Todd Levin

This shit has got to stop. I just don’t understand it. Money? Pride? Whatever. People are paying respect.

RUN DMC was truly the first act that got me hooked on hip-hop. 1983. Seventh grade. Homeroom. My friend Jonah, a weird kid who used to sell D&D dice and handmade comic books detailing his step-father being ass-raped by Mr. T, was also heavy into hip-hop. Partly under the influence of his older brother, David. Jonah had shelltoes, LeTigre sport gear, and a name plate belt that spelled out “JONES”. He also had a cassette of the first RUN DMC album – the one with no name. “Rock box”, “Sucker MCs”, “Hard Times”, “It’s like that”. Those were the songs I remembered really well. As soon as I started listening to that, I was hooked. It was hard, fueling the supercharged hormones that were using my body as a punching bag from the inside, so it satisfied that side of me that would otherwise turn to devil music – Twisted Sister, Quiet Riot, Def Leppard, Scorpions, W.A.S.P. And it was different. It rocked the downbeat.

I was always pretty aware of hip-hop up until then, my heavy exposure the result of being shuffled between public schools. But after hearing RUN DMC, my awareness was heightened. I started listening to the college station that played 2-hour blocks of hip-hop one night a week. I heard the “popeye” rap, the rappin’ duke, all kinds of terrible shit. It was a weird time for hip-hop, between 83-85, but it was so entirely different that I couldn’t turn my ear from it. Then the “pee wee herman” and Whodini segued into “hold it now, hit it” and “ain’t no half-steppin'” and “south bronx” and even RUN DMC’s own “peter piper'” and that was that. Never looked back, as people say when they don’t have any other words for it. Jonah was weird as hell, but he was right, too.

Addendum: after writing that, i got this sort of queasy feeling. that feeling of self-consciousness, where i wrote something i genuinely felt and meant but, from a distance feels a little, well, desperate. it contains all the elements of a plea for being ‘down’: compassion, history (including pop cultural details of that period in history to ensure the appropriate level of old school flavor), references to run dmc. ‘my god,’ i thought, ‘i even name-dropped tracks from the first run dmc album, in case anyone doubted my hefty connective thread to the old school.’ thing is, i couldn’t help it. i loved run dmc. and when other people get up and dance spasmodically every time ‘come on eileen’ gets played on 80s night, i feel absolutely no nostalgia. i remember the song, i remember it coming out of my television constantly. but i don’t remember attaching myself to it sentimentally. but when i hear the opening guitar for ‘rock box’ or something like ‘ll cool j is hard as hell / battle anybody i don’t care if you tell / i excel / they all fail…’, my wrinkled brow smooths itself out. i just thought you should know how difficult is it to often be the very same person you ordinarily hold in judgement. it’s tricky.

A friend of mine is in town this weekend because his father had a major-minor art opening in Manhattan on Thursday evening. It’s always an event when his father has an opening because his paintings, which are sort of a combination of Van Eyck’s formal composition and David Lynch’s subconscious, are painstakingly realized and therefore take months, sometimes years to complete. And this opening was pretty unusual. Not only was it tightly focused – consisting of just a single painting – it also shared an opening with a large exhibition of Paul Cadmus’ pencil and pastel portraits. Now, if you’re not familiar with the work of Paul Cadmus it means you’re either A) not a huge student of American painting or B) not a tremendous homosexual. Cadmus was incapable of NOT painting or drawing gayed up. Why is this important? Because the crowd gathered for his show – a show Mr. Cadmus could not enjoy personally because of the many inconveniences of being deceased – was intensely, eye-stabbingly gay. And not just sleeveless Chelsea-style gay. This was a swarm of Upper East Side, Old Moneyed, Over Fifty, Suspenders and Seersucker, Caring for Their Ailing Mothers, Bank President Gay. I have never seen a group assembled quite like this before. I counted four ascots before I grew weary.

In addition, Cadmus’ most recent long-term lover and most frequent model, Jon, was in attendance. He was signing books alongside the author of a recent book on Paul Cadmus, and the two figures side-by-side couldn’t have been more different. The author was strictly W.A.S.P. – pressed edges, Just For Men haircut, perfectly tucked in – while Jon, who is now in his 70s, was wearing his hair long, slicked back and dyed blonde and, rather than the shirt/tie/jacket combo established by the book’s author, opted for a shiny black lycra unitard boatneck top. In a word, it was Superstarriffic.

