Archive for June, 2010
Fly Guy
June 23rd, 2010
How marvelous to have been flies on the wall for the cringe-laden Cameron/ Sarkozy showdown last week. The official occasion was the visit of France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy and his wife Carla Bruni to London to mark the 70th anniversary of Charles De Gaulle’s wartime broadcast urging his nation to resist the Nazi occupation of France. But the real story became Bruni’s blistering bid to command the camera at all costs.
Time to Shine
June 22nd, 2010
Anyone been watching Work of Art: The Next Great Artist on Bravo? Rapid recap: it started June 9th and has 14 aspiring artists compete in weekly art-themed challenges for a prize of a solo show and $100,000. I missed the first one but tuned in for the second, in which the artists were asked to make sculptures from materials plucked from an appliance dump.
Inside Outside
June 21st, 2010
Tonight, as he claps closed his computer, Husband will hustle out of the door straight to a dinner at a DC dining establishment. No other halves allowed (it’s business, not pleasure), so I’ll be on my tod this evening. Naturally, a night alone is no biggie at all (it’s a chance to catch up on The Hills, is how I see it), but it did get me thinking about loneliness in general. Who can have missed the headlines that hit after the recent publication of Emily White’s memoir Lonely? White’s story was stark, and struck some serious chords: a 30-something successful lawyer, her life was left in total tatters when chronic loneliness suddenly set it.
Papa Don’t Preach
June 20th, 2010
It’s Fathers Day today, so offspring everywhere are crafting cards, picking out flowers or up the phone, or whipping up a batch of pancakes/ pastrami-stuffed sandwiches (Dads like pancakes and pastrami). And I’ve been lingering on and listing up some of the things my Father has taught me, thus far:
House and Home
June 19th, 2010
‘Alleeeeeeeeeeeeeeedd Joaaaaanne Foooorrdd’ came the call, summoning Husband and I into our interview at the hands of the U.S. Citizens and Immigration Service yesterday. In 30 minutes, we set about proving that our relationship is to be believed and bonafide: we’d packed a binder to bursting with all the failsafe don’t-doubt-us documents, but found that in our case, our case could be made with the following:
Two ‘joint-life’ accounts (bank and insurance)
Two sheets of photos (Husband’s collated collection of first-meet to marriage pics was the one thing that sparked interest in our interviewer: ‘Is that scuba diving? What about shaaaaarrrks??’)
Tech Support
June 18th, 2010
During a DC dinner the other week, our conversation was cut by the buzz of berries and the flash of phones, so talk turned to the tech that’s changing our times. One guest hated how hard it is to prioritize in the swell of a constant stream of emails. Another said she struggles to be in the moment, ever armed with an active device…
Check out this week’s video blog. And special thanks to Apple (without which this blog and the videos would not be possible).
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Up Close and Personal
June 17th, 2010
The night her mother Debbie died of cancer this year, British teenager Sarah Phillips picked up her mobile phone and sang into it a home-made tribute. The song, later set to a string of family videos, became an internet sensation with hundreds of thousands of hits, raising more than £100,000 for charity and lending a benchmark to grip on for a family in grief. Four weeks after Debbie died, Sarah entered the iTunes chart with her eye-pricking and visceral version of Paolo Nutini’s song Autumn.
