Journal des inscrits - 10 août 2008

Fanfreluche................................................^^

Sac à vrac

12/13 de la 3

Belle nuit à tous !

Interlude de l'ORTF

Ce qu'on nomme culture consiste, pour une partie des intellectuels, à persécuter l'autre partie.
(Jean-François Revel)

Cours Pierre Guyotat sur la langue française.

Fanfreluche................................................^^

je crois , le meilleur concert de ma courte vie, je n'avais jamais vu une foule partir en live comme ça!

Colic

mon gros coup de coeur du moment

Whip to be square

Whip to be square

The appropriation of leather, rubber and revealing clothing was one of those fin-de-siècle symptoms that turned out to be not so fin at all

Julie Burchill
Saturday November 11, 2000
The Guardian

I don't know about you - and knowing what culturally upright people you stern-but-fair Guardian readers actually are, I think it's quite unlikely that you listen to pop radio at all - but there's always at least one, current hit record which is so rotten that I will stop anything, and I mean anything, in order to cross the room and turn it off. Recent culprits have been anything by the vile U2, Music by Madonna - and now, I'm afraid, Holler, the Spice Girls' comeback record.

But it's worse this time - far, far worse. Even though I was irritated by the Madonna record, I didn't find the idea of Madge dancing with her bay-bee nauseating or anything. But when I hear the Spice Girls' record, I am victim to a host of lurid visions that I neither want nor need in my life. Apparently, they're going to take us to their "fantasy room" and "we're going to like it there". After which it will be no time at all before they're making us "holler holler" and, allegedly, scream their names.

My main problem with this is that I am both too worldly and too prim, and so any of the ways of interpreting this threat/promise upsets me. The obvious thing they're going to do to you in their fantasy room is give you a blowjob. But what sort of fantasy is that? Everyone's got oral sex coming out of their ears, these days; it would actually be quite exotic to meet someone who wouldn't go south - you'd think they were really kinky. If this is what they're singing about, I find it quite pitiably pedestrian.

Then my imagination starts to run riot. Face it, the Spice Girls are grown-up, experienced women. They're not going to be singing about doing the oral as though it's a cure for cancer. So it must be something more extreme. If they've got a special room for it, it would have to be. Would that be a dungeon, then? With like . . . waterproof sheeting on the floor? Oh, no! Horrible visions of Scary relieving herself on the innocent bodies of her paying public come to mind. No wonder Geri got out while she could.

Then I tell myself not to be so silly. No way would the Spice Girls be peddling a record to their tiny fans that advocated the joys of urophilia. But then, they've encouraged tiny children all around the country to sing about their lovers (Wannabe) and wearing condoms (2 Become 1). Would it really be such a big jump to crooning about the joy of watersports? And if so, will they be round to bestiality by Christmas?

On balance, I think that Les Spices are singing about S&M - a very M&S type of S&M, but S&M all the same. There's a lot of it about these days. The appropriation of leather, rubber and extremely revealing clothing - once the province of the sweaty suburban swinger and then the hardcore clubber - by wholesome mainstream celebrities such as Davina McCall (who arrived at the Q Awards brandishing a whip last week) was one of those fin-de-siècle symptoms which have turned out to be not so fin at all. On a more cerebral level, look at the enduring appeal of the cruel Mrs Thatcher to Tory MPs, or the latest excruciatingly cutting string to Anne Robinson's bow.

Yes, fun and games at the Commons last week when, using an "arousal monitor", scientists were surprised to find that 80% of MPs and peers got more aroused by being shown photographs of Mrs Thatcher than they did by pictures of semi-naked models, a lesbian kiss or Denise van Outen in a skimpy dress. Amusingly, party allegiance made no difference to the results, though the one (anonymous, male, Labour) MP who reacted most strongly to a photo of Tony Blair was "very surprised and a bit embarrassed". Peter, sweetie - don't worry about it.

Outside of Parliament, conventional stimulus ruled. But are even we civilians immune to the dark appeal of the dominatrix? Surely a good 80% of the appeal of the BBC's new smash hit show The Weakest Link is the stony-faced severity of Anne Robinson, and the heartlessness - even brisk enjoyment - with which she despatches her victims to take the long walk of shame past the camera: think about it, it wouldn't be half as compelling with Henry Kelly or Jenny Powell grinning and soothing at the podium. Tellingly, the show is the brainchild of a doctor (who tend to be sadists) and a comedian (who tend to be masochists).

