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The Ed Show

"Don't speak ill of the dead," my mother said, or words to that effect (maybe "everyone's entitled to a positive view in death'), so perhaps it's no surprise that over the course of today, Ed Koch went from New York's fairly contentious ex-Mayor to a loveable curmudgeon who just loved his old home town.

I don't want to speak ill, but I do think we shouldn't completely leave reality behind. When Rudy Giuliani ran for Mayor in 1989, he very clearly positioned himself as the alternative to the New York That We Just Had... and then he promptly lost to David Dinkins... who had just defeated Koch in his bid for a fourth term in the primaries.

Giuliani turned around and ran nearly the exact same campaign in 1993, defeating Dinkins; and that time, many Democrats - especially the political Clubs in Harlem which produced Dinkins - felt Giuliani's approach was racial code. It was, kind of... but mostly Giuliani was still running against the New York of Ed Koch, with Dinkins playing the Koch stand-in. And again, New Yorkers liked the appeal of that message.

New York City in the eighties was the time of Ed Koch; and though we may tell this story differently now, at the time New York was a tough, gritty town with plenty of problems, and knowing the right people, in and out of government, could smooth out a some of them. That's what Ed Koch gave us, and by 1988, it was not a New York that people necessarily liked.

Koch was in many ways part of the last gasp of a generation of postwar white male politicians who helped build and maintain the urban Democratic political machines of many major cities, especially North and East. Like William Donald Schaeffer in Baltimore, he was a "confirmed bachelor" who seemed to do little more than eat, breathe and sleep political machinations. They, and other men of their age presided over the late seventies and early eighties rot in city governments that tended to end in scandal, often over patronage. And gradually, the cities they led, and the machines they built, moved to let women and minorities (and eventually, Republicans, in some cases) in to the machines, or the machines broke (and perhaps the ultimate ironic proof of the problem is Boston, where for all the liberal broadmindedness, minorities cannot wrest the Mayoralty from the Irish and Italians).

Koch's scandals, by the late eighties were numerous. There was Donald Manes, the Democratic leader of Queens, involved in an enormous kickback and bribery scandal out of the Parking Violations Bureau. Then there was Bess Myerson, the former Miss America, appointed ot Koch's City Arts Commission, who bribed a judge in a personal matter by hiring the woman's daughter to work in a patronage, do-nothing job. Let's not start on OTB. This is the New York of Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities, the New York that coddled and crowned Donald Trump, the New York of the eighties-era banking zillionaires, real life Dynasty types whose crass consumerism crashed in 1987. 

Ed Koch was Manhattan triumphant; he came out of Greenwich Village and made it all the way up the East Side. AIDS? Homelessness? Crime? Don't be a downer. Don't ask questions. Half of what Koch is being credited with - the balancing of New York's books - was both required by the Financial Control Board he didn't control and solved by the tax money that rolled in with the stock and bond boom. The other half, the part where he's credited with bringing New York "back from the brink" didn't even happen under him; to the extent that New York has reduced crime and "cleaned up"... well, that's how we got Giuliani, and what he gave us: a safer, less gritty, less edgy, and arguably less interesting city. And we, us real deep down urban types may pine for that gritty edginess... but we don't really want Ed Koch's New York back, not really. Remember Westway? We just wish you didn't have to trade a sense of safety to get back cheaper rents and a livelier arts scene. And how upper middle class are those aspirations, really?

I met Ed Koch once, at this thing I was working on back when I did phramaceutical marketing. This was in his ex-Mayor phase, where he could be had for a small fee and a nice lunch to speak, where he tende to sell himself as... well, you know, that lovable old curmudgeon who just loved NYC to bits. I got him a little riled by quizzing him on why he would favor ending rent controls and stabilization. But hey... how often does one get the chance to ask? I remember being struck by how tall he was, how he really did come off larger than life in person. And that he was a pretty tough customer.

