Liquor License

The week in pop litter was painted in hope, desperation and folly.
Thank Sappho and her minions, then, for some good Lesbian intelligence.
As you know, I love news about Licker Licensees. First, we learn that local lez Portia di Rossi will soon go the growl with Joely Richardson on Nip/Tuck.
“I am a lesbian playing a lesbian,” she said in a radiant moment of self-awareness. Apparently, she and Ellen discussed the matter for some time and Portia realised that FINALLY it was time to stop HIDING her SEXUALITY.
Except, of course, that she hasn’t really. That’s one of only three things I know about her. The other two being (a) she was in that hateful program Ally McBeal and (b) according to an unreliable acquaintance, she’s a really good kisser.
And then, news surfaced that Pink might also be a hobbyist Muff Diva.
Do you care? Would it surprise you any more, than say, the SHOCK revelation that George Michael was gay? I don’t. And no it wouldn’t.
The thing that surprised me, erroneously as it turned out, is that she wed Corey Hart. Remember him? Sunglasses at Night?
This was from 1984 when, I imagine, a young Pink was yet to buy her first copy of Bodyweight Exercises for Buff Women.
There was no excuse at all for Corey Hart. I checked my vinyl to be sure. 1984 wasn’t a terrible year. In 1984 I bought The Go Betweens’ Spring Hill Fair, Lloyd Cole’s Rattlesnakes and Madonna’s Like a Virgin. I still listen to all of these records. No one listens to Corey’s woeful First Offense.
Some diligent googling reveals, however, that his name is Carey. Not Corey. And he rides motorbikes and sexually ambivalent popstars for a living. So, don’t be confusing them, ok?
Apart from this: britneyparislindsay. Couldn’t give a toss. Mais, J'attends novembre 25 quand je ne serai pas embarrassé pour être australienne. Vive le changement !

Hogwarts Kerfuffle

Ladeez:, puh-lease. Am I the only sister? Sup? In my efforts to keep this blog aloft -

Albus Dumbledore, wizard and avuncular defender of kiddies, is a Big Help to His Mum. Yes. The Hogwarts headmaster is, er, a head master.

Our source for this shocking intelligence is not, on this occasion, the pervie architects of Harry Potter fan fiction. It is in fact JK herself who chose to disclose Dumbledore’s preference for Deep House, tasteful lighting and cock.

When Rowling is not busy fashioning the kind of gaudy sentence that makes your authoress read like Hemingway by contrast, she’s Out There, apparently, sticking it to the man.

At New York City ’s Carnegie Hall a few weeks back, Joanne gave the fans the kind of minutiae they tend to eat up with a runcible spoon. Or, indeed, whatever the hell implement practitioners of the dark arts use to feed their unholy faces.

It seems, I’m told by my breeding colleagues, that JK’s info drip filter is emptied with great zeal. She could say, “Well, Snapes won’t sleep in anything but fretted linens. And he just loves the music of Spandau Ballet.” (Who doesn’t?)

Apparently, such mild revelations regularly afford a new lens for eager readers. It’s a harmless, job-creating fancy for all concerned. In this way, Rowling is much like a Cultural Studies Department.

However, I digress.

And so, it seems, do literally thousands of others. The last fortnight saw a relentless battery of headlines regarding this “story”. Wiki-reality has been transformed no less that 200 times in the last 24 hours. Bloggers, of course, are in a state.

“Why the hell should a children’s book have to include some idiotic political message?” asks one.

This incident will sell books. Maybe Rowling is not content to simply have more money that the Queen. Maybe she wants to actually purchase ER II as a mantelpiece ornament. Or, maybe she cares about The Gays.

Whatever her agenda, Rowling has now done much more than Out a fictional character. She’s given a whole lot of boring career pouffes something to crow about.

A gay spokesman told the BBC, “It's great that JK has said this. It shows that there's no limit to what gay and lesbian people can do, even being a wizard headmaster.”

And in news just to hand, Gay and Lesbian People have also earned the right to be thick and boring tw-ts. This is the sort of response that deters one from activism. (Well, that and laziness. And the chicks are rarely cute or well groomed.) This is why I turn a hostile shade whenever anyone calls me a Lesbian. Even when delivered respectfully, it is always capitalised and feels as though one has been awarded some kind of 25 metre muff-diving certificate.

As I'm sure you'll agree, enjoying sex is hardly a newsworthy achievement. Even for the founder of the Order of The Phoenix.

