Tuesday, October 28, 2008

The No One Deserves This Post.

WHY?

The Yes, It Was For A Girl Post.

For anyone wondering why the Doritos thing is there.



Joining Facebook and supporting whaling-ending (feeling charitable for the least amount of effort? Epic win, admit it) on the same Tuesday morning. Blimey.

Friday, October 24, 2008

The Cindy's A Rare One Post.




The Queen is seen here at the launch party for the book Rare by photographer Nicole Maloney, featuring loads of snaps of the rich and famous (including Cindy, who also supplies the book's foreword). For more of Cindy at the event, just go here.

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

The Cindy In Black & White In Colour Post.

Here's Cindy as part of a Leslie Kee spread featuring loads of models in tribute to the late Richard Avedon...


And three of Cindy's latest Vogue shoot (French variety, a vast improvement on the missed opportunity that was the recent Vanity Fair thing):



Cindy Crawford, ladies and gentlemen. Bringing it since 1988, and quite possibly in kindergarten.

Sunday, October 19, 2008

The Non-Screen Music Related Post.

A while ago I announced I'd be posting a complete list of all my OSTs. The list of the rest of them took much less time.

These are the voyages of... er, these are all the non-soundtrack albums I either bought myself or got given, including ones I left in Barbados/with my mum. Asterisked ones were taped off the original source.


A&R: "I Don't Like Big Brother" (single)
Paula Abdul:
Forever Your Girl
Shut Up And Dance (The Dance Mixes)
Spellbound
Belinda Carlisle: Her Greatest Hits
Beyonce & Shakira: "Beautiful Liar" (single)
Tony Burrows:
Bubblegum Classics Vol. 5: The Voice Of Tony Burrows
Mary-Chapin Carpenter:
Hometown Girl*
Stones In The Road
(signed!)
Neneh Cherry: Raw Like Sushi*
Depeche Mode: Violator
Hilary Duff: "Wake Up" (single)
Melissa Etheridge: Never Enough
Debbie Gibson:
Anything Is Possible
Electric Youth
Out Of The Blue

Amy Grant:
Heart In Motion
Home For Christmas
Nanci Griffith: Storms
Guns N'Roses:
Appetite For Destruction*
G N'R Lies
Use Your Illusion I
*
David Gunson: What Goes Up Might Come Down!
Sophie B. Hawkins: tongues and tails
Jonathan King: The Very Best Of Jonathan King
Kirsty MacColl: Electric Landlady

Marty Robbins: El Paso City
Skid Row:
Skid Row
Britney Spears:
Britney
Greatest Hits: My Prerogative

Treacle: The Days Of Over
Wilson Phillips:
Shadows And Light
Wilson Phillips

Various:
The Best Of The Statler Brothers
Cool Christmas
For Our Children
In The Summertime: 10 Scorching Sizzlers
(free from the News Of The World)
Manchester: So Much To Answer For (The Peel Sessions)
The Mozart Collection Vol. 2
(free from The Sunday Telegraph)
Now Hear This! (free with March 2007 issue of Word)
Now Hear This! (free with June 2007 issue of Word)
Now Hear This! (free with July 2007 issue of Word)
Now Hear This! (free with 2007 issue of Word)
Retro Saturday Classic Comedy: The Secret Policeman's Ball (free from The Daily Star)
Songbirds (free from The Mail On Sunday)
Tenors: Take 10 (free from The Mail On Sunday)
This Is Eurovision
25 All-Time Greatest Bubblegum Hits: The Ultimate Collection
Word Of Mouth
(free with issue 28 of Word)


The soundtrack post? Wait...

Thursday, October 09, 2008

The Apologies Post.

Apologies to Aria Giovanni, for that PG Porn video with her and Nathan Fillion. The apology is because I just didn't find it funny - not because of their playing, but more thanks to the punchline being telegraphed practically from the moment I first heard of the clip. Another black mark against writer James Gunn, who also has both Scooby-Doo live-action movies on his CV and hence has a lot to answer for.

On the brighter side, thumbs up to Wendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman for the forthcoming Heroes score album, even if there's no release date at the time of typing. Expect a review of either that or the Buffy the Vampire Slayer score album sometime in the future. Who should apologise this time? The people who sat on such things while releasing countless song compilations (Grey's Anatomy, The OC, The L Word, etc - though the last named did have at least one score CD as well).

Wednesday, October 08, 2008

The Happiest Place On Earth Post.

Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Tisdale and the two blokes were in London's West End last night for the premiere of High School Musical 3. Other than the Disney link and the drop-dead-gorgeous aspect, that has no connection to what this post is about.




Here's Cindy attending Miley Cyrus's 16th birthday party at Disneyland over the weekend, with Kaia (who is almost certainly a Disney fan - they were at the High School Musical 2 premiere as well) and Presley. Why is he looking at Minnie Mouse that way? Mini-perv. Anyway, the event was a treat for lady-watchers (Jennifer Love Hewitt and Tyra Banks were also among the guests), and the babe-on-the-cusp that is Miley also performed, but it's all about Cindy in these parts.

For the record, Miley's actual Sweet 16 takes place on November 23rd. I thought only the Queen of England had two birthdays.

Sunday, October 05, 2008

The Say It Ain't So, Cindy Post.

Carl Hiassen in today's Miami Herald:

The collapse of Wall Street and the freeze of credit markets can be traced to one unlikely culprit: Cindy Crawford.

I'm sure she didn't mean to cripple the economy. Most supermodels avoid meddling in global monetary markets, and it's unlikely that Cindy realized how much influence she commanded.

