Credit: A24/EW This August, A24 will be releasing their biopic on Anthony Bourdain. Tony , which is directed by Matt Johnson, and is expected to focus on Bourdain's early culinary experiences in 1976 during his time in Provincetown, Mass.  Dominic Sessa, who rose to fame after his breakout role in The Holdovers,  will play young Bourdain. Other stars on the cast include Antonio Banderas, Emilia Jones and Rich Sommer. This kind of biopic seems like something Bourdain would probably not approve of. But you can't tell that to Hollywood! Will you be checking out Tony this summer?  Credit: World of Reel

Greetings music lovers, and welcome to another edition of Manor Music Monday, this entry being, I hope, a brassy antidote to the mess that has become The Met Ball, or the East Coast's most famous Jerk Parade, tonight with Extra Jerk and Tupperware Titays (with apologies to dearly departed Tupperware). Can anything work to counter this gory dumpster fire of tacky, mess and blurgh? DJ Li'l Scratch believes so, and tonight at the Manor's exclusive after hours club, "Huh? Wha? I'll Have That With Sloppy Oral," he'll by spinning delicious tunes by a brassy singer you're guaranteed to be delighted by. Yes, it's Miss Toni Fisher, a performer who's giving us serious "growl, snarl, snap" above. Don't mess with Miss Toni amirite? Her time in the spotlight was brief. She was a Hollywood nightclub singer for only five years, recorded just one LP - 1960's "The Big Hurt" - and scored only two Top 40 hits, the first one being ...

If you were tiny in the 1970s, 80s or early 90s, you were likely subjected to "Dynamite," a tacky-ass free magazine distributed to elementary school kids nationwide starting in kindergarten, as well as at children's doctors offices, or really any place with which to reach a pre-teen audience. Why tacky-ass? Because it was essentially a massive nationwide free advertising vehicle, which pushed the likes of "Shields and Yarnell," for example, a sub-par network variety show starring married mime performers. And really, who else would give this forgettable Vegas act a nationwide magazine cover but "Dynamite," much less the here today/gone tomorrow actor who played Juan on "Welcome Back Kotter?" I said what I said.  The magazine also included half-hearted  tricks, games and contests, but the focus was mostly on what was later called "advertorial content." Again, this was distributed in elementary schools. When it wasn't trying to pu...

Credit: ABC7 News Visitors of San Francisco's iconic Pier 39 have been dazzled lately by Chonkers, an estimated 2,000lb sea lion. The pier is a popular destination for sea lions because it is protected from predators and crashing waves while also providing an expansive buffet of fish.  Chonkers is believed to have come from up north off the coast of Oregon or Washington and was first spotted in San Francisco last month. Since his arrival, he has captured the hearts of San Franciscans and visitors alike, who flock to the pier in hopes of catching a glimpse of this mammoth beauty. Chonkers typically enjoys breakfast there but is trickier to pin down later in the day.  Chonkers is certainly hard to miss, as he is quite a bit larger than his sea lion brethren. That just means there's more to love! Credit: AP Photo/Haven Daley Source: AP News

Boy with Guns, 1902 Stanislaw Wyspianski

 

I thought for sure this beaut was a Ford Fairlane, but apparently it's a 1957 Ford Tudor Sedan. But whatever it's called, it's gorgeous! A s always, please note my exceptionally professional job of obscuring the license plate.  In '57 there was a lot of great shows on tv, and some terrific movies too. For my money, "Witness For The Prosecution" is the most fun, suspenseful and ultimately satisfying 116 minutes you could spend in a theater that year (that ENDING!). Also, if your mom was driving you to elementary school or picking you up after, it's very likely you heard this song, and you could also see it on Ed Sullivan that year: So wake up, little Susie (and Sammie), wake up--after all, it's Open Post, darlings! Photo Credits: AK

I have noticed that lately bumper stickers don't seem to be as prevalent as they were, say, 20 years ago. Every once in a while I'll spot a lonely sticker, and take special delight whenever I see a car whose bumper looks like this header photo. Nice to have some reading material when I'm at a red light behind one of these. Have you ever put a bumper sticker on your car? I have seen a few over the years that have tickled me, but it seems like one little bumper sticker says so much about you as a human. They are deeply personal and I don't know if I could commit to one. If you could choose to have one bumper sticker to represent yourself, what would it be?  Feel free to share any memorable ones you've seen over the years! Credit: reddit

Greetings music lovuhs, and welcome to another edition of Manor Music Monday. Or perhaps should I say "tap-tap, tap-tap-tap" since it's National Morse Code Day, too. Send this to likeminded nerds:  ( ... --- ...). It's   the universal Morse code distress signal, dont'cha know. 'Cause we're living in stressful times, aren't we?  It's time to decompress, if only for an evening, and at the Manor's exclusive "Tug Job" bar, vapory and snackery (warm, cheesy cassava bread is served all night!), DJ Li'l Scratch will be playing tunes by a  performer whose career as a big band singer, Broadway, movie and TV star stretched over 50 years. Do you know who it is? If you guessed Fran Warren, you're right. And, yes, you can also add Sexploitation Queen to her resume, since she played the cranky mom in " Toys Are Not For Children ," a beloved 1972 psycho-sexual drama extraordinaire. Fran really did do it all! It was the early 1940s ...

