetic, so we took them up on their offer and showed up at 10:30 on the dot, where free drinks were proffered and the Joy Division side of the team manned the wheels, playing US metal, US pop and the occasional Bruce Springsteen (is that redundant?).

Fashion Week's Deep Sea Adventure (Complete With Champagne, Limousines and Japanese Paparazzi)

2010-02-18T23:32:00.000-08:00

SUSAN CIANCIOLO
(NEW YORK) Veteran NYC fashion designer and multimedia artist Susan Cianciolo doesn't consider herself a designer, but rather an "artist who occasionally makes clothing,".

Not that Cianciolo doesn't have the chops to become as big a design force as her Parsons' classmates Mark Badgley and James Mischka; in fact, she helped launch their line upon graduation from Parsons, before branching off to help create Kim Gordon's influential X-Girl clothing line in 1995.

Despite never having become a household word like her aforementioned classmates, Cianciolo has nonetheless remained an influential creative force in the fashion world, designing clothes and costumes for musicians and artists, while creating occasional collections constructed from organic and "re-purposed" fabrics.

Cianciolo's garments are custom-made at her loft in Chinatown, and can be ordered via her website, susancioniolo.com

While Cianciolo won't divulge the names of the artists and performers with whom she works, one can find her aesthetic when looking at recent images of Bjork, MGMT, Yoko Ono, Antony and the Johnsons, and Annie, to name a few.

Cianciolo's FW 2010 collection, inspired by deep-sea photos from the National Geographic, was presented as one element in a group show incorporating photography, clothing and sculpture, the sculpture in question being the accessories. I guess you could count the models' extravagant up-dos as sculpture also, but no credits were given for these individual works of art. However, a quick visit backstage revealed makeup artist Christopher Drummond touching up the models' hair, so maybe he's the mystery artist behind the hair sculpture.

The collection, part of a show called Underneath the Sea, Inside a Mountain was presented Tuesday night at SoHo's White Box Gallery, where, inside, throngs of Japanese paparazzi huddled around a slab-like, rectangular plinth dominating the center of the room. The black-clad Japanese paparazzi army, with their intimidating equipment, made some lesser-equipped photographers feel a bit abashed, but we soldiered on bravely, snapping away with our humble Nikon point-and-shoots (which don't work very well, by the way).

The paparazzi, grouped as they were in the center of the exhibition space, presented a unique reversal of their role as as media, turning them into the spectacle, as opposed to communicators. Was this intentional? Cianciolo won't say.

To present her clothes, Cianciolo had models saunter through the gallery's crowded main space, to strike poses against a blank, white wall. The small Polaroids comprising the photo exhibition didn't stand much of a chance, mounted, as they were, in sparse configurations on the gallery's front and back walls, perpendicular to the models' 'posing walls'.

The photos were small Polaroid snapshots of seascapes, fishing piers, forests, and occasional, lonely plazas, the latter of which looked vaguely South American.

Some of the photos' muted color schemes could be found in Cianciolo's collection, but, by and large, the photos got lost in the mix. White Box Gallery's cavernous white interior played the most important role in Cianciolo's presentation, establishing a bleak tableau which offset Cianciolos distressed, deconstructed compilations perfectly.

Cianciolo's somewhat Japanese-style mash-ups, involving multiple layers of clashing silhouettes and fabrics, recalled Rei Kawakubo, Romeo Gigli, Christian Lacroix and, somehow,'80s graffiti artist Stefano Castronovo. On top of Cianciolo's anarchic compilations, mind-boggling accessories had onlookers trying to figure out what exactly the models had hanging around their necks; upon close inspection, these accessories appear to be segments of sari fabric, knotted and tied to the ends of a short fabric cord.

The "street-cast" models, of varying heights, shapes and genders added a certain grit to the show, which kept the presentation from getting too precious and too fashion-y. Cianciolo says she finds her models herself, by walking around NYC and approaching those individuals she thinks look right.

Christopher Drummond's war-paint like makeup contributed strongly towards the alleged NatGeo aesthetic inspiring the show; the makeup artist told me "backstage" (actually "backstage" was the gallery's basement exhibition space) that he and the designer pored over old issues of the magazine to get ideas, focusing on undersea shipwrecks and deep-sea marine life. Judging from the end result, however, it looks like a fair share of makeup techniques from South American native tribes made it into the show as well.

"After Hours": A Late Appreciation of Not Only Scorsese, but Joe Frank

2010-02-07T23:44:00.000-08:00

SAVAGENYC does not own a television. SAVAGENYC does, however, own a lap-top computer.

If one owns the latter, then one doesn't really need the former, because everything on the former is available, for free, on the latter, usually within minutes of said content's distribution via "Premium Cable", whatever that is.

Just read whatever it is you're interested in seeing, 'Google' it, and voila: there it is on YouTube, ready for your delectation. Awesome. And free. This extends to forgotten "Night Gallery" episodes, interviews w/ Bette Davis, and even the most recent episode of "Project Runway".

Case in point: SAVAGENYC recently became re-obsessed with Martin Scorsese, after reading all the hype around "Shutter Island".

Yes, we succumbed to the hype, but it was Sunday, it was cold, and there was nothing going on anywhere, so we bought the NYT and read the A&L section, which featured a front-page profile of Scorsese, written by Terrence Rafferty.

Rafferty's profile homed in on Scorsese's adrenaline-fueled aesthetic and compared the director's new film to his 1991 remake of "Cape Fear", one of SAVAGENYC's all-time favorites. We Googled the trailer, read the reviews, and we didn't even have to watch the Superbowl, where Scorsese's 30-second commercial for the film was hotly anticipated to debut within the commercial break scheduled for the game's 3rd quarter.

Scorsese fans are known to hotly debate the director's best and worst films, and "Cape Fear" usually falls into the latter category, due to its B-movie plot and pronounced moral relativism.

As for SAVAGENYC, you can have "Casino" (gratuitous) and "The Age of Innocence" (dull and pretentious): just give us a good, old-fashioned noir thriller/police procedural, with claustrophobic cinematography, rabid editing, and a scary Jessica Lang, and we're happy.

"Shutter Island" looks...okay (if a bit silly), but, from the bits we've seen, it seems too stylistically indebted to "Silence of the Lambs", and we've never been too thrilled w/ pudding-faced actor Leonardo DiCaprio. However, it looks as though Scorsese has been commercially obliged to hitch his wagon to DiCaprio in order to get Hollywood studios to "green-light" his movies. Whatever. It's annoying to see such a visionary director compromise his aesthetic with box-office superstars who will only dilute his projects. Benicio del Toro wasn't available? SAVAGENYC takes cold comfort, however, from the fact that Ben Kingsley, Patricia Clarkson, and Max von Sydow are given prime roles in the thriller.

All of this got SAVAGENYC to thinking: why were Scorsese's "worst" movies always our favorites? Did we have "bad taste"? Of course we grew up w/ "Taxi Driver" (overly long, and gratuitous), and "Raging Bull" (overwrought) but what really first turned us on to Scorsese was "After Hours". More on that in a second, after the digression below.

"Looking for Mr. Goodbar" actually kicks "Taxi Driver"'s ass in terms of its evocation of paranoiac NYC ennui and self-immolation (despite the fact the movie was shot on an LA sound-stage) ,and Woody Allen's "Broadway Danny Rose" is a smarter version of "Raging Bull", smartly sending up NYC's machismo-Mafia culture by examining it from the perspective of a nebbishy, z-list theatrical agent.

Hands-down, "After Hours" is one of Scorsese's worst, according to film bloggers, but this film was the first of Scorsese's to touch a nerve w/ SAVAGENYC, when it was screened to students in a Film Analysis course curated by Greg Durbin.

Scorsese's frenetic tracking shots, in Midtown offices, on lonely SoHo streets, and in late-night diners certainly resonated with SAVAGENYC, but it was the film's Pinter-esque dialogue and happenstance plot turns which really captured our attention.

So we were surprised to learn that the main plot for the "After Hours"'s script had actually been lifted, according to Panopticist.com, from a performance piece written for radio by Joe Frank, the venerable LA radio personality.

Joe Frank reportedly settled out of court w/ Scorsese, for a handsome fee, according to various web sites, but SAVAGENYC was interested to find out more about the mind behind such inimitable lines as:
PAUL:
Sorry, I guess I'm really putting you through the ringer tonight.
MARCY:
It's okay. I'm used to it. Can we get the check?

Turns out, Joe Frank has, at least, as big a cult following as "After Hours", and after listening to some of his radio monologues, SAVAGENYC was thankful for the lawsuit he brought against the producers of "After Hours". Otherwise, we're not sure we would have discovered Frank's surreal but deadpan and ripped-from-the-headlines monologues, which are nothing short of brilliant, and influenced by Kafka, Richard Foreman, and Beckett. And Pinter, of course, Pinter.

So, thanks to Scorsese for inadvertently putting Frank on the map w/ "After Hours", and for alerting this cultural commentator to the brilliant, twisted mind of Joe Frank.

Check out "After Hours" here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JSHKaHqXM0

And check out Joe Frank here.
http://abmp3.com/mp3/joe-frank-lies.html
http://beemp3.com/download.php?file=2772300&song=the+ultimate+traffic+report
http://abmp3.com/download/2586500-oj-039-s-man-friend.html

Mr. Brainwash: Coming Soon to A Wall (Or Auction House) Near You

2010-02-05T18:10:00.000-08:00

by SAVAGENYC

(NEW YORK) International hell-raiser and provocateur-nonpareil Mr. Brainwash will soon be blowing up Manhattan's Meat Packing District, with what news-makers promise will be a star-making solo debut.

ICONS will open Sunday, February 14 at 415 West 13th Street: 15,000 square feet of anarchy, painting and sculpture. The first 300 people to arrive will be awarded with original prints, created and signed by the artist.

Don't even miss this one; if you do, you'll be missing history in the making.

You may be familiar with Mr. Brainwash from his mind-bendingly surreal and super-scale illegal paste-ups, which borrow from Banksy, Shepard Fairey and Warhol,and cover entire buildings in Los Angeles.

MBW's paste-ups have earned him an international cult following from devotees as far afield as London, New York, Paris and Los Angeles, and he's also the subject of a new documentary, Exit Through The Gift Shop, which has caused much head-scratching at Sundance.

