Hawaii Five-O 2010, 1996, 1975

Lee Goldberg recently shared three different main titles for Hawaii Five-O: The opening credits for the brand-new version which debuts this fall; the pilot from the attempt to relaunch the show in the 1990s; and the theme as rendered by song and dance man Sammy Davis Jr.

Related links:
Remakes of HAWAII FIVE-O, ROCKFORD FILES, CHARLIE'S ANGELS
Opening Theme: Hawaii Five-O
Opening Theme: BARETTA "Keep Your Eye On The Sparrow"

HAWAII FIVE-0 Opening Credits 2010


New Hawaii Five O Intro


Sammy Davis Jr. Sings "You Can Count On Me" the theme from "Hawaii Five-O"


More TV opening credits:
Law & Order: UK
Opening Theme: THE PROFESSIONALS
Opening Theme: THE ROOKIES
Opening Theme: KOJAK
Opening Theme: STREETS OF SAN FRANCISCO

"What a dump!" Monday + Goals!

Yesterday I was digging in a box of art supplies searching for some wrapping paper, and look what I uncovered!  I didn't even remember I owned this Bette Davis paper doll.  It must have been a gift.


I'm especially fond of this lovely black number, no doubt an Orry-Kelly:

I really should have a pot luck or something and we can bring all our dolls!

But on to sewing.  I found this book on Saturday at the flea market and it has inspired me.

I feel like I'm ready to re-approach pattern making; I wasn't back in January.  The book proceeds project by project, making garments of greater complexity.  I'm psyched!

Remember our lively discussion about harem pants?  Well a few of you recommended Simplicity 4788, a sort of Lawrence of Arabia get-up.  I found the out-of-print pattern online and bought it.  I love all three versions and the clothes are cute too.  Thanks for the suggestion!

I experimented a bit with a yard of black crinkle cotton I bought last week and I came up with this:

It's basically just the baggiest pair of boxers ever made but super comfortable and so pretty to twirl in if slightly immodest.  Michael calls it my "skort."  If I'd had another yard, however, they'd be the balloon pants of my dreams.

So to recap, my week consisted of:

1. Sewing my skort, which took about an hour.

2. Donating a few bags of fabric to the Salvation Army.

3. Reading "Deluxe."

4.  Oh, yes.  I was transfixed upon seeing this photo of Liza at the "Sex and the City 2" premier.  I love this Liza look, which I think Cathy could pull off in something a bit less transparent.



I had to find out more about it so I started what turned into a very lively discussion on the Pattern Review message board, definitely worth a chuckle if you're interested.  I bought this pattern as a result.  Can't you see some of these looks in red sequins?



Readers, at the flea market on Saturday I also saw the loveliest vintage Singer 301, but I successfully talked myself out of purchasing it.  I really do have more than enough machines... sob.

For the coming week I want to:

1. Get started on the pattern drafting book, taking all my measurements and maybe trying to draft my first pattern.

2. Re-thread my serger which has sat unused for nearly a month.

3. Figure out what I want to sew next.  There's a menswear competition on Pattern Review that ends  in a few weeks and I'm not sure whether I'll enter it or not.  Maybe I'll whip up something slightly "Road to Morocco."

And now how about you guys?

I'm guessing you're mainly off work today so you'll all be busy sewing.  In honor of the holiday, I am only going to nag you telepathically.  But you know who you are and believe me, the frequency should be coming through loud and clear.  If you can't hear my nagging voice in your heads, you're not listening!

Have a wonderful, relaxing and/or productive day everyone!

What are you sewing these days?

Another downer: "Deluxe: How Luxury Lost its Luster"

After reading "The End of Fashion" last week, I serendipitously stumbled upon "Deluxe: How Luxury Lost it's Luster," at the Salvation Army (hello, irony) on Friday and jumped right in.


Written by Dana Thomas and published in 2007,  "Deluxe" tells a similar story to that of Teri Agins' 1999 "The End of Fashion," though it brings us forward nearly ten years and has a narrower focus.  It's a depressing tale.

The subject is marketing and fashion brands and how global corporations like LVMH and others have bought up small, tradition-bound, family-operated luxury companies and simultaneously exploited their reputation for fine craftsmanship, mass marketed their pedigrees, and squeezed them for profits, all the while compromising the quality that made them famous in the first place.