Like I said, I don't come to decimate Koch... just to keep it real. My adopted hometown, the city I love, the Manhattan that still glitters and gleams... I love the town that produced Ed Koch and appreciate the big personality it takes to be that town's Mayor. Ed Koch, for better and worse, helped make New York what it was and what it is, and I can't imagine one without the other, either. It's a shame to see the Ed Show end, but let's not add to the Disney-fication of New York by pretending he was Uncle Walt. He deserves better than that.

Winter Land

Mom and I are off on our new family tradtion, a post New Year's gathering in Maine at my Aunt and Uncle's, including my two cousins. Like last year, Mom and I broke up the drive, spending the night around Portland.

This morning I walked outside to get my hair dryer (I hate packing hair dryers in my suitcase; I need a separate piece of luggage for technical, maintenance type equipment. Or something), I was welcomed by a pleasant blast of crisp, cold winter air. I've mentioned, for years now, how much I like the change of seasons, and the weird world we have now, when the reality of global warming pushes winter further and further out of reach. 

Still, I was struck by the visceral joy of the cold weather today. Seeing my breath, bundled up yet my puffy cat unzipped. It's only in the high thirties, and while many would find it weather to complain about, on a sunny morning with little wind and low humidity, it's really very pleasant. It's the morning I understand the people who drive miles to ski, when I miss those fun winter days in the city, walking around window shopping, enjoying the cold.

Things simply aren't that cold anymore, not very often, and not for very long. I am not someone to wade deeply into the politics - or even the science - of climate change; I worry less about the sense of impending disaster than I do simply mourn the loss of the things I genuinely like - a cool day, snow on the ground, leaves off the trees, when those limited hours of sun really brighten a day. A good and proper winter.

So, rather than watch it wistfully out the window, I'm off to walk around in it. More later.

Men On The Net(Works)

I am truly embarrassed to admit this, but I used to keep this (especially exhaustive) list of men I found attractive in a little notebook I kept hidden in my room. After I came out, the point of this lst was much more clear; but at first, you know, it was just an interesting diversion.

Apparently... I'm not alone in this: Via World of Wonder, James St. James directs us to Matthew Rettemund's exhaustive list of the 50 hottest men on television. This makes perfect sense since James, Matthew, me, and the rest of my gay generation kind of all kept this list, with many of the same men on it. I'm not sure it's the same for the kids these days, but that moment of recognition, that "you thought he was sexy too?" conversation was like a feminist click of "I'm not crazy" and "I finally fit in with the others."  It was not just, simply, the leering and lust... but goodness, aren't they talented?

Rettemund (who has the "nice work if you can get it" of being Professionally Gay) covers pretty much all the bases, and does a nice job of filtering in some of the more recent examples to a list that he's clearly been caring about for years. I don't make a physical list anymore (or even an Excel soreadsheet)... but one does, you know, keep track. And these days, when every TV show has that "hot guy who drips sexy" role, that isn't always easy.  Thank Goddess for IMDB.

A lot of this fascination can be traced back to the late seventies, when increasing gay visibility made frank depiction and interest in male beauty less of a social taboo (and the seventies were pretty sex-mad, anyway). Rettemund covers most of the bases - though he misses, most egregiously, Parker Stevenson and Shaun Cassidy of The Hardy Boys - with a little heavy emphasis on youth, even for my tastes. I'm not sure Blair Underwood is am especially brave choice, either. But Rettemund does capture, in pictures, that glorious moment when Tony Danza and John Schneider were as hot as street trade (and don't think they didn't know it).

One can nitpick this sort of thing to death (shortlist: Ian Somerhalder, Paul Wesley, Cam Gigandet, No Dawson's Creek?, Patrick Dempsey, Jensen Ackles, Jared Padalecki... I mean, jeez), and that's without diving deeply into daytime soaps (he does namecheck Brian Bloom!), but this list will serve as a fine, fresh start. And Rettemund rescues the show that nearly every gay man can remember even if the show was barely watched: the CW's Summerland, where the male beauty was simply freaking ridonkulous. If nothing else... thank you for Ryan Kwanten!

