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Michael Woodsmall

By Neha Sharma 10/26/12 5:57pm

FUNNY PEOPLE

CK. (Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images)

For One, er, Six Night(s) Only: Louis CK Stands Up, and Tells Jokes and Things, Before Taking on SNL

Stating that, “prejudice is entertainment, prejudice is fun,” Louis CK stripped himself of any social standard for morality at the very beginning of his show at the New York City Center. On the second night of the New York leg of his national tour, one thing was made clear, Mr. CK’s brash shtick is what he is, well, sticking with. In the HBO special Talking Funny (April 2012), Mr. CK told Jerry Seinfeld—who believed in rehashing old jokes that were a hit with the audience every time he tours—that people come to see the comedian and not some live re-run of an older show. The balding redhead trusted his audience enough to throw a completely new routine their way, and he did just that on the night of the 23rd.  Read More

By Rebecca Webb 10/25/12 6:13pm

Women's Rights

Fey. (Paul Bruinooge, Patrick McMullan)

Reproductive Rights on Tap at Jazz at Lincoln Center

“As Matt Lauer once said in the sixth hour of The Today Show, I can’t believe we are still talking about this shit.”

Last night, The Observer attended an event that most of the other guests agreed should not have existed. Filo pockets and mini spring rolls should not have been served to the dignified attendees in their little black dresses. And they, in turn, should not have been drinking glasses upon glasses of wine while engaging in pleasant conversation. Quite frankly, we should not have been standing there at Jazz at Lincoln Center at all. But in spite of innumerable efforts to educate the dissenting public, the issue lingers—so there we were, standing at Jazz at Lincoln Center.  Read More

By Rebecca Webb 10/12/12 10:22am

Tender is the Night

Boardman. (Patrick McMullan/Patrick McMullan)

Paper Celebrates Nightlife—and Cat Marnell Enters the Presidential Race

“I wish there were more neocon blondes involved … Otherwise I’m not registered to vote—because if Andy Warhol didn’t, why do I have to?” Cat Marnell cozied up to The Observer Wednesday night at Paper magazine’s eighth annual nightlife awards, offering us her views on the 2012 presidential race.

Removing a tragic fur coat, Ms. Marnell, a Best Nightlife Social Media Star nominee, revealed the now slightly smudged words “Chinese Democracy” written across her forearms in what we can only assume was black eyeliner.

“My political stance is Chinese Democracy.”

Uncertain, we asked her what this meant.

“I don’t know exactly. I was going to go with ‘manifest destiny’—I don’t know what that means either,” she said, flipping her head of blond hair to the side as she spoke. “I support Guns N’ Roses and I hope they get back together.” (Chinese Democracy is the title of a less-than-successful Guns N’ Roses album, which came out in 2008.)

What did she plan to do with award, should she be so fortunate?

“I’d really like to speak out about [getting the band back together], and I really don’t think young children shouldn’t be prescribed Adderall—so that’s my platform.” Read More

By Rebecca Webb 9/26/12 1:17pm

Howdy Midtown

Yeehaw. (Angelito Jusay)

20th Anniversary Celebrations See A Real Barn Burner in Bryant Park

Square dancing brings a lot of things to mind; the Empire State building just isn’t one of them. Yet, there it was, all aglow in its red and blue, standing over a crowd of do-si-doing New Yorkers—hipster toddlers in mini-knits and European grandmothers, tangled in an unapologetic mess . We had heard about it, but when we took a peek this Monday, we weren’t expecting to stumble upon the sea of cowboy hats that stretched before us in Bryant park, and neither were our neighboring spectators. But such is the surprise of the city.

One of our fellow passersby could hardly contain her excitement.

“Oh my god, I love New York.”

And this is the reaction the Bryant Park Corporation was looking for. Bryant Park Square Dance is new to the roster of park activities this year, part of the 20th Anniversary series. Read More

By Neha Sharma 9/21/12 3:58pm

Screenings

Peter Staley in How to Survive a Plague. (William Lucas Walker)

The Revolution Will Be Screened: David France Introduces How to Survive a Plague at the Angelika

David France has a lot of people rooting for him. Supporting his debut film, the powerful documentary How to Survive a Plague (set for a Sept. 21 release), a  host of celebrities—like Alan Cumming, John Cameron Mitchell, Heather Matarazzo, Ingrid Sischy and Jay Manuel—came out to the Angelika Film Center downtown for the screening this Wednesday. The guests were tied by a common denominator: most of them are strong advocates for LGBT rights, one of the dominant themes of the documentary.