On another quick art note, this afternoon I went to the Richard Avedon portrait show at NYC’s Museum of Metropolitan Art. I love his portraits, though the absence of context for his subjects often deprives them of an emotional life. (unlike someone like nan goldin or larry clark.) There were a few portraits that still managed to really sit with me, including a diptych of Samuel Beckett. But one photograph, in particular, got stuck inside me. Avedon did a series of portraits of his own father, Jacob Israel Avedon, in the years leading up to his death. Without question the relationship between father and son and the obvious chronology of the photographs attributed to some of the series’ impact. The next-to-last picture stopped me dead. It shows Avedon’s father with an expression I can only describe as a perfectly natural mixture of Shock, Sadness, Amazement, and Disappointment. Isolated, this expression had nothing to compete with. It was a profound statement, something like, “Holy fuck, this is what happens?” It was like watching a man finally understand his own mortality completely – how painful and incredible and somewhat absurd it is all at once – and all he’s left with is this twisted, speechless expression. I spent a lot of time with this photograph and, before I waved goodbye, I couldn’t resist saying to myself and to Richard Avedon’s dad and anyone else within earshot, “No shit, Jacob.” I really feel like that crazy expression must be on my face everywhere I go, no matter what I do.

I just turned down a request to appear on The Ricki Lake Show. Before you gasp in disappointment and shock, let me explain. I’m still a whore; it’s just that I now consider myself the classy kind of whore.

Here’s what happened, though I still don’t quite understand it myself. I received a telephone call yesterday, and the woman’s voice on the other end asked me if I was Todd Levin. This has happened to me before, because there is another Todd Levin who is well-known in very small circles, mostly in Germany. I believe he used to be a “composer” of the type of contemporary music one might describe as “modern shitty”, and now he curates art shows. Anyhow, every once in a while I receive a phone call from someone with a German accent asking if I am him. I reply “nein” and carry on about my business.

Yesterday was different. First of all, the accent was New England middle-class. And then she asked if I was the Todd Levin who wrote a story on “male vanity” for GirlComic.Net. Yes. Yes I am. (i remember being embarrassed to tell the lady i was dating about this story, because it was so crass and she was so class.) Apparently, Ricki was doing a full show on the subject of male vanity and they’d found my article during their research. They loved me, or so they said. They needed me on their show, or so I was told. And here’s the part I really didn’t understand: they thought most of the material in that article was true. At one point in the conversation, the production assistant actually asked me if it was true that Edward Norton and Van Morrison had breast augmentation surgery. (i guess she forgot to ask about james joyce and cardinal o’connor – two of the other famous male figures i accused of under-going this same surgerical procedure.)

My immediate reaction was the same one I stuck with: no. Would I love to be on television? Absolutely. It would make a great story and, under the right circumstances, it could be fun and useful. But Ricki Lake? I asked the PA who the other guests would be. She mentioned a man who has invested $36,000 in cosmetic surgery, and another guy who once appeared on MTV’s “True Life: I’m Getting Plastic Surgery” (a hard-hitting episode that aired right on the heels of “true life: i’m horny in miami”) so he could share his calf implants with the rest of the retarded world.

I sized up the distinguished panel and quickly realized the show would go down something like this: I would crack a joke about how lame male vanity – and all vanity – really is, and the guy with giant calves would say something like “Well, look at you, chicken wing. Maybe you’re just jealous, with your ugly face!” And then all of my smart ideas and classy comebacks (“eat a dick sandwich, bitch”) would melt away and I would be reduced to tears. Because, as we all know, ideas have no place on Ricki Lake; only words. And more than that, no matter how clever and evolved I think I am, I still basically crave approval and love from everyone and that very basic need would result in being legitimately concerned about the opinions of a man who has had fake calves inserted into his legs. I would be sitting onstage for the remaining 40 minutes of the program, silent but wondering, “does this chair make me look fat?” That kind of thing doesn’t happen on Charlie Rose.