Trump the Shark

Since Kamala Harris had her political career abruptly terminated last year, so many people I admired, from celebrities to strangers I thought were my friends (to cop a phrase from Bob Seger), have let me down by bending their knees to Donald Trump and MAGA.  Mika Brzezinski, Kristen Welker, Bill Maher, Kasie Hunt, Jake Tapper - the list is endless, made more infinite by people who embraced MAGA before Trump forced Harris into early retirement, such as James Howard Kunstler and Elon Musk.  So you can imagine how tested I was when I found a testimonial post for the late Charlie Kirk on the Instagram page of one of my favorite fashion models from the 1980s, Kim Alexis.

Kim (I call her by her first name because not only do I follow her on Facebook, I am one of her personal friends on Facebook, and remember, I have met her in person) expressed her sorrow over Kirk's death, and she also extended her condolences to Kirk's family.  The reason Kim voiced  sympathies for Kirk is because she had actually met him and found him to be a personable and likeable guy.  Black women - including Beverly Johnson, whom Kim has worked with (and the results of their work together are stunning, of course) - would likely beg to differ, given Kirk's questionable questioning of black women's brain power, and so would I, except for a few things.

Remember, just because Charlie Kirk was a rhymes-with-glass-pole doesn't mean he couldn't be charming and engaging in a one-on-one engagement.  After all, Harry Truman, upon meeting Joseph Stalin at the 1945 Potsdam conference, took a liking to him, and actor Jack Lemmon, upon meeting Fidel Castro at a film festival in Havana, said that the Cuban leader had charm "right down to his toenails."  I'm sure Kim was charmed greatly by Kirk when their respective paths crossed.   I'm sure Kirk - who was young enough to be my son - would have charmed me.  And Kirk, to be honest, could exude charm in a public setting.  One video of Kirk engaging with a transsexual person making a transition from male to female caught him saying that he personally hated the idea of injecting sex-altering drugs into anyone to change their sex and telling the individual that he/she should look inward and determine through introspection what sort of body he/she felt comfortable in.  He said he was confident that he/she would make the right decision for himself/herself.

Of course, Kirk probably hoped that he/she would stay a he, but he grasped that that was not a decision for anyone other than the individual to make.

None of this, of course, excuses Kirk for being a racist, homophobic, misogynistic Christian nationalist.  But none of his character deficiencies apply to Kim Alexis.  Kim is a Christian, but she is not a die-hard fundamentalist.  She's not a Christian nationalist.  Good grief, her husband is Jewish.  And I know she's not racist - not because she has black friends, but because she has white friends (some of whom I know, like her fellow models) who would not be friends with Kim if they had reason to believe she was a bigot.  In short, she is not MAGA.  As a Christian, she was showing charity on Instagram toward a fellow human being who was needlessly shot to death in a country with too many guns and too many people who have no qualms about using them.  

And that Instagram post?  Well, that's what I was slowly getting to.  It's not there anymore.  Kim took down the post?  She did more than that.  She took down her whole Instagram account.  When I first saw the Kirk post, I did not leave a comment because I, quite frankly, didn't know what to say.  I tried to go back to her post to see what other people were saying in response, and that's when I saw that her account was no longer available.  It may remain unavailable for a long time.  (Her Facebook accounts, where she did not mention Kirk, are still up.)

Even though Kim did not provoke the same visceral reaction in me that made me stop watching "Morning Joe" (and the rest of MSNBC as well) when Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski confessed their pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago two weeks after the election - I didn't unfriend her on social media - she certainly hit many a raw nerve.  So did Lisa MacKenzie (née Moberg), a Swedish veteran model living in the U.S. who also expressed sorrow about Charlie Kirk's death.  I'm friends with her on Facebook as well, and a lot of her other Facebook friends excoriated her for her thoughts and prayers, and I had to explain to her that Americans aren't as nice to each other as Swedes are. 

Kim's and Lisa's sentiments were clearly meant to be above politics, but this is a time when nothing is above politics, so it helps to be able to tell when someone is genuinely trying to express sorrow for a fellow human being's death and and when an extremist is martyring a fellow extremist.  I did not find their comments worthy of me needing to cancel them.  But long before Kirk was killed, I had to cancel a lot of people who expressed strong support for MAGA or bent their knees to it, be they people I knew personally or famous people I admired.  And that brings my post full circle.  I'm sorry to say that Kim and Lisa - both of whom I featured on my beautiful-women picture blog - are among the few exceptions to the rule that anyone who expresses conciliatory or complimentary comments about MAGA figures ought to be canceled.

Speaking of my beautiful-women picture blog . . . It's been three months and change since I terminated it, and given how many of the women I featured turned out to lack inner beauty - most of them corporate-media reporters who coddle Trump when they should know better - I don't regret my decision one iota.

Kim Alexis: Love Isn't a Mystery

How do I love Kim Alexis?  Let me count the ways . . .

The top fashion and cosmetics model from the 1980s that teenage girls wanted to be like and teenage boys wanted to be with turns sixty years old today, and the very mention of her name conjures up images of glamour, elegance, beauty, and sex appeal.  It also brings back memories of how enchanted and entranced males of my generation were by her when we were in high school and college.  She was the perfect woman in our eyes, and she brightened up our lives with her very presence on magazine covers. 

Of course, we would always sigh if we caught a glimpse of her smiling face looking back at us from the cover of a beauty magazine in the supermarket racks (such as above, which is taken from the cover of an issue of Glamour), but as we were of the wrong sex to be seen thumbing through Glamour or Mademoiselle, we would be rewarded every February with the annual Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue, in which Kim Alexis was featured in the magazine and sometimes on the cover as well.  

