Welcome To The Man Mansion

In honor of Fathers Day I thought I'd show you a classic 1980's style man mansion, a mantasy realized.




It's actually the official residence of the mayor of Denver, although no mayor has lived in it, and certainly no first lady has either.


It's called Cableland, because a cable TV mogul built it, and then donated this excess of 1980's style to the city of Denver. What were they thinking when they accepted it as the mayor's residence?


It has every manerism: conversation pits, big fat furniture, a pink grand piano, flame stitch upholstery, hard edge steel, big fugly sculpture...


...uber electronics, tons of TV screens (88 to be exact), tanning beds, mauve walls, and I heard there are plenty of naughty bits lying about too, like a 12 foot fire pole in the master bedroom (I think they call it a stripper pole nowadays).


What was the bachelor home like of the guy you ended up with? I think many were in the same vein of Cableland, even if more modest with a big ugly recliner, a platform bed, and milk crate bookcases.


What would Cableland be without the big ass pool awaiting a bevy of bikini girls to frolic in?


Read what's going on with Cableland HERE
And rent it for a special party HERE
I think they should turn it into a theme park for guys.

And Happy Fathers Day!

The specs (kind of fascinating):

Construction: Summer 1986 to Fall 1987 Subcontractors: Over 50 trades involved Home & Grounds: 24,000 Square Feet Swimming Pool: 1,102 Square Feet Facilities: Guest house, pool house, staff quarters Creature Features: Squirrel condos, birdbaths TV Reception: Cable TV; closed circuit TV Sets - 88 including viewing wall with 64 TV Monitors; 61-inch TV (great room); 55-inch TV (video room) Telephone Lines - 5; Telephones -97 Bathrooms - 14; Bedrooms -4; Kitchens - 4 (including catering kitchen) Features: Custom designed furniture Upholstered fabric walls Underlighting for furniture Sunken Bar Guest office suite, kitchen and bath Terraced patios Pink Weber baby grand piano 12-foot fireman's pole Three fireplaces Tanning bed & spa equipment Underwater seascape mural Resistance exercise pool Surround sound & tactile sound systems Lite-touch lighting systems Snowmelt driveway system Laser security system Ice cream bar Project Management & Interior Design: Gerhard Interiors Limited, Rancho La Costa, CA Architecture: Lawrence Pepper, Rancho Santa Fe, CA Landscape Architecture: DHM, Inc., Denver, CO Lighting Design: Noel Allanmeyer, Carlsbad, CA

Congratulations Mr. and Mr. Adler-Doonan!

From The New York Times:

Simon Doonan and Jonathan Adler

Published: September 19, 2008

Simon Doonan and Jonathan Adler were married Thursday evening at the Clift Hotel in San Francisco. Howard Steiermann, a minister of the Universal Ministries, officiated at a ceremony that included Jewish traditions.

Mr. Doonan (left), 55, is the creative director of Barneys New York. He is also a columnist for The New York Observer and the author of four books, including “Eccentric Glamour: Creating an Insanely More Fabulous You” (Simon & Schuster, 2008). Next month, the BBC will broadcast a comedy series based on his memoir. He graduated from Manchester University.

Mr. Doonan is the son of the late Betty Doonan, who lived in Bangor, Northern Ireland, and the late Terry Doonan, who lived in Hove, England. His parents both worked for the BBC; his mother was a clerk in the news department and his father monitored foreign broadcasts.

Mr. Adler, 42, is a potter, an interior decorator and an owner of home furnishing and design stores bearing his name. He is also the head judge on “Top Design,” a reality series on the Bravo network. He graduated from Brown.

Mr. Adler is a son of Cynthia Adler of New York and the late Harry R. Adler. His mother was a lawyer at his father’s law practice in Bridgeton, N.J.

Mr. Doonan and Mr. Adler met in November 1994 on a blind date arranged by a mutual friend.

“The bloke who set us up just had some intuition that we would hit it off,” Mr. Doonan said. And they did, for the most part. “He’s very good-looking, charming and funny,” he said. But ...