Gen X beauty, the cool, detached, slightly subversive aesthetic embodied by women like Winona Ryder, the real Supermodels (Linda, Christy, Naomi, Kate, Shalom, Helena), Sade Adu, Lisa Bonet, Angelina Jolie, and Uma Thurman, to name a few, is having a quiet but very intentional resurgence, and companies are paying attention. This is the anti-performative face of beauty: matte skin, undone hair, minimal fuss, a kind of emotional distance that reads as power rather than effort. In a market saturated with hyper-curated routines, poreless skin, and influencer maximalism that no one with a life has time for, brands are rediscovering the commercial appeal of restraint.  You’re seeing it in campaigns that lean into healthy, realistic skin,  pared-down makeup, and a return to individuality over algorithmic perfection. It’s not nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake, though; it’s strategy. Consumers are fatigued by overkill and searches for unrealistic optimization, and Gen X beauty ideals offe...

Credit: Warner Brothers It's April 25th, and you know what that means: Miss Congeniality Day! In the film, which came out 26 (!) years ago, Miss Rhode Island, played by the lovely Heather Burns, described April 25th as her perfect date. "It's not too hot, it's not too cold, all you need is a light jacket!" It is definitely too cold here in my neck of the woods, but hopefully some of you Peckers are enjoying the weather today!

A Summer Tea Party, approx. 1910 Louis Wain

 

I saw "Project Hail Mary" ( in the theater! ) last night and I loved all two and a half hours of it (it's even better than "Cats" )! I've been hearing about how good it is, but I had no idea what it's about (I hadn't seen any ads, probably because my tv's always on MeTv and most of the ads are for term-life insurance), but it isn't a religious film, it's sci-fi, but not drearily dystopian or aliens committing horrors. I can't remember any movie where I've smiled so much all through it. A brief precis: something molecular called astrophages are eating up the energy of the sun, which could lead to our planet's extinction, as well as other stars in our universe, except for one star. A ship has to be sent to that one star that hasn't been affected to figure out why, and to stave off our own destruction. Sounds pretty grim, huh?  Well, it ain't. Ryan Gosling is Dr. Grace, a professor at a middle school for brainiacs, and he...

Credit: Getty Here are Meryl Streep, Emily Blunt, Stanley Tucci and Anne Hathway at the  The Devil Wears Prada 2 premiere last night in NYC. Blunt wore a pearl-encrusted choker paired with a very voluminous Schiaparelli gown. Hathaway went for a rich red Louis Vuitton dress with matching platform heels. Meryl looks to wearing some variation of a Halloween costume I wore in fifth grade and Tucci, well, he's in a suit! What do you think of these lewks, Peckers?

Happy 4/20, music sloots, and welcome to another edition of Manor Music Monday, today with a little puff-puff or a gummy or two. Why? Because it's 4/20, silly, a holiday started in the early 1970s by a bunch of "burn-out" teens at San Rafael High School, the numbers being code for a time, or 4:20pm, when they'd secretly meet to smoke weed by, or all things, a statue of Louis Pasteur.  What does this have to do with music or DJ Li'l Scratch? Absolutely nothing, but then don't expect our furry DJ to make sense today as he's lit like a sparkler. Better still, he'll be busy tonight at "Richard Johnson's," the Manor's after hours club and vape lounge, where you'll hear tunes by a deceptively loony, yet supremely talented jazz songstress. Why look, it's none other than Marion Montgomery. If you live in the UK, you might know of her, since she was an American-born jazz singer who married a Brit and thereafter became a much-beloved f...

What are these problem children up to now? Um…Nothing good so it seems. For those who haven’t paid attention because the “you in danger girl” meme silently distracted you from absorbing this knowledge with cute kittens and puppy algorithms, then I am sorry to be the one to have to drag you out of protective, blissful ignorance. I am sorry. I am.  To put it bluntly, Gen Z wins the most absurd generational trend category in a landslide. Just look at Gen X. Their entire youth was an exercise in survival of the fittest; Darwin’s theory was in full effect.  One friend remembers eating bowls of cereal and pouring milk from cartons with the faces of missing kids with "have seen me" on them. Basically, a latchkey kid is home all alone and decides a bowl of cereal sounds good, but some authority thought that advertising that bad shit happens to kids while kids make a bowl of cereal was an ace idea. Maybe the vulnerable child knew little Timmy before the bad man in the van got him....

Credit: Getty That's it, that's the post! Share what was all the rage when you were a teen in the comments!

Ernest Hemingway, circa 1933 Miguel Covarrubias