"Love and work... work and love, that's all there is." That's what Freud said. He forgot beauty, and hope, but he had a point - most people preoccupy themselves with the first two.
Freud, however, was a psychoanalyst in private practice, and his idea of work was probably different from mine. Here's what I do all day: I have clients. I have staff. I frequently do something creative; occasionally I do something that might seem glamorous. I spend a lot of time looking for new clients.
Not so bad, though currently I'm short-staffed and have more clients than ever before, and am feeling stretched very thin. I'm working late, getting in early, and occasionally waking up in the middle of the night remembering something I forgot to do that day.
For most of my working life I was the client, which I liked better - after all, the real problem with clients is that you have them, and thus they have you right where they want you. This is undoubtedly why doctors try to impose a sense of reverence on their patients (so they can pretend they're not in a service business), which I tolerate right up until one calls me by my first name while introducing himself as "Dr. ____." (My response? I find a way to address him as "Bob.") I've dated enough physicians to have lost any awe for the profession, and that peek under the scrubs may explain the appeal of Grey's Anatomy and its ilk.
I prefer the veneration that attends a choicely worded pronouncement, which doctors certainly enjoy (cf. House M.D.) and which people in my line of work often get to savor when we're good at what we do. However, I was a magazine editor for a long time, and nothing beats defining a trend, then announcing it, as in this delightful number sung by Kay Thompson (author of Eloise and thus no stranger to pronouncements) in Funny Face:
(Post title from Dolly Parton's theme song for 9 to 5.)
Friday, July 18, 2008
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Morte d'Arthur
There was a time when I spent most of my waking hours in nightclubs, working and playing. Many of those hours were spent with Arthur Weinstein, who died last week.
Those who only go to clubs to party have no idea how desolate and malodorous those sparkly venues are when they're closed. (For a better understanding, visit Clublife, and buy the book of the same name; you'll be glad you did, though it's not for the faint of heart.) Arthur could walk into any empty space and imagine it full of beauty, and fabulous people, and know exactly whose those people should be.
The Times obit's headline described him as "starter of nightclubs." That was true, but he also knew how to keep them exciting. He started Hurrah, which was my first home away from home (and which I could walk to my apartment from, no matter how late or how inebriated I was), the wonderful after-hours clubs The Jefferson and the Continental, and, with Frank Roccio, the Lower East Side's crumbling palace The World.
Frank is long gone, and now Arthur is too. I hadn't seen him in years, but I miss his wit and style, and my heart goes out to his long-suffering wife of more than 30 years, Colleen, and their daughter Dahlia.
New York nightlife in those days seemed like it was the center of the universe, though perhaps the denizens of nightclubs in any era feel that way. But look at Patrick McMullan's book so80s, and maybe you'll understand. I see ghosts on almost every page.
Those who only go to clubs to party have no idea how desolate and malodorous those sparkly venues are when they're closed. (For a better understanding, visit Clublife, and buy the book of the same name; you'll be glad you did, though it's not for the faint of heart.) Arthur could walk into any empty space and imagine it full of beauty, and fabulous people, and know exactly whose those people should be.
The Times obit's headline described him as "starter of nightclubs." That was true, but he also knew how to keep them exciting. He started Hurrah, which was my first home away from home (and which I could walk to my apartment from, no matter how late or how inebriated I was), the wonderful after-hours clubs The Jefferson and the Continental, and, with Frank Roccio, the Lower East Side's crumbling palace The World.
Frank is long gone, and now Arthur is too. I hadn't seen him in years, but I miss his wit and style, and my heart goes out to his long-suffering wife of more than 30 years, Colleen, and their daughter Dahlia.
New York nightlife in those days seemed like it was the center of the universe, though perhaps the denizens of nightclubs in any era feel that way. But look at Patrick McMullan's book so80s, and maybe you'll understand. I see ghosts on almost every page.
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
The Designated Sitter
Baseball's All-Star Game is tonight, just a few subway stops north of here at Yankee Stadium. I will be watching it from my couch, and it's likely that hamburgers and apple pie will be on the menu, if only metaphorically.
The primary difference between the sides, besides one having Derek Jeter on it and the other not (though Chase Utley could interest me for a long weekend), is the American League's use of the designated hitter, meaning that with very rare exceptions, pitchers don't have to hit. As the game is in an AL park, that's how it will be played tonight.
This rule is regularly railed at by traditionalists. But most workers specialize. My dermatologist is a medical school graduate with years of experience, but when I need a pelvic exam, I'm calling a gynecologist.