Exit Through The Gift Shop is being hailed by critics as a Meta-confounding, postmodern mash-up in the conceptual tradition of Being John Malkovich, with a little Morgan Spurlock thrown in to boot. As critics marvel at the film's complexity, they go on to say that Exit Through The Gift Shop makes astute observations about not only consumer culture and the hypocrisy of the art world, but about the nature of film itself.

Originally conceived as a documentary of Mr. Brainwash's idol, Banksy,Exit Through The Gift Shop takes a sharp left-tern midway through; during Mr. Brainwash's production of the documentary, Banksy "turns the tables" on Mr. Brainwash, to commandeer the documentary's production and make the film a work-in-progress-portrait of Mr. Brainwash himself.

According to Reuters, Brainwash was so in awe of Banksy that he sought for years to document the notoriously secretive artist's work methods of pasting illegal artwork on streets world-wide. When the documentary production got going in earnest, Banksy convinced Mr Brainwash to start pasting up his own creations, which are arguably much more complex and riveting than Banksy's. And that's only the beginning.

As it turns out, SAVAGENYC actually owns a piece of Mr. Brainwash's work, if by "own" one means delicately scraping the work from a wall on East 2nd Street, during a snow storm, and taking it home.

You may not know about Mr. Brainwash, but you've seen his work.

Brainwash's most recent take on the nature of art and celebrity can be found all over the LES, in the form of a CD cover he was commissioned to do, last summer, for Madonna's greatest hits collection, Celebration.

MBW's whip-smart take on Madonna, as filtered through Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat, maintains the pop star's reputation for visual acuity and underground awareness, but the question remains: will Mr. Brainwash's work look as good in a gallery, or can it only be appreciated on the street, where people can stop to remove them and take them home (for free)?

Skyline Books, NYC's Go-To Source for Pulp Novels and Beatnik Literature, Closing Next Month

2009-12-18T07:05:00.000-08:00

by SAVAGENYC

New York ---- Skyline Books, the pulp fiction and Beat literature mecca on West 18th Street, will close its doors for good next month, victim to online booksellers and an $1200 monthly rent spike, according to a source close to SAVAGENYC.

Freestanding book racks in front of Skyline's storefront have long stopped passersby dead in their tracks, with titles ranging from the sublime ("LSD Orgy" and "Memoirs of a Beatnik") to the ridiculous ("Touch Me: The Poems of Suzanne Somers").

In addition to offering obscure paperback editions by Beat poets and counter-culture superstars like Gregory Corso and Herbert Huncke, Skyline also served as a one-of-a-kind dime-store novel destination, where a thirty bucks or so could yield a year's supply of hard-boiled noir.

"There was no greater Sunday afternoon than going to a movie at Film Forum or The Quad, followed by a trek to Skyline Books for unbelievably weird books," said Skyline customer Zach Elton on Thursday, aghast at news that another NYC institution was folding."Why even live here anymore?"

Recent window displays revealed a vintage paperback edition of Jim Thompson's "The Grifters" selling for $200, next to a sinister-looking hardcover edition of Aleister Crowley's "Magick Without Tears".

Inside the store, art, photography and Modernist first editions offered no less temptation than their cheaper sidewalk counterparts, and careful inspection of the store's back recesses revealed nonfiction categories proffering Military History, Heraldry, and Occult. "[They're]a testament to the bizarre reading habits of some mysterious New Yorkers," says the store's website yesterday.

On upscale West 18th Street, Skyline's seedy, offbeat presence has remained one of the neighborhood's last bohemian holdouts, outliving diehards like Academy Books and Revolution Books, amidst an encroaching tide of big-box chains like Bed Bath & Beyond, Old Navy and, of course, Barnes & Noble.

Punk rock icons Richard Hell, Patti Smith and Thurston Moore were regular customers at Skyline, as were '60s-era subculture stars like Gerard Malanga and Huncke, the male-prostitute junkie poet whose sordid memoirs have earned him posthumous status, in France, as Genet's successor.

Abigal Hoover, an employee at the store since 2005, recalls the time Richard Prince (whose "Marlboro Man" photograph sold at Sotheby's in 2007 for a record-setting $3.4 million) dropped by to snag a 1961 Grove Press edition of William S. Burroughs's "Naked Lunch", for $300K.

"There was a post card from Burroughs inside the book, written to Bowles from the Hotel El Muneira in Tangiers, where Burroughs wrote 'Naked Lunch'," says Hoover.

"It's probably one of the most valuable Beat books ever sold. By comparison, 'Ulysses' last sold at auction for around $700,000 ," Hoover adds.

Skyline's scheduled shuttering comes on the heels of last April's curtain call for Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop, a 42-year-old West Village institution venerated for its pre-Stonewall status as the world's first serious gay and lesbian bookstore.

And last week saw another close call for New York book lovers: the near-demise of Left Bank Books in the West Village. Fortunately, Left Bank owner Kim Herzinger averted crisis by snagging a last-minute lease on a neighboring storefront, at a monthly increase of $1500.

Skyline says goodbye at the end of a decade in which NYC book hounds watched helplessly as institutions like Librarie de France, Posman Books, A Different Light and Collisseum Books closed amidst competition from online booksellers and rocketing rents.

Unlike those stores, however, Skyline had real NYC personality, chutzpa and attitude, from its original artwork by Patti Smith to its transgender manager, to its black-leather-and-chrome Warhol Chair, used to display teetering stacks of art books pertaining to the Pop artist.

A recent article cited the new term "Copenhagenization" to describe cites taking a cue from the Danish capital's progressive culture---will the opposite of that insightful term soon be "Manhattanization"?

Schumer for President ?

2009-12-02T17:07:00.000-08:00

Just because you're a member of Congress (surrounded by people like Tom Coburn and Michelle Bachman and David Vitter) doesn't mean you have to limit your summer concert fare to focus group tested crowd-pleasers like Carrie Underwood, Rascal Flatts and Jimmy Buffet. Au contraire!

In Brooklyn, NY it looks as though the 'altbro' strategy might have a little more impact.

US Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) is going to bat for Williamsburg's world-famous JELLY Pool Parties, the possibly-endangered free concert series which has been blowing up summer Sundays at various outdoor venues since 2005.

Summer '09 saw influential alternative acts such as Grizzly Bear, Dirty Projectors, Mission of Burma and Girl Talk explode the waterfront with performances that were not only free but truly epic (see below).

Schumer says he was dismayed to learn that JELLY 2010 may not have a home if East River State Park is unavailable for the 2010 season, and he's meeting with officials from the Parks Department and the Open State Alliance to ensure a 2010 season ensues.

Schumer says he happened across one of the JELLY parties while biking through Williamsburg one summer Sunday, and was enthralled by the nuclear-level energy of the waterfront bacchanal. Indeed, if it was the Girl Talk concert he "happened" across last summer, one can easily see his point--it was, for many, a moment that had to be seen to be believed. Just being in the vicinity of the East River State Park during the concert had many neighborhood residents dancing like maniacs on Kent Avenue up to North 11th Street.

While some cynics might suspect that a press release in which a US Senator extols the joys of biking, Brooklyn and Simian Mobile Disco might be a calculated pitch for "the hipster vote", SAVAGENYC is happy to give US Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) the benefit of the doubt, and just assume that he's a hipster at heart who secretly rides a vintage fixie and likes hanging out with Jay-Z and the founder of VICE magazine, Suroosh Alvi.

Just listen to Schumer and Alvi, respectively, describing the cultural value of the Perfect Sunday Afternoon.

Schumer:
“As I was riding my bike through Williamsburg this summer, I came upon the Pool Parties and was inspired and energized by the huge crowds who came to see the concerts. People came from far and wide to enjoy the Brooklyn concert series, and when I heard they were in danger I just could not sit idly by and let the JELLY Parties get cancelled. Events such as the JELLY Pool Parties are what New York’s parks are made for – they are lively and exciting and build energy and enthusiasm for people to stay and live and play in NYC – and I will fight to ensure they are back in action in 2010.”

Alvi:
"The Brooklyn music scene exploded over the last decade, drawing hordes of new bands and artists to the borough and making Williamsburg the epicenter of some of the best new music in the world. The recent East River events have been the culmination of it all, showcasing VICE bands and other artists to thousands of music junkies across New York. VICE salutes Brooklyn native Chuck Schumer – a man who clearly knows his music – for going to bat for countless New York City concert -goers," said VICE founder Suroosh Alvi.

Schumer made a speech on the last night of the concert series last August and told a cheering crowd that his office was in the final stages of sealing the deal to keep JELLY at East River State Park.

And just yesterday, he released the following update:

Today, United States Senator Charles E. Schumer announced he is pressing officials to iron out remaining concerns to see that the JELLY Pool Parties are saved from being shut down. Schumer is meeting with state and park officials and organizations to get the ball rolling on a permanent solution. The JELLY Pool Parties, a very successful free summer concert series started in 2005, were held at East River State Park in 2009. Unfortunately, the New York State Parks Department and the Open Space Alliance (OSA) indicated that the Jelly Pool Parties may not return for a 2010 season. No final schedule has been set for the 2010 season and Schumer is committed to seeing the JELLY Pool Parties remain a fixture for next summer and beyond. Schumer, a Brooklyn native who attended two of the Pool Parties this past summer, was struck by the quality and popularity of the concerts and the enthusiasm of the crowd. Schumer has already met with the NYS Parks Department and OSA and has pledged to do whatever it takes to see the Pool Parties return 2010.

Feed the Hungry This Holiday Season, and Pay For My GameStop Purchases

2009-11-25T14:24:00.000-08:00

Today's JIM THOMPSON/ JAMES M. CAIN AWARD recognizing NYC-Style Chicanery of the First Magnitude goes to Bronx resident Stephen Riley and his consort Myra Walker (nominated here partly by virtue of simply being named Myra Walker, one of the best names a lady con artist can have), founders of the brilliantly lucrative and deliciously fishy United Homeless Organization, which was just trying to get by like everyone else, when along came Arnold Diaz

But who gets the BankofAmerica/WellsFargo/Ameriquest/GoldmanSachs award for rendering a large percentage of the US population homeless in the wake of the bonus-generating subprime loan scandal? Alas, we have no nominees for that award, because we're not smart enough to figure out who perpetrated that brilliant scam.Apparently no one else is smart enough either to find nominees for that illustrious award, including the US Attorney General's Office.

