Thursday, June 30, 2011
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Curation. And junk like that.
I love the verb to curate. It implies something done carefully, lovingly and with great consideration. Curation is something done by museum experts, shop owners and anyone who decorates his or her home. The act suggests choices of thoughtful inclusion and exclusion.
So I am quite irked when the word curation is used cavalierly. When the writer thinks that by simply using the word, she has implied that care has been taken in the selection of objects. When I see that a grotesque hodge-podge of items offered in a shopping venue has been “curated”, well, I am ready to jump through my computer screen and down the throat of whoever wrote that. (possibly now might be the time when I should switch to de-caf)
Perhaps an example: a day or so ago, the online shopping site, Gilt Groupe, offered “a line of décor in that jetset style”, which had been curated by the “famous designer Matthew Patrick Smythe”.
Now I am not within the economic demographic to know who Mr. Smythe is and I am sure he is a wonderful interior designer (for some people. the room photos shown on the site looked a little too precious and insincere; i.e. books as objects). I wonder about the people who are buying this stuff online. Do they really like these things? Do these things fit in with what is already in the home? Are the items being bought simply because Mr. Smythe put them up for sale? Are you really going to put this on your mantle?
All of these items are random, like someone’s front yard junk sale. Curated? Hardly.
(readers, i am sure you are just as shocked that the high prices are not accompanied by any historic documentation as i am)
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Newsprint scented candles. Gee, now that's a good idea.
Think it smells as good as burnt hair?
They really should come out with mimeograph candles. That, I might buy.
They really should come out with mimeograph candles. That, I might buy.
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Never fade away
Now I know why I feel invisible in my own neighborhood...
No Enclave for Old Men*
by James Wolcott
June 6, 2011, 11:14 AM
*Or women
Brendan Bernhard, the Orwell of the East Village (yes, I know Brenda says Auden but maybe we're both right), writes about the chasm between young and old in the theme park of the conscientiously hip.
You notice them everywhere in Manhattan, but perhaps particularly in a slightly out-of-the-way neighborhood such as the East Village — middle-aged or older New Yorkers who look as if they have remained in the city that doesn’t sleep way past the limits of insomnia or common sense.
They seem a little lost in this International House of Cupcakes, among i-Stoned youth, galvanized immigrants, packed bars, and cafes where the music is always played at a volume whose message might as well be posted on a notice board outside — Adults Permitted, But Youth Preferred.
Aging is a delicate, unrewarding business at best, and some people — as a result of genes, outlook, resolution, and money — manage it better than others. To judge by the relative lack of oldsters in the East Village (anyone over 40 is a rarity on the streets after 9 p.m., and most of those are either homeless, comatose, or possibly dead), it’s obvious that this is one of the more trying places in which to grow old. Those who hang on must also confront the irony of living in an era in which they are constantly scolded that it is within their power to remain “young,” while being made to feel ancient almost all the time.
[snip]
Journalists generally don’t write about growing older in a hip young neighborhood because even hinting at an interest in the topic is tantamount to an admission that they may be getting a little long in the tooth themselves. Yet age apartheid is one of the most salient and least discussed aspects of life in the East Village. In his disastrous but unforgettable mayoral campaign of 1969, Norman Mailer suggested turning the East Village into an autonomous zone, leaving the acid-heads and “freaks” to run the place, rather as the Danes did with the Christiania section of Copenhagen a couple of years later. It never happened, but in a way the neighborhood is as unbalanced as if it had.
No such apartheid here on the Upper West Side, where the oldsters terrorize young and middle-aged alike with random complaints that have long, complicated histories attached that we're all supposed to be familiar with. I would provide examples but it's no way to start a Monday.
No Enclave for Old Men*
by James Wolcott
June 6, 2011, 11:14 AM
*Or women
Brendan Bernhard, the Orwell of the East Village (yes, I know Brenda says Auden but maybe we're both right), writes about the chasm between young and old in the theme park of the conscientiously hip.
You notice them everywhere in Manhattan, but perhaps particularly in a slightly out-of-the-way neighborhood such as the East Village — middle-aged or older New Yorkers who look as if they have remained in the city that doesn’t sleep way past the limits of insomnia or common sense.
They seem a little lost in this International House of Cupcakes, among i-Stoned youth, galvanized immigrants, packed bars, and cafes where the music is always played at a volume whose message might as well be posted on a notice board outside — Adults Permitted, But Youth Preferred.
Aging is a delicate, unrewarding business at best, and some people — as a result of genes, outlook, resolution, and money — manage it better than others. To judge by the relative lack of oldsters in the East Village (anyone over 40 is a rarity on the streets after 9 p.m., and most of those are either homeless, comatose, or possibly dead), it’s obvious that this is one of the more trying places in which to grow old. Those who hang on must also confront the irony of living in an era in which they are constantly scolded that it is within their power to remain “young,” while being made to feel ancient almost all the time.
[snip]
Journalists generally don’t write about growing older in a hip young neighborhood because even hinting at an interest in the topic is tantamount to an admission that they may be getting a little long in the tooth themselves. Yet age apartheid is one of the most salient and least discussed aspects of life in the East Village. In his disastrous but unforgettable mayoral campaign of 1969, Norman Mailer suggested turning the East Village into an autonomous zone, leaving the acid-heads and “freaks” to run the place, rather as the Danes did with the Christiania section of Copenhagen a couple of years later. It never happened, but in a way the neighborhood is as unbalanced as if it had.
No such apartheid here on the Upper West Side, where the oldsters terrorize young and middle-aged alike with random complaints that have long, complicated histories attached that we're all supposed to be familiar with. I would provide examples but it's no way to start a Monday.
Monday, June 13, 2011
Simple. And clever.
A friend of ours recently bought an apartment and planned some minor renovations: sand and seal the floor, take out the walls of the second bedroom and add a Murphy bed. A Murphy bed? Yippee!
In space shy Manhattan apartments, it is the perfect solution to the problem of a seldom-used guest bedroom. There are other options. There is the daybed, the fold-out couch, the aerobed, and the “don’t-go-to-bed-drunk” hammock but none of them are all that clever. The Murphy bed really is clever, isn’t it?
And who doesn’t love a Murphy bed? As a kid, I was fascinated by these life-size gadgets. I loved the presto change-o aspect of them. One minute you see a plain wall and the next, viola, a perfectly made bed. It was like the secret door in the bookcase of a mansion’s library or (eek) in the guest bedroom. As kids, we like gadgets. We like things that do stuff, things that change from one thing to another, things in which the ultimate intention isn’t immediately clear.
Of course I don’t remember where I saw my first one; it must have been on television or in the movies. The bed just seemed like a genius idea. It seemed like a great place to hide but onIy if you were two-dimensional.
The bed is a piece of furniture that has remained virtually unchanged since around 8000 BCE. The early beds were made up of straw or any other natural cushion found nearby (fir boughs, palm leaves). Around 3200 BCE, beds in Scotland were raised boxes topped with comfortable fillers. Like the pencil, beds do exactly what they are designed to do. With a few aberrations, the main difference in beds has been in their decorative framing. But the Murphy bed does something different. It doesn’t need to be tarted up to look like a space wasting sexy thing. It is cool and sleek just as it is. And it disappears.
Saturday, June 11, 2011
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
