03.29.09
Britney’s Trouble (For the Record)
Good old Facebook link sharing – not sure I’d have ever come across this had it not appeared in my mini feed this evening. A Britney track that I haven’t heard? A video I haven’t seen?! Surely not! But yes…
For her revealing documentary broadcast in the UK on Sky One earlier this year to much press attention, the track Trouble was recorded and a video montage of clips from the doc produced to boot. The track itself is awesome, great beat, infectious lyrics and a black and white video revealing just a little bit of everything that Britney is about – just as in the show.
Click on the screenshot above to view or here (damn WordPress for no longer allowing me to embed the full code directly into posts… what is up with that?). But enjoy.
We love you Brit.
03.28.09
Brawn GP signs up Branson’s Virgin brand
Richard Branson / Ross Brawn
The news of the above union only reached me this afternoon when having coffee with a friend (rather embarrassingly given that he had just flown in from New York and already had more of a finger on the pulse of the UK news agenda than me…).
But what excited me more than the fact that the naked Brawn GP car will finally be clothed in logos and livery this season after all, was the fact that the story was broken exclusively on TimesOnline before anywhere else.
Another triumph for UK online media topping the global news agenda. Awesome.
03.27.09
Olivia Palermo vs Blair Waldorf – let battle commence
© Getty Images / CW
How on earth did I not see this before?
The City’s resident ’social’, Olivia Palermo, is pretty much the real life version of Blair(with the possible exception of the fact that Olivia occupies her time with an occupation that could at least be loosely termed gainful employment…). I mean, physically they are even carbon copies of each other. Both impossibly stunning - beauty that is almost a caricature: the doe-eyed, chocolate-boxy brunette who stuns the Manhattan scene on a daily basis.
Anyhoo, imagine pitting the two against each other – who would come out on top? Well the L.A. Times have done it for us – and it’s a must-read for any fans of either show. And they are not the only ones to have spotted the common denominators either.
And for anyone who wants more of an insight into Palermo and her whole scene (can you believe she is still only 22?) check out this fab piece from The Independent published last year.
While you’re at it, learn about the Socialite Rank feud that tore her down a peg or two from the #1 top spot on the New York social scene – and check out the primary source of the scandal too.
See – she actually is a real-life Gossip Girl. Blair would be proud – and devastated in equal measure.
O’Driscoll adds to the Irish glory with RBS Player of the Championship
So… Grand Slam glory, RBS 6 Nations Champions and now the blue-eyed boy captain of Ireland has yet more silverware to display on his mantlepiece – RBS Player of the Championship.
But what makes this one a little special was the fact it was voted for by the fans – 24,000 of them to be exact. Of that 24,000, Brian raked in nearly a third of their votes, only narrowly beating Italy’s Sergio Parisse in the final voting hours.
B O’D seemed pretty chuffed with the accolade, but made sure to dedicate his achievement to both the fans and his teammates:
‘It has been such an immense week already and to be named the RBS Player of the Championship is a fantastic end to what has been a phenomenal Championship. This year’s RBS 6 Nations has been a special Tournament for me and the team for lots of reasons – it’s been fantastic for Irish rugby and for the whole country. ‘
‘To be voted RBS Player of the Championship by the fans makes it extra special but I’m really proud of our team effort right the way through the Tournament and I would not be in this position if it was not for my team mates. The support of the fans throughout our campaign has been unwavering and a huge part of the team’s success on the pitch – I’m just glad we could reward them too by bringing home the Grand Slam.’
Good job Brian, good job.
03.24.09
Global sporting success bring global fashion coverage
Well – didn’t Paul Costelloe make the right move attaching his name to arguably the most successful sports team curently representing our nation?
The England Women’s Cricket team return from Sydney today with a World Cup trophy in hand (yes World cup, making them the best on the planet at what they do). Naturally, the press have gone a little crazy with the column inches since the girls’ victory over New Zealand in the early hours of Sunday morning, and the result is that those blazers are everywhere.
© Associated Newspapers 2009
Of course, I’m loving it too as it all helps sow the seeds of preppy tailored fashions for Spring. Good job girls - on trend as well as on top of the world.
03.23.09
We heart Taylor Momsen!
So who saw the UK’s GG last week? God bless my Sky+ for catching it when I sacrificed GG night for more sociable activities, with which I have only just caught up. Well. OMFG.
