Named in honour of loathsome British TV and radio "personality" Vanessa Feltz, and only because I don't want to keep typing "Oprah." Anyway, this year's go to:
The BBC. Although thankfully Sharon finally broke it off with him over the weekend, he's been such a pain in my ample rear for the past few years that he has to be here. Goodbye and good riddance.
The real BBC. For refusing to give Monk and Medium decent slots, for never shutting up about Doctor Fucking Who, and for its self-congratulation. And for Steve Wright. Still.
Abbey National. For outrageous penalties, and for refusing to register debit card withdrawals the second they're made so I can incur more of the damn things.
NTL. For being crap.The only reason I don't switch to Sky is that it's too much hassle.
Everyone whose fame, 15 minutes or otherwise, is due to reality TV. Except for Kelly Clarkson.
Madonna. For obvious reasons.
The editor of the Sunday People. For that loathsome post-Katrina editorial that I blogged about earlier.
Paris Hilton. For always being on E!, it seems like.
Angelina Jolie. Ditto, plus for the whole Brad Pitt thing (sorry Jen, but I'm very much on Team Aniston). And for Mr. and Mrs. Smith.
Akiva Goldsman. For being associated with a whole load of crap for years (Cinderella Man is an exception) and yet still getting gainful employment.
Zoo and Nuts. For robbing me of dignity and brain cells each time I leaf through them. And for going through most of the same models nearly every week.
My new boss. For too many reasons to list.
The Bush administration. See Madonna.
LivingTV. For giving us Most Haunted, America's Next Top Model, Grey's Anatomy and Extreme Makeover up the ying-yang but burning off Veronica Mars weekdays at 6pm. At least they also gave us Charmed.
Kate Moss. For... oh, just go away.
Firefly fans. For being deeply obnoxious in the run-up to and in the aftermath of Serenity. (Did you see the box office returns? You can't stop the signal my ass.)
E4. For inflicting Point Pleasant on us, and for showing the five episodes Fox never aired. And showing them three times. In one night. Each.
Point Pleasant, Revelations and Threshold. Between them those three shows make up my ten worst TV experiences of the year, with Threshold coming last only because I bailed on said crapfest after three showings.
David S. Goyer. For Blade:Trinity (which at least had Jessica Biel's ass) and Threshold. This man must die. Now.
The Cindys to follow. We need something to cheer us up.
Oh, and Ben Affleck's penis. For trying to sabotage Jennifer Garner's career.
Tuesday, December 13, 2005
Tuesday, December 06, 2005
Moving onto the C-listers...
To add to Cindy Crawford, Jessica Alba, Monica Bellucci, Hilary Duff, Mariah Carey, Gwen Stefani, Nicole Kidman, Laetitia Casta, Britney Spears, Rosanna Arquette, Nicollette Sheridan, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Liv Tyler, Shakira, Jessica Biel, Paula Abdul, Nicole Scherzinger, Lindsay Lohan and Devon Aoki:
Monita Rajpal. Every man with an interest in women has his favourite anchor. Miss "Those are the headlines, this is CNN Today" is mine.
Erica Campbell. Playboy's Model of the Year, and as they used to bill compact discs, small (except in the chest area) but perfectly formed.
Sophie Anderton. Not seen very often, but always welcome.
Rihanna. Really more of a D-lister, but being almost the only relatively famous female to come from Barbados I'll give her a lift. Plus she's tasty.
Holly Marie Combs. Still my favourite Charmed One.
Alexis Bledel. For Sin City.
Brittany Murphy. Ditto.
Beyonce Knowles. It's been fun.
Emilie de Ravin. The most fanciable of those Lost passengers.
Maggie Grace. The second most fanciable, with apologies to Evangeline Lilly (who will not be on my list because, frankly, I don't like her name).
Lucy Pinder, Kristen Bell and Kelly Monaco will almost certainly be on the D-list. Who'll join them?
Monita Rajpal. Every man with an interest in women has his favourite anchor. Miss "Those are the headlines, this is CNN Today" is mine.
Erica Campbell. Playboy's Model of the Year, and as they used to bill compact discs, small (except in the chest area) but perfectly formed.
Sophie Anderton. Not seen very often, but always welcome.
Rihanna. Really more of a D-lister, but being almost the only relatively famous female to come from Barbados I'll give her a lift. Plus she's tasty.
Holly Marie Combs. Still my favourite Charmed One.
Alexis Bledel. For Sin City.
Brittany Murphy. Ditto.
Beyonce Knowles. It's been fun.
