Fran Lebowitz: caustic wit or boring complainer?

"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

she is the greatest, always was, always will be

"Hamilton," probably, and it should have been the last thing anyone ever saw. I saw it on Broadway the night before it opened. Have you seen it? It is the only thing I have ever seen that was better than people said it was.

stopped reading

There are moments, such as on a recent-ish appearance on Bill Maher's show, where she's starting to sound a bit fogey-ish, but yeah, like 98% of the time she absolutely rocks.

this thread is the ONLY time i am ever reminded of fran lebowitz.

The last time I was reminded of her before this thread was bumped was when I saw her trotted out in the Candy Darling documentary to make casually transphobic remarks, but with an air of fogeyness more than of conscious malice.

I'm barely aware of her but she comes across as a sanctimonious boor in that interview

wkiw fran

Shakey doesn't like old Jewish lesbians who are voting for Clinton if they're delightfully obnoxious

(ie if they're one adjective up on him)

Would prefer they were funny, it's true

as with Monty Python's late work (eg Mr Creosote), i like vituperative, disgusted spleen just as much as belly laughs

same with Michael O'Donoghue and vintage NatLamp, Roseanne uncensored

love her

“You are a white person who is boring … you are deeply embarrassed by your complete lack of interesting qualities … humility is no substitute for a good personality … this will not change.”

The halfway point between Virginia Woolf and Travis Bickle.