Who's That?

When a woman walks into a room, she commands attention from everyone. She doesn’t even have to be beautiful; she only has to be a woman. Ugly Betty could enter a room and turn the heads of men and women alike. Women have an aura about them that gets them noticed. Other women quickly see a woman who has just entered a room and size her up as many things – a rival, a potential friend, an inspiration. They want to be like her. Men start wondering about her. “Is she an actress?” Is she a doctor?” “Wonder what she looks like with her hair down?” They want to be with her.

When a man walks into a room . . . no one cares. Men inspire neither mystery nor mystique. The have to be preened up, primped up, and pumped up to even get a notice. Women don’t care about men. They don’t even like men. Even other men don’t care when a man steps into a room. Men always have to have their arrivals announced: “Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States!” Even the Pope needs an introduction when he becomes pope: “Annuntio vobis gaudium magnum: habemus Papam!” Ever notice how those old American Express commercials seem to work better with Pele, Pavarotti, and Barry Goldwater’s running mate than with Roberta Peters? “Do you know me?” Uh, no, I don’t.

Men don’t inspire or fear each other. They can’t even stand each other. You think Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas tolerated being on the same stage? So how could a man enter a room and attract attention? Mr. Jones walked into a room with a pencil in his hand, and something was happening, and he didn’t know what it was. No one else knew. No one else cared – least of all about Mr. Jones. When a man does walk into a room, he’ll only inspire, if anything, remarks like: “What, did someone just come in?” “Didn’t he use to be someone I knew?” “His shoe lace is untied.” Even a man who looks like he shops at Barneys New York or stepped out of an advertisement in GQ won’t draw much attention. He might provoke some curiosity; one or two people might wonder if he’s gay.

Well, maybe some debonair men can pull off an auralike effect. Sean Connery. Roger Moore. Pierce Brosnan. But certainly not James Bond, the man the all portrayed; even 007 had to introduce himself. “Bond. James Bond.” A fictional secret agent man, including one who’s been given a number but having kept his name, may be able to introduce himself quietly, but most men can’t do so in real life. Even Elvis Presley need to shake his hips and sneer to get attention. When he walked down Los Angeles’s Sunset Boulevard one day in 1968 while preparing to film his now-legendary TV special, no one so much as recognized him. British rock and rollers – who couldn’t attract attention until they grew their hair – had already stolen his thunder. Elvis had indeed left the building.

A woman who so much as steps into a room and the eyes of everyone are on her, as John F. Kennedy, the man who accompanied Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy to Paris, could have told you. A man has to yell and shout to get noticed. Ask Chris Matthews.

The best thing about a woman is the she can walk out of a room and still leave a sense of aura behind, as well as a lot of curiosity. “Who was she?” “I’d like to meet her.” “She has beautiful eyes.” When a man leaves the room, you hear: “Did someone say something?” “Where’s that waiter?” “I wonder what’s on TV tonight.” “Cigarette?” “No thanks, I don’t smoke.”

Out of sight, never in mind. Oh, never mind.

Wrong Way Fred

To: Alfred B. Chamberlain, Columnist, West Fargo (N.D.) Dispatch-Bee

Dear Fred:

This letter is to inform you that your services as cultural critic and commentator for the West Fargo, North Dakota Dispatch-Bee are no longer needed. After thirty years, we have elected to terminate your employment effective immediately. You are a wonderful writer and an accomplished stylist who never misses a deadline, but we have to let you go.

You get everything wrong.

Remember when General Motors introduced the Chevrolet Cavalier in the early eighties? You wrote in your column that it was a solid, competent car that would stop the Japanese from gaining a greater share of the U.S. auto market. Well, that car was a piece of junk, and the Japanese have increased U.S. market share to the point of driving GM into bankruptcy. When Madonna had her first big hit, you dismissed the notion that her personal style could compensate for her lack of musical substance. You predicted that she would be gone in two years. You also predicted that the Australian pop-rock group Men at Work would become one of the greatest and most enduring bands of all time.