Emilie de Ravin. The most fanciable of those Lost passengers.
Maggie Grace. The second most fanciable, with apologies to Evangeline Lilly (who will not be on my list because, frankly, I don't like her name).
Lucy Pinder, Kristen Bell and Kelly Monaco will almost certainly be on the D-list. Who'll join them?
Monday, December 05, 2005
21 worrying days until Christmas.
This sucks. Rent is due on the 15th (though actually being paid the 16th on account of it being payday), but unless I get very lucky post-wise or get a lovely bonus from DMWorks.biz, as Ashurst is called now - or even manage to get paid in advance on account of the last biweekly payday coming while the place is closed, I'm looking at either having one big amount of overdrawing or the nice lady at Borders or HMV or wherever I choose to buy Sharon the complete fourth season of Charmed telling me that the debit card's been declined.
Wish me luck, all of you.
And no, the above is not what I'm really getting the big sister - while I'm pretty sure no one related to me reads this, why go and tell anyone here? Plus the sister doesn't like Charmed. Or Gilmore girls. (And yet she likes I Want To Be A Hilton. Go figure.)
Wish me luck, all of you.
And no, the above is not what I'm really getting the big sister - while I'm pretty sure no one related to me reads this, why go and tell anyone here? Plus the sister doesn't like Charmed. Or Gilmore girls. (And yet she likes I Want To Be A Hilton. Go figure.)
Sunday, December 04, 2005
So if Jen and Rachel are ever in the UK...
This was in today's Observer by Stonewall's Ben Summerskill. I thought about linking, but I decided to let her and the missus (and other enlightened folks) read the whole thing. Still a long way to go, but it's definitely in the right direction. US Government and most of the rest of the world (except, of course, the countries that did it before this one) take note.
For four million gay people in Britain, Christmas comes early this year. From tomorrow, they'll be able to give notice that they intend to register their partnerships at town halls across the country. Then in a fortnight's time, lesbian and gay couples will be exchanging 'I dos' for the first time, not just in register offices but - in happy harmony with the way we live now - in the stately homes of down-at-heel aristocrats and below deck on HMS Belfast, too.
For inhabitants of the Westminster beltway, life for gay people might appear to have changed completely in recent years. Since the summer of 2003, four major gay legislative demands have secured passage through a doggedly gay-sceptic House of Lords. The legislative hurly-burly of the past two years is certainly in stark contrast to the one change - on lesbian and gay adoption - that peers had previously grudgingly conceded since 1997.
Civil partnership itself, for which Stonewall and others campaigned so hard, is transformative. It will offer gay people every single right, and responsibility, invested in marriage. Even the Slaughterhouse Act 1974 has been assiduously amended by owlish civil servants so that a lesbian might bequeath a slaughterhouse licence to her partner.
This time next year gay people will no longer risk resentful families preventing them attending a hospital bedside. And hundreds of thousands of public sector workers will be entitled to leave a survivor pension to their partner, something they've been disgracefully forced to fund in the past without having the opportunity to pass on the benefit.
The Economist acknowledges that civil partnership will be dubbed 'gay marriage'. In practical terms, it will mean 'Elton and David get wed' headlines and Auntie Maureen and Uncle Fred attending their gay nephew's wedding reception.
It will also represent a world-class challenge to the 'hetero-normativity' bemoaned plaintively by sociologists for 30 years. For while Britain's wider population might have disobligingly resisted academic entreaties to challenge their own 'hetero-normativity', they do fully understand that if their cousin, son, auntie or schoolmate wants to have a wedding list at Debenhams and a honeymoon in the Maldives, it makes them pretty much the same as everyone else. Most important of all, introduction of civil partnership gives a message to a generation of young lesbians and gay men, and generations to come, that one day they will be entitled to the same respect and fair treatment as their heterosexual counterparts.
A stark corrective to the idea popular among some liberal intelligentsia that Britain has completely changed for the better as far as 'gay stuff' goes was the killing of Jody Dobrowski on Clapham Common six weeks ago. Too shy and embarrassed even to visit a gay bar, the 24-year-old was kicked to a slow death to reported chants of homophobic abuse.
Campaigners at Stonewall are only too aware that changing the law, tough though it might be, is really just the easy part. Changing the world is tougher still. And if you remain unconvinced that there's still a problem, just visit any school playground in Britain. The insult 'gay' is in common usage, even in primary schools. Lesbian and gay 16-year-olds with good GCSE results are more likely to leave school at 16 than their heterosexual counterparts, compromising their life chances. And confidence that the bullying which causes this will be addressed is scarcely enhanced by the knowledge that Ruth Kelly, cabinet minister in charge of our schools, voted against equality for gay people in the last parliament.
