Bravo, André Balazs, bravo!

So I'm going home for Christmas next Monday and I'm super psyched about it. Yes, it will be great to see my family and spaaaaand some time (Vincent Gallo inflection from "Buffalo '66").

But to be honest, one of the things I'm really looking forward to is staying at the Standard Hotel again. I was so lucky to stay there last time I was in New York for work. The place is just fantastic and I wish I could live there all the time!

The High Line runs right through the Hotel. All the rooms have floor to ceiling windows with mesmerizing city views. The bath tubs are gigantic. The staff is cool and friendly. I frickin' love it there!

My happiest memory from my last visit was watching the surreal video installation that plays in the elevators. It's rather indescribable and really needs to be witnessed live, but I'll try to do it justice here.

I learned from Boardsmag.com that the installation, created by genius Marco Brambilla, is comprised of 300 looping film and CG-enhanced clips. It's absolutely hypnotic to watch on the high-def monitors in The Standard's elevators. As you go up, you ascend into Heaven. As you go down, you slide through Purgatory and fall into Hell - an intense way to start your morning on the way to work!

Here's a photo of the "Hell" part of the video:

The article on Boardsmag.com explains the story of how it all came together:

After seeing the director and video artist's work in a gallery last year, boutique hotelier Andre Balazs asked him to create a permanent installation to be displayed on high-definition monitors in the Standard's elevators.

Brambilla responded by creating Civilization, a video mural based on Dante's Divine Comedy that scrolls in synch with the movement of the 18-storey hotel's elevators. "The idea of doing a ‘video mural' had interested me for quite some time and the journey from hell to heaven depicted in this way seemed to be a good fit," he said in a statement about the work.

Produced by Toronto-based Crush, Civilization is comprised of 400 individual channels of looped clips: obscure film and stock footage, Hollywood movie moments and original CG imagery. Brambilla (who is repped for commercials by The Ebeling Group) spent three months researching and cataloguing footage before spending six weeks - working mostly at night - pasting together painterly collages in Flame and ordering them into a narrative journey: hell, lower purgatory, middle purgatory, upper purgatory, heaven, upper heaven and back to lower hell.

My absolute favorite detail of the entire installation: Michael Jackson dancing in heaven. Gets me every time.

You can watch the full video here!

There's been a lot written about André Balazs’ masterpiece hotel. Last Summer, The Standard gained some notorious sexy cred for the exhibitionist activity of a number of feisty hotel guests who had some fun with the giant windows.

The restaurant/club on the 18th Floor was dubbed the "The New Studio 54" by Jacob Bernstein in an article he wrote for the Daily Beast. I guess Madonna and Valentino party there. I definitely have to try to get up to the top this time around.

I'll say what up to Chloe Sevigny for you.