Dead|Sexy

At your leisure, please check out my new site.

I know this “Sexy Dead Guys” meme is completely pervasive and zeitgeisty right now (viz. Bangable Dudes in History, My Dageurreotype Boyfriend, et al.), and it may be difficult for you to believe, but my first flicker of this idea began a few years ago. Way back when I still bought the newspaper I came across an image of Anton Chekhov. “That is one surprisingly appealing dead author,” I thought and reflexively cut out the photograph. I felt sort of odd and shallow because I’d never actually read any Chekhov, but here I was saving his photo like he was Rob Pattinson and I was Sweet Sixteen. That led me to keep a clipping file of truly attractive men so I could recognize someone like that if he ever came along. (Read about my pivotal "all the guys I like are dead or fictional" self-realization here!).

I never did much with this guy file save for a couple of related posts on this very blog. So, getting my act together a bit late, I missed out on bringing this to book form (congratulations Bangable Dudes). I might as well put up that tumblr now, right?//

Everybody Apache Dance

Apache dancers, c. late 1920s?

This couple look really hard core. I'm guessing early 1950s but I could be wrong.
Above and top from French CanCan

"Prada Candy....pure pleasure wrapped in impulsive charm... a new facet of femininity
where more is more and excess is everything."
She's doing the Apache Dance.

You can see how they filmed the commercial here

Le Bateau Lavoir, a ramshackle area in Montmartre, 1900——> Apache territory!

"The Apache is the plague of Paris", 1907

Krazy Kat as an Apache dancer, 1930.
watch the cartoon at Uncle John's Crazy Town

Apaches, 1911

 "A Tough Dance"-- 1902

 La Danse Apache - Alexis Et Dorrano 1934

Prada's got a new perfume: Candy. Normally I wouldn't rush to post about that but when I heard they'd hired gnomish photographer-director Jean Paul Goude to create an over-the-top visual match for the perfume's "excess is everything" PR I thought I'd investigate. (I liked some of his work with Grace Jones and loved that iconic Chanel Egoiste commercial....) In the new video, a French ingenue music student jumps her piano teacher and launches into an exuberant terpsichorean frolic. The acrobatic dance sequence is a revival of the Apache Dance.

Pronounced “ah-PAHSH” (remember, it's French!) the Apaches were a late 19th century Parisian street gang—or rather, they were reputed to be "as violent as wild Apaches" and they thought that sounded pretty good and the name stuck. Later, "Apache" became a general reference term for a thug or a pimp. The Apache Dance—became popular just after the turn of the century. By 1908 they were doing it on stage at the Moulin Rouge (it was revived and adapted in movies and by teens up through the 1950s). Part tango, part stage combat—the original Apache Dance fit in perfectly with the other "rough" and "degenerate" dances so popular in those years: Grizzly Bear, Turkey Trot, Boston Dip. The whole schtick is that it mimicks a violent encounter between pimp and prostitute: he "slaps" her, tosses her around, and drags her by the hair. Actually, it all sounds rather like an old Snoop Dogg video...

Greek specials

"(To) Asclepius and Hygeia, Tyche gives thanks"

pair of eyes, bronze, marble, quartz, obsidian, c. 400 BC carved marble shell, c.400 BC

akroterion, or architectural decorative device, c. 350 BC

bronze statue of a man, c 100 BC

bronze horse, c. 700BC

terracotta statuette of a siren, c 500BC

cuirass, c 300BC

Terracotta keras (drinking horn) in the form of a lobster claw

Archaic drinking cup, c. 550BC

limestone votive ear with earring, Cypriot, c. 300BC

Herewith, a few atypical Greek artifacts—no white marble youths, no urns, no parthenons. The Ancients obviously had creativity, sensitivity, and humor. What is going on with those people today? (I'm Greek so I'm allowed to say "those people"). Greeks have always squabbled amongst themselves (viz. Sparta<-->Athens) but with the entire European Union doing a face-palm over Greece and her debts I just hope they can get it together.

Fashion musing and arithmetic*

 

So we've gone from cajoling women to dress like children, and ogling children dressed like adults, to actually using children as "fashion muses". (Above, 14 year old actress Hailee Steinfeld as the new face of Miu Miu, and 13 year old Elle Fanning modelling for Marc Jacobs.) I'm not clear why this annoys me so much: is it the "exploitation" of underage girls? No, no, no. Is it the gimmick-novelty of using children in serious fashion? Possibly. But this gimmick has far less épater la bourgeoisie strenuousness than, say, parading supermandels Andrej Pejic or Lea T. No, I think it's only because I find the child-muse marketing so boring.//

I had just been formulating my thoughts about this when I saw the piece in the New York Times about 15 year old fashion wunderkind/industry insider Tavi Gevinson. For those of you who might not keep up with such things, Style Rookie is her blog, Rookie is her new magazine, she's written for Harper's Bazar and if you have any further questions talk to her publicist. Tavi was profiled last year in the New Yorker where, in an exquisitely sadistic moment, she was prompted to worry about her future relevance as she grows up.