In the media too, lesbians and gay men remain almost invisible. And when they do crop up, as EastEnders demonstrated only last week, it is as lurid stereotypes. The BBC1 soap might have made ground-breaking history almost two decades ago when Colin pecked Barry on the cheek. But sensible Sonia's innocent peck from Naomi last Monday night apparently left Sonia so traumatised that she instantly jumped into bed with her virtually estranged vegetable of a husband. It would warm the cockles of prudish Lord Reith's heart.
He would undoubtedly also take comfort from the noisy opposition to gay equality still coming from some parts of the British establishment. Friday's Daily Telegraph duly featured a bitter polemic against civil partnership from 'Why-oh-Why' columnist Ferdinand Mount. Ferdie's principal complaint seemed to be that the Islington Council registrar who will soon host a ceremony between Sir Anthony Sher and his partner is exactly the same one who recently married Ferdie's beloved daughter.
Standing shoulder to shoulder alongside Mr Mount is the Daily Mail's Melanie Phillips, one of the trenchant campaigners for 'family values' who seem - distressingly for so many - to have lost the argument. The Office of National Statistics reported recently that it expected the number of unmarried people in Britain to outnumber the married for the first time by 2030.
Not that heterosexuals necessarily make a good advert for marriage. As a tabloid journalist, Melanie might be acquainted with the personal excitements of pop singer Britney Spears. Britney was for years a pin-up of neo-cons worldwide as an exemplar of their beloved abstinence before marriage. Even George Bush cited the singer as a role model for American youth.
Last year the star - who had actually been having intimate relations with fellow popster Justin Timberlake while being feted against her will as a teen-virgin - did demonstrate devotion of a sort to marriage, by getting heroically drunk one night and marrying a casual acquaintance - not Mr Timberlake - in a Las Vegas wedding chapel. Britney demonstrated an equally heroic penitence by getting divorced the next morning.
The columnists may bark, but the caravan of 21st-century Britain moves on. Perhaps one happy outcome of Stonewall's campaign for civil partnership has been the message it's given to a government all too often over-anxious about social reform. The roof has not fallen in, politically or socially. And it won't fall in tomorrow morning either.
For while politicians and so-called faith leaders might fret about an orgiastic decline in traditional values, this weekend, Auntie Maureen and Uncle Fred are cheerily awaiting an entirely unforeseen, and much welcome, postal delivery from their distant relatives. A clutch of wedding invitations.
For four million gay people in Britain, Christmas comes early this year. From tomorrow, they'll be able to give notice that they intend to register their partnerships at town halls across the country. Then in a fortnight's time, lesbian and gay couples will be exchanging 'I dos' for the first time, not just in register offices but - in happy harmony with the way we live now - in the stately homes of down-at-heel aristocrats and below deck on HMS Belfast, too.
For inhabitants of the Westminster beltway, life for gay people might appear to have changed completely in recent years. Since the summer of 2003, four major gay legislative demands have secured passage through a doggedly gay-sceptic House of Lords. The legislative hurly-burly of the past two years is certainly in stark contrast to the one change - on lesbian and gay adoption - that peers had previously grudgingly conceded since 1997.
Civil partnership itself, for which Stonewall and others campaigned so hard, is transformative. It will offer gay people every single right, and responsibility, invested in marriage. Even the Slaughterhouse Act 1974 has been assiduously amended by owlish civil servants so that a lesbian might bequeath a slaughterhouse licence to her partner.
This time next year gay people will no longer risk resentful families preventing them attending a hospital bedside. And hundreds of thousands of public sector workers will be entitled to leave a survivor pension to their partner, something they've been disgracefully forced to fund in the past without having the opportunity to pass on the benefit.
The Economist acknowledges that civil partnership will be dubbed 'gay marriage'. In practical terms, it will mean 'Elton and David get wed' headlines and Auntie Maureen and Uncle Fred attending their gay nephew's wedding reception.
It will also represent a world-class challenge to the 'hetero-normativity' bemoaned plaintively by sociologists for 30 years. For while Britain's wider population might have disobligingly resisted academic entreaties to challenge their own 'hetero-normativity', they do fully understand that if their cousin, son, auntie or schoolmate wants to have a wedding list at Debenhams and a honeymoon in the Maldives, it makes them pretty much the same as everyone else. Most important of all, introduction of civil partnership gives a message to a generation of young lesbians and gay men, and generations to come, that one day they will be entitled to the same respect and fair treatment as their heterosexual counterparts.
