Archive for September, 2010
Clothes Talking
September 23rd, 2010
Something sinister has started in the clothes cupboards of teenage and twenty-something girls, and it launches with the line “I went shopping and bought…” Haul vlogging is the latest thing to run a rash across the internet: search YouTube for “haul video” and it flags up more than 165,000 entries. It’s basically sharing a shopping spree with the world via a home-made video blog. An example might go something like this: “Hi everyone. I’ve got so much to show you all. American Apparel is one of my favorite shops. It’s quite expensive, but it is designer. I got this skirt – I’m not a big fan of pink, but I really liked it, so decided to buy it. It’s really just kind of elegant and pretty. The color’s just really nice as well, so I bought that. It just goes above the knee.”
Horse Power
September 22nd, 2010
Time to get on the guilt train, readers, and ask ourselves how we got to work this morning… or school, or the shops, or the somewhere else we had to be. If you got in on foot, you’re off the hook. By bus or bicycle? That’s fine too. See, it’s Car Free Day today, an international event set up on September 22nd to encourage us to get around without cars. Good cause too, cos nowhere feels more filled to the gills with the gleaming demons than our planet as of now.
Balancing Act
September 21st, 2010
Horoscopes: on the good days, love them! on bad days, leave them! I fall fickle on either side of the fence on this one: sometimes things seem insanely in-line with what I’ve read in a mag, a rag or a newspaper, while at others the life happenings and the horoscope are completely out of kilter. But there is one astrological aspect I’ve never been able to contest, and that’s my total, utter Libra-ness. This is my sign, and how. Indecisive? I think that’s a Yes! Especially since moving to the States where there are 200 choices of breakfast cereal in one shopping aisle. Gullible? Sure: banoffee and key lime pies are full fruit servings for me. On the up side there are diplomatic and sociable streaks and some have it that as a Libran I am charm personified. I believe them (easily influenceable is another tell-tale trait).
Floored
September 20th, 2010
I came late to the U.S. MasterChef party, partly as I’m a die-hard fan of the British version. And also, it has to be said, because I don’t do well with Gordon Ramsay’s agitation and thigh slapping for more than a few minutes at a time. But, last Wednesday we were stranded without so much as a bit of buoyant reality TV to cling to, so we settled for the final of MasterChef.
Saints Alive!
September 19th, 2010
From yesterday’s profane to something altogether more sacred today, with the official feast of Saint Januarius. I first met this most mythical of saints in Naples, which makes sense since he’s the patron saint of that city. San Gennaro (as he’s known in Italian) is honored by the faithful there three times a year in the cathedral, as they wait to witness the liquefaction of his blood stored in two precious vials.
San Gennaro is a huge deal in Italy, but it’s not as if he’s going unnoticed here: had any of you heard of the mega, madcap celebrations that go on for him in New York City each year? 2010 is the 84th Annual Feast of San Gennaro, the longest-running and most revered religious outdoor festival in the States. It’s been banging since September 16 and ends today, stampeding all through the streets of Little Italy. This is the area of lower Manhattan that served as the first home in America for hundreds of thousands of Italian immigrants who came here seeking to improve their lives beginning in the early part of the 20th century, so it’s frankly heartening to see that they carted their best bud Gennaro across the Atlantic with them.
Sheets to the Wind
September 18th, 2010
If there ever was a modicum of morals or self-restraint in the rough and ready genre of reality TV, then Jersey Shore has stripped that away, all slapping and screaming. Oh how the hair extensions and false nails have been flying on MTV’s hit show, currently festering through its second season. The premise is simple (eight people spending the summer together in a house), the plot minimal (part-time jobs, jacuzzis, eating, drinking, dancing and devil-may-care the consequences). Season one took place on the Jersey Shore and the gang are currently in Miami Beach.
Spit it Out
September 17th, 2010
100, 500 – that’s the number of words an average person consumes every day. That’s a lot of letters to be getting on with, an amount that has tripled from 1980 to 2008. So let’s slow ourselves right down and sit with a word – just one word – from the artist Ed Ruscha today.
Join me on this week’s video blog. With special thanks to the letter L and the letter I and the letter S and the letter P.