Fred, these are just three of the biggest examples of your miscalculations. You opposed the Persian Gulf War and supported the war in Iraq. You wrote in 1992 how Bob Kerrey had a chance to win that year’s Democratic nomination for President of the United States, and we ran the piece the day he withdrew as a candidate. Good grief, we had a chance to win a Pulitzer Prize – a Pulitzer, Fred - for distinguished editorial writing, and you had to go and ruin it. It was all because of that piece you wrote suggesting that the Berlin Wall would never be opened – two weeks before it fell!

And don’t get me started on your column scoffing at the idea of Lithuania trying to secede from the Soviet Union.

Fred, how many more examples do I need? Do you know how embarrassing it was when you praised the movie version of Dune? What about the big movie career you predicted for Teri Polo? Your piece on how Rush Limbaugh was too angry and smug to succeed on talk radio? Or your idea for the paper to run a sweepstakes to give our readers a chance to win a new Yugo? Your assessment of “Frasier?” “A spinoff of ‘Cheers’ will never make it.”

Well, Fred, you made one accurate prediction. You recently wrote a column predicting you’d lose your job. You may have based your prediction on the growth of the Internet and the decline of newspapers, but you were still right about your own situation. The paper is still here, Fred, but you’re gone. Please come to the office and collect your belongings as soon as you can, because we plan to throw them out if you don’t.

Josiah P. Quackenbush, Managing Editor, West Fargo (N.D.) Dispatch-Bee

P.S. Why did you call your column “Peace In Our Time?”

Watt's That You Say?

Dear Mr. Watt:

You don’t know me, but I am a writer. I’m thinking about writing a book about the Reagan years, either a personal memoir or a straight history; I haven’t decided which. Anyway, I have a few questions for you. As you were President Reagan’s first Interior Secretary, I know you can certainly help me.

First, regarding your comment that you don’t refer to people in this country as Democrats and Republicans, but rather as liberals and Americans. Why did you say that? I know that liberal programs are unpopular these days, but how are American liberals unpatriotic for supporting government programs and initiatives that are meant to benefit the country? You also compared environmental activists – you call them “environmental extremists” - to the Nazis. Why did you say that? Did you mean to imply that they had an anti-Semitic or murderous agenda against Jewish supporters of your proposals to drill more, mine more, and cut more timber on federal lands? In fact, many environmentalists are Jewish, and I know you’re aware of that, because you once complained to the Israeli ambassador to the United States that the preponderance of Jews in the environmental movement would hinder the U.S.’s ability to be a good friend to Israel. Why did you say that? And why did you call environmentalists “a left-wing cult dedicated to bringing down the type of government I believe in?”

And why did you describe Indian reservations as an example of the "failure of socialism?"

You also banned rock music from the 1983 Independence Day celebrations on the Mall in Washington because it would attract “the wrong element.” Why did you say that? The proposed rock music act was the Beach Boys. The Beach Boys, Mr. Watt, who were an oldies act by 1983. It also got reported that you attacked the group personally, even though the words “beach” and ”boys” never passed your lips. Why didn't you say something about that? And besides, it’s not like they were the Ramones, or X, or some other punk band of the time. Why did you prefer Wayne Newton?

Lastly, sir, you said, regarding your coal mining commission, “We have every kind of mix you can have. I have a black, I have a woman, two Jews and a cripple. And we have talent.” Why did you say that? I know you were trying to illustrate the diversity of the commission, but couldn't you have been more tactful about it? You also said, “I have the ability to laugh, and if you can’t laugh in this job, you should just get out.” So why did you quit as Secretary of the Interior?

Please explain these comments. -- Sincerely, Steven Maginnis

Dear Mr. Watt:

Since I wrote you last week, FBI agents who claim that I have harassed you have visited me. They said you told them so. Why did you say that?

(James G.Watt, Ol' Skullface himself.)

A Model Time

It first happened to me when I was thirteen.

