FRIGID FRIDAY

This fisherman has come in from the cold. It's so frigid outside there's no point in dangling bait through a hole in the ice. The fish are frozen, too. But it's not much warmer indoors, and there's even the risk of an energy blackout here in the Northeast.

If the electricity stays on, I may warm myself by the heat of London call girl Belle de Jour's weblog, and frankly I don't care whether she's really Martin
Amis in drag. I've been enjoying her recent postings about her favorite sexual kinks, her fondness for anal sex and her first real date since becoming a call girl. You might enjoy them. She's very entertaining, even if her French is lousy. And she sets a standard of sexual candor that "The L Word" is unlikely to match in its premiere Sunday night.

If Belle is too lowbrow for you, try The Talk bulletin board at the Guardian. It's brimming with hot topics like the Parthenon marbles -- should they be returned to Greece in time for Athens 2004 Olympics? and Is John Cage having a laugh? If that's too highbrow, try popping some bubble wrap.

January 16, 2004 10:41 AM |

Categories:

Me Elsewhere

'WILD SIDE' STILL ROCKS 

Nelson Algren was one of the great American authors of the 20th century, it is no exaggeration to say, and among the most neglected. Consider his underrated classic, "A Walk on the Wild Side." The title -- popularized and co-opted as an idiomatic phrase by Hollywood and Madison Avenue (institutions Algren loathed) -- is familiar to most anyone who speaks English or knows Lou Reed's lyrics. But the novel itself? Hardly.

BUSTER KEATON REVISITED 
Buster Keaton: Tempest in a Flat Hat is not a biography. "This book is merely a fan's notes," Edward McPherson writes in the introduction, although his publisher ignores the disclaimer and calls it a biography on the cover. In fact, the book is a bit of both, a difficult combination to bring off unless you're David Thomson, who set the standard with Rosebud, his penetrating rumination on the life and career of Orson Welles, which was nothing if not a distillation of every obsessive thought he ever had about the myth and the man and all his movies.
LAUREN BACALL, STILL SALTY AT 80 
When Lauren Bacall writes that her singing voice ranges "somewhere between B minus sharp and outer space," she's being candid and funny. It's not every stage star with two Tony Awards for best actress in a musical whose vocal talent offers so little promise. (OK, Harvey Fierstein excepted.) Still less would one admit it.
THE STARS ACCORDING TO BOGDANOVICH 
Peter Bogdanovich's superb collection of movie-star profiles and interviews -- a sequel to Who the Devil Made It, his interviews of top film directors -- begins with an affectionate tale about Orson Welles that reminds us just how intimate the author's connection to Hollywood's greatest has been. But contrary to what we've come to expect from dime-a-dozen celebrities and celebrity interviews not worth two cents, the tale avoids bromidic egotism and journalistic platitudes.
SAMMY'S WHITE DREAMS 
Four decades ago Lenny Bruce sentenced Sammy Davis Jr. to "30 years in Biloxi," stripping him of "his Jewish star" and "his religious statue of Elizabeth Taylor." Now we have two new biographies of Davis that spring him from ridicule, if not from doubts about his legacy, and restore a measure of dignity to a black entertainer whose huge fame and success never overcame his devout wish -- indeed his lifelong effort -- to be white.
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This page contains a single entry by CriticalMASS published on January 16, 2004 10:41 AM.

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