Liked this from the soundtrack of french film, Anna M (disturbing tale of loopy, parisian stalker).
Indie folk trio, Au revoir Simone perform their song Stay golden as they wander through the a New York neighbourhood. Of course, some wiseacre can’t resist a witticism. The girls, more or less unpeturbed, continue – as wistful as ever.
Bravo!
#23.1 – AU REVOIR SIMONE -STAY GOLDEN by lablogotheque
Excerpt
The smuggest man in England? The Manchester Evening News chose their ‘half man, half lobster’ photograph of Mr Gill with care after taking exception to a very rude article about their city’s (risibly inadequate, according to AAG) restaurant scene.
AA Gill springs to mind, not because of an savagely amusing piece of journalism, but because he was on the Radio 4 travel show, Excess Baggage this morning. He mentioned that he had caused offence to the Welsh and in the course of a google search to find out how, I found this – a piece for Vanity Fair excoriating British expats in NYC.
Having been one myself, I can understand what he means – to a degree. That said, I don’t really think that his sweeping generalisation captures the existential truth for everyone that winds up there. I remember two fellows from Essex who were working in a Manhattan shoe store who loved everything american because it was so utterly different from their not loved place of origin.
Brits Behaving Badly (65.92 kB) A man at cross purposes (156.45 kB) AA Gill on dyslexia (194.96 kB)
Ming, the tiger, at the window of the small Harlem apartment where he was kept by Antoine Yates.
Ming the tiger in Harlem
Antoine claimed the “hell on earth” environment of Harlem encouraged his passion to stay inside with his pets, away from the dangers outside.
“One of my first exotic animals was a squirrel monkey – then I started getting into boa constrictors and pythons,” he added.
His family had planned to open a zoo, he says – so he ended up pretending they already had one to con his way into owning two tigers and two lions.
He ended up getting rid of three of them – but was too attached to Ming to let it go.
“My relationship with Ming was very, very unique,” he insisted. “We had a bond that was unbelievable.”
Ming grew to be a 500lbs adult tiger – but this wild beast had never left Antoine’s small apartment in the Harlem high rise while his owner chose to remain with the jungle cat.
“To be close to such a beautiful animal 24 hours a day is magical. I began to really understand a big cat,” he claimed.
“At that point I was ready to disconnect from the world.”
Cityscapes by Marc Yankus (New York, NY)
“In moments of transient repose, when its elements are briefly cloaked in softness, a kind of beauty envelops even the most mundane street scenes.â€
An old haunt in 1995/1996.
In Midtown, the Return of a Barfly’s Paradise – NYTimes.com
For Mr. Kelly, 63, who is a salesman for Time Warner Security, the past six months were the first time in many years that he had not been behind a bar. He said he spent much of his free time nagging his once and future landlord for a new lease.
Holland’s other bartenders drifted to dives in the surrounding blocks. Bill Leary, known as Dr. Bill, took over the Monday and Tuesday shifts at the Bull Moose Saloon, on 44th Street between Eighth and Ninth Avenues, and Steve Bibko has been serving free hot dogs along with Jameson shots and Budweiser back at Rudy’s Bar and Grill, at 44th and Ninth.
Some of the former Holland regulars are patiently running tabs at Rudy’s. Hank, a former regular who declined to give his full name because he “didn’t want people calling me on the telephone,†chuckled at the idea of Mr. Kelly spending his days with architects and electricians instead of gamblers and drinkers, and said he missed the claustrophobia of Holland.
An interesting NY Times article on the tightly knit Syrian Jewish community in Brooklyn. Among their number, Eddie Antar aka Crazy Eddie – the name familiar to me from trips to Wantagh, Long Island when his stores were advertised everywhere.
For many years, the most famous SY in the world was Eddie Antar, known professionally as Crazy Eddie. In the ’70s, he revolutionized the home electronics business and created an empire.
Nobody did retail theater better than Crazy Eddie. His souk-smart salesmen — many of them relatives and friends from the enclave — choreographed the shopping experience, waltzing the zboon (SY slang for “customerâ€) in well-rehearsed steps toward the be’aah, the sale. His ads (“His prices are insane!â€) were commercial performance art. And when he was caught defrauding his investors for almost $100 million dollars and subsequently fled to Israel, Eddie provided an international drama that ended in extradition and prison.
The Crazy Eddie case became a cause célèbre, shattering longstanding community rules of silence and decorum. Eddie’s J-Dub wife, Debbie, caught him in flagrante delicto with his mistress, who also happened to be a J-Dub named Debbie, on the last day of December 1983 — a confrontation remembered among old-timers as the New Year’s Eve massacre. The massacre was a real bean-spiller, and it was followed by the testimony of Eddie’s first cousin (and partner and C.F.O.) Sam E. Antar on how the illegal schemes had been carried out. This gave the United States Attorney prosecuting the case, Michael Chertoff (now the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security), more than enough to work with. Eddie went away for six years.
The souk smart phrase above reminds me of 2 Danish guys I knew in Fort Lauderdale back in 1994/5. They both worked at Florida Swap Shop selling electronic goods. They were clean cut, nordic, young fellows and I remember them reporting that their Israeli boss had remarked:
‘If I looked like you, or you could sell like me, now that would be a winning combination!’.
An interesting blog post from Sam Antar – Eddie’s cousin and former CFO of Crazy Eddie’s. Something to read before going shopping on Tottenham Court Road – or 5th Ave.
An interesting story leading on the OJ memoir.
In her discussion of the release of OJ’s ghost written memoir, If I Did It, Lionel Shriver mentions Juith Regan’s apology for publishing the book. Quite a character, it turns out. Ms Regan.
Judith Regan was fired for inappropriate behaviour (anti semitic rants), supposedly unconnected with the OJ book on 15 December 2006 (NY Times).
According to the notes, Regan was upset with her perceived lack of support from HarperCollins during the O.J. scandal last month (a claim that seems reasonable, given that HarperCollins CEO Jane Friedman won “Publisher of the Year” last week for her skill in “distancing” her publishing house from the distasteful event), and allegedly said this: “Of all people, the Jews should know about ganging up, finding common enemies and telling the big lie.” Regan then allegedly said that ICM literary agent Esther Newberg, HarperCollins’ executive editor David Hirshey, HarperCollins’ CEO Jane Friedman and lawyer Jackson constituted “a Jewish cabal against her.”
That’s it? Coming from a woman whose vituperative, graphic outbursts are legendary, that’s all she said? As her lawyer Bert Fields points out (but which was immediately to this writer upon reading):
“She did not make any remarks that a rational person would consider anti-Semitic,” he said. “What she said was that she was being destroyed in the press for something that wasn’t her fault, and that the Jewish people should understand more than anybody else what it is to be the victim of a big lie. If anybody considers that anti-Semitic, they should explain it to me
Eat the Press, Huffington Post, Rachel Sklar, 19 Dec 2006
However, not the kind to take things lying down she sued, makign allegations to the effect that she had been urged to deny an affair with a member of Giuliani’s praetorian guard at the by the boss of Fox News, Roger Ailes. She won a settlement of $10.75 million.