It's easier for the NY State AG to focus media attention on a couple of nickel-and-dime grifters than it is for the US AG or Congress to take on investment banks and sub-prime lenders who have paid their workers billions in bonuses to run the US economy into the toilet and render large chunks of the US population homeless. FOX5 should send Arnold Diaz to DC, not Union Square---maybe Attorney General Holder will follow Diaz's lead, as NY State AG Cuomo did after seeing Diaz's "Shame, Shame, Shame...Shame On You" segment busting the UHO!

But back to our award-winning grifters.
According to the NY State Attorney General's Office, Riley and Walker have been living large up in 'da Bronx since the early '90s, perpetrating a lucrative scam known to New Yorkers as the United Homeless Organization, a not-for-profit organization which, since 1993, has enjoyed thoroughly tax-exempt status and no financial oversight whatsoever.

If you've ever tried to buy a book at the Union Square Barnes & Noble, you're familiar with the UHO workers, who set up tables on the sidewalk of East 17th Street and harass passersby day and night, begging for " JUST ONE PENNY! JUST ONE PENNY TO HELP FEED THE HOMELESS!" UHO's aggressive panhandlers are recognizable to NYC pedestrians by their folding tables, water-cooler jugs, and color-coded hats and aprons bearing the familiar UHO logo.

According to the Attorney General, UHO founders Walker and Riley charge their "workers" rental fees of up to $15 per "shift" to stand behind the tables and beg for donations, holding clipboards bearing what the NY Daily News describes as "phoney-baloney" paperwork (extra points for getting the NYDN OpEd page to use the term "phoney-baloney"). Riley and Walker would let the workers pocket a portion of whatever they collected after workers paid their fees, but the lawsuit filed by the AG's office also says Riley and Walker use the workers' donations as a "personal kitty" while disregarding nonprofit or charitable solicitation laws.

The majority of the cash, earned from up to 50 tables set up every day across Manhattan, goes toward paying for Riley and Walker's rent, restaurant tabs and traveling expenses, in addition to a fleet of "UHO vehicles" and purchases from GameStop, Home Shopping Network and an online Weight Watchers account.

The alleged scam netted enough money for Riley and Walker to report revenue ranging from $60, 000 to $98,000 in annual filings from 2003 to 2007, and to withdraw, from 2005 to 2009, more than $173,000 from the UHO's bank account.

However, the AG's office says Riley and Walker did zilch to officially help the homeless, unless you count the leftover pittance the pair allowed its workers to keep after paying their 'shift' fees. Despite the claims by UHO panhandlers that donations would go towards "churches", "homeless shelters" and "feeding the homeless" the AG's office found that UHO operated no soup kitchens, homeless shelters or food pantries, and it did nothing to fund other charities' efforts on behalf of the homeless. In addition to allegedly lying about its donations to homeless shelters and soup kitchens, the UHO failed to maintain any records of money collected and paid out, and was operated without a board of directors, which NY State law requires of all charities.

The lawsuit goes on and on, and basically seeks to have UHO dissolved, and seeks, as well, to have Riley and Walker barred from ever soliciting charitable contributions again. However, no criminal charges will be filed, which is OK with us, since Riley and Walker did help some people out a bit, even if they made some goodly bank doing so.

But is all the attention on this alleged crime against humanity any worse than those of predatory lenders luring would-be homeowners into signing up for sub-prime loans which would end in foreclosure and eventual economic collapse of the entire US economy?

WHAT WILL IT TAKE TO STOP THE RAPACIOUS BRUCE RATNER?

2009-11-24T21:20:00.000-08:00

ATLANTIC AVENUE ATROCITY: EVEN WORSE THAN SUSPECTED

from Bloomberg.com's Architecture Critic James Russell:

The project has already changed drastically for the worse. It was once a glittering Gehry blueprint that would have covered the rail yards with a glass-walled arena and sprouted 16 towers wrapped in fluttering ribbons of metal and glass.
As the climate for property development went frigid, Ratner dumped Gehry and brought in a sports-design specialist, the San Francisco office of architect/engineer Ellerbe Becket Co., which was recently bought by design giant AECOM Technology Corp.
When images of the revised arena project -- a bloated, brown airplane hangar -- were greeted with revulsion, Forest City Ratner disavowed them. The developer hastily married Manhattan-based SHoP Architects with Ellerbe Becket. SHoP wrapped the brown blight in a pelt the color of rusting steel. The gambit got the arena cost down to $800 million from $1 billion, according to Forest City Ratner.
Hack Expediency
The result still smacks of hack expediency. One of SHoP’s overlapping metal bands thins as it arches into a broad porch over a bleak plaza, where Gehry had planned to build a high, glass-walled public space. Instead we would have a toad hunkering at one of the most important intersections in Brooklyn, that of Flatbush and Atlantic avenues.
Fans would stand soaking on the plaza on rainy days. The broad cineplex-look entry awkwardly squeezes into a much tighter gathering space and concourse. The secondary entrances have shrunk to the size of subway holes.
The spacious yet largely useless plaza and the beaklike porch occupy land slated in the Gehry plan for an iconic commercial tower once dubbed Miss Brooklyn. Ratner has promised the tower will be built. That means lopping off the beak, which would destroy what little integrity the design possesses.
Environmental Review

Destroy, Don't Develop Brooklyn

2009-11-24T16:32:00.000-08:00

LET'S GO, NETS!
Surely a geographic move to sunny downtown Brooklyn will turn around the 0-13 record of this unknown, loss-plagued NBA team from... New Jersey?

more FAQs answered after the jump!

Will the NJ Nets finally win a basketball game once they're ensconced in the new Nets Arena, which might be built once the "pleasantly residential" neighborhood called Fort Greene is sufficiently destroyed by 'developers'?

Probably not? But what if their new owner were a shady Russian oligarch?

Wouldn't that help?

What if the new arena was guaranteed to be really, really super ugly?

What if said craven "developer" staged a photo-op with a rapper? Those people are into basketball, right?

"Parallel Perceptions" at New York City Opera

2009-11-17T13:22:00.000-08:00

New York City Opera is demonstrating how elite cultural institutions can stay relevant by thinking outside the box.

Rachel Papo
Preparing for First Hand Grenade Throwing
2005

Elinor Carucci,
Mother Drives Me in the Rain
2000

Nikki Lee
Part #21
2003

Generating buzz for the opera company's 2009-2010 season, City Opera is doing away with traditional diva portraits and ensemble pics in this year's promotional materials, favoring, instead, contemporary work by emerging artists such as photographers Ryan McGinley, Elinor Carucci and
Christopher Morris.

“The visual arts are an intrinsic part of City Opera’s mission, whether as costume design, set and lighting design or graphics,” stated George Steel, General Manager and Artistic Director of New York City Opera. “As we begin our new season, we are proud to encourage and support artists not only on the stage but in the studio.”

The results, which can be seen on subway posters, promotional fliers and print ads for New York City Opera's 2009-2010 season, are enigmatic and arresting; forcing the viewer to contemplate why works like Madame Butterfly, Esther, and Partenope never really go away.

Read more here about City Opera's effort to bring opera's contemporary relevance to the forefront...

This fall, beginning on November 5, New York City Opera will be showcasing the work of photographers Elinor Carucci, Christopher Morris and Rachel Papo, whose work will amplify the images representing the company’s productions of the 2009-10 season. The exhibition, Parallel Perceptions, will occupy all four rings of the newly renovated David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center and will be displayed from November 5-22, 2009. In addition to showcasing the work of these three photographers, the additional photographs illustrating the New York City Opera 2009-10 season will also be on show, including images by Nikki Lee and Ryan McGinley. The exhibition is curated by Naomi Ben-Shahar.

Life in 2078: Dropping Off the Kids at Robert Downey, Jr. Junior High

2009-11-13T16:19:00.000-08:00

EXCELLENT NEWS this FRIDAY THE 13TH.
St. Mark's Bookshop actually has a new novel for sale, by...none other than the one and only Tama Janowitz, the brilliant and under-rated satirist whose scathing parodies of contemporary US life can be found in works like A Certain Age, Peyton Amberg, Area Code (212), and The Male Cross-Dressers' Support Group.

Who knew? Not Americans, who have been steadily deprived of Janowitz's inimitable brand of parody ever since her US publishers abandoned her withering, scorched-earth satire in favor of more easily digestible writers like Curtis Sittenfeld and Rachel Ray and...Dan Brown. Would you ever read a book written by someone named Dan Brown?

Janowitz's surprisingly hefty new novel is called They is Us, and UK critics are describing it as a kind of cross between Michel Houellebecq and Douglas Coupland.

Thank god British readers haven't let apathy and Philistinism completely subsume their commercial publishing model---Janowitz's latest novel, as well as re-issued editions of her earlier works are selling like crazy in England, where they're being properly promoted.

SAVAGENYC hasn't read it just yet, because we're hoping to get a free media copy,or at least be able to check it out from the Brooklyn Public Library. In any case, the reviews from the UK are pretty damn good----which is a nice thumb in the eye for the banal, insipid US media companies who refused to publish, this, her most ambitious work in years.

The holding-up of the mirror begins in New Jersey, a promising hunting ground for a dystopia. We're in the not-so-distant future, a time when Gwen Stefani and Busta Rhymes are considered early-modern classical music. The dystopic bit is neatly summarised in a map of the US drawn by Julie Fockinoff, a student at Robert Downey Jr. Junior High, and a member of the wearily dysfunctional and slightly mutated family upon which the book is centred.

read the complete review here

Things That Go Together: Satan and the '80s?

2009-11-12T10:25:00.000-08:00

Couldn't wait. SAVAGENYC was supposed to wait and see House of the Devil with friends and family, all of whom are stone horror buffs, but the temptation to just drop everything and hand over $12.50 to the Angelika Film Center on Houston Street was just too great. I mean, who can resist a poster like this ?

READ SAVAGENYC's REVIEW AFTER THE JUMP!

Quick version: scary. so scary you will turn into a little, 8 year-old girl all over again and get freaked out about going home to your apartment, even though you live in a building with about 8,000 other people.
On a scale of one to ten, I would give The House of the Devil a 19.

SAVAGENYC was attracted to the film for the likes of former Warhol Superstar Mary Woronov, and for the genius, '80s-inspired production design, hints of which can be gleaned from the brilliant poster.

But we forgot that this might actually be a really scary, nightmare-inducing experience. Too late, we were already strapped in.