Slap Happy

Close your eyes. Assemble a brief register of Sexy Cynosures who need a Slapping. And now dare to tell me that Natalie Portman is not at the top of your list.
I have long despised Portman. Even more that I despise erstwhile hottie Scarlett Johansson for enrolling in Spin Class thereby losing her plush décolleté. (Damn you, Scarlett, and your inscrutable fondness for honing your assets. Once, you looked like Brigitte Bardot’s clever younger sister. And now, you look like Princess Anne.)
She’s just SO falsely uncontaminated. I imagine her cupping her ideal breasts in her perfect hands each morning and mouthing the words “You’re so much nicer than all those dirty girls” into her Lalique looking glass.
But, to paraphrase the great D Bowie, I got problems.
These problems, however, are not strewn about the marketplace so lavishly as hers. Portman, whose greatest role remains a cameo in exquisite shambles Zoolander, has made a new film. And if this news alone does not suffice to destroy your day, behold, the Princess Chagrin.
Apparently, she got her kit off in a new Wes Anderson short. (You know him. Plonker who keeps ripping off old John Irving plotlines re the Dysfunctional Underbelly of American Families. Tenenbaums. Snore. Bill Murray in a wetsuit. Snore.) Apparently, she regrets it.
Sometimes, says Natalie, “the most powerful thing you can do is say no.”
And sometimes, the most powerful thing you can do to promote a puffed-up short film made by a middling auteur is to tell everyone you’re NEKKID in it.
I shall not convey the link to the mildly p-rnographic entertainment here as I believe it is every woman’s duty to locate her own smut. However, rest assured, if the remit of your filthy id extends to Portman, you can find her out-of-context and out-of-clothes on teh interwebs. You don’t need to queue at a dreary film festival.

More Facebook: Are You Sure You Wish to Deactivate Your Account?

Yes, actually, I’m quite certain. I'm a loud angry woman and, generally speaking, I know what I would like.
Please Tell Us The Reason For Your Decision To Leave MySpace/Facebook/Orkut/The Hapless By-Product of Your Shirking Self-Regard.
Try as I might, I’m finding it difficult to enunciate. Although I have spent the last hour sweeping my social-networking residue from your sullied floors, I’m not sure I can pinpoint the reason. Something brought on this fit of emotional tidiness.
I couldn't say what.
Particularly as I am just the type to be seduced by such enticement. Give me an easy, uncensored forum for giddy text. Give me the opportunity to build a persona by arranging words, cultural objects and obscenity. I’ll devote hours to such onanism. I will.
Let me be clear: facebook provides little but unyielding fun, fascination and a locus to use adverbs like “pigfuckingly” to the delight of one’s peers. Many of the citizens who inhabit this realm are literate and compelling.
I (of all people) should love it. And love it fitfully for a spell I did.
After a frenzied few days of exchange, however, it seemed I had to commit facebook Seppuku. Either that or die of a slow egoistic consumption like a virtual Mary Shelley. Bits of my diseased respiratory system would fly out of my mouth as I obsessively egested *cough* the last few items in my facebook CD rack *sputter*.
I made a vow not to build myself entirely from the artefacts that surround me some months ago now. It seems I quite forgot and immersed myself utterly in the cultural field of someone else’s chilling software.
My accounts have been deleted and already I wonder how I shall know myself for the rest of the morning. This will be a day without a “wall” of comments to consult; without the record of my Alltime Favourite Bands (How complex am I, btw. Suicide, Eno and Candi Stanton?!); without a public gallery of photographs that make me look much more confident than I have any right to be.
So, that’s it. Until the next 2.0 diversion, I suppose.
I’m occupying this space as an orthodox old blogger and replaying the Top Down traditions into which I was born.

An Oddcast

Well, again, things are silent.
So, I thought I would yell in my vile Australian accent and privilege speech over text, today. Possibly not a good idea. But here is my oddcast nonetheless. Contains profanity. And pretension. I'm afraid you will have to click if you wish to hear it.