Some even think there should be a constitutional amendment outlawing the DH, as in this speech from Bull Durham, which I think may be the best baseball movie ever made, though many men seem to prefer the richer but more sentimental Field of Dreams. But as we all know, there's no crying in baseball, so perhaps they're actually the designated weepers.
The primary difference between the sides, besides one having Derek Jeter on it and the other not (though Chase Utley could interest me for a long weekend), is the American League's use of the designated hitter, meaning that with very rare exceptions, pitchers don't have to hit. As the game is in an AL park, that's how it will be played tonight.
This rule is regularly railed at by traditionalists. But most workers specialize. My dermatologist is a medical school graduate with years of experience, but when I need a pelvic exam, I'm calling a gynecologist.
Some even think there should be a constitutional amendment outlawing the DH, as in this speech from Bull Durham, which I think may be the best baseball movie ever made, though many men seem to prefer the richer but more sentimental Field of Dreams. But as we all know, there's no crying in baseball, so perhaps they're actually the designated weepers.
Monday, July 14, 2008
Dance Like Everyone's Watching
My earliest career ambition (besides being an archaeologist, an idea I gave up when I learned it would require spending hours in the hot sun removing dust from pottery shards with a toothbrush) was to be a dancer on Hullabaloo!, the mid-Sixties prime-time TV show on NBC that featured all the acts you might expect, from Paul Anka to the Zombies, as well as some you might not, such as Judy Collins. There was a regular infusion of the British Invasion (Chad and Jeremy, the Kinks), undoubtedly helped along by Beatles manager Brian Epstein's appearance as the host of a London segment, and lots of Motown, including Marvin Gaye and The Supremes. A similar show called Shindig on ABC was its antecedent, but I don't remember it being as good.
Hullabaloo!'s dancers included Michael Bennett and Donna McKechnie, best known as creator and star of the original production of A Chorus Line, still one of my favorite musicals of all time. I only discovered that when at some point pre-Wikipedia I decided it would be fun to try to write a screenplay about a boy and a girl who meet on the show's set, and visited what was then The Museum of Broadcasting (now The Paley Center) to watch hours of tape, saw the dancers introducing themselves in a segment ("I'm Michael!" "I'm Donna!") and gloated at my early perspicacity, though I never did write the script.
An indelible segment of the show, called "Hullabaloo! A Go-Go," featured a dancer in a cage, shaking it while wearing a fringed minidress and short white go-go boots. A child's version of those boots featured prominently in my Halloween costume one year during the show's run. I later found a vintage pair in my grownup size and wore them happily, with Sixties minidresses, to early-Eighties shows by The Vipers and The Fleshtones. And I do remember a late-Seventies New Year's Eve upstairs at the Mudd Club, where I was dancing in a cage, but even then had no idea how or when I'd gotten there.
From a style perspective I never approved of the hippie version of dance or fashion - tie-dye and beads and pointless swaying, oh my! But put me in a Courrèges minidress and play something I can do the Frug to and I'll be there!
Fans of The Dark Knight will undoubtedly object, but here are the Hullabaloo dancers cavorting to the "Batman" theme:
Hullabaloo!'s dancers included Michael Bennett and Donna McKechnie, best known as creator and star of the original production of A Chorus Line, still one of my favorite musicals of all time. I only discovered that when at some point pre-Wikipedia I decided it would be fun to try to write a screenplay about a boy and a girl who meet on the show's set, and visited what was then The Museum of Broadcasting (now The Paley Center) to watch hours of tape, saw the dancers introducing themselves in a segment ("I'm Michael!" "I'm Donna!") and gloated at my early perspicacity, though I never did write the script.
An indelible segment of the show, called "Hullabaloo! A Go-Go," featured a dancer in a cage, shaking it while wearing a fringed minidress and short white go-go boots. A child's version of those boots featured prominently in my Halloween costume one year during the show's run. I later found a vintage pair in my grownup size and wore them happily, with Sixties minidresses, to early-Eighties shows by The Vipers and The Fleshtones. And I do remember a late-Seventies New Year's Eve upstairs at the Mudd Club, where I was dancing in a cage, but even then had no idea how or when I'd gotten there.
From a style perspective I never approved of the hippie version of dance or fashion - tie-dye and beads and pointless swaying, oh my! But put me in a Courrèges minidress and play something I can do the Frug to and I'll be there!
Fans of The Dark Knight will undoubtedly object, but here are the Hullabaloo dancers cavorting to the "Batman" theme:
Sunday, July 13, 2008
À la recherche du temps perdu
One of the benefits of an interesting life that has intersected with many others' is memories involving a broad range of people and situations, some of which become stories. But as I get older I'm often shocked to find how long ago some of those memories go back.
