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From DallasVoice.com Digs
"Oh, listen to yourself: clock, ticking, race. Your vocabulary is all wrong," Maxwell says from her apartment in the SoHo district of Manhattan. "Life is not a deadline. Let life be the moment and you'll be just fine." That might be easy for her to say. But Maxwell has a point happy people usually have more energy. "Time is funny. If you think you don't have enough time, then you won't," she says. "But when you start thinking, "'I have enough time to do everything I want,' then time magically expands. It's very true. Try it, and you'll see." As the gracious host of a domestic science show on the Style Network, Maxwell regularly doles out wisdom to help improve one's life. New Year's Day will mark her eighth anniversary. That's when Sander left the fashion business "I could never get beyond assistant designer," she explains and emerged as Brini on a cable access show in New York. With segments like "How to beautify your pet's burial plot," Maxwell's show is hoot. But it's also utilitarian. And the punchlines never rely on Brini pulling up her skirt to reveal she's a guy. "I actually have a lot of conservative fans. That's because I present a lot of conservative-friendly ideas that are based on courtesy and respect," she explains. Her modus operandi is strictly retro. Not only is Maxwell's fashion and cultural sense bracketed off from 1958 to 1974, so is her ideology. "We were all communing together during the feel-good hippie movement. And in 1970s, we stood back and said, "'Well, that didn't work," she says. And thus, the Me Generation was born, "which gave birth to a highly competitive era that was characterized by gunplay in the rap community and Reaganomics," Maxwell says. "It was a step in the wrong direction. So it's nice to think about returning to a time when people cared about how they interacted with others and appreciated when people were courteous. That's what conservatives appreciate about what I do." Maxwell first visited Dallas in 1983. Her mom, stage actress Mary Jane Wells, starred in "The Idiot" at Theatre Three. "I loved Dallas. That was the height of the oil-boom era, where the women wore big shoulders and even bigger hair," Maxwell says. As 2006 draws near, many gay Texans are trying to figure out how to overcome the last election, when voters overwhelmingly supported a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriages. In fact, gays all over the U.S. have wondered why queer Texans would want to remain residents of such a crimson state. "Yes, I was sadly disappointed to hear that news," Maxwell says. So what does Maxwell recommend to start the year off on the right foot? "Right now, I'm reading Deepak Chopra's fascinating "'The Book of Secrets.' He explains that everything you see in the world is a reflection of something going on within you," she says. "So the gay community in Texas needs to look within itself to figure out why it's created such a divisive situation." Say what? Does she mean that we're to blame and that we brought this amendment on ourselves? "Oh dear, no. What I mean to say is we should take back control that we've created our realities. And if we don't like the situation, we don't allow them to have control. We figure out what we can do to create something better," she says. Has the well-mannered Brini Maxwell ever confronted anyone? "I am very much an avoider of confrontation," she laughs. "It's not something I do well. So I've developed quite a few mechanisms for sliding out from confrontation." Her diffusion tactics? "I purposefully ignore the situation, or I just pretend that I don't understand what they're talking about," she explains. If there's anyone Brini Maxwell has been molded after, it's Sue Ann Nivens, the homemaking expert that Betty White played on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show." But with a simple flip of the hair, Sue Ann always had a searing barb ready to toss at anyone who stood in her way. "Oh, I think I would frustrate Sue Ann considerably. I find that clueless avoidance can be quite effective," she says. Maybe Brini's philosophy is effective. At least she doesn't claim to be perfect. As for time management during the holidays, she says sometimes it's okay not to finish a project. "We all have that problem where things have come up where we're stitching on our gowns as we're riding down the elevator to the ball," she says. This year, Maxwell finished getting out her Christmas cards. And she didn't buy many gifts, she made them mostly needlepoint creations. She's hosting two holiday parties, has attended about five, volunteered at two fundraising galas, and last week bought a homeless person lunch at a deli. But Maxwell says she never skimps on sleep, the polar opposite of Martha Stewart, who always boasts that she only gets five hours a night. "Well, Martha has it all wrong," she says. "Just throw the clock away. Concentrate on what you need to get done, and truly believe you have the time to do it." IT'S A WRAP In her new book "Brini Maxwell's Guide to Gracious Living," ($19.95, Stewart Tabori & Chang), Brini offers creative gift-wrapping tips. - Wallpaper is a fun choice, but look for interesting and vintage specimens at thrift shops and tag sales. - Use those old posters to wrap large gifts. - Feeling especially creative? Make your own wrapping paper with large sheets of paper. Bust out the crayons, rubber stamps and sticker collections. © Copyright by DallasVoice.com |
