Five-Star Chiffon

Songs

Chiffon may have turned 70 this year, but he's still a 16-year old girl inside.  And streaming music has liberated her from the tyranny of critical gatekeepers.  Rolling Stone reviews once determined what records she would buy with her allowance and Baskin-Robbins 31 Flavors income; now she simply clicks on Apple's "New Music Daily" playlist and downloads what she likes--277 songs and 64 albums this year--based on sound only, baby (SOB).

Last year I managed to distill my favorites to 25 unusually diverse choices.  My year-end playlist now has doubled in size, reflecting a resurgence in rock (Inhaler and The Struts) and legacy acts (Iggy Pop, Pet Shop Boys, Robbie Robertson, Noel Gallagher, Shania Twain and Dolly Parton) as well as "Barbie."  IMHO, that soundtrack contributed mightily to the movie's success.  

A loud shout-out to Jessie Ware, too, whose body of disco-inspired work gets better and better:  "That! Feels Good!" is her best album yet and she's just as fabulous in concert.  This old queen thought he'd died and gone to heaven when she encored with a cover of "Believe," from the balcony of Washington, DC's Lincoln Theater bedecked in a boa and evening gown.

If I had to pick a favorite 2023 release it would be a fight-to-the-death battle between the cool and uncool: Post Malone's "Chemical" vs. Lewis Capaldi's "Heavenly Kind of State of Mind," both of which deserve to be heard speeding along the autobahn at 160 km per hour.  But Capaldi wins in the end:  oxycontin, the subject of "Chemical" simply can't compete with romantic love, now matter how cheesy in Chiffon's world view! 

As for lyrics, Chiffon asks:  "Who's better than Tay Tay?"  

'Cause she's the kind of book that you can't put down

Like if Cleopatra grew up in a small town

And all the bad boys would be good boys

If they only had a chance to love her

And to tell you the truth, sometimes I wish I was her

"Pearls" by Jessie Ware

"Just To Keep You Satisfied" by Inhaler

"Heaven" by Niall Horan

"Did you know there's a tunnel under Ocean Blvd.?" by Lana del Rey

"Living in the past" by Pet Shop Boys

"Heartbreak in the Making" by Dagny

"Inhale/Exhale AIR" by Shania Twain

"Acrostico" by Shakira

"New Atlantis" by Iggy Pop

"Ant Pile" by Dominic Fike

"Revolve Around You" by Lola Young

"Family" by the Weeknd & Suzanna Son

"Heavenly Kind of State of Mind" by Lewis Capaldi

"rock hudson" by Kelly Clarkson

"Can't" by ANOHNI

"Man I Am" by Sam Smith

"Your Spit" by IAN SWEET

"Elevator Eyes" by Tove Lo

"When Emma Falls In Love (Taylor's Version)" by Taylor Swift

"Red Horse" by Corinne Bailey Rae

"So Right" by Carly Rae Jepson

"Think of a Number" by Noel Gallagher's High Flying Circus

"pretty isn't pretty" by Olivia Rodrigo

"More" by Madeline Edwards

"Paint My Bedroom Black" by Holly Humberstone

"Still Standing" by Robbie Robertson

"Pretty Vicious" by The Struts

"Wrecking Ball (featuring Miley Cyrus)" by Dolly Parton

"One Last Try" by Romy

"Fever Dreamer" by SG Lewis, Charlotte Day Wilson & Channel Tres

"Stop The Bleeding" by Baby Rose

"Dance The Night" by Dua Lipa

"Your Mind Is Not Your Friend (featuring Phoebe Bridgers)" by The National

"Jersey Giant" by Elle King

"It Never Went Away" by Jon Batiste

"Killing Me" by Conan Gray

"Amandla" by Sun-El Musician & Msaki

"Sunrise (featuring Ocean Vuong)" by Gus Dapperton

"Chemical" by Post Malone

"Pride" by Joy Oladokun

"Summertime/Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child" by Mahalia Jackson

"Higher Than Ever Before (Barry Can't Swim Remix)" by Disclosure

"Fall In Love" by Icona Pop

"Close" by Dizzy

"Modern Loneliness" by LAUV

"I Remember Everything (featuring Kacey Musgraves)" by Luke Bryan

"Beast" by Idina Menzel

"These Lips" by Jessie Ware

"You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)" by Sigala & Adam Lambert

"Where The Wild Things Are" by Luke Combs

Books (26)

Thank you Colm Toibin and Edward White for sending me back to Thomas Mann and Alfred Hitchcock, the respective masters of their domains, but Tom Crewe wrote my favorite book of the year, a riveting historical novel that captures an era when sexual self-expression demanded lonely courage.  Meanwhile, Jac Jemc prompted a spontaneous pilgrimage to Bavaria with her delightful take on royal cousins, one of whom built the fairy-tale castle that Walt Disney appropriated for Cinderella.

