Robert Wilson's Watermill Center Gala 2010: Paradiso

All the usual suspects were there---like jackthedripper, tryviolence, and bitchy michell.



The actress Sharon Stone functioned as an auctioneer. She got a flying insect caught up under her dress, which led to much shimmying and shaking. A lesbian photographer eventually had to get up in there with her hand to get it out. False flag?



This fellow's name was Clive, or Rodney, or Blaine. That's it---it was Blaine something or other.



I love to photograph Bill Cunningham of the New York Times for some obscure reason.



It had to have been the hottest evening of the year. Everybody simply melted, which made me feel I was in good company.

Well, the publicity ban was broken in a blockade end run. The Nubian Princess was outed in the New York Times as being the lovely Pamela Harris of Southampton. And yours truly can be spotted in a crowd scene at number 20. I being one of only two gentlemen who dared to wear shorts.

Kindra Arnesen, of Venice, Louisiana, at the Gulf Emergency Summit

"That's my coon-ass."

As somebody who spent many years in the trenches of local town-hall government, speaking before various governing bodies whose main job was to sit patiently and tolerate the abuse we amateur foot-soldier pawns heaped upon them, which is the facade behind which a failed American democracy hides the truth of an ascendant American fascism, I can identify with Ms. Arnesen, and appreciate the skill with which she has done her job in double crossing BP's co-opting of her activism. Her message is terrifying. It is worth a 16-minute viewing.

Eva Cassidy Updated

Eva Cassidy - Live at Blues Alley, 45:53


Eva Cassidy singing 'Somewhere Over the Rainbow.' Superb.

Eva Cassidy - Somewhere Over The Rainbow, 5:30


Eva Cassidy - God Bless The Child (solo), 5:18


Eva Cassidy - What a Wonderful World, 5:30


Eva Cassidy - You Take My Breath Away (HQ), 5:39


Eva Cassidy singing 'Fields of Gold', 5:01


Eva Cassidy singing 'Autumn Leaves', 6:38


'Time After Time', 4:11


'Danny Boy' OMG, 3:44


'Imagine', 4:36


A most beautiful version of 'Bridge Over Troubled Waters', 4:12


'Yesterday', 3:10



'Early One Morning', 2:20



Eva Cassidy-Stormy Monday, 5:46





72VIDEOS

Best Eva Cassidy playlist

by Elelith1980,

5:08, Eva Cassidy - Fields of Gold,

3:55, Eva Cassidy-Songbird,

View full playlist (72 videos)

Dennis Hopper and Tony Shafrazi: Get Well Soon Dennis

In response to an article in the New York Times on April 7, Madman, Perhaps; Survivor, Definitely, by Manohla Dargis, about the life and career of Dennis Hopper, I realized I had failed to keep a promise I made to the art dealer Tony Shafrazi when I was at a museum opening back in January.

I had taken the only pictures of a moment Tony designed to send a message of love and support to a very ill Hopper, and I'd forgotten to email Tony the results for him to send along to Dennis as I had promised.

Back in the sixties, Hopper had taken a famous photograph of Roy Lichtenstein sitting on the floor beside some of his iconic paintings, a photograph which was blown up into a wall graphic that served as the introduction to the exposition. Tony, along with a couple of other friends from back in the day, wrote on the back of an art poster, "To Dennis, get back on your feet," and posed with it with their thumbs up.

I

I am very glad that Dennis Hopper is still with us, and apparently doing well. His career was an absolute uniquety---and the very definition of a well-rounded artist, in my humble opinion.

I don't know much about Tony Shafrazi's career, except that as a young man in 1974, he spray painted the words "Kill Lies All" on Picasso's Guernica at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The vandalism was cleaned off within a day, according to the New York Times, so perhaps he was more interested in the publicity then the sentiment, but he was a striking looking vandal nonetheless.

If I tried a stunt like that today in order to publicize my work, I'd be sitting in the Navy Brig in Charleston, South Carolina undergoing sensory deprivation torture, which is what it feels like most of the time here anyway, for an under-appreciated 9/11 truth questling such as myself. But I'll take the moral of Dennis Hopper's uncompromising world view to heart, and let it provide me with some sustenance. I also hope he stumbles upon this little message of love and support from his friends on the internets.

Zip Lining the Forest Canopy in Costa Rica

My first YouTube video! OMFG!

Taken by my Jaco Beach "work-out" buddy Erick. Here he is landing on the platform from the previous run.

Barnetta Carter

May, 1974. Junior/Senior prom. I was the junior and she was the senior. She had her first drink that night. What a good girl she was.

R.I.P. March 2010. Dead from complications of diabetes.

I remember she was insulin dependent back then; never planned to wed, as having children was deemed too risky.

Barnetta was a gifted actress who taught at Herbert Berghof in New York for many years. More recently, she ran a summer stock theater near Rochester. She had been declining for several years, becoming more agitated with her developing dementia. I had no contact with her through this period as the thought of it was almost too much to bear.