“He badgered me with lots of direct questions,” Mr. Doonan said. “In England people wouldn’t ask a lot of direct questions.”

So he chose not to answer many of them.

“He was kind of monosyllabic and a little remote on the first date,” Mr. Adler said. “But there was a little spark.”

Enough for a second date, watching the Mike Leigh film “Abigail’s Party” (“as a litmus test of his humor,” Mr. Doonan said). That sealed the deal.

“We have a ridiculous amount in common,” Mr. Doonan said. “We both hate smug people. We both rant at the same things.” And, he added, “We both drink a lot of tea.”

Javier Bardem - What Can I Say?

He is so hot! So talented! And Always In Style!
The New York Times has a nice interview
and some beautiful photos of him HERE
Take a Javier break - you deserve it!

Papa's Got A Brand New Couch - The James Brown Estate Sale

The one and only Godfather of Soul

Christie's held an auction of items from the estate of James Brown.
I just loved James Brown. He was a fierce original in all ways: the way he performed; the music he wrote; his hair-do; his clothes; his lifestyle; and his home furnishings.
The New York Times has the article about the sale HERE

Always In Style - Andy Warhol

God I loved Andy Warhol. He was kooky and Czech born, art school educated, a nerd, a party lover, a hard worker, and wildly talented. We had a lot in common. Including our hair-dos at a certain point. I often saw him at Studio 54, small, pale, quiet, but always looking at everyone and everything - a total visual vamp. He would have been 80 years old this coming August, and he truly would have been a gezzerette I love.

where he studied commercial art. While in Pittsburgh, sexy as got to know the painter Philip who wustrator.

The Andy I remember

You can buy this T-shirt with Marc Jacobs as Andy

From Fab SugarHERE

In the June/July double issue of Interview magazine, a modern-day marvel imitates a pop culture legend.
Marc Jacobs appears on the cover of the magazine, which is an ode to the pop artist whose 80th birthday would have been in August. With a platinum wig atop his head, the fashion designer is being compared to the eccentric artist; they both cross bred art and commerce, they have a knack for creating playground-like retail stores and look to other artists for inspiration and collaboration. When asked of the comparison Marc stated "I don't think of myself that way," he said. "Warhol is Warhol. He's practically a god. I thought, 'I'm going to get a lot of hell for this.'"Whether he gets flak for the cover or not, the photo — the work of Mikael Jansson — will also imprint T-shirts and tote bags to display in the windows of the designer's Bleecker Street store. And it all comes full circle: Proceeds from the Marc/Warhol garb will benefit the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh.

Always In Style - Robert Rauschenberg

Rauschenberg with his painting of John F. Kennedy

You can get a copy of this art work for $15.99 HERE

"...my fear is that after I'm gone,
something interesting is going to happen,
and I'm going to miss it..."

I want to thank Habitually Chic HERE for calling my attention to the sad passing of acclaimed American artist Robert Rauschenberg. He died at his home on Captiva Island in Florida at the age of 82 on Tuesday May 13.

Rauschenberg, labeled a "Titan" of American art by The New York Times, had been ill for a while and died Monday night, Jennifer Joy of the Pace Wildenstein gallery in New York said. Rauschenberg, spearheaded a style in the 1950s he came to call "combines," which incorporated aspects of painting and sculpture and eventually included objects such as a stuffed eagle or goat and street signs.

A Rauschenberg piece very much in the vein of Joseph Cornell HERE

Building on the legacies of Marcel Duchamp, Kurt Schwitters and Joseph Cornell, he helped to obscure the lines between painting and sculpture, painting and photography, photography and printmaking, sculpture and photography, sculpture and dance, sculpture and technology, technology and performance art — not to mention between art and life

Robert Rauschenberg was born on Oct. 22, 1925, in Port Arthur, Texas, a small refinery town where "it was very easy to grow up without ever seeing a painting,’"he said. His grandfather, a doctor, had settled in Texas and married a full-blooded Cherokee. His father worked for a local utility company. The family lived so modestly that his mother used to make him shirts out of scraps of fabric. For his high school graduation present, Mr. Rauschenberg wanted a ready-made shirt, his first. A decade or so later he made history with his own assemblages of scraps and ready-mades: sculptures and music boxes made of packing crates, rocks and rope; and paintings like 'Yoicks' (above) sewn from fabric strips.


