I must lay my cards on the table. I like Naomi Campbell. Perhaps I am indeed the lone member of her fan club as someone suggested yesterday.
I am not in the business of mob justice, or Facebook kangaroo courts. Wether she has been a silly cow in the past or not is none of my business. I am sure that for her past misdemeanors and indiscretions she has paid the price.
Since she hasn’t thrown a cell phone or punched an air stewardess for some time I think it best that we give this woman a break. Perhaps by walking in her stilettos for a mile I might understand where she’s coming from.
Frankly, if I were a model diva on vacation on a yacht in St Tropez forced to fly to a dismal courtroom in the Hague I too might find taking the stand at the war crimes trial of the President of Liberia, as she is now mocked for saying, ‘very inconvenient’. She has been embroiled in a situation that was not of her own making. I, for one, am not buying into this new wave of press generated ‘Naomi is a Bitch’ sentiment.
The way she is described in some quarters one might think that she is the one accused of war crimes, that she is somehow a war criminal by association. Naomi Campell may have briefly accepted a bag of blood diamonds but this does not make her in any way culpable for the crimes of the murderous Liberian President..she is naive at best, greedy at worst. Whatever she is she is totally undeserving of the vitriol presently coming her way.
Whenever I have chanced upon her she has been sweet and kind and desperate to deal with the well documented problems she has with both her temper and substance abuse. When Lee McQueen died she called everyone she knew he knew even if they didn’t know her particularly well. Friends of Lee’s found her unexpected comfort calls at that very difficult time very reassuring.
I had dinner last night with a wonderful producer friend of mine who knew everyone in the restaurant. I ate a large and delicious salad nicoise. We popped into an art event/installation that included a ten foot pile of pancakes and a naked man in a glass box with a pancake covering his face and genitals. Later we ended up at a young Hollywood party on La Cienega. The next generation of real managers, producers and actors all crammed into a tiny bar.
The best part of my day was spent in Malibu with the little dog. We walked down the hill to see how the Rambla Pacifico road construction is progressing. They are making a massive amount of headway, grading the land over where the land slide happened all those years ago and preparing to back fill with huge polystyrene blocks which apparently will lighten the weight of the construction.
On my way back I met two Armenian brothers who have moved into a house at that end of Rambla. One of them is dreamily good-looking. Instead of fixating on him however with his brown eyes and hairy chest I felt sad and missed my NYC friend.
My favorite restaurant Axe in Venice has burned down. Fuck. I loved that place.
2 replies on “Naomi Campbell”
i must not see pancakes the same way you do. 🙂
and some times the best place to be is home D.
jaysus now im going to want pancakes for breakfast tomorrow.
btw, if you had gotten diamonds in the middle of the night from some one, wouldnt you have wondered where they came from?
morality wise, in the big picture of things, so it interupted her holiday, its not like she doesnt get them often?
just my slant on it D. xxx
Duncan,
It’s nice to know that with all the bad press that Naomi Campbell has generated that there is some beauty of spirit to match her beautiful exterior. Her calls to Lee McQueen’s friends bespeak a person trying to sometimes rise to the best of their nature. However, with regard to the war crimes trial… from what I understand, she is the only link between this wretched man, Charles Taylor of Liberia, and proof of his ownership and use of blood diamonds to fund his regime. People are outraged because although she may have been at best, naive or at worst, greedy, she is an integral witness in a — war crimes trail. This is from Human Rights Watch, “Between 1989 and 2003, horrific abuses were committed against civilians in Liberia, including summary executions and numerous large-scale massacres; WIDESPREAD AND SYSTEMATIC RAPE; MUTILATION AND TORTURE; AND LARGE-SCALE FORCED CONSCRIPTION AND USE OF CHILD COMBATANTS (Caps., mine.). …” I would think that any human being, especially a person with a rich lifestyle beyond the imaginings or perhaps 80% of the people on the planet, might silently suffer “inconvenience” when weighed in the balance of the much, much larger issue. THAT is why people are so outraged.
As far as the installation art… I have to ask, was it a mannequin or a real man that had a pancake covering his face and his genitals? Curiouser things have been staged. As for installation art itself, I sometimes wonder if some of the artists aren’t having a great horse laugh at the public’s and some art critics’ expense. I was reminded of Damien Hirst’s cows in embalming fluid and I came across this review of from ’03 of a show of his, along with two contemporaries at the Tate: http://www.garyfaigin.com/reviews/2004/2004-05.html. The comparisons to J.M.W. Turner and Baroque art, I found a bit of a reach. Truth be told, I would be more a fan of the 19th Century Romantic Sublime art such as Turner’s, Baroque or Surrealist art. Imaginative, difficult of execution. Something that you can look at that bespeaks a skillful artist, who used his abilities over time to produce a work and not something like the cows that could be found embalmed in a museum of natural history or an agricultural dept. of a college. Then again, I come to exhibitions such as “Body Worlds”, which I think is brilliant if macabre, yet some could argue that such things belong in medical museums such as the Mutter in Philadelphia. Some say that the best art is meant to be provocative, to start a dialog, and I guess on that level, the exhibition that you viewed and Hirst’s works are successful art. On the other hand, who would buy a dead embalmed cow for themselves or as a gift, to be displayed as art?
You said that you were at a young Hollywood party but you didn’t mention anyone that you met. Was there no one fairly well known and/or interesting? Did you give and get cards? It would seem to have been a great place to network. Details?
Glad you’re still practicing the Alert, Avert, Affirm. 😉 Sorry about the restaurant. Hopefully, they’ll rebuild.
Blessings,
Amanda