AVIDA DOLLARS

Does anyone like Salvador Dali?

I used to, but not any more. Why you may ask. I shall tell you. He was a monomaniac – not for painting (paranoiac critical theory or nuclear mysticism – SEE BELOW) – but for money. Yes, MONEY. That green word.

He sold out on the world. He pissed on one of Warhol’s prints and changed the perception of an artist from the suffering outcast to the fortunate innovator. His name is also an anagram of AVIDA DOLLARS (meaning greedy for dollars).

AAAAhhh well that’s the way the world ticks. TICK <> TICK <> TICK <>

I don't want any subscribers. In fact, don't push the follow button. You are not my little monster. Don't push it ok?

Work is more fun than fun. 


Noel Coward


Isn't it just?

HELP!?

I'll give you a deal. 

You, yes, you who are reading this lovely, most brilliant blog can continue to do so if you would like to.

BUT the blog is in danger of being deleted.

Help the blog. Give him a pat on the back, some milk maybe. What he really really likes is a SUBSCRIBER.

Don't get me wrong. No one's forcing no one. Or someone's forcing someone. 

One click but of a button - where you are Zeus and the blog is Stephen Fry - and that's all it takes. Do unto others as you would have done unto you... all that crap. Now you must embrace your generousity. For the Blog!!! Long live!!!!!!!

Deathcrap

Hmmm... what am I feeling like this morning? 

Well... last night I went to the theatre to watch Deathtrap by Ira Levin at the Noel Coward Theatre, London. This is the longest running comedy thriller on Broadway. There is a pithy piece of wit on the brochure:

A PLAY TO DIE FOR

And, hell, it is. The frights, bangs and unexpected twists are lively and entertaining. This is very much a play where you do not have to think. It is one shenanigan after the next. Much humour results from the play on a 'play within a play' - evoked humourously and leaving a memorable ending of more madness. 

It has the ability to petrify... like Ghost Stories at the Duke of York's BUT you also get comedy, comedy and comedy.

Watch it. Far better than the Inbetweeners. No?

Has the World gone Gaga?

What would this blog ever amount to if it did not say anything about our dear Miss Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta – that is Lady Gaga to you!

On Sunday night, she collected her eighth MTV music award, attired in a dress made of red meat. This is absolutely LOGICAL… given that recently she wore a meat bikini in a photo shoot for Japanese Vogue… and, of course, this follows on well from her wardrobe of the past: lobsters capite, sunglasses made of cigarettes, bird-nest chapeau just to name a few. Well, the girl’s got style, but has she got substance?

As a rising gay icon, reclining over an empire of ‘little monsters’, proclaiming herself as the new Bowie, Warhol, Madonna and Spears – she is not modest, to say the least. The demure young lady – now 24 – is soon to become immortal according to some. I look forward to her apotheosis alongside Heracles and the Roman emperors. But, is there room for a spoilt little girl (who attended the same private school as Paris Hilton), popping some sweat, in a meat dress? The young Gaga has unequivocally worked very hard to get where she is – this is not doubted – but how authentic is she?

Promoting a sexual image publicly, while having asexual proclivities privately. Her spangled lifestyle is a set of paradoxes and lies. Last July, in an interview with Caitlin Moran she told the world: “[I am] not what straight men masturbate over. It’s not for them. It’s for us.” As to whom ‘us’ refers to, that is a mystery. But isn’t the whole point of her act, the sexualisation of Pop? Imagine Gaga looking in her mirror every morning. Does she grin and cackle over her image? Look how fake I am, but look how sincere I appear towards my fans. But the two are incommensurable for a true star. Gaga is horribly, cataclysmically and whimsically insincere.

Shortly after she scooped up her latest MTV award, she proved this point again in an interview with Ellen Degeneres (who happens to be her ‘favourite person’). This is what she said:

‘I wasn’t used to not performing [at the MTV Awards ceremony]… and so much of what I stand for is really hard work and being yourself and busting your ass, and it was really difficult for me and I kept thinking I can’t let my fans down tonight because I’m just another bitch in a dress at an awards show.’

The language of equivocation is a difficult skill to master. We have an expert here. She is exactly what she says she is not. In fact, she is ‘another bitch in a dress at an awards show’, but the sad truth is that she has the world hooked on her on her bony, emaciated Gaga claw.

‘If we don’t fight for our rights, soon we’re going to have as much rights as the meat on the bones’ she continues further in the interview.

So she’s also a social commentator? This is not the message that Jonathan Franzen is projecting. In fact, it is totally contrary to one of our greatest social commentators of all time. In his new novel, Freedom, he shows (with a large bolus of support and an academic mindset) that now we have too much freedom and it does not help our happiness in the slightest. A few decades ago, this could not be said as liberal democracies were still very much in their making. Having evolved from a carapace of repression and inequality, it has now become unfashionable to fight for our liberty. Go back to the 19^th century if you want to do that:

So, can someone please explain to me why we are watching that piece of meat waving her gawky legs and Nosferatu visage!

The Odyssey begins with the war of the X.

What is it with the use of 'x' at the end of an email or text message?

Porn XXX? What does it mean now that it has become so overused? And what does it say of trends in sexuality? Are we becoming (permit me to be a bit crude) 'gay'er as a society? - this is no bad thing as such: hygiene for the price of AIDS and two 'x' chromosomes (or 'y's) for the price of one… What is going to happen next - strangers kissing in the streets instead of shaking hands?

If this is the way society tends towards (rather like the occasionally questionable and louche taste of modern, post-modern and post post-modern art), so be it! But still, there is something banal about it all. Why and whence comes this custom? And more importantly: whither it goes? Let us hold on to some degree of tradition while we can!

Originally, the unwritten consensus for the use of x was for inter-familial purposes or from boyfriend to girlfriend or perhaps from girl to girl. But now it is knobbingly attached to the end of every email or blogging post that we write. What's the consensus now?

1 x = minimum;

2, standard;

3, warmer;

4, hot;

5 boyfriend to boyfriend or b to g or g to g or g to b;

6 or more - I can't be bothered to think.

Can there be a lore as abstruse as this?

To recap, this change is no tragedy as such. Indeed, it is good that we can express ourselves freely. However, if, just as while looking at a piece of modern art, you can step back and think "what on earthly hell for?', then it suddenly strikes you that the signet ‘x’ is totally absurd. Modern art is at least inventive and (supposedly) creative, but the signet ‘x’ is always the same. It is a stupendously dull detraction.

In Croatia, Germany and a whole host of other European countries, the positions of the 'x', ‘y’ and 'z' keys on the keyboard have been moved about considerably. Thus, for the pinkie that usually hits the sacred and hallowed xxx, would it now be zzz? That would surely be more exciting. Or even better y? y? y? am i doing dis?

Lamentably, I, too, am guilty of using this neo-barbarism at the end of my Facebook emails or posts. I used to avoid it in texts (I should be writing text- messages just as quotations is the proper, but practically obsolete, term that ought to be used in place of quotes... rofl, rofl – is that what’s ‘hip’ these days?). But, the absence of the ‘x’ came across as cold… and I’m not a cold bastard, though I am querulous.

However,  I learnt that lone resistance will achieve nothing. What do I change on my own? I could be strong and start a movement against the xxx (which would be hard given that the band, the XX, have just won the Mercury Award and there are x amount of people who can't read the Roman alphabet), or I could be feeble and follow what I like to think is the good old British maxim - if you can't beat 'em, join ‘em. So, I salute you 'xxx'-ers. This is only the beginning. Of the war. And the blog. Hugs.

Xxx

Bella, detesta matribus.
Wars are the dread of mothers.
Horace