A stark corrective to the idea popular among some liberal intelligentsia that Britain has completely changed for the better as far as 'gay stuff' goes was the killing of Jody Dobrowski on Clapham Common six weeks ago. Too shy and embarrassed even to visit a gay bar, the 24-year-old was kicked to a slow death to reported chants of homophobic abuse.
Campaigners at Stonewall are only too aware that changing the law, tough though it might be, is really just the easy part. Changing the world is tougher still. And if you remain unconvinced that there's still a problem, just visit any school playground in Britain. The insult 'gay' is in common usage, even in primary schools. Lesbian and gay 16-year-olds with good GCSE results are more likely to leave school at 16 than their heterosexual counterparts, compromising their life chances. And confidence that the bullying which causes this will be addressed is scarcely enhanced by the knowledge that Ruth Kelly, cabinet minister in charge of our schools, voted against equality for gay people in the last parliament.
In the media too, lesbians and gay men remain almost invisible. And when they do crop up, as EastEnders demonstrated only last week, it is as lurid stereotypes. The BBC1 soap might have made ground-breaking history almost two decades ago when Colin pecked Barry on the cheek. But sensible Sonia's innocent peck from Naomi last Monday night apparently left Sonia so traumatised that she instantly jumped into bed with her virtually estranged vegetable of a husband. It would warm the cockles of prudish Lord Reith's heart.
He would undoubtedly also take comfort from the noisy opposition to gay equality still coming from some parts of the British establishment. Friday's Daily Telegraph duly featured a bitter polemic against civil partnership from 'Why-oh-Why' columnist Ferdinand Mount. Ferdie's principal complaint seemed to be that the Islington Council registrar who will soon host a ceremony between Sir Anthony Sher and his partner is exactly the same one who recently married Ferdie's beloved daughter.
Standing shoulder to shoulder alongside Mr Mount is the Daily Mail's Melanie Phillips, one of the trenchant campaigners for 'family values' who seem - distressingly for so many - to have lost the argument. The Office of National Statistics reported recently that it expected the number of unmarried people in Britain to outnumber the married for the first time by 2030.
Not that heterosexuals necessarily make a good advert for marriage. As a tabloid journalist, Melanie might be acquainted with the personal excitements of pop singer Britney Spears. Britney was for years a pin-up of neo-cons worldwide as an exemplar of their beloved abstinence before marriage. Even George Bush cited the singer as a role model for American youth.
Last year the star - who had actually been having intimate relations with fellow popster Justin Timberlake while being feted against her will as a teen-virgin - did demonstrate devotion of a sort to marriage, by getting heroically drunk one night and marrying a casual acquaintance - not Mr Timberlake - in a Las Vegas wedding chapel. Britney demonstrated an equally heroic penitence by getting divorced the next morning.
The columnists may bark, but the caravan of 21st-century Britain moves on. Perhaps one happy outcome of Stonewall's campaign for civil partnership has been the message it's given to a government all too often over-anxious about social reform. The roof has not fallen in, politically or socially. And it won't fall in tomorrow morning either.
For while politicians and so-called faith leaders might fret about an orgiastic decline in traditional values, this weekend, Auntie Maureen and Uncle Fred are cheerily awaiting an entirely unforeseen, and much welcome, postal delivery from their distant relatives. A clutch of wedding invitations.
Friday, December 02, 2005
I told them to call her Tracy...
...but Jennifer Garner and the man I'm surrogate father for insisted that they choose what my child should be called.
Still, take good care of her. :)
Still, take good care of her. :)
How true. How very, very true.
From yesterday's New York Times.
We've seen it before: an embattled president so swathed in his inner circle that he completely loses touch with the public and wanders around among small knots of people who agree with him. There was Lyndon Johnson in the 1960's, Richard Nixon in the 1970's, and George H. W. Bush in the 1990's. Now it's his son's turn.
It has been obvious for months that Americans don't believe the war is going just fine, and they needed to hear that President Bush gets that. They wanted to see that he had learned from his mistakes and adjusted his course, and that he had a measurable and realistic plan for making Iraq safe enough to withdraw United States troops. Americans didn't need to be convinced of Mr. Bush's commitment to his idealized version of the war. They needed to be reassured that he recognized the reality of the war.
Instead, Mr. Bush traveled 32 miles from the White House to the Naval Academy and spoke to yet another of the well-behaved, uniformed audiences that have screened him from the rest of America lately. If you do not happen to be a midshipman, you'd have to have been watching cable news at midmorning on a weekday to catch him.
