Mergers
So the fall out of Phil's imprisonment, his being held on remand is that Derek is working his way into the square, getting a foothold on Mitchell Enterprise, holding a pack of spring onion space raiders hostage so Heather becomes his puppet…but that's me being silly, Derek just had to buy exiled Ben breakfast in the cafe where his half-brothers ex-wife Slobber Slobber Jane works. She doesn't need to wet the dish cloth under the tap to wipe the sides, she just uses her excess amount of drool. Anyway Jane chatted to Ian about helping his now-homeless half-brother, whilst Mandy watched HOMES UNDER THE HAMMER, ate TWIGLETS and had a face pack so she looks gorgeous. Eventually, by the end of the episode, Ian had found Ben, after an extensive search…seriously, there are only a few places people go to went they want staring into space time…seriously Ben wouldn't have been that hard to find. There is the cafe, the pub, the round bench outside the chippy, the laundrette, Arthur's bench in the square, the playground, the stairs outside the community centre, I could go on. Meanwhile, Derek was going round all the Mitchell businesses, chatting to Shirley and Jay (who aren't official Mitchell's, in terms of blood) and finally visiting Phil in prison, making deals and setting up the next few months. I do find Derek vile and despicable, but he can't leave yet, he's quite compelling to watch. And now Ray is going to work in the pub, this sets up a possible love triangle between Kat and Kim, poor Alfie and his over-stretched Hammers beanie. Hopefully Bianca's face will iron out, because at the moment she makes PUGS look like Botox addicts, that phrase "chewing wasps" has a poster girl. Again, I have been wondering what lies beneath Lucy's fringe that is possibly a PORTAL or PORT KEY, or another way into NARNIA or ELSTREE'S catering overspill gazebo.
The local weather reporter scares me, today she was wearing a leather dress and her bob was a little unkempt.
Pre-Collections 2012
It is that time of year again, that hazy January feeling, where a light cold that you can't and won't complain about haunts your nasal passages for a few days, where mornings feel colder, deaprtment stores feel tired and smell of desperate must-have sale sweat, you question why people queue for the NEXT sale? You read Shelley Von Strunckel's predictions for the upcoming year and feel hopeful…I quite like January, I try to not feel blue, but somekind of positive, some kind of upbeat in a subtle way and not as if I am in the audience for a filming of DEAL OR NO DEAL. The pre-collections started filtering through before Christmas, but not they are hitting us like a tidal wave over Atlantis. As I have said before and will again, I much prefer the pre-collections, due to their digestable size, their clear narrative, their focused attitude and use of one or two girls. I've noticed something, that I haven't picked up on before, that being that most of the looks are shot with the girl(s) in a corner. I do not know why this is? I do not care, if I am honest, I just noticed it.
By Look 8 of Alexandre Herchcovitch I was semi-sold, that curved dart that kept re-appearing, along with the Sissy Spacek in BADLANDS on a COLD MOUNTAIN colour palette was beauitful and easy to imagine women strolling round in. Looks 12-17 were a little off and not appealing and then the final look (18) sold the whole collection in one leather-based swoop.
Givenchy was great, though I lament the digital print pieces, I dream of the days when Riccardo was all about an interesting cut, he and Maria-Carla striding the catwalk, strange presentations, I guess it's why I like Givenchy couture the best…NO DIGITAL PIECES…the first look was WOW, then there were some digital print affairs that I am erasing from my thoughts as I type (that was an amazing LeCar track – Erase That Thought). Look 11, 18, 21, 26, 28, are ones I've selected that made me remember why I have such a soft-spot for Givenchy. Those oversize loosely tied bow dresses, them boots that created a silhouette within a silhouette, that Crimean War colour story, the way you could see Ms.Hepburn & co. walking round in it…maybe its folly to mention Ms.Hepburn, but I am a fan, will always be a fan, have a geeky-encyclopedic knowledge about her (nearly Mastemind worthy) and love till my heart asks for a transplant old GIVENCHY, so it isn't folly, its just lovely…and then the digital print comes back and I wonder when someone's portfolio runs dry, will the digital print be banished to the archives as an experiment that didn't really work?
Kel Markey the girl in The Row's lookbook has a memorable pair of eyebrows. Like V.Beckham, the Olsen sisters get better and better. The stripped back city-stained colour, the hint of a cocoon back (look 5), a strange fur setting for the girls to pose in, a pinkish caramac coloured biker with Kel "eyebrows" Markey wearing a drop-waist slip dress (look 9), oh me oh mein…Its bloody lovely. I want to search it out in London, because when I saw V.Beckham's output, crikey the fabrication, the make, was proper classy and I'm guessing The Row's is too.
