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Thursday, September 5, 2013 by Liz Smith "NEW SUMMER DESTINATION: HAMPTONS POLICE STATIONS" So read the headline on The New York Times over Labor Day, September 2nd. Boy Howdy! When the Times gets something right, they do it up brown. Also, I'd like to ask my readers — is it just my imagination or is The Times better on Saturdays than any other day of the week or is that just my fanciful imagination? If it's true ... why?
But aren't there really just too many rich people indulging themselves and their children and their too fast cars and aren't drugs becoming the thing of choice in too many posh households? Parents who think their kids are on the beach innocently removed from temptation by the bucolic beauty of the Hamptons are just kidding themselves. Entirely too much privilege, talk of wealth, fast luxury vehicles, motorcycles and automated bikes, big cars, airplanes and helicopters, designer dresses and famous rock bands-to-hang-with all going on. Like the French Riviera, the Hamptons have lost their innocence. |
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AND NOT a silver bullet or a wooden stake too soon — HBO has announced that “True Blood” will end its eighth season run next year. So all the vampires, werewolves and faintly ominous fairy storylines have to be wrapped up.
Fans of “True Blood” are mostly interested to see what happens next for actress Kristin Bauer van Straten. (Now that’s a name you can’t forget!) She has played the cynically wisecracking vamp, Pam, and is probably the series’ favorite character at this point. Even as I mourn the demise of “Breaking Bad” there is something to be said for going out on top. Though there’s no comparison between “True Blood” and “B.B.” (Most people following the former, wish it had ended a few bites back.) |
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I replied, “Maybe it has nothing to do with Vanity Fair, but it has everything to do with staying in business and selling on the newsstands. Who would you have preferred, Madonna?” He snorted: “Not especially, though I wouldn’t have minded. Just ... somebody or something else. Maybe a compilation of great old Vanity Fair covers?” Oh, well. Times have changed. I think the Annie Leibovitz cover shot of Miss Upton is lovely. It will certainly grab attention and that’s what counts. I am anxious to see the entire issue, and find out what, on it’s 100th birthday, Vanity Fair gives us. Aside from the bountiful Miss Upton. P.S. Kate Upton recently gave an interview in which she despaired over men and how she is treated. They all look at her as an object. But she is a thinking, feeling person, she wants us to know. At this point in her life, she is making her bread and butter off her beauty and how much of her body she can show. (She has been a Sports Illustrated cover girl several times.)
I, for one, realize that Vanity Fair could well have gone down historical literary memory lane to make this anniversary issue more “meaningful.” But when they recently did a memorabilia piece on the late great Mary McCarthy and her creation about changes coming in women’s liberation via her hit novel “The Group,” nobody paid this only-yesterday-phenomenon-of-the-times much attention. Even the celebrated Mary McCarthy-Lillian Hellman feud over which the latter playwright could not to be talked out of suing, doesn’t carry recent historical weight as it did when it happened. (McCarthy had said everything Hellman wrote was a lie!) Even Nora Ephron’s play about this literary fist fight between two famous writers did not fare well back in 2002 when Nora finally got it onstage as “Imaginary Friends.” (Cherry Jones and Swoosie Kurtz.) I loved it. Wish some producer with a death wish would put it on again. |
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