Pen and Ink

Oh, one more thing.

Before I jump in the pool, one last thought:

Movie reviewers really need to get the sticks out of their asses.  Sex and the City 2 was a hoot! Yes, it has its flaws but it was just good fun. Forget the reviews and go get yourself some Sex.

 

I knew I was in trouble when.

Andy and I (and the kids) took in the Coconut Grove Art Festival a couple of weeks ago. I had never been before, as I don't usually go out of my way to attend these kinds of festivals.  But the chair of the event sent me two complimentary passes, so we decided to go.

When it comes to the visual arts, I don't get most of what I see.  A lot of it I just don't understand. But then again, I'm a pretty literal person; I need things spelled out in black and white.  For that reason, I tend to gravitate toward photography.  It's not complicated. 

Depending on the level of art fair I attend, I will usually decide in advance if I'm up for an addition to my growing collection of photography. If I go to Art Basel, the granddaddy of art fairs, I know my wallet is safe, 'cause there ain't nothing affordable there.  

With the Grove festival, however, I didn't know what to expect. So my mind was open to possibly getting something.

We spent the morning wandering the fair. For the most part, I wasn't impressed with the photographers except for two or three. When we left around noon to take the kids to lunch, I hadn't bought anything. But it was my intention to go back and pick up a reasonably priced print from a black and white photographer who's work I liked.

While at lunch, my friend/colleague Jeanne called to say she was on her way over and let's hang out. So we went back to the fair, and I took her to see a photographer from Chicago I kinda liked.  She was captivated by his work and bought three small pieces.  I got swept up into it and also picked out three small pieces. They weren't expensive and I thought they would be nice additions to the "kids" portion of my collection.

Then we went back to Chris, the black & white photographer, because I wanted to take another look at the photo that caught my eye earlier.  It was of a gently-curved black staircase at SF MOMA, surrounded by very angular white walls -- a stunning contrast in shapes and colors (or neutrals, as the case may be).

The print was very reasonable, but Jeanne being Jeanne, she started negotiating for me to buy a larger, framed version.  True, the larger format was preferable, and yes, the white frame and mat surrounding the photograph was stunning. But still...

Meanwhile, Andy is wandering around the booth. I looked over and caught him staring at a VERY large photograph called "Coastal Grove."  It's a beautiful image of a canape of trees in a grove. And he was just staring.

I watched him and realized that I had made a fateful statement earlier in the day: "We need a large format piece of art on the wall in the living room."

With that in mind, I thought: "Oh shit, I'm in trouble."

A few minutes later he stood by my side and just said, "Honey."  

Oh no, I know that voice.

Of course, Jeanne was no help as she immediately echoed Andy's sentiments on the photo.

When Chris realized what was going on, I think he probably peed in his pants.  After all, this was a major piece.  So much so that he said, "Well, if you get that ("Coastal Grove"), I will give you this ("SF MOMA1").

Ahhhh, shit.

So that day, I went from being "casual collector" of photography to "serious collector." But both pieces look amazing hanging on my walls.

(Out of respect for Chris's work, I am not including photos of his work here. But check out his website at www.chrishoneysett.com. "SF MOMA 1 is in the portfolio called "architecture" and "Coastal Grove" is under "landscapes.")

Another publishing death.

I received a post card in the mail today informing me that Metropolitan Home Magazine has discontinued publication.  The December 2009 issues was the last one.

Another great magazine down the tubes.  This closing, of course, follows the venerable Gourmet, which was shuttered after the November issue.

I went online to check out the buzz and found that it had actually been announced back in November.  There, linked from the Huffington Post, was an article in the Times.  I get the paper every day, but that must have been an edition I didn't get around to reading.

So here I sit in mourning, albeit late.

I've been a subscriber to Met Home for years and years.  I can't really tell you why, as the magazine had a focus on modern design and furnishings, which are distinctly not my style.  But I got a lot of ideas from it, nonetheless.  In fact, I have a whole looseleaf notebook filled with pages ripped from the magazine.

They say print media is dying.  Apple has come out with iPad (bad name) which I suspect could become a big hit.  But you just can't rip pages off the iPad and stick them in a notebook of ideas for some future date.

As I have written previously, I used to look forward to editor Donna Warner's introductory page.  Reading her all these years, I felt like I knew her and followed the renovations of her various homes. I hope she lands at another publication or website so I can continue following her.  It's weird, but I feel like she's a friend.

So, RIP Met Home.  They're subbing Elle Decor for Met Home until subscriptions run out. Hopefully I will like it.

On the third day of Christmas.