That hair, that dress and – of course – that kiss. Little J all grown up – who saw any of that coming?
Well actually, I did – but only by a day. During my gloriously perfect Sunday afternoon of proper coffee, cricket and burrowing under a plethora of weekend papers down in Surrey, I was indulging in the usual jewel in the crown of my Sunday paper intake (the Sunday Times’ Style magazine) when the subject of young Taylor was raised by that enviable barometer of all things hip and cool, Jessica Brinton.
She was of course referring to the latest ‘do’ to be demanded by young fashionistas in salons across NYC – ‘the Jenny’ – as sported by Momsen in the latest episode to air in the UK. Bashful, down-trodden courtier of Queen B Waldorf has emerged from her cocoon into a fully fledged glam rock chic butterfly, charming the pants of Nate Archibald as she flies.
What is most astonishing is that Taylor is merely 15 years of age. With her doll-like features and painfully thin frame providing her with limitless model potential, her producers, publicists, stylists et al (including Fred Vanderbunt, creator of aforementioned crop) have developed the artsy rockstar’s-daughter-edge just enough to put her on the glam side of grunge.
Judging by her ever-growing portfolio of endorsements crammed around GG filming schedules, my bet is, she may go on to have the biggest – or at least most diverse – career of all the GG starlet darlings. Signed by IMG Models at 14, couture modelling for Page Six, nike sportswear campaigns… Hell, she even has a record coming out since The Reckless (the band she fronts) were signed by Interscope Records earlier this year.
And while we’re on the GG train (because Lord knows I don’t blog about it enough), everyone go out and buy Rolling Stone this month. Why? Just check this out and then stop yourself from racing to the newsagents tomorrow. H-O-T.
Photograph by Terry Richardson © Rolling Stone 2009
Oh, and there’s a video too.
XOXO
03.22.09
Generation X
[Claire]: Either our lives become stories, or there’s just no way to get through them.
- Generation X
How I managed to get through university studying literature – including a course on 20th Century works – and not read Douglas Coupland’s seminal piece, I’m not entirely sure. Or perhaps I’m doing my professors an injustice and it was on the reading list, but I was just too busy sleeping/partying/cheerleading that week to bother turning up.
Either which way, I just finished it and yes, it does live up to the hype. In short (and it is short, so won’t take an inordinate investment of time), it is well worth a read. As is well-known (expect to me apparently), Generation X captures the bleak, hopeless emptiness ensconcing the lives of three children born to the baby-boomer generation, who find themselves to be utterly directionless on the cusp of turning thirty in the early ’90s.
I couldn’t at first place what it reminded me of but I think it might be the similarly blank, borderline-terrifying nothingness at the heart of Don DeLillo’s White Noise. And in the same vein as DeLillo, while the pointless and demoralising existence can become a little much at times (surely no one can give up so completely of really living?), there are hidden gems within the text that are worth sharing.
Many authors are credited with ‘defining’ a period, a theme or indeed a generation, but Coupland actually does – peppering his narrative with footnotes providing a glossary of terms of his own/popular culture’s invention that go some way to defining the times in which the characters find themselves.
Some of these are ace. So, for all those who know my tendency to obsessively record astute quotations of personal significance (or else, they’re just cool), here are a few to give you a taster of the book:
Cult of aloneness: the need for autonomy at all costs, usually at the expense of long-term relationships, often brought about by overly high expectations of others
Derision Preemption: a life-style tactic; the refusal to go out on any sort of emotional limb so as to avoid mockery from peers.
Option paralysis: the tendency, when given unlimited choices, to make none
101-ism: the tendency to pick apart, often in minute details, all aspects of life using half-understood pop psychology as a tool
Rebellion Postponement: the tendency in one’s youth to avoid traditionally youthful activities and artistic experiences in order to obtain serious career experience. (Sometimes results in the mourning for lost youth at about age thirty, followed by silly haircuts and expensive joke-inducing wardrobes)
Tele-parabalizing: morals used in everyday life that derive from TV sitcom plots (‘OMG, that’s just like the episode where Jan lost her glasses!’)
