Mamma Biscuit has coined this week as Christmas Village Week—and if we had our way, public schools would be off the entire week so that children nationwide could stay home and work on their own festive village in the medium of their choice. Anyway, all week long, we Biscuits will be highlighting some of our most intense obsessions with Christmas displays involving paper and ceramic villages and all the detailed accessories that go along with it! So to kick-start it all off, we have decided to bring you Mamma’s snowy village in cake-form—specifically, a yummy, vegan nutmeg cinnamon cake! That’s right, there is such a mold for such a display. Knowing how much I love Christmas villages, my art director went all out last year by gifting me a snowy village cakelet pan from Williams-Sonoma. This nonstick cast-aluminum pan bakes six miniature cottages and is a must-have for any serious baker during the holidays.
Now this is what the pan looks like (photo courtesy of William-Sonoma.)
And this is what the award-winning, professional photoshop wizards at Williams-Sonoma have generated as a possible outcome from using such a baking mold. (Again, photo courtesy of William-Sonoma.)
Now this is what Mamma and the Biscuits have come up with.
Yeah, I know, it’s a bit of a mess but the process of decorating this village was way more fun than those horrid ginger bread houses—afterall, I like to play Godzilla with my edible village by simply mouthing a house as a quick snack. Don’t worry though, these homes are insured with Allstate, they’ll get their money back! Now let me make a few suggestions before any of you make an attempt at creating this at home:
1) Spray the hell out of the inside of those molds with nonstick spray so that all the details stay intact when you remove each house from the pan. Trust me, the last thing you want is a village looking like the remnants of stone houses in Pompeii!
2) Don’t get discouraged once you loosen these cottages from their molds—the details come alive as soon as you sprinkle powdered sugar over them (especially on the tiling of the roofs)
3) Make sure you decorate each home with icing before you position all of the homes in their specific spots—it reduces your chances of smudging.
4) Use shredded coconut to fill in the uneven gaps at the bottom of each home and to generally anchor any accessories like candy canes or pipe-cleaner trees.
Mamma Biscuit contributed so much to the creation of this display! She positioned herself right at our feet and while we were mixing the batter and preparing our icing, she stared at us intensely with her glazed eyes—just waiting for a morsel of batter to fall on the floor!
Happy Baking and Enjoy!
12 Days until Christmas, If you haven’t locked yourself in your car to scream it out, then there is something wrong with you!
It’s about that time of year when the December air is crisp and cold and the northerly winds in New York City beckon the Biscuit Family to head north to the outer boroughs of the boogie-down-Bronx for an annual visit to the insane Christmas display at the Garabedian Household! Located on a small plot of land on Pelham Parkway North in the Baychester neighborhood of the Bronx, this average, two-story home (inhabited by the most amazingly insane Italian-American family) comes alive with the biggest display of Christmas fuckery on the planet—all of which can be viewed from Thanksgiving until the Epiphany (6th) in January! Now most Italian-Americans would site great artists such as Leonardo Da Vinci, Caravaggio, Gianni Versace, Dante Alighieri, Valentino or even Christopher Columbus as proud cultural Icons, but not me! No, the only thing that makes me proud to be Italian-American (aside from Madonna, and well, Lady Gaga, I’ll throw her a bone) is the Garabedian Family and their totally inappropriate and surreal Christmas display!
Now, there is something so incredibly inappropriate and downright wrong but OH-SO-RIGHT about placing a life-size, movable Nativity scene overlooking a hodgepodge of hypersexualized mannequins of celebrities like Cher, Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, Liberace, Audrey Hepburn, Rita Hayworth, Diana Ross, Superman, and Michael Jackson! It’s as if Madame Tussauds Wax Museum purged an entire lot of celebrity wax figures that were deemed too sexual for the viewing public and somehow, the Garabedians got their bloated hands all over them with their own ideas for a Christmas display! Something tells me that Mary, Joseph and Jesus are extremely unhappy with their room at this inn—what can I say, they should have booked a room through Expedia, especially during the Christmas season! Now they’ll have to suffer as Mary gives birth right next door to this Sodom and Gomorrah after-hours party—and I’m sure she’ll be calling the front desk with a plethora of noise complaints between her contractions!
