We're just wild about Harrys

Vanities

Let's give thanks, a little early, for Harry Blackmun, who turns 84 this month, and Harry Connick Jr., who turns out 11 and 25, a pair of new albums. About those Harrys: Justice Blackmun, the author of Roe v. Wade, is of course one of the Supreme Court's saving graces. Does the lesson of the Blackmun Surprise—he was an unknown, conservative-seeming Nixon appointee—inspire a bit more confidence in a certain unknown, conservative-seeming recent appointee to the Court? Well, no, but as for his namesake, Connick Jr., he's obviously resumed an album-naming habit begun five years ago with 20. (11 was recorded by the child Connick in 1978.) Will we still need him, will we still feed him, when he's (ready to release) 64? Connick is a hugely talented pianist and arranger, not to mention a whiz at Tetris, but he shares with Justice Blackmun an inability to sing like Sinatra. If Connick—or Blackmun—is offended by that comparison, so be it. (Frank himself can't possibly be offended, can he? It's just that despite the fairly likable fellow portrayed in the someholds-barred CBS mini-series Sinatra, we'd just.. .as soon.. .he weren't.. .offended.) Frank, the Hairys—we're all on a first-name basis this month, a jolly state of affairs reinforced by a glance at the committee for "A Venetian Serenade," on November 11 at the St. Regis in New York: right there between the H s and the J's is the single word "Ivana. " A phone call to the novelist's HQ to find out about the streamlining drew a refreshingly candid response: "Marketing." So the former Mrs. Trump is now a business concept in heels. (Future trivia quiz: "Ivana once had a last name. It was [a] Ciccone, [b] Sarkisian, [c] Leitch, [d] Trump.")

Another futuristic streamlined business concept: ordering quality clothes from TV. If Diane Von Furstenberg's idea—selling "somewhat collectibles" (all of them made of silk) on the cable channel QVC for two hours on November 7 (and every two months thereafter)—catches on, shoppers may soon give up the catalogues they've already abandoned the department stores for. But the bottom line this November is Fear and Sex. Richard Rhodes's Making Love: An Erotic Odyssey is already leering from the bookshelves, there to be joined by Mapplethorpe (the photographer, by the way, would have been 46 this month), Madonna's Sex, and Incest: The Unexpurgated Diary of Anais Nin 1932-1934. In the CD racks are Madonna's Erotica and new solo albums from a couple of tough guys who are frankly unafraid to keep their long-running day jobs—Keith Richards and Mick Jagger. (Even the Kinks, uncharacteristically sensing a trend, are readying a new album called Phobia.) This month will see a Friday the 13th, and the 50th birthdays of sex researcher Shere Hite and Martin Scorsese (whose Cape Fear colleagues, De Niro and Lange, are reunited in Irwin Winkler's down-by-theseamy-side Night and the City). London has its annual Royal Sex Maniac's Ball, Los Angeles the "Pleasures and Terrors of Domestic Comfort" (emphasis ours) exhibition at LACMA, and Paris—well, do not be alarmed by those huge, overfed shapes standing around the gardens of the Champs-Elysees. They are not disoriented American tourists at all—just sculptures by Fernando Botero, on view through January. (Do be alarmed, if you're in the L.A. area, by Robert Glenn Ketchum's powerful photographs of environmental mayhem, at the Huntington Library.) In Washington, loads of functionaries are deeply afraid for their jobs, especially if the prevailing mood continues to indicate that the only thing we have to fear is the Republican ticket itself. Finally, although fear and sex are implicit in this issue's striking cover, we're—precisely—afraid that V.F. may have missed another—yes—sexy cover opportunity: November 1992, after all, is the month Demi Moore turns 30.

GEORGE KALOGERAKIS