April 7, 2011 The Culture Diaries A Week in Culture: Kim Hastreiter, Editor, Part 2 By Kim Hastreiter This is the second installment of Hastreiter’s culture diary. Click here to read part 1. DAY FOUR 11:05 A.M. Hop over with Drew and Jacob to Gagosian Gallery in Beverly Hills to catch the Gus Van Sant show as well as the Ed Ruscha garbage paintings. The guys were drooling over the Van Sant homoerotic boy paintings. They were just okay in my book and forty thousand dollars each. And the exhibition was sponsored by Gucci. (So LA). I liked the Ruscha garbage paintings, although I wouldn’t have bought any of this art even if I were a zillionaire. Gus Van Sant at Gagosian. 12:15 P.M. I dropped off the boys at the hotel and headed up to Laurel Canyon to visit my friend, the artist Adele Lutz. Within five minutes of Hollywood Boulevard, I was completely in nature. We hung out drinking diet cokes in Adele’s lush backyard looking for mountain lions (one walked through her yard just the week before!). 2:45 P.M. Starving. Adele and I head down to a wonderful new spot I heard about called Tinga, on La Brea and Second Street, where they make the most yummy Oaxacan street food. Boy, did we have an outrageous lunch. The food is ridiculous and the folks who run it are sweethearts. They kept giving us stuff to try. Crazy good. They gave us a salsa made from toasted grasshoppers. Yikes. Norwegian chefs.6:30 P.M. Head downstairs to the Standard pool to check out the setup for our “Beautiful People” party we’re throwing with Guess. It starts at seven. Everyone is running around. Madness. Meet Josh Madden who is deejaying for us and bond with him immediately. He is cute, smart, and a true-blue Paper fanatic. His brothers are famous: Joel and Benji Madden of Good Charlotte. Josh is more into being a regular guy. The party is full blast by eight. My posse arrives: the Brunettis, Press and Gefter, Cameron Silver and Jeff Snyder, and my old friend Debi Mazar decked head to toe in Isabel Toledo with her cute husband, Gabriele, in tow. Their Cooking Channel show Extra Virgin is a hit, so bulbs are flashing. It’s fun. Cobrasnake comes with his mom, who I adore with the hilarious Johnny Makeup! Paper fans are everywhere. Four identically dressed chefs from Norway introduce themselves, as does Jesse Williams, the gorgeous guy who plays one of the Grey’s Anatomy doctors. Turns out he’s a big Paper fan! Beautiful person Keri Hilson sings fiercely. It’s a success so I breathe a sigh of relief, run upstairs, and pack, as we have to be at the airport at five A.M. the next morning to catch the first flight back to New York to be back in time to throw our East Coast “Beautiful People” party that night! Oy vey. Read More
April 6, 2011 The Culture Diaries A Week in Culture: Kim Hastreiter, Editor By Kim Hastreiter DAY ONE, Los Angeles 9:00 A.M. Arrived at LAX late last night. Woke up shivering cold to gray skies in my mod jumbo suite at the super friendly no-fuss Hollywood Standard Hotel on Sunset. After a week of torrential rain, LA was damn cold. I was there for a quickie four-day stint and had fish to fry, so I dragged my ass out of bed, hiked across the street to Enterprise, grabbed a rental Camry and headed to my friend Robert’s Los Feliz craftsman bungalow for brunch and a catch-up. Ed Wohl boards. 10:35 A.M. Heading east on Beverly, I stopped in to check out my friends Robin and Cathy Petrovic’s fabulous Heath Ceramics store just past Fairfax. This extraordinary shop is filled with the wonderful dishes and tiles of Sausalito-based pottery-maker Heath, as well as great collaborations with other like-minded artists and artisans. 11:30 A.M. After turning left on Avocado Street, I passed Little Doms, the Los Feliz watering hole, and drove in circles looking for parking. I finally pulled up the steep hill outside my friend’s house and cracked hard into the car in front of me. Thank God for bumpers. 5:00 P.M. Back in Hollywood to meet up with my dear friend Ford Wheeler, a production designer, who’s in LA for twenty-four hours scouting for the new David Chase film he’s been working on. Funny how it takes coming to LA to see friends from New York. We hung out at the hotel for a few hours catching up on life and excitedly checking out an early copy of the spring design issue of T Magazine. His art-filled homes are featured on a six-page spread. Read More
March 24, 2011 The Culture Diaries A Week in Culture: Elizabeth Samet, Writer and Professor, Part 2 By Elizabeth Samet This is the second installment of Samet’s culture diary. Click here to read part 1. DAY FOUR I’ve been following the bassist Peter Washington around New York this week. I didn’t plan it that way: I didn’t know that Washington would be playing not only with Ann Hampton Callaway but also with the Terell Stafford Quintet at the Village Vanguard. A friend of mine who will be moving out of Manhattan in a few months told me he had never been to the Vanguard. This is unacceptable. Besides, it has been far too long since I’ve heard anyone there. The very first time I went to the Vanguard I was just out of college: I heard the late Illinois Jacquet play “Flying Home” that night. There are worse introductions. Tonight there are two hecklers