Commenting on the show's imminent sale to more than a dozen countries, BBC Worldwide said that Johnny Presenter-Foreigner would have to maintain the tone set by Robinson: "Foreign broadcasters are mesmerised by Anne. They are amazed at how tough and forthright she is, and that people are willing to be put through the mill by her. They've never seen anything like it before."

No doubt the spread of The Weakest Link will generate lots of simple-minded smut from our European friends about our collective desire to be dominated by ill-tempered women, coming so soon after the Mrs T shocker. Let them laugh; I have a theory that those countries which have a good record for winning wars don't mind their menfolk being seen as submissive, while those countries where the men are unwilling or unable to fight would prefer them to be seen as sadists for the sake of their own self-respect. That's why the French have got the Marquis de Sade and The Story Of O and we've got Anne Robinson and Mrs T.

This was part of the reason I felt unable to join my liberal colleagues in weeping a tear for poor ickle Lord "Spanker" Holme when he lost his cushy billet as chairman of the Broadcasting Standards Commission a couple of weeks ago. As Spinal Tap found out during the "Smell The Glove" fiasco, there's a thin line between sexist and sexy. Looking back to his line to his lover quoted in the News Of The World story: "Remember every minute after 5 o'clock adds six hard strokes. Think about it and tremble", indeed! I suppose that my contempt for Lord Holme is a close, better-behaved relation to my contempt for Eminem (and I bet that's the only time those two will ever be bracketed together): in a world where women are subject to such a massive amount of harassment, hate crimes and domestic murder (two a week) at the hands of men, isn't fantasising about hurting women, too, a little lousy? And try as we might to be enlightened about these things in theory, I bet that even the most liberal of men would feel uneasy if his own sister, mother or daughter became involved in a sadistic relationship - just as many men approve of prostitution so long as it's not their daughters, mothers or sisters out there turning tricks. It's not only the right which has sexual double standards.

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2000

Once upon a time there were three little girls who went to the police academy...

Once upon a time there were three little girls who went to the police academy...

...and changed the lives of teenagers everywhere. Julie Burchill was one of them

Friday November 17, 2000
The Guardian

I don't know about you, but when I'm auditioning people to be my friend, there are a few questions I always try to run by them, casual-like. First, I'll want to know if they've ever said "Enjoy" in that sickening way only sad little castrates incapable of enjoying anything do. Then I'll want to know that they're not going to be dreary and boring about the loyalty thing, and that we both understand that if a better offer comes up and Kate Moss wants either of us to be her best friend on pain of never seeing the other one again, then naturally it's all off. But the third question is, inevitably, the tie-breaker. Answered right, I'll pass on the other two. And it is: Who was your favourite Charlie's Angel?

Now some people might think that this is a trick question. The coolest Charlie's Angel of all time was Tanya Roberts as Julie, the last draftee before the show's cancellation. Unlike the other girls who must have married their Carmen rollers, Julie had poker-straight hair and a voice full of guts and gravel compared to their breathy babeishness. Tanya turned out to be pretty damned cool, too; a tough, working-class, New York girl with a nice line in put-downs and - it eventually transpired in the Sunday papers - a liking for Cocaine Sex Parties With French Girls.

But that's beside the point. The draftees don't matter: if you say that Tanya was your favourite, or Shelley Hack, or even Cheryl Ladd, you're missing the point. Only Jill (Farrah Fawcett), Sabrina (Kate Jackson) and Kelly (Jaclyn Smith) really matter, really signify in the rich tapestry of pop culture. It's like Boss Cat also being called Top Cat, or ignoring the fact that there was more than one Darrin in Bewitched - if you have to ask you'll never understand. The correct answer is, of course, "Jaclyn!" - said with a gasp before and a sigh afterwards.

Jaclyn, Jaclyn - beautiful Jaclyn Smith, with the gimmicky name and the timeless beauty, as completely and uniquely herself as Helen of Troy or Sade Adu. A sphinx without a secret, an angel without wings, a Jewish girl from one of the richest retailing families in Texas, Jaclyn was always something of a mystery, which is a mystery itself in a business where the participants are only too happy to splurge every last detail of their private lives in our faces. All we knew about her, really, was that she'd been married to a man called Roger but they divorced, and all we know now is that she eventually married a Scots technician she met on the set of a TV film and had a baby which she called Gaston. But, hey, nobody's perfect.