The House of the Devil brilliantly references everything from Halloween to Visiting Hours to The Little Girl Who Lived Down the Lane (don't forget Race with the Devil !) in its general mis-en-scene; recreating, with jaw-dropping accuracy, the artless composition, flat lighting, and drab interiors of those Friday night classics, all while keeping the viewer on the edge of his-or-her seat with an incredibly tense and taut narrative. Like Grindhouse, but with better, more suspenseful writing. And if you're just there for the kitsch alone (which, I admit, I was), the hilarious knock-out opening credits are worth the price of admission, promising a very disturbing ABC After-School Special.

Bike Lanes As Economic Stimulus

2009-11-11T14:06:00.000-08:00

BIKES: GOOD FOR THE U.S. ECONOMY, THE ENVIRONMENT and YOU

Do you, like Freddy Mercury of Queen, want to ride your bicycle?

Alas, where are you going to ride?

Well, you may not have too many choices for safe cycling right now, but evidence suggests the transportation tide is turning away from America's obsession with the car, toward that masterpiece of design and function, the bicycle.

Bike dealers across the country say sales are up, and getting better as more bike lanes become available.

To put it simply, more bike lanes=more $ for US bike makers=better economy + cleaner air + healthier populace.

Bike sales are one of the few bright spots on an otherwise bleak economic horizon, according to WNYC radio. And we're not just talking about a blip on the sales radar for hipster bike shops in Brooklyn, NY or Oakland, CA, although, according to the National Association of Bicycle Dealers, business is up for those type establishments as well.

US Bike makers say a big chunk of bikes being sold are being bought for use in cities where bike lanes are proliferating; where ridership is up.

Curt Davis, a product manager for urban and commuting bikes at Cannondale, tells WNYC radio that business, if anything, has increased during the recession, and he adds that business is getting better with more cities going "green".

"When that (financial) meltdown happened, it was right when we were introducing our Quick line of bikes," says Davis of the bikes, which can cost up to $700 a piece.

Cannondale workers wondered if they were going to be hit hard as everyone else in that fall of 2008, when Lehman Brothers collapsed and AIG asked for bailout money.

But...look what happened:

"We had to double our forecast, we had to immediately reorder twice as many bikes as we thought," the bike seller says of the rising economic tide currently lifting bicycle manufacturers and related industries

What's more, new evidence from the NY City Department of Transportation reveals that the more bike lanes a city builds, the more money people spend in bike shops.

Davis tells WNYC that as the Cannondale Quick line continues to sell, he's noticed that sales are being driven by consumers in bike-friendly cities like New York, Minneapolis and Portland.

This makes sense, because as bike lanes multiply, the more popular they become. According to the NYC Dept of Transportation, commuter cycling went up 26% in 2009, on the heels of an unprecedented 35% increase in commuter cycling in 2008.! All of this cycling Nirvana coming after the city decided to let common sense prevail and actually stripe 200 miles of new bike lanes throughout the five boroughs. All togther, that means ridership is up 66% since the addition of the new miles of bike lanes.

What would happen if bike lanes starting mysteriously proliferating in cities like Dallas or Oklahoma City? Would the US bike industry prosper? Would more people have jobs? Would public visibility of a rich artisanal trade such as bike-making be heightened? Would more people be in better shape? Would kids be able to ride their bikes to school without being suspended?

What a scary, threatening place a bike-friendly US would be!

read more here

Cycling=Ka-Ching!

Paris versus NYC According To Jean-Paul Gaultier

2009-11-10T11:44:00.000-08:00

Up-and-coming art impresario Vladimir Restoin Roitfeld blew up NYC's Lower East Side last night in inimitable French style, exhibiting 16 never-before-shown paintings by Parisian artist Nicolas Pol, who is being compared to Jean-Michel Basquiat by French art critics.

The champagne-soaked affair drew an enormous crowd of fashion and society types, from John Paul Gaultier and Neville Wakefield to Mary Kate Olsen and Carine Roitfeld, editor of French Vogue (who just happens to be curator Vladimir Roitfeld's mom).

Nicolas Pol "Studies for a Pink Martus"
Mixed Media 2009
205 x 310 cm

To whatever extent Mama Roitfeld may have played in attracting the fashiony crowd, sonny must be credited with discovering one of NYC's greatest exhibition venues since Vito Bruno's '80s Outlaw Parties rocked the 59th Street Bridge (alas, no cops arrived to shut down Roitfeld's affair!).

"It took us seven months to find the space, and get the city to approve it," Vladimir told Savagenyc of the former meat market at 80 Essex Street, near the foot of the Williamsburg Bridge. "It's the perfect setting for Nicolas's historical but anarchic aesthetic." Roitfeld added.

Even Gaultier was impressed.

"It's been too long since I've been to New York, " the '80s powerhouse designer enthused, gesturing to the abandoned market's 20-foot ceilings, decayed moldings and Depression-era neon signs reading MEAT.

"In Paris we have nothing like this for art." Asked to compare the art scenes of Paris and New York, the style-maker reiterated: "I just told you--it's here that it's happening."

Pol's work, which ran the risk of being overshadowed by all of the celebs and paparazzi, nonetheless rewarded close inspection, showing thought, craftsmanship and painstaking attention to detail.

"I am primarily a printmaker who happens to reference abstract painting" said the artist of his new work, which indeed revealed, under giant neon splashes and livid brush strokes, intricate prints made from what Pol says are original etchings, influenced by Goya's war drawings.

Nicolas Pol "Puaka Crusade" 2007
Mixed Media, 130 x 300 cm

The artist, although shy and unassuming amidst all the revelry, is no shrinking violet. Once arrested by French police for spraying graffiti on Paris buildings, Pol says a childhood experience discovering the rotting corpse of an elephant in Africa strongly influenced his aesthetic, which references executions, war and environmental apocalypse, as well as art history's Western European tradition, from Hans Holbein the Younger to Velasquez, to the afore-mentioned Goya.

When asked about comparisons to Basquiat, Pol shrugs and explains that if he references superstars like Goya and Velasquez, then he can't exactly "leave out" American art stars like Basquiat, Warhol and Robert Motherwell.

"My artwork is like creating emotionally moving music for a silent film. I want to create a narrative for people to think about while discovering my work," the artist says of his new work. Pol also says he's highly influenced by film, from Hitchcock to David Lynch to David Cronenberg.

Sources say two of the paintings have already sold, one for close to six figures.Pay a visit to 80 Essex Street, where you can see Nicolas Pol's engrossing new work.
While you're there, savor the venue, a shrine to Lower East Side grime and glory.

Nicolas Pol
"The Martus Maw"
80 Essex Street
New York, NY 10002
Through December 10th
http://artlog.com/events/5253-nicolas-pol-the-martus-maw

Who Invented the Future?

2009-11-10T07:59:00.000-08:00

Close your eyes and picture, if you will, ladies and gentlemen....the future.

Does it look like this?

Maybe a bit more like this?

Yes---much better.

Luxurious but streamlined glass homes in leafy suburbs, designed for maximum ease and efficiency.

Sunken living rooms with built-in sectional sofas in vivid shades of crimson or sienna. Swedish coffee services on a lacquer tray. Machines for living

What about the office? Who wants to walk or ride a bike to the train station in town just so you can commute all the way to the city on some filthy train or streetcar? So depressing and 1930s! So old-country!

Picture, instead: sprawling corporate headquarters on grassy plateaus, overlooking otherwise pristine lakes or rivers. Away from all the....crowds. Accessed by car! Only by car! Your own spacious yet aerodynamic automobile, complete with vertical stabilizers and jutting tail-lights, helpful in "reducing by 20% the needs for steering correction in a cross wind". What if you need to grab lunch? Have you seen our company cafeteria?

What if you need to get away? Far, far away? Picture gleaming TWA jet terminals with soaring white arches. Elegant air hostess in matching uniforms offering coffee, tea or cocktails at 35,000 feet.

All of these scenarios conjure up images of what many Americans considered utopia after the austere decades of the Depression and WWII. A new, modern utopia promised life without crowds, filth and poverty, a utopia where one didn't have to always share everything.

If you had to answer the question, "who invented the future?" you might do worse than to answer, Eero Saarinen, the Finnish-American architect whose influence is being examined in a retrospective at the Museum of the City of New York.

Saarinen played a pivotal role in building a new, post-war America throughout the ambitious and optimistic 1950s and 1960s. You might even say he "branded" the future. Saarinen's clients were a veritable "who’s who" of the most prominent corporations that projected America’s image nationally and internationally. These corporations' range of influence extended into the popularization of television and other media, the advancement of new information technologies, the expansion of higher education, the promotion of automobile culture and air travel, and suburbanization.

While Shaping the Future looks back at what Americans held dear in the optimistic period following WWII, the exhibition also provides a fascinating road map of everything that went wrong with America following the ambitious, wide-eyed era of the '50s: suburban sprawl, the exaltation of the automobile, white flight and the death of community.

Why was America so in thrall to this high modernist aesthetic? Much has been written on this question and, while we're certainly not architectural historians, we did come across an interesting account online citing the work of a cultural critic named Bram Dijkstra, who, along with Tom Wolfe, foresaw long ago the eventual problems a society might face when it embraced efficiency at the expense of humanity:

"Much of the post-WWII high modernism in America and the rest of the western world is antihumanist, hostile to notions of community, of any form of humanism. It becomes about the lack of meaning, the need to create our own significance out of nothing. The highest level of significance, that of the elite, becomes abstraction. So the concept of the evolutionary elite arises again, deliberately excluding those who 'haven't evolved.'"

Eero Saarinen: Shaping the Future, on view through January 31, 2010

Museum of the City of New York
1220 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10029
www.mcny.org

Steve Wolfe on Paper at the Whitney Museum of American Art

2009-10-20T16:26:00.000-07:00

Copying book covers may seem like a simple-minded idea, but the experience of Mr. Wolfe's works is surprisingly rich---visually, conceptually, psychologically and sociologically. Above all, you sense in his art a kind of monkish devotion that turns feats of technique into icons of a deeply personal religion.

"Wolfe's trompe l'oeil paintings, drawings and sculpture at the Whitney appear initially to be more examples of the"appropriation" school, where artists 'recontextualize' other artists' creations to shed light on society and the culture industry at large....but read Wolfe's press release, or the exhibition information on the wall at the Whitney, and you'll get a surprise....Wolfe's creations are works of astonishing craftsmanship and conceptual rigor, which succeed in turning the"appropriation" M.O. on its head by actually incorporating skill into what's normally criticized as an ongoing art world stunt." - from the NYT

BIKE SNOBS for BLOOMBERG?