I was recently at an event with a young colleague who, as things were winding down, spotted someone very well known in the field that currently funds my shoe collection. "Look, ____ is here!" he said excitedly. "I'm going to go introduce myself. Do you want to come?"
It was late, and I was tired, and my usual aplomb had gone missing, perhaps because I didn't enjoy the event that much. "No, ____ was at a party at my house before you were born," I said. "You go ahead. I'm going to go home."
In the taxi, I wondered why I'd had such a visceral reaction. Part of it was my clear memory of that party, where dozens of fun people showed up at my 425-square-foot fifth-floor walkup. That included the police, because some of my neighbors were, understandably, upset that a band was playing.
Some of it was because I wasn't sure that _____, who was at that long-ago shindig as a friend and colleague of friends and whom I only knew casually, would remember, and I didn't want to take up a lot of time with it. Nor did I want to feel like some eager acolyte, which was appropriate for my colleague but not for me.
But I also knew that it had been about 30 years ago. We had both gotten started young, and when you are in what's essentially a young person's field, you don't necessarily want to be reminded that you've been at it for three decades.
I couldn't help wondering what would have happened if I'd stayed in that field for all that time, as _____ had. Would I have become a person who newcomers hoped to meet because of the quality and accumulated weight of my work?
A mental review of my resumé leaves me with no doubt of my accomplishments. But because they're across a wide spectrum, it isn't always easy to recognize them as being connected.
Maybe that's why I'm making these efforts towards a memoir - to have it all make sense. And because I like telling stories.
I haven't read all seven volumes in the semi-autobiographical series by Proust that gives this post its title, only Swann's Way. After years of writing primarily for commerce, I have many doubts about whether I can even write prose that can begin to approach art, though I'm not sure I need to. But I too am in search of lost time; the less of it there is ahead of me, the more of it I have to find by looking back.
(This is a facsimile of the last page of the series, available here. I do not plan to write by hand in a cork-lined bedroom.)
I was recently at an event with a young colleague who, as things were winding down, spotted someone very well known in the field that currently funds my shoe collection. "Look, ____ is here!" he said excitedly. "I'm going to go introduce myself. Do you want to come?"
It was late, and I was tired, and my usual aplomb had gone missing, perhaps because I didn't enjoy the event that much. "No, ____ was at a party at my house before you were born," I said. "You go ahead. I'm going to go home."
In the taxi, I wondered why I'd had such a visceral reaction. Part of it was my clear memory of that party, where dozens of fun people showed up at my 425-square-foot fifth-floor walkup. That included the police, because some of my neighbors were, understandably, upset that a band was playing.
Some of it was because I wasn't sure that _____, who was at that long-ago shindig as a friend and colleague of friends and whom I only knew casually, would remember, and I didn't want to take up a lot of time with it. Nor did I want to feel like some eager acolyte, which was appropriate for my colleague but not for me.
But I also knew that it had been about 30 years ago. We had both gotten started young, and when you are in what's essentially a young person's field, you don't necessarily want to be reminded that you've been at it for three decades.
I couldn't help wondering what would have happened if I'd stayed in that field for all that time, as _____ had. Would I have become a person who newcomers hoped to meet because of the quality and accumulated weight of my work?
A mental review of my resumé leaves me with no doubt of my accomplishments. But because they're across a wide spectrum, it isn't always easy to recognize them as being connected.
Maybe that's why I'm making these efforts towards a memoir - to have it all make sense. And because I like telling stories.
I haven't read all seven volumes in the semi-autobiographical series by Proust that gives this post its title, only Swann's Way. After years of writing primarily for commerce, I have many doubts about whether I can even write prose that can begin to approach art, though I'm not sure I need to. But I too am in search of lost time; the less of it there is ahead of me, the more of it I have to find by looking back.
(This is a facsimile of the last page of the series, available here. I do not plan to write by hand in a cork-lined bedroom.)
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Some Say Fire and Some Say Ice
Dorian Leigh, the pale-skinned, dark-haired face of Revlon in the 1950s who was on 50 Vogue covers, has died at 91.
At 5 feet 5 inches, she was petite for a model and irresistible to men, with, said the Times obituary, "an hourglass figure and an alluring smile." She was married five times, and had countless affairs.
“She had so much estrogen, like some men are full of testosterone,” the obit quoted Carmen Dell’Orefice, the magnificent model who began her career at around the same time (and, at 76, is still on catwalks) as saying.
Leigh grew up in Queens and had two younger sisters (including the even more famous model Suzy Parker). Before she started modeling at the advanced age of 27 (she told Diana Vreeland at Harper's Bazaar that she was 19), she was an English major and a copywriter. Vreeland told her never to pluck her thick eyebrows.
