Two cloaks and a hat, worn with my most talismanic rings (one, given to me by a shop owner in Santa Cruz who insisted I leave with it, and the other, a green tourmaline that I learned last night can conduct electricity), inspired by the rain and a vivid dream I had this morning about a vintage Geoffroy Cat cape. I just kept saying "Geoffroy Cat" over and over again. Geoffroy Cats are found from southern Bolivia to the Straits of Magellan and named after the 19th Century naturalist Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire.
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Entries from November 2010
Windowlicker
As far as I'm concerned, the perfect jacket (including the fact that it's not my size). 'Tis for sale at my favorite vintage shop, though –– last year the owner conspired with me to send a very much wanted '70s era leopard-print maxidress as a surprise with a card that simply said, "For the first of many stardusted evenings..." 'Twas.
[ADOLFO black boucle cropped jacket, $165 at CatBooks1940s]
Windowlicker - from the French for window shopping: faire du lèche-vitrine - often appears on Tuesday and Thursdays at 10am EST-ish.
My Life in Pictures: Monday
Off for a cocktail at Cafe Loup with the head of New Directions.
DINO DINCO'S SEXY SIX PICKS
A typically wry, stylish Dino Dinco photo. Here is a cute photo of him.
Dino and I met online, after I read a piece he wrote about being Bruce Benderson's literary escort, still one of the funniest things I've ever read about the literary scene, and I probably sent him a fanletter right then, and we've shared a mutual fondness and esteem that has spanned years and the opposite coasts that we live on. I think we've seen each other in person exactly twice –– once in Los Angeles when I had a party in my hotel room a few years ago, and he brought orchids that we ooh'ed over for days, and once in New York, when he had a bash at the Tribeca Grand.
Still, our every correspondence necessarily includes an entreaty, such as when I was last in LA and couldn't be there without wishing I could see him (he was in Mexico prepping for a show), and the charming note he sent me tonight: Tell me you're coming West soon. I was just reading an interview with Allen Ginsberg yesterday and you came into my mind. I find his artistic viewpoint to be utterly unique and essential, especially his photography of pick-up spots –– surreal, abandoned landscapes without the sex, and the conceit that it is omnipresent –– and of course, he's cool and clever as hell. I can never, ever wait to see him again.
I asked Dino to tell us what's new and his answers are perfect because I thought about putting together a Lux Lotus holiday gift guide and basically, this is even better, so buy/do/see/experience/support all of these things and become a more beautiful person:
"1) I have been invited to speak about my work in fashion, film and founding the now-defunct fashion film festival, YOU WEAR IT WELL, at PREMSELA, the Dutch Platform for Design and Fashion in Rotterdam at the end of January.
2) On a related note, the Rotterdam experimental theater company, WUNDERBAUM, recently completed a three-week residency at REDCAT, where they presented the work, “Looking for Paul.” Their production was so keen, so intelligent and achingly funny. It was exciting to witness out-of-town artists make a work in part about Los Angeles and who didn’t rely on hackneyed clichés about the city. They were tremendous.
3) In 2011, I will be embarking on a year-long post as Performance Curator in Residence at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE). In addition to working with performance artists to present new work both inside and outside LACE’s walls throughout the year, I’ll be curating GUTTED 2011, the next iteration of their annual winter fundraiser, Saturday, 19 February 2011. LACE is now in its 33rd year and is one of the few venues in the city that has consistently nurtured and presented challenging, transgressive work. As a teenager, LACE is where I first experienced the work of Raymond Pettibon, Tom of Finland, and Nina Hagen who performed on the patio of their former downtown location. A membership to LACE is truly a gift to yourself.