Oh, and yes, this is just TV. Film is a different story altogether. And yes, this is really gay, too. But Betty, how could I resist? And hey.... Merry Christmas!

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Sunday Singalong: You'd Be Amazed How Much I Love You So

From the time spent reminiscing:

Donna Summer, Dim All The Lights. It's not even my favorite song, but it's a prime example of the kind of disco music that came to define the era: the slow jam opening to an extended sped up note, the percussive rhythms, the connecting bridge, followed by repeats of the chorus to the end. It's Summer's longest held note (a pop music record at the time for number of bars held), and lyrically, it's arguably one of the best of her songs from that era, sexy without being sleazy, a clear idea expressed from start to finish. For me, it's a reminder of the weird, wonderful sophistication of my childhood: the things we were exposed to at 11, 12, 13... gee whiz. They played this at junior high school dances, for goodness sake. I keep saying we were the generation that was 40 before we were 25. One other thing - it's this song, in many ways, that also turned the "disco" concept into pure formula; in many ways, this song is simply an improvement on the structure, lyrics and instrumentation of Last Dance. From there... you could list a raft of songs that essentially did the same thing (for artists such as Cher, Streisand, France Joli... I could go on). And that, as much anything, goes a long way to explaining why disco kind of wore itself out.

Donna Summer and Barbra Streisand, No More Tears (Enough Is Enough). Neither of these women did all that many duets; even more rarely were they ever paired with a singer anywhere near as strong (Summer may have married Bruce Sudano, but she could sure outsing him). Aretha Franklin has always had a similar problem. So this duet is remarkable, if nothing else, for how well matched these two are, both technically and in terms of range. Indeed, it's rare to have a duet where both the voices are fairly high sopranos. And the song is a marvel - never mind the pyrotechnics, just listen to them harmonize on "and we won't waste... another tear," with complete care and precision. Technically, I'm among those who think Summer wins this one, if we have to judge a contest; she's more naturally suited to the material, and Streisand can get strident. But it's a close call, and calling it a contest is to miss the point: this is just an amazing song, a remarkable duet, and it holds up amazingly well (consider how theatically similar it is to "I Will Survive" and how that song has been more or less been played into the ground.

Donna Summer, Last Dance. There's this moment, towards the end of every version (Casablanca edited the song a number of ways over the years), when Summer is doing the final repeat of the refrain "I need you by me, to guide me, to guide me..." (she apparently forgot "beside me"), and it's a long song and she's working it hard... and still, she sounds amazing. More than that, over a complicated orchestral arrangement (listen to the way the strings swirl, and the horns climb), she never gives the impression of the arrangement leading her, instead she's focused, in control, and very much in charge of where all this energy is headed.There's a reason this song became, commandingly, the song that sums up the end of an evening of dancing: it's not just the universal notions of the lyrics, or the obviousness of the title; it's that Summer gives it the authority it deserves. When she says "I need you..." and all the rest, the sense of need is actually palpable, and only one more dance can possibly satisfy. And so, come on baby... there's that dance. Yeah....

Donna Summer, Love Is In Control (Finger on the Trigger). J, my best friend, was the first person to point out to me that thinking of Summer as a "disco died" casualty was a mistake: even as disco vanished from radio and clubs, Summer was back in the Top 40 with The Wanderer, a fairly adventurous album that was actually well received. That was followed by a self titled album, including this single. Objectively, Love is in Control isn't necessarily great - you can hear the heavy hand of Quincy Jones in the instrumentation which borrows heavily from the similar work he was doing for Michael Jackson, and I realized, today, that Summer's voice is barely present for half the track. But she wins again, because her growling, fearsome delivery of lines like "you better raise your sights up high..." offer no room for hesitation. 

