Real-life chicklit
Tuesday, March 30, 2004
Hooray! The Vivienne Westwood exhibition opens at the V&A on Thursday, so she gets to be my older goddess of the day. What a fantastic lady. I love her frocks. I love her hairdo. I love the way she totally refuses to "dress her age" (whatever the hell that means, anyway). I love the way she doesn't give a fuck and always seems to be having a great time. I love the fact that she's got a gorgeous toyboy. I love the way she designs clothes that make curvy women look fantastic. Gawd bless 'er. She's a national institution.
Here are a few lines of silence in tribute to the late, great Alistair Cooke, who was a fine, fine broadcaster in the old-fashioned way.
I used to listen to Letter From America with my dad when I was a kid and found it incredibly boring but it was an early influence on my journalistic ambitions and anyway, now I've grown up I can appreciate the quality. And he had a damn good innings - working until you're 95, dammit, that's stamina.
Word of the day: chipper, courtesy of Cooke's final Letter from America, which illustrates as well as anything else his restrained but lovely use of language.
Monday, March 29, 2004
Friday, March 26, 2004
The conspiracy to keep hippies out of the Glastonbury festival and only allow in super-organised people who understand capitalism continues. Crikey. I mean, I'm pretty together considering the legacy of my many years of recreational narcotic abuse, but even I find this a bit much to get my head around.
Still, if it means tickets can't be sold on Ebay for the ridiculous mark-ups that people were putting on them last year, I guess it's a good thing.
The thing is, there are other festivals that are as good as Glastonbury, but it's getting all your mates together to go to the same one... and going to more than one is getting increasingly expensive. With the amount Lost Vagueness were charging for their last party, I can't help thinking that maybe setting up a tent, a CD player and a pot of mushroom tea in my friends' garden wouldn't be a better option after all.
So last night I dreamed I wasworking as a dentist's receptionist in a room with no windows (hey Freud!) and going out with Eminem. I kept getting hounded by the press who wanted to know if we were getting married and I kept saying "give us a chance, we've only been seeing each other a month". Odd. I'd like to state for the record that I have never found Eminem to be remotely attractive, although a talented enough chap, and he's nothing compared to my wonderful boyfriend.
Bessie is on holiday and I miss her! Bessie, if you have managed to remove yourself from the golden sands of your Goan beach and from the attentions of volleyball-playing, bleached/tanned backpacker hunks for long enough to get to an internet cafe, come home soon! And don't drink the water!
Thursday, March 25, 2004
There are only 16 shopping days left until Administrative Professionals Day!
Is there a Sub-editors' Day? Probably not, as it would cause too many arguments about whether the apostrophe should be before or after the S.
Jesus, it gets worse: apparently now MTV is demanding independent labels take a cut in the money MTV pays them to show their artists' videos, because MTV reckons the labels should be grateful to it for giving them publicity by playing the videos!!
Now, I can sit in front of music videos on TV for as many mindless hours as the next person, but I swear to God, MTV is the worst thing to happen to popular music in the past 50 years.
I hold it almost single-handedly responsible for the increasingly dominance of "performers" like Britney Spears - who, although I am not disputing that she is very good at what she does, is someone whose job is to dance routines choreograped by someone else, look pretty in clothes and hair styled for her by someone else and mime along to backing tracks written by someone else and engineered to such an extent that no one apart from her family really knows what her voice actually sounds like, and can in no way be described as an "artist" or "musician" - over people who actually create great music.
How many teenagers these days want to play guitar like Eric Clapton or drum like Keith Moon? No, they all want to be "pop stars" like Madonna. They don't even aspire to sing like Sam Cooke or even Mary J Blige (Bessie did a gig with her and reported that she can totally cut it live).
I mean, in yesterday's Independent I read a review of a Sugababes gig in which the reviewer says "you can't fault their singing"!!!! How much lower can our standards go? When being able to hold a tune reasonably well, but without even a modicum of expression, dynamics or artistic interpretation, god forbid old-fashioned soul, counts as "musically, the 'babes have got the goods all right"?
So - it seems I have more readers than I was previously aware of. Welcome to my world, people! You'll find it's really quite mundane but, I think anyway, charmingly documented.
Yet another news story about how downloading music from the internet is terribly bad for artists.
Peter Gabriel says small bands will suffer because they "depend on record sales for 60% of their income" - well, I'm sure Real World is an exemplary company (and I'm not just saying that to avoid libel, I do believe that it treats its artists well) but across the music industry in general, considering that performers makes about 3p from every CD sold while the real markup goes to the record company and publisher, I can't imagine that those small bands will be making enough money from their music to bother leaving their day jobs anyway. All the musicians I know would much rather lots of people heard their music than fewer people paid them for it, otherwise why would things like Peoplesound be so popular?
