Moet-Hennessy Seeks ‘Next Black Master’

Hoping to develop a better relationship with Moet Hennessy’s consumer base, according to an in-house publicist, the canned-heat purveyor decided to create what they’ve dubbed the "Next Black Master Art Competition." A contest among 10 African American artists-all of whom entered works that interpret the Hennessy tagline "Flaunt Your Taste"- the five-city competition will come Read More

Seligson’s Booby Trap

Susan Seligson wants you to know that she has big breasts. Really big breasts. “Massive boobs,” if you will: “fleshy torpedoes, exploding from my narrow shoulders, hovering ominously above my tiny waist.”

Ms. Seligson wants you to empathize with her, too. She wants you to feel the pain of ill-fitting bra straps digging into tender Read More

Hail to the Chef!

Yesterday The Transom and I were in the lobby at 915 Broadway, Observer HQ, waiting for the candle- (and occasionally marijuana-) scented elevator.

Waiting along with us was an expensively but hiply dressed man in a wool-knit beanie cap, with a Louis Vuitton bag the size of a 4-year-old child. We did a double-take. Read More

Freedom is Confusing For Artistic Foreigners

If you’ve ever visited a former Communist republic, you know that graffiti can be a problem. It’s as if, after all those years of stifled creative expression, it explodes all over the place from the nozzle of a spray-paint can.

And while free expression (if not vandalism) is to be encouraged, we’d prefer its Read More

Freedom is Confusing For Artistic Foreigners

If you’ve ever visited a former Communist republic, you know that graffiti can be a problem. It’s as if, after all those years of stifled creative expression, it explodes all over the place from the nozzle of a spray-paint can.

And while free expression (if not vandalism) is to be encouraged, we’d prefer its practitioners Read More

Sex, Fear and Videophones: It’s the Them Decade

You hear talk in New York about the 70′s being back.

Consider the evidence: The economy sucks. A certain spirit of sexual wantonness has seized the population. “Hooking up,” on its face, sounds a lot like cruising, and that old line about getting laid now because we might not be here tomorrow, victims of a Read More

Yule Duel

Holiday gift-giving circa 2001

is a minefield. It’s not sufficient that gifts be fabulous-they, like

everything else, must now convey the right tone .

What constitutes the right post-9/11 tone? It changes every day, and it’s

subjective. Small wonder New Yorkers are terrified of being either too

depressingly earnest or too unpatriotically frivolous.

Don’t Read More