Donna Summer and Musical Youth, Unconditional Love. It's also easy to forget that Donna Summer was actually a very versatile singer who could easily handle a wide variety of genres and styles; on top of disco, she was actually one of the artists to help bring reggae into mainstream pop musical culture, both with State of Independence, and with this charmer, done with the then trendy, kind of a flash in the pan act Musical Youth. The song lopes along genially, and Summer's "ya mon" diction may be somewhat mannered, but underneath it all... she gets it, and it shows. Plus, the duet softened her image tremendously, taking her from the saucy siren image of the seventies into a more wholesome, Earth Mother type presentation (which was probably the most natural fit).

Donna Summer, This Time I Know It's For Real. When word began to drift out that Donna Summer was in London working with producers Stock, Aitken and Waterman, the anticipation, especially among knowledgable gays, was palpable. Proven hitmakers, S-A-W had already made dance music stars out of Rick Astley, Bananarama, Kylie Minogue, and a number of others. And when "This Time" showed up, the wait was worth it. However lightweight lyrically, the song was a revival of the kind of upbeat dance music not seen since disco's heyday, and as it turned out, lots of people liked it, and missed it. Summer's so in her elements, it's hard to know where to begin about why this song is simple perfection. You'd be amazed... how much I love you so. 

Donna Summer (with Bruce Roberts), Whenever There Is Love (the Junior Vasquez mix). In the early days, a disco track wasn't really a "remix" effort, not in the way we see them today. Producers started out recording long tracks, and simply cut them down for radio, editing out instrumental breaks, and even verses. Go back, and you can hear an enormous difference from the seventies era songs (they're fuller, more fully arranged), then a lot of the early "remixes" where songs were lengthened or sped up artificially after the fact of their initial recording. That means that much of Donna Summer's hits were never touched, at the time, by the deejays who became remix stars. It was years before Summer joined the ranks of artists with multiple remixes of one song by different deejays... and naturally, they all wanted the chance to work with the Queen. This song, for the forgettable film Daylight, was the first time Junior Vasquez (legendary, dear) worked his magic... and magic it is. At his best, Vasquez plays with the dynamics of the singer, but never loses sight of the song's overall structure, and here, he's in top form. So is Summer, and it hardly matters that Roberts (who wrote it) is more or less blown away as a result.

Donna Summer, Love Is The Healer (Thunderpuss mix). But the part that kind of defies explanation is buried, deep down, in Summer's success: it's the connection she made, on the dance floor, with the dancers, in their hearts, down to their souls. Oh sure, maybe you just danced to Last Dance at your cousin's wedding. Fun... right? That's not the half of it. It's that late night, 2 in the morning moment when a group of ecstatic revelers - probably gay men, but whoever - were lifted that much higher by the voice of a Goddess who spoke to their deepest feelings. The place where love is eternal, we are all one, and everything is possible. This is not stuff for amateurs. It's dance as a religion, the communion of true believers. I am on a mission... a mission of love. "Love is the mission, baby," Summer says in this song's spoken break, and it's the priestess, speaking to her flock, open and ready to receive. Thunderpuss, a remixing duo, are naturally up to the challenge of translating this into the realm of anthem - there's similar ecstasy to be found in their remix of Whitney Houston's "It's Not Right, But It's Okay" - but it's Donna who reigns. That's why she was Queen.

Forever Donna

Somehow, I never expected to live through one year where two of pop music's greatest singers died.

Donna Summer was the lifeline of my childhood, the Queen of Disco who made the world safe for teen age gay boys yet to come out. She was beautiful, insanely talented, and she put dance music on the top of the pop charts. 

Of course she was much, much more than that. She was a stage performer. She was a survivor, one of the brightest examples of a seventies cocaine casualty rising from the ashes. She survived the "death" of disco and rode the return of dance music wave of the late eighties and early nineties back to her rightful place in pop history. 

