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| Kelly Clark Flies |
GIRLSLIDE
26 February 2006
As among the men, there was a marked contrast of styles among the female athletes at this year's winter Olympic games
at Torino.
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| Belbin & Agosto |
For old-fashioned sexiness and glamor it would be hard to beat Tanith Belbin, who with her partner Jamie Agosto won silver
in the ice dancing competition -- the highest finish ever for an American pair in that event. She had a strange mix of sensuality
and elegance that reminded one of Grace Kelly, and she skated beautifully, too. Cool.
Out on the slopes and snowboard runs there was another style bubbling to the surface, and it was even cooler. Kelly Clark,
a fearless snowboarder, was in fourth place after the first medal run of the half pipe. She could have played it safe and
gone for a bronze, but she wanted gold, so she let loose a run of stunning ambition and recklessness. She took awesome air,
rivaling anything the men can do, with wildly difficult tricks -- and she almost pulled it off . . . but a slip on her last
landing kept her off the medals podium. Still, her run summed up the spirit of the snowboarding culture -- leave it all on
the course and then go party.
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| Lindsey Jacobellis |
Then there was poor Lindsey Jacobellis, the 20 year-old phenom favored to win gold in the snowboard cross. After a brilliant
performance in the final race she looked back just seconds from the finish line and realized she was going to win. In a moment
of ill-advised high spirits she did a hot-dog maneuver off the last jump -- and crashed, unable to get back up in time to
grab that gold. She had to settle for silver. So sad -- and NOT really an example of the snowboarding spirit. It was just
dumb.
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| Julia Mancuso |
In the Alpine events, there was a new girl spirit on display as well. Julia Mancuso eschewed a helmet for her assault on
the slalom in favor of a knit cap and tiara. Her teammate Resi Stiegler, forbidden to wear her customary tiger ears, settled
for a couple of strings of pearls.
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| Resi Stiegler |
The TV commentators huffed and puffed about the inappropriateness of these girlie touches -- completely missing the wit of
them. Picabo Street, who used to be cool but is now just an aging duppie, chastised Mancuso as well, after she failed to
win gold in the the slalom. "Lose the tiara," she said.
Mancuso did lose it for the giant slalom, in favor of a helmet, but proceeded to win the gold medal in the event. On
the medals stand she donned the tiara defiantly after the playing of the national anthem. She ended up with the gold AND
the silly, wonderful tiara -- a real modern girl.
Take that, Picabo. Go have a drink with Bode Miller -- who won NOTHING at Torino, for all his arrogant, sulky preening
-- and shut up.
Things have changed.
OLYMPIC GOLD
19 February 2006
Imagine sitting back in a La-Z-Boy recliner, in a living room with a view of the Las Vegas Strip, with a fire blazing
in the fireplace, eating some country ham biscuits, drinking a Coke and watching the Olympics on a hi-def TV set. That's
the serene place I've been inhabiting recently.
I always zone out during the Olympics, especially the winter Olympics, parsing the competitions for the epiphanies that
inevitably arise from human endeavor at its highest pitch of skill and strain.
This year I've been struck by the contrast between Bode Miller and Shaun White -- two Americans good at riding mobile
platforms over snow and ice.
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| Bode Miller |
Miller of course is a downhill skier -- America's best hope for medals in the Alpine events. He's a perfect 60s anti-hero,
who parties hard, even on nights before his competitions, and has admitted to skiing "wasted". He used his period
of media attention before the games to tell us over and over again how little he values the media, how little he values the
Olympics themselves. What he values is how he feels about himself -- if he meets his own standards of performance, the standards
of others don't count.
Before the games, the media seemed to eat this up -- because "that's Bode" . . . a guy who can ski wasted and
still kick everybody else's butt.
Only he couldn't. He has performed terribly at the games so far, never once reaching the medals podium. Quite soon now
his opinions about media attention will be moot -- because he will have none. His fifteen minutes of fame are about to expire.