You weren't meant to like Jaclyn best - Farrah, "Jill", was the sexy one, and Kate, "Sabrina", was the "clever" one (which meant she was flat-chested). But Farrah had a vulpine, masculine face beneath her spectacular blondeness and Kate had a witchy little voice. My friend had a theory that women liked Jaclyn because she was divorced - whereas Farrah was smugly married and Kate stroppily single, Jaclyn combined both the idealism and combativeness of the modern woman, thus resulting in her divorcee status. It was her character who was immortalised on the most resonant and haunting LP of recent years - Air's Moon Safari, with Kelly, Watch the Stars. I once recall the Air boys, in their charmingly halting English, explaining themselves: "Eet ees not Jaclyn Smeeth we are so fascinated by, eet ees Kellee. We think of Kellee as being the most perfect person, ever."

But for myself and most of the other teenage girls who grew up with Charlie's Angels, it was hard to tell where Jaclyn stopped and Kelly started, as indeed it was with the other actresses. Farrah really was a sports-mad airhead, we could tell, and Kate was obviously a bit of a cow. But it didn't matter; the original triumvirate of Angels, lasting only from 1976 to 1978, were as perfect as a circle. If Jill was sporty, Sabrina was analytical; if Sabrina was abrasive, Kelly was comforting; if Kelly was soft, Jill was crisp. When Farrah left after only one season - her character Jill Munroe being replaced by Cheryl Ladd, as Jill's younger sister Chris - the circle slumped and became a sort of squidgy oval. By the time Shelley and Tanya had been substituted, the show was a big, shapeless mess. When it was finally cancelled in 1981, after 109 episodes, everyone had had a gut-full.

It was all so different in the beginning. ABC was always the poor relation of American TV networks, ranking lowest ever since its creation and only ever managing a couple of really big shows, one of which was Happy Days. Obviously, they were delighted when Charlie's Angel became the top show of the 1976-77 season and the only new show on any network to become an out-and-out hit. By the end of the first run, 59% of all televisions in use when the show was aired were tuned into it: 23m households. And it never left the Nielsen top 10 for its first three years. There were further surprises when a breakdown of the audience showed that it had ranked fourth in metropolitan areas, seventh amongst college graduates and seventh with the highest-income group. The girls got 18,000 letters a week and ABC charged the highest advertisement rate ever for commercials: $100,000 a minute by the end of the first season.

A lot of rubbish is talked these days about girl power and how Charlie's Angels were there first, and an equal amount about how exploitative and sexist it all was. In truth, it was neither: neither saint nor sinner, dom nor sub. It was, instead, one of those sublime, silly, shimmering moments when popular culture gets it absolutely right, like Mony Mony, Coca-Cola or The Simpsons. Up until the 1970s, women on American TV shows had been housewives and mothers; even big stars asked us to suspend our credibility and buy them as dizzy broads forever being scolded by their hubbies. Then Mary Tyler Moore, who had spent the 1960s as the archetypal American angel of the hearth in the Dick Van Dyke Show, reinvented her self as a bold yet vulnerable big city career girl for The Mary Tyler Moore Show.

So great was the resonance of this show that Oprah Winfrey, by then the most powerful woman on TV, would be reduced to tears when she greeted a frail, much older Tyler Moore on an episode of Oprah. You'd have needed a heart of stone not to whimper along as Winfrey recalled how, during her impoverished and abused youth in a deep south shack, this paragon of white WASPishness had been her greatest inspiration in holding on to the dream.

That's how desperate we were then for TV heroines who weren't wives and mothers; Mary Tyler Moore, stuttering in fear before her fierce editor Lou Grant, seemed like the shining path. In this context, it's not surprising that the Angels - with their guns, judo throws and ability to escape from any situation unscathed, no matter how savage or sordid - seemed like salvation.

Would they have been the same if they'd been called The Alley Cats? This was what Aaron Spelling, who created the show as a vehicle for Kate Jackson, star of his series The Rookies, wanted them to be known as. Another abandoned blueprint was that they would be three undercover policewomen; in a typical act of puny yet pungent Lib-Lite, Jackson suggested that the trio should instead be private investigators who had not been able to advance in the male-dominated LAPD, and that Angels was rather less offensively stereotyped than Alley Cats.