at the table behind us. Does this really happen? Do people pay a cover to heckle jazz musicians? I don’t get it. They are soon bounced, and the only other distraction proves to be the pair of unabashed lovebirds at the table in front of us. I guess the music of Billy Strayhorn—Stafford has just released This Side of Strayhorn—can have that effect on people. It took me in other directions, prompting a reflection on my relationship to the music of Strayhorn and Ellington, which was for several years just about the only music I listened to. I would prowl the excellent jazz department at the old Tower Records in Boston for more and more Ellington: first cassettes and then CDs, everything from the early Brunswick and Vocalion recordings to Money Jungle, the 1962 trio session with Max Roach and Charles Mingus. Stafford closed the set with Strayhorn’s “Johnny Come Lately.” I’m listening now to the version on The Blanton-Webster Band. But if you really want to get a sense of the Strayhorn mystique, listen to Ellington calling “Strays” out on stage to join him for “Drawing Room Blues” and “Tonk” on Live at the Blue Note, a recording of a 1959 date in Chicago. And Peter Washington? His playing was luminous—again. And a brief conversation with him in between sets suggests he’s as gracious as he is good. Read More
March 23, 2011 The Culture Diaries A Week in Culture: Elizabeth Samet, Professor and Writer By Elizabeth Samet DAY ONE What better way to launch this diary than with a little detour, en route to meet some friends, along the street of pianos? I love the Sunday morning silence of this short stretch of West 58th Street between Broadway and Seventh Avenue: all those Steinways, Bechsteins, and Bosendorfers asleep inside their showrooms. Outside there’s only the light jingle of the collar on a small but imperious terrier, its owner dragging sleepily behind. The terrier—preferably Fox or Welsh—is my ideal virtual dog. I can admire one in passing; then someone else can take it home. The canine’s playful condescension always calls to mind my favorite couplet, Alexander Pope’s epigram, which the poet had engraved on the collar of a puppy he once gave the Prince of Wales: “I am his Highness’ dog at Kew/ Pray tell me Sir, whose Dog are you?” My Piano Street Strut concludes a musical weekend. Let’s start in reverse order: Lucinda Williams, Webster Hall, Saturday night. Webster Hall has its own time zone: doors open at 6; show starts at 7; or maybe 7:45, as they inform you at the door; or, in fact, a little after 8, when Lucinda Williams steps onto the stage saying, “Sorry.” The hall is packed, and the crowd can’t get enough. Many are obvious veterans of her shows; they keep screaming, “Lu!” and lifting their beers in tribute. My favorite Williams recordings are bundles of bitterness, but I’m just not hearing it this night. But what chance did anyone really have after Ann Hampton Callaway at Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola on Friday? I raced home from a late night at work to meet friends in from D.C. for the show, which was delayed a bit because of some water problems at the club. Never underestimate the cosmic force of a diva: Callaway can conjure the elements. Water flowed again. And then Tony Bennett appeared. Yes, he did. Callaway improvised a song of tribute to him. It’s that capacity for improvisation, that singing on the precipice, I so admire about Callaway’s artistry. She often speaks of the importance of “live music,” and then she lives it right there in front of you. The first time I saw her she improvised a song using whatever unlovely, unmusical words the audience happened to suggest. I attended that show in the company of Callaway’s father, the great Chicago journalist John Callaway, who died in 2009. He interviewed me once and quickly became a friend. John was the most delightful correspondent: we wrote to each other about politics, sports, and books. (He was a fan of Henning Mankell mysteries.) And when he came to New York, I looked forward to dinner and stories of the old City News Bureau in Chicago. How is it that we can feel so deeply the loss of people we’ve known but a short while? Maybe it’s because there are so many stories left to tell. Read More
March 17, 2011 The Culture Diaries A Week in Culture: Zachary Kanin, Cartoonist, Part 2 By Zachary Kanin This is the second installment of Kanin’s culture diary. Click here to read part 1. DAY FOUR 8:00 P.M. I had dinner with my best friend from when I was a baby. DAY FIVE 10:00 P.M. Played harmonica with the “The Calamity Janes” at the Rod and Gun club in Williamsburg. My friend Chris discovered that he is a prodigy at zooming in and out on a FlipCam. Read More
March 16, 2011 The Culture Diaries A Week in Culture: Zachary Kanin, Cartoonist By Zachary Kanin DAY ONE 11:30 A.M. A graduate student came to my house to film me making a sandwich for her documentary, which, as far as I can tell, is about cartoonists eating lunch. 3:30 P.M. While on a stroll in the park, three teenagers ran up behind me, threw me to the ground, and punched me repeatedly in the head. I threw them off and ran far enough away to call the police. I spent the next several days replaying the scene in my head. Read More