2009-10-13T13:15:00.000-07:00

not a huge fan of Mike Bloomberg, but he does love his bike lanes, which is about the best thing we can say about any mayor of NYC that we've encountered so far....

Both of Bloomberg's mayoral rivals, Thompson and Avella, have vowed to get rid of Alternative Transportation Rock Star Janette Sadik-Khan, before ripping up new bike lanes and giving them back to SUV and minivan drivers so we're somewhat inclined to vote for Bloomberg, but we're not thrilled about his wholehearted endorsement of the Atlantic Yards landgrab, and his silence regarding what looks to be the boondogglization of Pier 6 near the Brooklyn Bridge. What's an NYC bike lover to do in the voting booth?

Can I Also Dress My Dog Like A Slut for Halloween?

2009-10-13T12:19:00.000-07:00

from a reader
Dear Savagenyc:

It is socially permissible, this Halloween season, to also dress my dog, Luxury Finder, in a sexually provocative, miniaturized version of the same rented costume I will wear, so that we'll 'match' at Outback Steakhouse's Annual Dumb n' Dumberer Halloween BeerBlast XXV?
There's supposed to be, like, a lot of guys from Financial Services who're are gonna, like, be there this year and I want to look cute and fun, but not, like, ugly.

Please let me know, ASAP

Love,

Chagrinned Health Aide Efforting Luxury Seaside Edifice Asap

Savagenyc Replies

Dear Chaelsea:

Yes, by all means, rent or own your sexy Halloween costume (probably just owning one would be the best bet, yes? Don't rent one) and go ahead and get one for your little dog, too. I guess.

But Raggedy Ann?

Dressing yourself and your Chiuaua, Luxury Finder, as matching Raggedy Anns seems a troubling costume choice, not only connoting daddy issues, but conjuring up a bevy of unpleasant intimations, for the target of your attentions, especially as your Chiuaua will be dressed in the same provocative, but miniaturized, costume.

Why don't you and Luxury Finder find a way to stay sexy, but throw some 'curves' into the mix?

Most drunk frat boys and Financial Services Department employees love nothing more than a little 'mystery' on Halloween, and you might be surprised how many of those keg-chugging Dockers (TM)-clad Revenue Analysts will be more than intrigued at the hint of a girl (and/or a Chihuahua)with 'something extra'.

Maybe, with the help of some, er, extra stuffing, you and Luxury Finder could pull off the Betty Boop Baffler, for instance?

or, perhaps TRANNY WONDER WOMAN?

however, CHAELSEA, you may want to reconsider your canine choice. I know small breeds are easier to dress in miniaturized slutwear, but most males I've encountered absolutely detest lapdogs, and this litte known fact could seriously inconvenience your quest for that luxury seaside edifice, courtesy the Dockers-clad Financial Services Analyst.
It's no small secret that most guys, hell, most human beings, hate small dogs, and even use them sometimes to make money in sporting ventures which don't bode well for the animals, even Chiahuahuas.

Nonetheless, Happy Hunting!

bashing back

2009-10-13T10:06:00.000-07:00

find a BASHBACK! chapter near you

New Warhol Biography from Arthur Danto

2009-10-08T20:48:00.000-07:00

Danto suggests that “what makes him an American icon is that his subject matter is always something that the ordinary American understands: everything, or nearly everything he made art out of came straight out of the daily lives of very ordinary Americans. . . . The tastes and values of ordinary persons all at once were inseparable from advanced art.”

FIXED GEAR FETISH

2009-10-08T14:24:00.000-07:00

Retro-style single-gear and fixed-gear bikes are spreading from their traditional home among the graphic designers of east London....

from Robert Frank's "The Americans"

2009-10-08T13:11:00.000-07:00

"...as a shabby, unshaven, camera-toting foreigner driving through the Deep South with New York plates and a "smart-alecky attitude," Frank struck at least one local sheriff as a Communist agent—and was arrested in an Arkansas town on the Mississippi border."

Robert Frank's Real America

J. Hoberman takes on the photographer who changed the way we look at—and depict—ourselves.

Looking In: Robert Frank's The Americans September 22, 2009–January 3, 2010 Galleries for Drawings, Prints, and Photographs and The Howard Gilman Gallery, 2nd floor

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

gs, Prints, and Photographs and The Howard Gilman Gallery, 2nd flo

Betty Davis: It's Time To Get Down

2009-10-08T12:43:00.000-07:00

10 unreleased cuts from libidinous funk diva Betty Davis...

Originally produced in '76, but more fresh and alive than ever.

LINER NOTES:

* Entire album previously UNRELEASED - never even bootlegged!
* Mastered from the original tapes*
* 32 page full color booklet featuring the original artwork, new notes, unseen photos, and full lyrics.

Betty Davis was a musical maverick with vision.

Image, substance, sex, and grit combined with a badass band that could deliver the funk bed backbone to the sultry music between the sheets. After cutting two notorious discs for the Just Sunshine label (Betty Davis and They Say I'm Different), and Nasty Gal (LITA 046) for Island Records, Davis went to work on her most personal and expressive record yet.

After capturing 10 hard-hitting tracks in 1976 at the remote Studio In The Country (Louisiana), a creative difference with her then label caused the platter to be unexpectedly shelved. Davis would cut one final album before retreating from the music business, eventually dropping out of the public eye completely.

Is This Love Or Desire is a little-known gem in the Davis catalogue. Mastered from the original tapes, and untouched for over 30 years, this release features detailed liner notes by Oliver Wang (Soul Sides, Betty Davis and They Say I'm Different re-issue contributor), the originally intended artwork housed in a lavishly packaged digipak, rare photos, archival material, and recent interviews with Davis and her skin-tight band Funk House.

Never bootlegged, never released, never heard until now, the secret story of this lost album will finally enter the history books and cement this bold soul sister's contributions to music and popular culture.

It's time to get down…Long live Betty Davis!

CHECK IT OUT AND LISTEN FOR FREE!

BEING VINCENT GALLO

2009-10-07T08:55:00.000-07:00

According to recent media reports, there's a fake Vincent Gallo on the loose, in Manhattan, crashing parties and picking up girls.

It's alleged that "Gallo" even asked a female publicist to email her photo as a prerequisite for his "appearance" at the premiere of "Where The Wild Things Are".

If you have an information about the whereabouts of "Gallo" please contact savagenyc immediately.

who's stealing vincent gallo's ID?

KEN BURNS ON THE STATE OF THE ARTS

2009-10-06T19:29:00.000-07:00

"Tolstoy said, 'Art is the transfer of emotion from one person to another.'"
Ken Burns interviewed by Savagenyc

SAVAGENYC: WHAT ARE YOUR SPECIFIC HOPES FOR THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION IN TERMS OF REACHING OUT TO THE ARTS COMMUNITY?

KEN BURNS: It feels like a changing of the guard. More importantly, it doesn't seem like a changing of the guard, it feels like it ---and I think that's the thing. Tolstoy said, "art is the transfer of emotion from one person to another," and I think what we've seen is, essentially, eight years in which the arts, even the arts, have been politicized. And we didn't need that to happen. These are tough times and we need the arts even more than ever. And, I think what we'll see is, a little bit, not clearer sailing, because the arts aren't about that, they're about always unsettling things, but we'll allow (artists) to do their work unfettered by any interference from the people who want to be arbiters, the commissars.

SAVAGENYC: WHAT, SPECIFICALLY, IN THE NEXT FOUR YEARS WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE HAPPEN?

KEN BURNS: Well, we don't need an Arts Czar. We have an NEA as well as Humanities. I think what we want are people who are willing to take risks, who realize that the arts are the life and blood of a country; they don't have anything to do with the actual defense of the country, they just make the country worth defending.

SAVVAGENYC: HAVE YOU SEEN ANY ENCOURAGING SIGNS SO FAR?

Ken Burns: Yeah, I have. I think the naming of Rocco Landesman as the NEA Chairman, is a good sign. I think seeing Jim Leach, who is a former congressman from Iowa, appointed by Obama to head the National Endowment for the Humanities is also a good sign, a sign that they want to leave these places untouched by politics.

DENNIS HOPPER ON POLANSKI, DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY, AND JANET JACKSON'S WARDROBE MALFUNCTION

2009-10-06T16:32:00.000-07:00

"I'm on Roman's side. Period."
Dennis Hopper interviewed by savagenyc

Talking to Dennis Hopper proves to be a strange but entirely welcome trip down memory lane.
1974 Sunset Boulevard, it seems. In the age of eager young Hollywood whippersnappers providing politically neutral soundbites on every topic from 'who they're wearing' to 'whose shoes they're wearing', Hopper's long, drawn-out and circuitous logic refreshes with its candor, conviction, and lack of glibness. He almost seems to enter a reverie when getting started on a particular topic, and the listener is more than happy to go along for the ride. Hopper, a celebrated photographer and artist in his own right, was in NY to attend an awards ceremony honoring his friend and neighbor, Ed Ruscha.

SAVAGENYC: Congratulations on the new photography book from Taschen. Are you still doing a lot of photography?

DENNIS HOPPER: Uh, yeah. I'm doing digital now.

SAVAGENYC: How do you find the time?

DENNIS HOPPER: I just carry a camera around with me.

SAVAGENYC: Where do you stand on the whole Roman Polanski issue?

DENNIS HOPPER: I'm on Roman's side. Period. I love Roman Polanski. He's one of our great directors. He's certainly a wonderful friend to me. I find the whole thing really 'after the fact'.
He was badly treated when (the original indictment) happened. This is ridiculous. He's lived in Switzerland for years; back and forth from Paris.

SAVAGENYC: Why do you think there's this sudden rush to extradite Roman Polanski from Europe after 30 years?

DENNIS HOPPER: Why is it happening now? Because we're going through an ultra conservative period of time. I think it all started with Janice. Janice, uh.... (Janet Jackson). Janice showing her nipple. By accident. The accident that happened at the Super Bowl. I mean suddenly we reverted back, as if the Sixties never happened. And yet, if television hadn't pushed in on that nipple nobody would have ever seen it. We have 24 hour news now that goes on, and you have to have stories, and it just goes on. They judge people on television. I thought it was great when 24 hour news came out, because I'm a news buff. Now I think it's ridiculous. You just have the same stories over and over. Then they bring in other sides, other opinions. And suddenly this is a big rape thing and everybody—the mother, the child, I mean everybody it happened to—everybody wanted to get out of this case in the first place. The judge mistreated Roman and that's the end of it as far as I'm concerned.