I was still behaving like a grade schooler, collecting bubble gum cards and pasting pictures in a scrapbook. I still listened to the Bee Gees while other boys my age were just getting into the Rolling Stones. Then I saw her.

She was a model in a newspaper ad. Her hair was obviously blond despite the black-and-white image. She posed seductively, her gleaming lips gently parted, her eyes staring straight ahead. She was doing what I learned later was known as making love to the camera. I felt a sinking sensation in my throat that I’d never experienced before. I sighed in a tone suggesting both contentment and despair. Who was this woman? I never found out, but she was the one who led me away from comic books to my discovery of women . . . and fashion models.

High school in the early eighties was a lonely experience for me. I never had a girlfriend to take to the movies or hang out with at the mall. At the same time, a new generation of comely young women was beginning to appear on fashion runways and magazine covers. I think there were only two or three active models in the late seventies who were mainstream celebrities; Cheryl Tiegs, of course, was one. Most models, like the one in the newspaper ad who helped me begin my journey out of childhood, were anonymous. Then the eighties began, and overnight there was an explosion of famous models. These women who graced the covers of magazines such as Mademoiselle and Vogue were my high school romances.

Most teenage boys at the time were infatuated with Carol Alt, the era’s most famous brunette, or Christie Brinkley, the era’s most famous blonde. They certainly appeared in enough annual editions of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. Oh, they were pretty, to be sure. But Carol and Christie never did much for me. They seemed to be generically beautiful, all sparkle and no spark. Kim Alexis was the best and possibly the only reason to check out Sports Illustrated’s annual swimsuit issue. Feminist wrath against the swimsuit issue aside, Kim Alexis looked like she belonged in a sports magazine. She had such a muscular, athletic physique, she could easily have been featured in Sports Illustrated as an Olympic champion. As a swimmer? Not in a bikini, of course, but she even looked hot in a swim team regulation tank top.



If I wanted real glamour – and more Kim Alexis – I had to go through more surreptitious means. I would occasionally peak in the women’s magazines my mother regularly brought home and look at the models inside. Cosmopolitan was a favorite of my mother’s, and sometimes she’d have Glamour or Redbook on hand. I’d look when no one was around to spare myself the embarrassment; it would have looked bad to be seen looking at Glamour or get caught red-handed with Redbook. If I’d been caught with Playboy like other guys, at least I would have been considered normal. It was in Cosmopolitan, though, that I discovered women like Anne Bezamat, a gorgeous Frenchwoman who wore her curled chestnut brown hair in a loose bouffant with a few locks hanging down. She had eyes like melting icicles – frosty with a touch of warmth. I was able to finish a romantic poem I’d started writing by looking at her picture. Thank you, Anne Bezamat.



The biannual fashion editions of the New York Times Magazine were a safer option, as I could look through them along with the rest of the Sunday paper. But not much safer. I still couldn't let Mom see me poring through these inserts, and she never suspected my interest in them. Once she took a New York Times Magazine fashion edition to see it herself, while I was reading another section. "You don’t want this," she said.

In fact, the Fashions of the Times, as it was called, provided my sweetest memories of my ongoing discovery of the opposite sex. It featured the most elite of the top models, the brightest stars from the most prestigious agencies. I would look through the pages excitedly, sighing with delight as I gazed through the photos. I must have fallen eternally in love at least a dozen times . . ..

There was Dianne deWitt. Her face was flawless enough to inspire mannequins sculpted in her likeness. She still had a warm, friendly smile, accentuated by her magnificently styled golden blond hair.


Sheila Johnson, one of the top black models of the day, always looked soft and alluring with her almond eyes and her silky brown complexion. She was quite the turn-on in a copper-colored sweater top with a plunging V-neck.



Rosemary McGrotha . . . was she Donna Karan’s muse or Anne Klein’s muse? Right, why should I care? With her steely blue eyes, her sharply pointed nose and her full, curvaceous figure, she looked like a real woman. She was a real woman. She was known for her love of good food and a lack of interest in dieting.