"Change, change, we got to start the change," said Simon Le Bon from deep within his very tight pants. And, you know, he and his more junior fellows who took to a global stage (made, naturally, from recycled tyres) this weekend past well may have had a point.
It is entirely possible that First World consumers ought to stop using risky light bulbs, packing children needlessly in Styrofoam and start, in short, Answering the Call.
Both irrationally and conveniently, in fact, one could Answer The Call by sending an SMS. One did so in the hope that this Message of Ecological Promise would be flashed on the same screen used to debut the lyrics of Madonna’s new single, Hey You.
Everybody’s favourite menopausal hardbody concluded her vile song that, despite its liberal use of schoolchildren, made Papa Don’t Preach sound like Ballad of a Thin Man by contrast.
There’s something happening here, said my partner who had lost patience around the time Snoop Dogg had offered his final Bow Wow Wow. (Yes, somehow, the terms “beyatches” and, indeed, “hos” seemed to drain the meaning out of an already fairly meaningless event.) But you don’t know what it is, do you, Missus Ritchie?
Madonna asked us to “jump up and down” if we cared about The Environment.
This, along with many Earth Saving measures listed helpfully on the Live Earth website, was easier said than done. First, I had been drinking bourbon since about the time Australian politician Peter Garrett had disgraced himself in Sydney with his eco-lite toadying and transparent campaigning. (You try enduring such a spectacle sober.) And, we had made a pact to take a shot of Kentucky Whisky every time the Australian Alannis Missy Higgins looked like she was about to cry.
(And, of course, another shot for every time a blond German child said something plaintive. By the time a little fraulein called Astrid told us to “make handicrafts for politicians” we were completely stonkered.)
Second, I was occupied with wi-fi, television remote, mobile telephone and a bunch of missiles for lobbing at all these media. I couldn’t possibly jump up and down. Sorry, Madge.
There are many ways to unpack the shame and idiocy and ultimate failure of Live Earth. Of course, fans of John Mayer will tell you, “At least they’re doing something. What are you doing?”. Well, apart from feeling rather smug that I have now paid for Bob Dylan tickets AND old Zimmy had the good sense not to appear in this shambles, not a lot.
But I am not attempting to unburden myself of guilt by texting to the tempo of the Black Eyed Peas or whatever else passes for popular music these days. And I do not suppose that in simply feeling emotional or being able to endure An Inconvenient Truth I am somehow saving Our Broken Earth.
We got to start the change, said Simon. Which is odd, considering that he had not changed his demeanour or outfit from earlier in the week which found him on exactly the same stage with the exactly the same expression In Memory of Diana. And, really, thanks to the miracle of Botox, he looked fairly much as he had back at the Granddaddy of pointless rock n roll international consciousness raising, Live Aid.
As did Madonna.
As she jumped up and down for the environment, and before I fell asleep, all I could think was: look at those thighs. I must enrol in a Pilates class.
I challenge you to derive any more inspiration than that from Live Earth.

Ladeez, please

Sup, beyatches? It is only Sessum and Self who bother to post-our-way-out-of-the-patriarchy these days. And, as you know well, neither of us is to be trusted for inspirational prose.
You must write. Or, I shall turn into a somewhat less literate Christopher Hitchens and start making fun of Michael Moore. And, then where will you be?
I am sure his new film is Good. I am also sure, as an Australian, it bears little relevance to my life. This doesn't stop my countrymen from importing it. I love so many things about American culture. I just wish there was a little less of it.
However, Michael Moore, a fractious cross between Engels and Tinky Winky, is doing Flint, Michigan proud. This weekend past, Box Office for his new Controversial™ and No Holds Barred™ documentary has been keeping apace with Jessica Alba’s turn as the Invisible Woman in Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer.
This is to say, of course, Sicko is doing moderately well. The grit is hovering in the Top Ten and, according to Moore’s personal newsletter, has now amassed the second biggest US weekend opening for a documentary. The first, needless to impart, is Fahrenheit 911.
Alba, 26, recently told press that she likes to keep slim and sexy by working out to loud and funky music at the gym. Moore, who is tiny for a mid-westerner, maintains his girlish figure by listening to the anarchic ranting of neo-cons and regularly getting thrown out of global corporate headquarters.
Each fitness activist continues to seduce thousands of new male fans. Although, let it be said, there are considerably fewer blokes in the Alba fan club who own copies of Das Kapital, tubes of Clearasil and belts made of string.
(And, it’s true that Moore is the next Most Likely spokesmodel to succeed Anna Nicole at Trim Spa.)
Now starring in his fourth flick as an earnest every-slab, Moore is a legitimate celeb. He has been playing the talk shows masterfully and, perhaps, edging closer to his aim of transforming the parlous health-care system.
The film, by all accounts, is very good, if You Like That Kind of Thing. I.e. Leftist emotional pornography that does its best to alter public opinion. It may not, however, resonate with Australian audiences as we simply don’t have identical or even analogous problems with our health care providers.
This didn’t stop new Melbourne International Film Festival Director Richard Moore from booking Sicko into his opening slot.
Plus ca change, as Australian Festival Directors offer in a vile accent while miming significance in the upscale sunshine of Cannes, plus c’est la meme lens. Apart from the weirdness of this opening selection, the Australian Moore is sticking to the popular formula of previous MIFF director James Hewison. Asian slow-bore, a youth focus and, yes, another affectedly dreary outing by Lars Von “I’m So Pretentious I Even Managed to Piss off the Endlessly Chipper Bjork” Trier.
Talking to press, Oz Moore said the selection was apposite as it would “set the mood for the after-party”.
And, in a sense, he’s right. I have attended a MIFF opening night party and the mood is generally one of Australian cultural embarrassment and worthy knee-jerk liberalism. Really, it reminds one of a faintly better looking, better dressed and drunker Socialist Workers Party meet-and-greet circa 1984. Ashamed of our own heritage and unwilling to enlarge upon it, we speak of borrowed politics and themes.
So, Sicko should be perfect.
Already, I miss James who, it must be said, knew how to curate a stinking Australian film for first night audiences and do so unapologetically while manfully holding his liquor. James speaks fairly good French, as it happens, and could probably intone "plus ca change” in Cannes with reasonable efficacy. This, however, never stopped him from putting indigenous work on prominent display.
But, why should you care about Australian culture? Goddess knows, we don't have much.