SALMAN RUSHDIE ON PALIN, POLANSKI and the POPE

2009-10-06T13:32:00.000-07:00

"I think (Obama) is the best available president. I'll take him. I mean the alternative was McCain and Palin and that's... not thinkable."
Savagenyc interviews Salman Rushdie.

Americans for the Arts 2009 National Arts Awards
Robert Redford, Salman Rushdie, Ed Ruscha Honored
Cipriani 42nd Street, NYC

Salman Rushdie was giving Robert Redford and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi a run for their money.
Sure, the photographers had a field day when Redford and Pelosi arrived, arm-in-arm, for last night's National Arts Awards in midtown Manhattan, but who really wants to talk to a movie star and a politician when you've got a real live fatwa target standing right in front of you at a very...publicized event? Also, there's no statute of limitations on religious decrees issued by Iranian Islamic scholars and "ulamas", whatever "ulamas" are.
Not that savagenyc was granted interviews with Redford or Pelosi, but still—we were more psyched about Rushdie than those two.
And we were psyched about Dennis Hopper.
Stick around for Hopper—he's a doozy.

Surrounded by reporters waiting for him to finish his chat with Larry Gagosian and James Frey, Rushdie looked every inch the international literary playboy as he sipped what looked to be a martini on the rocks.
All that was missing from the scene was what the WSJ described as Rushdie's usual "babe in tow", but who knows? Maybe said "babe" was giving her man a break, or powdering her nose.
In keeping with this image, Rushdie remained hilariously deadpan about various international scandals when interviewed, but he revealed a polite and equitable side when asked about his award and the furor his presence was causing.

Upon accepting the Kitty Carlise Hart Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Arts award, Rushdie quoted Kingsley Amis's remark upon being awarded the Booker Prize: "I always thought that prizes like this were total shit, but I just changed my mind."

SAVAGENYC: TELL ME WHAT YOU'RE DOING HERE TONIGHT?
Salman Rushdie:
I have the easy job. I have to sit there and then get up and say, "thank you".
But it's very flattering that an organization with this kind of pedigree should wish to recognize my work.
If you look at the history of the people who've won these awards, it's very impressive to think that you're going to be a part of that list. So I'm just very flattered to be here and, also, I kind of admire the work they do—Americans for the Arts—because I think that actually it's a tough time. It's a tough time for everybody, but it's a tough time for the arts as well, and I think that we need effective advocacy organizations to push the arts agenda. Americans for the Arts has been very good about it, so in that sense I'm happy to be here to support them too.

SAVAGENYC: ARE THINGS CHANGING IN WASHINGTON WITH REGARD TO THE ARTS?
ARE THE ARTS BECOMING DE-POLITICIZED? THERE SEEMS TO BE A CELEBRATORY SPIRIT HERE TONIGHT.
Salman Rushdie:
If I had a vote in this country I would have voted for the president, the one we've got. I think he's the best available president. Which doesn't mean I think it's all perfect. In a way I'd like him to be tougher minded
and less compromising on a number of fronts, both domestic and foreign, but, you know, I'll take it. I mean the alternative was McCain and Palin, and that's not thinkable.

SAVAGENYC: THE ARTS COMMUNITY IN EUROPE IS GROWING INCREASINGLY DIVIDED OVER THE DETENTION OF ROMAN POLANSKI AND HIS POSSIBLE EXTRADITION TO THE US WHERE DO YOU STAND ON THE SITUATION?
Salman Rushdie:
It's a very difficult problem. It's a fifty-fifty decision. On the one hand, no one is in favor of the sodomy of thirteen year-old girls, that's obvious. However, I also think, to put it simply, that, for me, the thing that swings my opinion is the fact that the girl concerned, now the woman concerned, has herself no desire to see him prosecuted. She's been saying for twelve years that she actually wants the charges dropped, that she doesn't want him to go to jail.
You know there's a problem of some people wanting to be, as it were, more Catholic than the Pope.
I mean if she can forgive him, then so can we, and frankly, nobody at the time was recommending a custodial sentence. I mean, it's not a good idea to run, when you're facing charges, and that is a problem.
But it's quite clear that what happened in that court between him and the judge is very murky,so my view is that 30-odd years or more, nobody, including the victim, wants this to come back to life. I think: let it rest.
I have a little theory that he will not come back but that's just a guess.

Tao Lin: Alt Bag or Chill Bro?

2009-10-02T16:52:00.000-07:00

GENERATION :( ?

money quote:

the writing of Lin and associates such as Brandon Scott Gorrell, Kendra Grant Malone, Ellen Kennedy and Zachary German is positively dripping in irony and shot through with the type of cynicism that relies on the heavy use of speech marks in order to detach "themselves" from their "work".

Take Your Fixed Gear Bike With You While Traveling And Say Goodbye to Slow, Clunky Rentals

2009-10-01T13:27:00.000-07:00

If you're a fixie freak, you probably were not surprised to hear that a fixed-gear bike is a better transportation solution in urban situations than either a car, bus, train, sidewalk, police car, or even helicopter, in cities like NYC and even Sao Paulo, Brazil.

When traveling, however, finding access to your favorite mode of transportation is a huge headache.

Savagenyc has rented bikes over the past year in Montreal, San Francisco, Sevilla and Provincetown, and the absolute dinosours we were given had us either cursing in exasperation and/or breaking down in fits of laughter over the sheer non-functionality of the 80-lb cruisers. When we were merrily passed by a septugenarian on an oversized tricycle, we knew there had to be a better way.

Most rental shops won't carry fixies due to insurance concerns, but that doesn't mean you must abandon all hope. Fixie scarcity for travelers may be changing drastically, with the introduction of Montague Bikes' new portable fixie, shown above.

The Montague Boston , a fixed-gear, is portable, lightweight, and can be taken on planes, trains and automobiles.

“The idea for the Boston was conceived when we examined how people use their bikes in an urban environment,” says Montague product manager Jonathan Vandenberg. “We found that while the concept of a low maintenance, 700c, single speed was ideal for city riding, it clashed with the severe lack of space that most cities suffer. Let's face it; it’s often hard to find secure outdoor parking for your bike, and who realistically has room in their studio apartment to accommodate a bike? The Boston's standard full-size geometry allows you to ride comfortably all day long, and when you reach your destination, you can fold the bike down to take it inside. It also looks great and can be easily customized as it uses all standard components."

The Boston delivers unprecedented performance and portability in three frame sizes: 17”, 19” & 21”. Standard components make this bike easy to customize at the bike shop. The Boston retailsfor $699.

order here

Michael Moore: Union Buster?

2009-10-01T10:46:00.000-07:00

why are members of the AFT pissed at Michael Moore?

cigarettes linked to child psychosis?

2009-10-01T09:53:00.000-07:00

SMOKING IN PREGNANCY LINKED TO PSYCHOTIC SYMPTOMS IN KIDS

pretty baby?

2009-10-01T09:13:00.000-07:00

remember this?
this image, appropriated by Richard Prince for his show "Spiritual America", is causing a furor in London, of all places...to the extent that the Tate Modern has CANCELLED the show...after being told by Scotland Yard the museum would be in violation of UK obscenity laws if the exhibition proceeded.

Boy did they cave. Sheesh. They should have just kept calm and carried on and reveled in all of the negative publicity and made a fortune.

Haven't they heard of Robert Mapplethorpe?

Apparently the whole show has been taken down---you can't even get the book!

I saw the show at the Guggenheim in 2007, and was pretty blown away by it.

The images are arresting; they're basically Warhol 7.0--but the main thing I was intrigued by was what the original photographers thought about their work being appropriated by Prince (and sold for millions of dollars), and if they had been paid any money by Prince.

WIENER MOBILE

2009-09-30T14:54:00.000-07:00

who is the world's fastest nudist?

AVENUE D SNIPER LATEST

2009-09-30T14:12:00.000-07:00

FEELING A BIT...ER, VULNERABLE TODAY TAKING MY DAILY CONSTITUTIONAL ON THE WILLIAMSBURG BRIDGE... EVEN THOUGH I WAS WEARING PROTECTIVE GOGGLES, A BULLETPROOF VEST, AND A BIKE HELMET

BRITTANY NOVOTNY, ESQ THROWS DOWN GAUNTLET FOR GOP INCUMBENT SALLY KERNS

2009-09-30T08:08:00.000-07:00

"Rep. Kern has been in the legislature for five years, and rather than focusing on the issues that affect the daily lives of Oklahomans, she has found time to draft legislation condemning international human rights treaties---which has no practical policy effect for Oklahomans. She's bad for business and out of touch."

SAVAGENYC INTERVIEWS TRANSGENDER ATTORNEY AND POLITICAL HOPEFUL BRITTANY NOVOTNY

BRITTANY NOVOTNY

OKLAHOMA CITY ATTORNEY AND DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATE FOR OKLAHOMA STATE LEGISLATURE, DISTRICT 84

*******

SAVAGENYC: RUMOR HAS IT THAT YOU'RE EXPLORING A RUN FOR OKLAHOMA STATE LEGISLATURE. IS THAT TRUE?

BN: As of September 27, it is now official

SAVAGENYC: WHY DO YOU WANT TO RUN FOR OFFICE?

BN: There is a lot of great momentum in central Oklahoma right now, with Oklahoma really moving in a positive direction.
Oklahoma needs legislators focused on jobs, education, and transportation issues.

Rep. Kern, the incumbent, has seemed more interested in advancing her own social agenda in her last five years in the legislature than fighting for the needs of the district.
The Journal Record (Oklahoma) described her as bad for business in an editorial this July.

I think the voters of my district want a candidate who will fight for them in the legislature and work to bring good jobs to the state, who will help pass legislation to encourage economic development that will create jobs, and who will work tirelessly to make sure we have safe roads and bridges.
I believe I have the drive, the determination and the dedication to get the job done and give the voters of my district a representative they can count on to represent THEM in the legislature.

SAVAGENYC: IF YOU'RE ELECTED TO THE OKLAHOMA STATE LEGISLATURE, WHAT'S THE FIRST PIECE OF LEGISLATION YOU WOULD DRAFT?

BN: According to a recent report by the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education, the number of students entering teaching programs in our universities has declined 24% in the last decade. Meanwhile, the number of teachers retiring in the state has seen a rapid increase.
It's expected that nearly half of Oklahoma's public school teachers will retire in the next decade. This is a situation that needs to be addressed. Oklahoma's teachers have the lowest average salaries in the region, so we're having trouble attracting people to the profession.

