An outraged Michael Jackson estate urges Discovery Channel to cancel broadcast of 'Michael Jackson's Autopsy'

From Pop & Hiss:

John Branca and John McClain, co-executors of the Michael Jackson estate, today fired off an angry letter to Discovery Communications president and CEO David M. Zaslav protesting the upcoming Jan. 13 broadcast in the U.K. of "Michael Jackson's Autopsy: What Really Killed Michael Jackson," a program that will reenact the King of Pop's autopsy. 

In the three-paragraph letter, the executors were clear in their outrage:

We were especially outraged when a sickening print advertisement for the program appeared making light of Michael's death by depicting a corpse sprawled on a steel gurney covered by a sheet with a hand sticking out wearing Michael's signature sequined glove. Discovery obviously views this as clever advertising and creative "branding" for its program. But in fact, the ad is debased, sick and insensitive. No doubt this fictitious, morbid image is being spread worldwide even now on the Internet, viewed by Michael's loved ones, and even accepted as authentic by those who may be unaware that Discovery made it up. 

The letter, dated Dec. 29, closes with this plea: "On behalf of Michael's family, fans, common sense and decency, we urge you to reconsider and cancel this program." 

A spokesperson for Discovery Communications declined to comment.

WORD. The more I learn of these co-executors, the more I like them. MJ could ask for no better stewards of his legacy.

UPDATE--Well, what do you know? It worked.

Billy Taylor, Jazz Pianist and Educator, Dies at 89

From NYT:

"Billy Taylor, a pianist and composer who was also an eloquent spokesman and advocate for jazz as well as a familiar presence for many years on television and radio, died on Tuesday in Manhattan. He was 89 and lived in the Riverdale area of the Bronx.

The cause was heart failure, said his daughter, Kim Taylor-Thompson.

Dr. Taylor, as he preferred to be called (he earned a doctorate in music education from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in 1975), was a living refutation of the stereotype of jazz musicians as unschooled, unsophisticated and inarticulate, an image that was prevalent when he began his career in the 1940s, and that he did as much as any other musician to erase."

Damn, not Billy Taylor.

UPDATE--Will Friedwald over at the WSJ gave a nice appreciation of the incomparable Taylor.

How Hall & Oates's Daryl Hall Has Made a Comeback

From New York Magazine:

"The cult ranges from TV cook Rachael Ray (who campaigned for their induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame) to art-song duo the Bird and the Bee (who recorded an album of their songs for Blue Note) to Death Cab for Cutie’s Ben Gibbard (who wrote a paean on Pitchfork) to Killers singer Brandon Flowers (“Everything you need to know about writing a hit song, it’s in ‘Rich Girl,’ ” he said) to Gym Class Heroes’ McCoy (who has Hall’s face tattooed on one hand and Oates’s on the other). To such people, the current Hall & Oates moment is, quite literally, a renaissance. “Renaissance artists considered themselves midgets on the shoulders of giants,” says David Macklovitch, singer-guitarist for electro-funk duo Chromeo and Columbia grad student—a band he considers “an Erasmus or Petrarch to [Hall & Oates’s] Homer or Plato.”"

Surreal, anyway you slice it. I knew about the Bird and the Bee album--it's a work of real conjuration--but in no way did I imagine it represented such a groundswell of enthusiasm extending to, my God, Rachael Ray.

Dorrie Glenn Woodson

Dorrie Glenn Woodson, 1956.
Photograph by Harold Feinstein.

From Paris Review:

I was encouraged to reach out to pianist Dorrie Glenn Woodson by her first husband, the photographer Harold Feinstein, and she and I met in person in New York before last Thanksgiving. Dorrie, seventy-six years old, had naturally gray hair that was long and free flowing, parted down the middle, and it framed her glasses in the style of Gloria Steinem. Among jazz musicians, no appearance is unconventional (except a rigid one), so I didn’t think about hers until we talked on the phone a few weeks later: When she described her parents, I couldn’t visualize them in her. She was born Dorothy Meese in 1934 on a small farm in rural Pennsylvania near the Mason-Dixon line; her father farmed fruits and vegetables and peddled them in nearby towns, and her deeply religious mother practiced the dawn-to-dusk farm traditions with dedication and care. The Dorrie I met was a long way from the farm.

