Alliterative Sirens …

If you are going to be a STAR, having an alliterative name is most helpful.
Here’s an incomplete alphabet of famous alliterative laydees, can you help me fill in the gaps?

Anouk Aimee
Brigitte Bardot
Claudia Cardinale
Diana Dors
Erika Eleniak
Farrah Fawcett
Greta Garbo
Helen Hunt
I
Joan Jett
January Jones
K
Lindsay Lohan
Marilyn Monroe
Nanette Newman
O
P
Q
Rita Rudner
Susan Sarandon
Tila Tequila
U
V
W
X
Y
Z

 

The best song in the world, ever …

happens to be on the best album ever.

Brompton Oratory
on the album ‘The Boatman’s Call’ by Nick Cave.

Simply glorious.

 

Pre-Raphaelites in Stunner victory

The Pre-Raphaelites online resource  has won the BETT Award for best digital collection and resource bank after being recognised as one of the UK’s leading educational websites.

Read all about it at the JISC Digitisation blog.

I’m a massive Pre-Raph fan and am looking forward to checking out this resource. Apparently there is a personal collection option where you can group and theme images from the collection.

I’ve just started to whip up a little collection The Goddesses Underground to pull together the Pre-Raphaelite art I used to illustrate my thesis ”The goddesses underground : Swinburne’s Poems and ballads (1866) and the creation of the goddess as a religious icon”.

 

Discoveries, tweeted – sort of like Girl, interrupted

Twitter. You have 140 characters with which to import your observation/discovery/opinion. Gotta love the pithiness.

Here’s some recent tweettweets:

• Fantastic literary/musical coupling Neil Gaiman @neilhimself and Amanda Palmer @amandapalmer Amanda now a fugstar too http://bit.ly/6me56n
• Courtesan Night – my pick of the new @dimitySO – esp delightfully named colour combo plum kitten/coral http://bit.ly/7Zll5L
• I like knives and these colourful little blighters are particulaly sharp http://www.kuhnrikon.com/products/tools/tools.php3?id=210
• RT @smashingmag: Pictaculous: a color palette generator – http://bit.ly/z6NGw
• Mad frockery & gorg colours #goldenglobes but Fergielicious wins the colour prize – in lavender like Liz Taylor’s eyes http://bit.ly/8kp3JT
• Little hands Clapping! and they are mine. My favourite writer has a new book out in a matter of days. Dan Rhodes rules  http://bit.ly/4weYE3

• What ho Pelham Grenville! New Year’s resolution: Read some P G Wodehouse
• Jarvis time http://www.bbc.co.uk/6music/shows/jarviscocker/ He wants to know a good Ryan Adams track – mine is ‘Harder now that it’s over’
• Tapestry now: Demons, Yarns & Tales http://flavorwire.com/61451/demons-yarns-tales-tapestries-by-contemporary-artists 
• Audrey Hepburn is a DJ. Coolest tshirt I’ve seen in an epoch, as worn by the Herb Whisperer http://bit.ly/7s9KEI
• Very sad news, the Company series is my favourite sci-fi. RT @thebookslut SF writer Kage Baker is very ill …
• Wolf Hall is calling. Tudors & Stuarts such a fascinating time, and especially the great Elizabeth I vs Mary Queen of Scots. Battle Royale
• Am ashamed to admit jeggings are kind of awesome & I think I will just damn the torpedoes and buy some. Toby jugs are great! I better stop watching this antique show before I become a collectrix http://bit.ly/7LGXe7
• Bus ride to work? Inviting people to play cards, pointing out interesting landmarks on the journey – pushing your luck http://bit.ly/61aBdZ

 

I love a song of lists – one of my favourite things

From raindrops and roses and the ole whiskers on kittens schtick of My Favourite Things in The Sound of Music:

In the 70s, Janis Ian gave the big ups to champagne and caviar, cocaine and Shalimar. Cos the 70s were glam, right?

To We didn’t start the Fire – Billy Joel. Belgians in the Congo, Liston beats Patterson etc.

To The Golden Filter – Favourite Things. Who could argue with a list including New York, Sydney, Paris, London, New York, ice cream, chocolate, coffee, sugar, candy, lollies, kitties, bunnies, knee highs, stockings, vintage, dresses, vodka, whiskey, kitty, bunny, Paris, London, sweet girls, cute boys, vodka, whiskey, cameras, pictures.

And now The Audacity of Huge by Simian Mobile Disco – a name check for Bill Murray, the Sultan of Brunei, and PM Dawn.

 

Creme de la creme – the best music of 2009

Here’s the tunes and bands that bent my ear and twisted my knobs in 2009:

Standout artists: Dan Black, frYars, White Lies, Roxy Music …

My top 20 for 09:

1. Gifted – N.A.S.A (featuring Kanye, Lykke Li and Santogold)
   A guestlist to die for, and a divine chorus of plinky plonk wall of sound
   
2. The ass, enchanted with the sound – Johnny West
   Hypnotically sparse, mad both sonically and lyrically with a metronomic beat that descends into chaos
3. Symphonies – Dan Black
4. Visitors – frYars (featuring Dave Gahan)
5. Kingdom of Rust – The Doves
6. In every dream home a heartache – Roxy Music
7. Love letter to Japan – The Bird and the Bee
8. Black River Killer – Blitzen Trapper
9. Lovesick – Lindstrom & Christabelle
10. Flashing Lights – Kanye West
11. Sometimes – Miami Horror
12. Siren Song – Bat for Lashes
13. Lloyd, I’m ready to be heartbroken – Camera Obscura
14. No survivor – Glasnost
15. Radio Kaliningrad – Handsome Furs
16. Seattle – THE BPA featuring Emmy the Great
17. My life is a succession of people waving goodbye – Morrissey
18. Hot mess – Sam Sparro
19. John Boswell – Symphony of science ‘A Glorious Dawn’ featuring Stephen Hawking, Carl Sagan
20. Bonkers – Dizzee Rascal

Surprisingly impacting on 09 was the Notorious BIG. The mashup Running with the XX is simple and sublime and Dan Black’s HYPNTZ is a gorgeous thing pasting Biggie’s words over the rambling beauty of Black’s tune Symphonies.