I am blessed, in my life, to have known one of her most ardent fans, my best friend. His love became my love; his joy in her music became mine. I am chocolate... but I don't like the heat.

She was the greatest of gay stars, a career created and supported by gay men, who managed to say "Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve"... and still managed to make it right in the end. It helps that, you know, she wasn't necessarily a genius... but man, could she sing. So that's mostly what she did.

People will talk about Last Dance and MacArthur Park and Dim All The Lights - the longest sustained single note in a number one song by a singer - but my two favorites are earlier and simpler. No one has, or will ever improve on "I Love You" and "Heaven Knows."

I am a dancer. I love to dance, to feel the rhythm on the dance floor. I have been dancing to Donna Summer since I was 12, and almost consistently ever since. And we will dance again to her music. And it will all be all right.

 

 

Andrew Breitbart... And the Angry Legacy

I was thinking just today that writing about people who passed for me can seem like an exercise in actresses and diva singers, and that's not really all I'm about.

Of course, that doesn't mean I had a lot of thoughts on the passing of Davy Jones, either.

But Andrew Breitbart just died. Which seems odd, and sudden, and somehow too soon. 

Breitbart will be known as the "conservative firebrand" who launched James O'Keefe, him of the "outlaw journalism" of exposing liberal "conspiracies" like ACORN... and the census. Even after O'Keefe was arrested (and pled guilty to) pranking the New Orleans office of Senator Mary Landrieu, Breitbart didn't quite give up on O'Keefe... though, in the long run, he seemed to put a little more distance between them.

I kept up with Breitbart because he seemed terribly energentic... and terribly angry. And I was never entirely sure as to why. 

Conservatives - many of whom seem to have known him, but not well - talk about him as kind and generous in private. He benefitted tremendously from being in the right place at the right time, working with Matt Drudge on a very thorough approach to news aggregation that pointed to the real power of the internet, not as a vehicle for conservatism, but the real possibilities in sharing information on a global, massive scale. His most succesful follow up was a similarly thorough aggregation of news wire feeds at his own site, combining the AP and Reuters and others into a super news service. For a news junkie generalist like me, those things were indeed admirtable, even brilliant.

His politics, though, were odd: he gave voice to the kind of "muscular conservatism" that rose with talk radio, and he shared a lot of their biases and myopia; from Whitewater on, he seemd determined to expose liberal frauds with every breath. But he could be defensive when conservatives were challenged (never mind himself), and nowhere near as rigid, or thorough. He claimed a role as a serious "conservative journalist", yet couldn't seem to either define it well, or make of it more than angry screeds and trumped up exposes into the seedier aspects of people's private lives.  If those he exposed were, some of them, no saints, Breitbart was never made more virtuous exposing them, either.

Ultimately, I tend to think that you get back what you give in the world; and the bitterness, anger, divisiveness and unhappy responses Breitbart generated (and which, despite claims to a thick skin, seemed to eternally annoy him), seemed evenly matched by what he put out. His "Big" websites - Big Journalism, Big Hollywood, etc - seemed small, cranky, eccentric exercises in shallow putdowns and knee jerk explosions of contempt. In some way, I think Breitbart knew that he could, and should, try to do better, be better, stuck in a dilemma of perpetual notoriety, lobbing grenades from the fringe. Anger, like any emotion, can be the fuse to light a fire which leads to political action. But as I keep saying, anger alone probably won't get you much in the way of results.

Breitbart will be remembered, I suspect, for all those angry things; all that he opposed, all that he disliked, all that he tried to discredit and deny. I personally can't think of a thing, not one, that I ever heard him focus on positively. And that's conservatism as it currently stands, isn't it? Not what you are for, but what you are against, what you can dislike, and demean, and dismiss. In his place will surely come others, with more of the same. More Shirley Sherrods! More Anthony Weiners, more scandals, small and mean spirited, one and all!  And that's like a legacy, kind of... just not a good one.

Saturday Singalong: And It Hurts Me More Than You Know, So Much More Than It Shows...

