The King's Visit

Tonight are the Academy Awards and many people expect The King's Speech to win several major awards, including Best Picture. I certainly hope it does. I'm a big Anglophile and this was an excellent film, shedding new light on some otherwise well-known history.

The film is about King George VI who came to the British throne in 1936 when his older brother King Edward VIII abdicated to marry "the woman I love," American divorcee Wallis Simpson. George was shy, awkward, and had a terrible stutter (his attempts to cure being the subject of the film). George never wanted to be king but he did his best. Along with Winston Churchill, FDR, and Stalin, George was one of the leaders who led the Allies through WWII and helped to conquer fascism. He died in 1952 and was the father of the current British monarch, Queen Elizabeth.

After his abdication, however, Edward became something of pariah. He and Wallis traveled the world, living in luxurious exile, and generally becoming the first couple we might call "celebutards." Allegedly they were sympathetic to Hitler and engaged in financial shenanigans and were generally just awful.

They also had a connection to NYC. Every year they would come here and stay at the Waldorf-Astoria, bringing loads and loads of luggage, including their own serving china. Edward was actually staying in NYC in 1947 when then Princess Elizabeth married Prince Phillip. And after they left town, rumor has it that this outlaw royal duo would never pay their hotel bills.

That said, they weren't so truly horrible. Apparently, in 1941, Edward visited a tenement on the Lower East Side. For all of his wretchedness, Edward always cared a great deal about the poor and working class. During his brief reign as King, he actually went into working class neighborhoods in England and talked face to face with commoners, even saying at one point "Something must be done" (like Princess Diana fifty year later, who was one of the first public figures who bravely shook the bare hands of AIDS patients). Edward may have been an SOB, and a creepy guy, but he was not totally without merit. And here in NYC, at least at one time, he showed that to be true.  

Wisconsin Protest in New York City

We Won't See Their Likes Again

Former Village Voice reporter Wayne Barrett and former Screw magazine publisher Al Goldstein, couldn't be more different. 

One is a deeply respected journalist who shone a bright light on the dark doings of New York's political world. The other is an infamous pornographer who published a very filthy magazine and hosted a really dirty cable show here in NYC called Midnight Blue. Love or hate this saint and sinner, they were both amazingly good at what they did, and both made a real impact on the worlds of politics and sex in NYC.

Now they are both out of work. 

Wayne Barrett is no longer with the Voice (as I blogged about here last month) and Al Goldstein's magazine and TV show folded up a few years ago. Both in their golden years, the times have changed and conspired to pass them by. Part of it is the decline of print journalism and the rise of the web (devastating both to newspaper and porn finances), and part of it is the fact that NYC is no longer the gritty, dirty city it once was -- and Wayne and Al were most certainly gritty New Yorkers. Instead, guys like this have been superseded by the likes of Gawker and Burning Angel, slick sites that are more representative of this increasingly slick city.


It's hard to believe how long these guys practiced their respective trades in this town. For thirty-plus years their work was read and consumed by New Yorkers of all ages, races, colors and backgrounds. Now they've been replaced by a new generation who owe them a debt they probably don't recognize. And NYC is a little the lesser for it.

We'll probably never see their likes again.

Carmelo Comes to Town

For those of you still broken hearted that Le Bron James snubbed joining the Knicks last year (he decided to take his "talents to Miami"), you may now dry your eyes. Our savior has come!

His name is Carmelo Anthony.

The superstar basketball player for the Denver Nuggets was traded to the Knicks in a complex deal that involves other players being traded from the Knicks to the Nuggets, a few others players being traded to the Knicks, and then some cash (roughly $3 million) trading hands. 

So now the Knicks has another big-time player and sports experts are calling this a blockbuster deal that could our city's sorry NBA team's fortunes around. In the last few years, the Knicks were doing so badly that the team was literally bribing New Yorkers to come to games. I went to a game in late 2009 where, for $20, I not only got a decent seat in the Garden but also a t-shirt and a free popcorn and soda.  

Last season, however, the Knicks got its act together and now such deals are gone. And now that Carmelo is joining the Knicks, suddenly b-ball will be cool in NYC again in a way it hasn't been since the glory days of Patrick Ewing. 

Best of luck, Carmelo, and best of luck Knicks. We're counting on you to make our city supreme in all sports once again!

Woodstock Minute With Larry Fine (Narrated by Allison Steele)

Battle of the Beers

We New Yorkers, like all good Americans, love to drink us some brew. We may not be Milwaukee (or even Canada, eh?) but, in this town, you can get just about any beer you'd like from anywhere in the world.

And for the last twenty years, the Brooklyn Brewery has been putting out some damn good beer, showing that NYC concedes to no one when it comes to making quality brew.