The address was accompanied by a voluminous handout entitled "National Strategy for Victory in Iraq," which the White House grandly calls the newly declassified version of the plan that has been driving the war. If there was something secret about that plan, we can't figure out what it was. The document, and Mr. Bush's speech, were almost entirely a rehash of the same tired argument that everything's going just fine. Mr. Bush also offered the usual false choice between sticking to his policy and beating a hasty and cowardly retreat.
On the critical question of the progress of the Iraqi military, the president was particularly optimistic, and misleading. He said, for instance, that Iraqi security forces control major areas, including the northern and southern provinces and cities like Najaf. That's true if you believe a nation can be built out of a change of clothing: these forces are based on party and sectarian militias that have controlled many of these same areas since the fall of Saddam Hussein but now wear Iraqi Army uniforms. In other regions, the most powerful Iraqi security forces are rogue militias that refuse to disarm and have on occasion turned their guns against American troops, like Moktada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army.
Mr. Bush's vision of the next big step is equally troubling: training Iraqi forces well enough to free American forces for more of the bloody and ineffective search-and-destroy sweeps that accomplish little beyond alienating the populace.
What Americans wanted to hear was a genuine counterinsurgency plan, perhaps like one proposed by Andrew F. Krepinevich Jr., a leading writer on military strategy: find the most secure areas with capable Iraqi forces. Embed American trainers with those forces and make the region safe enough to spend money on reconstruction, thus making friends and draining the insurgency. Then slowly expand those zones and withdraw American forces.
Americans have been clamoring for believable goals in Iraq, but Mr. Bush stuck to his notion of staying until "total victory." His strategy document defines that as an Iraq that "has defeated the terrorists and neutralized the insurgency"; is "peaceful, united, stable, democratic and secure"; and is a partner in the war on terror, an integral part of the international community, and "an engine for regional economic growth and proving the fruits of democratic governance to the region."
That may be the most grandiose set of ambitions for the region since the vision of Nebuchadnezzar's son Belshazzar, who saw the hand writing on the wall. Mr. Bush hates comparisons between Vietnam and Iraq. But after watching the president, we couldn't resist reading Richard Nixon's 1969 Vietnamization speech. Substitute the Iraqi constitutional process for the Paris peace talks, and Mr. Bush's ideas about the Iraqi Army are not much different from Nixon's plans - except Nixon admitted the war was going very badly (which was easier for him to do because he didn't start it), and he was very clear about the risks and huge sacrifices ahead.
A president who seems less in touch with reality than Richard Nixon needs to get out more.
We've seen it before: an embattled president so swathed in his inner circle that he completely loses touch with the public and wanders around among small knots of people who agree with him. There was Lyndon Johnson in the 1960's, Richard Nixon in the 1970's, and George H. W. Bush in the 1990's. Now it's his son's turn.
It has been obvious for months that Americans don't believe the war is going just fine, and they needed to hear that President Bush gets that. They wanted to see that he had learned from his mistakes and adjusted his course, and that he had a measurable and realistic plan for making Iraq safe enough to withdraw United States troops. Americans didn't need to be convinced of Mr. Bush's commitment to his idealized version of the war. They needed to be reassured that he recognized the reality of the war.
Instead, Mr. Bush traveled 32 miles from the White House to the Naval Academy and spoke to yet another of the well-behaved, uniformed audiences that have screened him from the rest of America lately. If you do not happen to be a midshipman, you'd have to have been watching cable news at midmorning on a weekday to catch him.
The address was accompanied by a voluminous handout entitled "National Strategy for Victory in Iraq," which the White House grandly calls the newly declassified version of the plan that has been driving the war. If there was something secret about that plan, we can't figure out what it was. The document, and Mr. Bush's speech, were almost entirely a rehash of the same tired argument that everything's going just fine. Mr. Bush also offered the usual false choice between sticking to his policy and beating a hasty and cowardly retreat.
On the critical question of the progress of the Iraqi military, the president was particularly optimistic, and misleading. He said, for instance, that Iraqi security forces control major areas, including the northern and southern provinces and cities like Najaf. That's true if you believe a nation can be built out of a change of clothing: these forces are based on party and sectarian militias that have controlled many of these same areas since the fall of Saddam Hussein but now wear Iraqi Army uniforms. In other regions, the most powerful Iraqi security forces are rogue militias that refuse to disarm and have on occasion turned their guns against American troops, like Moktada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army.
