Fran Lebowitz: caustic wit or boring complainer?

give it 25 years, crut

the substance of what she says is very hit-and-miss, but that was the case with Oscar Wilde too.

also i think it helps to hear her voice as you read her

Well I thought it was pretty funny. And she sounds honest, at least.

"I am deeply superficial" <= Isn't this an Andy Warhol line? Maybe she got it from her stealing board.

It is!

Wilde said things v close:

It is only the superficial qualities that last. Man's deeper nature is soon found out.

It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.

i don't get her. her clothes look bad.

her clothes look terrible!

famous ppl who have a "uniform" get tons of credit as if it's not its own form of vanity

i think she looks great but leslie feinberg is a personal style icon of mine so ymmv

leslie feinberg looks fucking amazing imo

also tbf to lebowitz there are a lot of photos in which i really dig her style and she has a cool unique thing going on but others are very bad, the oversize blazer with gold buttons and french cuffs that are too long paired with jeans is nagl imo

yea i may be too sympathetic to the bag lady look

expensive bag lady

she looks a bit like a viola swamp

"I feel very strongly that almost the entire city has copied my glasses."

this is the GOAT quote tho

mildly depressed by so many people not liking fran lebowitz itt rn

fran is a treasure

loved this interview

def going to hate on the young ppl myself though, much more than i expected i would when i was that age

https://31.media.tumblr.com/791e877c1d36944a12371d5ca685c4bb/tumblr_inline_mmtkamw7GU1qz4rgp.jpg

haa

"If she has those sheets, you're the trick."

i actually throw my suits on the ground when i get home. i'll never stop. i have mental problems.

Bike helmets: how pretentious!

aesthetically, E, aesthetically.

Obviously young'uns have little idea that Fran was an icon in the late '70s/early '80s, esp a gay icon, before queer taste got watered down and elevated that c**t Joan Rivers.

just realized quaker oats guy looks like Leon Wieseltier

who i also feel strangely obliged to defend at times

Quaker Oats guy = Barbara Bush

Ranking:

1. Fran Lebowitz
2. Barbara Bush
3. Joan Rivers
4. Quaker Oats Guy
5. Leon Wieseltier

"He has very important hair." Gore V. on Leon W,

She said some transphobic stuff in the Candy Darling documentary that made me really not like her.

She's definitely insightful in the Scorcese doc about gay culture - the way she framed the affect of the AIDS crisis on culture in that doc is really profound. She makes an amazing point about how it was not just artists who were lost, but a huge part of a highly attuned audience who knew their shit and pushed the forms forward.... and that loss wasn't confined to "gay culture" it rippled out to all the arts. As I remember it, she's talking about opera and dance in the doc, but you could just as easily apply it to disco and rock n roll, film, fashion, etc.

It is interesting that (as far as I know) she's never really come out herself. If she's gay. I guess I shouldn't assume she is.

But maybe that's all part of her contrarian schtick. The gay icon who won't come out. The writer who won't write.

Anyway, I actually like her a lot. I just knew her name from the paperbacks in the apartments of my parents and their friends when I was a kid, Metropolitan Life was everywhere - like ferns and brown corduroy. But the Scorcese doc made me appreciate her a lot more. I'm just not into hearing her do hacky stuff about bike helmets and men in shorts and kids these days with their internet and loving parents.

I

this is interesting. i basically had no idea who she was until this thread bump, since i have no culture at all.

well iirc you don't live in new york so

i agree shes a idiot

1. Fran Lebowitz
2. Barbara Bush
3. Joan Rivers
4. Quaker Oats Guy
5. Leon Wieseltier

upcoming 92nd St Y panel discussion on men's style & the future of the internet w/ Joan and QOG via google hangout

I'm with Fran. Living in an age when every grossly obese girl/guy can walk around the neighborhood in yoga pants and Uggs because - "Hey! You're beautiful. OWN IT!" - there have to be limits. And dressing dogs - jeez. She's sharp.

And brio2 OTM re: her observations re: the cultural devastation of AIDS in the docu. Didn't she say something to the extent that it levelled the field (disastrously) and opened the way for *everyone* to be an "expert"?

Living in an age when every grossly obese girl/guy can walk around the neighborhood in yoga pants and Uggs because - "Hey! You're beautiful. OWN IT!" - there have to be limits.

fuck this nonsense

Come to NYC in summer, then. You'll love it.

No Uggs, but certainly flip flops all around.

I couldn't even tell if capitaine was being sarcastic cause ilx is generally not a place where people are complaining that overweight people are wearing clothes you don't want them to.

yes commentary about people dressing dogs, so sharp, so edgy. all her generational commentary is esp sad since she doesn't appear aware of how lucky she was to be born in a generation where you could turn bon mots about algebra and hipsters into an actual career rather than, idk, 30 twitter followers.

yes, the democratization of humor! no wonder nothing's funny.

that thing about the writer's stealing board made me lol cuz it is exactly how writing works

mainlanders are cute with their flipflop horror

also the boomers are prob the only people in history simultaneously capable of deluding themselves into thinking they are their children's best friends and of worrying that they shouldn't be

Several millennials I've met do say that their boomer parents are their best friends. Which I just do not get.

there's no cultural divide, boomers and millennials have a lot in common

Drugs

otm, the greatest generation never bragged about how good the owsley acid was, or biker speed, or quaaludes

neither do boomers who shouldn't be set out with the recyclables

Social Studies is really great. Builds on the first but shows evolution.

"I never imagined that I would live to see a day where people talked about television all the time. I’m astounded by the number of people who — do you realize how much TV you’re watching? Thousands of hours. Thousands of hours. And people now think it’s like a requirement. I have to go, I have 75 episodes of such and such I have to watch. I’m not saying these shows are not good, I’m just saying maybe if I was three years old and I imagined I had this amount of time ahead of me, I might start pursuing it."

http://www.wmagazine.com/story/fran-lebowitz-doesnt-have-a-cell-phone-but-knows-everything-that-happens-on-social-media-anyway

what a profoundly uninteresting woman