Clotilde, Ralph Lauren’s spokesmodel, had the loveliest hair: a long, flowing chestnut brown mane framing her gently contoured face . . .. Oh my God! She could make tweed or knits look sexy.



So these women were a fantasy. So what? In high school, the girls either picked on me, were taken, or both. Being with lovely fashion models in my fantasies helped get me through adolescence. I emerged from that period more mature in my tastes; I went from comic books to classic novels and from light pop to classic rock. Alas, I was not more experienced in how to deal with real women. I've never regretted my obsession with the high-profile fashion models of my adolescence. They soothed my teenage restlessness when no one or nothing else did.

Mailroom Prison Nightmare

What are you doing here?

What are you doing, pushing this mail cart around? You spent eleven months filing documents dating back to 1963 and organizing them in numerical order in a civil engineering firm. You were going to pursue your dreams the moment that temporary job ended. You were going to leave menial office work behind and finish your play, complete your course work for an editing certificate, get more articles and essays published, maybe even branch out into photojournalism. But now you’re not doing any of that – you’re doing this instead?

How did this happen? In less than two weeks after your old job was done, you ended up in another dead-end, long-term temp job processing and delivering mail, answering to everyone and in charge of nothing? A job where you even have to let the manager know where you’re going just to get a drink of water? You spent nearly a year doing this kind of work. Now you have to do it again? You’re putting your ambitions on hold again? Do you even know what your ambitions are anymore? When you were twelve, you wanted to be a highway engineer. You spent time in your room drawing maps of your ideas – like a freeway running across Midtown Manhattan! What kind of non-constructive behavior was that?

Three years ago you were a lowly office clerk, and now you’re . . . a lowly office clerk? The bad economy is no excuse. Is this your life? You let yourself get denied, deterred, and diminished daily? There’s a guy in his sixties in this mailroom you work in. He spends his time speaking in cartoon voices and telling everyone bad jokes. He thinks he’s funny, and you want to tell him to shut the hell up. Is that you in twenty years? Come to think of it, wasn’t that you thirty years ago?

Mailrooms are for losers, and that’s where you’re ending up? Binding reports? Running faxes? Lifting heavy boxes, and in a dress shirt and tie? I never made it as a writer or a literature professor, but at least I never stayed in some mailroom prison all my life. I’m ashamed to call you my son. I’m glad I, as your father, never lived to see this!

I wake up screaming. As I turn on the light, I see a picture of a young woman I can never measure up to. The nightmare is over. But as of Monday morning, I’ll still be in a nightmare I can’t wake up from.

Weaving 9/11

Sometimes a song can encapsulate an historic event better than any journalistic or academic commentary can, even when the song was written long before the event took place. Rock critic Dave Marsh related Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Bad Moon Rising” to Ronald Reagan’s election as President in 1980, even though John Fogerty wrote the song about Richard Nixon. Elvis Costello’s 1979 song about mercenaries, “Oliver’s Army,” summed up the Iran-contra affair better than Oliver North’s testimony at the Senate’s hearings on the scandal in 1987. And so it proves with a 1969 song from the British rock band Family in relation to the al-Qaeda attack on the World Trade Center.

“The Weaver’s Answer,” regarded as Family’s signature song, was composed by lead singer Roger Chapman and guitarist Charlie Whitney about an old man wishing to look at his life as a tapestry. After recalling key moments of his past, he sees the loom of the “weaver of life” and understands why his wish has been granted; because he’s moments away from death. As recorded for Family’s second album, “The Weaver’s Answer” is a stately, arty, psychedelic rock song. Chapman and Whitney were never satisfied with this arrangement. As performed live, the song became a menacing, violent piece of music that made it a concert favorite among Family’s fans. Whenever I hear a live version of “The Weaver’s Answer” – especially a 1970 performance Family taped for television – I can’t help but frame it to the events in New York on September 11, 2001.