Anyway, this massive Christmas display features more than 170 mannequins, 50 cherubs, 10 hooved animals—be it reindeer or horses—many celebrities, fairy tale characters and one baby Jesus—all rotated for display throughout the years. I’m utterly sad and disappointed to report that I did not see one damn Madonna in this blasphemous mess! NOT ONE! The King of Pop seemed so lonely without that hag standing next to him in a Blond Ambition cone-bra corset—afterall, she is the Queen of Pop and although she goes by the name Esther these days and would rather hang out with Rabbi Shmuley at the Kabbalah Center, she wouldn’t want to miss the birth of Jesus Christ in the boogie-down-Bronx, especially if Jelly Bean Benitez intends to spin a set at this event! Needless to say this Christmas display is no joke! The Garabedian Family have been working on it each year since 1973, when matriarch Nelly Garabedian, a former seamstress, decided to “give back to the community†and started this visual assault on everyones good taste! Gary Garabedian (Nelly’s son), his father and his two sisters decided to carry on the tradition that started when Gary was just 7 years old. Can you believe it? Nelly started hoarding Christmas paraphernalia when Gary was 7—I envy these people! The theme that Nelly wanted for this display was to make it look like the movie stars were coming to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ and boy have they succeeded in that—10 fold!
The latest additions to their collection are three large fiberglass figures of Alvin and the Chipmunks, which the Garabedians snagged this summer from a house in Connecticut, why? I have no idea but at this point, they could put Joan of Arc burning at the stake right next to a sexy mannequin wearing a garter belt and knee-high-knock-me-down-fuck-me-boots in black patent leather and no one would bat an eyelash. Gary promises the addition of Elvis Presley, Spider-Man, a new nativity scene and Barbie mannequins in Bob Mackie costumes next year, so that gives us yet another reason to continue with this pilgrimage every year!
Gary has gone on record to say, “Every free moment we have during the year we are working on this display, we learned how to make our own fiberglass and now create our own molds for the mannequins during the summer. Then we buff them, prime them, paint them and clothe them.†They do all of this and then store many of the figures at his brother’s house upstate during the off-season. I envy these Christmas over-achievers. They make my Christmas display at the pug palace seem like Christmas at a low-income, Jehovah’s Witnesses’ household!
Now if you thought putting up a table-top Christmas tree from the dollar store was exhausting and too intrusive with your busy New York City schedule, the Garabedians can make you look like an incompetent vegetable by comparison. The male mannequins stay outside permanently during the holiday season, covered by large plastic bags when it rains or snows, but each evening at 5 p.m. the Garabedians haul out the female mannequins, which each weigh nearly 45 pounds. Then, when the crowd dies down, around 11 p.m., they bring the females back inside to store overnight so their gowns, furs and boas are not ruined by the weather. Yeah, now that’s commitment!
Now I know you are all thinking about their electrical bill but these folks have that covered too. All those lights and moving dolls use a fair amount of energy. The Garabedian house, which now uses 800 amps of electricity, has entertained numerous visits from Con Edison and once, over 30 years ago, shut down all the lights on the other side of the parkway. Con Edison actually grants this family a free month of electricity so that they can continue on with their insane Christmas display—and all of that money that people shove through the chain-link fence that surround this plot of yard gets donated to their local church! I guess the old adage is correct, even for Christmas: SEX SELLS (I knew my girl Madonna was onto something the moment she revealed her perfectly sculpted breasts to sell a record.) Anyway, Mamma Biscuit somehow garnished herself some attention in front of this massive display of moving dolls! The crowd loved her just as much as they loved looking at a set of religious statues looking down on a brothel of sexy mannequins—and that made our visit all the more memorable! To conclude this post, we implore you to watch Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas†music video which was partly filmed right in front of the Garabedian house back in the day. If Mariah Carey has given this display her stamp of holiday approval, than you know it’s something to see for yourself!