When he won the international grand prize at the Venice Biennale in 1964, Rauschenberg said he regarded the Merce Cunningham Dance Company as his biggest canvas.

Rauschenberg & long time friend & collaborator Merce Cunningham

Mr. Rauschenberg wasn’t just the designer of most pieces Mr. Cunningham had choreographed; he was also a permanent colleague. He toured America and, in 1964, the world as stage manager to the Cunningham company, adjusting the lighting and costumes, making several of the dancers into his long-term friends, helping turn the itinerary of a dance company into a fulcrum of ideas.
In 1954 Mr. Rauschenberg was the first stage designer to follow the principle of artistic independence already established by Mr. Cunningham and music composer and collaborator to Mr. Cunningham, John Cage. All he needed to know was which dancer to design costumes for, and if Mr. Cunningham had any further specifications. So when Mr. Cunningham asked (in 1954) for décor around which the dancers could move, Mr. Rauschenberg placed a large red free-standing combine center stage in “Minutiae”; though the choreography has not survived, the décor is still used in some Cunningham Events.
As a young art student Robert Rauschenberg was someone we intently studied, admired, and aspired to. Rauschenberg said "I think you’re born an artist or not. I couldn’t have learned it, and I hope I never do because knowing more only encourages your limitations.”
I also spent time around The Merce Cunningham rehearsal studios, and the name of Rauschenberg was often invoked.
As in every field, the pioneers and innovators pass away, and pass on a legacy and body of work for all of us, and the ages. When asked about dying, Rauschenberg said: "There are moments in the day when I find it terrifying, I don't ever want to go. I don't have a sense of great reality about the next world." Then, referencing an old spiritual, he said, "My feet are too ugly to wear those golden slippers. I'm working on my fear of it, and my fear is that after I'm gone, something interesting is going to happen, and I'm going to miss it." Amen and God bless you Robert, and condolences to your loved ones...

Thanks to The New York Times for great coverage, which I cut and pasted here for all of you.

You can read more about the great Robert Rauschenberg HERE and HERE

Always In Style - Simon Doonan and Jonathan Adler

Power couple, cutie pies, and always in style...Simon and Johnny

Jonathan Adler saved my life. I was in a deep depression after a once in a lifetime natural disaster. I found his book: My Prescription For Anti Depressive Living HERE
It led me to eBay.
I thought I was arranging with attitude, but instead, I made at this huge mess, truly the work of a mad woman, but I had fun, and stopped wanting to kill myself and everybody else.

I just wanted to kill this room.

Simon Doonan makes me laugh everyday HERE
If you'd like to read a little more about these two, go HERE

Always In Style - Javier Bardem

The trailer for Woody Allen's latest effort Vicky Cristina Barcelona has no dialogue — only a montage of scenes from the film set to a song sung in Spanish. This is probably for the best, I suppose, so we can concentrate on all the making out that's going on (including a kiss between Penelope and Scarlett) and how good-looking Javier Bardem is. According to IMDB, the plot description is this: "A painter enters a relationship with two American tourists. Conflict begins with the painter's jealous ex-girlfriend." The movie opens in theaters September 5.

Always In Style - Anthony Bourdain

How does the skinny sexy bastard stay so thin and so hot?

Okay, I stole this picture from Sneaky Chic for three reasons.
One: I heart Anthony Bourdain and he is my secret boyfriend.
Two: I wanted to let you know I have added the terrific blog of Sneaky Chic to Blogs and Sites You Might Like HERE
Three: I am starting a new feature called Always In Style where I will post gratuitous photos of guys I think are sexy and have style (and some of them might actually be decoraters and/or interior designers).
Thanks PH for the title suggestion...