"A short trip to New York City in 1961 established his lasting attraction to America, a place that to him felt less sexually repressive than England."

"Inspired by his stay, he made prints based on William Hogarth’s series of paintings 'A Rake’s Progress,' but he put that 18th-century morality tale — about a young man’s descent into perdition — in 20th-century terms. Mr. Hockney had the hero cruising runners in Central Park, drinking in gay bars and heading to jail. The episodes were depicted in a visually distinctive style: half-abstract but grounded in realistic details. By the time he finished the series, he was himself visually striking, with a high-color wardrobe of plaid suits, striped soccer jerseys and mismatched colored socks, owlish glasses and bleached blond hair. With a graduation gold medal awarded by the Royal Academy — received with the artist wearing a gold lamé jacket to the ceremony — and London gallery representation secured, Mr. Hockney was a British star on the rise...."

From "David Hockney, Who Restored the Human Form to Art, Dies at 88/His colorful figurative paintings were both conservative and iconoclastic, defying the dominant abstract schools of the mid-20th century" (NYT)(gift link, because there's much more to read and lots of great photos of Hockney and his much-loved paintings).

"[S]ocks and sandals were fully associated with nerd-dom, meaning that soon it was time for fashion... to embrace the twosome again."

"And so it did, with multiple brands, including Fendi, Miu Miu and Dior Men all showing sandals and socks on recent runways.... That this has happened at the same time that Gen Z has become increasingly vocal about its general discomfort with visible toes — the subject of multiple 'who let the dogs out' memes and Reddit threads — is probably not a coincidence. (Gen Z, after all, is the consumer group most brands are most eager to attract.) Whether that reaction is due, as some have posited, to a fear of fetishization — there are accounts on OnlyFans devoted solely to feet — or some other generational quirk, it’s a real thing."

From "Are We All Supposed to Wear Socks With Sandals Now? A teacher wonders about the etiquette rules of contemporary footwear" (NYT).

Complicated! I'd like to say wear socks and sandals in whatever combination expresses the youness of you, but as between the people who have publicly overembraced a supposed rule against socks with sandals and the people who are squicked out by the sight of toes, I'd like to skew toward the toe-haters. But make a good sock choice. Wear socks that say: I know what I'm doing.

And for you Roman Empire buffs: "ROMAN SOCKS AND SANDALS: FASHION OR FAUX PAS? In this article Mark Griffin explores the history of this unlikely pairing." ("'Udones' were made either of pieced together cloth or woollen yarn using a type of knitting called 'nalbinding' or something that looks similar to netting called 'sprang.'")

"I was walking with my girlfriend when we saw him. Shirtless, in late-afternoon sunlight, J.F.K., Jr., was playing Frisbee, wearing nothing but black athletic shorts..."

"... tennis shoes, and droopy white socks. This was the Ivy League. Nobody worked out. (Nobody I knew, anyway.) And so I wasn’t prepared for the muscularity, the anachronistic virility, on display. John’s physique was so classically ideal he might’ve been throwing a discus instead of a Frisbee and been carved out of stone. You looked for the defect in him and you couldn’t find it. There had to be something wrong somewhere, but it would take a magnifying glass to detect. Most of his clan had inherited the freckled, rabbity Kennedy looks. John, lucky in everything, had received the enhancing admixture of dark, French Mediterranean, Bouvier blood. I mentioned it was 1979. Bisexuality was undergoing one of its periodic upticks. I’d fallen into some confusion on that score myself. But I had a girlfriend now. That wasn’t what was going on. The urge I felt wasn’t to possess. It wasn’t even to resemble. It was to draw near. To be allowed to draw near...."

Writes Jeffrey Eugenides, in "My Unrequited Love Story with J.F.K., Jr./I knew John F. Kennedy, Jr., not that well and not that long, but enough to have experienced the gravitational pull he exerted, like some great big moon"
 (The New Yorker).

"Of Hemingway’s three children, Patrick came closest to simulating, though hardly emulating, his father...."