Oklahoma needs to do what any good business would do to attract qualified and talented employees-----we can increase the starting salaries of our teachers and start taking better care of the people that educate our children

SAVAGENYC: TO WHAT EXTENT DO YOU THINK ATTITUDES TOWARDS GAYS, LESBIANS AND TRANSGENDER PEOPLE HAVE CHANGED?

BN: I've been open and honest about who I am, and I've found my clients, colleagues and family to be great and supportive. However, this campaign is about the voters of the district, and making sure they have a representative who fights for jobs, education and transportation. I believe I have the drive, determination and dedication to do the job and remain focused on the issues that the voters care about.

SAVAGENYC: DO YOU ENCOUNTER BIAS?

BN: My fellow Oklahomans are generally good and friendly folks. I believe they respect people who are honest and real, and are looking for more of that in their elected officials. Just as my job as an attorney is to take on my client's issue and work for the best result for that client, my job as a candidate is to remain focused on the issues that are important to the voters of the district and to do everything I can to achieve the results they expect. I plan to work hard to bring good jobs to the state, to fight for our teachers and help us do more to attract new teachers to our schools, and to make sure we have safe roads and bridges for travel and commerce.

SAVAGENYC: WITNESSING THE UNEXPECTED SUCCESS OF THE OBAMA CAMPAIGN, DO YOU THINK YOUR RUN FOR THE STATE LEGISLATURE MIGHT BE CONSIDERED SUCH A BREATH OF FRESH AIR THAT IT COULD SUCCEED ON ITS SURPRISE FACTOR ALONE?

BN: Ultimately, as I've stated before, this campaign is about the voters of the district and their desire for a representative who fights for their issues----bringing good jobs to the state, improving our education, and making sure we have safe roads and bridges. I'm running because I have the ability to fight for my district in the legislature, and to make sure the voters in my district have an effective representative. Rep. Kern has been in the legislature for five years, and rather than focusing on the issues that affect the daily lives of Oklahomans, she has found time to draft legislation condemning international human rights treaties---which has no practical policy effect for Oklahomans. She's bad for business and out of touch. I think the voters in my district want a representative who is good for business and working to build a brighter future for Oklahoma.

SAVAGENYC: DO YOU SUPPORT SAME-SEX MARRIAGE?

BN: I cannot and will not deny that I have spoken out as favoring marriage equality, but I really don't see that as an issue facing the voters of my district right now. They have spoken on this issue in 2004, and right now we are dealing with a rising unemployment rate, sky-rocketing health care costs, the beginnings of a teacher shortage, and a lot of bridges in need of serious work. I'm running for office because I believe the voters of the district deserve a representative in the legislature who is fighting to bring and keep good jobs in Oklahoma, to make sure we're attracting plenty of of qualified teachers to our classrooms, and to make sure that the bridges and highways we depend on for travel and commerce are well-maintained and safe.

SAVAGENYC: DO YOU HAVE KIDS OR PLAN TO HAVE KIDS?

BN: I'm the youngest of five children, and I have 5 nephews and 1 niece. The biggest drawback of running for office is that there is sometimes just not enough time to see them as much as I'd like. I do have plans to have my own family one day, but I'm taking things one step at a time right now.

SAVAGENYC: HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT THE DEFENSE OF MARRIAGE ACT?

BN: As I said, I don't believe that is an issue that is of major concern to the voters right now. The voters in my district are looking for a representative who will put personal ideology aside in order to find bi-partisan solutions to the issues we face----a rising unemployment rate, skyrocketing healthcare costs, the beginnings of a teacher shortage, and roads and bridges that are in need of repair. I'm running for office because I believe the voters of the district deserve a representative in the legislature who is fighting to keep good jobs in Oklahoma, to make sure we're attracting plenty of qualified teachers to our classrooms, and to make sure the bridges and highways we depend on for travel and commerce are well-maintained and safe.

SAVAGENYC: MANY TRANSGENDER PEOPLE STRUGGLE JUST TO GET BY, BUT YOU HAVE ESTABLISHED YOURSELF AND THRIVED IN A VERY COMPETITIVE FIELD; DO YOU CONSIDER YOURSELF A ROLE MODEL?

BN: I'm very blessed to have a wonderful group of family and friends who care a lot about me, and have helped me get where I am today. Oklahomans value personal self-responsibility, hard work, and generosity. Coming from a Catholic family, I believe that each one of us has the power to make the world a better place by working hard and being compassionate human beings who make a difference with our actions. I'm going to work hard and show the voters I will fight for them---for jobs, education, and transportation and to build a brighter future for Oklahoma.

GOIN' BACK TO CALI?

2009-09-28T12:23:00.000-07:00

VARIETY: POLANSKI'S IN A FIGHTING MOOD

2009-09-27T10:32:00.001-07:00

uh-oh

FASHION Etcetera

2009-09-25T12:16:00.000-07:00

Fashion Etcetera
by Sam Haskins
September 19-October 24, 2009
Milk Gallery 450 West 15th Street
New York, NY 10011
(212) 645-2797 http://www.milkstudios.com/
10 AM-6 PM

There's a fun new photography show up at Milk Studios on West 15th Street. Check it out. It's a retrospective, of sorts, encompassing several decades of fashion photography, shot by South African-born photographer Sam Haskins, who now lives in Australia.

Sadly, Haskins suffered a mild stroke just nine days before yesterday's show opening, but is convalescing at Saint Vincent's Hospital and expected to recover, says his publicist.

Show sponsor Tommy Hilfiger has long been a patron of Haskins, and the designer says Haskins's style inspired him early on, with its clean precision and lighthearted energy. Nudity and eroticism abound in the show, which is a riot, considering the show is called Fashion Etcetera.

It's mostly a celebration of beauty, nature and life. If one is hard-pressed to find any actual fashion depicted in this show, its absence doesn't seem to matter to Haskins. In an interview last week with the Wall Street Journal, Haskins recounted his early disillusionment with the fashion industry after a magazine editor showed up at one of his shoots to test the models' body weight. Disgusted, Haskins turned his back on fashion, and went on to focus on commercial work and fine art. The fashion world eventually came back around, and Haskins went on to build an impressive, four-decade body of work. With the recent re-discovery of his iconic style book, "Cowboy Kate", his work is reaching new audiences, and the demand for his work has never been greater.

Aside from the simple celebration of beauty, Haskins's main aesthetic concern seems to be the issue craftsmanship. Bold, black and white images arrest the eye with their precision and clarity, while Haskins's masterful use of light inspires awe in anyone who has tried their hand at serious photography. Nature is a big theme as well, with nearly-nude models traversing rocky desert terrain or steep mountain paths . In one enigmatic piece, a nude woman seems to simultaneously emerge from, and sink into, shadowy depths, a 'Silver Sixties' Ophelia, her eyes closed in what seem to be the throes of ecstasy,

Technically, the show's not really a retrospective. Many of the iconic images, which you'll recognize from the '60s, have been juxtaposed in new diptychs and triptychs, offsetting formally related images discovered by the photographer years later. Most notable, though, is his striking, black-and-white "Cowboy Kate" series, where a young, aristocratic-looking model dons a black cowboy hat and points an antique pistol skyward, while flirting with the camera.

If Haskins's work doesn't have the puzzling and sometimes disturbing edge found in most of today's fashion photography, that seems intentional, and Haskins is fine with it. He's notorious for saying once that a dumb model won't photograph well. If straightforward girlie glamour from the sixties is your bag, this show's for you!

2009-09-23T14:55:00.000-07:00

PARTY LIKE IT'S 1995

2009-09-23T13:39:00.000-07:00

breaking CHAZ news

2009-09-23T13:11:00.000-07:00

ARIAL V HELVETICA
where do your alliances fall?

2009-09-23T11:26:00.000-07:00

iTunes’ App Store is probably the only place on Earth right now where Dan Brown is not number one

2009-09-23T11:13:00.000-07:00

The 43-year-old graphic designer said he saves thousands of dollars because he doesn't have to pay for gas, car insurance or other expenses that come with owning a car

2009-09-23T11:09:00.001-07:00

while the embargo remains, bicycles own the road.

DAVID BYRNE, CYCLING ADVOCATE

2009-09-23T10:55:00.000-07:00

Bicycling is like a religion to Byrne, a symbol of his wide-eyed eternal youth, and also a kind of therapy. Back in his Talking Heads days, he had an old three-speed that he rode through the potholed streets of downtown Manhattan, to the Mudd Club and gallery openings in Soho. Back then, biking was so unpopular that you didn’t have to worry about getting your bike stolen—nobody wanted it. To this day, he bikes pretty much everywhere, and since the early nineties, he has taken a folding bike on almost every out-of-town trip. On his latest world tour, which he just concluded in early August, he took along seven bikes, so that his band and crew could ride as well. “It wasn’t mandatory,” Byrne says, “but I really encouraged it. I’ve discovered, if you’re on tour for a year and you spend all that time just in a hotel room or backstage, you’ll be crazy by the end. You’ll be crazy. You’ll be angry. You’ll be drunk or pissed off or whatever, but it’s not a good way to spend a year. Get out. Exercise.”

2009-09-17T14:28:00.000-07:00

GO BUY THIS BOO K RIGHT NOW

2009-09-17T11:36:00.000-07:00

there is a hell after all....

SEPARATED AT BIRTH?

2009-09-16T15:06:00.000-07:00

"DR" ORLY TAITZ LAUGHED OUT OF COURT IN ATLANTA

KEEP AMERICA OBESE AND STUCK IN TRAFFIC

2009-09-16T13:38:00.000-07:00

WHY WALK OR SAFELY RIDE YOUR BIKE TO THE PARK WHEN YOU CAN DRIVE YOUR ESCALADE TO CHILI'S BEFORE TUCKING IN TO A BIG PILE OF JON and KATE PLUS 8?

GLORIFED OIL INDUSTRY LOBBYIST TOM COBURN WANTS TO KEEP YOU FAT, RETARDED AND STUCK IN TRAFFIC BY ATTACKING CLEAN TRANSPORTATION INITIATIVES

TELL DR. MENGELE, ER, COBURN HOW YOU REALLY FEEL!

why... the audacity!

