The world needs more love, not more gossip columnists. But then, rooting through the detritus of Western culture, all the gratuitous innuendo, celebrity filth, and pop culture newsbites is so much more rewarding. A decidedly ignoble occupation, of course, the practitioners of the trade generally regarded as venom-spewing maggots, prissy…
A return to real life after an all-too-brief vacation, slipping in and out of the immediate, pulled back into the dreamscape of memory. “Big Bad Wolf” at Les Bains, John Hood and Luigi Scorcia working the funk gestalt, the club less arch than usual, newly done up with mirrors and…
Our summer vacation, a busman’s holiday amidst the rich pageant of New York, taken up for the season by Patrick McMullan of Interview, mindful of the great social oracle’s dictum: Remember, it’s not who you are that’s important. It’s who you’re standing next to.” “A week of lurking around and…
Memento mori, a dance to the music of time, the distinctions between past, present, and future blurring, the curious workings of memory and delusion taking hold. The brain, lately, one big quadruplex theater of postmodern nostalgia, cacophonous Sensurround images and floating scraps of dialogue, the portable movie sliding in and…
Nightlife, one long forced march, the troops ever conscious of misstepping, a prance into the oblivion of darkness. An obstacle course fraught with tension and peril; to stumble, even momentarily, is to be devoured by the juggernaut of attitude. In any epoch, the in-crowd tends to be unforgiving and pitiless,…
Summertime in Miami, hot and pitiless as the Gobi Desert, an opportunity to relax, kick back, slowly sink into a terminal slough of despond. The right crowd, even in the beyond-the-pale doldrums, still making news. A rumor about the separation of philanthropists Sanford and Helene Ziff leading to extensive telephone…
A weekend of pop history, the American Booksellers Association convention coming to the wasteland, the forces of literary imperialism conquering the provincial barbarians. Miami, the endlessly entertaining if vaguely embarrassing tropic of pointless pleasure, awash in the relentless march of American lite culture, becoming the epicenter of civilization for a…
Memorial Day weekend, a nation mourns its war dead, throws sloppy barbecues, drinks too much beer. Miami, as usual, out of sync with the rest of the nation, bracing for the ultimate dialectic: the literary star power of the American Booksellers Association convention vying with the ugly threat of rioting…
The posthuman cyborg, comfortably numb for the off-season, beyond feeling and pride. A long revel in the local art form of the disgusting, savoring the various permutations of offensiveness like a true professional, taking a punch-drunk pleasure in an ability to withstand anything. Miami, a cartoon universe, the cast of…
The armies of the night, helpless in the face of the social addiction, doomed to wander forever like vampires, seeking sustenance and sensation. A losing proposition of diminishing returns, the relentless eventually losing all sense of perspective. The sheer process of simply going out, anywhere and everywhere, becoming an unfathomable…
A city festering like a mutant amoeba, imploding and feeding on itself in a frenzy of hype, too fabulous for its own good. The media rooting through the carcass for unsavory morsels, gorging on the second wave of expatriate celebrities fleeing Los Angeles, completely doomed and, worse yet, unfashionable. The…
Miami, a floating surrealistic circus, breaking loose from the constraints of reason and propriety. A satellite republic of weirdness, a banana republic without cash-flow problems, the brave new American city of the future. Terminally democratic, a duty-free zone on the brink of anarchy, embracing a twisted interpretation of the Jeffersonian…
Tumbling into a different dimension, the party zone, suspended in time and space, a parallel universe of insatiable desires and twisted pleasures. Lawless and unforgiving, the operating policy, oddly enough, succinctly defined by a three-year-old of our acquaintance, absorbed in a fit of psychotic whining: “I need it because I…
Miami, fashionable and fickle, a game of chance and improbability, a whimsical yet deadly postmodern landscape, kind of disgusting but kind of fun, too. You’re up, you’re down, you don’t know where the hell you are. Ocean Drive magazine throwing a party at The Forge with Jacques and Pascal, the…
Miami, the town that care remembered, but somehow neglected to worry about, allowing the subjects of Babylon to cavort with the abandonment of wayward Olympians. “Pops in the Park,” the New World Symphony’s gala dinner dance at the Omni Hotel, the upper classes in the throes of decorous merriment. The…
The Avenue — production of “Rondo” at Mario’s South Beach, a very loose adaptation of Miriam Schapiro’s book, many spirits unraveling, awash in the “melodrama of being,” the solving emptiness that lies beneath everything we do. The evening hours, a world where everything is permitted, but nothing, at the very…
Proto-reality, the high-concept world of television, as alluring, addictive, and curiously entrancing as clubs, the inevitable distancing of the cool medium making the alternating anxiety and boredom of nightlife slightly more palatable, and somehow more real than actually being there. Visions of pitch meetings, lucrative guest appearances on infomercials, starlet…
Pain and pleasure, misery and joy, the twin polarities of existence, locked in eternal struggle. Seized by an inexplicable desire for fresh air on a pretty day, hauling the pasty carcass out to a public park in the throes of a Purim-theme kids birthday party, the poisons of the night…
The toll taken, the sensibilities dulled to the point of oblivion, the physical infrastructure nearing collapse. The imminent autopsy no doubt revealing a suicidal insult to the brain, composed of ill-conceived liquor consumption, attitude assaults, and sustained exposure to Why-I’m-so-fabulous monologues and model-type conversations: “No, I’m not going to Europe…
Rebar at four in the morning and a night of heroic drinking with club promoter Michael Capponi, the twenty-year-old prince of South Beach, is winding down. The place is packed, grunge rock pounding over the sound system, a madhouse of lust and degeneracy. A Saudi fighter pilot earnestly raves about…
A weird world, getting weirder by the minute. Donald Trump, thwarted by the reactionary forces of Palm Beach, the town fathers reluctant to have Mar-A-Lago turned into another Trumpland development. The Donald now working on turning the place into a private club, based on the success of his recent girls-girls-girls…
Lost weekend, gone completely party crazy, wallowing in flash and gossip. Sliding in gently with a Valentine’s Day/last gasp of the Miami Film Festival cocktail reception at the Marlin hotel. The Scull sisters beyond baroque, with matching hairdos embalmed in beeswax. Publicist Susan Magrino, talking about the American Booksellers Association…