"Hemingway’s first son, Jack, was an avid fly fisherman who fished in Europe between battles in World War II. He had difficulty finding a postwar career until he became Idaho’s fish and game commissioner in the 1970s. He died in 2000. Hemingway’s third child, Gloria Hemingway, was a physician who struggled with alcohol abuse. She wrote a memoir, 'Papa' (1976), before undergoing transition surgery later in life. She died in 2001."

From "Patrick Hemingway, Ernest’s Devoted Second Son, Is Dead at 97/Inspired by his parents’ travels, he spent much of his life in Africa and helped complete his father’s safari memoir. He also published a volume of father-son letters. He was Ernest Hemingway’s last surviving child" (NYT).

Transition surgery? I clicked on "She died in 2001" and got to the obituary "Gregory H. Hemingway, 69; Wrote a Memoir Called 'Papa.'" Excerpt:

Pete Hegseth wore "an Old Glory print pocket square" and "star-spangled socks and a flag belt buckle. His only jewelry was a wedding ring..."

"... a lapel pin representing the crest of the 187th Infantry Regiment, and a Killed in Action bracelet worn in honor of a soldier, Jorge M. Oliveira, who lost his life in Afghanistan — a series of accessories that served as a form of value signaling. His hair was gelled back without a strand out of place. During the occasional interruptions from the crowd, his jaw was heroically clenched. Hidden were almost all of his tattoos: a large Jerusalem Cross, a 'Join or Die' snake, and an American flag with a stripe replaced by an AR-15.... Just a hint of ink reaching from his right forearm to his wrist peeked out from a carefully buttoned shirtsleeve. (It seemed to be the tail end of his 'We the People' script.) Left behind was the stars ‘n’ stripes cowboy hat. Unseen was the Uncle Sam jacket linings that Mr. Hegseth [has] occasionally flashed.... Certainly he did not look like the hard-drinking, adulterous, budget-mismanaging person that critics of his nomination had described. He looked clean-cut, not politically correct but patriotically correct.... Amid all the theatrics and speechifying by the many committee members and Mr. Hegseth himself, his uniform offered an argument of its own...."

Writes the NYT fashion critic Vanessa Friedman, in "Pete Hegseth Dresses for Defense/The nominee for Secretary of Defense wore his patriotism on his sleeve during his confirmation hearing — and his belt, his socks, and his pocket square."

I like the topic of politics and fashion. And this is fine. Good to see it aimed at a man, as it should be maybe half the time (or a bit less, men's clothing lacking much variation). I like the reference to the "theatrics and speechifying" by committee members, but it should specify Democrats on the committee. Good lord, they were rude! I rarely watch Senate hearings because I can't tolerate the nastiness. But for some reason I sat in front of the TV for over an hour. I'll just offer Tim Kaine as one example of the undignified badgering:

I guess that yelling and pointing and smirking would have paid off if Hegseth had snapped and responded in kind. But he didn't. And why would he? He knows he only needs to put up with this, even as Kaine knows he needs to make something happen.

ADDED: Instapundit mocks the NYT for printing "Unseen was the... jacket linings." 

"Gen Z may like crew socks, but they’ve remained relatively silent on the issue on TikTok, and don’t seem to care..."

"... when asked on other parts of social media. Meanwhile, the most popular TikToks on the trend war are explainer videos and millennials on the defensive. “This country is in a crisis,” wrote menswear writer and commentator Derek Guy on X after a poll from the sportswear company Bennetts revealed 50.3 percent of its voters preferred 'normal' crew socks. Other videos showed Generation Y bravely wearing hidden socks in public, reluctantly wearing taller socks to stay on trend, or, like Spence, creating makeshift ankle socks by folding longer socks under their heels."

I'm reading "Your socks are showing your age/Millennials have cutthroat defenses of their low-cut socks as Gen Z embraces crew socks" (WaPo)(free access link, in case you need pictures).

It's interesting, from my perspective, to watch millennials facing up to a younger generation that regards them as old, especially when the focus is something that — unlike the inevitable decline toward death — is completely trivial — here, the height of the tops of your socks. 

My advice, from the advanced age of 73, is:

"Sounds like schools assume all families have a lot of spare cash."