Empty Theatre

The New Life

The Prettiest Star

Buddenbrooks

The Twelve Lives of Alfred Hitchcock

Death In Venice

The Magician

Mr. Wilder & Me

Movies (95)

Like every other movie maven in America, I embraced "Barbenheimer" after an exceedingly long and unsatisfying spate of IP-driven dreck, but more germane to the development of this list were the imminent demise of DVD.com, which had me ransacking the films of my youth, and Ferrari, Michael Mann's late-breaking capstone to an illustrious career that proves 80-year-old white guys still have testosterone-filled moves.  I LOVED it, as much for the thrilling camera work and superb performances as a screenplay that expects viewers to connect the dots AND go along for the sensational (and horrifying) ride.

Oppenheimer

Avatar:  The Way Of Water

Ferrari

Mascarpone

One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

Barbie

Sunday, Bloody Sunday

Little Children

The Birds

Psycho

Tetris

Emily

Women Talking

Theater (10)

Would you believe that I saw Hamilton for the first time this year and didn't give it five stars?  Chalk up the near-miss to the fact that the influence of the once-in-a-generation hit over the past decade has been so pervasive that it seems slightly stale, notwithstanding the excellence of the current production.

Honorable mention goes to Stereophonic, an overlong, four-star drama about the difficulty of artistic collaboration with terrific performances all around and amazing music by Will Butler.

  

Good Night, Oscar

Parade

White Girl In Danger

Kimberly Akimbo

Streaming

It's ironic that I don't rate the form of entertainment that occupies more time than any other but I do have an off-screen life, however diminished by age.  Cue the melancholy bagpipes:  The Crown, Peter Morgan's unparalleled exercise in truthful imagination, is finally finished, like QEII herself.  No pleasures are guilty and I ate up every episode (and dress) of The Gilded Age.  Beef, Reservation Dogs and especially The Bear elevated my appreciation for unfamiliar cultures, and giving Euphoria a second chance proved that addiction stories could be given a new spin.  The latter also excavated a heretofore unknown musical treasure:  Mahalia Jackson's seamless medley of a show tune by George Gershwin (portrayed in Good Night, Oscar, above) and a mournful African American spiritual.  Finally, A Small Light added an ancillary dimension to Anne Frank's story, one that reminds us of a time when younger progressives were more likely to sympathize with Jews than castigate them.

And Desi Makes Nine

Not counting Mr. P, Vedder & Moofy, of course.  Aside from the first year of the pandemic, I can't remember a Christmas holiday I haven't spent with Tom, Audrey, Magda and Zoltan. Our gathering has more than doubled in size with the addition of Magda's and Joe's family, the D-Kids.

Desi, the newest addition, really got into the spirit of things.

He definitely has upped the testosterone level at 14 Thomas Park.

My visit started off with a small-world coincidence when Chris texted me from the Boston Museum of Fine Arts while I was on the train: "Look who I ran into!"  He and Zoltan, whom he hadn't seen since his commissioning ceremony, had both leaned in to read a label about some European battle painting.  Peas in a (history) pod.

Tom took me on a driving tour of North Andover, which included the Stevens Estate at Osgood Hill now used for special events.

I brought Audrey an ornament from the Huntington Garden and Library.  She and Tom do all their own gardening, landscaping and snow removal.  It's a LOT.

Zoltan and I took a late afternoon walk on the Common, past the North Parish Church.

The church cemetery dates back to before the Revolutionary War.

Anne Lillie Howard married a man who participated in the Boston Tea Party.  She probably had a life of her own, too, but you'd never know it from the engraving on her memorial.

Joseph Kittredge built this mansion in 1784.  It remains in his family.  Now that's a New England pedigree!

Zoltan struck a pose in front of the Hay Scales Building before driving me back to Boston's South Station.

 

Big Black Stand At Attica (3*)

I don't normally get my information about seminal events in American history from graphic novels but a full-length history of the 1971 Attica uprising wasn't something I ever would pick up either.  It occurred weeks within my arrival at Columbia but I was oblivious to it at the time.

Frank "Big Black" Smith (1933-2004) narrates the events from his perspective as the man designated by the mostly black inmates to negotiate on their behalf for better conditions and basic rights in an inhumane environment run by a cadre of white supremacist thugs. But as fully cognizant as I have become of systemic racism in American society, I took much of what he describes with a grain of salt, particularly his headlong attack on Nelson Rockefeller.  The book avoids analyzing any political considerations New York State's governor may have faced in trying to get the situation under control even though Smith encountered similar pressures from inmates more radical than he.  Rockefeller, however, had Presidential aspirations while Smith sought only to negotiate prison reform.