Obscurism: the practice of peppering daily life with obscure references (forgotten films, dead TV stars, unpopular books, defunct countries, etc.) a subliminal means of showcasing both one’s education and one’s wish to disassociate from the world of mass culture
Native aping: pretending to be a native when visiting a foreign destination
Personality Tithe: a price paid for becoming a couple; previously amusing human beings become boring. (‘Thanks for inviting us, but Noreen and I are going to look at flatware catalogs tonight. Afterward we’re going to watch the shopping channel.’)
And then a few fab little tit-bits from Andy’s narrative:
- ‘Nothing very very good and nothing very very bad ever lasts for very very long.’
- ‘We spend our youth attaining wealth and our wealth attaining youth.’
- ‘Give parents the tiniest of confidences and they’ll use them as crowbars to jimmy you open and rearrange your life with no perspective.’
How many of those can you apply to people you know, or even (like me) yourself? Kinda scary, huh. If you like it, buy it. It’ll be a fiver well spent.
03.18.09
RBS 6 Nations – RBS Player of the Championship
All you rugby fans out there who have spent the last few weeks screaming at the TV/pitch for shocking decisions that affect the whole outcome of the game (officials ganging up on England, blah blah blah…) – now you get the chance to actually make a difference.
The RBS 6 Nations press office has thrown open the final vote for RBS Player of the Championship to rugby fans – EVERYONE gets one vote online and you can vote right here.
The shortlist, picked by highly knowledgeable and trustworthy former internationals, is:
- Delon Armitage (England)
- Lee Byrne (Wales)
- Jamie Heaslip (Ireland)
- Brian O’Driscoll (Ireland)
- Paul O’Connell (Ireland)
- Sergio Parisse (Italy)
Initial unofficial rumours show O’Driscoll with a narrow lead, with the beautiful Sergio Parisse catching up fast in close second. If you don’t like it, change it.
Shane Williams, receiving last year's accolade - © Getty Images for RBS
03.14.09
Gossip Girl: sooo LAST season!
LOVED the Yale episode that aired two weeks ago (for UK viewers), but not as much as Serena’s choice of outfit when she went to meet the Dean:
How great is that blazer? The crest, the pin-stripe, the frilled fluted back… Thus followed a frantic internet search to find the source. I was ready to part with some serious cash to get hold of that piece, so imagine my shock and disappointment when I discovered that it was the Ralph Lauren ‘Filmore’ blazer from the 2008 S/S collection?
Since when did GG become a back-catalogue of last season’s knock-offs? Even considering the time at which these episodes would have been filmed (given the trans-Atlantic broadcast schedule delay, and the production schedule of a drama series), I found this massively surprising. Given the now well-established status of the show amongst aspiring fashionistas, and the proven effect of GG on retail trends, you can’t seriously tell me that wardrobe were unable to obtain anything more recent than that?
I guess in the meantime we’ll have to make do with a couple of replicas from Old Navy and Crew. Sigh.
For more GG fashion trends, check out the Gossip Girl Closet blog, which I just discovered. Though be warned: you might be a year too late.
03.09.09
The REAL top 100 books – how many have you read?
A little online meme currently doing the Facebook rounds is that, of the Top 100 books (as identified by the BBC in 2003), the BBC reckons that the average adult has only read 6.
This I felt was worthy of a blog for several reasons. Firstly, the list itself should be viewed by everyone, as all those who know me are aware of my enthusiasm for great works of English Literature (well, those and Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series).
But secondly, when I came to post ‘the list’ here, I learnt that the listcurrently being promulgated by numerous Twitterers and Facebook users is not in fact the list that the BBC published6 years ago. Nor, to any end that I can discern online, did the Beeb ever make the claim that only 6 titles have been read by the ’average adult’.
So here we have a classic example of an Internet meme- whereby content is spread instantly, virally and often inaccurately throughout the blogosphere, accelerated by the immediacy of the social media space. Thus, in the space of a week, the BBC’s actuallist has been replaced by the now prolific alternative version flooding Facebook walls and inboxes around the globe. A small-scale insight into how the blogosphere can re-write history faster than we can correct it, or remember it.
That said, both the amended list (duplications aside) and the original list (below) are both worth perusing to asses your own accomplishments. Certain Facebook buddies of mine have taken to marking those read with an X and forwarding their total to friends…
(OK, so I make it 42 from the list below – so far).