Because today is her funeral, and because I am still not over it:

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sunday Singalong: I Don't Know Why I Like It, I Just Do.

May she rest in peace:

Whitney Houston, Saving All My Love For You. Possibly one of the most straightforward jazz tunes to make it to the top of the pop charts, Saving was the followup to the knockout of You Give Good Love, itself breathtaking. But Saving was unnerving because so much of Whitney's range was apparent in just the two songs - few women can negotiate the singing personas of both girlfriend and the Other Woman. Saving is a classic Other Woman song, and while her singing is techinically perfect, what's astonishing is the depth of emotion, when she says, at the end, "we'll be making love the whole night through" you don't just believe her, it's that she captures the reality of having to live, emotionally, on just though stolen moments. Critics carped, early on, that Whitney couldn't possibly be all these women... but I think that's the amazing thing about the true divas - the ability to connect emotionally with material when you don't think they have the life experience for it.

Whitney Houston, So Emotional. By the time of So Emotional, Whitney had done nothing but release #1 singles; this one, in fact, tied the record of the Beatles, at six (the next, a pure safety play so she would have the record, was "Where Do Broken Hearts Go"; not her best moment). This also works if you pretend, as the charts did, that "All at Once", which got a lot of radio play, was never officially released as a single. But regardless, So Emotional is one of those real change of pace singles that show her versatility: percussive beats, screaming rock guitars and probably her first completely straight up dance beat. Not necessarily lyrically daring ("I get so emotional, every time I think of you"), but Whitney infused with a playful urgency that somehow made "shocking" actually work. I don't know why I like it... I just do.

Whitney Houston, Didn't We Almost Have It All (Live; the VH1 video). She would be forever tagged as the Power Ballad champ of the eighties, both good and bad, but that's more than a little unfair; the fact that she could sing the hell out of a ballad and that she could vocally stand up to enormous orchestrations shouldn't be tagged as liabilities, and anyway, her discogoraphy is much wider than that (but there's a reason I'm not putting "Greatest Love of All" in this mix). When Whitney came out, it was clear that Didn't We was an obvious single choice, and it went to #1, but critics, again, suggested that it was only her pull out the stops reading of it that made it work (truthfully, by then, Michael Masser's heavy ballad productions were starting to grate). And the song, really, is an especially strong construction (a standard verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus). But Houston wasn't one to let that slide, and in concert she completely re-approached the song, starting gentle and light ("Remember when we held on in the rain?") and gradually building to the overwhelming emotional moments, until "Didn't We? Didn't We?" became a plaintive wail over love and loss. Take that, haters.

Whitney Houston and Jermaine Jackson, If You Say My Eyes Are Beautiful. Pure, by the numbers duetting, one of those "they didn't even record it together" trade-offs of verses, a little harmonizing on the chorus, and done. But gee whiz! Jermaine's an underrated singer, but like many, he could barely keep up with her. The song is all about Whitney's sections and an especially pretty lyric. And it never quite got the play it should have, I think.

Whitney Houston, I'm Your Baby Tonight. By the time of Whitney's third album, it had been nearly seven years since her debut, and the world of pop had changed, in no small measure because of her. And the real challenge was could she find her way doing different material? The answer, amazingly, was yes, as Houston began a long, and productive relationship with producer Babyface. It's not just the explosiion of drums at the opening that signals the real shift of this single, but the loping, slightly backwards beat throughout. And Houston shows herself entirely up to the challenge of a complicated rhythm track, drawing out a sly sexiness, and leaving a lot of the vocal tricks at home. But then, we already establsihed that she was good at Other Woman songs, too.