Mr. Mitchell had already watched the film before the screening, and seemed to be one of its biggest fans. “I predict an Oscar nomination,” said the writer/actor/director. “I was just so moved by it. It is so empowering too, it is not a depressing document of tragedy—it is about people who made the drugs happen and saved an estimated 6 million people.” Read More

By Chloë Ashby 11:46am

After the Runway

Prose. (PatrickMcMullan/ PatrickMcMullan)

Is Your Underwear Purple Too?: Post-Fashion Week Musings on Style in Literature

It’s all over. Fashion Week is back in the closet until spring. As this year’s cast of models kicked off their heels and moved on with a shrug of their padded shoulders, there was at least one place where the flame of fashion still flickered: The Museum at FIT. Ivy Style, their latest exhibition, presents an entertaining panorama of college clothing, from rakish raccoon coat to basic Brooks Brothers blazer.

Every preppy should know the classic Fitzgerald line about Gatsby’s “gorgeous pink rag of a suit”; visitors to the FIT exhibit will see emblazoned on the wall a quote from his first novel, This Side of Paradise, less well known but equally unforgettable: “Is your underwear purple too?” Literature can provide the fashion addict with her fashion fix: As New York Review of Books contributor, and fervent fashion writer, Anne Hollander put it, “literature has always been the handmaiden of fashion.”

With our plaid in check, The Observer checked in with a cross-section of the city’s fashion writers and novelists to talk about the ways in which literature—that quintessentially private pursuit—collaborates, clashes and collides with the very public spectacle of fashion.  Read More

By Christopher Barnes 9/10/12 11:33am

movies

Christopher Barnes (far right) reports from Venice.

Postcards From Abroad: Oldest International Film Festival Stays Afloat in Venice

It has been 18 years since I was last associated with a Hollywood movie—I had a very minor credit on Pumpkinhead II, starring the amazingly talented presidential brother Roger Clinton as “The Mayor”—and this week, at the Venice Film Festival, felt like a walk back in time. In addition to covering the festival for The Observer, I was there to see off my small investment in an independent movie called Kiss of the Damned, which was closing the festival.

Venice is like a smaller Cannes: lots of premieres, stars and glamour, but without the large scale-madness of its French counterpart. Medium-sized commercial movies play alongside smaller, niche pictures. Harmony Korine’s Spring Breakers, Robert Redford’s The Company you Keep and Brian De Palma’s The Passion all premiered, as did a retrospective of Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate.

My only criticism of the Venice Film Festival is that it’s hard to motivate oneself to go to these movies during the day, when you have a combination of perfect weather, one of the world’s most beautiful cities and whatever residual bleariness from covering all those late-night parties. Read More

By Michael Woodsmall 9/05/12 2:50pm

Sporting Briefs

Cosell. (Vernon Biever/Getty)

Betray of Game: On Today’s Penalty-Deserving NFL Commentary

Howard Cosell—the man largely responsible for making modern sports commentating into what it is today and turning football spectating into a careful, tedious study (all while wearing some of the loudest ties)—damn near ruined the game. At a time when the only truly analytical approach to football was being conducted by mobsters calculating the betting spread, his beat-like commentary did something terrible. Harnessing his brash personality and deliberate way with words—and his unchecked arrogance—the law-degree-totin’ foulmouth changed the very nature of how we understood the action on the field. Much of this handiwork involved his ongoing, televised war of words with “Dandy Don” Meredith in primetime. Gone were the days when football was simply football. A new era was ushered in, and with it came the number-crunching sideline savants who bled the game dry of its blue-collar bravado and replaced it with a pedantic, stat-sick approach. Non-athletes were not only welcomed into the press box as vaunted experts, but came carrying a condescending tone toward the battle-hardened veterans who once lived and breathed the game to the utmost.  Read More

By Michael Woodsmall 5/15/12 7:14pm

books

Freudenberger. (David Jacobs)

Strangers Among Us: The Protagonist of Nell Freudenberger’s Novel Is New to America

One of the more recent entries in the annals of literary hype that threatens to overshadow actual achievement is Nell Freudenberger. Back in 2001, when the recent Harvard grad was an editorial assistant at The New Yorker, her short story “Lucky Girls” was published in the magazine, and she soon became known, both in New York publishing circles and beyond, as a wunderkind. She happened to be attractive. “Too young, too pretty, too successful” said the title of an article by Curtis Sittenfeld, in Salon. But then came a well-received first novel, The Dissidents, and a short story, “An Arranged Marriage,” in The New Yorker’s 20 Under 40 Fiction issue, in 2010, and awards, like the PEN/Malamud. And now with her second novel, Newlyweds (Knopf, 352 pp., $25.95), an extended version of “An Arranged Marriage,” comes her most successful effort yet, one that shows a more mature voice and the true triumph of her talent over her hype. Read More