Young Dorothy displayed a touch and dexterity on piano beyond her years; she won talent shows and admiration. The radio brought Ella Fitzgerald, Nat Cole, Duke Ellington, and other African American musicians into her home, in a nearly all-white region. She was transfixed. Her dreams of being a professional jazz pianist distilled and grew more potent. In 1952, after a talent show in Salisbury, Pennsylvania, eighteen-year-old Dorothy met an African American bassist and singer in the Herb Jeffries vein. He was from Frostburg, Maryland, and twenty years her senior. They began a long-term relationship, in secret due to the scandal of interracial romances at the time. She gained confidence in her ability to make impressions musically and generate opportunities for herself. Things seemed hopeful. But she’d grown up with no sex education—nobody uttered a word about it—and birth control was still illegal and often unreliable. It was double jeopardy.

Read More »

Fascinating account of a female jazz pianist who, while never making it big, has much to tell us about the travails of what it was like being a woman jazz musician--and more generally, a female artist. Or more generally still, a professional woman. (And as the situation, to some extent, still applies, this is not of mere historical interest.) I read a collection of pieces by Marian McPartland lately and she addressed the casual sexism facing female jazz players earlier in her career, but as this woman makes clear--at one point explicitly, but more, throughout--there's much more involved than guys not wanting to play with women. The whole thing is well worth reading.

See the Cast of Community Reimagined As the Avengers

From Vulture:

"Notes the illustrator, Chris Schweizer: Donald Glover isn't Spider-Man because "Spider-Man isn't an Avenger … it doesn't really go with the theme."

[Curious Old Library]

Perfect.

(title unknown)

From Vintage Photographs

COSMIC SIPPING

From More Intelligent Life:

Does wine taste better in certain phases of the moon? Catherine Nixey ventures to North London to find out ...

"I rarely mix wine with philosophy (a favoured pastime for some). But I am not often in the position of sipping the same wine twice in an afternoon, in order to observe the effect of the moon's passage on its flavour. The Winery specialises in wines produced according to biodynamic principles, which hold that a wine's taste is altered dramatically by the phases of the moon. I am here to sample such changes myself."

The idea of biodynamic wine is, I am sure, hokum and the article is less an experiment than it is a bit of whimsy, but I like her tone--and the wine, I am sure, isn't bad.

The Windows of Bergdorf Goodman

A window featuring a Roberto Cavalli dress.

From the Paris Review:

On a recent winter afternoon, I sat down for tea with Linda Fargo and David Hoey of Bergdorf Goodman, on the top floor of the store, in the restaurant overlooking southern Central Park. Fargo, who has an immaculate silver bob, is clad in a black Balenciaga dress, capped with a furry Mongolian gilet by Vera Wang, her throat studded with a necklace by a designer named Grazia Bozza, whom she discovered while vacationing in Capri. Hoey is wearing a Band of Outsiders suit—“a journeyman’s vest,” he explains. “It’s a symbol of a real working man who rolls up his sleeves.” 

And roll up his sleeves he must, even at Fifth Avenue’s most refined department store. Hoey and Fargo are the masterminds behind Bergdorf’s window displays, and they had invited me to come talk with them about their work and their new book, a $550 lavender-sheathed tome (“Our signature color,” explains Fargo) published by Assouline. Titled Windows of Bergdorf Goodman, the book catalogs more than ten years of their work, interspersed with remarks and witty one-liners from some of Bergdorf's closets friends (Bette Midler, Vogue editor Hamish Bowles, and street photographer Bill Cunningham, to name a few).

Read More »

Like the Aqualilies, the most preposterously beautiful spectacle I have ever seen. Proof positive that the best art isn't in museums or books. That poetry is something one enters.

Best Bet: J.Crew’s Knit Slippers

From the Cut

These cozy lambswool slippers have all the perks of indoor footwear, like soft suede soles and well-cushioned footbeds, with none of the usual frumpiness. Whether you’re entertaining dinner guests or blearily making your morning coffee, the bow-trimmed toe and contrast piping details will keep your feet warm without sacrificing style. Choose between a festive cherry red, charcoal gray, or cream.

J.Crew knit bow ballet slippers, $45 on sale ($29.99 in cream), at J.Crew and online.

I gasped--these are Cinderella's slippers.

Jeremy Sisto’s Baby Doesn’t Take Any Crap

From Daily Intel:

Name: Jeremy Sisto 

Age: 36 

Neighborhood: West Village 

Occupation: Actor. He's is currently starring in Beau Willimon's new play Spirit Control at Manhattan Theatre Club now through Sunday, December 5. 

