Exiting a hotel, travel duffel in hand, looking for a train, vacationing, you’d never expect to see the wildness of men in suits screaming down sidewalks, their neckties flapping behind them like the high-flown vinyl flags affixed to banana-seat bikes.
The women too, lunchtime and out in the sunlight, teetering and full-tilt, some stopping only to hop in place in two spots—dual pauses in their flight—removing each high-heeled shoe to end the hobbling and start the sprint.
The men armed with flailing briefcases. The women beclawed with designer pumps. Running away from the...
Let’s begin with Prince. This past summer P. Rogers Nelson reaffirmed his status as the sexiest man in music during a 21 shows stint at the historic Forum in Inglewood, wooing audiences that encompassed all race, colors, ages, and creeds. Over the course of several weeks, Prince turned everyone on—the retired African American church ladies, the potbellied middle-aged Mexican dudes, the gay Asian teens, the awestruck Eastsiders. Four thousand people from all walks of life packed each and every show and sang “Purple Rain” in cathartic unison. But the highlight, the pinnacle, the climax, of these performances, came when (to the crowd’s unbridled hormone-...
A mention of the name Anthony Mann in a room full of cinephiles will undoubtedly be met with breathless enthusiasm. In fact, I can think of few directors as roundly evangelized by that most discerning community than Mann, best known for his series of Westerns with James Stewart in the 1950s. Mention the name to the uninitiated, however, and expect little to no recognition of this director responsible for some of the most important and influential films of the 1940s and 1950s.
This cultural neglect is likely due to the relative indifference with which the director was regarded by top American critics in his prime. The great Andrew Sarris, for one,...
Oxnard teen, slain in shooting, was allowed to wear women’s accessories to school, official testifies. This was the headline of the Local section of the Los Angeles Times on July 12, 2011 describing the first-degree murder trial taking place in the San Fernando Courthouse in which Brandon McInerney was accused of shooting gay bi-racial classmate Lawrence King. Tried as an adult and charged additionally with a hate crime since white supremacist materials were found in his belongings, McInerney, now 17, shot King twice in the head at point blank range in front of a full science class of 30 students in February 2008 at the E.O. Green Junior High School. Reportedly, he...
It came to my attention, a few minutes before hitching my bathrobe up, lighting the Cuban dangling from my yaw, and settling down to write this column (in the bathroom), that Steven Soderbergh has decided to shift his medium midstream, in the build-up to his latest, and most marketed film yet, Contagion, and become an artist. Like Outbreak before it, Contagion is a disease film starring basically every popular actor of its time—Outbreak starred Morgan Freeman, Kevin Spacey, Dustin Hoffman, Cuba Gooding, Jr.; Contagion has Matt Damon, Kate Winslet, Jude Law, and Gwyneth Paltrow. Naturally, I thought, in metaphor, “It seems like an outbreak of celebrities...
…I am speaking of energies which ingest
the first perfected forms of creation
the primordium of waves
the calligraphy of torment
& so the coelacanths
the vampire fish
the orbits of volcanoes endure
- Will Alexander
“Water as a Dysphoric Medium”
Close to the Arctic Circle, and near to the polar light, your dreams are different. On two hours sleep, I ride a bus to tour the countryside and to view glaciers and geysers, hot springs and waterfalls—long-legged models, writers, and photographers all in tow. And also, a Ph.D. candidate in Math from Caltech. I know just a little about Maxwell, but I could use some more schooling on the topic of...
Vince Aletti is not only the eminent authority on disco, he’s one of the most renowned photography critics around, and he received notoriety for curating a show centered around the male body, called Male at Wessel + O’Connor Gallery in 1998. He is curating a show that “opens” on July 27th, 2011 on Paddle8.com, a new website that launched recently with The Art of Wit, a show curated by Glenn O’Brien. It’s a novel idea, a website that approaches displaying art as if it were a gallery show. Aletti’s show, Stuff, features still life photography, a very curious topic indeed for the video-obsessed internet audience. Aletti took some time out to explain...