Tragically, however, the crash of 2008 can be connected to that fateful day, a few short years ago, when Cindy got into the business of designing furniture for a popular retail firm.

It wasn't long before the Crawford brand caught fire. Every time you turned on the television, there she was, languidly sprawling across one of her Microfiber Plush sofas, or carefully arranging the pastel placements on one of her cherry-veneer dining tables.

She looked great. She had style. She was also much taller than most interior designers.

And, amazingly, you could buy a whole roomful of Cindy's furniture with no down payment. Unbelievable!

More amazingly, you didn't have to start paying off the stuff for a whole year or even longer. As a result, thousands of Americans who could barely afford their car payments eagerly started purchasing Cindy's terrific furniture -- although it wasn't technically purchasing, because not much actual money was involved.

As bankers watched the Cindy phenomenon grow, they realized that the customers who were snapping up all this accessible furniture might want larger homes to put it in.

The bankers also understood that special mortgages would be necessary when dealing with folks who already needed at least a year to pay for a headboard and a nightstand.

Thus was born the concept of subprime loans, a financing ploy very similar to the one used so successfully by Cindy Crawford's furniture company.

Subprimes allowed Americans to get homes with a minimal down payment. Interest rates were extremely low, and extremely temporary. The mortgages were structured so that those rates -- and the customers' monthly nut -- would shoot up radically after a few years, yet nobody seemed worried about that.

Bankers were just tickled to be selling so many loans, real-estate agents were thrilled to be selling so many houses, and home-buyers were elated to have more rooms in which to arrange all their new (and still unpaid-for) Cindy Crawford furnishings.

The economy was booming, or so we were told. Unfortunately, at no point in this brainless orgy of lending was it required for the folks who were borrowing all that easy money to show they had the means to repay it.

Inevitably, Wall Street was smitten by the Cindy factor. Venerable institutions like Lehman Brothers bought up billions of dollars' worth of bundled subprime mortgages, on the theory that the price of real-estate would keep rising insanely until the end of time.

If some poor sucker had to default, so what? Repossess his house and sell it for a profit to some other sucker, who could then fill it with more unpaid-for furniture by Cindy Crawford.

But the Wall Street wizards who control the credit flow made a disastrous blunder. The Cindy Model of friendly finance doesn't work very well when the stakes are high.

Selling a roomful of furniture to a family that can't afford to put any cash on the table is different than selling them a house. Thousands of subprime and adjustable-rate mortgages went plummeting into default, and the rest is history.

As Congress and the White House scramble to stanch the bleeding, investor confidence remains shaky. It might be helpful if Cindy stepped forward in some dramatic way, as fellow icon Warren Buffett has done.

Here's what she should say to reassure worried Americans:

"Please don't buy any more of my elegant yet comfortable furniture unless you actually have the money to pay for it. Before coming to the store, take a close look at your bank statements to make sure you're not making an incredibly foolish mistake.

"Hey, if you can't write a personal check for that five-piece king bedroom set, then you probably shouldn't buy it. Be stylish, America, but be smart. Tomorrow will be a brighter day."

Who knows what impact such a bold speech would have on the stock markets, but I wouldn't be surprised to see an instant rebound. The financial titans who followed Cindy Crawford down the path of carefree lending will just as faithfully follow her back to the realm of fiscal prudence.

There are encouraging signs from the furniture empire for which Cindy is the marquee draw. If you ordered that five-piece king bedroom set today, you wouldn't get to wait years before making the first payment. You'd only get six months.

It looks like Cindy's getting tough.

Take heed, Mr. Treasury Secretary. The handwriting is on the wallpaper.

Friday, October 03, 2008

The Go Away "The Go Away And Never Come Back Spot" Post.

I'm thin-skinned.

I'm also in a mood of not wanting to get negative in anything other than a hopefully non-biased, non-cranky way. Which is another way of saying that while I hate people dissing stuff I like, the thought of dishing it out on stuff other people like and not being able to take it bothers me. Weird, yeah.

So since petty annoyances are a source of stress and yours truly says no to drugs (apart from Metformin, Lipitor, and the other two that I have on prescription and that I can't be bothered to get up and check on their names because I'm listening to Dominic Frontiere's Hang 'Em High/The Aviator and have no desire to pause the CD thank you very much), that spot is out of here. It's history. It's gone. It's being replaced by a list of my favourite TV shows, current and out of production. Shallow? Pointless? And how is that not like 99.9999999% of blogs?

Incidentally, you know those most recent Laetitia Casta nude pics? I bought her last Elle off eBay, and they aren't in there - so were they online only? Pretty sneaky, Elle. The ones of her in the actual magazine are good though, even if she's clothed.

And now, here's some Laetitia to take us out. Yes, it's in French. Just deal.




Thursday, October 02, 2008

The Strictly Come Dancing Fans Can Kiss My... Post.

Four random thoughts about Heroes making a welcome return:

1. Mohinder is a bit less useless now he has powers that he's put to good use (beating up robbers, shagging Maya etc). He could still stand to shut up though.
2. Wait... so Future-Peter Petrelli is on the loose in the present and Present-Day Peter Petrelli looks like Weevil from Veronica Mars? I think I got it now.
3. So Daphne (adding to the show's already impressive "Wow, she's a babe!" factor, grazie Brea Grant) stole the Mona Lisa and nobody heard about it? Oooookay...
4. Poor Claire. Poor, poor Claire. Like I said elsewhere, ironically both invulnerable and the most deeply wounded of the lot. Teach her well, Meredith.

Roll on next Wednesday. That is all. And damn the fans of the US version of Strictly Come Dancing denting Kring's ratings. Again. (Although Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles has more to worry about, I hear.)