NYC: Part the So-Far...
Good evening ladies and gentlemen and all the ships at sea. Your intrepid reporter, sequestered in an unassuming residence in Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn, with missives describing what he's thus far seen and done on vacation while my host with the most remains asleep.
Herein find descriptions/sarcasm/gushing relating to the new revival of Company, a few minutes of the Robert Smigel talk at the Museum of Television and Radio, the current exhibits at MoMA, the Met and the Guggenheim, the movies Fur and Little Children.
Flew in after work - and about three hours of plane delays - on Wednesday, took a cab to the home of my always-gracious hosts Mike Gamble and Devon Febbroiello, bumped into pals Connor Elmes, Tony Barba and Noah Jarrett, and Mike and I took off for one of my favorite bars in Brooklyn: Buttermilk. The jukebox at Buttermilk is one of the best I've ever seen, with a handful of full albums (I noted the Hank Williams' Greatest Hits, X's Wild Gift, and at least one Sugar record) along with mix-CDs made by the employees enabling you to enjoy your libation while checking out The Gun Club or Pere Ubu or Lightning Bolt. Even better, it was $2 Yuengling night until midnight.
Following Buttermilk we staggered over to Bar4 which was having some sort of acoustic singer-songwriter night. Unfortunately everyone sounded like Dave Matthews so after one last drink it was sleepytime.
Thursday I went to the Met first, because I never feel like it's a trip to New York until I've eaten a hotdog from a cart sitting on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Breakfast achieved, it was inside I went to take advantage of my company's free-admission/sponsorship policy. The special exhibits this time were Sean Scully's Wall of Light, Americans in Paris, and Ambrose Vollard: Patron of the Avant-Garde.
Maybe it was being a little hungover or maybe I just wasn't feeling very charitable but I didn't dig Americans in Paris at all. Frankly, Winslow Homer's never turned my crank, nor has Whistler. I loved the John Singer Sargents and Mary Cassatts but mostly it looked like they were so intoxicated with Francophillia that their asses whistled La Marseillses (I spelled that wrong but alas this computer hasn't been letting me open a second window to double-check anything without crashing). It was all a race of catch-up trying to implement the latest techniques of impressionism in order for their hosts to love them.
The Ambrose Vollard thing being in the same museum at the same time probably didn't help, because if you've got a room of Whistler and just down the hall is a room of Cezanne? Whistler's hurtin'. A lot of gorgeous art from the same period, based around the collection and dealing of the titular figure, about whom Picasso is quoted in the exhibition that "The most beautiful woman in the world wasn't drawn, painted or etched as often as Vollard." Degas, Van Gogh, Braque, Picasso, and Cezanne (including the very first Cezanne bought in this country which was purchased by the Met in 1913), the pictures were great and it was an interesting look into how one person's aesthetic can shape a movement.
Also at the Met was Sean Scully's Wall of Light, these Rothko-inspired blocks of color done in watercolor, pastels and oil. Seeing the differences with the brushstroke and the shimmering quality of the oil paint and the way the different media react with light was really cool. I don't know how to describe what I liked about this but I had that frission up my spine the entire time, like when I look at a Rothko but without the sadness.
After that, shot down to Houston to see Little Children at the Angelika (I see a lot of movies in New York but they're all movies that aren't in Columbus, unless any of these opened this weekend in which case the expensive joke's on me). Kate Winslet's an unhappy housewife, Patrick Wilson's a put-upon husband married to Jennifer Connelly, Jackie Earl Haley is a sex-offender released from prison and living with his mother in the neighborhood, attracting the ire of a "concerned citizen" former cop with a dark secret. If all of this sounds a little cliched give yourself a gold star. Winslet and Wilson naturally end up having some animalistic sex drawn together by mutual loneliness and a pervasive sense of terror. Haley can't control his urges. Things go wrong in the most contrived way possible. Also, it has narration. Narration that's hilarious in one sequence but spends most of the movie explaining exactly what's happening at any given time, making the audience feel like the movie thinks we're stupid. There's a brilliant sequence where Connelly's character has a revelation and she acts it *perfectly*, but the narration has to tell us everything she's thinking when it's all right up on the screen. Connelly and Haley are great, but mostly I felt like I got badly manipulated for two hours plus.
After that ended I dashed uptown to the Museum of Television and Radio to the Robert Smigel talk for which I'd purchased tickets and timed it so I could see almost exactly an hour of it before having to go about six blocks to see Company. Missing Company was not an option, beyond the tickets costing about three times as much, it's one of my favorite plays that I'd never seen a performance of. And I bought the ticket before I knew about the Smigel talk so it was already locked in for that day.
