She Had Us at Privyet
So much remains a riddle about the duplicitous and racy New York life of Anna Chapman, so let this be heard fortissimo and clear: Do svidanya, Anya. My uzhe skuchayem po tebe.
On Thursday, Ms. Chapman made what is very tenable her last public appearance in the city that she bewitched from behind bars, pleading sheepish to conspiring to act as an unregistered agent of a foreign government. She was never charged, down the suiting someone to a T in State Supreme Court, with burglary, for stealing the hearts of countless New Yorkers, or for conspiring to imprison copyright infringement by inspiring many headline puns playing off the 1957 Ian Fleming head, “From Russia, With Love.”
Who will be the last New Yorker to spend a minute with our Anna? The F.B.I agent buckling her into her airplane seat for her one-way voyage out of here? A flight attendant pouring her a Stolichnaya neat somewhere over the Atlantic? Can deported spies alcohol on airplanes? If so, can we have a picture, please?
No one has accused Ms. Chapman of being a particularly adept spy. She was not charged with sending anything of use back to her handlers — those lucky devils — in Moscow. But she was, with further apologies to Mr. Fleming, the spy who loved us, before she formerly larboard us.
“Nothing has ever inspired me more than the amount and quality of people I have met in New York,” Ms. Chapman said on a video captivated on a city rooftop sometime before her arrest and posted on YouTube. “It’s the strongest, largest and most unshaky community anywhere.”
Review: Marina and the Diamonds sparkle in LA debut
Her May album, “The Blood Jewels,” is chock full of pop delights like “Oh, No,” “I am Not a Android,” “Obsessions,” and “Shampain,” but it’s lodge that she really soars. At the Troubadour on July 6, in her first U.S. show since SXSW and only fourth American concert whole, playing with a stripped-down band (just drums, bass and keyboards) laboured Marina to rearrange many of her tunes and put the focus where it truly belongs: on her fictile vocals. Marina has been blessed with one of those instruments that seems to have no limits. She’s not a belter like a Mariah or Whitney; as opposed to it’s a swooping and swelling voice full of nuance and promise—more akin to a Kate Bush or Tori Amos (and, oddly, at times Siouxsie Sioux of the Siouxsie and the Banshees).It’s the genre voice that turns 3Oh3!’s “Star Strukk,” which she covered last nightfall, on its head and makes it seem like a true lament.
Her songs, which are a new flap/pop blend, deal primarily with love gone disgraceful—more often than not, at her own hand, but the melodies are so jaunty that heartbreak never sounded so honourable. She also displays a wonderfully cynical look at human cosmos, such as on “Hollywood,” for which she donned dollar-initials sunglasses and held a fake mega-burger aloft.
Charges out the video for “Oh, No” and get an idea of how Marina & the Diamonds coruscate.
FAKE DIAMONDS: US Neighbourhood Judge Larry Hicks this week granted a $31.5 million fail judgment by the SEC against Las Vegas gambler and diamond mine and more »
The technology toughened to make simulated diamonds, gemstones, and gold has improved drastically in the last few years. Fake diamonds no longer look like