I would not be a consumer of brands like Louis Vuitton or Chanel regardless of who owned them; still, I feel about these historic luxury companies the way I feel about the endangered glaciers in Glacier National Park: I may not benefit directly but it's nice to know they're there.  To discover that a so-called luxury item selling for thousands of dollars is produced at one-tenth the cost by young Chinese women living on a factory campus is literally disillusioning.

I recognize even in myself a certain snobbishness regarding the provenance of an item (Italy, good; China, bad) as if Chinese workers had less right to jobs, comfort, and all the good things we all desire.  We're all human beings.  No one with a conscience, however, wants to purchase something made by people who are exploited or whose production is environmentally destructive.  But knowingly or not, most of us do.  We drive cars, we turn on lights, we eat bananas, we drink soda out of aluminum cans.
 
What's goes on in the world of luxury brands is just a window into how corporations affect us all, some more destructively than others. 

Corporations by design must grow and they're expected to increase profits from quarter to quarter.  They manufacture things (usually) but their primary purpose is to enrich their shareholders.  We see the results in the loss of our local stores when Walmart moves in, the tragedy that's currently unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico due to cut-rate, largely unregulated drilling by British Petroleum, corporate farming, corporate food production, corporate restaurant chains, corporate weapons manufacturing and "security," the list goes on and on.

Who owns Singer today and why does a Janome sewing machine look just like a Brother?

If your pension fund or 401K is invested in a profitable corporation (and it probably is/was), or you work for one, however, you might be more ambivalent.  It depends on your perspective.

I strongly recommend reading "Deluxe" even if it is a bit depressing; it's a fascinating story and it's eye-opening to discover what's driving those ubiquitous ads for luxury labels.  Frankly, it was startling leafing through some vintage Eighties copies of Vogue I own a few weeks ago, to see how low-key and soft-sell the advertising was back then; no global brands.  There were a LOT of cigarette ads, however.

So readers, should we lament the loss of the true, family-owned luxury brand that formerly catered only to a small circle of the very rich?   Is it really our loss, or theirs?

Should we resist purchasing anything produced by a corporation, regardless of where it's made, and limit ourselves -- where we can -- to sites like Etsy?

My Favorite Gown

I'm a big old movie buff. 

In early April we talked about glamour, the good the bad, was it still around and did we even care.  For me, if there's one garment that epitomizes what glamour is all about, it's the evening gown.

In old movies, they're everywhere, in almost every film genre barring Westerns.  Gown designers often got their own screen credit (back when screen credits were brief) -- i.e., "Miss So-and-so's gowns by _______." 

It's amazing how prevalent gowns still are on the fashion runway, at "red carpet" pseudo events, and in films like Sex and the City.  Apart from the odd wedding, when does a woman wear a gown anymore?  It's like we're not ready to let them go.  I'd argue that gowns are more popular today than say, forty years ago.

There still are formal affairs like fundraisers and galas where women wear gowns, primarily in big cities.  But it's rare to see a woman who isn't wealthy or a celebrity wearing a gown.  Not good not bad, just the way things are.

I decided to choose my all-time favorite movie gown.  You've no doubt seen it before.  It's the feathered gown Ginger Rogers wore in the Cheek to Cheek number in Top Hat.  It was designed by Bernard Newman, apparently with a lot of input from Ms. Rogers herself.

I actually got to see the original at a Hollywood costume design exhibit Diana Vreeland organized at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the mid-Seventies, a wonderful, wonderful show.  Let me tell you, Ginger Rogers was petite and Astaire wasn't much bigger.

The gown truly seems to come from another world: it floats, it's white (on screen at least; I think the real thing was pale blue so as to photograph better); it shines (on the satin mid section); it's fragile but also sturdy.  It bounces to the music and supports the mood of the lyrics.

You've probably heard the old story that Astaire hated the dress because the feathers had a tendency to fly off and stick to his tailcoat and in the film you can see a few feathers aloft.  Rogers was adamant about wearing it and I'm glad she stood her ground.  

If you've never seen it in motion, you must.  The dance itself starts at 2:10.



It's hard to separate a famous costume from the actor who wears it.  In this case, it was a perfect pairing.  No one wore -- or danced in -- a gown in quite the same way as Ginger Rogers.  Breathtaking.

