Step up represent from the Upper West.

[Photo Credit: First Serve]

Dig this entertaining essay by Colson Whitehead in the latest issue of the New Yorker:

Growing up on the Upper East Side in the nineteen-seventies, I was a bit of a shut-in. I would prefer to have been a sickly child. I always love it when I read a biography of some key Modernist or neurasthenic Victorian and it says, “So-and-so was a sickly child, forced to retreat into a world of his imagination.” But the truth is that I just didn’t like leaving the house. Other kids played in Central Park, participated in athletics, basked and what have you in the great outdoors. I preferred to lie on the living-room carpet, watching horror movies. I dwelled in a backward age, full of darkness, before the VCR boom, before streaming and on-demand, before DVRs roamed the cable channels at night, scavenging content. Either a movie was on or it wasn’t. If I was lucky, I’d come home from elementary school to find WABC’s “The 4:30 Movie” in the middle of Monster Week, wherein vengeful amphibians chased Ray Milland like death-come-a-hopping (“Frogs”), or George Hamilton emoted fiercely in what one assumes was the world’s first telekinesis whodunnit (“The Power”). Weekends, “Chiller Theatre,” on WPIX, played horror classics that provided an education on the subjects of sapphic vampires and ill-considered head transplants. I snacked on Oscar Mayer baloney, which I rolled into cigarette-size payloads of processed meat, and although I didn’t know it at the time, started taking notes about artists and monsters. Fate was cruel and withholding, and then suddenly surprised me with a TV announcer’s tantalizing words: “Stay tuned for ‘The Flesh Eaters’ ”; or “Don’t go away! We’ll be right back with ‘Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things.’ ” I couldn’t look the title up on the Web, couldn’t know anything beyond what its luridness conjured, and there was the frightening possibility that I might never have the chance to see the movie again. Who knew when this low-budget comet would return to this corner of the galaxy? Its appearance was a cosmic accident, one that might never be repeated. Weeks before, some bored drone at the TV station had decided to dump it into this time slot, and today I happened to be home from school with bronchitis. Did I have time to grab some baloney or a bowl of Lucky Charms before the opening credits ended? Thanks to “Star Wars” ’s Pavlovian ministrations, I got excited whenever I heard the horns that accompanied the Twentieth Century Fox logo.

About the only part of the old “Star Wars” movies that continues to spark emotion for me is the music introducing a Twentieth Century Fox movie. Still gets me amped.

Cool and refreshing tastiness from Call me Cupcake.

[Picture by Adam Vinson Via Still Life Quick Heart]

Sock it to Me?

Let’s keep it sweet this week. Head on over to Hungry Ghost Food+Travel for Strawberry Rhubarb Cardamon Shortcake…and Maple Whipped Cream.

Duh-rool.

I was the assistant film editor on a forgettable gangster movie called “Belly.” It featured Nas and DMX and was directed by Hype (aka Harold) Williams. D’Angelo came in to watch a screening once at 1600 Broadway. He and a few pals excused themselves to smoke L’s in the stairway while the projectionist threaded the movie.

D’Angelo was a big deal at the time. Then he fell off. Check out this profile of the gifted singer by Amy Wallace over at GQ:

Shame, guilt, repentance—D’Angelo knows them well. To say that he was raised religious doesn’t begin to capture it. He’s the son and the grandson of Pentecostal preachers. To D’Angelo, good and evil are not abstract concepts but tangible forces he reckons with every day. In his life and in his music, he has always felt the tension between the sacred and the profane, the darkness and the light.

“You know what they say about Lucifer, right, before he was cast out?” D’Angelo asks me now. “Every angel has their specialty, and his was praise. They say that he could play every instrument with one finger and that the music was just awesome. And he was exceptionally beautiful, Lucifer—as an angel, he was.”

But after he descended into hell, Lucifer was fearsome, he tells me. “There’s forces that are going on that I don’t think a lot of motherfuckers that make music today are aware of,” he says. “It’s deep. I’ve felt it. I’ve felt other forces pulling at me.” He stubs out his cigarette and leans toward me, taking my hand. “This is a very powerful medium that we are involved in,” he says gravely. “I learned at an early age that what we were doing in the choir was just as important as the preacher. It was a ministry in itself. We could stir the pot, you know? The stage is our pulpit, and you can use all of that energy and that music and the lights and the colors and the sound. But you know, you’ve got to be careful.”

[Photo Credit: Gregory Harris/GQ]

Paintings by Charles Williams.

True School.

Oliver Wang celebrates the 20th anniversary of a Hip Hop classic.

Phillip Kaufman has a new movie out–on HBO. Allen Barra profiled Kaufman, one of our finest directors, for the Wall Street Journal last week. And Barra reviewed the movie for the Daily Beast here.

Oh, Sister.

It’s a little early for this, but hell, it’s never really too early for recipe ideas…From House to Haus: sour cherry pie.

Matisse at work.

It’s Saturday. It’s a holiday weekend. And mad humid in New York.

[Photo Credit: o4kikidze_toma]

Roberto Clemente.

[Pictures by Macwagen via It’s a Long Season]

Watch this.

This is a dopey song. But a favorite. I’ve posted it before but sometimes you’re just in the mood…

[Photo Via: Bluthesten]

Moroccan brick chicken from Ceramic Canvas.

“Fat City.”

Now, there’s a case of a fine book and a fine movie.