4) “Homeboy,” the documentary film I’ve been working on for about 9 years should be finished by January 2011. The film is about gay Latino men who were in gangs and their experience with existing within the matrix of a multiplicity of often radically disparate cultures. I’m also adapting the script for “Puto,” an incredible play written by Ricardo A. Bracho, into a screenplay for a feature film I’ll direct. The story is focused around “Puto,” a queer art photographer who loses his laptop and his lover during a trip to the kitchen, and involves guerilla movements, honey bees and race and sex boundaries in near-future Los Angeles.
5) TODOS SOMOS PUTOS. I made a T-shirt as one of the works in an exhibition that I had with Julio Torres at Mexicali Rose, a gallery in Mexicali, Mexico, where we exhibited photographs, installation and objects. (Chris Kraus’ review of the show is to appear in December’s Art Forum.) On a black T-shirt is printed in white, TODOS SOMOS PUTOS – which translates more or less to “WE’RE ALL FAGGOTS.” The T-shirt is available through me directly and is also part of New Stand, a temporary newsstand in New York City of independently published artist and photography books, zines and other printed media.
6) My gallery in Paris recently closed so I’m looking for gallery representation, both in Europe and in the US."
––For more, visit DinoDinco.com.
Windowlicker
Dark today –– I want for nothing. Well... if you press me:
Sotheby's is auctioning a jeweled bracelet given to the Duchess of Windsor (TIME's first Woman of the Year, 1936) by her husband, engraved "God save the King for Wallis." I wouldn't mind that.
[THE GEM-SET AND DIAMOND CROSS BRACELET, CARTIER, 1934-1944, 350,000—450,000 GBP]
Windowlicker - from the French for window shopping: faire du lèche-vitrine - often appears on Tuesday and Thursdays at 10am EST-ish.
My Life in Pictures: Tuesday
It might be hard to make out here, but that's a pearl-trimmed ruff. Wearing Zandra Rhodes, off to Lady Mendl's with Terese Svoboda, whose "strange and nastily beautiful" Pirate Talk or Mermalade I want to seep into your consciousness like a delicious, forbidden dream. Which is another way to say I'm publicizing it.
Windowlicker
I have a very small apartment, although it's lovely and I do my best with the scale. If I had a larger place, I'd have a mural and black and white checked tiles in the entryway, and so much more. The things I miss of the houses of my childhood: enormous kitchens, massive dogs and driveways for days. I think Keith McNally has the ideal kitchen (I scanned this photo to send to a friend as inspiration. As in, inspiration to hang me a pot rack.).
I once saw a picture of a library in a magazine –– I think in a countryish farmhouse inhabited by eccentric siblings or perhaps that's my own perspective clouding the memory –– and over the door, "Consider the lilies of the field" was painted in Old English style faded lettering. It always stuck with me, and I was thinking that might look nice in my kitchen which also serves as my parlor and my library and pretty much every other room in the house.
I still have about a third of a can of Farrow & Ball's "Green Smoke" from when I painted my balcony door, and I could possibly do it myself with a custom stencil [from $35 at Primitive Designs Stencil Co.], maybe in "Arts and Crafts." If that works out, maybe I'll do Byron's She walks in beauty, like the night/Of cloudless climes and starry skies in inky dusk violet script over my bed.
Windowlicker - from the French for window shopping: faire du lèche-vitrine - often appears on Tuesday and Thursdays at 10am EST-ish.
My Life in Pictures: Monday
Today's ensemble inspired by the vintage tuxedo pants I found in Venice Beach and Hopper's Chop Suey (1929). Worn to La Colombe with Other Press (I'm reading their How to Live, or A Life of Montaigne right now) editor and kindred spirit in style, Corinna Barsan (see: Shiny White Page) and then to Tacombi, the next best thing to Quintana Roo, for lunch and a little tappity-tappity on the old laptop keys at the most blissful place in town.
Later on, of course, I'd love to dive into a Delage D8 Mouette Saloon with a couple borzois and a boy and be driven very, very fast out of the city. While chances may be slim, I dress for them.
That Night in New York
Beowulf Sheehan took this picture of me last week. I quite like it.