It was Jackson, the most conventionally feminist-minded of the actresses, who suggested the gimmick of the ever-absent Charlie - and, though this has since been reinterpreted as a terminally chauvinistic touch, I think there is something to be said for the way it added to the male-free feeling of the show, to a degree unparalleled before or since. Even the "real woman" dramas of Kay Mellor feature the boyfriends and husbands of the heroines week in, week out; but Angel-land truly was an Adam-less Eden in which the only men were agents of evil or disposable dupes.

Once in a while you'd see them get off with some Brett Rockjaw at the end of the show, but next week, they'd be back on the couches together waiting for the word from Charlie, and none of the previous week's romantic nuances would ever be mentioned. At a time when the only test of maturity is whether or not you have an all-important boyfriend, the Angels indicated that it was really grown-up and glamorous not to bother with that stuff at all.

Or perhaps the motivation was more sinister, in the way that pop star scream idols were always instructed by the management to appear single at all times (it says a lot for John Lennon's "integrity" that he kept his wife Cynthia under wraps for years; Ronan Keating never bothered). Perhaps the Angels were made to appear permanently unattached so that male audiences would become more loyal and more partisan about their Angel.

While women watched to see women doing "men's jobs" in fancy frocks, men were apparently attracted by what came to be known as the "jiggle factor". Typically, at least one Angel will be put in a position where she must strip down to a bikini in the first 10 minutes, or thereafter bring the future of western civilisation into question. The episode titles were all a big tease, too, the first season containing the notorious Angels in Chains as well as Consenting Adults, Dirty Business, Lady Killers and The Blue Angels. The last was an investigation into the pornography industry, but the Angels kept those bikinis on.

Call me an old-fashioned girl, but I would much rather have been an actress in the days of tease and jiggle than now, when every role offered to women between the ages of 18 and 35 will at some point include a close-up gynaecological examination. But that, as they say, was then. This is now. Now there's a film. When Drew Barrymore took it into her head to produce a big budget Charlie's Angels movie a couple of years back, you could practically hear the horny hands rubbing all across Hollywood at the prospect of every guy's favourite fantasy - the catfight - played out between mega-babes.

When it was confirmed that Cameron Diaz (aka Sexy Blonde Ex-Model) and Lucy Liu (aka Horny Oriental Wildcat) would star alongside Drew (aka Curvy Bisexual Wildchild), the media flew into a frenzy of activity detailing alleged friction and fur-pulling between the three and a spectacular bomb at the box office. It didn't happen and the film opened earlier this month to take $40m on its first weekend, going straight to the top of the film charts and staying there.

Diaz, Liu and Barrymore are good actresses and cool icons - but they seem diminished by playing the Angels in a way that the original cast did not. This is, I think, because they are taking it far too seriously, trying to make a feminist statement in an arena which is singularly unsuited to it. The problem is most clearly illustrated with the theme song, by the clumping Destiny's Child: "We're independent women/ All the honeys got the money/ All the mommas got the dollars." Which is blatantly both untrue and horribly self-righteous. What was fine as throwaway seems utterly demeaning as a big deal.

I was hardly a sweet innocent thing during the reign of the Angels - when it started, in 1976, I was a scrappy young punk of 16; and when it ended, in 1981, I was a notoriously cynical young madam of 21. But it spoke to me in those difficult years, nevertheless, about the gap between what you want and what you need, and - more importantly - between what it says on the shampoo bottle and the hair you end up with. I still can't hear that beautiful, yearning, swirling theme song - which spoke to us nervous young suburban virgins of career girls and swank apartments and sumptuous loneliness beside a swimming pool - without smiling and thinking, yep, it was worth it after all.

In its purest form, Charlie's Angels spoke dumbly to our dumb hearts, in those days before Aids, pierced navels and cable porn in every home. They were foolish, Day-Glo, layered, what's-your-sign, yes-I-like-pina-colada days, and frankly I loved them. But we're not that dumb any more, so there's no excuse.

And I won't be going to see the film.

What the angels did next
Merope Mills

Farrah Fawcett
(aka Angel Jill Munroe)
Fawcett quit Charlie's Angels after one season to pursue a film career, appearing in sci-fi flicks Logan's Run and Saturn 3. After splitting with first husband Lee Majors, she had a son, Redmond, with Ryan O'Neal. In the early 1980s she had a hit with The Cannonball Run, then disappeared into a string of TV movies. In 1995, she stripped for Playboy and has since been plagued by accusations of drug and alcohol abuse. On Letterman in 1997 she seemed "confused" and rambled incoherently for 20 minutes. She has been in Ally McBeal, and was cast by Robert Altman in his new film Dr T & the Women, for which she demanded cast and crew watch her nude scenes.

