In a recent interview, Charles Barkley told about an unusual phone call he received from Bill Russell–a call that persuaded Barkley to stop complaining about how much he paid in taxes…
Culturewatch
Merrill Garbus & The Wokeness Unto Death
For being an “outside artist,” Merrill Garbus of Tune-Yards has never lacked in critical applause. The lo-fi Afrobeat of her 2009 debut Birdbrains immediately established her as a singular voice in the freak-folk music world. The gigantic production and stylistic leap of Whokill, her 2011 sophomore effort, landed her on many year-end best-of lists. More recently she was commissioned to create the theme music for the New Yorker Radio Hour. As a fan, I’ve worried with each new release she’d morph her authentic weirdness into easily digestible hipster marketability. But she’s resisted that impulse. Unlike the manufactured weirdness of a Lady Gaga, her introspection and restlessness have kept her music from becoming self-help dance muzak. Her defiant neuroticism resists any easy boxing-in.
Stormy’s Tale (Or: Protect Me From What I Want)
Extry! Extry! Read all about it. The president is a spanko.
An Eye for Comedy
The second half of the HBO documentary, “The Zen Diaries of Garry Shandling,” made me want to be a kinder, more generous, and more forgiving person. The doc, directed by Judd Apatow, lifts the edges of the napkin covering GS’s life without revealing much. We come to know him from his eyes.
There Is No Gun
There is no gun in this poem.
Me Two Cents
One evening in the summer of 1960, while waiting on a rocker-sofa on the porch of a friend’s home to give him a ride to a party, his step-father sat down beside me – and grabbed my cock.
Feminist Criticism
Bill Cosby was a shitty comedian. His material on stage was smug, take-my-wifeish, and dated long before reports surfaced of his sexual predation.
Who’s Afraid of Michael Wolff?: The Uses of “Fire and Fury”
I’m a freak about timing. To me, a story without a peg is like a song without a hook. But it’s taken me quite awhile to find a copy of Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House. Since I’m less interested in the book than in its reception, I guess it’s okay to file late.
David Hockney’s Happy Phenomenology
Hockney’s pictures have been derided as “merely decorative” and the late Peter Fuller takes up that criticism with the artist in the short clip posted below. Hockney’s musings link pleasure in his art to affirmations of his (gay) self: “We should like ourselves.” There’s another BBC program where the artist is sound-tracked by snatches from Stravinksy’s opera, “The Rake’s Progress,” which flashed your editor back to an 80s Hockney show that seemed largely about cruising. (Not that Hockney’s phenomenology of his intentional body in space is always so libidinal.) While gay liberation is on his canvasses, the splashy promesse de bonheure in Hockney’s art belongs to everybody everybody. It’s a 60s thing, though it evokes other avatars of happiness that deserve dap–Greeks who first depicted the human smile, young French revolutionaries who declared: “happiness is the new idea in Europe,” ex-West Africans who flipped the mask of tragedy even as their favorite color reminded them of their lost continent. It’s all about blue for Hockney too!
If you’re around New York, go see his show at the Met before it closes on February 25th. B.D.
Requiem For a Not-So-Heavyweight: Hockney at the Met
David Hockney is a master conjurer of placid images and what such images conjure.
Women’s March in NYC
My friend was holding a coffee from Joe’s. It was noon. I said I wanted coffee from the $2 place. We were on Columbus and 86th Street, heading for the march.
What Is It ‘Bout Men: Toward a More Nuanced Response to #MeToo
I confess I have very complex and conflicted feelings about #MeToo’s virtual movement.
“Gigi” in a Gay-Friendly Age
Every year produces a gay sensation, and you can tell a lot about the preoccupations of the day from the story it tells. The current candidate, on track to be a Best Picture nominee, is Call Me By Your Name, a gushy–or, if you prefer, alluring–tale of lust between a 17-year-old boy and a man in his mid 20s.
Multiculturalism Versus Identity Politics
Multiculturalism preceded identity politics and has become identified with it. I think it important to distinguish between the two, even oppose them.