Who's your favorite New Yorker, living or dead, real or fictional?

Charlie-Ballerina Sisto, my baby girl. She doesn't take any crap, like most New Yorkers. 

What's the best meal you've eaten in New York?

Dell'anima's got this octopus thing that kills me (in a good way). 

In one sentence, what do you actually do all day in your job?

Presently, I spend my time at work trying to stay out of my own way. 

What was your first job in New York? A movie called Dead Dog. Not sure if was ever finished, though. [Ed: It was.] 

What's the last thing you saw on Broadway?

I have a baby, so it's been a while. Time Stands Still (pre-Broadway but close enough). Great show! 

Do you give money to panhandlers?

Yeah. Especially if they've got tricks, songs, or jokes.

What's your drink?

Don't have a usual right now, drinking Bass beer again for some reason. I used to drink it when I was younger, then forgot it like a neglected lover, but it got in touch with me late one night like a good booty call should.

How often do you prepare your own meals?

Never. I usually eat out. Sometimes I squeeze some honey into a jar of peanut butter, peel a banana, and have at it.

What's your favorite medication?

NyQuil count?

What's hanging above your sofa?

Window curtains.

How much is too much to spend on a haircut?

[Manhattan Theatre Club] is footing the bill right now and I'm sure they get a good deal, but I got a neighborhood spot that does me pretty well for twelve bucks. It's a little smoky, but it does the trick.

When's bedtime?

As soon as I can get there.

Which do you prefer, the old Times Square or the new Times Square?

Can't really tell the difference much. It's the same sensory overload, but my baby digs the stimulation.

What do you think of Donald Trump?

He's rich, right? 

What do you hate most about living in New York? 

The Mexican food. 

Who is your mortal enemy?

Myself. 

When's the last time you drove a car? Couple days ago. We have a car here because my wife rides horses in Jersey. 

How has the Wall Street crash affected you?

I don't have any money in it, so not too much directly. I got some broke friends because of it, though. 

Times, Post, or Daily News?

Times. 

Where do you go to be alone?

Subway from the theater. Precious moments. 

What makes someone a New Yorker?

If it's where you lay your head.

I liked Jeremy Sisto on Law & Order (the Green-Lupo partnership was one of the best in years, and Lupo-Barnard wasn't bad either); I like the tone of this interview; I especially like a few of his answers; but what prompted me to star this in the old Reader (and reprint it here) was this gem:

In one sentence, what do you actually do all day in your job? 

Presently, I spend my time at work trying to stay out of my own way.

There's probably no more eloquent description of what acting entails--or should. This will definitely be an epigraph, though it might prove a little tricky to provide the context.

Armed thug tried to rob salon, but brave off-duty cop getting hair done opened fire on crook

From NY Daily News:

"A heroic off-duty cop getting her hair done at a Brooklyn beauty salon got into a shootout Saturday night with an armed thug who burst into the shop, striking him at least once, police said.

Officer Feris Jones, who works in an NYPD crime lab in Jamaica, Queens, was a customer at Sabine's Hallway on Franklin Ave. in Bedford-Stuyvesant around 6:30 p.m. when the thug rushed into the business and demanded cash, police said.

Jones, 50, showing nerves of steel, immediately confronted the bandit, identified herself as a cop and ordered the man to drop his weapon.

Instead, the callous crook began blasting away, firing at least three times, but missing Jones, sources said.

Undaunted, Jones bravely returned fire, shooting twice and hitting the punk at least once, sources said. The injured man fled.

Cops later followed a trail of blood from the salon to the nearby Lafayette Gardens housing project. A search of the building came up empty and there were no arrests last night.

No one in the salon was injured."

TOTALLY BADASS. End. Of. Story.

Perhaps the best part comes at the end, though:

Jones was treated and released from Kings County Hospital. "Her hair looked fine to me," a police source said of Jones' coif, post-shootout. [emphasis added]

Natalie Portman Writing Screenplays Now

From Vulture:

Not content to just star in a 'chicks empowered by having cavalier attitudes towards sex just like boys do' comedy, Natalie Portman has gone and written one of her own. Portman and a college friend are shopping around a script called BYO, short for Bring Your Own, about two twentysomethings who throw a party where all attendees have to bring a single dude. It's being described as a 'female-themed Superbad,' and Anne Hathaway is reportedly interested in co-starring with Portman, though no word yet on which of them will be obsessed with drawing penises on everything. [24 Frames/LAT]

