Today, February 22nd
A self-described “comic, musician, skateboarder and infamous Blink182 fan”
ACTOR/COMEDIAN WHITMER THOMAS’ 1st ONE-HOUR SPECIAL PREMIERES ON HBO. The self-described “aging emo kid” mixes storytelling, comedy, music and documentary in “The Golden One,” taped at the legendary Flora-Bama Lounge straddling the state line between Florida and his native Alabama.
“I’m always gonna be the one whose mom called ‘the Golden One,’ right before she died,” says Whitmer. Having been central to LA’s young, independent comedy scene (hosting the monthly show, Power Violence), Whitmer wonders if he’s peaked at thirty (mirroring his musician mother’s failed ambitions). The fact that she performed on the same stags adds a deeper resonance to his comic musings on millennial anxieties, his Alabama childhood, dating, drinking, and more.
“Songs from The Golden One” features original music from Whitmer’s special
“The Golden One” premieres February 22nd on HBO. Watch the trailer here.
Studio versions of Thomas’ original music from “The Golden One” are featured on, “Songs from The Golden One,” available for pre-order here.
THE WOOLWORTH FORTUNE WAS BORN ON THIS DAY IN 1878. In 1852, Frank Winfield Woolworth—a 15-year old shop boy charged with managing stock and displays—set up a table of five cent items. It proved so popular that he eventually opened his first “Woolworth’s Great Five Cent Store” on February 22nd, 1878—launching one of the greatest retail success stories of the 20th century.
Top: on of the first stores; Bottom: Woolworth’s lunch counter was an American institution—and the site of one of the first civil rights sit-ins in Greensboro, North Carolina. (That counter is now in the Smithsonian.)
It’s a story few born after the mid-1990s know—that’s when the last of the “Five and Ten Cent” stores closed (killed by the post-WWII growth of supermarkets). But in his heyday, Woolworth owned 3,000 stores around the world. Tracing his roots to England, Woolworth was opening a new store there every 17 days by the mid-1920s. His wealth was so great, that he was able to pay cash to build New York’s Woolworth Building in 1914 (then the highest building in the world).
Called the “Cathedral of Commerce”, Woolworth’s tower cost $13.5 million (or $349,000,000 today)
Kent Monkman (Cree, b. 1965). Resurgence of the People, 2019
CHECK OUT THE MET’S GREAT HALL COMMISSION: KENT MONKMAN, MISTIKÔSIWAK (WOODEN BOAT PEOPLE). Cree artist Kent Monkman’s two monumental paintings are part of a series of contemporary commissions in which the Museum invites artists to create new works inspired by its collection. The commission's primary title, mistikôsiwak, derives from a Cree word meaning "wooden boat people;" and his two paintings (titled Welcoming the Newcomers and Resurgence of the People) depict the complicated relationship between settlers arriving in the "New World" and its native inhabitants.
Detail of Welcoming the Newcomers
Prominent in both paintings is the artist’s gender-fluid alter ego, Miss Chief Eagle Testickle, meant to challenge norms of gender and sexuality imposed by European settlers—and “reverse the colonial gaze to challenge received notions of history and Indigenous peoples.”
The New York Times called the work, "Stupendous,” and Miss Chief, “an avatar of a global future that will see humankind moving beyond the wars of identity—racial, sexual, political—in which it is now perilously immersed." "I wanted to bring Indigenous experience into this canon of art history," says the artist, whose work made me reconsider traditional iconography and the MET itself.
KENT MONKMAN, MISTIKÔSIWAK (WOODEN BOAT PEOPLE) is on view through April 9, 2020. The Met Fifth Avenue, 1000 Fifth Avenue.
Monkman’s work was inspired by the interrelated themes of love and hunting found in Rubens Venus and Adonis