I'm spending the evening with Keith Lockhart and the Boston Pops at the final Holiday Pops concert of the season. It doesn't get much better than this.

Whose Christmas Is It?

In this multicultural time in which we live, I loved this piece by musician Michael Feinstein in last Friday's Times. I was going to paraphrase it here, but decided that the full text was just too good. So I am including it here.

* * * * *

ABOUT 10 years ago, I was doing a weekend of Christmas concerts, accompanied by a fine regional symphony in California. The first night went well, I thought, with a program of holiday classics that seemed beyond reproach. The song choices were about as controversial as a Creamsicle.

Ron Barrett

But I was wrong. Minutes before I walked onstage the second night, a nervous representative of the orchestra board appeared in my dressing room to tell me that my program was “too Jewish.” Wow, I thought, who knew that orchestra management played practical jokes on artists moments before their shows? My laughter turned to disbelief when the stuttering gentleman said that there had, in fact, been complaints.

Between numbers the night before, I had mentioned that almost all the most popular Christmas songs were written by Jews and then riffed on the idea that the Gentiles must have written mostly Hanukkah songs. The audience was enthusiastic, so I assumed it was somebody on the board who had been offended.

Just as I was informing the unlucky messenger that the second night’s show would be “even more Jewish,” places were called. I bounded onstage in time to belt out the opening lines of “We Need a Little Christmas,” wearing a fake grin that barely concealed my rage. After a while, the music calmed me down, and I was able to merge with the holiday spirit encoded in the Jerry Herman classic. The Jewish Jerry Herman Christmas classic.

The evolution of Christmas is reflected to a degree in its music. As the holiday has become more secular, so have its songs, with religious and spiritual compositions largely supplanted by the banalities of Rudolph, sleigh bells and Santa. Many Christians feel that the true essence of Christmas has been lost, and I respect that opinion. It must be difficult to see religious tradition eroded in the name of commerce and further dissipated by others’ embrace of a holiday without a sense of what it truly means to the faithful.

Yet I also hope that those who feel this encroachment will on some level understand that the spirit of the holiday is universal. We live in a multicultural time and the mixing, and mixing up, of traditions is an inevitable result. Hence we have the almost century-old custom of American Jews creating a lot more Christmas music than Hanukkah music.

If you look at a list of the most popular Christmas songs, you’ll find that the writers are disproportionately Jewish: Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas,” “The Christmas Song” (yes, Mel Tormé was Jewish), “Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!,” “I’ll Be Home for Christmas,” “Silver Bells,” “Santa Baby,” “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” and “Winter Wonderland” — perennial, beloved and, mostly, written for the sheet music publishers of Tin Pan Alley, not for a show or film. (Two notable exceptions: “White Christmas,” introduced in “Holiday Inn,” and “Silver Bells,” written for “The Lemon Drop Kid.”)

You’ll notice that certain famous Jewish songwriters are conspicuously absent from this list. Why? Unlike the Tin Pan Alley songwriters, who churned out songs to order on every conceivable subject for their publishers, writers like Jerome Kern, the Gershwins, Richard Rodgers and Harold Arlen mainly created songs for musical plays and films, and unless a story line required a holiday song they had no need to write one. When they did try one outside the framework of a show, it rarely had the same spark. Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Happy Christmas, Little Friend,” recorded by Rosemary Clooney in the ’50s, is sadly lethargic. Even Clooney couldn’t recall it when asked to sing it 30 years later. Or so she claimed.

In my holiday shows, I’m always looking for novel expressions of the season, and when I introduce a new song I don’t usually think about the religion of its creator. That said, I’m always pleased to discover a surprising juxtaposition. It doesn’t take Freud to figure out that the sugarplums, holly and mistletoe all tap into a sense of comfort, longing, security and peace that so many fervently desire; that we all wish the clichés were true. As Jews, Christians, Muslims, Mormons, Buddhists and everything in between, we are all more alike than we are different. That’s something to celebrate.

Michael Feinstein is a musician and the author of “My Life in Song.”

Three Penny.

We caught a production of Three Penny Opera at New World School of the Arts last night.  It's a strange musical, but as with all things NWSA, the production was fantastic.

Tom Anello did a great job as MacHeath.  My friend Susan said, "Couldn't you see him playing the MC in Cabaret?"  Absolutely.

I especially like watching Ann Marie Olson, who was playing Mrs. Peachum.  She has a great stage presence and look.

While I'm on the subject of musical theater, A and I are doing a quicky visit to NYC next month and picked up tickets to In The Heights.  It will be my second time, but his first.  It's an amazing musical.  And if I can pull off what I think I can pull off, we'll be going back stage to meet one of the leads!