Still, if nothing else, Big Black Stand at Attica cites forensic evidence that some unarmed hostages and prisoners were shot in the back by the law enforcement personnel that Rockefeller dispatched to quell the rebellion after three days.  According to Wikipedia, this resulted in the deaths of 33 prisoners and 10 guards, all but four of whom were killed by Rockefeller's goons.  Smith himself was tortured by guards reacting to a rumor that he had castrated one of their own.

Although modest improvements were made in prisoner living conditions in the immediate aftermath of the uprising, Attica has since reverted to the status quo of the late 60s and early 70s.  For obvious reasons, prisoner's rights have failed to get much political traction--felons in many states are prohibited from voting while incarcerated--but Attica remains a haunting reminder of what can happen in the absence of reform.

Fall Back

My autumn began with a very rainy commute to Williamsburg on the New York Ferry, past the United Nations which, in just a few weeks, would once again prove its utter ineffectuality.

After meeting Victor's boyfriend, I walked back uptown from 34th Street dock on the East River, waving at Albert.  Check out his handlebar message.

Fog shrouded the buildings in midtown.

My hardy umbrella--a gift from Florian's mother--depicts major tourist attractions in Germany. Little did I know on that rainy Sunday I would impulsively travel to Bavaria in early October.

Another long walk pulled me south along the Hudson River, past the development of the far West Side that has completely transformed the skyline from New Jersey.

Amtrak took me to see Christine in DC for just $62, round trip.  I'd never been to the Library of Congress before.

We also visited the Congressional Cemetery, equipped with a map that helped us find more than a dozen LGBTQ graves.  That was a first in my experience.

Halloween was just around the corner by the time I returned from my early fall travels.

I kept running into evidence of the turmoil in the Middle East on the Upper West Side. College students and New Yorkers have aligned themselves with either Jews or Palestinians as Israel retaliates against Hamas after the worst terrorist attack in the country's violent history.  

When I was at Columbia exactly a half-century earlier, during the Yom Kippur War, a pro-Arab demonstration would have been inconceivable.  The world has changed thanks to generational forgetting.  "Have you ever been to Dachau?" I wanted to shout.  It was fresh on my mind.

Autumn colors seemed to arrive later this year.

I spent a delightful Thanksgiving weekend in Boston with Magda, Joe, Dagny, Della, and Desmond.  We hit the Science Museum on Friday, a regular weekend destination for the family when it's cold outside.

They took me to Mount Auburn Cemetery, too.

Dagny gleefully scooted past all the Boston Brahmins buried there.

Thom and I caught Hell With Jesus at La Mama Experimental Theater.  Ivo Dimchev (center, with microphone) encouraged the audience to come on stage and take selfies with him.  We clung to our seats.

Solo travel and photographing holiday windows occupied much of my fall, but I still managed to squeeze in ten museum or gallery shows, including West Coast art bro Ed Ruscha at the Modern.  He painted this work to be seen in a rear-view mirror, like a billboard receding on Sunset Boulevard.  Groovy concept, man.

A guard instantly reminded me that photos at the Frick Madison were prohibited shortly after I shot this work by Barkley L. Hendricks, part of an incongruous but terrific exhibit that had lured me to the stuffy museum for the first time ever. 

Nor were photos permitted at the excellent Max Beckmann show at the Neue Galerie.

Self Portrait with Champagne Glass (1919)

En route to the Whitney I passed straw sculptures in the Meatpacking District.

Henry Taylor's wonderful B-Side includes portraits of seminal figures like Jackie Robinson and Huey Newton.

I'm no fan of daylight savings time, but it allows gorgeous twilight views from the roofs of the Whitney.

Look how far African American portraiture has come in this recent work by Jonathan Lyndon Chase which lets it all hang out

. . . compared to an early 19th-century self portrait of "Moses Williams, Cutter of Profiles."  The American Folk Art Museum explains the fascinating reasons behind the evolution.

First- and second-wave feminist art could be seen all over town.  But only Judy Chicago's retrospective blew me away.  "Herstory" at the New Museum was the unexpected highlight of the season.

"The Three Faces of Man" (partial, 1985) by Judy Chicago

Tracey Emin from "Lover's Grave"

Shary Boyle from "The Palace of Me"

Photos of the signature collars that Ruth Bader Ginsberg wore over her judicial robes were among several interesting exhibits at the Jewish Museum, including one that depicts the horrific events of October 7.

"Manet/Degas" at the Met showcases the work of French frenemies with loans from major museums all over the world. Both artists clearly adored women as much as painting.  

Lola de Valence by Edouard Manet (1862)

"The Singer In Green" by Edgar Degas (ca 1884)

As familiar as I am with Andy Warhol's work, I'd rarely seen the results of his collaboration with Jean-Michel Basquiat.