Says one commenter, at "Why is it always spirit week? Schools keep adding theme days, and parents can’t keep up" (WaPo).

From the article: "Some themes are simple enough (wear blue for autism awareness, wear pink to stand against bullying), but others ('Book Character Day,' 'Favorite Animal Day,' 'Adam Sandler Day') are far more likely to involve advanced crafting skills or a panicked 9 p.m. Target run. 'Some of it is just wildly specific: ‘Wear a Dr. Seuss hat.’ Who has that just lying around? "Crazy Sock Day." Socks are expensive!; says... a single mother.... 'I think I spend a good $200 on spirit days every year.'"

Are you keeping up with the sock debate?

#sockdebate (TikTok).

Take that in. It's a debate about socks. It seems the millennials and the Gen Zers are fighting amongst themselves and dealing in rules. I'm so far beyond their rules it's just funny, but even when I was their age, I was individualistic about socks. But I will link to a 2010 post of mine:

Socks — with skirts — are a big fashion trend... but we're told not to wear them if we're over 30.

RFK Jr. would give women full control over the decision to have an abortion — "even if it's full term."

Here is RFK Jr. affirming his commitment to China-style full-term abortion, without limits, nationwide:

RFK: "I believe we should leave it to the woman, we shouldn't have the government involved."

STEELE: "Even if it's full term?"

RFK: "Even if it's full term." pic.twitter.com/i6GrXkPrlK

— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) May 9, 2024

I think his feet were supposed to be off camera. I don't like seeing his stocking feet in this context. It's too serious, too deadly. 

"I think that children are like animals that don't have any natural predators left and they're just not afraid of anything...."

"I was in London not long ago and there were these boys breaking the branches off a tree and this woman said, 'You boys stop doing that,' and they said, 'You can't talk to us,' and they were right. You know what I mean? What she was doing was bullying, you know, according to the law, and they knew it."

Said David Sedaris, in conversation with Bill Maher.

Maher added: "That's a sea change from when we were kids when... not only could your parent hit you, the neighbor could hit you.... It was like it takes a village — that was the mentality like any adult could — maybe that's going a little too far — but — I don't know — I think that's better than what we have now.... I mean, I I don't have children, you don't have children and some people say to me, you know, like, 'How do you know?' I'm sentient!..."

Sedaris: "I'm always surprised I meet a teenager and I say... you have to have an after-school job, and the parent, always: "This is Atticus's time to be Atticus.'"

I just found 8 TikToks for your mid-Saturday enjoyment. 2 of them made me cry. Let me know what you think.

 1. Grab a banana and dance.

2. How to go downstairs in a wheelchair. 

3. What exactly is your skin color?

4. The oldest car in the world.

5. Two young boys get a little puppy dog.

6. The organist at the Salisbury Cathedral hears a tourist singing and, unseen, plays in accompaniment. 

7. A woman describes her own life in Victorian times — brushing mud off skirts, darning socks, and hearing the drunkards singing in the streets.

8. The uncanny power of classical music.

"A 2018 Korean study involving six men in their 20s found that they fell asleep, on average, in 7½ minutes when they wore socks, compared with about 15 minutes when they didn’t...."

"In a 2007 Dutch paper, eight subjects with no sleep issues who were between the ages of 21 to 39 fell asleep, on average, in about 11 minutes, compared with 16 minutes when they wore socks to bed.... Feet are burgeoning with special vessels (called AVAs—arterio-venous anastomoses) that connect small arteries with small veins. This allows for an impressive amount of blood flow close to the skin, which, in turn, aids in the warming of it. Pulling on socks is more effective than piling on blankets because socks are a layer of insulation that stays in place even as you shift your feet. 'They make sure your feet stay warm, and there’s a constant signal going to the brain that it is safe to sleep'.... (Incidentally, mittens on hands work the same way, though it’s easier to tuck your hands beneath your pillow or body.)"

From "How a Pair of Old Socks Cured My Insomnia/We’ve looked over the guidance in this post to make sure it’s up-to-date, and we still stand by our advice" (NYT).

