It has been quite a while since my last dispatch.  It has been a nutty summer. I was in one earthquake and two hurricanes, and I’ve been travelling all over and under hill and dale and bumf#% and  highwater trying to discover the secrets of American fashion in the various Belt regions.

But first, an upcoming EVENT:

Tomorrow evening, for Fashion’s Night Out,  I will be in the men’s department of Bergdorf Goodman with Whoopi Goldberg and a bunch of other luminous personages from 7:30 – 8:15, debating that age-old conundrum: Facial Hair – Yea or Nay?

But now for dispatches from the travels.

I went to the Iowa State Fair,  and I thought I wrote a very gushy and loving piece about Iowa and Iowans for ELLE.com — nonetheless, ELLE received a rash of complaints about its offensiveness, and the online editor tore me a new almanac and opted to take it down (an overreaction IMHO, but then, I seem to offend people fairly regularly).

I did an interesting event in the Hamptons with Alec Baldwin and Simon Doonan, where we had a rather rambling conversation onstage about Yves St. Laurent after a screening of L’Amour Fou. (Among things discussed: the merits of prêt-à-porter safari-wear, and how only a gay man like Cristobal Balenciaga could possibly hand-stitch with both hands, ambidextrously.)

Me, Doonan, King Alec and his ooh-la-l'amour Hilaria Thomas

At this same event, Johanna Cox and I were immortalized a nutty little YouTube video, where we were interviewed by the exquisite Cognac Wellerlane.

And of course, there were C-WORDS.

It all started with a road trip I took to scenic Merced, CA and got a look at how corporations have sucked it into toxic zombiedom (but found that there is hope to be bought at the Goodwill store).

Then I went off on a bender of essays trying to come to grips with what seems to be an increase of hostility and cantankerousness in the usual friction between the male and female sexes — and how I think that this, too, is a function of capitalist brainwashing, The big takeaway quote, paraphrased:

We all seem to have forgotten in our pursuit of shiny new plastic crap that the primary function of women (besides childbirth) is to be critical of the corruptions that divide men from themselves.

I posted the somewhat florid essay, A MAN LIKE AMERICA on the Huffington Post, to further articulate these Deep Social Thotz.

And just to prove that my problems with authority are stupidly absolute, I wrote another C-Word about how I didn’t leave my house during Hurricane Irene (despite a mandatory evacuation order) because I don’t think anyone should buy any hype delivered to them by  mainstream news outlets.

In terms of printed matter, I have things either on the stands or coming out in PAPER and OUT and (the printed) ELLE — and I recommend that everyone check out StyleZeitgeist magazine, a labor of love and beauty put out by my pal Eugene Rabkin.  I contributed what I think is a rather sensational, uber-style-dweeby interview with Karlo Steel about his collection of vintage i-D and FACE magazines and how they influenced his entire life  (right up my alley, of course — *squeedles!!*).

Finally, I interviewed the gorgeous, formidable and ridiculously influential fashion legend Dawn Mello and her protege Michael Kors for the current issue of Bergdorf Goodman magazine (which is an actual magazine. Not merely a catalogue.  Run by the esteemed Glenn O’Brien, who has actual brains, in addition to being the best-dressed human male on earth).

And finally — if you haven’t, and if you don’t, you should always be reading whatever Will Durst says. Always. Forever. The End.

XXX

Well, despite being relieved of my Critical Shopping post at the Times, I still seem to be appearing in print media, in various ways.

Since my last post, I’ve been to Los Angeles, where I interviewed the earthy and jovial Chaz Bono and the directors of his documentary — World of Wonder’s lovely and talented Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato – for an NYT Sunday Styles feature.  I made it my business to ask all kinds of hair-raisingly stupid (but honest) questions about the connection between transgenderdom and Cher, so that you’ll never have to.

An interview with me in The Believer by the brilliant Dr. Jenny Davidson appeared on newsstands fairly recently; so did an article I wrote in this month’s ELLE magazine (which I can’t link to unforch because it’s the acoustic print version) about how flamenco dancing is a better mood elevator than Prozac and in some cases, sex.  I was also deliriously thrilled to be namechecked in the New Yorker by the hot and excruciatingly talented Ariel Levy, who quoted my somewhat excoriating comments in the Times about the designer Reed Krakoff in her somewhat excoriating profile of same.  I can die happy now that I have seen my name in that font, so I’m planning to buy more cigarettes.

Dr. Parkes and I displaying journalistic acumen at Churchill Downs

Then it was off to Louisville with my galpal-cum-ridiculously-overqualified-cameraperson, Dr. Amanda Parkes, where I wrote a thing on the KY Derby for that Rupert Murdoch i-Pad magazine called The Daily – which I wrote mainly to be edited by the terrifying Mr. Sasha Frere-Jones, journalistic superhero.  He apparently had to do massive editorial surgery because I guess I turned in a feverishly driven yet dismayingly unfocused 2700-word spin-art-splatter job of an article (in the tradition of most pieces written about the squiffy adult vice-prom that is the Kentucky Derby — at least this famous one by Hunter Thompson and this one I did for Salon.com a squillion years ago)   But  Mr. Frere-Jones dun did it — he took it all apart and he put it back together and he got ‘er dun and he dun runned it. I don’t know how he reupholstered my copy because I haven’t seen it — I don’t have an i-Pad, and I’ve been afraid to ask…but I am soooo grateful.

So...those things under the little satin disco guys - horses, right?

And, of course, I went barking off on a bunch of sourpuss political rants for Connecticut’s finest weeklies — there was a C-Word about how I think there should be a sin tax imposed on war profiteers and some other crazy-ass, barely intelligible thing about capitalism’s innate built-in Ponzi scheme mechanisms.  Whaddaya want:  it was Derby weekend and the only book I brought was by Slavoj Zizek.

More as it unfurls.

XXX