Off the beaten trek. Some even agreed.
Kat Stoeffel. The Age of the MSNBC Mom
Maureen Dowd. Bill’s Belated #MeToo Moment
Pete Wells. Anthony Bourdain
Michael Ian Black. The Boys Are Not All Right
Competing Chyrons
As the EU Head and Trump addressed the White House Press today, these chyrons appeared on the bottom of each cable news screen:
Trump Makes Surprise Statement as Pompeo Grilled on Russia – CNN
President Trump: The EU will Work toward Zero Tariffs – FOX
Trump Speaks on Trade After Trump, Cohen Audio Surfaces – MSNBC
That’s the American Media today in a nutshell.
Dystopia & Disruption
Man Booker Long List announced. Dystopia and Disruption themes. Signs of the times to be sure. But. I want to escape all that. Won’t be reading The Mars Room by Rachel Kushner. Clausty on steroids. Not sure about the others on the list. Seems a dark collection.
It’s clearly a good year for Canada’s Michael Ondaatje. His 1992 The English Patient won the Man Booker Golden Prize for the best novel in the past five decades. Just read his latest, Warlight which made this year’s list. A post-World War II story, which was good, but didn’t love it as much as one of my all time faves, The Cat’s Table.
Street Talk
Not those Queens quips from Hot Air One. Although they qualify. It’s what’s overheard on the street. People on cell phones talking at high decibels. Intimate conversations with lovers. Bosses firing employees. The quack doc complaining about his wacky girlfriend crying on the floor in front of the elevators in the lobby of his building. Mother berating another over how to parent. Wife telling someone her husband’s working late every night. Even on weekends. She’s stuck home with the kids. Yup. It’s an audible soap opera every day. We can hear you!
Word on the street. U.S. Open. Ricky Fowler for the win. Wishing for Poulter. Looks like D.J.
Pigs Spotted
The Spotted Pig, trendy mainstay of the West Village has been the fodder for recent #MeToo due to bad behavior by restaurateur duo Mario Batali and Ken Friedman. Friedman’s chef co-owner April Bloomfield has parted ways with him after pretending to be oblivious to the debauched behavior in the venue’s after-hours-upstairs. Drugging and raping staff. Allegedly.
News today that another woman is going to partner with Friedman to revive The Spotted Pig. Gabrielle Hamilton, author of Blood, Bones & Butter and decades-acclaimed chef owner of East Village gem Prune. A renegade rebel from lobster fiascos at upscale camps in the Berkshires, to line chef at Curtis & Schwartz in Northampton while at Hampshire College, as told in Table’s Edge. This is an interesting decision. But. Hey. Go Gabrielle! You are a true survivor.
Collateral Sadness
Bea and Ariane. Kate Spade’s and Anthony Bourdain’s daughters. 13 and 11. They are the true victims of their parent’s suicides this week. Their loss is exacerbated by a future of questions and abandonment. Whether intended or not. Also feel for Eric Ripert who found his pal Tony. It’s not something he’ll ever forget. Guilt. Remorse. Who knows. For other family and loved ones as well. These acts take such a toll.
Bourdain’s poetic storytelling was masterful. He brought people from far away cultures into our homes. His joie de vivre was contagious. It seemed. But, his dark side crept out in many journeys as he recalled past demons of substance abuse. Credit him with shining a bright light on the opioid epidemic in Western Massachusetts. It was a catalyst to delve into the rural crises which became a national focus in the 2016 campaign.
Parts unknown. Indeed. Sad sad days.
Aside Posts
Killing Eve. BBC America’s mesmerizingly unique love story. Assassin pursued by a British agent. Vice-versa. To dub this a feminist trope would be soul-less and silly at best. It’s an intimate sensuous cold look at raw characters. Sandra Oh. Jodie Comer. Acting, writing uncannily different. In a similar spirit, HBO’s Barry has an edgy ensemble, with laugh-out-loud Russian caricatures. Violent. Ironic. Startling. Jaundiced. Captivating. Both. Must see.
Warlight. A new novel by the brilliant author Michael Ondaatdje. Not as good as one of my all-time favorites The Cat’s Table, 2011. His table metaphors continue, nonetheless. It is a melodic poetic post-WWII tale of a boy abandoned by his parents and left to the care of loving Dickensian rascals. His mother, Rose, worked with one of them on the roof of the Grosvenor House Hotel in London during the war, intercepting enemy communications.
Mansour Ghalibaf of the Hotel Northampton in Table’s Edge, happened to be partner with owners of the Grosvenor House consortium, descendants from those days. As an aside.
Psychic Picnic
Memorial Day Weekend is traditionally the gateway to summer. Picnics, cookouts, barbecues. In search of a psychic picnic, Amazon’s mini-series The Picnic at Hanging Rock kept us up late and bleary-eyed. Based on a 50-year old book by Joan Lindsay, it’s set in a remote Australian mansion turned girls’ boarding school with a sociopath headmistress played by GOT’s Margery aka Natalie Dormer. On Valentine’s Day 1900 the girls go on a picnic to Hanging Rock. Clocks stop. Never sure why. Stray plot strands abound.
The picnic ends up with 2 girls and a teacher disappearing into thin air. Never found. Through a pink cloud? What this wasn’t was a rich story. More a titillating soft-porn Victorian lesbian-like but not thing. Need a real picnic in the fresh air to dispel this stale still-life.
City Writes
Recently Joey3Sticks ran into an old customer from Frank Stella men’s clothing store on the UWS. Philip Roth recognized him and they chatted for a bit near the Park on the East Side. RIP. New York authors falling by the wayside. Wolfe now Roth. City benches will miss them.
Still living. Stephen King has a new book, The Outsider. In keeping with his genre. He was in the ‘hood for the 2018 PEN America Literary Awards at the Museum of Natural History and later sighted wearing a tux in the lobby of The Mark Hotel on the UES.
White Wolfe
Author Tom Wolfe. His books stand the test of time. No one ever coined cultures better. Social x-rays. Limousine liberals. Radical chic. The ME generation. University athletics as centers of corruption. Astronauts as heroes of a generation. Wolfe’s white suits and literary legacy live on.
I Am Charlotte Simmons. Bonfire of the Vanities. The Right Stuff. Back to Blood. All-time favorites on the Book-Treks shelf.
It seems that Tom’s first job in journalism was as a reporter at The Springfield Union, in Springfield, Massachusetts.
Side Trek . NYC 