"Normally I buy the Audible package, sync up and try to quell waves of panic that I’m not better-read in key areas."

"The most recent went, like, 'Ahhh, I’ve barely read any Russian literature!' Though I was a Kafka nut as a teenager. So now I’m halfway through Maggie Gyllenhaal’s reading of 'Anna Karenina.' Which is long."

From "How Ronan Farrow Spends His Sundays/For one thing, the award-winning reporter eats sardines and cottage cheese while on deadline. He’s also into Mario Kart" (NYT). 

Here's that audiobook of "Anna Karenina." Listen to the sample before you spring for it. Famous actors are not necessarily the best book narrators. I was just saying I couldn't listen to Jennifer Jason Leigh narrating "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood." American actresses tend to have casual, idiosyncratic speech patterns — good for dialogue but distracting or irritating for the long haul through descriptions and multiple characters.

Farrow is 33. Maybe that's the key age for worrying that you're not better read. "Waves of panic" sounds extreme, but maybe people — some people — are deeply distressed that they haven't read all the books it seems you're supposed to have read. If there's anyone I associate with that feeling, it's Woody Allen. Maybe fear of not having read the great Russian classics is a displaced communion with his estranged father. The How-I-Spend-My-Sundays piece of literary fluff does have a reference to Woody — a veiled reference:

"See-through socks?" — Joe Rogan tries to keep up with David Lee Roth and David Lee Roth just barrels along.

 

You can scroll back to the beginning to watch that whole 12-minute clip. I actually listened to the entire 3+ hours of the podcast on Spotify. Roth is such a motor mouth, but it's all pretty interesting. He did leave Rogan in the dust, though. The main thing Roth got across — if you take the 3 hours as a whole — is that he's internalized the lesson his father taught by asking — every night at the dinner table — what did you contribute? 

In case you're wondering, Roth will be getting a new tooth. I forget how he said he got that one knocked out.

Speaking of Spotify, I like that — at the age of 70 — I've been able to hear something new now and then and genuinely adopt it as a personal favorite. When I was a teenager, it was so easy to accept new musical artists and really love them — internalize them. Now, it's an amazing delight when something leaps into the place in my head that was so open when I was young. Yesterday, I clicked on this and immediately took it to heart:

That's the live version, obviously. The version on the album is what especially appealed to me.

"After years of protests from fans and Native American groups, the Cleveland Indians have decided to change their team name..."

"... moving away from a moniker that has long been criticized as racist, three people familiar with the decision said Sunday. The move follows a decision by the Washington Football Team of the N.F.L. in July to stop using a name long considered a racial slur, and is part of a larger national conversation about race that magnified this year amid protests of systemic racism and police violence.... One option that the team is considering, two of the people said, is moving forward without a replacement name — similar to how the Washington Football Team proceeded — then coming up with a new name in consultation with the public."... Other professional sports teams, including the Atlanta Braves, the Kansas City Chiefs and the Chicago Blackhawks, have said in recent months that they have no plans to change their names... The [Indians] club has said that the name was originally intended to honor a former player, Louis Sockalexis, who played for the Cleveland Spiders, a major league club, in the 19th century and was a member of the Penobscot Nation. Some have suggested that Cleveland adopt the name Spiders as a replacement."

The NYT reports.

Trump tweeted" "Oh no! What is going on? This is not good news, even for 'Indians.' Cancel culture at work!"

Personally, I think all baseball teams should be named after a type of animal, preferably one that you can picture holding a baseball bat or attempting to play baseball in a silly fanciful manner. But the only team that meets my standard is the Cubs. Maybe the Tigers. The best trend actually represented by the existing name is birds — Cardinals, Orioles, Blue Jays. So I recommend another bird. Maybe Crows — for the alliteration and because there are crows in Ohio. But Spiders is perfectly good. It's got some Cleveland tradition, it might scare the opposition, and it's an animal. It's a type of animal not currently represented among the major league team names, but it would provide company for the Diamondbacks, which are currently the only team that's named after a type of animal that isn't represented by any other team. Anyway, don't name a team after a type of human being. That was never a good idea. And don't name a team after items of clothing. That's just stupid.

