In the immortal words of Staind, it’s been awhile. But also in the immortal words of Frank. Costanza, I’m back, baby!
I know, I’m sorry. I took a little time off. I’m not one of those fancy pants types that gets paid a bunch of money from Substack and things have been busy so I had to turn my attention elsewhere, but yeah. I’m here and I now have an official logo thank you to the brilliant Wes Robinson. Please check him out.
And now for some housekeeping. Mainly that I’ve been watching The Nanny and I think it’s the greatest show ever. And, like all great ideas, I mentioned on Twitter I was thinking of starting a newsletter dedicated to the show, and as you can see, I’m already stretched a little thin, so the newsletter will be part of The Melt empire. So once a week, I’m going to send out an e-mail where I talk about an episode of The Nanny. Now, before you go ahead and unsubscribe, this isn’t going to be some boring review where I break down everything that happened on each episode. Instead, it will be more about New York, funny Jewish culture, style, food, the glorious 1990s, and sort of everything I already write about in this newsletter, and I promise it will be entertaining. That will start next weekend.
Phil and Milton
Did you read Blake Bailey’s Philip Roth biography yet? Of course you didn’t! You let Cynthia Ozick, Adam Wilson, Laura Marsh, Parul Sehgal, David Remnick and a bunch of other critics tell you about the 800+ page book. And that’s fair! I, however, did read it. Mostly because I’m a Roth fan, but also because I wrote something about it that should be up soonish. One thing I really liked finding out was that Roth initially wanted Milton Glaser to do the cover for Goodbye, Columbus “whose jacket for [Bernard] Malamud’s The Magic Barrel he’d admired,” but got this instead:
That is not a good cover, at least for a Philip Roth book. It looks like it’s a book about French cooking and how to paint erotic nudes. The Glaser cover for the Malamud book, on the other hand, is incredible:
Interestingly enough, the meh cover was done by Roth’s brother Sandy. He was “happy to do the work for free,” and had presented a cover that was “brightly colored, with a lot of yellow sunlight that” Roth’s publisher, “changed to gray.”
I was interested so I did a little reading on Sandy, who died in 2009, beyond what you get in Bailey’s book. And, I’ve got to say, not a bad lede for an obit: “Sanford Roth, more affectionately known as "Sandy," lived with flair and boldness in his roles as an accomplished artist, a successful advertising executive spanning three decades, and a smooth dancer some likened to Fred Astaire.”
Something I started thinking about when I tried looking for some of his work is if he got confused more for the photographer Sanford Roth, who was friends with and took photos of a number of famous people, including his friend, James Dean, or if people asked if he was related to the Portnoy’s Complaint guy.
Either way, Sandy lived a good life. He was a mad man in the ‘50s all the way until 1983 when he decided he just wanted to paint. That sounds nice, doesn’t it?
April is the cruelest month, bro
This is the worst time of year. I mean, come August, I’ll be saying that is the worst time of year, and then hit me up next January and I’ll tell you that is the worst time of year. But right now really does suck. It’s chilly and rainy, but it’s also a little muggy and I can’t breathe for shit because I have terrible lungs. That, and I really, really hate the in-between season dressing thing. I don’t want to wear the colors I tend to go for in the fall and winter, so I phase out the brown, darker yellow, red, and forest green, and I try to bridge from cold to the sunny, warmer spring days I hope will come soon.
But I’ve also always lived in places with notoriously bad weather, so spring is almost always mostly “extra winter.” I’ve lived through my share of April snowstorms and also plenty of “80 degree one day, 42 the next” kinds of weeks to know that it’s always best to err on the side of cold. So, with that, I’ve paid real close attention to the “light jacket” market as of late. This is obviously a sign I’m getting old and that the next step is I’ll be in Boca getting dinner at Denny’s at three in the afternoon, taking a “light jacket” with me “in case it gets cold” on the 102 July day. Normally I just rock an old army jacket, maybe through a hoodie under it, but I do miss having a nice jacket for not so great, but not terrible weather. I’ve been a Harrington jacket guy forever, and I’m never going to stop having one of those in my closet because they’re cool and versatile as hell, but, for me, they’re also always blue. Comforting, easy, blue. Now, I don’t know how wild I’m looking to get, but I feel like this could be the spring when I rock something like the Sid Mashburn track jacket with all the floral design:
I’ve been really into floral stuff the last few years, and I’m glad to see more guys feeling that way as well. The problem, for me at least, is when I wear anything with flowers, it ends up looking like a couple of flowers in a great big pot filled with too much dirt, so I’m always trying to be subtle about the floral look. Truth be told, I can say that about anything that’s maybe a little too colorful when it comes to shirts, I don’t want to commit too much to a design that somebody could say “Wow, that’s funky,” so I try to be a little more on the subtle side, unless, of course, I’m wearing a fun shirt.
But with a jacket, you put it on, you take it off. It doesn’t necessarily have to define your entire day. So I’ve felt a little more adventurous. Besides the Mashburn jacket, I’m obsessed with this “Freaky” parka from the Levi’s Vintage collection that takes all of its inspiration from the Happy Mondays and Madchester stuff:
There are a few other patterns I’ve been into over the last few months, but, me being me, by the time I make a decision it will be summer and I’ll be just another slob in my cut-off khakis and t-shirt complaining about the heat.
And finally…
In case you don’t follow me on Instagram, tonight I posted a 1986 ad from an issue of Manhattan Inc. announcing the opening of the Ralph Lauren store in the Rhinelander Mansion on 72nd and Madison. Long story short, what I didn’t realize is prior to Ralph Lifshitz from The Bronx moving in, Eli Zabar operated an E.A.T. store out of there until selling the lease to Ralph in 1985. Could you imagine the meeting to make that happen? The spread! The ties! Ralph and Eli either hitting it off or hating each other. I want a ten-part mini-series on this!