GOAT

Illustration by Stefanie Augustine

One aspect of the magazine that I absolutely love, but, as yet, have failed to do justice to, is Goings On About Town (GOAT). Well, there’s no time like the present, as they say. Here then is my GOAT tribute. My reading of the magazine always starts with GOAT, not just because it’s located at the front, but because it’s such a great source of pleasure, and it’s easily digestible in small delicious bite-size chunks of text. And it’s not only about the text; the GOAT photos and the GOAT illustrations are an important part of the mix, too. Right now, I have the July 5th issue open before me to the wonderful Julieta Cervantes concert photo of Allen Toussaint. I like this picture so much, I went, in celebration, to iTunes and bought a couple of cuts off Toussaint’s album “The Bright Mississippi,” to wit, “Blue Drag,” and “Solitude.” Cervantes is fairly new to the magazine, but from the evidence so far, I’d say she fits right in. Also in this issue is the lovely pink, green and turquoise Rachel Domm illustration for She & Him at the Beach @ Governors Island and at Terminal 5. It’s a good thing I don’t live in NYC or I’d be spending a fortune taking in all these events. It’s better, at least from a pocket book standpoint, just to read about them in GOAT – read about them and dream. Another marvelous illustration is Stefanie Augustine’s red-plaid, wild-hair portrait of Reggie Watts at (Le) Poisson Rouge. It’s spectacular! It’s also on the magazine’s page where my fine-point, black ink underlining of certain noteworthy passages of the text kicks in. For example, here’s one from the capsule review of the Charles Johnstone show of basketball court photographs: “The geometry of the setup provides a template that each site tweaks with dappled shadows, housing-project walls, or abstract passages of painted-over graffiti.” Writing like that – I eat it up! It must be the surprising word combos that I like so much. I mean when was the last time you saw “geometry,” “template,” “tweaks,” “dappled,” “housing-project,” “abstract,” “graffiti” all rubbing shoulders, jostling for attention, in the same sentence? My soul, it's beautiful! I wonder who wrote it? My guess is that it’s Andrea K. Scott, who has penned some of the most delightful Critic’s Notebook entries recently. Here’s another of my highlighted sentences from July 5th GOAT (actually, this is a sentence-fragment): “with the camera dollying back to reveal the band, in shadow, with spotlights gleaming off the bells of brass instruments and the chrome keys of woodwinds.” My, my, that’s beautiful! And to think Richard Brody, of all people, wrote it (in “DVD Notes: The Fury”)! I’ve been awfully hard on Brody in my comments on his blog. But he deserves it; his attacks (there’s no other word for them) on Pauline Kael are contemptible. Don’t get me started. But every now and then, Brody gets off a gem. Here’s another one he wrote a few months ago in GOAT: “the long, sinuous tracking shots, with expressive vertical accents thanks to a crane, suggest the convergence of expedience (Fuller also produced the film) and boredom with a drama, indeed a genre, in need of juicing.” That’s from a capsule review of Samuel Fuller’s “The Crimson Kimono.” Again, as with the quotation above, it’s the string of unexpected, delectable words (“sinuous,” “vertical,” “crane,” “convergence,” “genre,” “juicing”) – some specific, some abstract - that makes this sentence as ravishing as a Rauschenberg. Each issue of GOAT abounds with succulent details. Dipping into it is like dipping into a box of Godiva chocolates.