Well, Mr. Smigel got stuck in traffic. So we saw a compilation tape of some of his work such as the William Shatner "Get a Life" sketch, Phil Hartman as a duplicitous Ronald Reagan masterminding the Contra affair, Adam Sandler and Chris Farley in an ad for "Schmitt's Gay" beer (a spot-on parody of beer ads selling sex but with hunky guys in speedos instead of bikini babes), and the pilot of TV Funhouse. Then Kurt Andersen (Spy, New York Magazine) gave some introductory remarks... only to be interrupted by Robert Smigel appearing as Triumph, Triumph on his hamd, sitting in the aisle. Which was *fantastic*. "Boring! Look, we've kept these nerds waiting for an HOUR to see the nerd with his hand up my ass! You, sir, could you stand up? You see this, this is a *quality* television nerd. He has options; he could be anywhere. He could be on a chatroom posing as a 13-year-old girl *right now*." After about twenty minutes of that they sat down to talk but by that point I had about fifteen minutes to spare to get to the Ethel Barrymore theater so I had to bold. On the one hand, I paid $15 to mostly watch some television with some strangers. But I got to see Robert Smigel-as-Triumph from two feet away from me, which softens the blow of any disappointment.
Dashed six blocks in eight minutes, got seated for Company in the last row of the rear mezzanine (the difference between a $40 ticket and a $86-116 ticket) but my view wasn't obstructed at all and I could hear perfectly. Plus you have a different kind of real fan up there, between the two guys cuddling next to me, the woman on the other side of me who saw the original production back in the '70s, and the kids below me reading a newspaper with casting ads.
The production was very sparse, platforms made of clear glass, a table with bottles of alcohol and glasses, a piano, and staged by John Doyle all the performers also played instruments, serving as the orchestra en toto, which is more impressive considering there were only 14 people in the entire show. Particular standouts were the woman playing Marta who did "Another Hundred People" imbued with this transfixing rage and vulnerability "Did you get my message? / 'Cause I looked in vain" with the last word going at you like a bullet then softening to "Can we see each other Tuesday / If it doesn't rain?" Also good was the three single women doing their paean to Bobby, the central character, with all of them playing saxophones like a '60s girl-group. The music worked perfectly stripped down, a little bit atonal and writhing and loose. And the ending might have been one of the saddest staging's of anything I've ever seen on a stage. I was in love with this portrait of loneliness and fucked up people trying to connect to each other.
Yesterday I hit the Guggenheim for the Lucio Fontana exhibit (the main galleries were closed for the installation of the Spanish painting thing opening next week). I loved how sensual his stuff is, even when it's gashes carved in copper, or fingerprints and punctures in silver paint.
MoMA had Brice Marden which was interesting, I'd never seen any of his work. He started out with these rectangular fields either monochromatic (like his big grey canvas called "Nico") or one panel next to the other in different colors or shades (like "Three Deliberate Greys for Jasper Johns") then he moved through some ink washes that looked too much like Pollock's stick painting, until you hit these big, gorgeous canvases with colored lines dancing, or my favorite some pieces that were oil paint on shards of cracked marble implying light on a floor. It was almost like a minimal version of Morandi, I heard somebody say, and I think that's about right, not stuff making a huge emotional impact but definitely work I thought was beautiful and stared at for a long, long time.
Tried to go to the Jewish Museum for the Masters of American Comics exhibit but I was told by the woman working there that it was closed on Fridays this season. So I missed that and went to the Angelika for _Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus_.
I totally respect not telling a wholly factual story and trying to focus on the moment that drove someone into a creative life rather than go from childhood to suicide in the space of one movie, but this was a little too "imaginary" for me. They invented the Robert Downey, Jr., character (fine, lots of biopics use composites) and then made the whole damn movie about him! We're worried if he's going to die, we're rooting for him, and he's entirely fictional. Whatever moment drove her into art in life is not in the movie and the moment that drives her there in the movie did not exist in her life.
The good side, though, is that it's beautiful. And the creators (screenwriter and director) of Secretary made another movie about self-actualization through sexual fetish that manages to be at times both thought-provoking and hot. And the way it's structured like a fairy tale was interesting. And Nicole Kidman and Robert Downey Jr. are great as usual. But overall, it's a well-meaning disaster.
