Saturday, June 2, 2012

Product placement and Andy Warhol


Touting a few things that have not disappointed me over the years. 

Costco’s wine store:  Although not officially part of Costco, the wine is the most generously priced commodity.  A fab Cote du Rhone that I thought was well priced from Wine.com was half the price at Costco Wines.

Häagen-Dazs pineapple coconut ice cream: I spring for the pricy brand for this flavor.  There is nothing I like better.

Sue Grafton’s alphabet series: When I need to get my mind off of something, I count on this author to deliver.  It doesn’t hurt that I like her detective, Kinsey, and all the wonderful misfits in her life.

Breyers  chocolate chip mint ice cream: Tried it once and became addicted.
Edy’s coconut ice bars: I think they put crack in these bars because I can go through a box in two days. I love all things coconut.

Kashi brand:  I first began to dislike Kashi when they touted a free meal or snack on the air and then have it no longer available on their website.  The slogan is now annoying, too, as is the woman who delivers it.

Barilla multi-grain spaghetti:  If you must eat multi grain, this tastes the best.  (As opposed to Ronzoni that tastes like musty cardboard.)

Chock full of Nuts Coffee: Despite the fact that my eldest calls it Chock Full of Poverty because it’s not Starbucks or Peets.

The Andy Warhol Diaries: I once lent this book to a friend and then rushed to her house an hour later and begged for it back.  I couldn’t be without it.  Whenever I’m in a funk or can’t write I dip into Andy Warhol’s Diaries. Yes, Scott Fitzgerald’s use of the language is unparalleled, Hemingway invented the fab simple declarative sentence, John Cheever wrote about the noir side of suburbia and Something Happened by Joe Heller was the best novel of the deadening effect of the eighties and the real Mad Men.  However, Andy’s Diaries deconstructed the world of art, film, writing, high society, low society, advertising, finance and emerging talent and served it to us with a childlike wonder that never paled. It was like a special daily newspaper with real insight into pop culture and the passing scene.  The Diaries chronicle the late seventies and eighties but they could have been written yesterday.

The Diaries began as a daily morning phone call to his assistant recreating the previous day’s events so she could keep a running tab of his business expenses.  Here is just a random entry from Wednesday, January 31, 1979.

I worked all afternoon.  Then cabbed all the way down to Delia Doherty’s fashion show at Lafayette and Canal Street ($5). She had paper clothes made out of tubing.  The girls had to be rolled in, they couldn’t walk or talk.  It was absolutely great.  Jane Forth was there, she was just back from South America doing the makeup on a movie with Carol Lynley.  Jane said that she’s going back to makeup school because you can make more doing scars and burns than straight makeup.  She’s got a fat ex-lady cop who takes care of Emerson, the baby she had with Eric Emerson.  He’s eight or nine now.  He’s taking ballet lessons, he’s following in his father’s footsteps. (All punctuation is as printed in the book.)

Here’s part of another from January 26, 1979

Jenette Kahn - she’s the president of D.C. Comics, a friend of Sharon Hammond’s - called and invited me to see the Knicks on Monday because she wants me to paint the floor of the Knicks’ basketball court.
Paul Morrissey called from California about Bobby De Niro wanting to maybe rent Montauk, and Paul was saying to give him a cheap price so he’d be sure to take it because it’d be great to have him there, but I think we should raise the price - we’re not making enough renting Montauk to run it.

January 28, 1979

I saw a little of Taxi Driver on TV and the guy at the end reading the letter from Pittsburgh really sounded like was (laughs) reading from Pittsburgh. (Andy was from Pittsburgh.)
Oh, and on the news the lady who hijacked the plane said she had nitroglycerin and wanted Charlton Heston and Wonder Woman to read her letter on TV.  She looked like a normal schoolteacher . . . she was from California.  There were some famous people on that flight - the Jackson’s father and the guy who was with Mary Martin in Sound of Music on Broadway.


Andy Warhol was never mean.  He just told what happened.

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