15 Days
10 Hours
7 Minutes
Full-blown anxiety attack is right around the corner!
Coming off the broken and shoddy heels that have been reattached (by way of a hot glue gun) onto the cheap pair of shoes known as Gaga’s Workshop at Barneys New York, Mamma Biscuit brings to you all the exquisite and unbelievably detailed holiday windows of Bergdorf Goodman. The theme this year is Carnival of the Animals and David Hoey, Bergdorf’s director of visual presentation, and the entire visual team at large have created a masterpiece that would make Lady Gaga run off into a corner somewhere between the Petites and the Juniors departments at Barneys to weep from embarrassment! Shoot, these windows are so exquisite and amazing they would make Simon Doonen contemplate a career change! In a span of one block, we Biscuits were transported into several unique worlds of animals from around the world—from tundra to the tropics, and everything in between! So come along and check them out but please excuse the harsh reflections in some of these photos (although at second glance, those reflections sort of add a beautiful layer of urban texture). The windows were incredibly hard to photograph in the daylight and in their entirety because of their enormous dimensions coupled with the limitations of a frantic and sometimes chaotic viewing crowd!
So we started our tour with this incredible paper window and honestly, I couldn’t have imagined that the windows could get better than this—and when they did, we were flabbergasted! Over 300 different papers were used in black, gray and white to create all of the monochromatic animals adorning this window of swirling books and literature describing all of the animals in our kingdom!
It almost seemed comical how the mannequin wearing that beautiful, long black and white lace dress by Marchesa paled in comparison to that giant and gorgeous zebra handcrafted from paper! I want that damn zebra in my living room ASAP, does anyone have David Hoey’s phone number?
From paper animals we went deep-sea diving into the aquarium window (below) showcasing an array of fish made by artist Brett Windham that were all encrusted with mosaic tiles, rhinestones, gems, and sequins. Now my camera couldn’t possibly capture how incredible this window was but in real-life and up close, it’s an aqua-disco of high-fashion and sophistication! All those gorgeous aqua-marine colors were so saturated and lush that you actually wanted to swim through that vignette and scour the reef for some Van Cleef & Arpels—all in a flowing bone-colored gown made of silk and organza of course!
Totally wet from diamonds, gems and rhinestones, we dried ourselves off in this wooden menagerie of animals from around the world. Despite some really harsh reflections within our photos, this window was incredibly impressive and jam packed with some of the most amazing sculptures of apes and monkeys all made from mahogany wood—not to mention an incredible frame around the entire perimeter of the window made of pine cones.
From there we shuffled Mamma Biscuit off to a very luxurious polar party in the tundra where the animals were crafted out of heavy, ivory upholstery and bundles of tassels while a crystal chandelier dripped like ice above the stacks of white pastries and a mannequin decked out in fur and chiffon!
From the North Pole, we shuffled off to the tropics featuring a gaggle of birds made of metal by 1970’s artist Sergio Bustamante. Again, despite some really harsh reflections, this window was incredibly impressive and the top portion of the window hung a gigantic eagle made completely out of brass!
Carnival of the Animals is a fantasy of luxury and impeccable craftsmanship bursting through each window in all of it’s holiday glory, and we Biscuits thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it! Now if we can only drag our 5th Avenue puggy off this expensive strip and back into reality—125th Street is more our speed!
17 days until Christmas, let the night sweats begin!
While the rest of America is dreaming of a white Christmas, Mamma Biscuit has her mind and her heart set on something pink and something pork—namely pigs! Can you blame the bitch? Her frame, appetite and abrupt snorting is highly reminiscent of the barnyard creature so this dream (or beautiful nightmare) is obvious—she can relate!