"[I]n an attempt to defend [Billie] Eilish — a sincere attempt, often from other young women — a new narrative is being formed around her body."

"Now, it’s about Eilish’s 'bravery' in having a body atypical for celebrities because she’s seemingly not a size 0. It’s a common refrain anytime a woman in the public eye is seen eating in public, having hips in public, or having rolls in public.... The goal of this kind of noxious positivity is to make clear that not being thin — either intentionally or not — is just as worthy of celebration as thinness has been since basically forever. But this is a false equivalence; we praise thinness because we think it tells us something about someone’s worth, their inherent beauty, their value as a person. The issue isn’t so much celebrating one type of body over another, but rather celebrating a body for its bravery, as if there’s something impressive about existing in the world even though your body doesn’t conform to narrow standards of beauty. Refusing beauty norms, or merely falling outside of them, isn’t that brave; it’s just an inevitability since those standards are increasingly harder to attain. Arguably, every woman in the world is brave in that regard because none of us are meeting every characteristic of perfection, whether we want to or not. Eilish has been vocal in the past about why she wears clothes '800 sizes bigger' than she actually is. 'It kind of gives nobody the opportunity to judge what your body looks like. I don’t want to give anyone the excuse of judging,' she told Vogue Australia in 2019. 'Anything you look at, you judge.'... Calling someone brave for merely existing in the body they have doesn’t take power away from thinness, and it doesn’t create any kind of equilibrium in culture.... The truth about Eilish’s body in those paparazzi photos — the truth about most women and their bodies — is really boring: It’s just a body, and you get the one you get."

 From "That Photo Of Billie Eilish Isn’t Brave. It’s Just Typical. In the pursuit of body positivity, we’ve tipped over into an absurd place — where merely existing in a body larger than a size 0 is considered courageous" Scaachi Koul (Buzzfeed).

First, I'd just like to say, the idea that there are beautiful celebrities who wear size zero is absurd. The chest measurement for size zero is 30 inches! Please point me to any adult with a 30 inch chest. This is not any sort of beauty ideal. But people say "size 0" the way people used to say "thin as a reed." Nobody is thin as a reed, and if they were, it would freak you out. 

Second, I'll say that women's bodies are not boring.

"My gut says that what Reade alleges did not happen. My head instructs that it is within the realm of possibility..."

"... and fairness requires acknowledging that. And there is another point to bear in mind: Double standards work in both directions. Those who disbelieved and diminished Christine Blasey Ford face the challenge of explaining why they seem so much more eager to credit Tara Reade’s account."

Writes Ruth Marcus in "Assessing Tara Reade’s allegations" (WaPo). Marcus wrote a book about Christine Blasey Ford and concluded that she was telling the truth. This column is (or purports to be) Marcus's effort to not be a hypocrite.

Outrage over misbehavior only by those with whom we have ideological differences is not righteous — it is hypocritical. Skepticism about accusations only when they are made against someone with whom we are ideologically aligned is not high-minded — it is intellectually dishonest.

And yet. Reflexive acceptance of any and all allegations of sexual misconduct against any man is not staunch feminism — it is dangerous credulity that risks doing terrible injustice to the accused. #BelieveAllWomen was a dumb hashtag and a dumber approach to inevitably complex, fact-bound situations. I have always tried to argue in favor of fact-finding first, conviction later, whether in the court of public opinion, in the Senate confirmation process or elsewhere....

I won't detail Marcus's assessment of the evidence in the Reade and Blasey Ford cases, but I wanted to point to something said in the comments over there. This combines 3 different commenters:

Women of a certain age, and Ms. Reade is one, know that we all wore pantyhose in those days in DC.... I have difficulty in thinking a female staffer on the Hill in the spring of 1993 was not wearing hose with a business skirt.... I'm a retired physician and a woman. I've done a lot of pelvic exams in my life and I honestly don't see how a standing man could reach under a standing woman's layers of clothes and insert a finger without groping, fumbling and cooperation.... Especially if she was wearing pantyhose....

