RIP Julius Shulman

1910-2009

Julius Shulman was arguably the father of architectural photography and certainly a peerless chronicler of the architecture of Southern California. In this video from The Los Angeles Times he talks about taking one of the most famous pictures of architecture ever taken: Case Study House #22, with the LA basin in the background.

Video: LATimes.com

I'm enjoying Lifetimes "Drop Dead Diva"

It's a kind of mash-up of "Pushing Daisies", "Desperate Housewives" and a little soupçon of "Life and Loves of a She-Devil" (the book, not the movie).

My only problem is that were supposed to think that Brooke Elliot is just soooo fat. Ms. Elliot is a beautiful, talented woman who might be a size 12. She looks like Catherine Zeta-Jones younger, slightly plumper sister. Even with unflattering photography you can see that most men would be kissing their elbows for the chance to date her. I mean, if this is the image that women are supposed to take as a hopeless loser, what have they have to look forward to?

The show however is a ball, I can't wait to see what they do with it and Brooke Elliot is a lady to watch.

Photo: Lifetime

Supermarkets, and less than super markets..

Paul at Deliver Rants wrote a funny post about modern shopping. It's pretty hilarious, and like most of his posts, dead on. Maybe if we all ask pretty he'll write more?

Photo credit: The Daily News

Happy Fourth everyone!

Isn't this a marvelous picture? It's from the New York Times showing the Macy's fireworks over the Hudson. Also, the crown of the Statue of Liberty (thanks, France!) is open to visitors again.

I vividly remember watching the fireworks from the roof of my East Village hovel, the World Trade Center framing them and the ones to celebrate the centennial of the Brooklyn Bridge. The fourth was also the date when I first became close friends (as opposed to casual acquaintance) with my best friend of over thirty years long ago at the Three County Fair, my dear Moo.

So I hope that all of you are having a great holiday weekend with those dear to you eating far too much hot dogs and having far too much fun. You can sleep in tomorrow unless you have church, in which case you'll have something physical to repent in addition to spiritual.

Lastly, I'm taking a moment to think about the 233 year history of this nation. It ain't perfect, but it's pretty darned good.

Photo: NYTimes

Your World, Boning You

Just got an email breathlessly informing me that I can have a new "Navigator" give me turn-by-turn directions sent to my iPhone for only $9.99 per month!

Why am I not biting?

Well, most of my month is going to work. Here's the directions (when I drive): turn left out of garage. Turn right onto Beverly Blvd. Go straight until you hit Spring St. (10 miles). Turn right, enter garage. Directions home? Exit garage. Turn right on 3rd. Drive 10 miles. Re-enter alley. Park car and get mail.

When you can get me the turn-by-turn directions to find the pen I misplaced in apartment I'll be impressed. Actually, if you can get me service in my apartment I'll be impressed.

Image from the email ATT sent me

Birthdays, whine and wined

I've had some birthdays that majorly sucked. Well, I should write that they sucked in that some bad but not terrible things happened. None were spent in bed with a life threatening disease, at the end of a gun, in jail or fleeing an attack of giant man-eating clams. But there was the one that I remember as a kid during a thunderstorm, where lightning struck the tree outside the kitchen window at the exact moment that I blew out the candles, shattering said maple, sending shrapnel into the kitchen and ruining the cake. As I remember it ruined a fair bit of the kitchen as well but I am unto this day a boy more inclined to mourn cake than crockery I've gotten bad gifts, heck I've gotten dumped on my birthday (well close enough for Jazz).

So it was very nice to stay in bed very late and then spend some time with one of my dearest friends having a very nice dinner. We went to Gordon Ramsey's place at the London in West Hollywood (formerly the Bel Age) and had a great time- wonderful food (a mushroom and sweetbreads pitivier that I'm going to steal), great service, LA a carpet at our feet and the warmth of a friendship that has lasted more than a quarter century (we met when we were 3). The irony that I was with yet again one of my tight circle of lovely, clever, desirable women who are slashingly witty as they are chic wasn't lost upon me. But heck, if Hugh Jackman was at the other end of the table I wouldn't have dared ordered the panna cotta.

Thank you dear friend for giving me a delightful birthday dinner.

Image: Ken Hvely for the Los Angeles Times. accompanying S. Irene Virbilia's review of the restaurant.

Disposable Husbands, Disposable Lives.

In todays Los Angeles Times, columnist James Rainey writes about Sandra Tsing Loh's article in the Atlantic about her recent divorce, called "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off". Rainey calls Loh out a bit, writing

"I suspect I will not be the only Loh fan dismayed by a piece of work that simultaneously goes too far -- letting the "flaming jet fuselage" of her own wrecked relationship cloud all marriage -- and not far enough -- failing to address any of the specific details that sent her partnership into a tailspin."

I would take it a little further, perhaps pointing out the rich irony of a woman who makes her living as the self-described "Mother on Fire"; exhorting mothers across the State to march on Sacramento this Sunday to fight for their children's rights would toss her marriage aside because marriage is in essence Too Much Work.