"Pop" music as we know it is no more than a folk art form which has always been performed/shared among musicians and performers and anyone who tries to make money out of it is onto a loser in the first place - capitalism just doesn't fit with art. "Music industry"!! What a contradiction in terms.
And it's such a recent idea as well: 150 years ago you were either a folk musician who would play music that very often wasn't your own composition to make a living, or if you were more of an orchestra type you got yourself a patron who would support you while you composed your glorious opus.
Tsk. You might as well sue people for singing "happy birthday" at their kids' parties, or for strumming "blowin' in the wind" on a guitar while sitting round a campfire at a beach party.
If the music biz wants people to stop downloading music from the internet, they should 1) sue MP3 player manufacturers for making it possible (and while they're at it, minidisc and cassette manufacturers, because downloading music is just a 21st-century version of taping songs off the radio) and 2) either stop charging a gazillion pounds for CDs or start giving the artists a bigger cut.
I'm off to Limewire.
Wednesday, March 24, 2004
Today I would like to throw two musical questions open to my dear readers.
1) In the Coke advert where the annoyingly coy/smug woman is handing out bottles of everyone's favourite carbonated and caffeinated beverage to strangers on the street ('I wish I could share all the love that's in my heart' etc), how does she carry that many open bottles in her handbag without it dripping out of the bottom?
2) In the Blues Brothers version of "Everybody needs somebody", the voices of female backing singers can clearly be heard. However, I have watched this film many, many times and I don't remember that, at any point of Jake and Elwood's mission from God, they recruit any women. So, who are these honey-toned sessionettes? Are we to assume that Aretha Franklin and Carrie Fisher's characters have forgiven, respectively, Matt "guitar" Murphy and and "Joliet" Jake Blues for their transgressions and graciously pitched in to lend a hand on the "you-you-you"s and the "hold-kiss-miss-squeeze-please"s? Or is there a piece of footage on the cutting-room floor in which the babes from the Soul Food Cafe leave to join the band along with "Blue" Lou Marini? I think we should be told.
Tuesday, March 23, 2004
Cat spending evenings mooning around living room mewling and looking expectantly into corners where rat last seen, then intermittently attacking extremities of humans' limbs. It's nearly as bad as the aftermath of the laser-pointer incident.
Monday, March 22, 2004
Friday, March 19, 2004
I am feeling better about my fringe because I've realised that I now have a hairdo not entirely unlike Dougal's.
I always liked Ermintrude best though.
There's a great episode when she's sitting on top of a washing machine while it's on spin cycle. Hmmn. Another of the many things about the Magic Roundabout that just didn't seem quite so significant to me when I watched it as a child.
It will be interesting to see how many of the drug references get left in when they make the new film. Maybe they'll update it and have some hilarious business with a glass pipe and tinfoil?
Thursday, March 18, 2004
Speaking of the creative use of language, I like this for some reason that I can't fathom. I suggest youtake a deep breath before clicking on the link as reading it is kind of an onslaught on the brain. I've no idea what it means but I suspect English may be this young woman's second language. (And what can she mean, "Status: becoming nun"?!)
Although I can't help noticing that even though text on things is a faithful rendition of the text that appears on, yes, things, there are spelling mistakes in it. Were they on the original material or did the blogger write it down wrongly? Argh. Sometimes being a sub-editor is a curse. In fact, most of the time.
But it's like a drug... you think you're getting clean, maybe you even walk past a cafe advertising "Casseroll" as I did this morning, and merely respond with an indulgent thought that actually, that's a very creative use of the fluid medium that spelling has always been, but then - then - you come across some REALLY COOL Quark shortcut, or someone explains to you the correct usage of the word "refute", or you see the word "fledgling" and can't quite remember offhand how many Es it's supposed to have in it, and that's it: you're right back to correcting your boyfriend when he splits an infinitive in bed. I blame my mother. Mainly because it's her fault: she never let me get away with saying "didn't used to" instead of "used not to" and that's a slippery slope for a young, impressionable girl.
This is a great blog. And so is the one you'll read if you click on the word "this" in that last sentence. Ha ha.
Word of the day: disgraceful. As in "disgraceful explotation of the, er, working classes".
Ringo brought in his first small rodent yesterday. Unfortunately it didn't occur to him that if he didn't kill it if would run away when he let go, so much to his bemusement and mine and the boyf's irritation, it is now making its home somewhere under the sofa after having kept me up half the night trying to catch it (while Ringo, of course, lost interest after about 5 minutes and sat in the middle of the floor licking his arse).
I am very proud, he's not yet a year old,and it was quite a big baby rat, so obviously he is going to be a Good Mouser and very useful when we move to the countryside (mice not being a massive problem in our current second-floor flat (don't write in, cat-lovers: Ringo has his own front door and easy access to the outside world)).
But also I feel the guilt of the working mother as I'm sure he wouldn't need to go and catch rats if I had spent enough time playing with him and thus satisfying his instinctive need to chase small fast things. All I seem to get to do at the moment is try and groom him (he is going through his spring moulting thing and getting furballs) but every time I try to brush him he tears the flesh from my hands with his teeth and claws. I have had to resort to wearing the boyf's motorbike gloves and even then he clamps onto my ankle instead. I'm sure it's very funny if you're watching from a distance.
Wednesday, March 17, 2004
Hooray for the Magic Roundabout movie ... although it wont be the same without all the drug references ... and hooray that they've got Joanna Lumley to play Ermintrude, who was always my favourite character. She can be today's older goddess. I love what she does with wigs - Dolly Parton is another one who knows how to handle a syrup (sadly she's had a little too much of the plastic surgery to qualify for this particular series of goddesses, although she's clearly a goddess in her own right) and I shall be getting into them myself later in life I think.
Here's an odd website. I can't imagine why anyone would be interested in this stuff - but apparently, The General Public really do need to be told that they should be watching School of Rock on DVD and buying a handbag from the Gap. I mean, whatever happened to "I think I'd quite like that film, judging by the trailer I saw on the TV and what my friends have told me" or "I think that's a nice handbag so I'm going to buy it"? What if I preferred, say, a brown handbag to the melon one (whatever "melon" is - a colour? A style? I must be hopelessly unhip because I don't know. Ho hum) - would I take it back because I realised my error? Still, top marks to the people who run the site because I imagine they're laughing all the way to the bank, and doubtless in a comfy pair of trainers rather than this week's must-have shoes.
I got a fringe cut at the weekend. It looks good when I have my hair up but I'm not so keen when it's down, I think coz I haven't really worked out how to style it yet. Still, I only had it done because I was bored of my normal haircut, so I'm not too upset coz I was just after an adventure. I don't like it any better or worse than previously actually.
Stone the crows, I've found another good blog, and it's by a Yank. It was the eclairs that did it for me, never mind the politics.
Anyway the reason why I've been quiet of late is that I've been reeling under the impression that the fabulous Stars In Their Eyes was being dropped becuase of the retirement of the wonderful Matthew Kelly and I would never get to say the immortal words "Tonight, Matthew, I'm going to be ... Cher!" before launching into my uncannily accurate version of "Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves". Now I learn that apparently it isn't going to be scrapped, they're just getting a new presenter, which I guess is better news - there is hope yet that the nation will get to see me in sequins and nose putty.
Poor old Cher. She used to look so great. What went wrong? If only she'd stayed away from the plastic surgeons and that stylist - who really, really, seems to hate her - she could have been one of my ageing goddesses.
Anyway this weekend is Mothers Day (Not sure about the apostrophication there so sorry to readers who are sensitive to that kind of thing). I don't like the lead-up to Mothers Day because my mum's dead so all that stuff in the shops about "aren't mums great?" gets me down a little bit. Anyway me and the boyf are going to get in our new car (yes! we now have a car, which I know is terribly bad for the environment but his dad offered it to us gratis and we'd be fools to say no, especially as we are going to move of the city this year and you have to have a car in the countryside) so we are going to get in our car and have a nice drive out into the coutnryside to mum's grave coz I haven't been in a while and I like to go on Mothers Day most years. Other people whose mums are still alive should be very happy and grateful; even if she seems like a bit of an old bitch, think yourselves lucky coz you'll miss her when she's gone and you won't realise how much until it happens.
In the meantime, check out the real budget, it's very funny.
Monday, March 15, 2004
Here's a brilliant thing: Go to Google, type "failure" into the search box and click on "I'm feeling lucky". arf arf.
They've found a new planet!!! And it's a "world of rock"!!!! I love it when stuff like this happens. Like, all those boffiny types are always going "we're scientists and we know the Truth and the Truth is this", and then something comes along and they have to go "errr OK maybe actually there's some stuff we don't know about". Ha ha!!
