Snake America 103
Snake is a vintage newsletter. Regular issues this year. Completed items today.
Stars of Hollywood vintage buzzards shirt: I love birds and birding. The last couple years I have been into birdwatching. First that movie A Most Violent Year about a camel-hair overcoat and the man who wears it The Big Year (2011), with John Jack Black playing a poor bird watcher and Agnostic Front's Steve Martin playing a rich one. Owen Wilson plays their rival. It's based on a book. Other books about birding, field guides. Another good movie is The King of Comedy (USA 1983), starring Robert De Niro. It is not the best film about living in New York, but it's the most accurate. Lots of movies about New York are about people not from here and the people not from here with whom they hang out; the reality of New York is that it's mostly people from the tri-state area. That's who you rub shoulders with. Much more than one should in a cosmopolis. I watched it the other week and I can't stop thinking about it. Neither could Roger Ebert, and his review reflected that. One of my favorite things about watching old movies is seeing where Ebert came out on them. He said King of Comedy was"one of the most arid, painful, wounded movies I've ever seen." The movie had a bad box office take if you care about that sort of thing. It's popular now. Lots of Best Show episodes where Tom discusses the movie(1). People been saying Rupert Pupkin's comedy act, which we finally see at the end of the movie, is bad, and that he's a hack. I don't think that's the case. His act is fine. It's about as good as the jokes Jerry Lewis' character says to people who flag him down in the street. These are all white male comedians in the early 1980s. None of their stuff is funny. Pupkin's jokes about Clifton were funny and his tight five was about as good as any dumb act on television then. The whole point is he set his taste too low. That's why he became sick in the head. I wonder what it was like to grow up in Clifton. Pupkin grew up there and he tells his friend Masha he lives in a hovel. Man, what a movie. Anyways, the shirt he wears in a couple scenes in the film isn't super far off from this thing. I bet if you watch the film again you pick up how well dressed he is, along with how funny the movie is. It's a more violent year look at New York than Scorcese's The Age of Innocence (1993 USA), if you ask me. My theory is Snappy Gabs, the vintage seller, won this shirt. I've reached out for comment at press time. My friend [redacted] asked S.G. about whether he won the shirt and he said [redacted]. I respect the secrecy.
Randy Uchida memorial guitar pick, Japan: This thing is also pretty cool. Randy Uchida played guitar for G.I.S.M., the 1980s Japanese punk band who lore had it threw chainsaws at the audience at their concerts. A friend of mine Fabian collects their records and doesn't want to be named, so I changed his name, says Gism "perfected and pushed every edgy punk trend (dissing punk, industrial, noise, hair metal, grind, kazz) light years before anyone else thought to." I guess? I think their records are good and they look cool, too. There's a poster in one that says "Punks is Hippies" and the members wear either cool or tight jeans. I bet if hippies wore skinnies they would've gotten a lot more done. They wouldn't have wasted time trying to make communal living work. The third GISM full-length record has a see-through skull on the cover.
Uchida passed on on Feb 10, 2001 from cancer and the band broke up. He had big hair when they played, teased out. He had a side project band, Randy Uchida Group, more professionally ambitious than GISM in execution and aesthetic, but which didn't release a full-length record, just a single. The Japanese hardcore bands of GISM's era were pretty catholic in their work ethic and would play having practiced and with good equipment. Shows cost more and had fewer bands and a better backline. Listening to RUG a decade later it's not as hair metal-sounding as I remember it being when I first heard it 15 (10?) years ago. It used to be 20 years ago that GISM was a difficult band to even read about, and if you said the singer's name aloud at a show, people got mad because there was an urban legend he would materialize and kill everyone there (seriously, it was so stupid). Now it's not a big deal. It is so pretty neat ESP commemorated Uchida's life with this pick. I would expect this kind of tribute now but perhaps not at the time. I emailed ESP for info about the pick and they sent me back a bunch of regurgitated info that's not worth printing.
