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March 23, 2006

The Secret Life of Plants

A couple of interesting articles in The New Yorker last week. The first (not online) was about a 40-year-old Manhattan money manager named Boykin Curry who is attempting to build a "Creative Person's Utopia" resort in the Dominican Republic. The second was about the fashion designer Hedi Slimane.

The interesting part was not so much the articles themselves (which were somewhat interesting, actually I found the whole issue pretty good, even discounting the Playboy centerfold montage). What I found fascinating was the random groups of friends that the two people had.

Curry (who you may vaguely remember, as I swear I do, for a book called Essays that Worked which he published as a college freshman) is assembling a list of advisors/business partners to help him fund, design, and gatekeep his Shangri-La. The list includes the football player Michael Strahan, a UN official, a couple of B-List actors, Moby, and Rich Lowry from National Review. Meanwhile, Hedi Slimane hangs out with Neil Tennant from the Pet Shop Boys, the chief curator of P.S. 1 in New York, Gus Van Sant, and Pete Doherty of No Fixed Address.

What boggles my mind is how these random people seem to a) remain important forever and b) connect with each other. The article on Slimane actually comments on this: "[Slimane] has become a core member of that global fellowship of artists, designers, filmmakers, and pop musicians who seem always to run into one another at hotels and parties, at film festivals and art fairs, and who speak constantly of working together on projects." I suspect that a) and b) are related, and that remaining connected with people on the rise is how people remain important. I mean, the Pet Shop Boys had one huge massive worldwide hit over twenty years ago, and maybe a couple of other songs you might have heard of (if you weren't five when they came out)...yet Neil Tennant remains someone who "matters", someone that it would be notable that Hedi Slimane would be friends with, and someone who would be invited to his fashion shows and stuff. And Boykin Curry's circle get chartered trips down to the D.R. where they are fed pineapple cocktails by men in Hawaiian shirts. I assume it's inevitable, if it isn't already true, that Curry and Slimane will soon have at least one friend in common.

What does this have to do with "Snakes on a Plane"? Well, in the near future everything is going to be related to SOaP (there's a good article about the movie here; I won't bother quoting it because every word is priceless). The connection is that for whatever reason, "Snakes on a Plane" has caught the popular fancy and has been upgraded from just another movie with a stupid title to something Important. The same thing that happened to "West End Girls". And so now in the near future Boykin Curry is going to invite the producer of "Snakes on a Plane" to join his artistic coterie. And Hedi Slimane is going to hang out with the screenwriter for "Snakes on a Plane". And why is that? I just don't know.

Posted by AdamBa at March 23, 2006 09:50 PM

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Comments

Pet Shop Boys 36 UK top 20 singles - not "a couple of others" and most of those went top 20 around the world - apart from the USA where Kelly Clarkson rules hmmmmm. Relevant? I thinks its American MOR and AOR thats now irrelevant...........

Posted by: Sparky at March 27, 2006 05:33 AM