The intro of “The Weaver’s Answer” finds Roger Chapman’s narrator wistfully beseeching the “weaver of life” for a glance upon his loom as multi-instrumentalist Poli Palmer’s vibraphone and Charlie Whitney’s guitar waft softly in the background. It’s a calm moment not unlike the one at 8:45 A.M on September 11, 2001 in Lower Manhattan. A sense of ominous foreboding arises as drummer Rob Townsend pounds out a repetitive beat. A guitar riff from Whitney slashes through with an impact comparable to the sound of the first plane hitting the World Trade Center’s north tower. Shouts from Chapman are followed by Palmer’s wavering flute and by heavy bass lines from John Weider, and the chaos sets off the first verse. The old man hopes to see “the flower of my childhood” and “the tears of yesterday” as the music builds like the smoke emanating from the north tower in the first few moments after the attack. With the drums pulsating and the guitar getting muddier, Chapman – ferociously bashing a tambourine throughout – voices the old man’s memories of marrying his wife and the births of his two sons. His vocal grows louder describing the passage of the brothers into young adulthood as both Weider and his bass rock violently. The old man recalls his sons’ marriages (“Do the sparks of life grow bright as one by one they wed / To start their lives as fathers / Apart from lives they’d led?”) with an anxiety comparable to what people trapped in the World Trade Center must have felt on 9/11. A cymbal crash rings with the explosive impact of the second plane slamming into the south tower, as a flute solo from Palmer ensues and signals heightened despair. It also recalls emergency sirens.



Led by Palmer, Family brings “The Weaver’s Answer” to a greater state of pandemonium. The tempo accelerates, the drums get louder, the bass lines swing and cut like a hatchet on a pendulum, and feedback distorts the sound while Roger Chapman’s cries turn into bloodcurdling screams. Listening to it all, one can’t help but remember the chaos and confusion on Lower Broadway as pedestrians watched people jump from the Twin Towers and the fires raged out of control. With the tempo at the fastest possible speed, Charlie Whitney’s guitar enters in full force, spitting out notes that sear the senses like the smoke and falling debris of 9/11. Rob Townsend’s drum thrashing only adds to the terror. This goes on for several moments before Palmer, having switched to his organ, sends out a warning of danger. Whitney responds with a dreadful riff, and the music falls back into a suspended state of animation, as when the World Trade Center’s south tower collapsed.

Family quickly recovers as Chapman returns, voicing the old man’s recollection of the death of his wife – “My sorrow blacking out a space upon our woven crest / A gathering for the last time / As her coffin slowly lain / Ash to ashes, dust to dust / One day we will regain.” This is followed by remembrances of grandchildren on his knee, but only having been able to hear them because age has blinded him, just as ash from the south tower’s collapse blinded New Yorkers on 9/11. Family pauses, then pushes ahead as the old man wonders, “Does by sight a shooting star fade from your tapestry?” Whitney’s guitar is white noise by now, and Palmer’s organ provides a melodic undercurrent. As Weider’s bass and Townsend’s drums charge on relentlessly, Chapman’s old man can suddenly see again as the weaver’s loom draws closer and the music reaches a final crescendo: “Could it be that after all my prayers you’ve answered me? / After days of wondering, I see the reason why / You’ve kept it to this minute / I’m about to die!” The music slips away, like the World Trade Center’s north tower falling away into nothing, and all that’s left is a few murky guitar notes bringing to mind the silent stillness that enveloped Lower Manhattan in a storm of smoke and ash.

It is this image I am left with as “The Weaver’s Answer” returns a soft vibraphone and a couple of prickly guitar notes as Chapman sings the old man’s requiem. “Weaver of life, at last now I can see / The pattern of my life go by / Shown on your tapestry.” A violin solo from John Weider symbolizes the passing of the old man into the next world before a brief final roar from the band brings the song to an abrupt end – just as life America as we knew it suddenly ended on 9/11.