Kate Jackson
(aka Sabrina Duncan)
Jackson was forced to turn down the Meryl Streep role in Kramer Vs Kramer because of her Angels commitments. After leaving the series in 1979, she tried her hand at the movies in Making Love, a romantic comedy about LA swingers. Jackson went back to TV in the mid-1980s with Scarecrow and Mrs King, playing a suburban mom opposite Bruce Boxleitner. Then she was diagnosed with breast cancer, and campaigned to raise awareness of the condition. She had more health problems - including cardiac surgery in 1993. Two years later she adopted a child, Charles Taylor Jackson. Most recent role: alongside Shannen Doherty in the TV movie Satan's School for Girls.

Jaclyn Smith
(aka Kelly Garrett)
The only Angel to last all five series, Smith stuck almost exclusively to TV movies afterwards. She played Jackie Kennedy in 1981, Jennifer Parker in Sidney Sheldon's Rage of Angels in 1983, and Florence Nightingale in 1985 - she was soon nicknamed "queen of the miniseries". Smith got a TV series, Christine Cromwell, in 1989, in which she played the eponymous amateur detective. Before Angels, Smith was a Max Factor model; afterwards, she continued to front for the cosmetics company, as well as managing a signature collection for the oh-so-classy K-Mart chain. Smith is currently on her fourth husband, heart surgeon Bradley Allen.

Cheryl Ladd
(aka Kris Munroe)
Fawcett's 1977 replacement recorded two albums, Cheryl Ladd and Dance Forever, while doing the show. After it finished, she too graduated into TV moviedom, appearing in a stack of Danielle Steel adaptations. Her main movie highlight was playing a pill-popping hypochondriac in 1992's Poison Ivy - alongside, ironically, Drew Barrymore. Ladd divorced her first husband David (son of Alan) and married movie producer Brian Russell. She recently began writing children's books. In Permanent Midnight (her one recent movie credit of note) she played an ageing TV actress, star of a fictitious show called No Such Luck. She is currently appearing in Annie Get Your Gun! on Broadway.

Shelley Hack
(aka Tiffany Welles)
Before Angels, Hack was a successful model (the "Charlie" perfume ads) and struggling bit-part actor. Afterwards, she starred in two failed TV series, Cutter to Houston and Jack & Mike. She had small movie parts in Scorsese's The King of Comedy and the ur-domestic-slasher The Stepfather. In the 1990s, acting took a back seat to activism: she was a polling station supervisor in the 1997 elections in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and was asked by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe to produce televised presidential debates there. She is currently working to restore TV production in the country.

Tanya Roberts
(aka Julie Rogers)
After her brief Angels stint, Roberts got into features: sword-and-sandals fantasy The Beastmaster (for which Roberts did a Playboy spread in 1982), leopardskin cheesecake Sheena: Queen of the Jungle; and Roger Moore's final 007 flick, A View to a Kill. She then declared: "Most of James Bond's leading ladies have gone on to become big, big stars. And I'm going to join them… I'm not taking my clothes off any more." After three years of unemployment she began to crack, and became the doyenne of the straight-to-video "erotic thriller" industry. She packed all that in in the mid-90s, and rode the retro wave to score a leading role in That 70s Show.

• Charlie's Angels is released next Friday.

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2000

Goodbye Seventies

John Lennon? What a phoney!

Working-class hero? My arse! He was about as working class as a Wilmslow dentist. Sexy? He was hideous

Julie Burchill
Saturday December 9, 2000
The Guardian

I don't normally feel the need to return to the scene of a hate-crime - once I've dissed 'em, they stay dissed - but in John Lennon's case, I will make an exception. John Lennon! Even his name makes me feel nauseous. Was one human being, with the possible exception of Jeffrey Archer, ever such an all-weather compendium of lies, boasts and eye-watering phoniness? It's actually quite hard to think of a person you can't stand one damned thing about - even Jeffrey Archer's good for a cheap laugh - but Lennon takes the booby prize every time.