There are enough commonalities that I'm way overidentifying here, which may be why I gasped when I saw this all in the paper. But I so clearly remember seeing a photo of her when I was in my late teens and finding my own style, and deciding that I could, and should, look like that. And, to the extent that I can, I still do.
I was unable to track down one of her "Fire and Ice" ads (the lipstick, which I wore exclusively for years and may have to try again, is a lovely blue-red), so this, found at Divas - The Site, will have to do. Post title from Robert Frost. I hold with those who favor fire, too.
At 5 feet 5 inches, she was petite for a model and irresistible to men, with, said the Times obituary, "an hourglass figure and an alluring smile." She was married five times, and had countless affairs.
“She had so much estrogen, like some men are full of testosterone,” the obit quoted Carmen Dell’Orefice, the magnificent model who began her career at around the same time (and, at 76, is still on catwalks) as saying.
Leigh grew up in Queens and had two younger sisters (including the even more famous model Suzy Parker). Before she started modeling at the advanced age of 27 (she told Diana Vreeland at Harper's Bazaar that she was 19), she was an English major and a copywriter. Vreeland told her never to pluck her thick eyebrows.
There are enough commonalities that I'm way overidentifying here, which may be why I gasped when I saw this all in the paper. But I so clearly remember seeing a photo of her when I was in my late teens and finding my own style, and deciding that I could, and should, look like that. And, to the extent that I can, I still do.
I was unable to track down one of her "Fire and Ice" ads (the lipstick, which I wore exclusively for years and may have to try again, is a lovely blue-red), so this, found at Divas - The Site, will have to do. Post title from Robert Frost. I hold with those who favor fire, too.
Wednesday, July 09, 2008
Smile, Darn Ya, Smile!
Cassie had to have four decayed, abscessed teeth pulled Monday and a cyst removed from her left rear leg. To prevent her from chewing at the stitches when alone, she was provided with a clear, cone-shaped collar that makes her look like a doggie astronaut.
This is a terrible indignity, next to which the missing teeth seem trivial, but cosmetic dentistry for dogs does not seem to be widespread, so she won't be getting a bridge or veneers, and apparently she'll be able to eat fine without them.
I'd say this was an object lesson in remembering to floss, but Cassie's lack of opposable thumbs might make that difficult. She has had regular vet visits during my years away from her, so I'm of course curious why this wasn't spotted before, but that's another story.
But thinking of tooth extractions made me remember an early-'80s showing of the hilarious and horrifying 1976 grindcore classic Ilsa: Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks at a movie theater downtown. Among other atrocities (including the bewildering and bewildered appearance of Spalding Gray in a role), a young woman has her teeth pulled out one by one with a pliers so she can better service the sheiks of the title. (UPDATE: According to the webmaster at SpaldingGray.com, that wasn't Spalding [see comments]. My apologies for the error.)
I went with a male friend who was then a grad student and is now the chairman of the English department at an Ivy League school. He was married, and I'm guessing that his wife wasn't into depravity. It didn't occur to me at the time to wonder why he asked me (the outing was entirely chaste), nor can I recall why I agreed to go, but it seemed sophisticated in a winking kind of way.
I do wonder if he's still married to the same woman. You either embrace your inner Ilsa (or your inner toothless concubine), or you don't.
This is a terrible indignity, next to which the missing teeth seem trivial, but cosmetic dentistry for dogs does not seem to be widespread, so she won't be getting a bridge or veneers, and apparently she'll be able to eat fine without them.
I'd say this was an object lesson in remembering to floss, but Cassie's lack of opposable thumbs might make that difficult. She has had regular vet visits during my years away from her, so I'm of course curious why this wasn't spotted before, but that's another story.
But thinking of tooth extractions made me remember an early-'80s showing of the hilarious and horrifying 1976 grindcore classic Ilsa: Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks at a movie theater downtown. Among other atrocities (including the bewildering and bewildered appearance of Spalding Gray in a role), a young woman has her teeth pulled out one by one with a pliers so she can better service the sheiks of the title. (UPDATE: According to the webmaster at SpaldingGray.com, that wasn't Spalding [see comments]. My apologies for the error.)
I went with a male friend who was then a grad student and is now the chairman of the English department at an Ivy League school. He was married, and I'm guessing that his wife wasn't into depravity. It didn't occur to me at the time to wonder why he asked me (the outing was entirely chaste), nor can I recall why I agreed to go, but it seemed sophisticated in a winking kind of way.
I do wonder if he's still married to the same woman. You either embrace your inner Ilsa (or your inner toothless concubine), or you don't.
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