Anyway, I left a fairly cranky comment on the Times piece about, among other things, Tavi's style sense. Gah! I'm insulting teenagers now. Afterward I realized that bile was misdirected: I have no issue with the girl— she's got a lot of what people long ago used to call Moxie. In fact, if I'd stumbled on her blog myself I'd be sort of enchanted: she's droll and enviably self-possessed. No, my bitter pearls were directed at the marketing juggernaut of publicists, mom-managers, product tie-ins, exclusive wedding-rehearsal-dinner-photo-sellers and ass X-ray takers that flogs things relentlessly and indiscriminately in order to corral my 1 millimeter of mental bandwidth and drain my wallet.//

If peevish-and-in-one's-40s ever becomes fashionable I am your new muse.//

*Anna Piaggi + Michelle Williams = Tavi Gevinson

 

 

age 15-16: a playlist

edgier selections

I remember hearing this on the John Peel Show while in London. I never owned their record I still think she's extraordinary

sillier selections

I think they hold up for me. Really fun, and their schtick was amazingly thorough.
Another John Peel Show find that, for me, existed on homemade cassette only. 

Not having a good day today, so I decided to seek comfort by regressing and spent the last few hours rifling through Youtube. I did this once before and posted with a slightly earlier playlist. I have to say my music tastes in those years (12-14) were pretty damn impressive, but by this age (15-16), having already given up on the Clash, I was starting to succumb to questionable choices. But, hey, anything's interesting 30 years on, from an anthropological point of view at least. I went down hill from here, falling precipitously in college (eg. Thompson Twins, Scritti Politti).

Reading list: The Face (a brilliant magazine, nothing like it in the US at the time), New Musical Express, and I-D once in a while. Wish I still had those magazines...

Me, Myself, and Irene

 

top: Library of Congress, rest: nypl digital

chronophages and trade cards

What a great job title: Drawing Master

"Rose, Fancy Ruling and Graduating Engines"— geometric lathes that produced the ornamental designs and sets of fine lines
used on the border of this card and the ones above

"Dealer in Natural and Artificial Curiosities..."
My God, think of the things an antiques dealer in 1801 must have had...

Haberdasher at the Three Pidgeons in Long-Acre, near Drury-Lane, London.
Sells all Sorts of Threads,
Thread and Inkle Tapes,
Manchester & Beggars Tapes,
Boot Strappings,
Quality Bindings,
Silk Ferrets & Galloons,
Silk & Worsted Gartering,
best Silk and Cotton Laces,
Stay Strapping & Silver Twist,
drawn Pockets,
Borders and Huzzeys,
Ticken Pockets & Stomachers,
Shirt & Waistcoat Buttons,
best London Pins and Whitechapel Needles,
Thimbles,
Manchester & Irish Ticks,
Russils and Tabbies of all Sorts,
Paduasoy, Taffaty & Sattin Ribbons,
best Belladine Silk, of all Colours,
Whalebone and Whalebone Busks,
Hooks & Eyes,
Silesia & Scotch Cloth,
Shagreens and Sar[?]
Wadding & Hair Cloths,
Pocket Fustians

Coates of Arms, Seals, Cyphers, Shop-cards, Bills of Parcels, Circulary Letters, to imitate hand-writing,
Benefit, Concert, Masquerade cards

Several years ago I was chatting with an Italian friend whose English had been heavily inflected to begin with, and after a few years living in Paris it was downright mysterious. He complained of some activity that was "a true chronophage..." 

What? 

"What is in English? Very time consuming"

"Chronophage" = literally "time eating." Yes!

Herewith the results of some of my chronophageous pasttimes (looking at old ephemera online; gathering word lists): 18th and early 19th century British trade cards from the exhaustive collection in the British Museum. As per my previous post on Brooklyn trade cards, what has been interesting me most these days is the wording: The lists of strange and exotic items available, the curious and arcane services proffered.

I love the fact that these items were as common as today's supermarket list of low-fat yogurt, BBQ sauce, and lighter fluid, but I have little or no clue what any of them are.

Flambeaux and Links
Gallipoly Oil
Gum Arabic and Dragon
Hartshorn shavings
Neats-foot oil

Pearl ashes
Salt Prunelles

Scouring sand
Smalts
Tea Papers
Tobacco Marks
White Chamber oil