We Don't Need No Re Run

The weird slo-mo rerun of Diana’s demise is begun. From this, the anniversary of her birth, until the commemoration of her death, the self-coronated Queen of Hearts will be killed a thousand times.
For now, expect enough weepy telemovies to furnish the needs of an above-average menopause.
For fans, such as I, of the Made for TV genre, great news is at hand. The Murder of Princess Diana is almost in the can. Made by the former partners of Working Title films, this screen excellence will no doubt have the American upscale, homosexual aesthetic of great telemovies like Mommie Dearest. While retaining the British upscale, homosexual aesthetic of great rom-coms like Four Weddings and a Funeral.
For those who prefer their People’s Princess with a side order of counterfeit integrity, the BBC will doubtless offer a dozen documentaries. These will range in matter from sophisticated conspiracy theory to cheesy cultural studies assay.
Speaking of the latter, let us not underestimate exactly how much poop newspapers are currently honing for Op Ed. I imagine cleverness written by academics called things like Diana: Femininity, Image and Resonance will be upchucked like so many cosmopolitan cocktails in coming weeks.
And, of course, the chic gossip Tina Brown is at it adding her expensive whiff to the conversation. Former VF editor TB has just unleashed The Diana Chronicles.
Of course, it all started hours ago at Wembley Arena. Along with many television viewers, I can barely wait for tonight to savour this wonderfully inappropriate spectacle.
From a dash to you tube to a Google news search, it seems as though this is even better than we’d hoped. Duran Duran performed, as expected. As did seedy troll Tom Jones. But, in between the singing of blue silver and the hurling of underpants, DENNIS HOPPER appeared.
Doubtless, the former HRH was a very great fan of Easy Rider and expressionist painting and would often ask Dodi to don an oxygen mask while shrieking, “Baby wants to f*ck! Baby wants to f*ck Blue Velvet!”.
I mean, really. What were Harry and William thinking?
Since her first appearance as a blush and unspoiled hottie in 1980, Diana always provided the stuff of well-paced screenplay. Just as she threatened to become unspeakably dull (as, between you and I, she probably was) another plot point was written. Despair, redemption and bouts of mild bulimia always emerged as needed.
Again, in an act of consummate script writing, Diana has left just enough time between her 46th birthday and the tenth anniversary of her glamorous death to allow media providers to spend themselves silly.
Tissues at the ready. It will end, gentle reader, on August 31.