Will you join me in calling for a return to nylon stockings for women in skirts working in a high-level professional context?

In a context where men are wearing suits, shouldn't women look more polished?

I took that closeup screen capture from the photograph at "Trump's personal assistant fired after comments about Ivanka, Tiffany" (Politico).

I don't mean to body-shame anyone. I just think this is too casual for working in the White House and that it's a good idea for men and women to hit the same level of dressiness.

Today, the heart of Facebook is blackish-purple.

Compare "Facebook has a heart... a blackish-green, mystifyingly obscure heart," where I encountered a large looming male with a parrot and a cockatoo and a squat crow-headed woman feeding a goose while a long-hair child turned away and had nothing to do.

Today's Facebook image has only female humans — one old and one young. The old one — Facebook must have chosen this specifically for me — is knowable as old because her hair is white and she's wearing glasses and white anklets and she has cats — one to pet and one perched on her back. Maybe her back aches — her non-cat-petting hand is in the oh-my-aching-back position. How long has she been bent over in the go-ahead-and-sit-on-my-back position? This woman Facebook thinks is me has a head so empty that the shape of the cat shows through it. Why can't I stand up and heave this beast off my back? How long have I been petting the standing cat? Perhaps for all eternity in this blackish-purple limbo.

The woman who Facebook has determined does not represent me is squatting grasping a rabbit and attempting to interest it in a carrot. Unlike normal cartoon rabbits, this rabbit is blasé about a carrot. Unlike normal cartoon humans, this woman has 5 fingers, and it looks like too many fingers, thus explaining, at long last, why normal cartoon character hands have 4 fingers.

The cat in the foreground contemplates a ball of yarn. Like the rabbit with the carrot, the cat does not react to the yarn like a normal cartoon cat. This thing that should be so exciting — yarn! to a cat — is lackluster, something to be gazed at with ennui, like the tiny world itself. The world of Facebook, where groups are at the heart, and the group their sophisticated algorithms have offered to me is, apparently, cats. Or rabbits. Or aching backs. Or anklets (yes, the "I Wear Anklets" group! I must join!). Or see-through bulbous hairdos. Or Forcing Carrots on Rabbits. Or Gazing Ennui-Filled at a Symbol of the World.

"The book treats us to the spectacle of a distinguished, gray-headed scholar... watching as a young artist commands her audience to spit Jell-O into her pantyhose."

"'I like to question the socially constructed notions of our sense of sex,' she declares. Our hapless sociologist-hero scribbles notes as a male art student screens hard-core pornography as part of his 'practice.' Another artist-in-waiting reflects: 'For me the vagina is the solution.'... The M.F.A. trains artists to talk about their work with slickness and flair, in conformity with the lexicon of the art world. The premise of M.F.A. education, Fine says, is 'helping students not only to be artists, but also to look the part.' Making art is not enough; aspiring artists must be able to articulate and defend the political and conceptual interventions their work performs. Learning to 'look the part' entails firm, sometimes punitive, lessons in self-presentation. This instruction takes place at the program’s central ritual: the critique.... One of the glorious features of contemporary art is that any material — tangled museum ropes, used lipstick tubes, untreated lumber — can be made interesting with the aid of a canny framing....  The ability to position one’s efforts as protest or satire, experiment or dream, is more than glib posturing. What the ritual of critique tests, however, is command of a particular vocabulary, one that emphasizes transgression, resistance, and rupture. An irony is that this insistence on verbal virtuosity privileges certain educational and class backgrounds."

From "Art-School Confidential/The expensive superficiality of M.F.A. programs" (Chronicle of Higher Education ) — a review in the book "Talking Art: The Culture of Practice and the Practice of Culture in MFA Education" by Gary Alan Fine.

As for the privileging of certain educational and class backgrounds — it also privileges a willingness to parrot, please, and bullshit. By the way, where's the transgression, resistance, and rupture if you're passing along your teachers' dedication to transgression, resistance, and rupture? It's such an obvious paradox. You'd need spirit and fortitude along with a determination to squander it. Do you get that with "certain educational and class backgrounds"? Maybe yes!