Condi Rice’s Favorite Kiss Songs

May 31, 2008
Arts, Briefly
Kicking Back With Kiss
Compiled by FELICIA R. LEE and MELENA RYZIK
It is unclear whether they discussed makeup, but on Thursday in Stockholm, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had a late-night meeting with the rock group Kiss. Ms. Rice was in Sweden for an international conference concerning Iraq; the band was there to [...]

First the voter I.D. law and now this

First the voter I.D. law and now this: on July 1 a new law is set to go into effect in Indiana that will “force any bookstore that sold even one book that could be broadly described as ’sexually explicit’ to pay a $250 license fee and be classified as an ‘adult bookstore.’” Indy [...]

Todd Haynes “I’m Not There”

Finally saw Todd Haynes’ I’m Not There. I’m a fan of Haynes’, but the movie struck me as really smart and interesting, wonderfully apt in its treatment of Dylan’s identities, but somewhat maddening as a viewing experience. One problem, maybe, is that the postmodern identity-scrambling sometimes simply underlines the basic bio-pic problem: that [...]

Lykke Li “Little Bit”

In honor of Eurovision (final tomorrow May 24!), here’s a mesmerizing, great single by Sweden’s Lykke Li (love the video, too; dig the calisthenics in knee-high black socks, and the bearded loon on piano).

Lykke Li’s album Youth Novels (to be released in the U.S. June 17) was produced by Björn Yttling [...]

Visit to New Harmony

The (grand)parents were in town and had arranged a road trip to New Harmony, site of the failed socialist/utopian community founded by Robert Owen in the 1820s. I’d always heard this was worth seeing, but the recommendations tended to sound a bit restrained, enough so here it is 7 years after we moved to [...]

Iron Man

Iron Man was fun. Iron Man is a robot, HAL, 3CPO & R2D2, and especially, I thought, Gort from The Day the Earth Stood Still; he’s a cyborg, part machine part man (and a techie friend of various other pet/helper robots); he’s a golem (I wonder if the Jewish golem tradition ties in any [...]

Road trip to New Harmony — food report

I hope to blog more fully on the visit to New Harmony, and to include some photos, but for now, a quick note on the food we consumed on the trip.
Lunch on the way there: stopped in Paoli IN, which seems faded and depressed yet still hanging in there with a semi-viable and at least [...]

Gap Whitney Museum artist edition t-shirts

Gap Whitney Museum artist edition t-shirts: by Kenny Scharf, Barbara Kruger, Chuck Close, Kiki Smith, etc., and Sarah Sze.
It’s a weird feeling to have someone you know from childhood design a t-shirt for the Gap and appear as a model for it in the ads.
Why couldn’t Barbara Kruger appear in her own ad?
I wonder if [...]

Panicked Republicans

Panicked Republicans, such a harmonious, euphonious phrase, I enjoy just repeating it to myself…
Here’s Josh Marshall on why the Republicans are feeling panicked about the loss of an open seat in a heavily Republican district in Mississippi:

And here’s the Adam Nagourney article:
Scott Reed, a former chief of staff to the Republican [...]

Richard Price’s Samaritan

Richard Price is the author of Clockers and has also written film scripts (e.g. The Color of Money) and episodes for the Wire. I was going to check out his much-praised new one, Lush Life, but in the NY Review of Books Michael Chabon said that it was a slight let-down after Samaritan (which [...]