Parsley Porn

In a ceremony long on sequins and short on edible canapés, the American group PETA has again anointed its King and Queen. Every year at around this time, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals takes pause from its important work of saving Our Broken Earth to recognise The World’s Sexiest Vegetarians.
Every year at around this time, I take pause from the important work of blaspheming on a personal weblog to recognise The World’s Most Pointless Activists.
Having received its annual Vitamin B 12 shot, an organisation that regularly relieves me of any lingering omnivore guilt named two marginal television personalities as its Sexiest. These are Carrie Underwood, a country-lite blonde singer from Oklahoma and Kevin Eubanks, a guy who plays in Jay Leno’s Tonight Show Band.
I have squandered the better part of a morning looking at pictures and moving images of these two putative celebrities and trying to work up some lust. I can report, neither of them is particularly “Sexy”. And, ask any leftover from my Salad Days, my standards are pretty generous.
Kevin, frankly, just looks like a nice Dad type in clumpy shoes and American catalogue-wear. I tried to imagine him pulling my hair and calling me his beyatch. No. By eleven, all that had occurred was an elaborate and unsexy fantasy which ended with him usefully painting my cornices. By which I mean: he usefully painted my cornices.
Two time title holder Underwood, although physically lovely, is every bit as sexy as the typewriter for which she was named. In fact, I decided this long ago as she reprised Love Is a Battlefield during the ’04 season of American Idol. Those of a certain vintage will recall the AWESOME boozy jiggle enacted by Pat Benatar in the original version of this powerful tune. Miss Underwood, sadly, drained a massively sexy song of all its sex.
Jus as PETA continues to drain real activism of any actual might.
For years now, this organisation has colluded with famous idiots. Using the vacant mechanism of celebrity, it has attempted to jam the machine of animal slaughter. It has asked Naomi Campbell (still an unapologetic fur-wearer and Very Hot Criminal) to pose nude for its anti-fur campaign. It has lured vegan Playboy models into its employ and draped them publicly in lettuce leaves. Yes, girls, it’s apparently fine to inject poison into your tits to uphold the phallic standard and show your arse-hole to Hef and the world for money. But eating little lambies is Just Not Cool.
Amid all of this hypocrisy and shallow, selective World Saving, PETA never misplaced my interest so utterly as when they named Mr Paltrow, AKA Chris Martin of Coldplay, as 2005’s Mister Herbilicious.
Coldplay? Sexy? !? He contains all the strapping sexual protein of char-grilled eggplant and I shan’t be eating a slice of him any time soon.
If PETA wishes to engage the attention of myself and other potentially principled foodies, they might start by engaging our intellect rather than libido. Cos, try as I might, I’m just not seeing Caz, Kev and I in a Jacuzzi.

Paris, still Burning

Despite earlier reports, P Whitney Hilton is not made from filigree titanium and life-force drained from the souls of sleeping children. She is not, after all, a blonde bagless vacuum with a synthetic chassis designed to suck the organ of discourse dry.
No. She’s an upright, Christian Girl Scout getting set to hock her sugar cookies to the culture. Yum.
As any penitent celeb would, Paris sought absolution from Barbara Walters on Sunday. From deep within her dermatitis, she told Walters, “God has given me this new chance.”
Freshly pressed into the service of the Lord, Paris declared her intention to help Those Less Fabulous. She announced astonishing plans to open something like a Centre For Children Who Can't Read Good. Then, she, like, rilly regrouped as a Total role model and confessed that her dumb act was, “no longer cute.”
Apparently abject stupidity has soured beyond its erotic Best Before date. Who knew?
PR redemption is a story that is played out every other week. Apparently, we love it. Angelina, a renovator’s delight, was once a tatty bi-curious hovel. Now she’s a rainbow cathedral of hope. Madonna was once a man eating onanist. Post Kabala, it don’t mean a thing if she ain’t got that string.
The thing is, though, Ange and Madge might actually give a crap. It is entirely possible to believe that they wish to use their charms for good instead of crotch grabbing evil.
As anyone who has seen Miss Hilton’s adult video might attest, she is not the world’s most responsive woman. So could God really prod her into a more active service?
Well, duh, no.
As is her mode, Paris simply proceeds through the motions. And in doing so, provides another handy clue to the burgeoning crappiness of the culture.
Today, she’s Redemption Barbie (with optional stick on rash). The world’s most expensive cipher has, again, drained the meaning from something beautiful.
Thanks to Paris, the practise of living has itself been refurbished and is now sold back to us as A Lifestyle Choice!
She hasn’t learnt anything so much as she has redecorated. This is salvation as performed by the Fab Five of Queer Eye.

MANAGED DIALOGUE?

Quote: “That is one of the mistakes a lot of people make — believing that uncensored speech is the most free, when in fact, managed civil dialogue is actually the freer speech.” --Tim O’Reilly, as quoted in the New York Times.

Quote: "My ass." -- Jeneane Sessum, as quoted in allied.