But -- oh no! Despite its dominance, Brooklyn Beer is being ignored in its own backyard. Micro and craft breweries are challenging our hometown, big time brewery and lots of restaurants and bars in town are ignoring it too. Obviously Brooklyn Brewery is fighting back but it may not be long before our very own brewery is quashed by hippies making their own homemade beer in their backyards next to their compost heaps.

I guess, in NYC, if you can make it here ... that doesn't mean everyone will want whatever it is you make. 

Must Read!

Imagine losing a wallet and then getting it back, credit cards and all -- forty years later.

This really happened here in NYC.

It's quite a story. And how appropriate that the place where this wallet was lost and then found, with the forty-year interregnum, was in the old New York Times Building. Stop the presses! Read all about it here.

Theater NYC

In this multi-media era, there's nothing more old school as theater. These days, when it comes to entertainment, if you can't throw it up on YouTube or watch/listen to it on an IPod, it seems like no one cares. The idea of actually going to a theater and watching real live people performing on a stage seems almost ... quaint.

And yet, here in NYC in the second decades of the 21st century, theater is booming.

Theater in NYC has always been a big industry. After all, this is the town that invented the theatrical brands of "Broadway" and "Off Broadway" and "Off Off Broadway" shows. But right now this seems to be a particularly exciting time -- perhaps historic -- in the annals of NYC theater.

Where else but in NYC can you see not one but two Oscar winning actors play Shylock in The Merchant of Venice? Just as Al Pacino is finishing up his Broadway run in the iconic role, another version starring F. Murray Abraham. Amazing. And, in fact, if you like Shakespeare, there's going to be a play by The Bard on stage somewhere in NYC for the next several months. Even more amazing. Call this Shakespeare NYC.

And over in Brooklyn, at BAM, Geoffrey Rush just debuted in Diary of a Madman. And very shortly Derek Jacobi will be coming into town with King Lear. 

And right now there's a very little seen Tennessee Williams play being staged, a Redgrave is on Broadway, the always brilliant Mandy Patinkin is back, and the amount of off Broadway and alternative theater is absolutely booming.

Plus a revival of Tom Stoppard's Arcadia is headed to town -- and Mr NYC already has tickets!

And yes, the saga of Spider Man: Turn off the Dark rolls on. Now the geniuses behind this show are calling in someone to re-write the show completely. I hope this show stays open if only because it's such a welcome distraction from the real problems of the world.

Seriously, you should read the Theater section of the Times -- it's a show unto itself.

For those of you looking for good deals on tickets to this extravaganza of old media, you should go on TheaterMania to find deals. This a wonderful time in NYC theater and everyone should want to be a part of it.

Extreme Makover NYC

I almost called this post The Face of NYC, but I think Extreme Makeover NYC gets more to the point (besides shamelessly riffing off the popular reality show).

As many of you know, plastic surgery has skyrocketed in popularity over the last couple of decades. People now shell out large chunks of their life savings in order to change their appearances and make themselves look younger. Wrinkles, moles, blemishes, bumps and odds and ends can be vanquished by the surgeons scalpel. Indeed, entire decades can be removed from the visages of those willing enough to pay the price and risk the consequences.

Here in NYC, however, it's not that simple. Plastic surgery is an industry but, like so many things these days, it's a niche one. Standards of beauty differ from culture to culture, and people from different cultural backgrounds who want plastic surgery want different kinds of operations. Asians, Russians, Latinos, in particular, have become big customers of plastic surgery but want very different kinds of augmentations. This fascinating article gives you an insight about the plastic surgery business in NYC and how, in order to survive in this competitive market in this competitive town, plastic surgeons better understand what kinds of enhancements their customers are going to want based on their ethnic backgrounds.

But it's not just the literal face of our citizens that are undergoing big changes. The face of this city has changed dramatically in the last forty years. Currently at Film Forum there is a retrospective of Al Pacino movies from the 1970s. Obviously The Godfather movies are his most famous but he made some other classics like The Panic in Needle Park (1971), Serpico (1973) and Dog Day Afternoon (1975) all set in NYC. As this article points out, the city we see in these movies is a very different place than it is today. The face of NYC from the early 1970s to the early 2010s has changed dramatically. Instead of trash and junkies, we have bike lanes and yuppies. Instead of run down rent-controlled buildings, we have glass condos. Watching any movies set in NYC in the 1970s is like peering through the looking glass, seeing a place that is at once totally familiar but also completely alien. 

By the way, not all movies set in NYC in the 1970s were scary ones. 2011 marks the fortieth year since Woody Allen released his second movie, and his first real big hit, Bananas. Watching this very funny trailer below from 1971, you see that they don't make movies -- or trailers -- like this anymore.  

Bananas (1971) Trailer: 40 Years Later