Someone told me this blog is getting stale, and that someone’s probably the only person who actually reads it. For that, I apologize. I’m new to blogging. Back in early December, a major Manhattan website had an internal crisis and wound up with a bunch of job openings. My agent set me up with an interview, but the guy who was hiring said, “Bro, how can I hire someone for a blogging position who doesn’t even have a blog?” He had a point. A few days later, John Claude Lacroix, Medicine’s founding partner, called me while I was on vacation in Miami. “Dude, write for my site,” Lacroix says. “Dude, send me the info. I’m in,” I say. Now just two and half months later, we’ve already gone sour.
Still, I enjoy the act of writing so much that I’m obviously willing to continue. But from this day on I’ll try extra hard not to bore readers. Rather, today I’ll use Portfolio Magazine as a lead in to a discussion of media, art, and politics. Also included is an unpublished essay written right when John asked me to blog.
In Miami, when John conceived this whole thing, I was attending Basel Miami, North America’s largest contemporary art fair. Yesterday, when my over dinner someone decried Med’s online sourness, I had just attended an opening for a group show of Iraq photographers. Below is one of the images from the show, taken by Stefan Zaklin, of a dead American in Fallujah.
The tie between Miami Basel and the Iraq war can be found in the pages of Conde Naste Portfolio this month. The magazine, now on it’s sixth (?) issue, has hit its stride. Si Newhouse staked $100 million—about the same as Transformers’ budget—to launch Portfolio. Media gossips at the Observer, Gawker, and Fishwbowl covered Portfolio’s every hire and fire, issue by issue. No feature was left untouched. The New Republic dispatched Elizabeth Spiers to write 3000 words on why Portfolio sucks (no longer avail online). Rumors of Michael Lewis getting $12 a word proved unfounded. Tom Wolfe did a cover story. And Portfolio trudged along.
Well, I finally bought my first issue, thanks to a cover story about Iraq by Denis Johnson, former junky and current National Book Award for fiction winner. Johnson stays up in Kurdistan, covering the oil boom. His story is hardly Jon Lee Anderson getting shot at in the opium fields. But Johnson writes a great piece nonetheless. With sentences like this:
This evening, Rambo orders beef Stroganoff, therefore so do I, to my considerable regret, and he sips a German beer I should get the name of, but I’m more interested in clocking his consumption, because I wonder if it’s possible for this specimen to chug down the calories and still look capable of pinning an elephant in four moves at the age of 47.
…it’s hard not to enjoy Johnson’s piece.
Portfolio’s sole problem is it’s limited scope. See it’s a business magazine trying to act like an ASME contender like VF or The Atlantic. My humble advice? Pull back on “business”—such a cruel concept anyway, ripping people off, don’t you think?—and play up the economics. Recent business best-sellers have been in The World is Flat and Freakonomics vein. Political economy—not business. With writers like Johnson, Portfolio should explicitly (like in an editor’s note) expand its breadth beyond “business” and into “political economy.” Using an all encompassing term that covers capitalist democracy and more allows the magazine to go deeper.
For instance, this month Adres Martinez writes a front of the book piece on campaign finance. He compares election spending to what large corporations shell out for marketing. Wendy’s spent $315 million last year, or the same as Kerry in 04. ATT spent $2.2 billion, about twice what this year’s race is to cost. Perfect political economy writing here…
The Portfolio stories that stay too business-y are boring.
Not boring is Jay McInerney’s Art Basel piece. Like Johnson, McInerney is a (former?) druggy novelist. Unlike the universally praised Johnson, McInerney is all too often derided for being a caricature of his younger self. Hey, is it Jay’s fault that he wrote Bright Lights, Big City, the only pure 80s NY cocaine classic?
Since then Jay’s lived it up as a wine columnist, model fucker, Strokes hater, foie gras eater, West Villager, without ever really leaving NYC or the Hamptons. He’s easy to hate on, for sure, but his books are fun and well written. Plus, the guy needs to exist. New York needs an 80s writer holdover who isn’t dead or completely washed up, someone who still lives “the life.”
So read the first paragrph from the Basel story:
Thursday morning, 4:30, I’m walking back to my hotel from Le Baron, the transplanted French nightclub that sets up shop on Collins Avenue for the week of Art Basel Miami Beach, with Paul Sevigny, a D.J., and Patrick McMullan, a photographer. (Who’s buying whom? Read “How Stars Are Born at Art Basel.”) Patrick’s been hard at work shooting the parties that have become such a big part of the festival, and Paul’s come down from New York to spin for one of them—I forget which. Ralph Lauren, Pucci, Swarovski, Audi, and UBS, the banking giant that’s the main sponsor of the event, are among the corporate entities that have hosted events tonight, and those are just the ones I can remember. The festival officially opened 12 hours ago, but the serious collectors and V.I.P.’s swarmed the Miami Beach Convention Center starting at noon, and the serious party people had attended dozens of soirees the night before. Iggy Pop gave a concert on the beach tonight, and not long after that I found myself on the lower floor of the Delano at Lenny Kravitz’s nightclub, the Florida Room, chatting with transvestites and trying unsuccessfully to make conversation with Lance Armstrong. (View other art shows around the world.)
Flashback to December. I’m at Basel, John calls, this blog thing is about to happen. I’m also working on a Miami piece for, um, myself I guess. This was my first lede:
Friday, 3am: Collins Ave, South Beach. Outside Rokbar, Tommy Lee’s club. During Basel, Rokbar’s been taken over by Parisian disco Le Baron. On this night Le Baron was hosting Purple Magazine, a $20 French fashion text that mixes downtown NY low-culture with Parisian high-sleaze. The party’s door sets nightlife records for arrogance.
“This,” cue a nose-y French accent, “is a family affair tonight. No one is getting in,” unless you’re Paris Hilton, who showed up with Brooklyn tattoo artitst Scott “Saved” Campbell, to hear DJ Paul “Chloe’s Brother” Sevigny, owner of NY mini-club Beatice Inn.
All this attitude to get into an ugly room—the walls are lined by faux-amps and televisions playing subversive videos—only to be swarmed by guidos of both the Miami-Armani/Exchange and French-snakeskin boot variety. Down the street was another party, hosted by Eva Mendes for V Magazine. Earlier, Scion (the car) had partnered with Swindle Magazine (founded by graphic designer Shepard Fairly) to host a party showcasing graffiti paintings on hotel rooftop. Vanity Fair and Moma did parties that night too.
Fuck, I guess we all did the same things in Miami.
Anyway, Jay McInerney basically launched Chloe and thus her brother’s career.
Chloe naked in Purple Magazine.
Back in 1994, Jay kept seeing this young lil thang around. He dubbed her the “It Girl” and wrote a profile for the New Yorker. Without Jay’s 7000 word love in, would Chloe be on Big Love today, would the Beatrice Inn exist? While not solely responsible for Sevingys’ dual rise, Jay’s piece in 94 certainly helped…
More on Jay and Chloe, and an unpublished essay on Basel Miami…
(more…)
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