Neverland cake
Magic
City,
Miami Beach 1959, first
episode season one.
What I loved: the hotel has tiny vents which force in fragrance--
“of ocean
breezes”; and the hotel is air conditioned to the nines, “like a
meat locker”...."so the women can wear their furs...” The
dark,
modern bars,
the tiki or
deco references,
recall my favorite time and place in books, the astronauts' Cocoa
Beach, (as illustrated by Tom Wolfe's The
Right Stuff,
and James Michener's Space.)
The
star Jeffrey
Dean Morgan
looks
like 1959 Florida to me, I guess because in his 1959 Florida glamor
he reminds me a little of my handsome uncle during that era, whose
family collected Disney art and who moved them from New Jersey to
Florida to engineer air conditioning and the dream that's a wish your
heart makes.
In Magic City the owner's son
looks like our commercial landlord's
son,
not in his features or coloring but in his grooming: the ironed
tight polo shirt and khakis, sculpted muscles, good polished loafers,
tan skin, brilliantine hair and teeth, and our landlord's son is not
available
on
weekends because he's skiing in Utah...
Downtown Abbey's
limited appeal for me is similarly a favorite detail: the way the
ladies, Mary, her mother, stand there with their arms just hanging
passively at their sides, languidly complementing their dresses. (I
even practice this on my own time, I find the posture compelling.
Just standing here, pretending I don't have arms. Don't have to do
anything.)
Other
than the setting, the first episode of the TV series was boring
though, the characters were boring, the graphic sex throughout was
boring! or maybe that's just me. I might watch another episode
someday, in the spirit in which I might watch Downton Abbey if
there's nothing else to do, for the fashion, and for the china! (the
reason I watch all the British murder mysteries, noting the tea, and
the whiskey, and the fish and chips takeout).
We
hugely enjoyed the series The Assets on Netflix, based on truth involving
an American double agent selling to the KGB. It's DC Virginia in the
80s and I love the heroine's now-dowdy long plaid skirts, loafers and
pumps, sweaters and blouses. Remember when women still dressed for
work in daywear? Now that is the correct self-effacing appearance of
a CIA mole hunter. The story in this one is actually exciting, but
aside from that and Sandy's A-line skirts, I loved the painted
yellow dacha in the Russian country and the old Russian hero
victimized by the Soviet state and who looks like my
greatgrandfather, and the Communist offices and apartments dividing
up the lovely old buildings of a past aristocracy. The rooms are so
familiar, haven't we seen photos of Eric Snowden there?
Now
here's a contrast which occurred to me as I was thinking about that
piped in environment of fragranced coolness in Magic City.
Have you ever been inside a welfare office of any kind? That
environment has got to be just as intentional. It's in an office
building and must be the same age as all the other neutral, fungible
offices in the building, but in this one, the walls are dirty and
dingy and dinged, needing paint for years now, the furniture must
have been picked off the junk truck, wobbly peeling tables, stained, burned, broken chairs, filthy floors, smeared window
dividing the receptionist from the visitors, nothing appears ever to
have been wiped down.
Surely
this neglect is meant to be perceived as intentional, as
a message to the guests.
Just as the cool ocean-scented indoor breezes are not intended
to
be noticeable
as a product of human invention, but
merely invisibly enhance the mood, like magic.