Whitney Houston, Queen of the Night (the CJ Mackintosh mix). Houston had a mixed history as a dance diva - her power ballads, naturally, didn't work on dance floors, and that put a lot of weight on her uptempo numbers (you can't really dance to "I Wanna Dance With Somebody"... nor could she). When you get a chance, go back and seek out "Love Will Save The Day" which also never quite got the moment it deserved. But as she matured, the possibilities of her in dance music also opened up. Queen, as a single, is an overproduced, top heavy rock number... but CJ Mackintosh found a deep house gem within it, playing with the lines of the chorus ("stuff that you want... thing that you need... more than enough... to make you drop to your knees") until they swirled into dizzying harmonizing ear candy. Rule the dance floor, indeed.

Whitney Houston, I'm Every Woman. Really, she was capable of almost anything. And there's nothing even especially wrong with Chaka Khan's original, yet there's Whitney, making it an anthem's anthem. And of course, you hadn't lived until you were surrounded by a sea of gay boys, hands in the air, claiming to be every woman, with it all in them. World peace, baby.

Whitney Houston and The Georgia Mass Choir, Joy To The World. In truth, she was a gospel singer, by training and by preference. Surely at some point, that's what she would have recorded, had there been time. As it was, only The Preacher's Wife soundtrack put her on truly religious material, and those gospel moments lift the album well above where it would be otherwise. The choice of Joy to the World was also, somewhat subtly, a dig at Mariah Carey, who had combined the orginial with Three Dog Night's song on her own Christmas album. Houston's response: who needs it? When she coos her way though the slow, nearly acapella opening, stopping to fully explore "heaven and nature"... it's a diva throwdown: don't come for me, honey, cause I'll crush you.

Whitney Houston and George Michael, If I Told You That. There's plenty of ways to go with the later career - even as her voice failed her, she found a second life singing full on in her mid range. The top notes might be elusively out of reach (which is why I don't immediately go to "I Will Always Love You"), but the trick turning was never what it was all about. When she turned, "It's not right, but it's okay" into a get the hell out statement, it was the power of interpretation and emotional connection that shown through. But what I loved was the sinewy magic she found working with Darkchild. Originally recorded for My Love is Your Love, If I Told You That became a sharp, stylized duet when she paired up with George Michael, two of the eighties icons united as survivors. Even if we didn't realize at the time how true that really was.

Whitney Houston, The Star Spangled Banner. In the end, though, it comes down to this: no one, but no one, could take the familiar and make it seem new the way she did. She did it, repeatedly with her own songs... so why not do it to the national anthem? Listen to her caress the word "ramparts", taking an emotional breath before soaring on "rockets red glare"... by the time she cruises up the extra high note on "Land of the Free", it's all over; she had the audience well before that, and that note is really just icing. Effortless. I just threw that in because I can. At the height of the Gulf War, she made the jingoistic patriotism that grated so much into an irrelevancy. It was all her. The National Anthem didn't become a top ten single because of the war, it was because of her. 

Whitney

I am writing this about an hour after the news first appeared: Whitney Houston has died.

It's one of those losses that is utterly unbelievable, yet somehow, inevitable.

To think that we'll have to - I'll have to - explain to people what she was, what it was like, what she meant. There hadn't been anyone quite like Whitney Houston; no one who had that voice, her looks, her onstage presence. Just as music video changed everything (and Whitney was as video-ready as anyone), changes in television production allowed more artists to perform live onstage, as opposed to lip-synching to already recorded tracks. Whitney Houston was one of the first artists to use this opportunity to her advantage, rearranging and reconstructing her songs on the fly. It wasn't the strength of her voice or the breadth of her range that was so astonishing. It was the times that, mid-song or mid-phrase, she'd simply take off in an entirely different direction than she'd gone the last time you'd heard her. I remember when she performed "All At Once" at the American Music Awards, and re-did the second verse so it rose from the depths of her low range to soar an octave higher by the end of the phrase, all in one breath.

That was the way she paved the way for all the Mariahs and Christinas and at least three seasons of American Idols; none of what happened to pop singing - the extended melismas, the fluttering around notes, the frank oversinging - was possible without the way Whitney Houston took on a song. At her height, she was unstoppable, undeniable. No one sang like she did, no one sang as consistently. And she made it look effortless.