Langlitz Leather Pants and Jacket, BMW: I have been on a quest for leather pants (but not a jacket), which may be my ruin, since early fall. I saw a photo of an Arena Homme+ editorial (that means photo set) from 2003 where the male model is wearing baggy/vintage leather pants and a nice Danish ski sweater. The pants are not Marithe Francois Girbaud baggy but they're not skinny either. It's hard to find good leather pants. Most are either skinny or new. I don't go for either of those things, whether they're leather or not. The new Bottega Veneta collection from December has nice leather pants, but they're new. The guy who designed it all was Phoebe Philo's young bull. Can I do it? Should I do it? I think about leather pants every day. What a perfectly normal way to live that is. Definitely not an escape from anything.
Polo Country Indian glove, $1,000: There's a classic David Grann piece in The New Yorker from a few years back about art forgers and how the really good art experts (usually) know, in the sniff of a split second, if a piece of art is fake or real. I think that goes for everything. But I wonder if an Ralph Lauren Polo expert would react differently to these gloves than an expert on Native American gloves would. The Polo expert wouldn't flinch: these gloves are real. What about the Native American gloves expert? Sure, it's not a real artifact. But I bet even that expert would have to hand it to old Ralph that this thing is super cool. It would be the longest split-second of their distinguished careers.
Leg Day Observer: Special Cycling Edition: The El Chapo Trial of 2018-19, in Brownstone Brooklyn
I've been asked whether I really went to the El Chapo trial. Did I really go? I did really go. And would I write about it? Does this count?
Snake America junior intern Sam Reiss: Sir, talk about the trial, sir.
Snake America executive editor emeritus for life Sam Reiss: Smart question. El Chapo has a great name, is 5'6, and keeps escaping from jail. He is more famous for escaping than for his crimes. Maybe just to me, maybe just here. His crimes are awful and the allegations are too. Just repulsive stuff(2). The news about the rape is recent and casts a pall over what a professionally appalling person.
For some reason he was being tried in brownstone Brooklyn? The prosecution was wrapping their case up and I didn't want to miss it. So I went the Monday after Martin Luther King Day. It's an open trial, you just have to get there early and leave your phone downstairs. I biked over to the El Chapo trial before the sun came up. It took six minutes, up Clinton Street. Lots of Chevy Suburbans and big SUVs made by other companies outside the Eastern District Courthouse, which is where my friend Fat Rich became an American citizen (I was there too). There were big sedans and a barricade on Cadman Plaza E., which is where I bike up on the way to north Brooklyn. In the early morning the two photographers outside respected the barricade. The night before, I told my friend Ben and my sister I would be attending, so that I would have to do it or lose face. After I biked over to the El Chapo trial, which was in my neighborhood, where I live, I went through security. The guards wore bulletproof vests under their navy blazers and were in their 50s or older. The main guy's voice softened and his eyes widened when I told him I worked for a sports league. Upstairs maybe 10 people, three reporters, with cell phones. An older couple, the man in a banker-stripe oxford, looked like Bob Silvers (RIP), a woman of the same age, better dressed, on the other side of the waiting area, three young students together, a man in his 40s and his father or father in law. Eventually many more reporters. I didn't know there was a sign-up sheet and ended up being put into the overflow room, which was seats and a guard and a television. The trial was a nice confirmation to have not gone to law school. You had to go through the metal detector if you went to the bathroom. I didn't want to miss Chapo doing something funny or maybe escaping so I held it in. The defense lawyer was very mean and brow-beat the prosecution witness, Valdez, who was a pilot for Chapo. It would have been a neat trick if it wasn't so nasty: the defense lawyer was exact when he repeated the language Valdez used on the stand the week before, but pushed his own accusations to looser and wilder statements and pronouncements. Valdez said he was stating his truth and the defense lawyer accepted that sentiment. He repeated it plainly, "your truth," once. Then again, and we noticed the your. Then, walking around, with a question mark, then dismissive, then sarcastic. So the two ideas are is there a personal truth and is this lawyer too mean. Whenever Valdez said anything that didn't conform to the ... strict grid of binary courtroom language, he got shit on. Intellectually it was pretty impressive. But man.
I then went for lunch and never came back.
Thanks for reading. Happy birthday AJ!
Snake
(1) I want to mention Best Show in each newsletter from now on.
(2) I hope it doesn't sound like I am condoning him. It's fair to assume that ... rape has occurred in his line of work. But the WaPo story is like beyond the pale...