Much–Needed Color + Light Pt. 1 (The Inevitable Swing Out Redux)

After a sad-ass 35th birthday and a weekend of carnage in San Francisco that was meant to help me find an apartment – a futile plan without a triple-digit income or a recently deceased relative it would seem – I'm pressing on to where to move in Texas, the logical choice being Austin. The chief appeal of Texas is of course that it's closer to Mexico, which I hope means the promise of many beautiful Mex boys. Don't start forwarding my mail yet, we'll see.

In the meantime, I need some radiantly unnatural Technicolor and vivacity to keep me up, as it where, and for that I turn back to my loves Corinne and Andy and my favorite Swing Out Sister clip: the ambigulously tropical spot for "Somewhere in the World." This is, once again, before Corinne got her hand gestures in check even to a point, but she looks lovely and Andy of course looks lovelier.

Also on the tip of lustrous color and flawless art direction, I occupied my birthday week with Bachelor in Paradise, a miraculous feat of Eames/Koenig/Neutra-derived aesthetic sublimity – even with the grotesque handicap of starring Bob Hope as a lethally dangerous lothario let loose in a suburban tract development!?! If ANYONE ON EARTH can overlook the presence of Bob Hope and still call it aesthetically immaculate ANYBODY can. That said, art direction aside, Lana Turner's 90mph Afro-Cuban fire dance in a polynesian nightclub, the presence of the oddly compelling Janis Paige (see also the equally essential 1959 Please Don't Eat the Daisies), the ever-miraculous Reta Shaw in her usual busybody bulldagger role (only diverted from in her staggeringly brilliant nightclub singer turn in 1962's Made in Paris)) – and a script that only the goddess Vera Caspary could pen. Dig these jewels:

"It would be pink."
"That's not pink – it's California coral."
"Who thinks up the names for colors in this country – Tennessee Williams?"

"Isn't it a little early?"
"Early? It's April!"

"A shrimp cocktail and 5 gibsons – not the most balanced diet."
"I shouldn't have had the shrimp cocktail."

"Hey, if your mascara runs you're gonna discolor your vodka!"

Genius.