Now what better way to pay homage to the pig during the holiday season than to devote an entire tree display adorned with vintage Russian pig ornaments? Actually, there is no better way, so that’s exactly what our little gremlin has done to deck the halls of our bedroom. That’s right—standing in a glass vase alongside our bed is this menagerie of vintage glass pigs, plastic dogs, miniature disco balls, red and white sateen-string balls and some flocked Christmas mice characters. Basically, standing alongside our bed is the gayest Christmas display you have ever laid your eyes on. I don’t think a holiday collaboration between Richard Simmons, Lady Gaga, Rupaul and Adam Lambert could yield gayer results than this tree display! If the LGBT Community needed a tree for a holiday float, this would be it—hands down.
At any rate, we have been collecting these Russian Christmas ornaments for a few years now and although they are super rad-looking, they are incredibly hard to come by. Ebay has done us very well in landing an entire lot of them in original boxes stamped with “Made in the U.S.S.R.†in ink on the backside of the box! I can just envision an angry, old, bloated battle-axe left over from the Stalin years packing these ornaments into their respective boxes—and somehow, that idea comforts me.
Anyway, slowly but surely, Mamma Biscuit will be rolling out her blog posts showcasing how she decks the halls at the pug palace so stay tuned for more, this is just the tip of the Christmas icicle!
19 days until Christmas, panic has not set in just yet!
Enjoy
Looks like Santa’s original and iconic workshop has some stiff competition this year with Lady Gaga’s Holiday Workshop at Barneys Department Store on 60th Street and Madison Avenue in New York City! Now you know Mamma Biscuit wouldn’t miss visiting this mess for the world—especially since she is so damn critical of the LADY and her references to a certain Blond Ambition who will remain nameless throughout this post! Anyway, for those of you who don’t know, this workshop/reinterpretation (including window displays) is a collaboration between Lady Gaga and renowned creative artists Eli Sudbrack and Christophe Hamaide Pierson of Assume Vivid Astro Focus (AVAF), and Mugler Creative Director and Lady Gaga Fashion Director, Nicola Formichetti. For the first time ever, Barneys New York has converted the entire fifth floor of the Men’s Store of its Madison Avenue flagship (just what the gay boys really wanted for Christmas) into a Gagafied workshop and boy was this an ambitious attempt at exploiting celebrity mass-appeal in hopes of getting people to shop in this awful economy! The experience was quite fun but the price points for most of the merchandise up at the workshop were beyond exorbitant!
OK, let’s start with the window displays, shall we? First off, Mamma Biscuit became the main attraction around that crowd of onlookers as Tommy and I posed for photos while viewing the window installations. Our little gremlin was such a hit that even Bill Cunningham, photographer for the New York Times felt compelled to snap his camera into a frenzy the moment Mamma’s mug caught his attention—and that’s no joke people! Now there’s nothing quite like the experience of a pug distracting a large, fickle group of adolescents who were obnoxiously singing along to Marry The Night at a Lady Gaga window installation. I just love that Mamma Biscuit can break that cool facade of a teenager and get them to buckle to their knees from her unbearable cuteness—and that’s exactly what happened!
But back to those windows again. The true gem of the four windows was Gaga’s Boudoir made completely out of hair. This hairy vignette was impeccably done and well thought out, although we tried not to get too close as we didn’t want our little Biscuit to choke on a hairball. Now Mamma Biscuit had already guessed that Lady Gaga was going to infuse hair and wigs into the window display so this came as no surprise but we were disappointed that there was a lack of cohesion from one window to the next. It would have been really great to have continued with this narrative and had seen another window or two depicting other rooms in Gaga’s fictitious living environment—all utilizing hair. How awesome would it have been to walk from Gaga’s Boudoir to Gaga’s living room and have an entire Christmas tree made of hair—ornaments and all? No such luck though.
