Interview

PHOTO BY FRAN ROBERTS

Leave it to MaxMara to bring animal skin to wood-paneled electronices.


Sportmax, a division of MaxMara, invited artist Sebastien Agneessens to create MMIX, a white-walled performance environment that very fashionably emphasizes volume and light. The first event was a live performance by Agneessens and Kyle Fischer, for which they designed six musician speakers made of replicated zebrawood—an endangered species. The performances incorporated field recordings by the late musicologist Alan Lomax, who traveled the US to capture the sound of indigenous cultures and nature. On November 12, dancer and choreographer Jodi Melnick danced in the space. Ballerina Andrea Miller is up next, on December 10. No animals will be harmed in the making of this live performance.



The installation is on view through December 10. Sportmax is located at 450 West Broadway, New York.

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David Chang is best known for delivering perfectly executed, unpretentious comfort food at his wildy popular fleet of Momofuku restaurants in New York City. During a recent book signing at San Francisco's Sur la Table (he was in town to promote his new cookbook Momofuku, co-written with Peter Meehan), Chang flipped through local newspapers in search of escort ads. Armed with a glue stick, he individually pasted the provocative photos on the inside cover of each cookbook, adding a little fun to the usually ho-hum autographing process.  As with his cooking, when Chang meets his fans, he likes to deliver something extra. 

Chang took a few minutes to talk to me about Sichuan hotpots, Kevin Smith, and what he looks for in a woman.


ERIK MORSE: I really like the idea of food tours, where you pick one food, and take one day to visit all the places where a great version of that food can be found.  If you were to do such a food tour, what food would you pick and what culinary destinations would you visit?

DAVID CHANG: I would do Sichuan hot pots and I would go to all the Sichuan restaurants throughout New York. I'd go to Flushing, Chinatown, Brooklyn and Manhattan. Spicy & Tasty and all the Grand Sichuans. There's probably about fifteen restaurants we'd have to check out.

MORSE: Have you ever done such a food tour before?

CHANG: Oh yeah. It's great for groups–and sweating heavily.

MORSE: Favorite vegetable?

CHANG: Daikon

MORSE: You use a lot of eggs in your cooking. Many people say that a great chef can be judged on his ability to perfectly cook an egg.  Would you agree with that, and what's your favorite way to cook an egg?

CHANG: I like eggs. My favorite way of cooking eggs is old school French. I love them soft boiled. I think you can probably make a good judgement call [about the quality of a chef] well before they actually even cook the egg. The process and organization leading up to cooking the egg can tell you a lot about the cook.

MORSE: If you had to pick a genre or period of time in film that embodies your cooking, what would it be?

CHANG: I really don't know. I think most people would probably say we were like fucking Kevin Smith: overrated and terrible. I like Kevin Smith, but it's sort of like anyone can do it.   

MORSE: What do you look for in a woman in terms of what she can do for you with food and cooking?

CHANG: I don't know. I just found out signing today that a girl I dated a couple of years back just got married. I mean, what the fuck? It's always a shock. I don't know.

MORSE: Is food a big part of the courting process for you?

CHANG: I have no idea.  I guess the question is can she deal with a neurotic weirdo like myself.  Not the other way around.

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The 76th issue of COLORS magazine celebrates the lives of Internet addicts, one-legged prom queens, muscular young men shaped like bats, and people who fancy themselves vampires. It's just the global network of adolescents in 2009, as depicted by the everyday-feature quarterly for its "Teenagers" theme.

COLORS is a magazine sponsored by—but operationally separate from—United Colors of Benetton, so the magazine's interest in rainbow-striped diversity is less surprising that it might seem. This being the magazine's 18th birthday, it was naturally the moment to celebrate coming of age. And like any gear-hungry teenager, the latest issue of COLORS comes with new technology. Select pages of COLORS are marked with a Lego-like graphic; readers orient these in front of their webcam and "augment" reality by activating the page's story as a video.

Erik Ravelo, COLORS' Creative Director, explains that the magazine's web site began as a way to interface with users, encouraging readers to share stories of "other-ness." As readers and editors came to work with increasingly complex and integrated technologies, the project became more and more an exploration of the limits of print media. Says Ravelo, "Wow, we even changed the invention of the magazine itself."

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"This is like Cirque du Soleil for poor people," joked Reverend Jen Milller, beatified patron saint of the Lower East Side and MC for Thursday's 11^th annual Mr. Lower East Side pageant at the Bowery Poetry Club. The pageant was not a venue for polished beauties to flaunt their Vaselined teeth but, rather, a showcase of performance artists, exhibitionists, and various unsavory characters meant to embody the spirit of the neighborhood–the old, weird East Village, to borrow a phrase from Greil Marcus.  Contestants ranged from familiar characters in Reverend Jen's Art Star crew–John King, the self-proclaimed "Minister of Ass," and artist Patrick Bucklew, a.k.a. Mangina, who wore nothing but a plastic prosthesis shaped like female genitalia–to men who were moved by the raucous pressure of the crowd or sheer drunkenness to join midway through the pageant. (One such mid-contest entry was Pickles, an audience member's kitten.) (PHOTO: THE REVEREND JEN MILLER)

The competition was judged by any biological woman or gay man who showed up and managed to complete a ballot. Contestants competed in three categories: a one-minute talent portion, swimwear, and a combination evening wear/interview segment. Talent standouts included Dave, an elderly Art Star whose feat was to wander around the stage completely naked, and Juggernut, who, in a magnificent piece of dada-punk theater, used his minute to scream "Stun Gun! Stun Gun!" over a Europop beat while threatening audience members with a Taser. Most contestants interpreted "swimwear" as "underwear with leather jacket" or "loincloth assembled from case of Pabst Blue Ribbon." (To be fair, there aren't any beaches on Orchard Street.) By the evening wear portion, several of the potential titlists had gone missing.

When the votes were tallied, the Budweiser crown (complete with detachable bong) went to comedian Mike Amato, who clinched the title with his stripshow/lip-synching number. The runner-up title, Mr. TriBeCa, went to last-minute entrant and enthusiastic beat-boxer Dan Glass. Novelist Jonathon Ames, Reverend Jen's literary agent, was in attendance with fellow Bored to Death compatriot Jason Schwartzman."It was like that scene in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest where everyone boards the bus," said Ames. "They all get to escape."

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