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| Shaun White |
Shaun White is a goofy 19 year-old snowboarder. Like all the rest of the snowboarding competitors he engages the media happily
but unseriously -- the snowboarders think of the Olympics as a bit too "establishment", but they don't have to make
a point about it, it's just obvious in their self-contained joy in what they do, sliding on snow and flying above it, goofing
on each other's accomplishments. Now they're doing it in Torino -- but it could be anywhere.
White was the prohibitive favorite to win a gold medal in the men's half-pipe, but the first of his qualifying runs was
a disaster. He had to do a perfect second run just to make it to the final competition -- and he did it, with such style
and grace and physical calm that it made the spirit soar.
He went on to win the gold in another inspiring performance. Afterwards, he teared up a bit when he saw how happy his
parents were. "I wasn't expecting to get emotional," he said, clearly surprised at himself. Later, when asked
what the gold medal meant to him, he said he hoped it would help him get babes.
Shaun White is a new kind of hero, in the Napoleon Dynamite mold -- goofing on an inner direction and self-confidence
and in the process producing an infectious joy, a sweet art. Bode Miller shreds his own buzz, so preoccupied is he with making
sure we know he doesn't need our approval. White doesn't seem to care whether we know that or not -- he soars above it all,
and our eyes follow his arc through big air.
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| © 2006 Paul Kolnik |
LAS VEGAS:
REALITY CHECK
14 February 2006
When you steal away from the "real world" and your "ordinary life" to visit Las Vegas, you may doing
exactly the opposite of what you think you're doing -- because the "real world", where you lead your "ordinary
life", is largely a fantasy construction, a theatrical facade of superseded historical concepts applied to a reality
that is very different indeed, in order to make it seem manageable and familiar.
This fantasy world is necessary because the world we actually live in is changing so rapidly and profoundly that the change
can barely be processed. So we still think of "modern art" -- a form which took shape about a hundred years ago
and petered out in the 1960s. We're not sure what has replaced it -- so we speak of post-modern art, still relating contemporary
events to an historical era long vanished. We think of culture as "the fine arts" -- painting, sculpture, opera,
symphonic music . . . forms which are no longer alive in the popular imagination, no longer contributing new work to the contemporary
consciousness. They are part of archived culture -- fine things, as museums and libraries are fine things, but things that
tell us little about the culture we actually live in now.
Theatrical box office returns for movies are regularly printed in newspapers, preserving the illusion that we still have
a public culture of moviegoing, whereas in fact movies are primarily consumed through, and all movies make their profits from,
private viewings in the home. "News", as presented on television, is about entertainment, not information, much
less truth, and has about as much connection to reality as the "reality television" which fills the nominal entertainment
slots on the TV schedule.
Our "representative government" is owned lock, stock and barrel by corporations, which have all the rights and
privileges of individuals but none of the responsibilities -- as gross a parody of humane civic order, of "democracy",
as it's possible to imagine.
Former cultural centers like New York are becoming a combination of regional retail shopping centers, like huge malls,
and refuges for the upper middle class, who imagine they are living in a lively contemporary hotbed of cutting-edge culture,
even as they drive out the young bohemians who alone fuel such culture.
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| © 2006 Paul Kolnik |
So where are we really? It's hard to say precisely, because all the wheels are spinning so quickly -- but Las Vegas is the
most productive place to come and consider the subject. Las Vegas has an ironic archived culture, in the form of gigantic
three-dimensional representations of former cultural centers like Paris and Venice (and New York.) It builds the sort of
buildings that people want to inhabit, as opposed to the sort of buildings that academic culture thinks they OUGHT to want
to inhabit. It presents shows and spectacles that they actually want to see as opposed to shows and spectacles that the overeducated
classes think would be good for them.
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| © 2006 Paul Kolnik |
In Las Vegas, gambling, one of the largest industries throughout America, and the true American Pastime, is legal, as opposed
to underground and hypocritically outlawed. In Las Vegas, men are encouraged openly to appreciate women's bodies in various
stages of undress without any polite fictions masking their desire to do so. In Las Vegas, the lust for money, the operative
principle of our society, is celebrated frankly. In Las Vegas, the democratic spirit, the camaraderie of all citizens, is
practiced in individual exchanges on a massive scale.