As long as there's video, kids, glamour lives on!

On the road with John Williams

For the John Williams blog-a-thon, I wish I did an entire post about my favorite out-of-print Williams work, the amusing Long Goodbye score, which I've briefly mentioned on my blog before. But someone beat me to it. I don't want to write another post about Williams' pivotal role in the Star Wars or Indy franchises, so I'll bring some attention to a great unreleased score that hasn't been covered in the blog-a-thon yet.

Williams isn't my favorite film and TV composer--that would be Ennio Morricone--but from the mid-'70s to the early '80s, the American maestro was on fire and wrote terrific score after terrific score. His first score for Steven Spielberg, the 1974 tragicomedy The Sugarland Express, one of my favorite Spielberg flicks, has very little of the grandeur or bombast Williams later became known for in his collaborations with the filmmaker. The last time I saw the Spielberg road movie was also the first or second time I saw it--letterboxed on AMC in 1992, and that's the only way the film should be watched outside the theater--but after all these years, I've never forgotten Williams' understated music.

The score's primary theme is a simple harmonica melody performed by Toots Thielemans. The piece effectively captures the longing of the Poplins (the not-so-bright but sympathetic Texan fugitive couple played by Goldie Hawn and William Atherton) for their baby without being syrupy. It's especially haunting during ace cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond's glistening end credits images of Michael Sacks' young state trooper standing over the Rio Grande, saddened by the outcome of his experience with the Poplins.

The main theme has been re-recorded a few times, most notably by Williams and the Boston Pops Orchestra for Sony Classical's 1991 Spielberg/Williams Collaboration album, but the full Sugarland score has never been officially released (it's been bootlegged though, with album graphic designs that look like the Poplins just discovered Photoshop). I actually don't mind its unreleased status because outside the context of the film, the minimalist and downbeat score isn't the kind of score I'd listen to a few times on disc, like Williams' scores from Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Long Goodbye and Catch Me If You Can. But within the body of the film (and accompanied by Zsigmond's stunning cinematography), it's powerful stuff.

Reflections on My First Year of Sewing

 

Subtitle: "A Cautionary Tale"

One year ago this week I purchased my first sewing machine, on eBay.   I'd bought it with the intention of altering a pair of jeans I'd found at Goodwill; having them shortened locally would have cost more than I'd paid for them.  Little did I know what that purchase would set in motion.

A year later, my life has changed radically.  I sew nearly every day.  I own a dozen sewing machines.  My apartment is bursting with sewing books, notions, boxes of fabric, and a lot of sheet shirts.

Creativity is important to me and I've found sewing to be a wonderful new outlet with limitless room for growth.  I love it.  But at the start, there was no plan beyond shortening those jeans, which have since been passed on to Michael.  (I wear my own jeans now, thank you.)

A year ago I had no idea you could actually sew a man's wardrobe -- shirts, boxers, trousers, etc. without years of experience.  I learned otherwise.

The year divides neatly into four periods:

1. Getting Started

In late May 2009, I had never so much as touched a sewing machine let alone threaded one.  I learned how to sew from You Tube videos and from Diana Rupp's excellent book, "Sew Everything Workshop."  My first projects were things like boxer shorts (the first pair of which took me three days) and sewing machine covers.  Then I got ambitious.



2. Finding Help 

I reached out to Brian (of BrianSews) through Pattern Review last July and he became my unofficial sewing coach all summer.  Brian was a tremendous motivator and it was fun having someone else to sew with even though he was living in Alabama.  Perhaps most importantly, Brian demystified the mechanics of sewing machines so that I can now maintain my vintage machines myself.  The basic mechanics of sewing haven't changed in a hundred years.



3. On My Own (sort of)

From September on, I just sewed everything I could think of.  October proved fateful when I decided to enter the Pattern Review Little Black Dress contest inspired by the chic day-to-evening-wear photos of an early contestant named Elainemay.  Since I obviously couldn't model my LBD myself, I got on the horn and reconnected with my estranged cousin Cathy.  In Cathy I found my muse.  I still sewed for me and Michael, my mother, and the dogs, but Cathy's glamour, enthusiasm, and spontaneity proved irresistible.