I would have let the old geezer rest in pieces if there hadn't been this recent flurry of sentimental activity around his remains. The Beatles Anthology book comes out and cretins queue all night for it. That album gets to number one. George Michael, whose once-sharp brain must surely have been well bleached by the bright brazen sun of La-La Land, buys Lennon's piano partly "to keep it out of tiny hands in Tokyo" and partly because Imagine was - ahem - the greatest song ever written, casting a giant shadow over today's bonsai bands. Liam Gallagher, Mr Brains Trust himself, names his kiddie after his all-time hero, while, in a Putative Project of truly sumptuous grotesquerie, plans for Yoko Ono and Michael Jackson to bring a Yellow Submarine musical to the West End stage in 2002 are announced.

To cap it all, any swot lucky enough to be blessed with BBC Choice can tonight experience "an evening of programmes dedicated to one of the greatest singer-songwriters and one of the most influential political artists of modern times". Yes, be still my beating heart as the Professional Widow introduces such toe-tapping classics as Instant Karma, Power To The People and No9 Dream (bet you can't whistle that one). There's also an ass-sucking documentary, Gimme Some Truth, in which (according to a reverent BBC press release) "an American fan turns up on Lennon's doorstep saying that he needs to talk to him because he believes that Lennon's lyrics were written specifically for him. He is invited into the house for something to eat." For some reason, this piece of writing made me hoot with laughter, so I just wanted to share it with you. And, as the cherry top, there's a long, lingering look at the "Lennon Shrine" in New York's Central Park, containing interviews with "the thousands of people who make a pilgrimage to the shrine on the anniversary of his death". And every one of them nuttier than his killer Mark Chapman, I'll be bound.

Lennon; what a phoney! For a start - working-class hero? My arse. The Marianne Faithfull cover version was more heartfelt! Lennon was about as working class as a Wilmslow dentist, unlike Paul, George, and Ringo. That's why the tosser was at art school in the early 50s, for Pete's sake! (And, on the subject of Petes, who was it insisted that the original Beatles drummer, Pete Best, be sacked because he was too good-looking and all the girls screamed at him? Right first time.)

Someone once said that pop stars must be either sexy or profound; when you get the pair, you've hit the jackpot. Lennon was neither. Imagine's lyrics could have come out of a stoned fortune cookie or maudlin Christmas cracker, and generally appeals to vicious go-getters who'd sell their best pet to a torture lab if the price was right. But more seriously, he wasn't sexy in the least - he was hideous, even when young. Those piggy little eyes, that thin, curtain-twitching little mouth, the voice a tight whine of ill-temper - ugh! If he was anything like as unattractive, whiny and boring as a child as he was as an adult, I'm not surprised his mother - Julia, by all accounts an attractive, intelligent, high-spirited woman who must have felt she'd given birth to a switched baby - ran away and left him with his Aunt Mimi. (See that early giveaway as to his manicured roots, by the way; working-class people never refer to their mother's sister as "Aunt"; she is invariably "Auntie".)

The young adult Lennon was an appealing chap, too: this is the man, remember, who, in front of a packed dressing room, shouted "QUEER JEW" in response to Brian Epstein fussing, "Now what shall I call this autobiography of mine?" He was crap during the Beatles - everyone knows that Paul wrote 99% of all the decent songs - and crap after the Beatles. He was always the weakest link. I'll take the spirit and soul of Ringo's Back Off Boogaloo and It Don't Come Easy over the smug platitudes of Woman or Starting Over, any day.

Ah, the Yoko years! Move over Romeo and Juliet, Dante and Beatrice and Jimmy and Janette Krankie, and let this pair of lovers show you how it's really done! In reality, of course, their alliance was a fetid mess of domestic violence, drug addiction and mutual adultery - hey, if I'd wanted that, I could have got it at home. After the initial provincial excitement of copping off with a "Jap", as Lennon so frequently referred to his lady love, I think it fair to say that there wasn't even a great deal of physical attraction - on either side, and who can blame either one after seeing that album cover? ("Couldn't Paul and Linda strip off instead?" said the sweet, vague Sir Joe Lockwood, head of EMI at the time Two Virgins was released. "They're so much prettier .") "I don't believe in Beatles - the dream is over," Lennon once sang. "I just believe in me - Yoko and me." I'd bet any money that the Yoko Dream turned out to be emptier and phonier than the Beatles Dream. But when Lennon wanted to turn back, he was too afraid of losing face. Instead, he swaddled himself in ("Imagine no . . .") possessions; at the height of their swinishness, the Ono-Lennons kept a whole apartment in the Dakota building, just below the one they lived in, for the exclusive occupation of their fur coats - just to keep them at the right temperature. Forget sex and drugs; that's probably the most decadent, vile pop star antic I've ever come across in my life.