In Las Vegas, all the civic and psychic and class-based masks are ripped away, all the institutional veils are lifted
. . . here the lid is off and you get a look into the works. You may like what you see, or not -- though it's surprising
how well and pleasantly the town functions without the fantastical facade most of us use to cope. But like it or not, understand
it or not, appreciate it or not, this is where we are -- and wherever we're going, we have to start from here.
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| © 2006 Paul Kolnik |
[The report above is illustrated with photographs taken by Paul Kolnik on a recent visit to Las Vegas. I'll be publishing
more of them, and writing about them, in the weeks to come . . .]
HAIRSPRAY
8 February 2006
My friend Paul Kolnik flew into town from New York for Super Bowl weekend. He didn't come to watch the game or bet on
it, but to do the publicity photos for "Hairspray", the hit Broadway musical which opened this past Monday at the
Luxor, the latest transplanted and streamlined version of a Broadway musical to open on the Strip.
The Luxor lost its big theatrical attraction, "The Blue Man Group", an off-Broadway transplant, to the Venetian
recently and hurried to replace it with the Tony-winning musical based on the film by Jon Waters.
For many years, Paul has been the house photographer for the New York City Ballet, raising the level of dance performance
photography to new heights. Photographing a ballet there by guest choreographer Susan Strohman led to her hiring him to do
publicity photos for her Broadway dance musical "Contact". A photograph of his became the signature image in the
show's advertising, and the show went on to become a hit, which led Strohman to use him again for "The Producers",
which became a mega-hit.
Suddenly Paul was Mr. Broadway, shooting most of the big successful shows and doing further work on them when they went
on tour with new casts. That's what led him to the Luxor for this latest incarnation of "Hairspray".
He took me with him to watch a dress rehearsal of the musical on Saturday afternoon with a small audience consisting mainly
of local friends of the production. It was the first time I'd seen the show, and I thought it was wonderful.
"Hairspray" is an irreverent but sweet evocation of the early Sixties in Baltimore, a democratic celebration of
eccentricity and idealism. It sort of occupies "Grease" territory, but with a hipper attitude and a bigger heart.
The songs evoke and celebrate early Sixties pop music without parody or condescension -- they just reproduce the innocence
and energy of the form. The choreography echoes popular dance steps of the time in cheerful, affectionate variations. It's
the costumes, though, by the brilliant Broadway veteran William Ivy Long, that hold the show together and give it much of
its buoyant charm. They constitute simultaneously an archeological tribute to, unrestrained celebration of and witty commentary
on the wacky fashion innovations of the Fifties and Sixties. (For the range of the costumes' color palette, Long says he
was influenced by the colors found in the Necco Wafer rolls.)
There was a special kind of excitement on both sides of the footlights at the dress rehearsal -- the sign of a show that's
playing well and can't wait to strut its stuff for the paying crowds. The production is the result of a lot of combined theatrical
experience and ingenuity and it was a pleasure to watch it all operating in high gear. The show is a light diversion, but
professional virtuosity has its own kind of aesthetic weight. "Hairspray" is seriously good fun.
After the dress rehearsal I left and Paul went to work on the set-ups -- posed pictures of the cast on the various sets.
(Basically this involves cycling backwards through the scene settings for the shots.) Paul took nearly a thousand photos
and the next day was having trouble burning them onto a DVD for the show's publicity people to examine. I met him for a late
breakfast at the Luxor's 24/7 coffee shop, The Pyramid Cafe, with my laptop in tow, to see if my machine would have more luck
making the DVD. (It didn't.)
In the course of our efforts my laptop started to lose battery power, so we asked the manager if we could plug in to one of
the restaurant's power outlets. No problem, of course -- because this is Las Vegas. "Our outlets are your outlets,"
said the manager. When she learned that we were working on photos for "Hairspray" she seemed thrilled. "We
need a new show in here," she said. "We can really see the difference it makes for casino traffic and business
in the restaurants. It creates action."
That's why so many Broadway shows are setting up shop here -- they create action for the casinos, and there's never enough
of that. My guess is that "Hairspray" -- whose democratic, exhuberant and often elegant vulgarity echoes the Las
Vegas style so well -- is going to create more than its share.
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