This will be either be the best thing ever or the worst--unlike, say, Baby Mama, a film I entertained high hopes for, but I suspect was probably just middling. (Yes, I'm venturing an evaluation on a movie I've never seen.) Even if this project turns out to be terrible, however, it will be interesting to see AH and NP occupy the same film, indeed, the same scenes. As Anne gamely noted of herself, she's at the point in her career where she's getting a look at the scripts Portman passes on--a fact that, given the HYPE-rventilation that's greeted Black Swan in just about every quarter, including my beloved New York Magazine, still means something. Might, then, the pairing reveal--or trade on--a certain frisson of competition? Might Anne enter the same bracket as Natalie, through, say, a type of celluloid osmosis? Might it confirm Anne's second-fiddle status, and, if not justify, seal her fate there forever? Or provide our heroine a chance to usurp?

To return to Anne's own Oscar talk, far less plausible than her last foray, Rachel Getting Married, I am sure she does a bang up job with Love and Other Drugs, but I don't care how compelling her performance is--and everyone, including Dana Stevens, a critic I actually like, thinks it really is something--she's not going to get it. Come on, people--it's a romantic comedy! Let's get real.

See the Spider-Man Musical Costumes (Plus Some Pretty Dresses)

From Vulture:

Vogue has the first official look at Julie Taymor’s Green Goblin, Swiss Miss, and Carnage — all photographed by Annie Leibovitz. Money Taymor quote: “I know it’s too much, but is that bad?” Discuss. 

[Vogue]

All together now: AWESOME.

A Supernatural Beauty | Cécile de France

From Vanity Fair:

"Belgian actress Cécile de France, 35, has this to say about being cast in Clint Eastwood’s film Hereafter, out this month from Warner Bros. “I thought, It’s not possible to have so much luck in my life! I was very happy and very surprised.” With an impressive résumé in French film, including two Césars (French Oscars) for L’Auberge Espagnole (2002) and Les Poupées Russes (2005), she was introduced to American audiences in 2004, appearing with Jackie Chan in Around the World in 80 Days. For his 31st film as a director, Eastwood, who turned 80 this year, has taken on the subject of the afterlife. The screenplay, by Peter Morgan (The Queen, Frost/Nixon), examines how three individuals deal with death and, ultimately, with one another. The cast includes Matt Damon, Derek Jacobi, and Bryce Dallas Howard. De France plays Marie, a French journalist who, while on vacation with her boyfriend, miraculously survives a tsunami."

Not much of a profile--there's only a little more beyond this--and I heard Hereafter wasn't much of a movie, but Cecile de France is interesting to me, if only for the fact that I saw both films mentioned and I don't remember her at all (too busy admiring Audrey Tautou, I guess). Also, the movie sounds more interesting than I expected on the strength of a cast that includes her and, of all people, Derek Jacobi, the redoubtable Shakespearean actor. I heard the movie went through a lot of rewrites--and in the final product, according to the critics, it shows--but I suspect it might be awful in an interesting way, which is better than just being awful.

WTC memorial finds $10,000 in cash stuffed in a donation box by an unknown donor

From NYPOST:

"Officials at the 9/11 memorial preview site were stunned when they opened one of the donation boxes Tuesday night and instead of the usual pile of change and crumpled singles, they found $10,000 in crisp bills clearly left by a single person.

'I was home watching the Yankee game when I got a call from the preview center's manager. She asked me if I was sitting down,' recalled Joe Daniels, president of the National September 11 Memorial & Museum.

'We just found $10,000 in the donation box,' Daniels was told.

Daniels said officials have no idea who left the pile of 99 100-dollar bills and five 20s, or why they did it without any recognition -- or even a receipt that could be used for a tax deduction."

I'm sorry, but I love these kinds of stories. Quiet, simple decency.

Google is to start translating poetry

From Guardian Books:

The search engine is adapting its translation technology for verse. So how will it handle The Jabberwocky? 

Who'd be a translator? By day you struggle with the German for 'babbitt-lined bearing' (Weißmetallfutterlager, of course), by night you worry how you'll pay the bills. Online translation services such as Babel Fish may not be able to match you for nuance and naturalness, but they're a) instant, b) improving and c) free, free, free. 

And now their creators are eyeing up the poetry market. According to Dmitriy Genzel, a Google software engineer, the internet's favourite one-stop shop is now working on the machine-translation of not just words, but meter and rhyme. 