The other three windows were really lack luster, unrelated and a bit under whelming in my opinion. A mermaid floating in what looked like a crystal cave and a take on Nick Knights’ half Gaga/half motorcycle rendered in a bastardized Umberto Boccioni sort-of-way really solidified the lack of visual cohesion and made it a bit amateurish for our taste. More importantly, the windows left Mamma Biscuit wondering: where was the Christmas in all of this?!
So we continued on around the corner and through the side entrance to check out the actual wokshop on the 5th floor. Upon entering the floor, we were greeted by a giant Gaga sculpture reclining on fragmented glass and spikes and extremely hot temperatures and humidity—which hit us like a sequin-encrusted brick wall! It was too damn hot in there people, and it wasn’t even that crowded!
As we walked around we were bombarded with many different items all related to Lady Gaga and her iconic style. We passed by a rack of highly over-priced and unadorned motorcycle jackets that infuriated the crap out of me. Now anyone who knows me personally knows that motorcycle jackets are my thing (especially vintage ones) and in my opinion, I would never recommend that any little monster purchase such a crappy jacket at the workshop when they can simply head down to St. Marks Place and buy a fully studded motorcycle jacket alla Vivienne Westwood punk at Search and Destroy for literally, half the price—and the look would be more Gaga then what she had on the racks in her workshop! The sunglasses that were on display were also incredibly overpriced and could be easily recreated (cheaply) with a quick visit to Home Depot for clear, woodshop goggles followed by a quick stop at Michaels Craft Store for lace fabric, studs and a hot glue gun! Mamma and I were stunned at such baffling prices—it’s as if Lady Gaga wanted us to believe that we were at a Chrsities auction placing a bid on a piece of jewelry from Elizabeth Taylor’s private collection!
However, I will say that the energy and the vibe was totally fun up there and the gays really love their Gaga! We did have a super-fun little Gaga moment at the hair-bow booth where I hand-selected a cyan and black hair bow to compliment Mamma’s black and white houndstooth coat—and the crowd of onlookers loved it! That fun moment immediately dissipated once I reached the Christmas ornament section of the workshop! I mean really, a tiny, crappy resin rendition of Nick Knights’ Born This Way motorcycle Gaga for 25 bucks? NO THANK YOU! Why didn’t she have any glass ornaments in that very style? Or how about a wig ornament or a hair bow ornament with a poinsettia detail? I was expecting to see some glass blown ornaments of Alexander McQueen’s armadillo shoe (they had giant chocolates in that shape) but again, no such luck! What we got was a cross between an art installation of Gaga’s shoes, sunglasses and tea cup on sale alongside ill-conceived products that people could realistically purchase but wouldn’t really want to buy after examining the quality more closely!
All in all, Gaga’s workshop seemed less about artistic quality and more about half-baked quantity at inflated prices. Now Mamma is a huge Andy Warhol/Keith Haring fan and by no means did this worskshop come close to a Factory of any kind but I’m guessing that was Lady Gaga’s intentions. The vibe was super fun, the music was turned way up and people were generally having a great time—and that definitely made up for where it lacked. Hey, that counts for something! At any rate, this workshop, like Lady Gaga is a part of pop culture and a must-see for anyone who lives in New York City, or simply visiting. Just be warned, if you do not fit into the impressionable-little-monster category then you may leave yearning for a Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers take on Santa’s workshop—that’s how Mamma felt on the way out; she was glad she made an appearance but totally relieved to get the hell out! It was really hot in there!
Christmas is only 22 days away—the pressure is mounting!
MEDIA ALERT: what a delight it was to have actually made it into the Sunday Style section of the New York Times. Bill Cunningham photographed a montage of men in New York City for a piece entitled Off Leash and I’m so honored that I was included in this list of most daring men in fashion! Moreover, Mamma Biscuit made the cut too in her fabulous houndstooth coat—how EXCITING! Check out the humble little photo on the left, midway down of our little gremlin in my arms while we’re both looking at some of the photos we had just taken in front of the Gaga Workshop Windows on our digital camera—printed piece below!
And here is a screen shot of the full length photo taken from the video piece on the New York Times website!