All right, time to shower and see what my last day here brings. Tomorrow is plane rides and maybe that Bobby Bare Jr. concert back in town. Monday is a return to work and a million voicemails to clear out. Love to all of you.
Herein find descriptions/sarcasm/gushing relating to the new revival of Company, a few minutes of the Robert Smigel talk at the Museum of Television and Radio, the current exhibits at MoMA, the Met and the Guggenheim, the movies Fur and Little Children.
Flew in after work - and about three hours of plane delays - on Wednesday, took a cab to the home of my always-gracious hosts Mike Gamble and Devon Febbroiello, bumped into pals Connor Elmes, Tony Barba and Noah Jarrett, and Mike and I took off for one of my favorite bars in Brooklyn: Buttermilk. The jukebox at Buttermilk is one of the best I've ever seen, with a handful of full albums (I noted the Hank Williams' Greatest Hits, X's Wild Gift, and at least one Sugar record) along with mix-CDs made by the employees enabling you to enjoy your libation while checking out The Gun Club or Pere Ubu or Lightning Bolt. Even better, it was $2 Yuengling night until midnight.
Following Buttermilk we staggered over to Bar4 which was having some sort of acoustic singer-songwriter night. Unfortunately everyone sounded like Dave Matthews so after one last drink it was sleepytime.
Thursday I went to the Met first, because I never feel like it's a trip to New York until I've eaten a hotdog from a cart sitting on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Breakfast achieved, it was inside I went to take advantage of my company's free-admission/sponsorship policy. The special exhibits this time were Sean Scully's Wall of Light, Americans in Paris, and Ambrose Vollard: Patron of the Avant-Garde.
Maybe it was being a little hungover or maybe I just wasn't feeling very charitable but I didn't dig Americans in Paris at all. Frankly, Winslow Homer's never turned my crank, nor has Whistler. I loved the John Singer Sargents and Mary Cassatts but mostly it looked like they were so intoxicated with Francophillia that their asses whistled La Marseillses (I spelled that wrong but alas this computer hasn't been letting me open a second window to double-check anything without crashing). It was all a race of catch-up trying to implement the latest techniques of impressionism in order for their hosts to love them.
The Ambrose Vollard thing being in the same museum at the same time probably didn't help, because if you've got a room of Whistler and just down the hall is a room of Cezanne? Whistler's hurtin'. A lot of gorgeous art from the same period, based around the collection and dealing of the titular figure, about whom Picasso is quoted in the exhibition that "The most beautiful woman in the world wasn't drawn, painted or etched as often as Vollard." Degas, Van Gogh, Braque, Picasso, and Cezanne (including the very first Cezanne bought in this country which was purchased by the Met in 1913), the pictures were great and it was an interesting look into how one person's aesthetic can shape a movement.
Also at the Met was Sean Scully's Wall of Light, these Rothko-inspired blocks of color done in watercolor, pastels and oil. Seeing the differences with the brushstroke and the shimmering quality of the oil paint and the way the different media react with light was really cool. I don't know how to describe what I liked about this but I had that frission up my spine the entire time, like when I look at a Rothko but without the sadness.
After that, shot down to Houston to see Little Children at the Angelika (I see a lot of movies in New York but they're all movies that aren't in Columbus, unless any of these opened this weekend in which case the expensive joke's on me). Kate Winslet's an unhappy housewife, Patrick Wilson's a put-upon husband married to Jennifer Connelly, Jackie Earl Haley is a sex-offender released from prison and living with his mother in the neighborhood, attracting the ire of a "concerned citizen" former cop with a dark secret. If all of this sounds a little cliched give yourself a gold star. Winslet and Wilson naturally end up having some animalistic sex drawn together by mutual loneliness and a pervasive sense of terror. Haley can't control his urges. Things go wrong in the most contrived way possible. Also, it has narration. Narration that's hilarious in one sequence but spends most of the movie explaining exactly what's happening at any given time, making the audience feel like the movie thinks we're stupid. There's a brilliant sequence where Connelly's character has a revelation and she acts it *perfectly*, but the narration has to tell us everything she's thinking when it's all right up on the screen. Connelly and Haley are great, but mostly I felt like I got badly manipulated for two hours plus.
After that ended I dashed uptown to the Museum of Television and Radio to the Robert Smigel talk for which I'd purchased tickets and timed it so I could see almost exactly an hour of it before having to go about six blocks to see Company. Missing Company was not an option, beyond the tickets costing about three times as much, it's one of my favorite plays that I'd never seen a performance of. And I bought the ticket before I knew about the Smigel talk so it was already locked in for that day.