Remember Lewis Carroll's nonsense poem Jabberwocky? In 1931 the New Yorker's Frank L Warrin came up with a fantastic French version, Le Jaseroque. Here's what Google's existing offering, Google Translate, came up with when we asked it to turn that back into English: 

It wabe: the toves lubricilleux

Gimble twisting in the guava.

Mimsy were the gougebosqueux

And mômerade horsgrave.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!

The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!

Beware the Jubjub bird, avoids

The Band frumieux to take!'

Aronofsky: 'Ballet world is very insular'

From Digital Spy:

"Black Swan director Darren Aronofsky has revealed that he found the world of ballet 'insular' and 'self-involved'.

Speaking at the BFI London Film Festival press conference for the thriller - which stars Natalie Portman, Vincent Cassel and Mila Kunis - Aronofsky said that he initially struggled to research his latest movie.

'The ballet world was a very hard world to get into,' he commented. 'Usually when you make a movie doors open up. You say, 'I want to make a movie' and everyone's like 'okay'. The ballet world just couldn't care. They're just very, very insular and self-involved. They're very focused, so it took a very long time.'"

The world of ballet should be proud of themselves for failing to swoon before the really insular and self-involved world. I know I'm proud. Maybe they reacted that way because, a little bemused, they realized they'd get a raw deal.


That said, I don't know how to feel about this statement (Swan Lake is indispensable):

Discussing the inspiration for the film, Aronofsky said: "We were just trying to do a movie version of the ballet Swan Lake. We went back the source material, which is about a maiden who's captured by an evil force and turned into a half-swan, half-human creature. We just tried to dramatise that as a movie.

Born deaf, but also born to dance

Profoundly deaf ballet dancer,
Nina Falaise, centre, aged 14
Photo: CLARA MOLDEN

From Telegraph:

"At the age of 10, Nina Falaise went to audition for the Royal Ballet School at their stunning studios in White Lodge, Richmond Park. She danced so brilliantly that the legendary Dame Ninette de Valois, the Royal Ballet’s founder, patted her on the head, gave her a smile, and told her: “You will go a long way.”

It was only when the young ballerina had her medical that the school realised she was deaf – and promptly failed her.

“I was absolutely devastated. It seemed to me that my dream of becoming a ballerina was doomed,” Falaise, now 55, recalls. Despite the unpromising start she went on to a dazzling career as a ballerina. Nowadays she’s determined to encourage more deaf people to get into dance.

“I feel that dance is one of the most natural things for deaf people, because deaf people are visual and more attuned to body movement,” she says.

What a woman. What a wonder. Valois was right, after all. I especially like Ms. Falaise's statement, later in the article, that a "vibration is an emotion."

A Real Problem - Mario Vargas Llosa's The Temptation of the Impossible

From The Smart Set:

"The old man has always been a Romantic. It is easy to picture him there in the military boarding school in Lima, 1950. He describes it to us in four words; damp, gray, boring, unhappy. That was Mario Vargas Llosa 60 years before he won the Nobel Prize for literature. 

In the face of the doldrums, Vargas Llosa turned to Victor Hugo. Who else is a sensitive young lad living in Peru going to turn to? I say this jokingly, but also, not. In a curious and enjoyable little book Vargas Llosa wrote about Hugo's Les Misérables (The Temptation of the Impossible: Victor Hugo and “Les Misérables”), he describes being carried away by Hugo's world of 'extreme misfortune, love, courage, happiness, and vile deeds.'

But more than that, Vargas Llosa speaks about being caught in the horns of a dilemma. Vargas Llosa found solace in the amazing fictional worlds created by Victor Hugo. Escaping into the world of Jean Valjean gave Vargas Llosa the fortitude he needed to face the real world. But it also made the real world seem pale in comparison. Real reality couldn't live up to the dreams of Victor Hugo. Hugo was, thus, helping Mario Vargas Llosa with the problems of the real world and taking away his faith in reality at the same time."

Llosa's debt to Hugo--how interesting. And it is something Llosa himself has written on... I'll have to check this out.

Vienna's ballet accused of naked prejudice

From The Australian:

"AN Austrian ballet star sacked after posing for a set of erotic photographs has turned the tables on the boss who fired her.  

She has revealed that he, too, was once in a risque photoshoot.  

Karina Sarkissova, 27, an award-winning prima ballerina at the Vienna State Opera, was dismissed when pictures of her dancing nude were published in local magazines.