2009-09-15T21:34:00.000-07:00

RIDING YOUR BIKE TO SCHOOL: NOW AN ACT OF CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE

YOU'RE NOT ALONE

2009-09-15T11:16:00.000-07:00

WHICH TERRIFYING MICROBES LURK IN YOUR SHOWER HEAD?

THOSE RESPONSIBLE FOR "HOT TUB LUNG" ?

what about those pathogens responsible for "LADY WINDERMERE'S SYNDROME"?

2009-09-14T15:18:00.000-07:00

'90s ERA VIDEO DATING AT ITS ....BEST

2009-09-12T11:07:00.000-07:00

HOMELESSNESS ONCE AGAIN CHIC

2009-09-12T10:40:00.000-07:00

PHONEBOX "CALLING CARDS" IN LONDON: KILLED BY INTERNET?

2009-09-12T10:23:00.000-07:00

WARHOL '80s PORTRAIT SERIES STOLEN FROM L.A. COLLECTOR, HELD RANSOM FOR MILLIONS

SOMETIMES THINGS DON'T MATCH

2009-09-08T22:09:00.000-07:00

BYRON IN LOVE

THIS WEEK IN NYC

2009-09-08T15:17:00.000-07:00

WHAT WOULD GENESIS DO?

2009-09-08T14:08:00.000-07:00

ISRAELI PROPAGANDA MACHINE HITS A SNAG

RATNERPLAATZ

2009-09-04T11:01:00.000-07:00

BRUCE RATNER DECIDES TO HIRE A HIP YOUNG BOUTIQUE ARCHITECTURE FIRM FOR BROOKLYN'S VERSION OF MADISON SQUARE GARDEN.
THAT'LL CHANGE EVERYTHING!

2009-09-01T02:37:00.000-07:00

WHAT TO DO WITH DEAD SHOPPING MALLS

KILL ALL CARS NOW

2009-08-27T13:05:00.000-07:00

HIGH SPEED 'BOONDOGGLE' REMIX

2009-08-27T13:04:00.000-07:00

BIKES FOR CLUNKERS?

2009-08-27T11:42:00.000-07:00

scary MARY returns to theatres this fall with HOUSE OF THE DEVIL

2009-08-27T08:22:00.001-07:00

SHOWS COMING UP THIS WEEK AND NEXT

The Girl Effect at LOMBARD-FREID PROJECTS

La Petite Mort d'Ete at Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery

Whitney’s Biennial at C.R.E.A.M. Projects

2009-08-23T19:59:00.000-07:00

which Escalade Hybrid would Jesus drive?

prix goncourt winners who, for some weird reason, just don't catch on over here in america

2009-08-20T20:39:00.000-07:00

JONATHAN LITTELL

Littell's novel The Kindly Ones was written in French and was published in France in 2006. The novel is the story of World War II and the Eastern Front, through the fictional memories of an articulate SS officer named Maximilien Aue.^[12]

Littell said he was inspired to write the novel after seeing a photograph of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, a Soviet partisan executed by the Nazis. He traces the original inspiration for the book from seeing Claude Lanzmann’s film Shoah, an acclaimed documentary about the Holocaust, in 1991. He began research for the book in 2001 and started the first draft eighteen months later, after he had read around two hundred books about Nazi Germany and the Eastern Front,^[13]as well as visiting Germany, East Europe and Caucasus. Littell claims that he undertook the creation of his main character, Aue, by imagining what he himself would have done had he been born in pre-war Germany and had become a Nazi.^[14]

The Kindly Ones won the 2006 Prix Goncourt and the grand prix du roman of the Académie française. By the end of 2007, more than 700,000 copies had been sold in France.^[15]

Littell's only previously published book, the cyberpunk novel Bad Voltage, which Littell considers "a very bad science-fiction novel",^[16] tells the story of Lynx, a "half-breed" who lives in a futuristic Paris. Many scenes in the novel take place in the Paris Catacombs; he also includes an unusual appendix in this novel which lists all the music and songs he listened to while composing. In addition, Littell has published a detailed intelligence report about the security organs of the Russian Federation, an analysis of Léon Degrelle's book La Campagne de Russie, influenced by the works of the sociologist Klaus Theweleit, one book with four texts written before The Kindly Ones and, finally, a short essay.

2009-08-19T13:20:00.001-07:00

It's Your Ride from Cinecycle on Vimeo.

2009-08-17T20:36:00.000-07:00

who knew WHITE SUPREMACIST websites could be so service-oriented?
click here for weight loss tips from STORMFRONT.org

2009-08-17T20:04:00.000-07:00

WHO IS SARAH MAPLE AND WHAT DOES SHE WANT?

2009-08-17T19:29:00.000-07:00

"SUPERSTAR" RETURNS? TODD HAYNES'S CLASSIC (AND CONTROVERSIAL) KAREN CARPENTER BIOPIC IS BACK ON VIEW AFTER YEARS IN LEGAL LIMBO

HARRY KNOWLES:
SUPERSTAR: THE KAREN CARPENTER STORY (1987), dir: Todd Haynes—Before the internet gave rise to the underground film phenomenon, this illegally circulated masterpiece about singer Karen Carpenter’s struggle with eating disorders, become a cult classic thanks to independently owned video stores and a largely untapped network of film lovers who would not be denied a great movie just because of a silly think like music clearances. More to the topic, the film wonderfully frames Carpenter’s sad story of a celebrity at the top of her game who is the architect of her own destruction (with the help of body issues propagated by, among other things, Barbie dolls). A haunting work from a director who has proven that he’s the real deal with later works like FAR FROM HEAVEN

QUESTION FOR 'DOC' SAVAGENYC? CLICK BELOW!

2009-08-17T11:20:00.000-07:00

Dear 'Doc' SavageNYC:

Due to recent layoffs I no longer have access to affordable health-care, and my prescription drug coverage plan is a thing of the past.

Like many Americans, I'm having trouble obtaining my prescription drug of choice: the appetite suppressant OBETROL, also known as methamphetamine dextro-amphetamine hydrochloride

Question: are there any safe but 'strong' over-the-counter remedies for those who need a little help in the appetite reduction department? I'm not opposed to 'mixing-and-matching' as long as it doesn't involve a lot of ammonium nitrate or an open flame.

Sincerely,

LAID OFF AND SEEKING AFFORDABLE APPETITE SUPPRESSANTS IN THIS RECESSION

'DOC' SAVAGENYC replies

Dear LOASAASITR :

We hear ya.

Last year, after barely surviving an emergency gastric bypass, a friend of ours, who, ironically, was a certified employee benefits administrator, was laid off due to departmental budget cuts.

She, too wanted to know about affordable, over-the-counter alternatives to prescription drugs; her concerns were to treat such complications as gastrojejunal anastomotic leaks and fibroid achrocordons.

We told her a lot of these 'conditions' like "anastomotic leaks" and "bariatric stent migrations" sounded similar to those ailments that you never heard of before people like Sally Field and Cheryl Ladd started mentioning them in 20-minute afternoon infomercials--I mean, how did conditions like "Restless Leg Syndrome" and "Severe Nut Allergy" elude the medical establishment for so long?

Anyway, we told our newly-svelte friend to drink lots of Pinot Grigot and read uplifting advice columns like "Laughter is the Best Medicine" and "Can This Marriage Be Saved?". She'll be okay if she just quits watching infomercials and reading about Star Jones' near-death breast-lift experiences. And walk a lot. Walking is good.

But, back to your problem: obesity is a serious health issue for more than 35.7% of Americans, and appetite suppression is no laughing matter. What's worse, sometimes our 'stomachs' are bigger than our 'pocket books' and we end up 'eating ourselves all the way to the poorhouse'. Those little 'entrees' at dinner can hike up your overall food bill by as much as 46.7%*. No doubt: the more you can avoid eating, the better off you'll be.

But how do all of these Tracey Golds and Mary-Kate Olsens and Dennis Quaids of the world do it? Without ending up in Karen Carpenter's, er, shoes ? Purging is out of the question for many of us, savagenyc included. Too taxing on the body and there's that unpleasant smell sometimes associated with Bulimia. Laxative abuse? Sounds intriguing, but probably messy and inconvenient.

No, a lot of it is mind-control.

But sometimes, even with the most iron-willed mind control, a little "help" comes in handy, even if the 'help' is really just the placebo effect. Take, for instance, Benadryl Allergy Sinus Headache or Dristan Cold Non-Drowsy. Or.... Triaminic Softchews Allergy Sinus. Or, perhaps a "cocktail", like Alka-Seltzer Cold and Sinus LiquiGels with a Tylenol Sinus Childrens chaser. These are all affordable, over-the-counter cold remedies which, when taken or combined in...recommended doses, could conceivably mitigate the desire for carbs, protein and glucose.

But don't just take our word for it. For fact-checking purposes, we turned to our equivalent of the Physician's Desk Reference ("Google"), and investigated which affordable, over-the-counter cold/sinus medications might cause certain side effects, such as....loss of appetite.

According to drugs.com, the following over-the-counter cold and sinus medications contain pseudoephedrine aka speed: Alka-Seltzer Cold and Sinus, Allerest No Drowsiness, Bayer Select Decongestant, Benadryl Allergy Sinus Headache, Dristan Cold Non-Drowsy, Ornex, Ornex Maximum Strength, Sinarest Sinus, Sine-Off Maximum Strength, Sudafed Sinus, Tavist Sinus, Triaminic Softchews Allergy Sinus, Tylenol Sinus Childrens Softchews

Most of these over-the-counter medications can be bought in convenient 2packs at family pharmacies near you, for minimal fees, like $1.00 to $1.50 per 2pack--and most doses last a minimum of three hours. Compare this to reports of uninsured individuals being charged up to $308.00 per month for Obetrol, which is now called Adderall, and was a popular weight-loss drug in the 60s and 70s. It's a real dilema---because one would assume taking Adderall for a month would be safer than taking Triaminic Softchews Allergy Sinus every day for a month, but perhaps you could go the former route for the first 4 weeks, and then splurge the following month on an office visit and Adderall prescription, in order to save your by-now shot liver.

Take care,

'Doc' Savagenyc

*we're making this up but it sounds reasonable

2009-08-17T10:22:00.000-07:00

new documentary explores the rapidly diminishing power and relevancy of the RIAA

2009-08-17T09:38:00.000-07:00

would you starve before eating THIS ?
if so, you might be ORTHOREXIC

2009-08-17T09:09:00.000-07:00

LOS ANGELES TIMES: ALCOHOLICS MAY 'MISREAD' FACIAL CUES