Mr. Bush's vision of the next big step is equally troubling: training Iraqi forces well enough to free American forces for more of the bloody and ineffective search-and-destroy sweeps that accomplish little beyond alienating the populace.
What Americans wanted to hear was a genuine counterinsurgency plan, perhaps like one proposed by Andrew F. Krepinevich Jr., a leading writer on military strategy: find the most secure areas with capable Iraqi forces. Embed American trainers with those forces and make the region safe enough to spend money on reconstruction, thus making friends and draining the insurgency. Then slowly expand those zones and withdraw American forces.
Americans have been clamoring for believable goals in Iraq, but Mr. Bush stuck to his notion of staying until "total victory." His strategy document defines that as an Iraq that "has defeated the terrorists and neutralized the insurgency"; is "peaceful, united, stable, democratic and secure"; and is a partner in the war on terror, an integral part of the international community, and "an engine for regional economic growth and proving the fruits of democratic governance to the region."
That may be the most grandiose set of ambitions for the region since the vision of Nebuchadnezzar's son Belshazzar, who saw the hand writing on the wall. Mr. Bush hates comparisons between Vietnam and Iraq. But after watching the president, we couldn't resist reading Richard Nixon's 1969 Vietnamization speech. Substitute the Iraqi constitutional process for the Paris peace talks, and Mr. Bush's ideas about the Iraqi Army are not much different from Nixon's plans - except Nixon admitted the war was going very badly (which was easier for him to do because he didn't start it), and he was very clear about the risks and huge sacrifices ahead.
A president who seems less in touch with reality than Richard Nixon needs to get out more.
Thursday, December 01, 2005
Cindy Crawford: now that's a woman! (With apologies to Hollywood Tuna...)
...who redeemed themselves for their Alba comments by using the above headline (non-brackets section) when talking about Cindy in Maxim.
And if Earl of Grey is reading this, a) drop dead and b) here are some more images to remind you what a supermodel looks like. Note the lack of resemblance to the egocrazed freak of nature that is Janice Dickinson.
http://img429.imageshack.us/my.php?image=crawfordcindycdec05fm45131ru.jpg
http://img429.imageshack.us/my.php?image=crawfordcindycdec05fm4512b0xo.jpg
http://img516.imageshack.us/my.php?image=crawfordcindycdec05fm45158bl.jpg
http://img206.imageshack.us/my.php?image=crawfordcindycdec05fm451109ql.jpg
http://img209.imageshack.us/my.php?image=crawfordcindycdec05fm451118af.jpg
They're from C magazine, which along with Singapore Harper's Bazaar is something I must get hold of. Somehow.
Adrienne Curry and Tyra Banks, meets America's Permanent Top Model.
And if Earl of Grey is reading this, a) drop dead and b) here are some more images to remind you what a supermodel looks like. Note the lack of resemblance to the egocrazed freak of nature that is Janice Dickinson.
http://img429.imageshack.us/my.php?image=crawfordcindycdec05fm45131ru.jpg
http://img429.imageshack.us/my.php?image=crawfordcindycdec05fm4512b0xo.jpg
http://img516.imageshack.us/my.php?image=crawfordcindycdec05fm45158bl.jpg
http://img206.imageshack.us/my.php?image=crawfordcindycdec05fm451109ql.jpg
http://img209.imageshack.us/my.php?image=crawfordcindycdec05fm451118af.jpg
They're from C magazine, which along with Singapore Harper's Bazaar is something I must get hold of. Somehow.
Adrienne Curry and Tyra Banks, meets America's Permanent Top Model.
Tuesday, November 29, 2005
Dear Sarah, Forget about a Christmas card this year. Yours, Victor.
It's been a whole heap o'trouble since the new people took over Ashurst. Space issues, wage issues, jobs being delayed, and Sarah (the woman who apparently is in charge) spending most of her time in Yorkshire or some such place.
Maybe if she and Lincoln (or as the production manager once put it, the fat cunt) were down here more often - like every day - they might get some idea. Especially with the courtyard; rubbish piling up because they're too cheap to get it collected weekly, cardboard taking up more space under the new recycling system than under the old (no more throwing it into a huge container that takes ages to fill up and is easy to negotiate around; no, they would much rather have them go into smaller containers that fill up quicker and mean they have to go into yorks, which take up even more space).
And where's this PC I've been promised for months, eh? We'd better get one hell of a bonus, that's all I'm saying.