4. I Start to Blog

I originally had no interest in blogging: too much work.  But as Cathy's popularity grew,  I wanted a platform where she might be easier to find.  Enter Male Pattern Boldness in January (Michael thought up the name).  Like sewing, blogging constantly challenges and expands my creativity.  It's like putting on a show every day without having to sell tickets.

Thanks go out to The Selfish Seamstress (Elainemay of LBD fame) and Gertie for their early help in spreading the word. Their blogs and so many others have set a high standard for me to aspire to as well as been a source of ideas to steal. 



Also a big thank you to Deepika at Pattern Review, without whose website I likely would still be sewing boxer shorts in isolation. 

Where I go from here is anybody's guess.  I suppose we'll find out eventually.

Finally, a note of gratitude to you, my readers, and to those of you who regularly contribute comments.  I greatly appreciate your warmth, eloquence, and good humor. 

Have a wonderful holiday weekend, everyone, and thank you!

AFOS: "The Android's Dungeon" playlist

Airing next Wednesday at 10am and 3pm on A Fistful of Soundtracks is the Fistful of Soundtracks: The Series episode "The Android's Dungeon" (WEB80) from July 17-23, 2006.

The WEB80 playlist consists of selections from scores to film adaptations of comic books or graphic novels. Several of these films actually aren't from the superhero genre, particularly Ghost World and American Splendor. Even though my print comics writing debut was in a superhero graphic novel, and I was entertained by Iron Man and its sequel (which I've jokingly referred to on Twitter as Iron 2 Man because of its weirdly arranged logo in the TV spots), I'm not really much of a fan of the superhero genre. As Matt Zoller Seitz recently noted in a Salon piece that's a great read despite Seitz's tendency to refer to superhero flicks as "comic book films" (last time I checked, comics aren't just about superheroes anymore), the superhero genre has gotten too clichéd. It's also too white right now. A few days after I posted that fans of DC's short-lived All-New Atom are worried that the company will kill off the series' surprisingly non-stereotypical Asian hero Ryan Choi, what does DC do? They bump him off, of course. Screw DC (the non-Vertigo-and-WildStorm part of the company, that is, because Vertigo and WildStorm are the only DC publishing divisions I give a shit about these days).


1. Danny Elfman, "The Batman Theme," Batman: Original Motion Picture Score, Warner Bros.
2. Shirley Walker, "Main Title," Batman: Mask of the Phantasm, Reprise
3. Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard, "Molossus," Batman Begins, Warner Sunset/Warner Home Video
4. Eytan Mirsky, "American Splendor," Everyone's Having Fun Tonight!, M-Squared
5. David Kitay, "Theme from Ghost World," Ghost World, Shanachie
6. Danny Elfman, "Spider-Man 2 Main Title," Spider-Man 2: Original Motion Picture Score, Columbia/Sony Music Soundtrax
7. John Ottman, "Main Titles," Superman Returns, Warner Sunset/Rhino
8. Thomas Newman, "Rock Island, 1931," Road to Perdition, Decca/UMG Soundtracks
9. Marco Beltrami, "Main Title," Hellboy, Varèse Sarabande
10. Robert Rodriguez, "Sin City End Titles," Sin City, Varèse Sarabande
11. Ennio Morricone featuring Christy, "Deep Down" (from Danger: Diabolik), Canto Morricone: The Ennio Morricone Songbook, Vol. 1, Bear Family
12. Dario Marianelli, "The Dominoes Fall," V for Vendetta, Astralwerks/EMI
13. John Ottman, "Suite from X2," X2, Superb/Trauma
14. James Horner, "Rocketeer to the Rescue/End Titles," The Rocketeer, Hollywood

Reruns of AFOS: The Series air Wednesdays at 10am and 3pm. To listen to the station during either of those time slots or right now, press the play icon on the blue widget below the "About me" mini-bio on this blog. I wish I included Oldboy or Akira in that 2006 playlist. Oh well.

Harem Scarem: Could these pants work for me?

Wise readers, I need your input: What do you think about loose, flowing, dropped-crotch pants for men?

I know I'm a little behind the times here, as apparently these have been showing up on runways for the last couple of years, primarily for women.

