PREPPIES OF THE APOCALYPSE

Our weeks-long heatwave finally broke early this morning with a cool downpour. Heavenly. The rain didn’t last long, and the heat is going to climb back up, but it was lovely to have a respite. To celebrate, and to bring us into the weekend in good shape, I hit the wine store attached to the Whole Foods on Columbus. I love that place. Wine stores in New York tend to be small and cluttered and limited—everything’s small here, there’s just no room to sprawl—but the Whole Foods one is roomy and calm, with a wide selection. In general, I’m not a huge Whole Foods buff (the prices make me shake my head sadly), but I’ll go out of my way for that wine store.
We’ve had the Hess Cabernet before. I have an anecdote about it, but first I’m going to have to back up and explain the concept of Kilimanjaro Coffee: A few years back, for her fortieth birthday, my friend Heather decided to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro. It was, as you’d imagine, a test of will and strength and internal fortitude, filled with in…

A young actress named Eileen Osborne, who is currently starring in a deliriously terrible off-Broadway musical, rushes backstage during a break between scenes. In a panic, she calls Napoleon to warn him of some unspecified threat involving U.N.C.L.E. She’s unable to give details over the phone, so Napoleon and Illya hurry to the theater to confront her. By the time they arrive, the performance is over, and Eileen is nowhere in sight. Her bubbly understudy, Janet Jerrod (ventriloquist/puppeteer Shari Lewis, of Lamb Chop fame), takes them to a cast party at a nearby restaurant, where they find Eileen dead in the ladies’ room.
Back at headquarters, Mr. Waverly has some disturbing news: A THRUSH operative has just been captured while carrying a printout of top-secret information stored in U.N.C.L.E.’s heavily-guarded subterranean computer, thus suggesting THRUSH has grievously compromised U.N.C.L.E.’s security. Again. Illya and Napoleon gamely try to look surprised at the news, like this…

Happy Friday!  This will be a super-fast roundup, because I have lots to do today and very little to report. I managed to post a new Duranalysis – “Ordinary World”—on Wednesday; check it out if you haven’t already.  In commemoration of this august occasion, here’s Andy (come on, you have to admit that particular lyric is perfect for Andy), which means my series of weird Duran art is now complete. Collect them all!
Book news: My novel Bias Cut is free on Amazon today and all through the weekend. Download it, if you wish; maybe tell a friend about it. It’s a good book. Lots of banter, a bit of a mystery, a handful of glamorous locations, a smidgen of violence. Lots of champagne gets drunk. And there’s only one overt and gratuitous Duran Duran reference in it.

Came in from a rainy Thursday on the avenue…

“Ordinary World” was the first single released off of Duran Duran’s 1992 self-titled album, which, because Duran Duran already had a self-titled album, is more often known as The Wedding Album. One self-titled album per band is plenty, even for Duran Duran. Here’s a splendid quote from Nick on the subject: “You know, it is NOT really called The Wedding Album, even though it is called The Wedding Album”. Thank you, Nick, that cleared the matter right up. Nick often speaks in Zen kōans peppered with bon mots, like a Vivienne Westwood-garbed Buddhist monk after a few glasses of champagne. Nick is, as always, the greatest.
The video, which was nominated for an MTV VMA in 1993 for Best Cinematography, was directed by artist Nick Egan, who also collaborated with the band on the videos for “White Lines”, “Perfect Day”, “All You Need Is Now”, and the recent “Pressure Off.” It’s a lovely video, filled with beautifully composed visuals; the only reas…

At an U.N.C.L.E. test range in the middle of a desert, Illya watches while a sultry technician (softcore starlet Edy Williams, of Beyond the Valley of the Dolls fame) conducts a controlled detonation of M4, a newly-developed and highly volatile explosive material. Following the successful demonstration, the technician handcuffs a briefcase containing the formula for M4 to Illya’s wrist. I suppose the big takeaway from this scene is that the unnamed technician heaves her formidable bosom in Illya’s direction and pants heavily while making double entendres about the hot weather, thus making this one of the relatively rare erotically-charged scenes about military-grade weapons testing. Heaving bosom aside, though, I was mostly just thrilled and relieved to see U.N.C.L.E. does indeed have female scientists. Good for you, U.N.C.L.E.! You folks have been regularly getting trounced by THRUSH in the gender-equality department, so it’s nice to see you making up a little lost ground.
After thw…