Yet still the legend lives. But that doesn't make it legit. Lennon famously got into trouble for saying in the 60s that the Beatles were "bigger than Jesus" - pathetically, he also apologised when this statement threatened to damage their sales in the God-bothering US South. And, of course, it was a ridiculous thing to say - for a start, Jesus had better songs and he didn't go about calling people "Queer Jews". A far better comparison would be with the Queen Mother, about whom it is equally impossible to imagine the BBC ever making even a slightly critical programme. In the long run, I think that's what John Lennon will turn out to be: a Queen Mum body double, a dry run for the big one - the man who united one nation under a vale of tears.

Le 10 août, c'est aussi l'anniversaire de l'ordonnance de Villers-Cotterêts (1539)

Par son ordonnance de Villers-Cotterêts, petite bourgade picarde, le roi François Ier exige désormais que tous les actes administratifs, politiques et judiciaires soient rédigés en français et non plus en latin.
C'est une décision qui va faciliter l'unification du royaume. Tous ceux qui parlent la "langue d'oïl", pratiquée dans le bassin parisien et le val de Loire, ont désormais accès aux actes officiels. Dans les faits, il faudra beaucoup de temps avant que l'édit royal entre partout en application. L'unité linguistique ne s'achèvera qu'après la guerre de 1914 (cf Eugen Weber, La fin des terroirs). Aujourd'hui, la réforme constitutionnelle avec l'inscription des langues régionales peut sembler menacer le legs de François Ier et remettre en cause le statut officiel du français.

Retour de vacances

Une semaine dans le Finistère, ça fait du bien. Même s'il a plu tous les jours.

Occasion de lire quelques bons livres, dont l'excellent "Oro" de Cizia Zykë. Ce livre est une tuerie. L'auteur raconte comment à l'âge 35 ans environ au début des années 1980 il a monté un exploitation d'or au Costa-Rica. Tout y passe : les joints roulés dans des pages d'une Bible, les prostituées du coin, la jument qu'il fait jouir dans la jungle.

"Endless Road ",Time Bandits,1982

vive les années 70

Pfff

C'est fini la semaine, je suis bien content !!!

Je ne pensais pas qu'un hyperactif était aussi fatigant... Je me dis que les parents ont bien du courage...

Nous irons au lit plus tôt pour compenser !!!

Greatest Liver

Luv-You're the Greatest Lover ( 1979 )

Welcome to Waldolala.................................................................. : -) ! ! ! !

Welcome to Primetime,BITCH ! ! ! !

Mr EDGY : Coup de cœur absolu . C'est extrêmement long a charger ( il n'y a qu'une source ).

Post simiesque (35)

Quand la Chine s'éveillera, le monde tremblera.

(Napoléon Bonaparte)

Vision nocturne…

Ce soir, j’ai soupé dans un petit bistrot bruxellois, j’ai eu à subir, tout le long du repas, le spectacle d’un homme lavant sa voiture ! Et vous savez… un homme qui lave sa voiture : C’est tellement bête que l’on en éprouve de la pitié pour la voiture !

Mandy Moore, " Drop The Pilot ".

Amorphophallus titanum

Je déteste...

Les mauvais perdants, mais j'arrive encore à me contenir. La honte ça se comprend.

Mais ce que je déteste par dessus tout, ce sont les mauvais gagnants. L'arrogance sous couvert de bonne fois, ça me fait sortir de mes gonds.

Comme mes coups de gueules ici, il est rare que je sorte de mes gonds. Mais c'est toujours spectaculaire.

Mes excuses à ceux que cela choque. Même si je les fais surtout parce que je vous aime bien malgré tout.

« J'ai toujours eu un penchant pour les langues italiques. »

(Sissou)

« L'élève qu'il parle le nord-picène ou le sud-picène est toujours épicène.
Il salue ses camarades îliens et sait rester courtois malgré son tempérament bilieux : "Ave Sicule" »

(Arth1ur)

jardins

j'ai adoré "Repos éternel" aux jardins de Chaumont.
"! tnemelues is ,ha" tid sius em ej

Mosaïque romaine

To ..... with Luv'.....................................................^^

Coup de chapeau

Alors là , ce matin si je n'avais pas lu le journal du dimanche au lit, je serais tombé sur le cul : une page entière, dans un grand quotidien régional, consacrée aux efforts des bénévoles d' Aides aquitaine prodigués sur la plage gay du porge, de mémoire c'est la première fois que je vois un tel article sur ce support.

