Effing Awesome Summer: VIKTER DUPLAIX at Hudson Hotel on Monday!

The velvet-voiced dance music vocalist and producer will be spinning and hopefully singing a little bit at Giant Step’s latest installment of Turntables on the Hudson. This one’s a must!

Effing Awesome Summer: LITTLE DRAGON!!

I don’t think I’ll ever stop talking up Little Dragon, the amazing left-field soul/jazz/dance outfit from Sweden, fronted by the beautiful, gifted songbird Yukimi Nagano. I got their album last year and fell in love, anxious for their first arrival in New York. It happened last winter. Now they’re back for two dates here, and one in DC.

They’ll be at this year’s Giant Step party at Summerstage in Central Park this Saturday, July 18–for Effing FREE (Rumsey Playfield at 72nd Street, starting at 1pm), in a show featuring Chester French, along with Q-Tip and Benji B’s spinning.

I personally can’t make it to that, so I’ll be seeing them at Le Poisson Rouge (LPR) in the West Village this Friday, July 17. There’s a cover to that show: $10 in advance/$15 at the door. I urge you to go.

There’s plenty of vids of Little Dragon and Yukimi on Youtube, and their MySpace page has one new track with some of their better known tracks.

DC/VA folks: They’ll be at LIV on July 19. LONDONERS: They’re doing the Secret Garden Party this year on July 25. Go!

Who Wears Short Shorts? Young, Dumb PR Chicks in Fashion.

Yesterday, I had the day-off from my usual grind up at Barneys and all the stresses of sale season. I was tucking in for the last fifteen minutes of Wendy Williams, when my good friend, a young stylist summoned me down to Midtown and Soho to help him pull looks for a photo shoot.

I liked the idea of getting out of the house and basking in the relatively balmy, sun-soaked weather we’ve been enjoying lately, so I thought nothing of it. I forgot, however, that this entailed dealing with the small army of Pretty Young White Things who flank the annals of the fashion world’s publicity houses.

These young girls are the oft underpaid flunkies who are required to do nothing more than look cute and soigne while laying down the hard lines of their clients’ rigid corporate credos. They are not to speak of impending bankruptcies, stay mum on whether any store has actually managed to sell some of their clients’ pieces, and they generally keep out the riff-raff with gimp-like shrugs and batting eyes. Like in all segments of the fashion biz, they dare not proffer their real opinions on the product, lest they fuck with the profit margins.

Anyway, these young girls, besides serving up heaps of sugar-coated attitude and banal conversation while staying ‘on-message,’ can always be counted on to show um, inventive takes on current trends in fashion. Their $700 biweekly checks leave them to get real creative by devising looks that can work both in a downtown office and also at last call at any Lower East Side boite they might fall into. This summer’s solution are Daisy Dukes as office attire. Yeah.

I saw girl after girl awkwardly adjusting a ragged pair of cut-off shorts as they stood up and sat down, twisting them this way and that. I witnessed several attempts to class up the tartiest of trends with dress shirts and flats. None of these approaches worked. This look is barely tolerable on the Jersey Shore, and down South, we all know that frayed edges only match with WIC checks and an Everclear cocktail. But here were several young women rocking this shit like it’s tasteful business attire.

Irony is out of style. If donning trucker hats and swigging PBR for shits and giggles is offensively démodé, then how did this look become cool?

Ladies reading from the hinterlands, you’ve been warned on this one. Don’t go there.

Giant Step Comes Through Again: Benji B at the Hudson Next Monday

The best after-worker continues on. Benji B guests next week.

Crime…pays?

Does anyone in retail have the sheer scruples that Cecille Villacorta did over the six years she worked the Saks jewelry counter? Through a p.o.s. system that was wisely switched out, Villacorta falsified her own sales to collect inflated commissions, and she rewarded many of her customers with bogus refunds on their credit cards. In one year, she took home $400,000 in commissions and it’s been claimed that she bilked Saks to the tune of $1.4 million. Her lawyer says the larceny paled in comparison to what she claimed was the $27 million in sales she brought in over her time there. Maybe he made a good point: Villacorta got NO jail time and 100 hours community service, a $96,000 fine and probation. There’s the threat of deportation, but that’s getting appealed.

Effing Awesome Summer: JellyNYC’s free summer concert series moves to the WB waterfront

I kept wondering where exactly JellyNYC were going to stage their hugely popular summer concert series after the City decided to turn the McCarren Park Pool back from inventive arena space to, well, a pool.

JellyNYC took their show straight to the water: East River State Park. In lieu of a park-sized pool or even the famed Slip-n-Slide, several blow-up kiddie pools will flank the new site. I’ll be at the Dan Deacon and Beach House dates, y’all.

The only things I have to say about the matter

I will not say anything related to MJ but in this post. I didn’t see the whole memorial on TV and don’t plan to, but I heard it was done in good taste. I saw the clips of Paris and Jennifer Hudson and it looks like they did the man right. I am thankful not to have heard from whatever celebs the pundits have dragged onto the air to give their two cents. Whatever you or I could say about him is more than what I believe someone else.

I pray for the Jackson family, and hope they’re in good spirits. I’ve already heard stories about Michael’s ghost, which is pathetic. The worst thing you could hope for Michael is that he would spend another day on Earth. I hope he is happy and looking back on this life favorably and watching over his loved ones. I am moving on.