Are you a tool?

After yesterday's blog equivalent of jumping into the deep end of the pool, I thought some lighter fare might be in order for today's post.

The current issue of Details magazine has a piece called "63 Signs You May Be A Pretentious Tool."

Basically it's a quiz of 63 statements with yes or no responses. The more "no's" you have, the less of a tool you are.  

It's clearly written for a straight audience (despite Details clearly acknowledging that it has a gay readership too).  Because many a gay man would answer in the affirmative to some of these questions, having the effect of raising one's "fabulous" quotient.

So I took the quiz online.  Of the 63, here are the statements to which I answered yes.

• You think about the lighting at restaurants (But of course. Life is all about lighting.)
• You own eye cream, and you use it. (Well, yeah.)
• You host brunch. (Doesn't everyone?)
• You take off work the day before you host brunch. (Sure, if it's a large enough crowd.)
• You can name an architect who isn't one of the Franks. (Find me a straight guy who's met Zaha.)
• You tell your trainer you want to strengthen your core. (I don't have a trainer but I used to take Pilates, which is all about strengthening your core. So if I had a trainer...)
• You've referred to an event as a gala. (I am a fundraiser, after all.)
• You've recommended your tailor to a friend (Cary goes to her now.)
• You know this great little tapas place. (Ask me about great croquetas in Miami.)
• You use periods instead of dashes in phone numbers. (They look much better.)
• You have a thing for typefaces. (For years and years.)
• You double-kiss. (I spend most of my time in Miami. It's mandatory.)
• Your business venture has a social-networking component. (Any business today that doesn't is out of business very soon.)
• You'd go to Miami only for Basel. (Sure, if I didn't live here I would travel for Basel. Do straight guys even know what Basel is?)
• You photograph your food. (Not all the time, but I've taken pictures of my amazing dark chocolate chip cupcakes and posted them on Facebook.)
• You think you're down with lesbian chefs. (Ever had dessert at Michael's Genuine in the Miami Design District. If so, you know what I mean.)
• You've crossed state lines for a flea market. (Not yet, but I would if it was really, really good.)

Of the 63, I responded to 17 in the affirmative. That makes me, on the pretentious a-hole spectrum (according to Details), a "pseudo-tool."  Here's how the website describes it:

You might not lose sleep (on your 600-threat-count sheets) thinking about your upcoming shopping trip to Japan, but having a favorite artisanal butcher or fixating on the fit of your polo shirts is not normal. Just try not to judge people by the book they're reading or the beer they're drinking, okay?

Only 600-thread-count??

A new season.

My DVR is getting quite a work out this new television season.  So much so that I've had to go in and delete dozens of episodes of Star Trek: Voyager that I've accumulated.

On the "scheduled recording list" are my returning favorites Brothers & Sisters, Grey's Anatomy and Private Practice.  I'm still high on those, although B&S is getting a little too soapish, and I'm not sure how much longer GA should really go on. But I'm still really into Private Practice, if for no other reason than I am mesmerized by Kate Walsh.

This season, unlike last, there are a bunch of new shows on the list.  Modern Family is a smart show, to be sure. I caught the premier of Three Rivers, the new medical drama that focuses on a leading transplant hospital with high tech toys that I can't imagine any hospital in this country actually has.

For anyone who knows me, it should come as no surprise that I love Glee, a total mind confection that deliciously brushes up against the absurd. But who cares?  There's singing, dancing, and great Broadway cameos.

But the one new show that has me riveted is The Good Wife, with Juliana Margulies as Alicia Florrick. For those not in the know, Alicia is a lawyer who returns to practice after 13 years of staying home to take care of her now teenage children and her US attorney husband, played by SATC's Chris Noth.

This is no mere legal drama. In the pilot, we see Noth admitting that he hired prostitutes and resigning his position, before being hauled off to jail.

The Good Wife is about how Alicia pulls her life together personally and professionally, balancing home and work, and at the same time, her emotional health. The second episode added to the richness of the drama, with Alicia's kids starting to delve into what has happened to their father and their stable home life. 

If that wasn't enough to make a great drama, add Christine Baranski to the mix, as the firm's top litigator. Baranski is always good, but it's not often we get to see her in a strictly dramatic role. It fits her well. I think this is going to be a wonderfully nuanced show.  

So lots to watch. But what to do about all those Voyager reruns?

You make me wanna shout.

Here's another one of those everyone-in-the-train-station-dances video clips.