MAD MEN

Who is Don Draper?

That's the mystery at the heart of "Mad Men", the hottest show on TV right now. It was created by Matthew Weiner, one of the writers of "The Sopranos", and it just won the Emmy for Best Dramatic Series.

If you haven't seen "Mad Men", it's about an advertising agency called Sterling Cooper in early 1960s New York. Kennedy is President. Wagner is Mayor. Marilyn Monroe is about to OD. Beatlemania, the civil rights movement, and Vietnam are just around the corner. And New York is still an affordable place to live.

It was a simpler, more laid back time. In those days, men wore suspenders under double breasted suits and the women were encased in incredibly tight fitting skirts. Everyone drank and smoked all day and managed to do very little actual work. Most of the women in the office are secretaries looking to get married, all of the men are married but trying to sleep with the secretaries, homosexuals and black people live very much in the shadows, and a high paying salary is $100 a week.

In the middle of this lost America is a lost man named Donald Draper -- a high flying, unhappily married, perpetually adulterous ad exec. He's dying inside but we don't exactly know why. In fact, he's not actually Don Draper ... so who is he?

Obviously I'm much too young to know what 1960s NYC was like but I'd like to think it was like it is on "Mad Men." It may have been a more conformist, socially repressive time and it's probably good that a lot of the mores of that time have changed. But it also feels like it was a time where manners and respectability -- class -- was still important. And it's sad that we've lost that.

Wang Hui

The lady friend and I just saw a great exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art about the Chinese artist Wang Hui. He was a painter who worked for the Qing emperors (the last dynasty before the revolution in 1911) during the late 17th/early 18th centuries. He created some of the most incredible landscape paintings and scrolls ever seen. Some of these scrolls are literally yards long and they show off the majestic physical beauty of China. The paintings are simple yet highly detailed and, even though they are hundreds of years old, there is something wonderfully fresh and contemporary about them.

I'll admit that I don't next to nothing about Chinese art or art in general but what amazed me about Hui's paintings, and some other similar Chinese paintings included in this exhibit, is that Chinese artists
as far back as the 13th and 14th century were experimenting with impressionist art long before the Europeans. You could almost say that Chinese artists like Hui were the real fathers of Impressionism (they Chinese were also created and were eating pasta long before the Italians but that's another story).

I strongly recommend seeing this exhibit if you're in the mood for something different.

Wang Hui

Nasty Weather

The last three days in NYC have been hot, humid, and vile. The rain keeps coming and going, and the air is so thick you can hardly breath. The streets have been like some kind of tropical island or Turkish bath. Worse, it's the kind of gross, yucky weather that impacts your mind and body. You know what I'm talking about, right? It gets under your skin and makes you feel irritable. Your constantly wiping sweat off your brow and your skin feels perpetually dirty no matter how much you wash. Worse, it gives you the Sunday night blues -- all day, every day -- and it's even been giving me a headache. Ouch.

Has anyone else been affected by this weather? It's supposed to stay with us through Tuesday and I'll be most grateful when it ends.

Paul Newman RIP

He was one of the greatest actors in movie history and his career lasted more than 50 years.

Paul Newman made countless classic movies like Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, HUD, The Hustler, Cool Hand Luke, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Sting, The Color of Money (his only Oscar), and Nobody's Fool. Beyond that, he was a canny businessman (everyone has bought his salad dressing at least once) and also a great humanitarian.

Like so many of the great actors of his generation, Newman got his start at the Actor's Studio here in NYC. He will be missed.

Paul Newman, a Magnetic Titan of Hollywood, Is Dead at 83

Remembering New York Icon George Plimpton

Five years ago today, George Plimpton died at the much-too-young age of 76. Who was he? He was a modern day Renaissance man, someone of many talents and interests who wanted to do -- and did -- just about everything. Above all, he married highbrow culture with popular tastes, and he was someone who made you feel good about being alive.

A native New Yorker, George Plimpton was a blue-blooded, Harvard and Cambridge University educated Knickerbocker. He lived on the Upper East Side for almost his entire life and was prominent on the New York social circuit. Plimpton founded the still-running literary magazine The Paris Review in 1953 and edited it until he died in 2003. Among some of the writers he helped discover were Terry Southern and Philip Roth, and he even interviewed Ernest Hemingway. He also wrote books, including one on Truman Capote. In literary circles, he was a star-maker.