I saw the male version for the first time on a young Asian man in my neighborhood about a month ago, paired with a very preppy blazer and tie, and he looked great.  Actually, his had more of this shape:

You may remember these pants in an earlier incarnation:

Which makes me think of this.

Sometimes these are called harem pants, sometimes parachute pants, sometimes Hammer pants, sometimes the ugliest pants ever.  But as the temperature reaches up into the nineties (fahrenheit) these pants are starting to look more appealing.  I don't want to put on anything tight or heavy, but I'm not ready for a caftan.

They were a big part of Hedi Slimane's Dior Winter 2008 collection for men,  and variations have been showing up on many a runway since then.

After doing a little online research, especially on Pattern Review, I know that this look elicits a strong emotional response.  Some love 'em; most HATE 'em.  (Something about all those folds on the hips.)

I'm not riding a camel through the Garden of Allah, I'm a (shortish) middle-aged Western guy walking the streets of Chelsea.  I don't rap.

So, knowing me as you do:  Yea or Nay?

If nay, could you kindly elaborate?  If yea, what pattern would I use?

For your viewing pleasure...?

BREAKING NEWS: Cathy caught in knockoff scandal!

 

Oh, the shame of it.

Imagine my distress when a commenter yesterday noted that a nearly identical dress to TED, which Cathy looked so lovely in, had been posted yesterday on Pattern Review!

And sure enough -- look.

Only that this dress -- identical in every way to the Simplicity dress, mind you -- was a vintage Vogue pattern from the same era:

Look familiar?



Loyal followers of MPB, I knew in my heart of hearts that Elaine was a selfish b (as she reminds us daily) but I never, never thought she would stoop so low as to send me a designer knockoff.  I'm not sure how to proceed: Do I call 911?  311?  

How did Simplicity get away with this?

There's a section in "The End of Fashion" -- which I finished yesterday by the way and highly recommend -- all about the famous lawsuit between Yves Saint Laurent and Ralph Lauren over a tuxedo dress.  You can read about it here.

When is a knockoff a knockoff and when is it "inspired by" or a "tribute"?  I think this topic is more and more relevant these days as retro looks are just about everywhere.  But if you read "The End of Fashion" you'll know this problem has been going on for many, many decades.  

Then there are websites like this one:

Or this.

They don't even try to hide the fact that they are ripping off the originals.

I'm a little torn, frankly, because, while I obviously want to protect my cousin's reputation, I myself am not beyond picking up a pair of knockoff sunglasses on Canal Street.  There, now you know.

In this day of the Internet and globalization, are we really getting something better when we buy the original?  Are we supporting fair labor practices when  "Made in Italy" can mean made by Chinese immigrants in some Italian sweat shop.  Are we allowed not to care?

Have you ever purchased a knockoff, or knocked off a look yourself in your sewing?

I'm curious to know where you stand.

Jump in!

Lost, "The End": "I don't believe in a lot of things, but I do believe in duct tape"

As someone who's watched every single episode of Lost since the still-amazing pilot and recapped the series' entire fourth season for another blog (and never got paid for writing those recaps--as Chris Rock would say, what kind of gangster shit is that?), I'm still processing the events of Lost's lukewarmly received and sometimes frustrating series finale. I wasn't expecting the finale to answer every remaining question about the series' mysterious goings-on. How could it do so in one episode, even with an extra half-hour? I just wanted a finale that gave proper farewells to the characters and brought the goods action-wise like those eps when Sayid busted out his badass breakdance fighting moves, and "The End" delivered in the character and action sequence departments. But was all that time spent in the sideways universe during the final season worth it? I don't think I'm completely satisfied with the reasoning for the sidewaysverse. That whole business with the giant cork didn't make much sense either. Bullet time:

-My favorite recurring Lost theme was the conflict between a man of science (Jack) and a man of faith (Locke). The final season resolved that conflict beautifully, with Jack finally accepting Locke's beliefs in the specialness of the island and dying the way he wanted to (which was seeing his remaining friends leave the island safely) in a pitch-perfect final image that referenced the pilot's first moment and showed how much of an influence the Watchmen comic had on Lost co-creator Damon Lindelof.

