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My close friends Tracey & Merv and her sister Jen, with her husband Art, all came from Connecticut to visit Kevin & I. We ate at Ommonia Cafe where I had a Greek omelette (eggs, sauce, black olives, feta)! Everyone's meal looked outrageous. The bloody marys were great as was the gossip at our table! Great service!
Luckily, we had good weather despite early predictions of rainstorms.
Hope you enjoy these pictures of our time together.
Don Featherstone, inventor of the plastic lawn flamingo, has left the lagoon at age 79.
The patio fixture came to symbolize suburban vulgarity, for sure, if not utter tackiness and bad taste. It was, in fact, shorthand for it. So much so that John Waters famously titled his breakthrough midnight movie Pink Flamingos.
For the novice, the lawn flamingo is a plastic-cast flamingo with two anatomically-incorrect metal legs that plant it into the ground. No irony was intended when Don, a native of Worcester, Massachusetts, created this symbol of suburban luxury.
But the flamingo is such a flamboyant figure in its own right, it practically begged to become part of the camp canon. I have two lawn flamingos in the privacy of my own apartment, up against a wall for support since I can't plant those legs in acrylic floor tiles.
Featherstone created the lawn flamingo in 1957. Its heyday was in the late '50s-'60s. Waters' movie brought back the figurine as a symbol of pure, gaudy camp and it remains, to this day, available and for sale at gardening and hardware stores and at hipster outlets like Urban Outfitters.
In 2009, Madison, Wisconsin made the plastic pink flamingo the city's official bird. While the lawn flamingo is a peaceable creature, the real-life flamingo, like a swan, can be beautiful but vicious. I once saw two fighting in a lake in florida with horrible, bloody pecking and screeching involved.
So, take flight, Featherstone and bless you for bringing this seemingly endless icon of sheer Americana into our lives, knowing the garden gnome can never touch your flamingo, which is ever so much more politically correct than a lawn jockey of any color. (Oh, wait! Do those come in pink?)
Divine in perhaps his most famous role, as Dawn Davenport, in "Female Trouble"
I remember having breakfast in Earl's Court, London, while on vacation in '88. The radio was playing pop tunes that went with the glitter-painted walls on that sunny March morning, and then the news interrupted. It was announced that Divine had died.
It was only weeks before when I saw John Waters with Harris Glenn Milstead (Divine) on the red carpet at Greenwich Village's Waverly Theater for the premiere of "Hairspray." Milstead had eschewed being in drag as his famed alter ego.
I had an even closer encounter with Divine, in front of the old Bleecker Street Theater in New York. Divine was milling about in front of the old movie house, on the theater's pillared portico, in full drag. She was with a gaggle of men, holding court, and I stood across the way with a friend of mine, watching her and conversing, waiting for the doors to open for the night's showing of "Pink Flamingos," amongst a small sea of moviegoers. Suddenly, Divine broke from her group, stalked directly over to my friend and I, and said hello, towering over me in stillettos. (Milstead was 6'2" without the heels; I'm 5'5".)
So, there we were, and I was very flattered to have the larger-than-life "underground" movie star begin pawing my chest and lavishing attention on me with trademark, camp eye and lip gestures I couldn't take seriously. I was young then, and in tight blue jeans and a black shirt boasting pink flamingos across my chest. A fan of Divine's since I saw "Pink Flamingos" when it debuted in NYC at the Elgin Theater in Chelsea, I chatted it up, even though starstruck. It was a lively conversation, though I don't recall what was said. I do remember laughing a lot.
Divine with Andy Warhol at Studio 54
The doors opened, we went inside, and Divine was escorted away as she was about to take to the stage to intro the film and do a q&a with the audience afterwards. It all remains a memorable event in my life, this brush (literally) with celebrity.
So, cheers! Happy Birthday, Divine, for all the joy you brought us through your films and dance music. And for that brief but thrilling encounter on Bleecker Street that I'll never forget. Wikipedia labels Divine a cult figure; I consider Divine a superstar.
