Leading off with anything that's not this:
In 1959, I would not be sitting in a Culver City Starbucks, enduring the cacophonous eruption that marked the beginning of Half-Price Frappuccino Happy Hour, mixed with the howls of laughter from the world's loudest Japanese students in their gangsta finery. None of that! Culver City would have existed, but on its long, downward slide. It still would have had the West Side's glorious June Gloom, that blooms at any time after and before the rainy season. But where would you write your screenplay without coffee shops? Ship's? Don't get me started on the still-lamented Ship's. The toasters! Geneva, the waitress!
Anyway, not everyone would have fit at Ships. No need. The guy working on his cat cartoon on a Sunday afternoon would probably have been doing that at a drafting table at a job that paid a living wage - maybe I'm just being nostalgic.
Housekeeping note: This really is on Twitter. And for a good reason. I've been tweeting the tracks of the albums from the What Albums to Buy for Christmas 1959. (Working through the Dave Brubeck album this week.) Also tweeted news of Queen Beatrix's abdication because we covered - exhaustively - her luncheon with some Vogue swells when she visited New York in '59. RVV is "following" any business that advertised in the issue, anyone mentioned (Queen Beatrix, Jane Fonda so far; Anderson Cooper briefly because his mother doesn't tweet, but he looks too much like Glenn Beck in his Twitter photo and he's boring to boot) and anyone who follows RVV. Just seems polite. We'll see how it goes.
People Are Talking About. . . "Hawaii, the enormous, thoroughly overwritten novel by James Michener, who still manages to be interesting if the reader skips judiciously, particularly the islands dreaming of a sugared Eden; when Michener gets to the complications of mixed nationalities and their taboos he becomes fascinating, except when he dips out of a vat of specialized glucose that should only be taken intravenously. . ."
This was his first door stopper. I suppose one of them had to be first. I remember them holding down a lot of real estate in the bookcase at home. Hawaii was the third "grown up" book I read. The first was A Woman of the People, nowhere near as brutal as the The Kite Runner (which seems to be the default mature novel shoved down the throats of hapless middle schoolers), and also not sanctioned by any grown up. You had to know yourself if you were ready to leave the safety of children's books.) The second book was Exodus, which left my friend Arlene and I determined to drop out of school, somehow get to Israel and start making ourselves useful on a kibbutz - baking bread, learning to shoot. All that. All I remember from Hawaii is seething with fury at missionaries for making the Hawaiians put on clothes and get pneumonia. Funny, on this page we have The Sound of Music on stage and Hawaii in print - Julie Andrews starred in movies of both and both were vats of "specialized glucose." I feel no need to read this again.
People Are Talking About . . ."The extraordinary skill of Medardo Rosso, an Italian sculptor who lived in the tradition of Rodin and died in 1928; this month New York's Peridot Gallery will hive him a belated show, including this impressive figure, 'The Bookmaker.'"
I think he meant, "The Bookie."
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| Stolen from Twittering Machines, a blog about esoteric (to me) art and music. |
A sculptor with poor hygiene and social skills finally gets his due - that is always the theme for him. And if it looks as if it were carved out of butter - close. Wax.
The dress! "The shape of after-six clothes; instance, right, this brown silk chiffon dress with floating-power sleeves and a way of saying 'fashion' that's gentle but compelling." By David Levine. Could find nothing out about him.
Moment of quiet, line is gone, now my chance for one of those new-fangled caramel frappuccinos.
Next time: the next page.
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