So far, Luscious Jackson’s brand of cool is working for them. ““Fever In Fever Out,’’ their third album, is the sleeper success of the year. With sales of more than 260,000, it’s holding tight in the upper reaches of Billboard’s top 100, and the slinky single ““Naked Eye’’ just broke into the top 40. ““Fever In Fever Out’’ is utterly unconventional girl-pop: it straddles the borders of techno, hip-hop, rock and bubblegum, using gorgeously moody keyboard and drum textures to suggest the nowhere zones between love and lust. Cunniff, Glaser, Trimble and Schellenbach (all single, more or less, and all 30-ish) obsessively recount the head trips lovers play on one another. ““Last night I came into your home/To break some ice and throw some stones,’’ Cunniff says in ““Naked Eye.’’ But their sexiness is controlled. When Cunniff whispers, ““Wearing nothing is divine/Naked is a state of mind,’’ she sounds more intimidating than titillating, like she wants you under her thumb.
Luscious Jackson developed their hipster edge in New York, where Glaser, Cunniff and Schellenbach all grew up (Trimble, who joined the band last, grew up in different places around Europe). In their teens they ran with a group of friends that included the Beastie Boys. ““That was a magical time for New York,’’ Glaser says. ““There you are in 1980 or ‘81, coming of age and seeing amazing bands play: Kurtis Blow, Grandmaster Flash, John Lurie, the Bad Brains. It was like anything goes–girls playing, guys playing, it didn’t matter.’’ The Beastie Boys signed Luscious Jackson to their label, Grand Royal, a connection that eventually backfired somewhat. ““It was like “Beastie Boys protEgEes’,’’ says Cunniff. ““People thought the Beastie Boys produced us. It’s like, why don’t you look at the record and see what the credits say? We produced ourselves.’’ ““Fever In Fever Out’’ has the girls’ fluid, sultry stamp all over it. Their cool sophistication is contemporary, but their smarts are timeless.
title: “New York State Of Mind” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-07” author: “Thelma Chang”
PEYSER: Many actors who become famous abandon theater. So why are you two still here? PARKER: It’s not that one is superior to the other. I love our other job. But theater is just so liberating–to be responsible for your own skills. NIXON: It’s like something being homemade. There’s such a small group of people involved in a quiet room. You’re much more of a worker.
How difficult is it for actors to come back to the theater? NIXON:It’s much more fluid than it used to be. It used to be you were either a stage actor, a film actor or a TV actor. PARKER: You can scare yourself away from it. If you don’t work in the theater enough, the idea of doing it, if you wait too long, is too horrifying. I’ve heard Meryl Streep say it was a scary idea to come back.
What’s your scariest theater moment? NIXON: I was playing Anya in “The Cherry Orchard.” I had to come on and say, “I just heard a moment ago that the cherry orchard has been sold.” But I forgot the entrance. I’m standing in the wings, but I didn’t come on. Everything ground to a halt. The play couldn’t proceed until this information was delivered. So an actress came on stage and tried to fix it, but she didn’t know the line. She said, “I just heard backstage that the cherry orchard has been sold.” Improvising Chekhov is a bad idea. PARKER: I threw up during “Annie.” NIXON: Onstage? PARKER: No, the prop man had a garbage can in the wings. I went off and Mr. Warbucks said, “Annie will be right back.”
Do audiences react to you differently now that you’re TV people? PARKER: Waa! We’re not TV people, are we? NIXON: We won’t be for long. But we are for the moment. PARKER: It doesn’t seem different to me. New York audiences are very sophisticated. They’re pretty much there to see the play. NIXON: They clap when I come out now.
Didn’t they do that before? NIXON: Occasionally. No, not really.
Does working in the city feel different since Sept. 11? PARKER: We were both supposed to start rehearsals on Sept. 11. NIXON: I actually started on the 10th, so we had one day. PARKER: It’s been a big part of our rehearsal and running the show, trying to incorporate this malaise, this new way of living. It does get in there. You leave whatever dark hole you’re rehearsing in and it’s sad.
“Sex and the City” is such a city-girl romp. Will the tragedy affect that vibe? NIXON: There was this interesting article a few weeks ago about how Sept. 11 changed single people in the city. It makes them feel more single in the negative way. Our show already had that, but you’ll see it particularly in episodes airing in January. PARKER: I think about it a lot. New York City was kind of this fifth lady of our show, this snow globe. I feel even more connected to the city than I ever have since Sept. 11. But we always had a huge, profound sadness. It’s too easy to say that our show is four women running around looking for an orgasm.
Cynthia, I read that you’d like to be doing “Sex and the City” in 20 years. Really? NIXON: I’m not a very creative thinker. I find something I like, I want more and more of it. I really like this job, so I’m like, this is good. I’ll have seconds, please. PARKER: I just went into shock. In 20 years? Still, the world has changed so much in the last month. There are so many more stories to tell than there were a month ago.
Are you at all like your TV alter egos? PARKER: Carrie’s life is so different from mine. I love the person she’s become. I love the discovery of her moral compass, that there’s integrity about her, and that she’s so flawed. But she’s very different from me. NIXON: Miranda’s very aggressive, very confident, but she’s not very good at intimacy. I am very good at intimacy and I am not particularly aggressive or confrontational. Miranda just wants to be alone a lot.
You must be tired of that question. NIXON: They asked my mother on “Intimate Portrait,” how are Cynthia and Miranda alike? And my mother said, “They look an awful lot alike.” PARKER: That is a really good answer.
title: “New York State Of Mind” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-23” author: “David Brown”
The connection between Mukasey and Giuliani runs deep: Mukasey’s son, Marc, is a lawyer at Bracewell and Giuliani, the Republican presidential hopeful’s law firm. The son was also one of three lawyers who represented Giuliani last year when Bronx, N.Y., prosecutors sought Rudy’s grand-jury testimony as part of their Kerik probe. (Kerik avoided jail by pleading guilty in the summer of 2006 to minor local corruption charges.) Kerik’s lawyer, Kenneth Breen, confirmed to NEWSWEEK that the federal investigation of his client is ongoing, but he added that Kerik rejected a plea deal offered by the Feds several months ago because “he paid his taxes and did nothing wrong.”
