meerkat products ltd.

Paul Newman.

Friday Music Cue: To Be Young, Gifted And Black

This is from Donny Hathaway's 'In Performance' album which, while only containing six or seven songs, is one of the great live recordings. Go-Bama!

Home Stretch

Putting the finishing touches on the gay Key West website-sweating bullets trying to make it perfect before the end of the month, but we'll do it--and it's looking pretty awesome.

 

I Heart Barney Frank

On McCain's wuss move to suspend the campaign: "Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., chairman of the House Financial Services Committee and a close adviser to Obama, called the idea “the longest Hail Mary pass in the history of either football or Marys.” --NYT. I heard that, girl! And that was totally off the cuff, within 20 minutes of McCain's announcement. Hot.

Friday Music Cue (on Monday): Bonjour Tristesse

I'm so overwhelmed with projects that I've been super remiss on keeping Meerkat current-look to see that change next week. Three days late, here's a Friday Music Cue: 'Bonjour Tristess' by Juliette Greco, from the 1958 Otto Preminger film. Just saw BT for the first time and found the poor little perky rich girl played by Jean Seberg to be decidely annoying, and her near incestuous relationship with her dad (David Niven) dark but unexplored. A truly terrible job of looping Seberg's dialogue cast the character in an even less sympathetic light. For a movie set on the French Riviera that stars Seberg, Niven and Deborah Kerr to leave me cold takes some doing. Great intro section here though with Greco's song, and Seberg's (or whomever's) zombiefied voice actually works in the context of these lines.

Anywhere But Brooklyn: Try Portland

Actually, I like Brooklyn. But my friends at Yoko Devereaux (very much an intrinsic part of the cool newly minted BELT area of South Williamsburg) have started a new blog devoted to fashion, cocktails, music, books, restaurants and bars, travel-all the finer things of life. They asked for some of the photos I wasn't able to use for my story on Portland, Oregon for OUT and I was happy to share.

One of my favorite things in Portland is the near perfect Ace Hotel-it's just the right mix of a casual, funky atmosphere offset with some extremely bold and inspired style choices. On the mezzanine overlooking the lobby the complete lyrics to Leonard Cohen's 'Suzanne" are printed on the wall right behind a filing cabinet (above), a remnant from when the building was a bank.

The cabinet is beautiful, but it's what has wound up in those drawers that is really magic. See what; after the jump.