Maybe if she and Lincoln (or as the production manager once put it, the fat cunt) were down here more often - like every day - they might get some idea. Especially with the courtyard; rubbish piling up because they're too cheap to get it collected weekly, cardboard taking up more space under the new recycling system than under the old (no more throwing it into a huge container that takes ages to fill up and is easy to negotiate around; no, they would much rather have them go into smaller containers that fill up quicker and mean they have to go into yorks, which take up even more space).
And where's this PC I've been promised for months, eh? We'd better get one hell of a bonus, that's all I'm saying.
Thursday, November 24, 2005
Previously on listings:
To add to Cindy Crawford, Jessica Alba, Monica Bellucci, Hilary Duff, Mariah Carey, Gwen Stefani, Nicole Kidman, Laetitia Casta, Britney Spears and Rosanna Arquette...
Nicollette Sheridan. Hope the Housewife who reportedly is due for the chop isn't her.
Gwyneth Paltrow. Estee Lauder reminded me.
Jennifer Love Hewitt. Even though Patricia Arquette is better on Medium than JLH may well be on Ghost Whisperer (unlike Medium, it's not on in the UK yet), she is unquestionably hotter.
Liv Tyler. Even if she's been hiding since the Trilogy ended.
Shakira. Her performance at the MTV Music Video Awards is enough to get her here.
Jessica Biel. Not as good as t'other Jessica, but that ass is too delicious to ignore.
Paula Abdul. Still a fox.
Nicole Schertzinger from the Pussycat Dolls. Stickwither.
Lindsay Lohan. Would have been on the C-list, but after the AMAs...
Devon Aoki. For being the hottest person in Sin City not called guess who.
Due for consideration; everyone else in Sin City, Amanda Righetti, Kelly Monaco, Erica Campbell, Sophie Anderton, Lucy Pinder, and Famke Janssen (again)...
Nicollette Sheridan. Hope the Housewife who reportedly is due for the chop isn't her.
Gwyneth Paltrow. Estee Lauder reminded me.
Jennifer Love Hewitt. Even though Patricia Arquette is better on Medium than JLH may well be on Ghost Whisperer (unlike Medium, it's not on in the UK yet), she is unquestionably hotter.
Liv Tyler. Even if she's been hiding since the Trilogy ended.
Shakira. Her performance at the MTV Music Video Awards is enough to get her here.
Jessica Biel. Not as good as t'other Jessica, but that ass is too delicious to ignore.
Paula Abdul. Still a fox.
Nicole Schertzinger from the Pussycat Dolls. Stickwither.
Lindsay Lohan. Would have been on the C-list, but after the AMAs...
Devon Aoki. For being the hottest person in Sin City not called guess who.
Due for consideration; everyone else in Sin City, Amanda Righetti, Kelly Monaco, Erica Campbell, Sophie Anderton, Lucy Pinder, and Famke Janssen (again)...
The next and last part.
"You're wanted by Mr. Herbert," the girl grinned at me.
It had to be bad news. The crawling little creep was every teacher's pet, and she never looked at anyone that way unless they were being called on the carpet. And I had been slipping a bit in a couple of classes; maybe he just wanted to give me a warning. That always worked.
My misplaced optimism vanished the minute I entered the headmaster's office. He was sitting behind his desk, tapping a large envelope, and giving me an expression that indicated I was not about to like what he was going to say.
"Young man, I'm not one to waste words," he said calmly, and upended the envelope. Out dropped a glossy magazine that I recognised immediately; one of the kind that had buff young men on the cover. There was what looked like a bookmark sticking out of it - he pointed to the mark.
Opening it, I saw a double-page spread of myself on my front, looking at the camera and smiling with my ass spread apart, letting the readers see everything as a climax for the preceding several pages. So Bradley had sold them...
"One of your classmates has a parent who reads that... material," Mr. Herbert said. "Apparently you've been making a habit of that around here."
I said nothing.
"I suppose your parents have no idea?"
I still said nothing. But it was true; they didn't. Or at least, I thought they didn't.
"You'll have to leave this school, of course," he continued.
I just nodded. I should have known this would happen sooner or later - this was a small place, and it was amazing that my secret reputation as the boy the other boys wanted hadn't come out before now. Maybe because I had been making shy overtures to girls, and getting turned down - making me look like yet another frustrated horndog.
I wasn't looking forward to the next few days. I didn't know who'd spilled the beans, and I didn't care. I just knew I had to get out of there.
* * * * * * * * * *
"So where are you going to go?" Terry asked me. "Thrown out of home, thrown out of school..."
"Oh, I've got somewhere to go," I said, smiling shyly. "Have a look." I handed him another magazine. "It was the last one I did around here before they found me out."
