The proud and good craftsmen at Xtreme Cuts: Yuri, David and Robert
Thank god the era of the men’s hair stylist is over. Hair stylists, eh? Fussiness, “styling products,” girly smells … It seemed like part of the worldwide conspiracy to make men as vain, as vapid and as anxiety-ridden as too many women are. Yet, for a couple of decades, what really were our options? Traditional barbers were growing scarcer, and the ones who remained in business seemed to lose more of their skills with every passing year. So, off to the hair stylist it was.
But since the late ’90s the traditional barbershop has been making a comeback. (I shared a few snapshots of a genuine old-time smalltown barbershop here.) And since my trusted and excellent barber Frank — is there an HBD explanation for why so many good haircutters are of Italian descent? and why so many of them are named Frank? — mysteriously disappeared three years ago (one day, I moseyed over to his shop, found the building being demolished, asked what had become of Frank … and no one could tell me), I’ve been sampling the work of many barbers and many shops, both in NYC and in California.
Thanks to the fine folks at Century Link, I had no internet for Friday’s Wildcard. But we’re nothing if not flexible here, so we’re going to run with it. Today we have the prescient electronic music of Tom Dissevelt & Kid Baltan, a Dutch duo that made refined glittery futuristic music from the crude and blunt tools of the era. An incredible amount of work went into making these wonders of sound in the pre-multitrack and synthesizer era. And the results stand up today just fine against their MacBook Pro wielding successors.
Italian poster for this staple of the French New Wave. Featuring art by the mysterious Donelli, whose splashy watercolor style graced a few New Wave posters, including a couple for Godard’s “My Life to Live.”
Godard must have liked his work, as there’s a moment in “Contempt” in which one of Donelli’s “My Life to Live” posters is visible hanging in the background. And here’s JLG himself being interviewed in front of one:
I spent some time with the DVD of Peter Watkins’ 1967 “Privilege” the other day. Confession: I didn’t get much out of the movie, which features Watkins’ usual combo of showy modernist stratagems and semi-hysterical point-making. I found it to be terribly paced and pretty blah looking, and I thought the lead performance by Paul Jones was painfully obtuse.
But what do I know? “Privilege” is celebrated by some for the way in which it highlights the propaganda potential of popular performers. I’ll admit that the movie makes some valid points (who would deny that pop icons often command a creepy sort of sway?), though none of them, it seems to me, warrant the apocalyptic emphasis that Watkins gives them. (Though I suspect we can all recognize similarities in the mass appeal of the Beatles and that of Hitler, allow me to suggest that comparing the two might be a little . . . tone deaf.) And I found the filmmaker’s scolding, leftist-professor gaze to be wearying. I kept asking myself: Isn’t it rather ungenerous to condemn pop culture without even trying to appreciate what there is in it that people might respond to? Watkins takes what might have been fodder for a lively travesty — the intersection of mass media, consumerism, religion, and democracy — and uses it to mount a barking denunciation. Where this sort of thing goes I’d much rather spend time with “Wild In the Streets,” “The President’s Analyst,” “Nashville,” or “Smile” — satires that are alive to the appealing aspects of the things they’re skewering.
Fortunately, the DVD that Netflix sent me also included a 1962 documentary on Paul Anka called, with more than a touch of irony, “Lonely Boy.” Directed by Wolf Koenig and Roman Kroitor, it’s believed to have inspired Watkins to make “Privilege.” Frankly, I think “Lonely Boy” puts the later film to shame. In around 20 minutes it gives you the Anka phenomenon in all its layered grotesqueness. There are the screaming girls, both ecstatic and disturbed; the slightly homoerotic coterie of male handlers; the weird spectacle of a pre-fab image made to take the stage and enact itself. The film is very knowing — Koenig and Kroitor are anything but naive — yet it reveals a lot of humanity. You get a sense of Anka’s talent, ambition, and charisma. (He suggests a cross between a Caravaggio model and Mickey Mouse.) And the girls who worship him are, in their intensity and vulnerability, touching and unnerving in ways that only young girls are capable of being. Koenig and Kroitor are open to the human aspects of fandom. Watkins, by contrast, surveys the pop landscape and sees only automatons waiting for the jackboot.
In summary, I found the unassuming “Lonely Boy” to be strange and provocative, the archly radical “Privilege” a snooze.
Curvy Aussie cutie Angela White got her start modeling for big boob site Score but I first noticed her on Abby Winters. Although we haven’t mentioned it much around here, UR readers are familiar with the Australian amateur site, right? It’s like SuicideGirls without the tattoos and piercings or FTV Girls but more natural. White — with her generous proportions, freckles, dimpled chin, crooked smile, and enthusiastic bisexual romps — was one of Winters’ breakout stars who quickly climbed the porn ladder. She now works exclusively for her own official site which on the one hand features plenty of hardcore, but on the other has eschewed her girl-next-door appeal for glammed-up slickness. Ladies, easy with the airbrushing! Some of us like skin with texture.
The pictures below the jump are NSFW so don’t proceed while you’re on the clock unless you want your monitor to melt. Happy Friday.
“You have suffered a great deal, sir?” said Franz inquiringly.
Sinbad started and looked fixedly at him, as he replied, “What makes you suppose so?”
“Everything,” answered Franz, — “your voice, your look, your pallid complexion, and even the life you lead.”
“I? — I live the happiest life possible, the real life of a pasha. I am king of all creation. I am pleased with one place, and stay there; I get tired of it, and leave it; I am free as a bird and have wings like one; my attendants obey my slightest wish. Sometimes I amuse myself by delivering some bandit or criminal from the bonds of the law. Then I have my mode of dispensing justice, silent and sure, without respite or appeal, which condemns or pardons, and which no one sees. Ah, if you had tasted my life, you would not desire any other, and would never return to the world unless you had some great project to accomplish there.”
“Revenge, for instance!” observed Franz.
The unknown fixed on the young man one of those looks which penetrate into the depth of the heart and thoughts. “And why revenge?” he asked.
I recently returned from a 10-day vacation to New York City. Here are some pics and observations from my trip. WARNING: I’ve lived in (suburban) Los Angeles my entire life and spent all of 18-20 days total in NYC on various vacations, so take my ramblings under advisement.
Blowhard, Esq.
Callowman
Sherbrooke
Eddie Pensier
Enzo Nakamura
Epaminondas
Fabrizio del Wrongo
Fenster
Brundle Guy
Glynn Marshes
Paleo Retiree
Atypical Neurotic
Question Lady
Sax von Stroheim
Sir Barken Hyena
The Mistaken
Uncouth Reflections 