“Just because you live in LA it doesn’t mean you have to dress that way,” read the famed billboard campaign mounted by New York fashion house Charivari. Up and coming fashion maven Christian M. Chensvold (a longtime colleague and cohort, back to our days filing penny-a-word stories for the Petaluma Argus-Courier) had two recent stories run in the Men’s Fashion issue of the Los Angeles Times Magazine that are good reminders of this fact.

One, a chat with musician Ben Harper about the contents of his closet, “Eclectic Generator: For native son Ben Harper, style is one more artistic medium” can be read here http://www.latimes.com/features/printedition/magazine/la-tm-crharper14apr03,1,7830216.story?ctrack=4&cset=true

The other, “Antique Chic: This is not your father’s navy blazer. Hey, wait a minute. Yes, it is!” is here:
http://www.latimes.com/features/printedition/magazine/la-tm-vintagestores14apr03,1,7023033.story?ctrack=1&cset=true

Chensvold, of course, is the man behind Dandyism.net ( http://dandyism.net ) and the cat who set me up with my first legit fashion assignment for Apparel Magazine, which found me at a madhouse convention in Las Vegas last month where we dined on his per diem, lost a ten spot each at roulette and had “bohemian chic” repeatedly whispered into our ears by PR sirens. The article ran Friday and can be read here: http://apparelmag.com/articles/apr/apr05_1.shtml

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Let’s Get Plastinized: Esteemed friend and colleague Hiya Swanhuyser gets under the skin of the publicity pushers behind “The Universe Within: The Human Body Revealed” in the current SF Weekly. An exhibit of 200 cadavers splayed, filleted and displayed thanks to a new preservation process sure to send shivers through the world of taxidermy, the exhibit (up through April at the Nob Hill Masonic Center in San Francisco) depends on “plastination” a new process that generates a resin simulacra of human body tissues. Swanhuyser, who gives little slack to flacks writes, “We have several friends who visited [the] exhibit when it was in Los Angeles. Every one of them said it was a disgusting mess full of iffy ethical situations that they couldn’t wait to see again. The show’s peppy press materials make it sound like a goody-two-shoes science-educational collection and a perfect place to take the kids on Saturday, which it is, sort of.”

She later adds: “Perhaps the PR smarm on the Web site has some truth to it: A viewer may well come away with ‘a deeper understanding for his own body and — in the end — a more conscious life with and in it.’ That and a severe case of the willies.”

PR smarm. Love that. Read the article here http://sfweekly.com/issues/2005-03-30/calendar/nightday.html

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Viva Lumaville: Finally, East Bay poker champ and boyhood chum Brian Jostmeyer forwarded this missive to a bevy of Lumavillians:

Subject: Marin brie tops French in competition
“this a monumental occasion, not only has the US taken down the French yet again, (the Paris Wine Competition of 1976, where cal wines beat out the french) Petaluma in particular was the winner! sweet! three cheers for lumaville triple creme brie, my personal favorite and
a true champion!”

Alas, as Prosper Montagne opines in The World Authority Larousse Gastronomique:
“Among gastronome, opinion is sharply, though unequally, divided on the subject of cheese, which has its passionate enemies and passionate devotees.”

Jostmeyer learned the news from an article posted at FuckFrance.com, a site intended, I can only imagine, for those galled by Gauls.

http://fuckfrance.com/read.html?postid=1159484&replies=14&page=1

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