But Plimpton was not just some ivory-tower elitist. Far from it. He was a man of action. He fought in World War II. He was with Robert Kennedy in Los Angeles on the night of his assassination in 1968, and helped wrestle Sirhan Sirhan to the ground. And he did something most of us would only dream of: he got to pitch in a National League Baseball game, box against Sugar Ray Robinson, golf on the PGA Tour with Jack Nicklaus, and play with the Detroit Lions football team. He wrote about these experiences in Sports Illustrated and other magazines, and he wrote about his football experiences in the book Paper Lion that became a movie with Alan Alda.

Talking about movies, Plimpton appeared in them too, including as an extra in Lawrence of Arabia and small parts in Reds, Volunteers, and Good Will Hunting among others. He appeared on TV as well, as himself on The Simpsons and also in a small recurring part as Carter's grandfather on ER.

Plimpton was also the New York City Fireworks Commissioner for over thirty years, first "appointed" by Mayor Lindsay and holding that "job" until he died.

I had the pleasure of seeing George Plimpton in person several years ago at the 92nd Street Y. He was appearing with Norman Mailer and Mailer's wife where the three of them read letters by F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. A very tall man with an aristocratic voice and bearing, Plimpton was funny, charming, and a great reader. It was a real honor to have seen him and I only regret not learning about who he was much sooner.

George Plimpton was one of those people who brought joy to just about everyone who ever encountered him. I remember right after he died, James Lipton of Inside the Actor's Studio appeared on Charlie Rose and he said of his friend's passing, "What are we going to do now?"

My guess is George Plimpton would say, "Go on living -- and enjoy it!" He was a true original, someone who blazed his own path, a real New York icon.

George Plimpton: Man of Letters, Man of Action

Suzanne Vega - Tom's Diner

How did Suzanne Vega write "Tom's Diner"? Find out here.

It's quite a long essay by Ms. Vega and she tells you anything and everything you'd ever want to know about how this classic NYC song came into existence.

It's scary but true: this song is over 20 years old -- but it's still great. If there was ever a song that encapsulated this town, it's "Tom's Diner."

Just a few interesting facts about this song:

1. The real Tom's Diner is actually Tom's Restaurant on 112th and Broadway. And yes, it's the same one as on "Seinfeld." I actually grew up very near restaurant and went there often in my misspent youth. The food is okay but they have GREAT milkshakes.

2. The story about the actor who died while drinking is, as confirmed by Ms. Vega here, William Holden.

3. The "bells of the Cathedral" refers to the Cathedral of St. John the Divine.

4. This is the first song on Suzanne Vega's hit 1987 album "Solitude Standing" -- the same one as her other big hit song, "Luka."

Gotta Love New Yorkers

Picture this: a man with a beautiful black cat sitting on his head standing outside the Winter Garden Theater, home to Mama Mia!, with no one paying it any attention.

Where else are you going to see something like this?

Sarah Comes to Town

The esteemed Governor of Alaska and Republican nominee for Vice-President is in town today. She's going to the U.N. to meet foreign leaders and then get tutorials in foreign policy with the likes of Henry Kissinger (shudder). This is a woman who didn't have a passport until last year and said she didn't pay any attention to the Iraq war for the last five years -- and a year from now she may be a heartbeat away from formulating American's foreign policy. You can't make this stuff up.

Palin in the City

Meanwhile, the usually gaseous conservative pundit has written a brilliant column about John McCain's nutty response to the financial crises. Will puts it perfectly: "Under the pressure of the financial crisis, one presidential candidate is behaving like a flustered rookie playing in a league too high. It is not Barack Obama."

Happy 40th Anniversary New York Magazine

New York magazine changed the publishing industry when it was founded by the late Clay Felker forty years ago. It was brash, funny, strange, and original. Home to the New Journalism of the 1960s, New York published a huge variety of authors including Tom Wolfe, Pete Hamill, Jimmy Breslin, and so many other great writers who are still around today.

More than any other publication before or since, New York was the city speaking to itself, encapsulating our urban neurosis, spotting every trend before it hit and predicting its demise before its fall, and keeping everyone up to date on what was going on in this town. New York was and is the "go-to" magazine for everyone who is anyone (or no one, like yours truly) in NYC and New Yorkers ignore it at their peril.

Check out New York's 40th Anniversary section and read some old stories that still read as fresh as if they were published today.

Last Game At Yankee Stadium - Final Inning

1923-2008

Goodbye, House that Ruth Built. You made this city proud more times than we can remember. Thank you.

Yankee Stadium closes after 85 years