I loved Calvin, that military blanket felted wool in Civil War browns and greys reference, the tailoring that was just so incroyable…oh LORD, collections like this make me so so so happy. Everything was focused on the natural waistline (not a stylists version of where they think the waist is). I started to think of Lauren Bacall wearing it, if she ever left Key Largo, or Therese Desqueyroux (from the book of the same name by Mauriac, that I read for French A-Level), that crazy sexy-unsexy-sexy…on and on. Francisco Costa, like Stefano Pilati, Thomas Maier, is a modern day genius and should be lauded and feted and celebrated for his incredibleness.
I think Chloe have the best trousers, like seriously they are heart-breakers. By look 7 I was sold and then that bomber with below the knee skirt and deep healthy cherry red boots…sublime. I loved look 17 and 19, I started to think of a French exchange student who finds herself in Bridlington, surviving on half a mild and half a bitter mixed together, reading "A Kind of Loving" (Stan Barstow) and thinking she'll bump into David Hockney as she quotes Truffaut. Though on the otherside, there were feelings of Marilyn Monroe in NIAGARA, just slight feelings, just in the way jackets were placed over shoulders and there was a slight nipped-in waist (SLIGHT).
In the corner of a room in Amsterdam, The Netherlands look 24 was YSL-esque 90s Goth pretty, if Party of Five went theatrical and there was a Goth in the family and that Goth found some clothes at the thrift store in the summer and wore a deep avocado shade of lipstick and dyed their cheerleader blonde hair raven black and watched THE CROW and wished they had a walk-on role in THE CRAFT.
Balenciage was fun, not so much a corner, more a vestibule in a club or Brixton Academy a while back. For me I started to think about some John Hughes characters on a vacation to Paris/London/maybe Berlin, they'd probably go to a lot of places because they'd have that inter-rail ticket and just becoming immersed and losing their sense of self and inhibition, returning home with a Dolph Lungren flat-top and a Grace Jones tattoo on their inner thigh.
Look 8 and 9 at Bally.
Nice colour story at 3.1 Philip Lim.
Margiela gave me a new way of wearing jackets, a tuxedo under a duffel, so simple and I kick myself for not thinking about it and obsessing about anoraks over DB size 52 suit jackets. And then I was didn't really pay attention, as said attention was thinking about the previous jacket combination and then I got to Look 17 and 19 and slowed the NEXT NEXT NEXT down to a less heart-burn inducing speed, I especially care for Look 31. But man that Duffel/tuxedo combination…flipping crikey…shitting crikey.
Another girl in the corner from Proenza Schouler and in my humble opinion I think it would be helpful for Roksanda Ilincic to study these two lads handling of colour.
Another girl in the corner at ACNE, whose colour story I adored, proper just lapped up silver/nude/chestnut and that blue that lies somewhere between a teal peacock. Look 8 and 3 made me extra happy, especially because the shoes could be worn by a size 7 wearing male (like me). I do like ACNE, I like the proportion, the masculine/feminine, it all just makes complete sense to me and that hybrid skirt/pocket/fanny pack bag was curious.
I dream of the bookcase found in the place where the Antonio Marras girl lives.
Valentino had 48 looks, their girl was in that corner a long long time. As I get older and my tolerance thins and my appreciation deepens, I find myself drawn to Valentino, exploring the back catalogue, watching clips on YOUTUBE, getting emotional during the film, just falling deeply for the subtleties and beautiful proportion. Look 7, with the pleats falling from the waist, look 18, with a blue so dreamy, battleships could get sunk in its depths (plus it sort of reminded me of the clothes my art teacher would wear as she introduced us to the delights of the Romantic era), look 28, which I shouldn't like but do, look 40, which reminds me of after the awards shows have ended and dawn is rising and eyes are tired and feet are weary and bed feels like the best medicine and this stunner.
From start to finish I studied YSL, I wished for that mirror to be in my room, reflecting the MARRAS bookcase…I adore tough YSL, I adore romantic YSL, I adore YSL. There is something about a Stefano shoulder line that makes me melt and absurdly jealous at my wish to acheive something so natural looking. And that slight cuff with the three-button affair…oh mein…
WAH, I love a Celine pre-collection more then the mainline, I've said this before and will again (no doubt). Those trousers rivalled Chloe's and if the Chloe girl in my mind was a French girl on a vacation in Bridlington then Celine's girl was an English woman touring the wilds of the Breton coastline. The notion of controlled volume, even in the skinnier looks was/is genius, your eye roving up and down and across and back to the centre front marker. Those last two shift dresses, the Philo colour story, the weird sad feelings at a limited mainline show… I am a massive fan of volume at the shoulder into the sleeve, that curved line and roll of the sleeve head as it drops off the natural shoulder line makes me itchy with happiness.