The Russian-born dancer retaliated by revealing that Manuel Legris, the ballet's director, posed for erotic art photographs in the 1980s with both male and female dance partners at the Paris Opera. 

Sarkissova handed the pictures of a naked Legris in various poses to the newspapers, saying she had been inspired by his example. 

'He took artistic liberties and wouldn't allow them to be censored by anyone and he published illustrated books with erotic but artistic pictures,' Sarkissova wrote in an open letter to the press. 

The ensuing scandal and charges of double standards have caused a sensation at the opera house, best known for its productions of classics such as Swan Lake and The Nutcracker. 

Editorials in leading German-language papers sided with the ballerina and accused the opera's management of behaving like 'Pavlovian dogs'."

Since public opinion supported her, she got her job back. More important, though, she took a stand. My favorite line comes a little later, when she talks about the offending photoshoot (hers) and describes her body as a "symbiosis of strength and aesthetics." That will make it into a poem, at least by way of epigraph.

Tina Kay Bohnstedt on 'A Tribute to Lena Horne'

From SF Chronicle:

Tina Kay Bohnstedt and Jekyns Pelaez in Val Caniparoli's "Lady of the Camellias."

"Since she joined Walnut Creek's Diablo Ballet in 1999, Tina Kay Bohnstedt has consistently impressed as one of the Bay Area's hidden dancing treasures. Now 40, the English-born, German-bred dancer has brought a measure of mature technical mastery to a performing art that values and overvalues youth. Bohnstedt will dance in this weekend's Diablo concerts (in a revival of Val Caniparoli's 'Lady of the Camellias' pas de deux), but the news in the troupe's 17th season opener is 'A Tribute to Lena Horne.' This full-company work marks Bohnstedt's most ambitious choreographic venture to date, and she was understandably a bit apprehensive during a phone chat last week."

Interesting interview--and I like almost everything about this woman: the fact that she's still dancing at 40; that she's devoted to her troupe (and her mother); that she tells aspiring dancers not to become dancers; that she has an impressive professional pedigree; and, of course, that she chose to build a piece around the songs of Lena Horne.

Jean Marie Auradon- 1930s

From Vintage Photographs

On Poetry - The Age of Citation

From NYTimes:

"But if the epigraph’s prevalence is a product of history, it also reflects the specific needs of our own literary moment. In “Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation,” the theorist Gérard Genette claims four basic functions for epigraphs. The first two are straightforward — an epigraph can comment on the title of a given work, or it can apply to the work’s body. But after that, matters get a little more “oblique,” as Genette diplomatically puts it. “Very often,” he says of the epigraph, “the main thing is not what it says but who its author is, plus the sense of indirect backing that its presence at the edge of a text gives rise to.” The point, then, isn’t Karl Marx’s wisdom, it’s “Karl Marx.”"

Interesting article on the prevalence of the epigraph. (Must remember to look up Genette article.) I'm in agreement with nearly all of what the author says, though he is more neutral (i.e. the insecurity of the epigraph can't be helped) and tends to underplay the role of poets wishing to appear intellectually chichi, Benjamin's presence saying nearly everything. The use of Stevens may be part of that chichi factor, too, his eminent "quotability" and, what the author doesn't note, his permanent influence on contemporary poets, that explains more. To be sure, there's something grandly aphoristic about Benjamin as well--even Wittgenstein--but it is the Karl Marx rule here that is most operative.

Charming

From Vintage Photographs

Manuel A.Bravo,"Mannequin with a Voice", 1930-35.

From Vintage Photographs

Brigitte Bardot - ballerina

From Vintage Photographs

Robert Doisneau, Camionette d’Etalagiste rue d’Alesia, Paris, 1968.

From Vintage Photographs

Girls in makeup

From Vintage Photographs

Paula Gellibrand (Cecil Beaton, 1928)

From Vintage Photographs

Paris in color before Great War

Autochrome photos of Paris 1910-1914

Sarah Bernhardt (1866, Nadar)

From Vintage Photographs

John Barrymore with daughter Diana (Alfred Cheney Johnston, approx. '21)

From Vintage Photographs

France (May, 1968)

From Vintage Photographs

(title unknown)

From Shorpy Historic Photo Archive

(title unknown)

From Vintage Photographs

(1024×803)

(title unknown)

From Vintage Photographs

(1024×803)

ANGELA DAVIS / TONI MORRISON 1974

From Vintage Photograph:

Dorothy True (by Alfred Stieglitz, 1919)

From Vintage Photographs:

Southworth & Hawes, "Young Girl with Portrait of George Washington", 1850.