-I'm glad Ken Leung's Miles, the character who provided the above one-liner about duct tape, lived to see another day. Bloggers like angry asian man and DISGRASIAN were disappointed that their favorite pair of Lost characters, the supercouple of Jin and Sun, was offed in "The Candidate" (some have even cried racism over the demises of the Kwons and Sayid), but I think the death of Miles, the show's sole Asian American regular and one of the few APA guys in prime-time who's neither a martial arts expert nor a coonin' buffoon, would have been a bigger letdown. (Speaking of Asian stuff, spoken-word artist Bao Phi wrote a nice post earlier this season about Lost's huge Asian American following.)

-I was also jazzed to see Miles' fellow freightie Lapidus alive after the submarine debacle in "The Candidate" because Jeff Fahey, who was underused on Lost but served as great comic relief whenever he did get screen time, is a master at making something out of nothing, ever since his laconic turn as the eccentric title hero of ABC's short-lived '90s procedural The Marshal. One of the reasons why the Star Wars prequel trilogy was an epic fail was because it lacked a Han Solo-esque figure who would wittily comment on the mystical goings-on and serve as a relatable audience surrogate. I like to think the Lost creators took notice of that flaw in the prequels, so they gave us not just one Han Solo-esque foil, but four: Sawyer, Miles, Lapidus and the not-as-cynical-or-snarky Hurley.

-The sci-fi geek in me who enjoyed all the time-travel material during my favorite Lost seasons, four and five, was disappointed that neither the nuke in "The Incident" nor the island's funky science was the reason for the sidewaysverse. The afterlife angle pretty much shot down my theory that Desmond or some other character with extraordinary powers created the sidewaysverse to hide his friends in there from the homicidal Smokey. On a superficial note, Sidewaysverse Kate looked slammin' in that black miniskirt.

-So Hurley and Ben are basically Mr. Rourke and Tattoo now? I bet the new island protector begins each morning by greeting everyone else with "Smiles, everydude, smiles!"

-Since when is Shannon the love of Sayid's life? I thought he was into Nadia. Whatever, man. I'm sure the Sayid and Shannon shippers got their panties wet that night. God, I hate that term "shippers." Other terms I hate are "squee" and "bromance." All those terms should be taken out back and shot and given a burial like the one Rick Rubin gave to the word "def" when he removed "Def" from the name of his label American Records.

-Yes! Lt. Van Buren is cancer-free! Woops, wrong series finale.

Cathy models The Elaine Dress + POLL

At long last The Elaine Dress (TED) photo shoot.

It should come as no surprise that Cathy is now obsessed with all things Selfish-Seamstress.  Honestly, wasn't that Elaine's dastardly plan all along?

I believe that you really can't control other people; you can only set them free and hope they choose to stay.  And that's what I've done with my cousin Cathy.  If she prefers to wear dresses chosen by Elaine, and thinks Elaine has great taste, and that Elaine understands what a woman wants to wear, etc., so be it.  I'll just sit idle at my Singer 15-91 and wait for Elaine's next directive.

So here it is and I hope you enjoy it!



As always, to see these photos full-size, please click on any image and then, in Picasa, choose "View All" in the upper left hand corner, and "Slideshow."

NOTE: This slideshow depicts dangerous acts of dumpster diving.  MPB is not responsible for copycat behavior by viewers.

And finally...



So, can Elaine pick a pattern or what?

Lost (2004-2010)

After watching the Lost series finale, I thought to myself, "Ooh, I bet Roman from Party Down is not a happy man right now."

I'm sure the finale pissed off viewers who are into "hard sci-fi" like Martin Starr's Roman character. As for myself, I'm still not sure what to make of the finale--so the sideways universe was essentially the Nexus from that lame seventh Star Trek movie?--but one thing's for sure: the post-finale wrap-up show hosted by Jimmy Kimmel and scored by special guest bandleader Michael Giacchino was hilarious.

AFOS: "Kiss Kiss Ban Ban" playlist

Airing this Wednesday at 10am and 3pm on A Fistful of Soundtracks is the Fistful of Soundtracks: The Series episode "Kiss Kiss Ban Ban" (WEB73) from February 27-March 5, 2006.

This ep, which focuses on rejected or unused original music from soundtracks to movies like Thunderball, Ocean's Twelve and Hell Up in Harlem, got a nice mention in the RiffTrax forums in 2008. The "Kiss Kiss Ban Ban" title has double meaning. It refers to both Shirley Bassey's bizarre pronunciation of "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" in the rejected Thunderball theme "Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" and the banishment of these tunes from the final cut.