See how you fair…
1. [ ] – The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien
2. [ ] – Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
3. [ ] – His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman
4. [ ] – The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
5. [ ] – Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, JK Rowling
6. [ ] – To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
7. [ ] – Winnie the Pooh, AA Milne
8. [ ] – Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell
9. [ ] – The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, CS Lewis
10. [ ] – Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë
11. [ ] – Catch-22, Joseph Heller
12. [ ] – Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë
13. [ ] – Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks
14. [ ] – Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
15. [ ] – The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger
16. [ ] – The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame
17. [ ] – Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
18. [ ] – Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
19. [ ] – Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres
20. [ ] – War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
21. [ ] – Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
22. [ ] – Harry Potter And The Philosopher’s Stone, JK Rowling
23. [ ] – Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets, JK Rowling
24. [ ] – Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, JK Rowling
25. [ ] – The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien
26. [ ] – Tess Of The D’Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy
27. [ ] – Middlemarch, George Eliot
28. [ ] – A Prayer For Owen Meany, John Irving
29. [ ] – The Grapes Of Wrath, John Steinbeck
30. [ ] – Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
31. [ ] – The Story Of Tracy Beaker, Jacqueline Wilson
32. [ ] – One Hundred Years Of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez
33. [ ] – The Pillars Of The Earth, Ken Follett
34. [ ] – David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
35. [ ] – Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl
36. [ ] – Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
37. [ ] – A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute
38. [ ] – Persuasion, Jane Austen
39. [ ] – Dune, Frank Herbert
40. [ ] – Emma, Jane Austen
41. [ ] – Anne Of Green Gables, LM Montgomery
42. [ ] – Watership Down, Richard Adams
43. [ ] – The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald
44. [ ] – The Count Of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas
45. [ ] – Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
46. [ ] – Animal Farm, George Orwell
47. [ ] – A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
48. [ ] – Far From The Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy
49. [ ] – Goodnight Mister Tom, Michelle Magorian
50. [ ] – The Shell Seekers, Rosamunde Pilcher
51. [ ] – The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
52. [ ] – Of Mice And Men, John Steinbeck
53. [ ] – The Stand, Stephen King
54. [ ] – Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
55. [ ] – A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth
56. [ ] – The BFG, Roald Dahl
57. [ ] – Swallows And Amazons, Arthur Ransome
58. [ ] – Black Beauty, Anna Sewell
59. [ ] – Artemis Fowl, Eoin Colfer
60. [ ] – Crime And Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
61. [ ] – Noughts And Crosses, Malorie Blackman
62. [ ] – Memoirs Of A Geisha, Arthur Golden
63. [ ] – A Tale Of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
64. [ ] – The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCollough
65. [ ] – Mort, Terry Pratchett
66. [ ] – The Magic Faraway Tree, Enid Blyton
67. [ ] – The Magus, John Fowles
68. [ ] – Good Omens, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
69. [ ] – Guards! Guards!, Terry Pratchett
70. [ ] – Lord Of The Flies, William Golding
71. [ ] – Perfume, Patrick Süskind
72. [ ] – The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Robert Tressell
73. [ ] – Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
74. [ ] – Matilda, Roald Dahl
75. [ ] – Bridget Jones’s Diary, Helen Fielding
76. [ ] – The Secret History, Donna Tartt
77. [ ] – The Woman In White, Wilkie Collins
78. [ ] – Ulysses, James Joyce
79. [ ] – Bleak House, Charles Dickens
80. [ ] – Double Act, Jacqueline Wilson
81. [ ] – The Twits, Roald Dahl
82. [ ] – I Capture The Castle, Dodie Smith
83. [ ] – Holes, Louis Sachar
84. [ ] – Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake
85. [ ] – The God Of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
86. [ ] – Vicky Angel, Jacqueline Wilson
87. [ ] – Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
88. [ ] – Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons
89. [ ] – Magician, Raymond E Feist
90. [ ] – On The Road, Jack Kerouac
91. [ ] – The Godfather, Mario Puzo
92. [ ] – The Clan Of The Cave Bear, Jean M Auel
93. [ ] – The Colour Of Magic, Terry Pratchett
94. [ ] – The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
95. [ ] – Katherine, Anya Seton
96. [ ] – Kane And Abel, Jeffrey Archer
97. [ ] – Love In The Time Of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez
98. [ ] – Girls In Love, Jacqueline Wilson
99. [ ] – The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot
100.[ ] – Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie
