Let’s see. Menu, cancel, start, stop, index, go to, jog, clear, up, down.
Food, reading, running, working, mood swings.
Yes, this machine found in a skip in North London is definitely controlling my life. And it’s not even as good looking as Zoltar.
Nell Frizzell
You’re right. That is Mickey Rourke penetrating Sylvester Stallone from behind. And yes, he is sporting a Nicole Appleton circa 2006 hairdo. And yes, Sly seems to have a fully erect penis for a forearm.
And do you know what? That’s why The Expendables is the best film you’ll see all year. In fact, The Expendables may well be the best film you’ll ever see. Because this is a film in which Sylvester ‘Melt Face’ Stallone and Arnold ‘Arthritis’ Schwarzenegger are the deadliest mercenaries on the planet. That’s right; a man (allegedly) so engorged with human grown hormone that he can no longer feel his toes, let alone see or touch them, and an (allegedly) ageing robot Nazi with chipmunk pubis glued to his head are your go-to guys for lightening-quick, death-defying acts of assassination and hand-to-hand combat. As Stallone’s character Barney Ross puts it. “We are the shadow, the smoke in your eyes, the ghosts that hide in the night.” Not two puckered heaps of steroid-saturated imbecility, who fight like a pair of hippos trying to breakdance.
Who doesn’t want to live in that world?
As adolescent fingers across the country fumble, not around someone’s bitterly confusing underwear, but through enveloped A-Level results, thoughts must inevitably turn to that king of the celebration/commiseration knees up, V Festival.
Falling as it does just days after the release of those pivotal summer exam results, V Festival was where I spent the third August weekend of 2001. And, by chance, I am off there again this year.
So, what difference has a near-decade made? Well, very little, as far as Faithless and The Charlatans are concerned. Like jean shorts, brown lipstick and plaid shirts, they’re right back where they were nine years ago. (Continued)
Last night the lovely Rod Stanley, editor at Dazed and Confused, told his followers on Twitter that he was “So sick of the word ‘hipster’. Seems like it’s been ten years of endless articles sneering at young people interested in music, art, fashion, fun etc as ‘hipsters’, like that’s some sort of strange crime against society.”
Like ’scenester’ before it, and ‘fashionsta’ before that, ‘hipster’ has become as tired and ubiquitous as a pair of sagging Asda jeggings.
Well Rod, worry ye not, for I have taken it upon myself to find the heir to the ‘hipster’ throne. Observe:
Coolies: Including the vital ‘hip’ ‘fashion’ or ‘trend’-like prefix, ‘coolie’ also has an interesting association with red-shirted railway servants and poorly paid labourers. And who among us doesn’t appreciate a slave-like, sweaty adherence to newness and counterculture?
Neatos: It rhymes with ‘Doritos’ and ‘Wheetos’, two extremely cool grain-based snacks, and has the requisite allusion to 1960s slang. A winner by any measure.
Snazzers: It’s been far too long since I heard a piece of graphic design, or newly launched fashion label, described as ’snazzy’. Which means, according to the great tombola of recycled coolness, that it is just about ripe for a revisit. (Continued)
Here is my entry to the Ideas Tap columnist competition. It’s an ace website: check it out
As an ex-smoker (someone who only smokes when excited, exhausted or extremely drunk,) watching a biopic about Serge Gainsbourg did to my willpower what old Serge did to young, long-limbed, single women; totally shafted it.
Gainsbourg: Je T’aime, Moi Non Plus, Joann Sfar’s new biopic of infamous bon viveur, chanteur and smokeur Serge Gainsbourg, has more scenes of glamorous Parisian smoking than the entire Godard back catalogue. So, while the film is an interesting mix of magical realism and erotic biography, I am ashamed to say that I spent most of the hour-and-a-half running-time desperately chewing my armrest, rolling bus tickets and trying to light my own fingers. (Continued)
When my mother gave up caffeine, to better enjoy her early menopause, she mistakenly told our gentle and fairly pedestrian neighbours that she’d, “had some coke at a party the other day and couldn’t sleep all night”. What my mother failed to tell these fine, upstanding people was that the coke in question was actually the brown, fizzy kind you get in lady-shaped bottles and the party was an early afternoon birthday party at her special needs school.