Look 22, look 17, look 16 at Kenzo were joyful.
Thats everything I've liked from the pre-collections that I have viewed.
(all the images are from style.com)
smiler
Ben's smile at the end of Eastenders last night resembled a beaver whose destroyed a rivals damm, as if two beaver colonies were re-creating classic scenes from James Bond films. He looked more like his father when he did a little happy wee as his dad was carted away by DCI MARSDEN and her men. There's nothing like a scorned gay out for revenge and one should never underestimate the power of the scorned teenage gay. I wouldn't want to be Ben when Shirley stops the tears or what look like tears and gets him by his short and curlies…but then he'll unlease a torrent of whoop-ass revenge on her and it'll probably take the combined weight of Heather and her bouncer boyfriend to restrain him and get him shipped off to Grant in Lisbon for intensive "YOU ARE A MITCHELL" training. It is nice that Heather has someone to love her, someone to share the last pack of Wosits with…after the Minty debarcle, her lust for George Michael and his yoghurt top and that bunk-up with Darren "sperm-machine" (sung in a Kraftwerk way) Miller, she deserves a vat full of melted GRUYERE happiness. The return of Lucy is making me remember why it was good that Lucy was shipped off to her gran's. Even Lucy version 3 isn't helping the re-awakening of love. It's that fringe, the fringe that hides the sin, the fringe that is a temporary bus shelter, the fringe that makes folk shout "tidal wave – scatter" as she walks down Bridge Street, that fringe that just is so so wrong. I love KIM, I love her wardrobe, how she went all tounge-tied when Bianca's ex Ray saved her from the falling ladder, how her weave remained unruffled, just slightly vexed…she is genius in python… carrying on with love, I wonder who would write to Rose, her whose neck Tony Robinson and his TIME TEAM wish to dig in and uncover the truth, maybe its some guy on deathrow, maybe its someone whose blind, but then when you're blind your other senses become heightened and well, touching that draping flesh…shivers running down my spine…shivers… Ricky has gone, Janine keeps calling Pat, Bianca has a few more fag burns in her silver puffa, Liam got a job at Walford's answer to McDonalds, Cora in the charity shop being sexual with the steam-cleaner and Jane and her sous-chef job in Cardiff (she'll have to wear a bib as she cooks, the amount she slobbers).
I love the square.
Also, I like my new thick socks and the XLR8 Matais Agauyo podcast and Midnight in Paris.
book cover
Adieu
It was Pat's funeral on Eastenders, the square turned out, bar Dot, who was missing from proceedings, unless I blinked during the camera panning through the congregation thinking their thoughts about Pat. Cora looked like amazing, all teased beehive and Jackie O sunglasses, casting shameful looks at Lauren. Oh Lauren, she who sicks up in a graveyard, oh Lauren…going off the rails, why she doesn't look around the square at what she could become…that would sort her. An Albert Square line-up, consisting of those in their mid to late thirties, including Bianca, Roxy, Kat, Mandy…shall I go on? Lucy Beale is back, a new version, is this version three? Is she the real-life sister of the woman who plays Jane? Both have that slobber lip and fringes that could smuggle armies, like a Trojan Horse hairpiece. But seriously the new Lucy's hair is like a wonder of the square, with it's shiny plastic coating to prevent possible acid rain getting to her roots and that fringe. What secrets or acne infested forehead lie beneath that tidal fringe? She's only been in two episodes, she hasn't said much or done much, but I am patient and will sit and watch her bring that stripping moron Mandy down…down down to grease up that pole love town. Did Tanya get her hat for the charity shop Cora is managing or was she being all modern mum and wearing one of Oscar's paper-mâché creations? I think Derek is proper evil, but i also think this Branning brother firm malarky is a little too much to swallow, c'mon Max might fiddle his tax and Jack is an ex-cop with two kids and permanent gum slap sounds every times he speaks,but a firm… I gasped when Carol tripped outside the Vic, as David drove off weeping and chatting to Pat's light-up ornament. And then there was the extra ending, Simon laying flowers at midnight at his mum's grave…
I am confused by that new advert starring Jennifer Lopez. She drives a car, she sings, she swaggers, she has perfect hair, the scene is proper tropical, her Latina blood pumping through her neatly arranged veins. I wondered was it an advert for razors? She's done one of those and this could be a sequel. Was it an advert for a new album? Was it an advert for tampax, because those adverts are all about not letting menstrual cycles disrupt your day,but no, it was a car advert. Where at the end she gets yanked through the sunroof and dances…sometimes I wonder…
