Chanel: Shade Parade

God, i feel ESTRANGED from this blog. still i hope to change that in the coming months. My distraction, in part, has to do with my new love affair with Pinterest, which is siphoning off my interest in posting all things visual. If you haven't discovered it... Do.   It's a series of online pinboards where you can pin things you like the look of. Genius.

Anyway, I digress. this advert is quite simply, amazing. and quite the way to make a re-entrance into the world of my blog after a summer break. think of my fingers prancing about like this as a warm up before they type.

I Heart. Big time.

Nicked: the musical

My dear friend Sam Hodges is playing our esteemed Prime Minister in a new 'urban' musical political satire, NICKED,which premiered at the HighTide theatre festival a few weeks ago. I'm off to see it this week with existing enthusiasm buoyed by this you tube trailer which is hilarious. political rapping: bring it.  

Sea side treats (by way of M&S)

Mini bucket-and-spade jellies and chocolate ice creams from M&S bring sweet beach treats to, well, the office. Bite-sized delights. so dinky, so cute, so cool.

Moustaches: OUT OF CONTROL

 Oh GOD. Practical and affordable (£9). i wasn't expecting that.

 Can't quite say the same for the below. but hey, what they lack in usefulness, they make up for in F.U.N



Moustache badge

£17.50 for a badge?! seemingly so. does my moustache obsession warrant such a ridiculous and unnecessary expenditure? Hmmm. Still, thank you Sam for drawing it to my attention (x).

Ash Cloud

Hopefully this won't stop me flying tomorrow. though it is rather impressive looking. so much so it is currently my sister's screensaver. she's a funny one - fabulously so.

Diver

I have decided to start a fantasy art collection - ie a collection comprised of pieces of art that I'd like to buy, but can't. sort of like fantasy football but, you know, not. Although, in theory, one could start out with a fantasy lump sum and buy art like mad, and see how much the collection had appreciated at the end of each year. or something. Anyway. i saw this today and thought - I'd rather like that. called Diver, it's cibochrome print mounted on aluminium with neon and is part of married couple Rob and Nick Carter's neon 'Postcard from Vegas' series.

Vintage swimming

Good it's been eons since i posted anything. Yikes.

Still, this is where, who and how I wish I were today.

Pencil sculpture

Yet another chapter in my 'book of obsessions' (see moustaches, matryoshkas et al) relates to pencils. more specifically pencils with rubbers on the end, which i steal on a regular basis from swish hotels and with which I write all the time. but when i was sent a link to this post on Sharon Montrose's blog i sort of felt put in my place. writing with pencils with rubbers on the end is clearly too damn fricking obvious when you could, you know, be sculpting their lead into letters of the alphabet, figurines, hearts or shoes...  A big woop for Brazilian born, Connecticut based artist Dalton Ghetti

Wastwater

I came out of Wastwater, a series of three short, tangentially linked plays (an elliptical triptych is what the Royal Court call it), having very much enjoyed them, but really quite foggy about what their point was. which was a bit strange. for some reason beforehand i though they had an eco link. but while watching, nothing of that nature particularly struck a cord. Each story takes place in the immediate environs of Heathrow airport - were the plays about the intimate, minor dramas lost in the roar of international activity? or the flightpath as metaphor for something - emotional journeys? the noise and fear and fright and excitement of takeoff and landing as one chapter closes and another opens? who knows. i'm still wondering. still, all of the above said, it was strangely compelling... 

I am fan of both Simon Stephens (playwright) and Katie Mitchell (Director), and I loved the claustrophobic intensity of each of the two-handers - the dialogue is pacey and has no pre-amble;  thrown into scenes dripping with drama from the get-go you must work to catch on to what's happening in them: who are the characters? where are they? what's their connection to one another? how well do they know each other?

Within each section, one of the characters is pushed to (and beyond) a significant, and potentially life-changing point by the other,  in a situation that is (one presumes) all too familiar to the latter. is it a good  thing? or darkly sinister? the tension is almost unbearable at points (in the best way, as oppose to a boring way) - the mystery being unravelled is teasingly, tantalisingly drawn out even as the dialogue races along.

weird. but in a good way.