I have seventeen mosquito bites on my right leg alone. My clothes reek of sunblock. I’m soggy and puffy from the heat and humidity. The apartment smells like concentrated Eau du Richter. I found a roach napping in my Converse yesterday. I haven’t slept through the night since early June, and probably won’t until mid-September. My sanity slips a bit more daily. Welcome to summer, NYC-style.
My schedule has been full, so there’s no Duranalysis this week. Tons of great suggestions, though –thank you so much to everyone who has contacted me! I should be in good shape for topics through the rest of summer; now it’s just a matter of carving out time to do it. Speaking of the boys, Salon has a very nice piece up about the current tour. Has anyone caught them? They’re playing at the Apollo next week, but tickets are out of my reach at the moment, and anyway, it’s not quite the same without Nick. (As far as I know, there’s still no official explanation for Nick’s absence on the tour beyond “a…

Ah, “The Super-Colossal Affair”. The Man From U.N.C.L.E. purists tend to loathe this episode, pointing to it as emblematic of everything that caused the show’s steep ratings decline in season three. It’s goofy, they say, overstuffed with slapstick comedy that often veers into the surreal. It’s ludicrous and silly. It’s too campy, they say.
They are correct. All of those things are true about this episode. And yet, I kind of like it. I may even love it, just a little.
Mind you, I’m not willing to stick my neck out to defend it from its many detractors. I’m not crazy. I have eyes; I can see that it’s a ridiculous mess. Even still, I’d much rather be subjected to good-natured nonsensical shenanigans than the unrelenting humorless tedium that defined season four, no question. Here’s my bold statement for the day: “The Super-Colossal Affair” is better than every single season four episode.

Happy belated Fourth of July. Those are fireworks over the East River as seen through our living room window. This was taken on June 30th, which is when my neighborhood in Queens traditionally has its big Independence Day celebration; New York City’s main fireworks display (sponsored, as all NYC holiday-themed celebrations seem to be, by Macy’s) took place a bit further down the river, around the Brooklyn/Queens border, on the correct day. It's a scheduling thing, I suppose.
I skipped the roundup last week because I was scrambling to finish that Duranalysis; you’d think that’d mean I’d have twice as much to talk about now, but that’s not the case. I don’t even have any new book giveaways this week! For the time being, Wrong City and Four Emperors are still both free at Smashwords (and pretty damn cheap at Amazon, if you’re more of a Kindle person), so I'm giving you those links again. And here’s the link to my full book list.

Anyone out there on Twitter? It’s an easy and (mostl…

Napoleon saunters down the sidewalk, scoping out the backsides of attractive women, which is something he does rather often on this show. Has anyone ever edited together a supercut of Napoleon casually ogling asses? I feel like that’s something that should exist. When he pauses to stare at a potted pear tree in a shop window, a window washer drops a large sponge on him. Napoleon dodges in time to avoid being hit by the sponge, which lands beside him with a thud and shatters the sidewalk.
At U.N.C.L.E. headquarters, Napoleon and Mr. Waverly discuss the incident. The pear tree is the calling card of Napoleon’s old nemesis, the diabolical yet gentlemanly G. Emory Partridge (George Sanders), last seen tormenting our heroes in various tawdry ways in his private dungeon in “The Gazebo in the Maze Affair”. Illya arrives, straining to push a cart bearing the object that was hidden inside the sponge: an ingot of Quadrillenium X, which, per Illya, is the heaviest and hardest material in the wo…

Gear up, Simon. Let’s do this.

"Violence of Summer (Love’s Taking Over)” was the first single released off of Duran Duran’s 1990 Liberty album. The video, which was shot in France, is the work of prolific directors Andy Delaney and Monty Whitebloom, who collectively operate under the name Big TV! The single, like the album, was neither a critical nor a commercial success; it peaked at #65 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, which… seems about right, actually. It’s a decent song, and it’s a decent video, but it falls far short of the giddying, glorious heights these boys have been known to attain. As Simon put it in a 1998 Goldmine interview, in which he zeroes in on the song as one of the “weak spots” on the critically-disappointing Liberty, “it just didn’t have a proper chorus, great verse though. Just not paying enough attention, we lost our concentration.” Then again, in that same interview he refers to “Serious”*, the second single off of Liberty, as one of the greatest Duran so…