I was reminded of this coke-related cock up the other day, as I cycled through the grey and clanking streets of an industrial estate in Edmonton. Wordsworth had the Lake District, Rimbaud had Paris and I, my friends, have a decaying industrial estate just beyond the North Circular; we are slaves to our muse. (Continued)
Photos by Nick Scott
Standing in a bright, white room, I realise that my powder compact will probably never recover from its fight with Gary Jarman’s beard. It’s a Wednesday morning in North London and I have been pulled in to do makeup at the photo shoot for The Cribs’ new single. When I say makeup, of course, I’m not simply talking about hiding the odd pimple, or lightening a shadow. This is an all-out voyage in to housewife slap, for the aptly titled new single ‘Housewife’. Which is why those persistent Wakefield bristles are causing such damage to my ten year old cosmetics.
If the words ‘make up’ and ‘Jarman’ seem unnatural bedfellows then so be it. But bassist Gary is keen to point out that this isn’t intended as a confrontational, or even necessarily a political act. “It fits with the song,” argues Gary as I slide liquid eyeliner across his top lid. “With this I don’t see a political agenda to it. We are comfortable enough with all degrees of gender and sexual preference to see dressing up like this as no big deal. If it was a song about a soldier, then I suppose I could be dressed as a soldier. Also, I just thought it might look good.”
The photographer for the shoot, Pat Graham, is probably best known for his work with seminal Riot Grrrl band Bikini Kill, as well as bands like The Make-Up and Modest Mouse. Two of these bands link closely to the current Cribs project; before becoming the fourth member of Wakefield’s finest musical export, guitarist Jonny Marr played in Modest Mouse, while riot grrrl bands like Bikini Kill, along with X-ray Spex and The Slits, have long been important to Gary Jarman, who was involved in Ladyfest celebrations in Britain and the US.
Bikini Kill’s Kathleen Hanna was also friends with Kurt Cobain; another man who famously donned a dress in the public eye. While many will no doubt draw comparisons between the Jarmans’ housewife dresses and the way that Kurt Cobain played with sexual stereotypes in Nirvana, the final shot for the Housewife artwork also has a strong documentary feel, and could probably be more pertinently compared to the work of American photographer Diane Arbus. The cover hints at Andy Warhol, Cindy Sherman and there is even a vague air of Stepford Wives about that close-cropped, subdued image.
Muscular men diving in to perfectly stilled pools of white chocolate, huge cartoonish landscapes of red mountains and white chocolate buttons, photo montages of Parisian street scenes and white chocolate squares. That’s right; David Hockney is the new milky bar kid. Or so we are to assume, judging by the new adverts.
Creative agency Santos has had the inspired idea of going around the country dressing British chocolate fans as one of the Royal College of Art’s favourite graduates. Race, gender, age and musical ability are transcended by white bowl cut wigs, rounded blue spectacles and a very-late-70s-San-Francisco red spotty neckerchiefs and cowboy hats. Well, the cowboy hats are a bit of a curve ball, but who’s to say what Hockney used to keep the sun off his face during his LA period?
Of course, chocolate and modern art go together like fruit and nut. Salvador Dali did a toe-curling (and moustache-whirling) advert for Lanvin chocolate in 1968, while Andy Warhol screenprinted chocolate bunnies and Jeff Koons sculpted gold-encrusted White Hot Chocolate.
And who can forget Frida Kahlo lying in an overflowing bath, smoothing her monobrow while she nibbled on a flake? Or Sarah Lucas’ famous ‘Have a break, have a chocolate Marlboro toilet’ Kitkat advert? Or Anthony Gormley’s life sized melting chocolate figure for Cadbury’s?
Rather than tap in to a never ending flow of horse-riding, cheeky faced nostalgia to sell slabs of sugar, Santos have simply taken up their rightful place in the contemporary confectionery art hall of fame.
It’s just a shame that adding biscuit and raisins to Milky Bars is the chocolate equivalent adding a hamster and electricity to a blender.
Nell Frizzell
I watched Inception last night.
Blimey. To think, just twenty five years ago Christopher Nolan was singing ‘I’m In The Mood For Dancing’ on Top of the Pops with his sisters.
Hasn’t he been busy?
Nell Frizzell
Lidl, you sexy, sexy bastards.
Nell Frizzell
