It won't be long...

...before we get the new place done, and ready to receive guests...

Delicate and lovely?!

From the Nate D. Saunders auction house website:

Early Muppet characterization in Jim Henson's hand of Miss Piggy for her television debut. Created for his 1974 pitch to ATV Studios in London, Henson here presents "Piggy Lee", who would become the iconic Miss Piggy.

Henson handwrites: "THE PIGS / Life size - Piggy Lee and Hamilton Pigg. She is delicate and lovely - He is cigar smoking - epitome of grossness."

Beneath, the puppeteer affixes two Polaroids of the anthropomorphic swine couple clad in evening attire. This Piggy predecessor appeared alongside other early Muppets on 13 October 1974 in a guest spot on a Herb Alpert television special. The bit was so successful that the Muppets soon got their own television show.

The "delicate and lovely" Miss Piggy [they all have to start somewhere, I guess] is probably very pleased to note that the asking price for this rarity is $20,000!

In the porcine superstar's own words - "Why be you when you can be Moi?"



Play Miss Piggy's Fashion Domination Game

Cleanliness is next to...

I must have these!











Probably the campest shower curtains ever.

Read more about them over at the ever-wonderful Dangerous Minds.

Strike a pose!

"As an artist, Fosse was known for his thoroughly modern style, a signature one could never mistake for anyone else's. Snapping fingers are omnipresent, so are rakishly tilted bowler hats. Both hip and shoulder rolls appear frequently, as do backward exits. Swivelling hips and strutting predominate, as do white-gloved, single-handed gestures. Fosse himself often called the en masse amalgamation of these moves the "amoeba", and that word as much as any describes his particular style, at once fluid and angular."











"In today's world, everything seems like some sort of long audition."

"If you think you can do better, then do better. Don't compete with anyone, just yourself. When you are in trouble or have a dilemma, ask yourself, "What's the important thing?". And when you wake up in the morning, ask yourself how you can be a better person, not just a better performer."

"Live like you'll die tomorrow, work like you don't need the money, and dance like nobody's watching."

"I would never discriminate against someone's talent because they showed the poor taste to like me."

Robert Louis “Bob” Fosse (23rd June 1927 – 23rd September 1987)

It's Hat time again!

Royal Ascot Ladies' Day 2014.

I wonder how many of these styles we'll see at Gay Pride next week...

Well? Do you?

Take the test!

Arise...

...Dame Zandra Rhodes!

At last.

HM The Queen's Birthday Honours List.

This weekend, I am mostly dressing casual...

...like the "Dancing" Marquess of Anglesey!

Judy...

...and handbags!

An irresistible combination.

Judy Garland (born Frances Ethel Gumm, 10th June 1922 – 22nd June 1969)

Judy Garland Museum

An insatiable search for novelty

From an article by Richard Metzger:

I won’t beat around the bush about Nancy Kates’ new documentary Regarding Susan Sontag because I loved every minute of it. For one, I’ve always been fascinated by Sontag herself, but beyond that, this is a very fine film, made with great flair, economy and emotion. There’s not a single wasted frame. It’s the Susan Sontag movie that needed to be made.

Susan Sontag was a “social critic,” film-maker, novelist and political activist, although she is mostly referred to as an “intellectual,” a sort of rock star writer who emerged in the early 60s pontificating on a dizzying variety of subjects that no one had ever really thought of taking seriously before her. Sontag offered the readers of her essays opinions on “camp,” the hidden cultural meanings behind low budget sci-fi films, photography as an unlikely impediment to understanding history, Pop art, wars, the cinema of Jean-Luc Godard and much, much more. There was seemingly nothing that didn’t fascinate her and this unceasing, insatiable search for novelty and new experiences is what fuelled Sontag’s life on practically every level, including her personal relationships, which often didn’t run very smoothly.

Although she often came across as brash, even imperious in her interviews, Sontag was someone who privately felt that she was a bit of an underachiever, always writing about artists and culture, but not taken as seriously as an artist herself for her own films and novels. Gore Vidal famously trashed her talents writing fiction, which apparently wounded Sontag deeply.

Obviously it was Sontag’s right to have held this rather morose opinion of her life’s work, but it seems so cosmically unfair considering the literary gifts she left behind her. “Susan Sontag’s brilliance”—in a nice turn of phrase I’m pulling straight out of the press release—“gave form to the intangible.” No minor achievement, it is for this that she will be best remembered.

Remarkably, the documentary Regarding Susan Sontag receives its world première at the "DocFest" at (of all places) the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield (a venue most famous for hosting the World Snooker Championship) tomorrow (Tuesday 10th June 2014)...

And here is a trailer for the film:

Regarding Susan Sontag trailer

It is fifty years since Susan Sontag published her fantabulosa essay Notes on Camp - read it in full here.

Divine Saves The World

From Dangerous Minds:

In San Francisco in the 1970s, Todd Trexler was one of the most prolific and sought-after poster artists for the city’s predictably amazing drag scene. He generated many posters for the Nocturnal Dream Shows and midnight movie screenings at the Palace Theater on 1741 Powell Street (it was also called the Pagoda later on). His attention-grabbing yet stately posters captured and perhaps helped define the distinct aesthetic of San Francisco’s drag happenings. The contrast of Art Deco filigrees to big personalities like Divine and the Cockettes is very effective.

Sadly, Trexler passed away in February of this year at the age of 70. His essential posters can be seen in an exhibition that opens this week at Magnet (4122 18th Street) in the Castro district of San Fransisco. Some of the items have not been on display in 40 years.

As an art student in 1968, Trexler began making posters, many of them hand-drawn. He was close with Sebastian (or, as he was also known, Milton Miron), a key member of the Cockettes. Todd continued to do work for them for a number of years in the 70s, before moving to Monterey to attend nursing school in 1979.

Here’s Trexler on the “Divine Saves the World” poster shown above:

"I absolutely adored working with Glenn on the few occasions that I did! The day that we planned to take photos for the VICE PALACE poster I’ll never forget. Glenn and I sat in the back seat of a car with Sebastian in the front. We drove around San Francisco looking for a place to use as a backdrop. We ended up at the Palace of Fine Arts and decided it was perfect! Glenn was in makeup, bib-overalls with the sides split to make them large enough. He had tossed a couple of 50’s net prom dresses in the trunk of the car. He slipped into a pair of open-toed backless mules and wrapped the prom dresses around himself and instantly became DIVINE! I took the photo and that poster is an all-time favorite of my poster career."

Divine decadence, indeed.

Todd Trexler posters website

Meanwhile, at the beach...

...this is "the look", apparently.