She had a devoted companion, David, who was with her until the end, along with her three siblings, who were also at her bedside. Her funeral is Saturday in Nashville, and I'll be there, along with many others flying in to honor her as the great star she was.

P.S. She made that dress! That's the way it was done back in the day!


Addendum:

Some pictures taken at 87th Street during a visit Kent made to New York in April 1984. This is how I will always remember her---and she would be happy with these pictures too.

Barnetta and her love, John Avril.

John, Barnetta, Kent, Michael Fields, Rolf Scholander [?] and John Dunn

Me and Barnetta

Kent, Barnetta and I

Rolf, Michael and Zoe Walker, who replaced Nell Carter in Ain't Misbehavin' within her first six months in New York.

Everett Sims

1920-2002

Italy Without Simon

It just wasn't the same. Not that anything in the temperature-inverted city of Milano reminded me of my recent trip to Rome and her surrounding hills. Even the Duomo seemed a spaceship apart.

But having been cut adrift by Mr. Simon Shack---at the behest of some duck named donald---I had to find my way somehow through the cruel, lonely streets of an unfamiliar Italian city. Simon and I had talked about his bringing his crew up to join us for several days of shows and fetes and galas. Alas, it was all for naught, as Simon chose to withdraw his affection from me. If it were a test Simon, you failed.

In the absence of his warm embrace, I even got to the point of socializing with rightist politicians, such as Letizia Brichetto-Arnaboldi Moratti, the mayor of Milan. She was kind to me! And I returned the favor! Any port in a storm, I say!

(She ran as a candidate for Mayor of Milan in the 2006 municipal election, winning the election with over 52% of the votes. She is a businesswoman who worked in insurance and telecommunications, is married to the oil magnate Gianmarco Moratti, brother of Massimo Moratti. Between 1994 and 1996 she was president of the Italian state television company RAI. In 1999-2000 she was responsible for the growth of Rupert Murdoch's group in Europe. From 2001 to 2006 she was Education Minister in the second and third Berlusconi cabinet.)

And I'd even dine with Berlusconi if he'd have me! The food is better! (With apologies to Christina.) So, when it's time for heads to roll, I'll be happy sitting with the friendly fascists of Italy, and not the loathsome duckian liberals of Scandinavia!

We went to a mad party at the house of rich modern-art collectors named Orsi---who collected bears too, out the kazoo. Let me just say, their food was fabulous!

Their collection of memento-mori was also most impressive.

There were more galas then you could shack a stick at---and if I meant shake I would have said it.

At the big dinner at the Triennale Design Museum, on one side, I sat next to Pepi Marchetti Franchi, who recently opened Larry Gagosian's gallery in Rome...

and on the other side, I sat next to an old friend, Barbara Bertozzi Castelli, the widow of Leo. It must not have been easy adjusting to a marriage with an over 50-year age difference between the partners. When people mistakenly asked if she was Leo's daughter, she would say, "oh no, Leo's daughter is 68!"

Oh well, the spy business is fraught with soured relationships and broken love affairs I'm learning. But, if I ever got the chance to say I'm sorry to Simon, I would, because---I am. I'd even apologize to that old duck guy. Till then, I just have to pumpitout, I guess.

Christmas 2009: You've Come a Long Way Baby

X-mas 1964

X-mas 2009

I spent Christmas in the city, staying with a friend in her townhouse on Washington Street, which is a very old thoroughfare in downtown Manhattan, running up from the Battery to the World Trade Center site, whence in disappears within modern development, only to reappear in Tribeca, where it continues to run about 40 blocks up to 14th Street.

On the afternoon of Christmas Eve, I foolishly opened the front door from the inside without checking and set off an alarm. By the time it could be shut off, ADT had called the New York City Fire Department, and within 10 minutes an engine company and a huge ladder truck showed up at the door. The firemen were dressed in their full turnout coats, with Scotts packs on their backs.

I found it odd that an alarm company would summon the fire department for a burglar alarm being set off. While the responders couldn't have been nicer or more polite, the essential difference between firemen and police, I should think, is that firemen don't need a warrant to enter a private residence.

In any event, it seemed like a big waste of energy---both of the human and carbon variety. I saw other such fire department over-responses happening everywhere I went in the city during this trip. Luckily, I didn't note what was visible on other recent trips into the city---and that was the large American flags unfurled from the backs of speeding fire department equipment, flapping furiously in the breeze, and not looking especially fire-retardant in the process.

Or maybe I've just become sedentary in my old age, and am easily overstimulated. Whatever the changes afoot in fire department processes and procedures---if any---the members are surely earning their salaries now.

Went to Aggie's for "Cocktails," and to See the Iconic Works

What a privilege this evening was. I really don't understand how someone as transgressive as I am is allowed within kneeing distance of a major Mark Rothko, let alone the archaic Chinese bronzes. In any event, I do know how to mind my manners amongst such graceful perfection.

We'd spent half the week in the city, just doing this and that. I'd never walked along the new city park, The Highline, which were old elevated train tracks running down through Chelsea and the West Village. Whomever, did a superb job transforming the industrial wreakage into one of the most pleasant jaunts imaginable.