Soft leather sofa
Eastenders tonight was one of those shows where it feels like its LIVE, in REAL-TIME, maybe because it was breakfast time on the square and ALFIE MOON hadn't risen. I was looking at the sofa in Pat's old house and noticed the gathered leather detail on the cushions, how when Janine was relaying her dream about giving birth to a devil child she looked a little like a fallen angel, that gather detailing looking like crumpled wings after a heavy fall from the Lord's green fields on high. Denise had washed her weave, after 12 days of passing out photocopies of MURDERER MITCHELL's face down Turpin Road like a robot dog who got peed on searching for its owner…up and down, up and down she went, until CLEVER RICKY dropped a love note from Frank to Pat admitting both his and Phil's guilt over the car lot fire in the 90s. This means more scenes of DCI MARSDEN grilling Phil, taunting Shirley and her razor cheekbones and getting GAY BEN on side with promises of lifetime tickets to PRISCILLA QUEEN OF THE DESERT. I do hope JOE comes back, I did have a massive crush on Joe and his mum LORRAINE had amazing hair. DAVID is back, sexing CAROL like they did when they were 14. DEREK is pure villainous evil, the way he has a perma-snarl that erupts into this toothy smile is quite genius. EASTENDERS does this so well, better then those other soaps. Derek is rotten and I can't second guess what he's going to do, I don't want to either.
Why does Madonna have sex in the rip-tide scenes in a lot of her films. I saw a clip of her movie about Wallis Simpson and there it was, a quick exfoliating tumble with Edward. Madonna is a one-trick-film-sex-scene pony. It is gross MADONNA, I can't see why a gritty fumble is arousing…well maybe to you, the queen of REINVENTION whose finger is on the pulse of what HER public need. At the moment that means beach sex, shots of MADONNA confused behind a camera and talk of her new album and her choice of collaborators. You know, my 8 year old self played out his tape of TRUE BLUE and I do enjoy listening to her MADONNA album, because I am a fan of Borderline and Burning Up, I love the video for FROZEN, it's beauty, but she lost me when she had disco balls exploding around her lady area as she preached politics and sending glaciers to stop drought in hot places…plus her body is gross, a walking talking saddle stretched over a skeleton come alive at the HUNTERIAN MUSEUM.
I recommend RESTLESS, GUS VAN SANT'S new film, Henry Hopper is quite brilliant.
I recommend the coastal socks from LABOUR AND WAIT Liam got me for Christmas.
I recommend THE DAMNED DON'T CRY with JOAN CRAWFORD.
desk
In sympathy
Dark days are upon us, I cried a little, because she has gone, I had to go into the other room, we lit a candle for her and Hayley's birthday, Pat has gone. Another one of Albert Squares institutions has departed.
Eastenders does an institution well, that certain breed of woman who has seen the bottom of the gin bottle more times then she's reapplied her coral pink lipstick.
That certain breed of woman who defends her brood, who picks herself up, reapplied her coral pink lipstick and faces the world in her faux-moth riddled fur that could tell stories of long-forgotten bunk-ups.
And boy, Pat had some bunk-ups…Crikey that image of Frank at her back door in his birthday suit, a light upbow-tie keeping his Adam's apple warm…nuzzling his head in Pat's flat-top. Or her and heart-failed Roy having a quickie in the car lot. The old bird has been around.
Eastenders is genius at the creation of a tough old bird, better then any soap in this country and I will fight anyone who disagrees. On the square the residents lives are all intertwined, everyone has family, belongs to someone…Pat's family tree spanned halfway down Turpin Road, once round Beale's Plaice deep fat fryer and back through the swamp of Kat's tarnished sequin wardrobe.
Since 1986 Patricia Harris/Beale/Wicks/Butcher/Evans has filled the square with her smoke stained wisdom. She's been up and down more times then a knackered Southend roller coaster, at all times wearing her legendary ear jewels. She's been a beauty queen, a prostitute, a mum, a gangsters moll, a landlady, a B&B owner, a taxi driver, a jailbird, a mum, a nan. She's had feuds, love affairs, bust-ups, wore colour stories dreamed up in the bright lights of Clacton, love and lost and drank more gin then her out of Oliver Twist. 25 years is a long time to live in one place, only Ian and Dorothy have been around as long. Her story is fraught with turmoil, true it's fiction, we were sucked into her life for 30 minute slots twice, then thrice, then four times weekly. True she shouted, slapped, cried, loved, tanned and had a hairstyle reminiscent of a half chewed bit of candy-floss-tumbleweed. I once got her autograph for Bella as a birthday gift.
