It All Comes Back to Keith Olbermann

A short, funny piece from The New Yorker on architect Frank Gehry that reminded me of Keith’s comments on Alex Rodriguez yesterday.

Sticks and Stones Dept.
Your Name Here
by Lauren Collins
June 4, 2007

In 2001, Barnaby Harris, as he put it recently, “got married to a beautiful woman who was extremely passionate about her yoga practice.” Not long after, he decided to have a special T-shirt made for her birthday. It was white with blue lettering: “Fuck Yoga.” The marriage didn’t last, but the sentiment did: Harris, a former Broadway stage manager, is now a full-time purveyor of “Fuck” paraphernalia. Despite the popularity of the anti-yoga slogan, Harris struggled to produce a follow-up hit. The only other suitable direct object he has come up with is “Frank Gehry.” “It has a lyrical quality,” Harris said.

Inspiration for the second saying struck several years ago, Harris said, “when, with all the press for Bilbao, the Disney Concert Hall, a tolerance center in Jerusalem, it was like Frank had just put his foot down on top of us and crushed us. He had Brad Pitt making his coffee. You win, Frank.” (Urban myth has it that Pitt, who is an acquaintance of Gehry, worked with him as an apprentice.) Harris had the “Fuck Frank Gehry” shirts made in brown with orange lettering and in navy blue with silver lettering. He sold a few hundred, many to Europeans. Opponents of Bruce Ratner’s Atlantic Yards development, in Brooklyn, kept asking for donations.

Then, in March, a friend of Harris’s named Howell Caldwell was working as an assistant director on a weight-loss commercial starring Valerie Bertinelli. Get this: Caldwell’s limo driver, Geoffrey Cushing-Murray, also drives Gehry; on set, he mentioned to a friend that he had run into her husband wearing a “Fuck Frank Gehry” shirt at a Super Bowl party. Cushing-Murray had told Gehry about the encounter, and Gehry, he said, had been intrigued. Caldwell volunteered that he knew the guy who made the shirts. Within days, a sample batch was on its way to Gehry’s office.

“Somebody sent it to me,” Gehry said the other day, over the telephone, “and I thought it must have been the people in Brooklyn who are sort of angry. But then I thought, well, it must be loving, too. So I decided it was funny, and I put it on. And I wore it to the office, and everybody got a kick out of that, and then I wore it to the gym”—Gehry lifts weights at a Gold’s in Venice Beach—“and everybody got a kick out of that. The tough gals at the gym said, ‘If it’s an offer, you better be able to deliver, Mr. Gehry.’ ” Gehry’s wife, Berta, found this all funny. (“She’s Panamanian, so she doesn’t get rattled by much,” Gehry said.) In a Queer Nationesque move of appropriation, Gehry decided to begin sending the shirts out as gifts.

“First, someone from his office called and wanted me to deliver one to a friend of Frank’s who was giving a lecture at Baruch College called ‘Starchitecture,’ ” Harris recalled. “A week later, he called again: ‘Would you please send some shirts to Bruce Ratner?’ A couple of weeks ago, I got a third call: ‘Frank needs two in every color and every size.’ ”

It was suggested to Gehry, who once had a cameo on “The Simpsons,” that for a high-powered architect he had an unusual ability to take a joke. “Yeah,” he said, “because as I’ve gotten to be pretty well known there’s a lot of negative stuff written, right? People potshot at you. So I sort of ignore it. You know, when Bilbao was presented publicly, there was a candlelight vigil against me.” He let out a rueful laugh. “And then there was a thing in a Spanish paper saying, ‘Kill the American Architect.’ That was scary. So I stood beside the President every time there was an event. I figured, if they’re gonna kill me . . . Anyway. Once the building was built, I could live there for free. And the same thing with Disney Hall—when it was first shown they called it broken crockery, and now everybody thinks it’s great. So it takes a while. The little building on the West Side Highway, in New York? A few months ago, everybody was telling me how horrible it is, and now they like it.” He laughed again and went on, “You kind of say, ‘At least they’re looking!’ It’s not that big a deal, is it, compared to what’s going on in the world?”

You’ve got to hand it to Gehry for taking the “Fuck Frank Gehry” concept and running with it. I particularly like this comment:

So I decided it was funny, and I put it on. And I wore it to the office, and everybody got a kick out of that, and then I wore it to the gym”—Gehry lifts weights at a Gold’s in Venice Beach—“and everybody got a kick out of that. The tough gals at the gym said, ‘If it’s an offer, you better be able to deliver, Mr. Gehry.’ ” Gehry’s wife, Berta, found this all funny. (“She’s Panamanian, so she doesn’t get rattled by much,” Gehry said.) In a Queer Nationesque move of appropriation, Gehry decided to begin sending the shirts out as gifts.

It is so totally in sync with what KO said about A-Rod and the Third Baseline Blondies he encountered at Fenway Park last weekend:

(Check out the entire photo gallery, Fenway Scene. Man, those Sawx fans are brutal! And clever!)

A-Rod needs to take the barbs (Lord knows, they’re a-comin’ his way …) and have some fun with them. Like Ken Griffey, Jr. did. Like KO said.

Alex has a lot of money. Maybe he should put KO on the payroll as an advisor ….