“The Weaver’s Answer” vividly illustrated the final throes of life after much tumult and grief, and in that sense it’s not unlike how the World Trade Center attacks unfolded. Many people in Lower Manhattan must have felt their own lives pass by in a rush if recollections and remembrance in a chaotic milieu of despair, much like the old man in Family’s song. At the World Trade Center, 2749 tapestries were abruptly completed. Meanwhile, at the Pentagon and in a field in rural Pennsylvania, 228 more people received . . . the weaver’s answer.

This song, like the date of September 11, 2001, is a tombstone.

Naomi Sims - A Personal View

I’m too young to remember when there were no high-profile black fashion models, so I can’t offer much of a perspective on how Naomi Sims revolutionized modeling and challenged standards of feminine beauty as the first black supermodel; several commentators are better qualified to do that. I can, however, describe the effect she had on me.

Ms. Sims had already quit modeling by the late seventies, the time I first became aware of the opposite sex. Her astonishing portfolio, however, remained very much available, and so she was one of the first models to get my attention. Like other boys, I had silly crushes on famous models, but to a white suburban male teenager like myself, Naomi Sims was a revelation. Her warm, bright countenance captivated me; her deep black eyes and her rich, dark brown complexion conveyed an astonishing, undeniable beauty. When she pulled her hair back, her face assumed a pure, unencumbered exoticism that has rarely, if ever, been equaled by fashion models of any race. Ms. Sims displayed in her expressions the spirit of a woman who carried herself with dignity. I derived from her beauty an appreciation for an elegance that was hers exclusively, as well as an ability to see beyond skin color even as I saw her own. I didn’t give much thought to the fact that she was a black woman. I was too distracted by how gorgeous she was to notice.




Ms. Sims also became famous for her walk in fashion shows, in which she moved her limbs and torso in a controlled, seductive style that one fashion writer compared to the movements of a dancer. I never had to imagine what that was like; she gave the same impression when she stood still in a picture. Indeed, in her most legendary photos, she could convey the same incredible combination of grace, class, and sexiness that turned many a head on the catwalk. I was drawn to both the sweetness she'd exhibited on the cover of Life magazine in 1969, and to the self-confidence in her pose within the same issue. I could only sigh as I peered at a Francesco Scavullo picture in which Ms. Sims, dressed in an orange outfit against a matching background, spoke volumes as she looked back at me with a radiant smile that displayed as much brightness as the lighting. She was the finest example of the model as actress, demonstrating a range of moods, yet Ms. Sims always seemed to project herself; the woman you saw in the picture was the same woman you encountered off-camera. Naomi Sims was her own greatest role.

She continued that role in her second career. Dissatisfied with the superficiality of modeling, Naomi Sims started her own company making beauty products for black women, and she wrote several books on health and beauty for that same audience. Again, she impressed me and commanded my attention. She'd already proved she was more than just another pretty face in providing substance to her style; now she proved there was life beyond modeling that played on her strengths and her talents as a style expert and as a businesswoman. She made herself look more beautiful by demonstrating the steely substance behind her glamorous exterior. Looking at her from afar, I couldn’t help but be impressed, and I admired her immensely.

I know how Naomi Sims battled racism and sexism in industries that, even diplomatically speaking, could only be described as cutthroat, emerging unscathed. I was therefore shocked and saddened at the news that this incredible woman died of breast cancer. Despite her success at fighting adversity all of her life, this disease proved to be the one obstacle she could not overcome. I think of her the same way that I might think of a long-lost girlfriend from college, a woman who came along with so much beauty and personality and made life much more enjoyable. Yet, just like that hypothetical college girlfriend, she never knew just how much of an impression she left on me and how much she shaped my perspective on so many things. Naomi Sims’s legacy stems from a modeling career that lasted a mere five years, but it went far beyond the world of fashion. And for me, it went beyond appreciating the beauty of women whose skin color happened to be different from mine. She helped me see beauty in all women, inside and out.