Well, Mr. Smigel got stuck in traffic. So we saw a compilation tape of some of his work such as the William Shatner "Get a Life" sketch, Phil Hartman as a duplicitous Ronald Reagan masterminding the Contra affair, Adam Sandler and Chris Farley in an ad for "Schmitt's Gay" beer (a spot-on parody of beer ads selling sex but with hunky guys in speedos instead of bikini babes), and the pilot of TV Funhouse. Then Kurt Andersen (Spy, New York Magazine) gave some introductory remarks... only to be interrupted by Robert Smigel appearing as Triumph, Triumph on his hamd, sitting in the aisle. Which was *fantastic*. "Boring! Look, we've kept these nerds waiting for an HOUR to see the nerd with his hand up my ass! You, sir, could you stand up? You see this, this is a *quality* television nerd. He has options; he could be anywhere. He could be on a chatroom posing as a 13-year-old girl *right now*." After about twenty minutes of that they sat down to talk but by that point I had about fifteen minutes to spare to get to the Ethel Barrymore theater so I had to bold. On the one hand, I paid $15 to mostly watch some television with some strangers. But I got to see Robert Smigel-as-Triumph from two feet away from me, which softens the blow of any disappointment.
Dashed six blocks in eight minutes, got seated for Company in the last row of the rear mezzanine (the difference between a $40 ticket and a $86-116 ticket) but my view wasn't obstructed at all and I could hear perfectly. Plus you have a different kind of real fan up there, between the two guys cuddling next to me, the woman on the other side of me who saw the original production back in the '70s, and the kids below me reading a newspaper with casting ads.
The production was very sparse, platforms made of clear glass, a table with bottles of alcohol and glasses, a piano, and staged by John Doyle all the performers also played instruments, serving as the orchestra en toto, which is more impressive considering there were only 14 people in the entire show. Particular standouts were the woman playing Marta who did "Another Hundred People" imbued with this transfixing rage and vulnerability "Did you get my message? / 'Cause I looked in vain" with the last word going at you like a bullet then softening to "Can we see each other Tuesday / If it doesn't rain?" Also good was the three single women doing their paean to Bobby, the central character, with all of them playing saxophones like a '60s girl-group. The music worked perfectly stripped down, a little bit atonal and writhing and loose. And the ending might have been one of the saddest staging's of anything I've ever seen on a stage. I was in love with this portrait of loneliness and fucked up people trying to connect to each other.
Yesterday I hit the Guggenheim for the Lucio Fontana exhibit (the main galleries were closed for the installation of the Spanish painting thing opening next week). I loved how sensual his stuff is, even when it's gashes carved in copper, or fingerprints and punctures in silver paint.
MoMA had Brice Marden which was interesting, I'd never seen any of his work. He started out with these rectangular fields either monochromatic (like his big grey canvas called "Nico") or one panel next to the other in different colors or shades (like "Three Deliberate Greys for Jasper Johns") then he moved through some ink washes that looked too much like Pollock's stick painting, until you hit these big, gorgeous canvases with colored lines dancing, or my favorite some pieces that were oil paint on shards of cracked marble implying light on a floor. It was almost like a minimal version of Morandi, I heard somebody say, and I think that's about right, not stuff making a huge emotional impact but definitely work I thought was beautiful and stared at for a long, long time.
Tried to go to the Jewish Museum for the Masters of American Comics exhibit but I was told by the woman working there that it was closed on Fridays this season. So I missed that and went to the Angelika for _Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus_.
I totally respect not telling a wholly factual story and trying to focus on the moment that drove someone into a creative life rather than go from childhood to suicide in the space of one movie, but this was a little too "imaginary" for me. They invented the Robert Downey, Jr., character (fine, lots of biopics use composites) and then made the whole damn movie about him! We're worried if he's going to die, we're rooting for him, and he's entirely fictional. Whatever moment drove her into art in life is not in the movie and the moment that drives her there in the movie did not exist in her life.
The good side, though, is that it's beautiful. And the creators (screenwriter and director) of Secretary made another movie about self-actualization through sexual fetish that manages to be at times both thought-provoking and hot. And the way it's structured like a fairy tale was interesting. And Nicole Kidman and Robert Downey Jr. are great as usual. But overall, it's a well-meaning disaster.
All right, time to shower and see what my last day here brings. Tomorrow is plane rides and maybe that Bobby Bare Jr. concert back in town. Monday is a return to work and a million voicemails to clear out. Love to all of you.