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Mim Udovitch and Mick Farren

the breakfast table
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from: Mim Udovitch

David Bowie's Charm and Donald Trump's Hair

Posted Tuesday, Oct. 5, 1999, at 12:13 PM ET

Hello, Sweetie--

The Mets win! Also, as long as I'm on parochial issues, it is freezing cold here, and the radiators in my apartment are making those knocking and whispering noises that make all prewar buildings in Manhattan seem like they were built on Native American graveyards. Furthermore, there is yet another Op-Ed piece in the New York Times today on the Brooklyn Museum show, this one by Philippe de Montebello, in which he characterizes the works on display there as by artists "who deserve to remain obscure or be forgotten," boldly opining, "I have seen the exhibition, and I think the emperor has no clothes." Strong words for a man whose institution not long ago devoted a heavily promoted show to the designs of Gianni Versace featuring such culturally important artifacts as the famous safety-pin-adorned dress worn by Elizabeth Hurley to, I believe, the premiere of Four Weddings and a Funeral.

I like your conspiracy theory, but where most such theories fall apart on the unlikelihood of the conspirators being sufficiently organized to carry off such a thing, yours falls apart on the unlikelihood of any alternative candidate's being sufficiently disorganized not to understand the benefits of serving the interests of corporate oil. Also, while I don't like to quibble, I don't think W. is a self-admitted cokehead. Did you happen to catch Sam Donaldson's interview with a tearful George Bush senior on 20/20 last night? I don't think it would be an exaggeration to say that you frequently see grittier reporting on VH1's Behind the Music, especially the part where Bush was so overcome with emotion while reading a letter he wrote to a 7-year-old girl whose father had been killed in battle during his administration that he was unable to continue, and had to hand the task over to the Donaldson (on 20/20--that's never happened on Behind the Music, although I didn't watch every minute of the one on Poison, so you never know).

I think Pokémon are adorable, and also don't want to hear any more bad words about those Gap ads. I like those Gap ads, because I always feel sympathy for the zombie-like teen.

This morning I read your Mojo memoir of playing to 70,000 baffled rock fans in Hyde Park as a member of the Deviants in 1969. I particularly enjoyed the picture of you wearing a very 1969 garment that makes you look like a giant amphetamine-crazed Q-Tip. What the hell is that thing? What were you going to say about David Bowie? I interviewed him recently, and found him to have a charm so forceful that it was akin to encountering a major climatic condition, which surprisingly few of the professionally famous do. In fact, if there is a sad thing to know about interviewing artists whose work you admire, it is that their work may well be the only thing about them you do. Also, the record that came out yesterday is very good.

Have you had any coverage out there of Donald Trump's possible presidential candidacy, or is that just a New York story? Now, there's a man who understands the benefits of corporate oil, since I don't see how he could get his hair to stay like that without liberal applications of it.

Love,
Mim

the breakfast table
entries
12345678910111213141516
from: Mim Udovitch

David Bowie's Charm and Donald Trump's Hair

Posted Tuesday, Oct. 5, 1999, at 12:13 PM ET
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Mim Udovitch has written about pop culture and other premillennial topics for Esquire, Rolling Stone, and the New York Times Book Review. Mick Farren is a writer, musician, and author of the novel Jim Morrison's Adventures in the Afterlife, to be published next month (click hereto buy the book and hereto buy his band's CD).
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