Legacy of a misspent youth

This one goes out to all of us who grew up in the New York City during a certain era before cable or movie rental when you had to make sure you were home in time to catch the annual showings of monster movies, the Planet of the Apes movies,or even the Cathy Lee Crosby version of Wonder Woman on channel 7.

Update: This is for you, Dan, courtesy of yet another expat Staten Islander:

Photos officially OK in NYC

Finally, common sense prevails over security theatre and knee-jerk paranoia:

Faced with complaints from photographers and tourists alike, the NYPD has issued a department order reminding cops that the right to take pictures in the Big Apple is as American as apple pie.

“Photography and the videotaping of public places, buildings and structures are common activities within New York City . . . and is rarely unlawful,” the NYPD operations order begins. [From the New York Post]

NYPD say pics OK!

[Click the image above to enlarge and print for yourself to carry around, if you’re so inclined.]

Let’s hope they finally drop the anti-photography here in the UK one of these days.

Library data

Shamelessly, unoriginally ripped off from Norm:

Number of Songs: 18,812
Most Recently Played Song: Peaches & Herb, “Shake Your Groove Thing”
Most Played Song: Freeez, “I.O.U. (7″ Version)”
Most Recently Added Album: The Eurythmics, We Too Are One

First Song Alphabetically: Ella Fitzgerald, “A-Tisket, A-Tasket”
Last Song Alphabetically: Brave Combo, “Zydeco Gumby Ya Ya”
Smallest Song Numerically: Wire, “1 2 X U”
Largest Song Numerically: The B-52’s, “6060-842”

Shortest Song: The Beastie Boys, “Ask For Janice” (0:11)
Longest Song: The Sugar Hill Gang, “Rapper’s Delight” (14:46)

First Album Alphabetically: The A to Z of British TV Themes From The Sixties and Seventies
Last Album Alphabetically: Alan Barratt, Zulu Nation Part 5
First Band Alphabetically: a-ha
Last Band Alphabetically: !!!

First Ten Songs That Pop Up On Shuffle:
Queen, “Dreamer’s Ball”
Señor Coconut & His Orchestra, “Showroom Dummies”
The Brand New Heavies, “I Like It”
They Might Be Giants, “Stand on Your Own Head”
Depeche Mode, “Policy of Truth (Capitol Remix)”
James Brown, “Sex Machine”
The Explosions, “Hip Drop (Pt. 1)”
The Comunards, “So Cold the Night”
Fed Astaire & Ginger Rogers, “A Fine Romance”
The dB’s, “Bad Reputation”

Louche decadence

As far as cultural commentary goes. I realize that I’m really grabbing at the low-hanging fruit to point out that Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch auction is a long-awaited glimpse at the sheer, unadulterated crazy that is the King of Pop’s approach to life. The gallery of selected offerings scratches the surface of a story about questionable taste, obscene wealth, stunted maturity, and an attempt to keep reality at bay.

Michael Jackson's auction

The thing is, the story of the Yves Saint Laurent auction has a lot of parallel themes, although I’d venture to say Laurent’s taste was infinitely better, and there’s a very different vibe to an estate auction in comparison to a living person auctioning off the trappings of a chapter in his life he wants to forget. (And honestly, Michael, I can sympathize with that.)

Yves Saint Laurent auction

There’s something very enticing about this description of Laurent’s things from a photographer reviewing them: “I have an affinity for louche decadence, which is one of the things on view here,” Pierson says. “There is a very opium-den quality — all those tables full of objects one can peruse in a haze.” It’s less enticing to picture Jackson’s “armour, display cases of custom-made crowns and an ornately carved throne with red velvet upholstering in his bedroom.” However, reading about the two auctions made me feel a bit sad, and I saw some eerie parallels in the way two very different, very wealthy men seemed to rely on so much stuff to keep at bay an overwhelming world around them.

“The innumerable representations of serpents and birds that Saint Laurent amassed, symbols of an obsession with a natural world from which, toward the end of his life, he became increasingly removed” do not seem so altogether different from Jackson’s infamous menagerie. “Saint Laurent was not the first person to apprehend that genius can often be a curse. Neither was he the first to withdraw from society, in all its disappointing dimensions, into the fixed and reassuring company of things.” Also, clearly, he was not the last.

The Party’s Over

We lost another treasure this weekend, when 82-year-old Blossom Dearie passed away in her sleep. Blossom’s music was a wonderful mixture of sadness and sweetness and mischief, but I’m very surprised that her Times obituary didn’t mention the work that indelibly impressed her delicious voice onto a generation or two of American kids:


And here’s one last treasure for you — an absolutely sublime duet with Lyle Lovett:

Random wonderful things

I’ve been bedridden for days, so my already active trawling of the web has really gone off the charts. Here are a few gems that I feel compelled to share:

  • The “I Can Read Movies” Series: these imaginary paperback novelizations of hit movies are so beautiful and mid-century perfect they bring a tear to my eye.

  • Comics Grammar & Tradition: I moan about some of the typographic conventions in comics, but I can at least acknowledge that many of them are at least reliable conventions. Here’s a good guide to what they are.

  • Paul’s Boutique, remastered: The Beastie Boys finally re-release one of my all-time favorite records, one that completely blew me away from the first instant I heard it. The accompanying site is Flash-heavy, but filled with good stuff, including a free commentary track of the B-Boys telling stories about the tracks as the entire record plays.

  • Chip Steele, R.I.P.: Chip Steele has been a bit of legend to me for a long-time, ever since my pal Dave went sky-diving with him. If you’re going to jump from a plane, you want a man named Chip Steele strapped to your back! Unfortunately, Steele had a fatal mid-air heart attack while giving a lesson to a young Army private, soon after uttering these now-immortal words: “Welcome to my world.” Pvt. Pharr then landed himself safely, but was unable to revive Steele. If I have ever heard a good premise for a bro-mantic action movie, this is it.

To do: museums

Hunterian MuseumMoBPA

File away for ongoing reference: London’s 70 best unseen museums. Once in a while, Time Out does exactly what I want it to do.

This could effectively become my itinerary for the next year. Of particular interest: