beef

two things have got my back up recently. cameron diaz's scary-ass, dead-behind-the-eyes, plastic surgery face in the sunday times culture magazine is one. getting priority seat trumped on the bus by a fat, mulleted woman is two. are they remotely linked? can i bring them together to make this one coherent beef? i doubt it. but here goes.

i'm fundamentally deeply freaked out by plastic surgery. sure, by all means get some fake titties and a new ass in tiajuana, but all the face-plumping collagen shit is a big old no-no. in my books, once you start cutting up your face or sticking stuff underneath to plaster up the cracks, you're on a slippery slope to no longer being a person. instead, you become a thing. occasionally still quite a sexy thing, but a thing nonetheless. as soon as you compromise on the display of emotional register in your face, you compromise on your fucking humanity. and you start down the road to becoming a wierd AI sex-bot. like Jude Law in, well, AI.

Gigolo Joe

so. back to the cameron diaz article. there's this picture of her on one page, where she's doing her best bride of chucky impression, and then the writer has prolapsed this eulogy about her ageless face and infinite youth on the other. the tagline is 'the girl who won't grow up'. quite.

this all comes about from her doing another flirty, little-girlish role in her newest film gambit. i mean, in knight and day, the film she did recently with cruise control, her face was practically falling off as she blushed and gasped her way through a series of action sequences like an orgasmic teen. needless to say, the manic intensity of her face was largely balanced out by cruise's own horrorshow boat race. the more i've thought about it, the more i'm convinced that it wasn't really him in that film, just a stunt double wearing an MI2 style tom cruise mask that didn't quite fit.

basically, what i'm trying to say, i think, is that the only type of role i could ever really dig diaz, or cuise, or any of the other ageing, hollywood surgery-clan of superstars playing these days, would be one which actually acknowledges the fact that their character has had loads of fucked up plastic surgery and now looks fucking weird. in fact i'd really dig that. it would be brave as fuck. i mean, if any of them fancy an oscar over the next few years they should seriously consider it.

ok. i'm glad to have got that off my chest. i feel like one of those toxic breast implant chicks after a boob reduction. 

on to my second beef.

me and my friend petey were riding on the bus yesterday with two or three big bags of his stuff, shipping them from my yard to his sister's. when we got on it was pretty much empty apart from a snoozing philipino at the back, so plonk goes the luggage on that little rack near the driver, and down we go in the seats behind it, cos hey, you always wanna keep one hand on your stuff on public transport. not cos anything's actually going to happen, but just to massage your paranoia.

so we're chatting away when looming up over us appears this beefy lady in her 50s. she's got a jaw like a polak construction worker, and a mullet straight off the set of winter's bone. 'excuse me', she says, looking at us with dead eyes. we wait for her to continue. nada. she grinds her teeth. 'oh, sorry!' my friend's clocked on faster than i have, we're sitting in the priority seats. 

we explode upwards in a profusion of apologies, the two of us doing our best hugh grant impressions, and make way for her to completely gazump our seats. no 'thank you', no acknowledgement - us, still babbling bullshit like reprimanded school kids. i mean, how dare we even consider sitting in a priority seat when someone actually deserving of it might be held up from being seated there for an extra 10 seconds. 

and then we look around. there isn't a single seat taken. all four of the seats just after the doors - the ones that don't even require a step up - empty. she could have walked on two more metres, but, instead, she decided to pull rank on us.  for the sake of it. we look back. on consideration, she's not even in her 50s. more like her 40s. and she's hardly fragile. in fact, she looks like she might arm wrestle for pitchers of beer on the weekends. or rape middle class inmates doing time for fraud. 

in other words, we've just been yoked. a rudeboi has walked up to us, asked to see our phones and we've offered to show him the pin code and how the apps work. what a fuckin' hooah. ralph cifaretto wouldn't take this shit. and the only retribution i could hope for was some genuine senior citizen to bowl up and pull rank on this bitch. or i could take the scissors from petey's washbag and cut off her mullet.

but instead, i had to be content with just standing there, narrowing my eyes and casting bad juju on her.

maybe she fell in the shower this morning. who knows.

She was a hooah, Tony!

ok. so i haven't managed to link these two subjects up at all. as an apology i offer you something completely unrelated.

funny pictures of kids.

peace

loadsa links

van damme goes kurtz   the universal soldier franchise was a big part of my youth. i can only hope you were so lucky. well, it's back. ooooh yes. and it looks like it's going to do everything carl urban's Dredd didn't, wouldn't or couldn't. it looks psychedelic and brutal, or, brutally psychedelic.. or psychedelically brutal? i don't know. but pretty intense stuff. universal soldier: day of reckoning

fuck the fucking world mother fucker   the best thing to hit youtube in a while. this guy is germany's answer to steve-o. cannonball!!

joey bada$$   17 year old NY rap prodigy. absolutely killing it. joey bada$$ | hardknock

miami nights   one of channel 4's series of random acts. a portrait of two girls on the neon soaked, sleazy streets of miami, set to sebastien schuller's track nightlife. a real pleasure. emily kai-bock | nightlife

ghosst(s)   a pretty freaky animation. slightly uncomfortable viewing for those of you that like trippy anime. lorn | ghosst(s)

puntual serveeses   one of the best pieces of online grammar i've seen. quite the treat. man and van

beer chase   my favourite ad out at the moment. carlton draught | beer chase

coming soon..? probably not   one book i would love to see on the silver screen. the windup girl

the next big thing   this kid has more of the right moves than tom cruise. and he had all the right moves. i'm taking evening classes to learn this routine in time for new years. indian kid dancing

inspector norse

wow. i haven't dug an electronic tune this much for a while. it's like Todd Terje was comissioned by sega to make the soundtrack for a Barbarella: Queen of the Universe video game on the megadrive. needless to say, that's a game that definitely should've been made.

but, instead, its the soundtrack to Kristoffer Borgli's short film, Whateverest (perhaps the best name ever?), and it couldn't be a sweeter match. the film's a wicked character study of Marius Solem, a loney, suburban Scandinavian lad who just don't know no better. i haven't seen moves like these since i went to a psy-trance rave in copenhagen... isn't it secretly how we all want to dance? no? just me?

there's always been something a little tongue-in-cheek about the whole space disco sound, but this track's got that unashamed synth-fetishism that's almost self-consciously ridiculous. a full power synth-gasm. pretty much the perfect musical vibe for a self-loathing, stomping loner to gum mandy and weap to. good style.

JOCK ON WAX

looks like that high protein diet's paid off.

JockTalk has just released an EP on the vinyl only record label Tusk Wax. this has been in the mix for a while now, so its great to see it out in the ether and getting the love it deserves. some jaw dropping grooves straight out of the Jock's subterranean sex dungeon, so clean out your ears and get your pom-poms ready, cos you can hear it in short right here.

if you're a vinyl man, make sure to pick it up. in stores by the beginning of august, or message them on the Tusk Wax fan page and they'll send you one faster than you can say touchdown.

Tusk Wax 7

2.1 litres of fluid

this guy.


i stumbled across this about half an hour ago. i now know it word for word. prepare yourself

i am proud to give you, dan fredenburgh

(APPLAUSE)

anyone that likes a guy that knows how to use film reel as an acting tool, look no further

flying houses

photographs by Laurent Chehere

blood orange

deceit, murder and arcades. all in a night's work for new york's primo hipster, devonte hynes. more 80s than rick astley's dance moves, hynes pedals his retro r'n'b under the stage name Blood Orange. his heartachy vocals and low-fi synths evoke a kind of b-movie pastiche fantasy, from highschool drama in the lunchroom to noirish femme fatals and getaway driving badasses. finally we've got the video his music deserves: blood simple meets the wraith. wassup


a perfect celebration of americana. keep an eye out for american ninja 4 on the motel tv..