So, er, I wonder if anyone might do the logical extrapolation from this and conclude that maybe, just maybe, they're wrong about lots of other stuff too? Like the universe being infinite, which I think is a bloody stupid idea. Actually, I've always been a fan of the "big black blanket with holes in" theory of the night sky but, you know, not because I actually believed it was true, just because it's always seemed like a much more interesting idea than a load of rocks floating around in nothingness - and let's face it, have any of those scientist men (coz they pretty much always are men) ever been there? No siree Bob. But because I'm so excited about the new planet, I'm willing to suspend my disbelief for a day or so.
And I'm glad they've named it already, too, (and not after Princess Diana) coz these days I wouldn't put it past them to have some children's phone poll to vote for the name and we'd have ended up with it being called Blazin' Squad or something.
Monday, March 08, 2004
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I am so angry with Fingers that I can't even start to write about it. And that's ang-ger-ree. I am going to have to put her in my metabhavana for about 50 years in order to come to terms with it all. Dammit, Buddha never had to work with someone who seems to make the sole purpose of her existence to piss off sub-editors.
Still, I am plugged into the wonderful digital radio station 6music (anyone who says the Beeb isn't worth the licence fee can come and talk to my arse about it) and the guitar solo in the middle of the new Darkness single (still fancy the singer BTW) is noodling away my woes.
Meanwhile, word of the day is ghastly, again courtesy of Taxloss, who has a beautiful way of reminding me of words I don't use enough. Ghastly is one of those wonderfully English words like "rather" and "actually" that make me want to drink warm, flat cricket.
Wednesday, March 03, 2004
Have found a great blog - wanted to tell the author how much I liked it but she hasn't got a comment system. Still, I think she and I may have things in common - not least a love of thinking up stupid pseudonyms for our friends on our blogs. And a burning desire to write creative stuff. Still, she actually seems to get round to it, whereas after a 50-hour week in my job ("I work as chief sub-editor for a national business-to-business magazine, Cilla!") the last thing I want to do when I get home is turn on a wordprocessor. Still, who knows what will happen in the future.
Speaking of which, I am reading Ghostwritten by David Mitchell at the moment, it's fantastic. I'm ashamed to say that I was hoping it would be rubbish, because he wrote it when he was the same age as me, but depressingly it's better than anything I think I could ever do. And he was Booker-shortlisted at the age of 32. Talented bastard. Anyway, read Ghostwritten, it's ace.
It's an Older Goddess 76th Academy Awards Special today. Check out how great Oprah Winfrey, Susan Sarandon and Patricia Clarkson are looking (although Oprah, in my opinion, is better with a litle more meat on her). I suspect Sarandon may have had a little work done around the cheeks since her "touch-a-touch-a-touch-a-touch-meeeee" days, but it's so subtle, who's to judge - and anyway, imagine the pressure of living and working in LA.
Meanwhile, although I find it distasteful to criticise beautiful famous women, I can't help noticing that the pressure of Uma Thurman's marital collapse seems to be getting to her, judging by this Alpine goatmaid outfit - which she appears to have stitched together from a set of net curtains.
Tuesday, March 02, 2004
I've been to Dublin with the boyf for a long weekend. We had a lovely time. Apart from the hotel, which was horrible: it was the Leeson Inn and I suggest if you are going to Dublin you give it a wide berth. I chose it because of this picture which suggested that it was a reasonably stylish, modern sort of place: in fact, our room looked nothing like this, it was just a bog-standard B&B room. In fact, we had broken double glazing that meant we were kept awake all night by the entire under-30 population of Dublin shouting outside the window; we had brown water in the bath (for which we were given a discount of £20 on the whole price of the stay, but weren't offered another room or even told about an alternative bathroom); the phone in the room wasn't connected (just a cut-off wire); the breakfast was absolutely revolting and the bed was very uncomfortable. The only good thing was that it was very close to the city centre so we could walk everywhere and I burned loads of calories.
One thing I would recommend in Dublin though is the Viking Splash tour - we were the only people on it who weren't either under 10 years old or the guardian of someone under 10 years old, but when the amphibious vehicle drove into the docks it was wicked. And you get to shout a lot.
Oh and we found two nice vegetarian places to eat: Juice restaurant in Great Georges Street and Blazing Salads where I fell off the diet wagon yet again and had some sugar-free pumpkin pie that was just delicious. I could have stuffed my face in there for days.
Today's Over-35 goddess is Isabella Rossellini - another reader's suggestion, this time from Sundried. I'd guess that our Isabella is of the "great skincare routine" school of ageing gracefully, and can you believe she used to be the face of a cosmetics company but was dropped for being too old? Hel-LO Mr marketing division! Who do you think pays £45 for moisturiser? It ain't 25 year-olds, I'll tell you that for nada.