Of course, it was too much, too soon and all of it was insane. I remember seeing her live - it was an imperative - with the lucky break of getting a seat in the fifth row. It was astonishing. And she was so innocent, so ingenue to it all. When she sang "I Am Changing", and got to the final notes, "and nothing's gonna stop" - pause - the audience couldn't wait. The ovation was deafening. And she stared at us, wide-eyed. It was a mixture of appreciation... and fear. It's scary, I think, to be that loved, no matter how good you are at what you do.

Clive Davis sold her to America as the embodiment of the American Dream; our Golden Girl, the triumph of talent and beauty and class and taste. And it worked. So what if she couldn't dance? (In Living Color, famously, spoofed her as the "Rhythmless Nation", verbalizing something we all whispered). It was two albums and six years before the reality, and then the less pretty parts, started to sink in: no one's life is that golden. No one, really, can not break under all that pressure.

The problems were apparent long before the rumors moved from whispers to scandal. She was erratic on her films, not a strong actress, and tales off set suggested some real problems. The fact of her drug use was apparent long before it was openly discussed. By "I Will Always Love You" it was clear that her voice was suffering under the strain. By My Love Is Your Love it was all too clear that her range was far less than it had been, and there'd been some real damage. And maybe, just maybe, the story of the past year or two is that her singing could never entirely recover. And she lived to sing. I'm sure that would be crushing.

I am, frankly, stunned. I can't explain, exactly, how much she meant to me, how influential she was, how much I admired her; the most analogous I could be is to say she was, in some sense, my gay generation's Judy Garland, the singer of our age against whom others were measured. Such a beautiful, stunning, talented creaure. And, of course, perhaps how obvious that talent that burns that bright cannot last for long. Not long enough. Not nearly long enough. I just thought we'd get to see her rise, like a phoenix, one last time. And instead... she's gone.

 

Hitch

Like many, the moment was gasp-inducing: when I read Christopher Hitchens scathing take on Mother Theresa, I was both appalled and amused. And ultimately, won over.

If there was a sacred cow, Hitch wanted to take it apart, both to show you there was no need to hold it sacred, and to point out that cows are tasty, if cooked properly. 

He had, as they say, a way with words. His sentences were things to admire, full of pithy phrasing, brilliant word choices, dripping acid on his subjects as they made their acerbic points. He was the last of a breed, the unapologetic, slightly sozzled old school reporter (classic Fleet Street, as they say over there) who took nothing for granted and so no need for the niceties.

Hitch was a good example of how Vanity Fair is a different thing under Graydon Carter, less the upscale version of People that it devolved to under Tina Brown, harder edged, more sarcastic, a latter day Spy, an American Punch, still obsessed with celebrity and names, darling, names... but less sentimental, more old school. There was Dominick Dunne to name drop incessantly, and Hitchens, to remind you that assumed greatness is a mistake.

I remember when he called the Queen Mother an old drunk, and those terrible things he said about Jackie Onassis (not as bad as Gore Vidal, but still). And never mind those terrible things he said about churches and religion. Is nothing sacred? Of course not.

They don't make them like Hitchens anymore, partly because we know better: when he wrote 5,000 words defending his drinking, I felt, for once, not that he'd gone too far, but that his cantankerousness was simply the camouflage of an old man set in his ways. He was one of the "getting sober is for quitters" school, of a piece with his general defiance... but at some point, some choices aren't giving in or giving up, they're just sensible, practical approaches to living healthier. Hitchens gave up nothing, but he was slowed, finally, by cancer that robbed him, literally, of his voice, but not his words. And he was not about to go gentle in to the good night.

The word is that Christopher Hitchens died overnight, at age 62, having completed his last piece which will appear in next month's Vanity Fair. It will, of course, be a must read. But then, they all were. All I wanted was for him to live longer.