Haïku lélé avec des morceaux de mon dîner dedans :

Ce soir jambon si rose
j'ai vidé le frigo
Je m'en vais

J'ai un nouvel amour
j'emporte Jean Ristat
Je m'en vais

En coupant les tomates
je suis comme un enfant
Je m'en vais

J'y mettrai des oignons
Mon petit Seroplex
Avec un peu de poivre

C'est un petit partir
pour une humanité
mais un grand pas pour moi

Six mois d'immobilisme
comme Jonas dans la gueule de son bureau
Je m'en vais

mon bébé

mon bébé,

tu viens de partir il y a quelques heures, et voila déjà dans quel état je suis.....
j'ai passé un excellent week end ( encore un :) )

Wikipedia et moi : Daniel Barenboïm.

Daniel Barenboim, né le 15 novembre 1942 à Buenos Aires, est un pianiste et chef d'orchestre de nationalité argentine et israélienne. En 2002, il reçoit la nationalité espagnole et depuis janvier 2008, il est également porteur d'un passeport palestinien.

Enfant prodige, il donne son premier concert en tant que pianiste à Buenos Aires à l'âge de sept ans. Son père est alors et restera longtemps son professeur de piano.

L'instant music 16

Ce soir je zappe et je tombe sur un classement club 90 qui me donne l'impression d'être revenu au collège, ou de regarder un dance machine. Il ne manquait que OphelYYYY Winter.

Mada

3 jours chez moi

Merci d 'être venu, tout un symbole pour moi, tu as vu d'où je viens, j ai aimé te faire découvrir tout ça, j 'ai aimé nos câlins, nos promenades, nos petits clins d' oeils amoureux discret, nos moments en voiture, dormir prés de toi la bas...je t 'aime ma puce, je tiens aussi a dire à quel point tu es exceptionnel, un homme généreux, un homme bien, ne change pas, soit tel que tu es, merci d'être celui que tu es
ta crevette

Fantasme gay

Un dimanche calme d'août...

- Ca glisse. Les péniches qui nous font traverser la région glissent sur l'eau du canal avec détermination. Effleurement aquatique dans le silence de la nature. Les bateaux avancent lentement, mais nous mènent là où il faut, à l'étape suivante. Nous passons les écluses et parcourons les biefs qui nous séparent du prochain point de ralliement. Là où le public viendra faire la fête avec nous le temps d'une soirée...

- Ca cogite. Pas mal de réflexions en cours sur ma situation professionnelle. Questionnements sur le désir à continuer ce travail de cette manière. Ce ne sont que des questions, pour l'instant. Ca fait du bien aussi de ne pas s'endormir sur une situation relativement confortable. C'est peut-être l'année des changements.... Alors sans tout bouleverser, viendra à la rentrée le temps des choix pour les mois à venir...

- Ca approche. Bientôt la fin d'une longue mais passionnante saison de travail. Bientôt le début des vacances. Vacances bien méritées pour tout le monde après ce périple estival et tout ce qui avait précédé. Bientôt son arrivée aussi. D'abord pour assister aux dernières soirées festives et découvrir ainsi directement notre travail, puis pour passer un peu de temps dans la région, à se reposer...

La liste de Ross

J - ? JE SAIS PLUS COMBIEN

Aujourd'hui : Jean Ristat (1943)

C'EST SI VRAI ...

ray of light

un bull

VU AUJOURD'HUI...

LE MIROIR DE L'AME

On a beaucoup dit et beaucoup entendu que les yeux sont le miroir de l'âme... Je n'ai jamais vraiment bien compris cette expression.
Un miroir reflète, donc, nos yeux reflètent-ils l'âme de ceux qui nous font face?
Nous montrent-ils le monde selon notre âme? ou notre âme comme une aura se trouve t-elle autour de nous et non en nous?
Lorsqu'on dit que les yeux sont une fenêtre ouverte sur l'âme tout est plus clair.
mais si cette expression de miroir existe c'est bien qu'il doit y avoir une raison...

L'impudicus moderne, conversation avec ma quiche