1. Bernard Herrmann, "Prelude (from Torn Curtain)," Alfred Hitchcock Presents...Signatures in Suspense, Hip-O
2. Los Angeles Philharmonic, "The Killing," Bernard Herrmann: The Film Scores, Sony Classical
3. The National Philharmonic Orchestra, "Main Title," Alex North's 2001, Varèse Sarabande
4. The National Philharmonic Orchestra, "Space Station Docking," Alex North's 2001, Varèse Sarabande
5. James Brown, "The Payback," Dead Presidents, Capitol
6. Shirley Bassey, "Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang," The Best of James Bond: 30th Anniversary Limited Edition, EMI
7. Dionne Warwick, "Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang," The Best of James Bond: 30th Anniversary Limited Edition, EMI
8. Johnny Cash, "Thunderball," The Man in Black: 1963-1969, Bear Family
9. Blondie, "For Your Eyes Only," The Hunter, Chrysalis
10. Jerry Goldsmith, "The Dig," Timeline: Music Inspired by the Film, Varèse Sarabande
11. Lalo Schifrin, "Music from the Unused Trailer," The Exorcist, Warner Home Video
12. John Barry, "Moviola," John Barry: Moviola, Epic Soundtrax
13. Jerry Fielding, "The Water Hole," Music for The Getaway: Jerry Fielding's Original Score, Film Score Monthly
14. Jerry Fielding, "Casing the Joint," Music for The Getaway: Jerry Fielding's Original Score, Film Score Monthly
15. David Holmes, "$165 Million + Interest (into) The Round Up," Ocean's Twelve, Warner Sunset/Warner Bros.
16. The Smithereens, "A Girl Like You," 11, Capitol


Other than "The Payback," my favorite part of WEB73 is hearing Shirley Bassey's "Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" back-to-back with Dionne Warwick's version, as if the double shot is a battle between Bassey and Warwick like that awesome moment in Dave Chappelle's Block Party when the Roots brought Jill Scott and Erykah Badu together onstage for a "Duel of the Divas Who Sang 'You Got Me.'" (Scott wrote the chorus of the 1999 Roots track and was featured on the original recording, but MCA, the Roots' label at the time, wanted a more famous artist to be part of the Things Fall Apart album's first single, so the band replaced Scott with Badu on the released version.) The duel in Block Party ends in a draw--Scott and Badu are both terrific onstage--although I prefer Scott's original "You Got Me" because in 1999, I couldn't understand some of what Badu was singing during the chorus of the Things Fall Apart version. As for which of the two versions of "Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" is better, it's Bassey FTW, even though like with Badu's "You Got Me," I have no idea what Bassey's singing during the chorus ("Mr. Kiss Kiss Ban Ban's not a foal"?).

Reruns of AFOS: The Series air Wednesdays at 10am and 3pm. To listen to the station during either of those time slots or better yet, right now, press the play icon on the blue widget below the "About me" mini-bio on this blog. Don't be a foal like Mr. Kiss Kiss Ban Ban. Press play!

Ciao, Monday! Vogue GIVEAWAY winner + GOALS

Happy Monday, everybody!

What fun I had yesterday with my cousin Cathy.  You'll have to wait till tomorrow to see TED ("The Elaine Dress") in all its glory in our photo shoot, but I think you're going to like it.

I'm very excited to announce that the winner of the Vogue pattern "Pay it Forward" giveaway is....

Littlecottondresses!

Littlecottondresses, please email me at peterlappinnyc@gmail.com with your mailing address so I can get this pattern to you ASAP.  (We'll be wanting to see your version by late June, btw.)

But enough cliffhangers.  Let's briefly review the week.

I think you'll agree that last week had two oddly related themes:  polyester and The Selfish Seamstress (never thought I'd see those words in the same sentence.).

1. My 1953 project put on hold due to a polyester brocade meltdown (or rather, ravel-out), I switched gears to the princess-seamed "designer fashion" dress pattern Elaine sent me, 1974's Simplicity 6672.

