Aussie Dressfests

The Melbourne Cup, the Brownlows, the Logies ... 3 good reasons for Aussie sheilas to don some of the most frightening apparel in Christendom. Ropey international rope ins like Paris Hilton and Nicole Ritchie are also likely to make an appearance (well, at the first and third anyway)

My personal fave for the 2007 Logies - Nicky Whelan. I don't know who she is but her hideous yet strangely fascinating dress has me tied round its frilly little finger. Here is The Logies photo gallery for more delights to whet your whistle (or is wet your whistle)?

Here is a great sum up of last year's Brownlow WAGS

Blisss!

Isabella Blow RIP

Isabella Blow died last week (7 May 2007). She lived and breathed fashion - and helped the careers of designers like milliner Philip Treacy and Alexander McQueen (McQueen described her as "a cross between a Billingsgate fishwife and Lucretia Borgia") early in their careers.

This rather lovely article states:
Michael Roberts summed up Isabella's contribution to the world beautifully. "She was like an exotic bird," he said. "Issy was living rather like Diana Vreeland, the legendary fashion editor of the Fifties. She seemed to be trying to translate the styles of the Fifties and Sixties to modern life in a dull office in Hanover Square. At times, it could be difficult for her. Life tramples on people like that."
Isabella Blow - Blowing'em all away - The Independent (via NZHerald)
Isabella Blow - Vogue

What made Isabella special was she had such a grand and dramatic flair, that made no concessions to trendiness. While she wasn't what you'd call pretty, she was utterly compelling. The French have the term jolie laide (beautiful ugly) which is applied to a woman who is not conventionally pretty or beautiful yet has something powerfully alluring about her.

Dita von Teese is another example, she is not at all conventional looking but her tiny corseted frame, porcelain skin and ebony hair with a highly made up face add up to a harmonious whole. You just can't look away.

The Age has a great article on her influence on fashion after her visit to Australia for Fashion Week.

Seriously...

Two really full on news stories I've read in the past week...One which I was incredibly disturbed by, the other which I just felt extreme sadness over...Both just affected me and I'm still musing over both...Thinking they would lend themselves well to some sort of theatre...But maybe that just sounds too callow...Read it and I'm sure you'll be thinking about both of these stories for a time after...


Story One
Five fifth-graders in the US state of Louisiana have been arrested today after an investigation into allegations that students had sex in an unsupervised classroom, with other classmates present.
"After 44 years of doing this work, nothing shocks me anymore," Union Parish Sheriff Bob Buckley said. "But this comes pretty close."
The alleged incident took place March 27, at the Spearsville school in rural north Louisiana.
Four students - two 11-year-old girls, a 12-year-old boy and a 13-year-old boy - were arrested on charges of obscenity, a felony. An 11-year-old boy who was the alleged lookout was charged with being an accessory after the fact, Buckley said.
The class was inadvertently left unattended while the teacher attended a meeting, Buckley said.
"It's not clear how long they were left alone but speculation is that it was about 15 minutes," Buckley said. "When no teacher showed up, the four began to have sex in the classroom with the other elementary students in the classroom with them."
The students, who were not identified because of their age, were released to their parents after their arrests because the parish has no juvenile holding facility, Buckley said.
"I'm sure they're like everybody else up here, shocked that children that age would be indulging in sex acts, especially with witnesses," Buckley said.
"Children now are subjected to sex in music and movies these days. They are certainly are a lot more knowledgeable now."
Buckley said it was unclear what a juvenile would face in penalties. For adults, conviction on obscenity in the presence of someone under 17 carries a $US10,000 ($A12,260) fine and from two to five years in prison.

Story Two
A mother and father who admitted killing their blind and intellectually disabled son "out of love" were released today on good behaviour bonds after a judge said they needed help not punishment.
Margaret and Raymond Sutton were sentenced in the NSW Supreme Court for the manslaughter of their son, Matthew, on April 2001.
"Nothing that the court can do by way of sentence can add to their suffering," Justice Graham Barr said, handing down the five-year good behaviour bonds.
The judge found that the parents had suffered from "an abnormality of mind" and that there was an overwhelming need for them to be treated, not further punished with a custodial sentence.
Matthew was killed the day before he was to face an operation to overcome a chronic ear infection that would have left him deaf for three months and taken away his only link to the outside world.
It would have permanently reduced his hearing to 10 per cent, at best.
According to a police statement, the couple said "they decided that they could not subject [him] to any further pain, and knew in their own minds that the operation [he] was to undergo would take away his quality of life".
During their trial, the couple's lawyer, Tony Bellanto, QC, told the court they should not be jailed for the act "born out of love", but should be treated with compassion and mercy.
From the age of five, Matthew lived in institutions but regularly went home on weekends.
The court was told that, at 18, he moved to a group home in Katoomba, run by the Department of Community Services, where he was frequently physically and verbally abused by staff and other residents.
His behaviour changed and he became violent and hard to manage. Furniture and fittings had to be screwed down to prevent him from throwing them. The Suttons' family and friends no longer visited when he was at the couple's Leonay home.
Mrs Sutton, 60, who battled to improve conditions in the group home, had two nervous breakdowns and was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. Her 63-year-old husband turned to alcohol.
The couple filled their son's "last weeks of hearing" before the impending operation with everything he enjoyed: a visit to the beach, a trip on a Harley-Davidson and rides on the escalator at a shopping centre.
The day before the operation the couple discussed their son's prospects and made their plan.
Mrs Sutton told police afterwards she gave her son some tablets to sedate him, so that "a further act could take place to end his life". She said she did not know what it was, and was not with him when he died.
Mr Sutton told police he later went to his son's bedroom and "released" him from this world. He did not want to tell police what he did but agreed the act he performed caused his son's death.
An inquest heard Matthew's body contained traces of tranquillisers, and suffocation could not be ruled out, but no cause of death could be determined.

