In the nineteen-thirties and forties, Damon Runyon was the most widely read journalist in the country, and his movies like Double Indemnity and Broadway plays like Guys and Dolls were hits. Runyon held court nightly in Lindy’s Restaurant on Broadway and 51st Street, which, even in May 1949, three years after his death, was the fabled realworld haunt of many of his thinly fictionalized characters: Dave the Dude, Harry the Horse, Izzy Cheesecake.
In his Times’ May 22, 1949 profile, Leo “Lindy” Lindemann told of a “timid, well-dressed” older woman who came to the restaurant asking after “some of those quaint persons Mr. Runyon writes about.” Lindy pointed her to a regular, who he identified as Morris the Schnook. “She was delighted. She pressed his hand when she left. When she reached the siewalk, the Lindy habitues roared with laughter. Morris the Schnook was their invention. Their butt was really Abe Lyman, the orchestra leader.” And thus, the Times saw fit for the first time to print the term “schnook.”
Now, 55 years later, and just months after self-hating Jew Jerome Robbins was quoted calling himself “a schnook from Weehawken,” I’m as surprised as an orchestra leader to offer up the 86th appearance of “schnook” in the paper of record. Frankly, I’m a little verklempt.
What Is the Value of Priceless Art? Debate Continues on $20 Admission [NYT]
Author: greg
Hilton Kramer Wakes Up, Finds Out It’s 2004
Needless to say, he’s in a bad mood.
Related, I’m guessing, from Christopher Knight in the LAT: “It will also drive some people nuts, which is another reason to applaud. At a preview, one notoriously fusty critic was heard to shriek, in reference to what he imagined was being done to Barr’s legacy, ‘This is patricide! Patricide!'”
Oedipus on 53rd St [Observer]
Fox Presents: Bocaccio’s Decalogue
Now! From television’s acknowledged experts in adultery, profanity, lying, and covetousness!
According to Variety, FX SVP Gerard Bocaccio dreamed up the concept for ‘The Ten Commandments,’ a series of 10 one-hour TV movies which will “explore the spiritual and moral issues faced by modern America.”
Steven Soderbergh and George Clooney’s Section Eight will exec produce, and the two will be joined by eight other “A-list directors [sic, Clooney’s A-list? how about ‘up-and-coming’? Seriously, people],” and each will tackle a commandment.
I wonder who gets “Thou shalt not steal?”
Related:
FX gets serious about Bible study [Variety, via Yahoo, thanks to GreenCine]
Read like a million posts about Kieslowski’s Decalogue, a ten-hour made-for-TV exploration of the spiritual and moral issues faced by modern America Poland.
Chest-Haired Americans (Still) Need Not Apply
As part of a settlement in a discrimination suit, Abercrombie & Fitch will create an “Office of Diversity.”
$50 million buys a lot of waxing [SJ Mercury News]
Y Tu MoMA Tambien
While a few “right on”s and “elitist”s trickled in over the weekend, and my favorite–“MoMA is a corporation, the new building is a corporate HQ. You are a foot soldier”–just arrived yesterday morning, the quality of the responses to my little MoMA admissions price challenge did not improve with time.
I should’ve wrapped this up and posted the winners a couple of days ago, but I’ve been too busy hobnobbing with a bunch of MoMA bigwigs (10%) and a kid (99%, Yeah, it doesn’t add up. Tell me about it.)
Dennis Lim Reviews Van Gogh’s Submission
“Artists from Abbas Kiarostami to Shirin Neshat to Ousmane Sembene have confronted the misogyny of conservative Islam in ways that are at once more damning and less willfully profane.”
Still, just because it was at once outrageously incendiary and a lackluster piece of filmmaking, it’s still chilling and despicable that Van Gogh was killed for Submission.
The Day I Became a Martyr: Islam Protest Brings Fatal Fatwa [Village Voice]
Related: greg.org entries for Theo Van Gogh
Raghubir Singh at Sepia International
Was it Documenta where I was taken in by Raghubir Singh’s quietly masterful color photographs of India, which bring an artist’s eye to documentary photos. Gabriel Orozco meets Cartier-Bresson.
There was a great show at the Smithsonian last year, and now his work has come to Sepia International. In his review, The Voice’s Vince Aletti tries to gently correct the art historical record to reflect Singh’s early(-er) and powerful use of color. Scoot over, Egglestone, and let Singh up there on the dais, too.
A Windshield View [Village Voice]
Raghubir Singh: A Retrospective, through Dec. 30 [Sepia International]
Singh Books at Amazon: A Way Into India, River of Colour
A Bridge Too Far Away
Jonathan Glancey gives an invigorating description of Sir Norman Foster & Co’s Grand Viaduc du Millau, an awesome bridge on the A25 running from Paris to the Cote d’Azur.
Come fly with me [Guardian UK]
Not Lost in Translation
Architect Chad Smith plays Scarlett Johanson in his own remake of Lost in Translation: he’s tagging along to the Park Hyatt in Tokyo on his boyfriend’s business trip. The only trouble is, he’s not lost, he’s not depressed, and he’s not confused. And presumably, when he gets back to the US, people at the Golden Globes won’t think he’s a bee-atch.
Stick your nose into his diary at littleminx.com.
Talking About The Weather (Project)
The artist Olafur Eliasson will be speaking at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington DC about his work, including last year’s The Weather Project at the Tate in London.
Olafur Eliasson, The Demetrion Lecture: Wednesday, Nov. 17 at 7pm. [Hirshhorn.si.edu]
Movie Theaters I’ve Been To That Have Closed
This afternoon on WNYC, Jonathan Schwartz was reading an underwriter plug for Zankel Hall, when he stopped and said, “Some of you may remember that Zankel Hall is in the site of the Carnegie Theater, a movie theater with–well it was very small and down a windy staircase–with personality. So many theaters with personality have closed.”
That got me thinking, while Schwartz rattled off a dozen theaters I’d never heard of, of the theaters that have closed since I moved to New York:
There’s a great website for this kind of thing, Cinema Treasures. And Hiroshi Sugimoto began photographing movie theaters almost 30 years ago, and many of them are now gone.
Advertiser Shoutout
A round of applause to the advertisers who keep greg.org swimming (ok, maybe wading…ok, maybe slightly damp) in MoMA tickets. Please show them we’re not ALL poverty-stricken Marxist anti-consumerists:
Note to self: Feuillade, Richie, Gonzalez, Falluja
Just what’s been on my mind:
In this way, well-publicized planning for the invasion of Fallujah innoculated GWB against mid-election criticism of the administration’s failures in confronting the Iraqi insurgency.
Now that the election’s over and the invasion has begun, Fallujah is exactly the kind of operation that the US military can succeed at, will “succeed” at. This could change the tenor of coverage of the war, even if it does not actually improve stability. Leaders on the ground were extremely critical of the entirely political/Washington-driven Fallujah invasion and pullback last Spring. Who knows if we’ll find out about this one?
MoMA Free Passes Update
Thanks for the response so far. I should say that while I think Kurt Andersen’s idea for the federal government to pay for all the country’s museum entry fees is a good one, I see two problems with it:
1) the problem in the White House, and
2) it’s Kurt Andersen’s idea, so if you’d like me to send him the passes…
Related:
Free Museums for All [Studio 360, 7/28/2001]
My diatribe supporting Billionaires For MoMA which, if you make it to the end, has an offer for free passes.
Blogumentary Blog Blogged
Fimoculous has an excellent collection of articles, interviews [including Rex’s own], and links for the premiere last week of Chuck Olsen’s film/site/project Blogumentary . Check it out.
Blogumentary [mitochondria at fimoculous]
Blogumentary production blog