2. I purchased new fabric for my 1953 dress: black and oyster cotton sateen.

3. Remember this 1920s pattern from last week?

Well, I decided all good things come in twos.   I won this on eBay on Tuesday!

Twenty-three skidoo and boop-boo-de-doop!

As for the week to come...

1. Wednesday is the first anniversary of my very first sewing machine purchase.  That's right: on May 26, 2009 it all started, and what a year it's been!   I have to figure out how best to celebrate it.  Any ideas?

2. Clean sewing area (I know, I know, this shows up a lot).

3. Choose my next project; not sure what's next.


Now how about all of you?  (Nagging Alert)

Vintagegal: Did you finish your summer dress (made out of curtains)?  San Antonio Sue: How are those jeans coming along?  In The Heyday: Did you finish hemming your 40's dress? Can we see it?  Stella: You MUST tell us more about that chicken.  Smartypantalons: Did  you post your Etsy patterns? Anything good?  Karen: Are you still knee-deep in home dec projects?  (send your old curtains to Vintagegal!)  Mz. Whitney: What did you do with your white stretch denim?  Melanie Jade: We want updates on that wedding dress!

Kids, you've been doing well -- most of you, that is.  For those of you who've finished your projects, please treat yourself to a nice ice cream pop in celebration of my one-year sewing anniversary.  For those of you who have not finished your projects, we'll save you the sticks.  OK, we'll give you a bite, but then it's right back to work.  Tempus fugit!

Oh, what the hell, ice cream pops for everyone!

Have a great Monday, everybody and don't forget to catch Cathy's debut tomorrow in wide-screen celadon polyester.

Boop-boop-de-doop!

This brand is your brand

So I am reading a fantastic book, "The End of Fashion" by Teri Agins, published in 1999.  It tells the story how fashion changed from something dictated by Paris designers to a corporate-run industry making primarily copycat sportswear, heavily marketed via highly identifiable brands.  It's a fast read, chatty and engrossing.

She quotes Giorgio Armani:

"Fashion is finished, for me the diktat is finished," Armani declared to New York in September 1997.  "That is, 'this is fashion and you must dress this way--it's finished."  Fashion is what  a woman makes.  She puts on an Armani jacket, a skirt by Gigli.  This is fashion."

Agins identifies what she calls four "megatrends" that contributed to the "end" of fashion, as she see it:

1) Women let go of fashion. (Now pursuing careers, fewer women defined themselves by their wardrobes.)

2) People stopped dressing up. (Think "casual Fridays.")

3) People's values changed with regard to fashion (i.e., They weren't embarrassed to shop for value instead of status.  They wanted quality, but at an attractive price.).

4) Top designers stopped gambling on fashion.  (Fashion houses, largely owned by publicly traded companies, were no longer willing to gamble on fashion whims.)

In a nutshell, while people still care about clothes, it's more about the image the brand conjures up in their mind since so many of the clothes are similar, i.e. commodities.

Agins explains:

"Today's 'branding' of fashion has taken on a critical role in an era when there's not much in the way of new styling going on--just about every store in the mall is peddling the same styles of clothes.  That's why designer logos have become so popular; logos are the easiest way for each designer to impart a distinguishing characteristic on what amounts to pretty ordinary apparel."

So where do you stand on all this, readers?  Do these logos affect you in any way?  Are there some brands you have a weakness for, others you find distasteful? (I've chosen these but don't limit yourself to them.)

Are any of us wholly immune to the power of the fashion brand?  Not me, even though I make most of my own clothes.  But I do look at magazines from time to time and even if I didn't, just walking the streets of the city the ads and logos are impossible to avoid and/or ignore.

I remember when I was about 13 or so, I had to have a Lacoste shirt because everyone (well, everyone who mattered to me) in my school at the time was wearing one.  And I confess: I do own a pair of Gucci loafers (bought at a consignment store).  And while I've stopped wearing cologne, I was once very fond of the exclusive Acqua di Parma.

As a sewer, are you less impressed with branded merchandise?   How about fragrance?  Does the name (and image) matter, or is it just the smell?  (Tell the truth.)  Is there a clothing brand you strongly identify with even if you don't wear it?

"The End of Fashion" was written ten years ago.  Do you think anything has changed since then or has marketing and the importance of the fashion brand only intensified?

Jump in!