From Vintage Photographs:

Dita Von Teese Has an Entire Room in Her House for Her Hats

From the Cut:

"I have a huge collection of hats — I have a whole room dedicated to them so that's a lot of hat," Dita Von Teese told Vogue.com.

"Wearing a hat says: 'I have confidence and I don't mind if people are looking at me.'" But she can't handle anyone else be-hatting her: "I have to put a hat on myself. There's just something about wearing it the right way, getting the right tilt, it's super important." Does that mean she styled her own turban-tower for Jean Paul Gaultier? [Vogue.com]"

I know next to nothing about Dita Von Teese, but I do know hats are awesome. And she's right to put on her own: getting the "right tilt" is essential. I wish I had my own room of hats.

Freida Pinto Resembles a Sparkly Mermaid

From the Cut:

Mermaids are known for being beautiful, otherworldly creatures, in which case Freida Pinto was right on point by channeling Ariel at last night's premiere of 'Miral' in Qatar. The sea-foam green color and fish-tail-style skirt is very 'Under the Sea,' no? And the sparkly top of the dress, which matches her shoes, even looks a bit like fish scales, in a glistening-in-the-ocean-depths kind of way. 

Do you like Freida's mermaid-inspired outfit, or is it too fishy for your taste?

LOVE the dress--and her.

Aviatrix: 1920

From Shorpy Historic Photo Archive:

Washington, D.C., circa 1920. "Helen Clifford." 

Who seems to have been a pilot or biker, 

or maybe just wanted to look like one. Harris & Ewing.

View full size.

Green Street: 1900

From Shorpy Historic Photo Archive:

Ithaca, New York, circa 1900. 'Greene Street.' Hey, mister -- you missed a spot. 8x10 inch dry plate glass negative, Detroit Publishing Company. View full size.

For Professor Brinkmann

Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise:

I am very sad to hear that the musicologist Reinhold Brinkmann has passed away, at the age of seventy-six. His book Late Idyll, on Brahms's Second Symphony, is a masterpiece of scholarship and a searching meditation on the art of melancholy."

Never heard of this guy, but the Second Symphony and "a searching meditation on the art of melancholy" are right up my alley. This book will be bought.

Alicia de Larrocha, Spanish Pianist, Will Be Honored

From ArtsBeat at NYT:

"Alicia de Larrocha, the great Spanish pianist who died a year ago, will be memorialized in a ceremony at the Manhattan School of Music at 3 p.m. on Oct. 24, the conservatory said. Spain’s consulate general is also sponsoring the event. Speakers will include Ms. de Larrocha’s daughter, the consul general, the president of the school and record company figures. Performers will include the pianist Joaquin Achucarro, the guitarist Jorge Caballero, the soprano Theresa Santiago and the American String Quartet, the school said."

LOVE her. I hope the ceremony turned out beautifully.

Saturday night.

From Vintage Photographs:

Miles Davis

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Composer Daniel Catan takes on the Frank Capra classic 'Meet John Doe'

From Los Angeles Times:

"Having already adapted one film for the operatic stage -- 'Il Postino,' currently playing at the Los Angeles Opera -- composer Daniel Catán is set to repeat the task with a new work based on the 1941 Frank Capra classic 'Meet John Doe.'

The opera, commissioned by the Butler School of Music in Texas, is scheduled to premiere at the University of Texas at Austin Butler Opera Center in fall 2012. Catán will be a composer-in-residence at the university in 2011 in order to work on the new composition."

How fascinating.

Will anyone in Colombia buy Ingrid Betancourt's new book?

From CS Monitor:

Today's release of Ingrid Betancourt's book, 'Even Silence has an End,' about her six years in captivity in a guerrilla camp, was marked by calls to boycott her memoir."

After picking up (but not yet reading) Letters to My Mother--letters exchanged by Betancourt and her children, impressively prefaced by Elie Wiesel--a while back, I Wiki'ed her story, in order to gain some purchase on at least the broad strokes of her captivity and aftermath. I have no real opinion on the controversies this book has aroused, nor the woman more generally, but based on what I have heard, I find the story fascinating. Unsurprisingly, so did Colombia--especially since the account, according to one bookseller, “is exceptionally well written and by far the best of all the books by former hostages."

Aesthetic value wins the day again.