It is my understanding that sex exhibitionists perform in the southern windows of the Standard Hotel on Saturday nights for the delectation of park habitues.


I just love the city.

I Wasn't Going to Mention It,

but then newyorksocialdiary.com went and published a photographic image!

Last Wednesday night at the Tribeca Rooftop at 2 Desbrosses Street, Yaz and Valentin Hernandes, Cynthia and Dan Lufkin and Laura and Richard Parsons co-chaired the American Folk Art Museum Gala celebrating advocates for the arts.

I sat next to an honoree and the museum's director Maria Ann Conelli, with honoree, Adam Gopnik, to her right, and a third, Arki Busson, sitting within spitting distance.

I really don't understand the universe that puts a transgressive figure such as myself in an expensive seat. It is too hot in the spotlights near the dance floor! I want to sit off to the side near an air-conditioner vent!

Some have called me a CIA agent disguised as a schizophrenic New York left-wing, literary art fag, but I'm just your typical everyday anti-banking anarchist with a chip on his shoulder.

Jean's Mummy and Daddy

Jean came over and we braved going through some ruined boxes that had been in storage for years. Everything in them was water damaged, except for the one thing she was looking for---a photograph of her mother and father. Pangman, I believe, but don't quote me.

Mother looks like she's doing a bit of sewing. Jean couldn't do anything genteel like that at all---no harpsichord playing or embroidery for her!

Reminds me of when I used to cook for Lord and Lady Gordon of Montreal when they came down to stay at their son Peter's house. Ask them. I'm sure they won't remember me. It was the late 80's. All very nice. Very nice indeed. My wiener schnitzel was to die for.

Nick & Joe's Halloween Party 2009

They outdid themselves this year. The party which is only given on the years when Halloween falls on a Saturday (My famous drag performance, when I came as the Madonna/Whore Complex and performed a medley of songs by Mike Stoller and Jerry Leiber, which even included a major wig change, mid-number, was I believe 1994 or 1995.) had grown so large that it outgrew its domestic origins and was held for the first time at a beautifully decorated Water Mill Field House. Joe clearly ranks as a modern-day Perle Mesta---or Helga the Hostess of Horror at least.

Sixties Pamela didn't make it into the group shot because she wouldn't stop dancing and get down off the stage.

This year I came as a Tran-sexual Gladiator in a see-through toga made of shower curtains.

I'd bought a real gladiator helmet when I was in Rome and had it shipped back. I thought I needed to bring the look back down with an improvised Chiton.


I had a bag of Roman Gladiator shields, which were once part of the MGM prop collection. In the fifties, when they did big battle scenes, they would often film them in 1/16 scale, and these battle shields were created for that purpose.

I ran leather shoe laces through them and glued wire to the backs with which to gather up folds of fabric and twist-tie them into place.

It was a nice idea, but when I started to dance and sweat the whole thing nearly fell apart. People said I was a gladiator cloud.

Bridgehampton Lion's Club Not-So-Classic-Jack 1rst Prize Winner

US $50 prize. Down payment on dinner at Pierre's

Buster & Biker Jean

I Can Only Imagine

kt and allybally are deeply individualistic, expressive and moving, while the set piece for church altar, as shown by the npousa 10, is a dead public display dressed up in black and white for the marvel of synchronization. This proves to me we should only pray in the privacy of our rooms, and stay out of churches.

ktloveland


allyballybabe


npousa


Ivan Parker's version is the Ur one.

Last Night's Party at Jack Lenor Larson's Longhouse Reserve

I'd never been before. It was nice to start out at Round House, Larson's starter home next door, which a neighbor kindly opened up. A troop of drummers came to lead us away to the party proper.

As we came out of the woodland and into the sun, we were given green paper parasols

Richard, who was one of our party, had read the invitation to, "wrap yourself in silks, batik and ikat," seriously. I looked askance at him at first, but he was the absolute hit of the evening, a visual that had everybody talking to, and about him.

Bill Cunningham of the New York Times ran away in horror.

The house is fabulous, but the 16 acres of gardens are unbelievably beautiful.

The evening's ethic was good too---both in the entertainment, which was provided by scores of hyphen-Americans trained in Cambodian classical dance and Korean drumming, and in the evening's honoree, Carol Cassidy, an American weaver and textile entrepreneur, who has lived for nearly 30 years in Laos, and has done much to keep traditional craft and a sustainable economy alive there.


We were given gifts when we arrived of loomed silk Buddhist temple scarves, tightly wrapped in beautiful handmade Mulberry-paper covers, a wrap which at first I mistook for the gift itself. The scarf was the perfect addition to wear in my spectral mood.

Patrick McMullan has a picture of me up.

It was all a perfect balance between the low-keyed and the luxe.

A paper chrysanthemum temporary party decoration.

A permanent garden feature--Buckminster Fuller's "Fly's Eye Dome"


Yoko Ono's grand chessboard, "Play It by Trust," 1999.

It was all fun and games.

But I was very tired, and it left me feeling very sad.