I suppose it was inevitable that when a public persona has a personal crisis that said persona will have to come up with a public mea culpa. It's rather interesting in this day when some Californians are fighting for the reinstatement of their right to marry that there's a public figure blaming the wreckage of hers not on the fact that she and her "fellow transgressor" got caught, but on the idea that the institution itself is so fundamentally flawed it should just be dropped as a social construct.

Image of Charles and Diana's divorce decree from CNN.com

Kultcha Klash

None other that the New York Times has taken upon itself to present the homes of Bravo's latest little train wreck "The Real Housewives of New Jersey". The focus of the article, is, as it should be, on outsider "Danielle" who may or may not have a dubious past, and might not even be names (horrors!) Danielle. For this crime she's being stonewalled in joining in friendship with the rarified social circle defined by the intermarried and hopelessly intermingled clan that makes up the rest of the cast: sisters Caroline and Dina and in-laws Teresa and Jacqueline. Danielle is a climber, you see, baldly stating her desire for a wealthy man to take care of her and her two daughters and not afraid to flaunt her sexuality to get one. Which doesn't fly with the socially staid Manzo clan (because being a climber is unforgiveable. Having your Father-in-Law "Tiny" found crammed in the trunk of his Continental stuffed full of lead canape's however is genteel). All except Jacqueline, who wants to be the "nice" one and doesn't want to hurt Danielle's feelings but doesn't want to cross her relatives.

In the mean time in between shopping trips Teresa is building her dream home, so swathed with "marble, granite and onyx" that it resembles the planets most inviting (certainly largest) mausoleum, laying out hundred dollar bills like a licker-tape parade. If there isn't an audit of this entire clan by the time the finale airs, it will only prove that there are no gay IRS agents.

Andy Cohen, drop a dime on them. Do it in time for sweeps. Because "Real Housewives of the Federal Pen" will be must-see TV.

Photo: Bravo

Memories, like the corners that need dusting...

March at PerfumePosse wrote today about her reasons for becoming a perfumista; basically because of the transportative power of scent.

Of course yards of literature by people with far more interesting powers of description that I could hope to enjoy have been written on the subject, whether the taste of Proust's Madeleines or the smell of Shakespeare's roses, Lawrence's chrysanthemums or even Chaucer's famous flatulence.

But really, doesn't everyone have a scent that can instantly transport you into the past, for better or worse? The scent of a former paramours cologne smelled on another? The smell of dry leaves and cut grass taking you back to the autumnal leaf-forts of you (well, my) childhood? The dusty smell of roses on a hot summer day: something that will ever and always make me think of my friend Sue and her "rose alley" or the slightly oily smell of the canyons above Los Angeles, ripe with jasmine, that take me back to the days when I had a convertible and used to waste gas driving about at night, gleefully driving miles out of my way to the grocery store to enjoy the exciting, ozone-pregnant Santa Anas. Or the wet smell of concrete and food and fecund subway grates that is New York?

Even if the memories are ones that you've never had. Maybe that's why I am so seduced by all that is from the house of Lutens; I know that my starch WASP-ness is so ingrained I might as well have a small green crocodile instead of a left nipple, but I can open one of those bell jars and am suddenly in a Souk. Because sometimes you want to be the Sheik, and sometimes you want to be Lady Diana..

Image: Les Salons du Palais Royale

Kindle- an apology

I've always been a big skeptic of the Kindle. For those who have never heard of it. it's Amazon's proprietary book reader doohickey. It holds up to 3500 books, magazines or newspapers and costs about $350 for the smaller model and nearly $500 for the deluxe one with the larger screen. I've been pretty snobbish about the thing, metaphorically clutching my pearls over the whole affair; why, I read books, thanks ever so. Actual books. The ones with pages and stuff. The ones that sit on my shelves and make me look learned, or at least make me look like I don't dust enough. I am still skeptical about paying that much for a book reader then paying for the books on top of it, even if the books are $10 -$15 dollars off the rack price. After all, they're saving on printing and shipping costs and any further nail into the coffin of the actual brick-and-mortar bookstore is I believe no good thing.

What caused a chink in my anti-Kindle armor? Kindle for iPhone. That, and the fact that there are tons of classics out there that are if not free, then almost free at the Kindle store. I downloaded a free copy of one of E. F. Benson's inimitable "Lucia" novels and have been reading it on the bus, and yes Virigina it's clearly legible on even the teensy screen on my iPhone. But the real chink came when I decided to hoist the hardcover omnibus edition onto the sofa to read some more. It was quite frankly as easy and carefree as balancing the Gutenberg Bible on your chest for an evenings reading refreshment. I admit it, I shelved the book and grabbed the iPhone. and while flipping the "pages" I had visions of the luxury of doing this on the big-screen Kindle, having all sorts of boks available to me at my whim in that slim and nearly weightless package. Certainly never having to think about what the cover of my read is communicating to fellow passengers would be nice: the Kindle's blameless wite casing could contain anything from the Bible to Barbara Cartland, from Stephen King to Stephen Hawking,. You could be reading the lastest number of "TLe Monde" or "Love's Lurid Lustbats" and no-one would be the wiser, and I can see that the inverterate traveller would find this a godsend.

$500 is looking somewhat more reasonable..

Photo: Amazon