until after we conduct a full investigation.”
“But that’s not possible,” I say. Alex Keller has been pissing people off for six years. How can there be not one complaint in his file?
Although I didn’t mean to imply that she’s on the take, that’s exactly what I’ve done. Her eyes narrow suspiciously. “And why not?”
“He’s belligerent and antagonistic and seems to have a serious problem controlling his temper,” I say, listing a few of his many failings in an effort to put her at ease.
Her features lighten but she’s not appeased. “If you have a specific incident in mind, you can make a formal complaint now.”
I have several specific incidents in mind and would like nothing more than to spend the rest of the day lodging complaints against Alex Keller, but I can’t linger. The numbers are already fading from my memory.
The Maine Filibuster
E very morning Anna Choi comes into the office, itemizes her clothing and sums up her look with a pithy statement. Today she is Ellis Island retro. Pants: Antique Boutique, $45; shirt: H&M, $11; coat: Hasidic overcoat from Williamsburg, $30; headwrap: Bendel’s, $220; shoes: Fausta Santini, $72.
Although she is making fun of the Public Eye, an item in the local weekly that asks people on the street these very questions, Anna faithfully adheres to the dictates of self-conscious funkiness found therein. Her pants are almost always from a flea market, her shirts are almost always from the bottom of the secondhand bin at Domsey’s, and nine times out of ten she’s sporting one outrageously expensive item, which is usually something small like a belt or a purse.
Anna is the editor of Fashionista ’s Home Front section and it’s her job to write about celebrities puttering about in their French country kitchens. She visits their homes, spends two hours touring their grounds and taking notes on the way sunlight pours through skylights, and then returns to her three-hundred-square-foot apartment in the East Village. Becauseher tenement barely has a kitchen, let alone a place for pots, pans and oven mitts, Anna is a closet fetishist. Her mouth waters at a glimpse of neatly stacked linens in a narrow space. Her heart beats faster at the sight of dry goods in a pantry. These are the temples she chooses to worship in, and every month her editor has to cut five hundred words on walk-ins and shelving systems and coat hangers.
Home Front is a lush section, with exquisite photographs of beautiful celebrities in white fluffy robes eating croissants on hydrangea-drenched verandas or kissing in wooden boats on their lily ponds or playing Bach’s third concerto on their baby grand pianos. Flipping through the section, you get the sense that these moments are more than posed, they are staged. They are practiced scenes that don’t quite exist beyond the click of the Canon Rebel EOS 5 and you can’t help but feel that the participants themselves look at the photos with the same longing you do. It’s like Cary Grant wishing he were Cary Grant.
Despite the breadth of homes covered—ranches in New Mexico, villas in Malibu, town houses in Manhattan—there is a remarkable sameness about the articles. It’s as though everyone has a 200-year-old circular stone shrine in the backyard or a statue of Nefertiti in the driveway. Anna does a good job of mixing it up, of making this library of leather-bound first editions seem like the first library of leather-bound first editions she has ever seen. Her writing is strong, and she delights in giving celebrities free rein and then gleefully reporting the glittering bon mots they let fall from their lips. Inevitably an actor will show her the spot on the side of a hill where he stands and belts Hamlet’s “too too solid flesh” soliloquy at the top of his lungs. With enough rope, anyone will hang himself.
Although it’s three-thirty and the cannonball has already left Penn Station for the Hamptons, we’re having a Friday
“But that’s not possible,” I say. Alex Keller has been pissing people off for six years. How can there be not one complaint in his file?
Although I didn’t mean to imply that she’s on the take, that’s exactly what I’ve done. Her eyes narrow suspiciously. “And why not?”
“He’s belligerent and antagonistic and seems to have a serious problem controlling his temper,” I say, listing a few of his many failings in an effort to put her at ease.
Her features lighten but she’s not appeased. “If you have a specific incident in mind, you can make a formal complaint now.”
I have several specific incidents in mind and would like nothing more than to spend the rest of the day lodging complaints against Alex Keller, but I can’t linger. The numbers are already fading from my memory.
The Maine Filibuster
E very morning Anna Choi comes into the office, itemizes her clothing and sums up her look with a pithy statement. Today she is Ellis Island retro. Pants: Antique Boutique, $45; shirt: H&M, $11; coat: Hasidic overcoat from Williamsburg, $30; headwrap: Bendel’s, $220; shoes: Fausta Santini, $72.
Although she is making fun of the Public Eye, an item in the local weekly that asks people on the street these very questions, Anna faithfully adheres to the dictates of self-conscious funkiness found therein. Her pants are almost always from a flea market, her shirts are almost always from the bottom of the secondhand bin at Domsey’s, and nine times out of ten she’s sporting one outrageously expensive item, which is usually something small like a belt or a purse.
Anna is the editor of Fashionista ’s Home Front section and it’s her job to write about celebrities puttering about in their French country kitchens. She visits their homes, spends two hours touring their grounds and taking notes on the way sunlight pours through skylights, and then returns to her three-hundred-square-foot apartment in the East Village. Becauseher tenement barely has a kitchen, let alone a place for pots, pans and oven mitts, Anna is a closet fetishist. Her mouth waters at a glimpse of neatly stacked linens in a narrow space. Her heart beats faster at the sight of dry goods in a pantry. These are the temples she chooses to worship in, and every month her editor has to cut five hundred words on walk-ins and shelving systems and coat hangers.
Home Front is a lush section, with exquisite photographs of beautiful celebrities in white fluffy robes eating croissants on hydrangea-drenched verandas or kissing in wooden boats on their lily ponds or playing Bach’s third concerto on their baby grand pianos. Flipping through the section, you get the sense that these moments are more than posed, they are staged. They are practiced scenes that don’t quite exist beyond the click of the Canon Rebel EOS 5 and you can’t help but feel that the participants themselves look at the photos with the same longing you do. It’s like Cary Grant wishing he were Cary Grant.
Despite the breadth of homes covered—ranches in New Mexico, villas in Malibu, town houses in Manhattan—there is a remarkable sameness about the articles. It’s as though everyone has a 200-year-old circular stone shrine in the backyard or a statue of Nefertiti in the driveway. Anna does a good job of mixing it up, of making this library of leather-bound first editions seem like the first library of leather-bound first editions she has ever seen. Her writing is strong, and she delights in giving celebrities free rein and then gleefully reporting the glittering bon mots they let fall from their lips. Inevitably an actor will show her the spot on the side of a hill where he stands and belts Hamlet’s “too too solid flesh” soliloquy at the top of his lungs. With enough rope, anyone will hang himself.
Although it’s three-thirty and the cannonball has already left Penn Station for the Hamptons, we’re having a Friday
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