David Warner and all that is great in the world

I've torn myself away from my plate of broccoli (you think I'm joking...) as I was looking at my dvd collection and thinking about what makes me buy certain films and not others. I've got this whole "logic" thing going. There are some films that I own that I don't exactly rate as my faves but there's something about them that makes me want to watch over and over again. Which to me is what separates a film you'd watch a few times and enjoy to one you put on high rotation. Admittedly I do own a few flicks that I think I've only watched once...but I just had to have them. (ooh eer)
Ok my mouth tastes like broccoli now...Ew...
Anyway, green vegies aside, there is one film I own that has somehow over the years become part of a ritual. I watched it years ago when I first moved out of home as I was packing up my bedroom and from then on, everytime I've moved flat or been about to go overseas on a big holiday (as in not to New Zealand!) I've put it on and it calms me down. It transports me. It makes me feel safe and secure and feel confident. Because it's so inherently become part of when I travel or uproot myself, the memory of those viewings really soothes me and is part of my journey. Ok so this sounds like I'm taking the piss...And it will even more so when I say what the film is...But it's true!! I'm moving overseas soon and I tell you what - When I'm packing up my room or during one of those days before I leave...I'll be watching "Waxwork." The 80s horror that has it's tongue firmly in cheek the whole time (even the director...his name is Anthony Hickcox...I mean, please!) yet still manages to have some genuinely gorey moments. I might sound like a freak, in so far as a schlocky horror film with cannibalism, zombies and crushed in brains is something that gives me serenity. And maybe I am. But there's something about David Warner in his bizarre get up that looks like he's a cricket player gone mad, coming out with lines such as "Would you like a closer look?" as he's dunked into a vat of wax that just makes me feel...safe. I'm sure you've got your own personal film that just transports you and makes you feel good...Perhaps it's something more palatable than mine...But mine's working just fine for me...I can't wait to watch it again.

Charming Music Video

Peter, Bjorn and John's "Young Folks". Marvellous.

My Humps

Nothing like a kooky cover version to get a laugh. This is a lovely version of "My Humps" as performed by Alanis Morrissette. Idolator is a site laden with all kinds of musical gems and heads ups.

Historical Hotties

You know when you are just a little teeny bopper and your hormones are a fizzing and fermenting ... and you start having crushes on pop stars and movie gods ... can you remember who were YOUR historical hotties?

Here's a few of mine from waaaaay back in the day

My ultimate ... and recipient of the only fan letter I have ever written.
IAIN GLEN
Scottish, with stunning bone structure and eagle eyes. Intelligent, intense, and a fiendishly good actor on stage and screen.

I first saw him in a 1980s tv series called "The Fear" where he played a 80s chancer.



See this potted bio on Fandango

Daily Telegraph article on this wonderful actor and what he is up to these days.

Other Faves:
Simon Le Bon - Duran Duran. Of course.
Martin Fry of ABC
Gary Oldman
John Duttine (lovely bearded chap from "The Day of the Triffids")

Beauty

This to me is the most gorgeous couple to ever grace the silver screen. Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting starred in Franco Zefferelli's 1968 Romeo and Juliet.

and Audrey Hepburn is the quintessence of beauty and grace


Beauty is one of those things that has always made the poets sigh:

'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.'
(John Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn)

She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
(Lord Byron, She Walks in beauty)

But one of my favourite poems chooses the virtues of "kinde and true" over beauty:

Upon kinde and true Love

'TIS not how witty, nor how free,
Nor yet how beautifull she be,
But how much kinde and true to me.
Freedome and Wit none can confine,
And Beauty like the Sun doth shine,
But kinde and true are onely mine.

Let others with attention sit,
To listen, and admire her wit,
That is a rock where Ile not split
Let others dote upon her eyes,
And burn their hearts for sacrifice,
Beauty's a calm where danger lyes.

But Kinde and True have been long tried
A harbour where we may confide,
And safely there at anchor ride.
From change of winds there we are free,
And need not feare Storme's tyrannie,
Nor Pirat, though a Prince he be.

************************

That's by Aurelian Townshend. He is a member of my favourite poetry "school" of all time, the METAPHYSICALS. John Donne is my number one poet.

Music be the food of love ... youtube clips

Britney and JT "What goes around"

Amy Winehouse "Rehab"


and gotta love the Jane Fonda

and a genuine stone cold classic by Kon Kan