Terry looked inside, and his eyes widened. "Your first with another guy?"
"Yep. It was fun... and it wasn't all posed."
"You're turning into quite the slut, kid."
"But it's fun to be wanted," I admitted. "The editors said they keep getting letters wanting to see more of me, and I did get asked about..." I couldn't help smiling. "...about making a video."
"And are you going to do it? You go this way you won't get any action with girls..."
"Oh, I will. I want to be fully bi on screen."
"But have you ever fucked a girl in real life?"
I had to admit I hadn't.
That was four years ago, and to this day I still haven't... not yet. But I kept posing now that I was out of the island, and I've been busy in front of moving and still cameras ever since. And the fan mail keeps on a-coming; teenage boys saying they knew I was gay when they saw me, married men who say they think of me when they're fucking their wives, wives who think of me when they're with their husbands. And bi's who love how I don't mind sleeping with either sex on screen or in magazines. And letters from Bradley, who stayed behind (I never told them who took those first pics, and the magazines refused to rat him out - he gets 10% of what I get).
And letters from girls who think I'm wasted on men; they want to change me.
They're wasting their time... like I said before, if I make guys happy, that's fine with me.
Like JK here; I met him a couple of years ago - we've been friends for a while now. Last year we started seeing if friends could sleep with friends and still remain friends.
My friend's on his knees in front of me now... ohhhhhhhh.... mmmmm.... good boy.
It had to be bad news. The crawling little creep was every teacher's pet, and she never looked at anyone that way unless they were being called on the carpet. And I had been slipping a bit in a couple of classes; maybe he just wanted to give me a warning. That always worked.
My misplaced optimism vanished the minute I entered the headmaster's office. He was sitting behind his desk, tapping a large envelope, and giving me an expression that indicated I was not about to like what he was going to say.
"Young man, I'm not one to waste words," he said calmly, and upended the envelope. Out dropped a glossy magazine that I recognised immediately; one of the kind that had buff young men on the cover. There was what looked like a bookmark sticking out of it - he pointed to the mark.
Opening it, I saw a double-page spread of myself on my front, looking at the camera and smiling with my ass spread apart, letting the readers see everything as a climax for the preceding several pages. So Bradley had sold them...
"One of your classmates has a parent who reads that... material," Mr. Herbert said. "Apparently you've been making a habit of that around here."
I said nothing.
"I suppose your parents have no idea?"
I still said nothing. But it was true; they didn't. Or at least, I thought they didn't.
"You'll have to leave this school, of course," he continued.
I just nodded. I should have known this would happen sooner or later - this was a small place, and it was amazing that my secret reputation as the boy the other boys wanted hadn't come out before now. Maybe because I had been making shy overtures to girls, and getting turned down - making me look like yet another frustrated horndog.
I wasn't looking forward to the next few days. I didn't know who'd spilled the beans, and I didn't care. I just knew I had to get out of there.
* * * * * * * * * *
"So where are you going to go?" Terry asked me. "Thrown out of home, thrown out of school..."
"Oh, I've got somewhere to go," I said, smiling shyly. "Have a look." I handed him another magazine. "It was the last one I did around here before they found me out."
Terry looked inside, and his eyes widened. "Your first with another guy?"
"Yep. It was fun... and it wasn't all posed."
"You're turning into quite the slut, kid."
"But it's fun to be wanted," I admitted. "The editors said they keep getting letters wanting to see more of me, and I did get asked about..." I couldn't help smiling. "...about making a video."
"And are you going to do it? You go this way you won't get any action with girls..."
"Oh, I will. I want to be fully bi on screen."
"But have you ever fucked a girl in real life?"
I had to admit I hadn't.
That was four years ago, and to this day I still haven't... not yet. But I kept posing now that I was out of the island, and I've been busy in front of moving and still cameras ever since. And the fan mail keeps on a-coming; teenage boys saying they knew I was gay when they saw me, married men who say they think of me when they're fucking their wives, wives who think of me when they're with their husbands. And bi's who love how I don't mind sleeping with either sex on screen or in magazines. And letters from Bradley, who stayed behind (I never told them who took those first pics, and the magazines refused to rat him out - he gets 10% of what I get).
And letters from girls who think I'm wasted on men; they want to change me.
They're wasting their time... like I said before, if I make guys happy, that's fine with me.
Like JK here; I met him a couple of years ago - we've been friends for a while now. Last year we started seeing if friends could sleep with friends and still remain friends.
My friend's on his knees in front of me now... ohhhhhhhh.... mmmmm.... good boy.
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