Her final years were spent in a house inherited from Andy, decorated in a strange chintz meets Austen meets Liberace style, with a lounge complete with cruise ship bar and leather sofa that had a quality similar to its owners skin.
Pat had leathery orange hued skin, like sandblasted polyester gone boiled, you know it's a look and she wore it well.
Her last years were spent been a Nan to Bianca's brood, to fighting with Janine.
Its a sad sad time as the weather goes Tsumani outside.
Farewell Pat.
Listings
So I am thankful and dismayed at a number of things that I have witnessed over the past year, so in the tradition of end of year lists and celebrations… THIS IS MY LIST OF THINGS THAT MADE ME HAPPY AND THINGS THAT MADE ME WANT TO SELF-HARM OVER THE YEAR (2011) (the bad first, because it is always better to end on a positive)
Boots with "skinny" jeans tucked into them, especially those boots with the lace fronts and inside side zip, worn with utter pride and trend-setting conviction by those that do. Everytime I witness this SHAMEFUL SIN, I want to tear my retina's from my eyes and do a show-stopping tap routine over them.
UGG boots make their wearers walk like disabled penguins.
All this talk about REPRESENTING…seriously it is like some SOCIALST propaganda, an Orwellian-style brainwashing of the nation through self-empowerment. There have been so many occurrences throughout the year in numerous situations where people have said they were representing…but weren't…an easy word that actually means nothing to many who utter it. Maybe in the dictionary the definition should read: REPRESENTING – To appear to want to do good for others whilst massaging ones own ego, to speak for the many but actually just speaking for yourself, to care, but only about yourself, to have no real handle on reality and probably should self-section oneself immediately.
TOP KNOTS and kaleidoscope bleaching.
BATES melted Vienetta arm slobbing all over ANNA in DOWNTON ABBEY, as they laid together after consummating their marriage…another retina stamping moment.
STANDSTEAD AIRPORT at midnight, when you're weary and humourless it's HADES.
BEIGE.
UMBRELLAS, I know they are practical and necessary and stop that rain dry curl. It's the threat of having my eyes gouged out, the inconsideration of users, the fact that people shake them all over, making you look like you've lost control of your urinary capabilities.
Going to a gig or an event and looking round and quietly despairing that so many beige fools got tickets instead of your friends who really should have been there. Case in point, seeing PULP, it was one of the highlights of my year, it had been a good 11years since I'd seen PULP and I was crazy excited. So we get to Hyde Park and wade through a sea of discarded Sunday Times and M&S smoked salmon with vinigarette crouton accompaniment and had some beers and watched Grace Jones, because that's all you can do when she is on stage, she has that weird power. And then PULP came on and we screamed and sang every word, I went a little hoarse, but all around me others were singing and going wild like me, but some weren't. Some complained about the crowd singing, about the crowd having fun…and these were friends of friends…oh the shame I felt at the slight association.
But on the plus side PULP were amazing and I cried tears of pure joy. (so the positivity starts)
Like seeing Michael Mayer during the summer.
Being in ITALY.
Seeing two RYAN MCGINLEY exhibitions, in Amsterdam and London.
DR PEPPER.
Watching television. (MODERN FAMILY, obviously EASTENDERS, BREAKING BAD, glee, PEANUTS, PRINCE documentary, THE PROMISE, DOWNTON ABBEY)
Forever listening to KOMPAKT (since 2001) is happiness.
COMEME is a great record label too.
Sigur Ros' new live cd/DVD is beautiful, as is listening to ETTA JAMES on CLAPHAM JUNCTION platform on an icy morning.
Small obsessions with Bacall and Bogart.
Reading WALKER EVANS biography.
TRAM RIDES in the morning with JARAH drinking Dutch coffee.
DRAPO and his layers is a marvellous thing to behold, especially in a small Italian town.
Lots and lots of amazing things this year, that I decided not to carry on with the bitterness and concentrate on the good vibes, because this last year has been alright, after a rocky beginning and weird middle items shaky end.
We'll see what next year brings, what new loves, likes, obsessions and hair pulling hatreds are formed. If I watch the X FACTOR or not, finding another APP to watch EASTENDERS in ITALY and hopefully having some WATANABE in my wardrobe.
I think next year STANDBYME will focus on television, some books and observations.