Okay, the annual Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue is misogynistic, it exploits exotic Third World locations, and most of the swimsuits the models wore in them wouldn't be suitable for aquatic competition.  But,as I've said before Kim Alexis is an accomplished athlete, and she could have been a champion swimmer in her own right.

I valued her appearances on talk shows.  They were one of the few moments where she was a living, breathing woman, and not a static photograph.  Like the guys at the bar in the series finale of "Cheers," who planned their entire day around watching an awards show when they knew that Kim Alexis would be one of the presenters, I always set my VCR every time she'd be on a late-night talk show I couldn't stay up late to see, like David Letterman's old NBC show.   Heck, even her TV commercials were entertaining.  And whenever you did hear her speak, you always got the impression that she wasn't playing a role or projecting an image.  She was the real deal.

And she remains the real deal today.  Still beautiful after three score years, she is a zealous health fanatic, a devout Christian, a patriotic American, and an accomplished blog writer.  And however nice she appears on television, she is so much nicer in person.  I ought to know.  Remember, as I wrote about when it happened, I met Kim Alexis back in 2016!

This is me with Kim Alexis at a photographic exhibition in New York in September 2016 in what was a heady week for me.  (The following day I took part in a press conference with another living legend, astronaut Buzz Aldrin, when a school in  his hometown of Montclair, New Jersey was named for him.)  Stan Wan, the fashion photographer whose work was being exhibited, took the picture.   I know I showed this picture before, but of course, on this festive occasion of her milestone birthday, I can't  help but show it again . . . if only to bask in the warm memory of a dream come true . . . meeting the most stunning blonde supermodel of the eighties.

I haven't crossed paths with Kim Alexis since then, but maybe I will again, once this damn pandemic is over and I can join my model friends for another get-together.  But for now, I can only offer this lovely and incredible woman from afar (she lives in Arizona) my best wishes for this day.  Happy birthday, Kim, and many more. :-)

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P.S.  My sister owned a copy of Kim Alexis's workout videocassette, which only goes to show that my sister wanted to be like Kim Alexis as much as I wanted to be with Kim Alexis.  So I guess the Maginnis siblings were typical of the times. :-) (I actually found that video in the house; I still hope to transfer it to videodisc and send it to Kim Alexis, whom I'm friends with on Facebook.)

Pictures From an Exhibition - The Laundress

As I type this, Hurricane Matthew is going full tilt boogie in the Caribbean Sea and it still has a chance of literally hitting me where I live, and I'm trying - with only a modicum of success - to get my mind off it.  So I thought that writing about a reception I attended earlier this month - at which I had one of the greatest moments of my life (I'll explain in a moment) - would help do that.

Stan Wan is a fashion photographer I met through my association with the many beautiful models I have connected with, and I consider him a friend.  So I was really pleased when he invited me to a reception for his exhibit of fashion photographs at, of all places, a boutique laundry-supply store.  The store, called The Laundress, is on Prince Street, just below Houston Street, in Lower  Manhattan, and though it was an odd place for a photography exhibit - imagine, conversely, buying laundry detergent at a museum - I still had a great time looking at Stan's fashion photos from Europe in the 1980s, which are very impressive.  His photos, many of which were taken in Paris, included photos of a short-haired model named Jennifer Linley Taylor,  a young Paulina Porizkova, and a somewhat more obscure model from the 1980s named Martha Longley, whom I recognized on sight.  Stan was surprised that I remembered her or even knew her name.  It's easy to remember a woman from the eighties named Martha, because back then there weren't too many women with that name. :-D  

As much fun as I had looking at Stan's photos, though, I had an equally fun time mingling with the other guests, including several of my friends from the modeling profession, who were there in full force - along with one model among my Facebook friends that I met in person for the first time. 

And here she is with me! :-D

Yes, that is the one and only Kim Alexis, the multifaceted fashion and beauty model who was the fancy of teenage boys all across America in the early 1980s - including me.  I had missed the chance to meet her before at one of Nancy Donahue's and Harry King's parties when Facebook lost my invitation to that particular soirée, but this time proved to be the charm.  When I got there, I saw Nancy Donahue outside the store and gave her a hug, and as I was looking over her shoulder, I noticed this drop-dead-gorgeous blonde woman standing behind her, and my first thought was, "Oh, my God . . . that's Kim Alexis!"  :-D

Anyway, Kim Alexis, in addition to still being gorgeous, is a very sweet and engaging woman, and I had the opportunity to talk to her - as in a real conversation - and I told her about my writing career, while she told me about how she'd just moved after having lived out west for awhile.  She now lives in Manhattan; I imagine I'll be seeing her again, particularly at one of Nancy and Harry's parties.

I think Stan himself took this photo of us, though Nancy definitely took this photo of Kim and me with Stan. :-)

And Nancy and Kim, who modeled together a lot together in the early eighties, haven't lost their ability to make hearts melt, as evidenced below. :-)  (Disclaimer: I did not take this picture.)

I also saw Alva Chinn, who remains a dear friend as always, at the exhibit, and our mutual friend Fred DeVito got this picture of the two of us together, below. Thanks, Fred! :-)  I always enjoy posing with her.

And here I am, below. with both Kim and Alva, along with Barbara Camp, an interior designer who's also designed sets for fashion shoots, I'm led to understand.   The person who took this pic caught Fred taking a picture of the same scene! :-D 

I also met another veteran model whom I'm friends with, Yasmine Guenancia, whose husband co-owns Cafe Un Deux Trois at 123 (get it?) West 44th Street, but I didn't get my picture taken with her.  But it was great seeing her, as she's always been very sweet to me. :-) 

So yes, it was a great night, and it was a wonderful experience.  Wonderful experiences are hard for me to come by these days, so I'm glad I went.  And if you hurry, you can see Stan's photos at The Laundress, at 199 Prince Street in New York, if you live in the Tri-State area.  :-)