Hot tracks:

• Stand – Othello Woolf
  Listened to him thanks to The Guardian and his alluringly literarily name – sounds a bit like David Byrne and nicely woozy
• Ecstasy – Dan Black
  Deeply sexy tribute to the joys of the matrimonial bed after the hurly burly of the chaise lounge. Maybe
• Strange enough – N.A.S.A.
  Another score for guest star Karen O of The Yeah Yeah Yeahs – plus that killer Wu Tang chant
• Dance wiv me – Dizzee Rascal and Calvin Harris
  Another romper stomper
• Holiday – Dizzee Rascal and Calvin Harris (loving Goldie guest starring in the vid, reminds me of the night me and my friend Hot Wookie bumrushed the show and got all up in his (gold) grills
• Sweet Disposition – The Temper Trap
• In the crook of my good arm – Pale Young Gentlemen
• Audacity of Huge – Simian Mobile Disco
• Olive eyes – frYars
• Daniel – Bat for Lashes
• Doctor Doctor – Just Jack (Fred Falke remix)
• In for the kill – La Roux (+ hot remixes)
• The Fear – Lily Allen
• Lisztomania – Phoenix
• Sleepyhead – Passion Pit
• I never said I was deep – Jarvis Cocker
• Sweet Disposition – The Temper Trap
• Sea within a sea – The Horrors
• Crystallised- The XX

More great pleasures of 09: God help the Girl, Fujiya & Miyagi, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Florence and the Machine, Patrick Wolf

Some pleasurable latecomers were encountered on our Picton road trip – Tom Middleton, Tosca, Slowdive, Quiet Village, Low Motion Disco.

There were as ever a bunch of hottie mashups, including Kitsune Maison Mashups (ElectroSound), ToToM – Dylan Mashed, and a couple of delicious old Night versions of Duran Duran tracks.

Sab prefers the cassingle

 

Road trip 2010

IMG_1776

Originally uploaded by kebabette

We started off the year with a road trip to Picton – having a squiz at Kaikoura, Picton and points in between. Lovely family catch ups and discoveries on a whirlwind trip.

Scorchingly hot weather to be driving in, but the open road beckoned and baby slept well on the way there and back and we all enjoyed the creme de la creme of music – 2009’s finest, Tom Middleton, Tosca, Florence and the Machine, and loads more.

Wilkommen 2010 and hope y’all have a great year.

 

Santa photo 1973

 

In this episode Mum & Baby get new shoes, and I get a bit addicted to Twitter

Bubs and I got some new shoes last weekend. From Pumpkin Patch. She got some cute lavender spotty numbers and I got these sneakery/boat shoes. I don’t let the fact that my new shoes are aimed at 5- 11 year old girls rain on my floral parade.

My little shopping outlet was floral in tone. Nice rose bedecked tank dress from Jay Jays. Heck it’s gotta be either roses or sequins these days to take my fancy. Or some variation on a black cardy, shrug, over top.

Cup and Show Week. Cup Day is the Decline and Fall of Rome in miniature – I loved this article by Philip Matthews Glamour and Glitz Yeah right. It’s dryly amused tone seemed to capture L’essence du Cup Day (an occasion which was always endlessly combed over each year in detail by the gossip section of society mag Avenues):

First sight as we cross over: a guy urinating against a fence. Is he in shorts, a kilt or has he just lost the bottom half of his trousers during the course of his day? Anyone’s guess.
It’s mid-afternoon. The girls are starting to stagger and the guys are starting to pick fights with each other.
We got our first sighting of that Cup Day icon – a drunk woman in a mini-skirt carried out by two blokes and followed by security – about an hour earlier. It’s when the event stopped being sedate and started to become its opposite.
Try to put your finger on the mood out here in no-man’s land. It’s about nothing but drinking.
Police and bored security guards lean against a fence, waiting for taunts and play-fights to get serious.

It’s Show Day in Christchurch, often a scorchingly hot one but today it’s nippy and having a relaxing at home day watching Star Trek, eating Twisties, drinking Coke and sifting about. Lovely really.  And hopefully at some stage over the long weekend we’ll make it to 2012. Disaster squared, exponential, and to the max.

Over on the CCL Blog I looked at:

• Curiosities of Literature
• A comic about mathematics and Bertrand Russell?

In recent TWitaction:

• I try a new technique to deal with impoliteness and bad manners:
  Old people tooted revved and tried to run me over outside Farmer carpark so I smiled, turned and waved as if I was the Queen. Regal serve!
• Patrick Wolf’s gorgeous new video Damaris tingles heartstrings
• Headline of the day – ‘Kitten demand outstrips supply’ a spot of Keynesian kitten economics
• Othello Woolf – ‘enervated white funk’ + a boy with a literary name = gotta hear me some (yes it is good)
• #unseenprequels is an addictive meme – my contribs include Evening of the Living Living, Fiance of Chucky
• and to #collectivenouns I give an ella-ella of umbrellas and a holden of bogan
• typographical delights at typenuts.com
• Oh and my three copies of Ivanhoe arrived this week.

 

Title-ation

 

IMG_0346

Originally uploaded by kebabette

Who could resist purchasing alluring paperbacks like these?

I think the top title somewhat contradicts itself … you can’t keep those erotically delighting techniques secret if you write a whole dang book about it can you?