I made it to Park City this past weekend for my first-ever Sundance Film Festival! I have never seen so many people smushed into such a tiny town. The sliver of real estate known as Main Street is truly overrun…
Here is my friend Rhett and I with director Morgan Spurlock at the after-party for his new film “The Greatest Movie Ever Sold,” quite possibly the worst photo ever taken of me:
I’m as big a salon snob as any urbanite, which I why I was so thrilled when I broke my big city-salon only rule and tried out Lunatic Fringe when I was recently in Salt Lake City.
From the second I stepped into the place, in the city’s gayish Sugar House section, I felt my stresses disappear in this oasis of clipping calm. After introductions more fitting for a first date (it’s that friendly Rocky Mountain way), I was whisked into the warm “Lather Lounge,” where my hair advisor Jon spent no fewer than five minutes rubbing all that ails my hair out of it with various tea tree potions.
Afterward a lengthy consultation on the merits of various styles, he sliced away, giving me a look certainly more fitting for NYC than SLC. And all it took to finish off was tonic lotion, thickening spray, and Surf Spray and Sumo Tech (whatever that is) from Bumble and bumble. I can’t recommend the place enough…(seriously.)
As I swooped into the Salt Lake Valley the other day, I was shocked to see how bad the air quality seemed as soon as we got below the peaks of the Wasatch Front. Turns out it was pretty bad — everyone I spoke with in Salt Lake commented on how bad the air quality was, and the AP reported that it was some of the worst air quality conditions in years. Who knew the inversion effect was so bad in Utah?
Don’t piss off the gays! It seems Utah will be bearing the brunt of California’s vote to ban marriage for same-sex couples. A movement has begun to boycott the state as a result of the LDS Church’s involvement in the California Prop 8 fiasco. On top of that, there is an urging by activists to have the IRS pull the church’s tax-exempt status (one of the requirements of being tax-exempt is not participating in excessive lobbying.)
“The main focus is going to be going after the Utah brand,” John Aravosis, an influential Washington, D.C.-based blogger, told the Associated Press. “We’re going to destroy the Utah brand. It is a hate state.”
Last night thousands took to the streets around Temple Square in Salt Lake to again hold the Mormon Church’s feet to the fire for its involvement. One great sign: “Let’s keep intolerance INSIDE the church.”
Related: Thousands protest in Salt Lake City
I’m not sure I could be a bigger booster of Kimpton Hotels, like the Hotel Monaco in Salt Lake City, even if they gave me free rooms. Ever since my first stay at the Monaco about five years ago, I’ve been in love with the Kimpton chain and its hip and comfy rooms. Besides the Monaco SLC, I’ve done the Pacific Palisades and the Palomar, and of course hung out at the Nine Zero in Boston — and I love them all.
Globe columnist Alex Beam takes a whack at Brokeback Mountain in his latest column. He criticizes the film’s “pretentious, useless soundtrack,” and says moviegoers should be prepared to “endure the heavy-handed morality play; just don’t plan on having a good time.” Though I’m not necessarily in the business of defending the super-hyped film, I disagree with his assessment of the film.
Others do as well. A well-crafted letter to the editor today said, “Alex Beam is free and welcome to state his negative opinion of the film ‘Brokeback Mountain,’ but he makes distorted and misleading assertions about the film and its reception by the public that seem to indicate an effort to cast the film in a negative light.”
Tonight my friend Kim and I took a post-dinner stroll around Temple Square, the world famous home to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. If you’ve never seen the Salt Lake Temple (I prefer to call it Cinderella’s Castle) in person, it’s truly a site to behold. The place is at once fascinating, beautiful, eerie, and bizarre.
Call me crazy, but the last time I was in Salt Lake City, three years ago, I fell in love with the place. Great restaurants, coffee, and shopping — not to mention the most dramatic setting of any landlocked U.S. city. While people may associate Denver with the mountains, they’re only in the distance there (the Mile High City is merely the last city on the Plains); in Salt Lake, the mountains are in your face.
