The Next Haircut To Be Cloned By Millions

I won't be one of them. I'm already wearing it. Have had variations of the cut each time I leave my hairdresser's chair for the last six months or so...Mr Spock sides - a... Blunt fringe - a... Pudding bowl-ish shape - a ...longer or shorter, fuller or flatter, very blunt or not-so-blunt. But naturally black (always), not peroxide blonde.

*Monkey face* (in addition to what I've already said there and then) to the group of bogan/redneck girls who passed snide remarks about my previous hairstyle two years ago on the street - a super-severe ultra-blunt shiny full pudding bowl bob ala YSL Autumn/Winter 2008 but it was way before they put their models in those wigs. Plebs. Anything that's done-on-purpose ironically-ugly will suddenly be deemed "hot" when a celebrity, minor or major, wears it. Time for a new 'do.

Who Needs An iPod?

I don't.*

Not when I can have this. A Low-Technics record player by Mark Garside. Discovered via Top Bird (she won it at a fair...it's so not fair!)

I can't find very much information on how the disposable-spoon-and-plastic-cup player works but I like how it's on the other end of the spectrum from this.

Watch the demo video here (good choice of vinyl!).

*I must be the one of the last few people left in the world who doesn't own an iPod. I've always wanted a Sound Burger, though. And now, a Low-Technics.

I Might Go Back To School Again...

...just so I have an excuse to buy this Leather Academy Collar by Natalia Brilli.

It'll definitely add some pizazz to the drabby full academic regalia of gown, hanging hood and mortarboard on graduation day. Totally against the strict dress regulations, of course.

Now Available At An American Apparel Store Near Me!

From when the huge American Apparel ads were first plastered on the windows of the former Gowing store in Darlinghurst a few months ago, we've been eyeing the corner shop every time we walked by, wondering when we'll be able to stop ordering online and having to send stuff back to exchange for the right sizes each time we ordered a new style.

Finally, the hoardings went down and the signboards up and lit over the weekend! Woohoo! The joy of feeling the merchandise and trying them on for size! And taking them home right after paying.

We thought the store would have queues running round the block but I guess not everyone was anticipating the opening as much as we did. So if you want first dips for sizes and colours for your American Apparel favourites, go now, before the rest of Sydney does.

American Apparel
82 Oxford Street (corner of Oxford and Crown)
Darlinghurst
Sydney

Update: Theft of Intellectual Property

Big big "thank you's" to everyone who left comments and wrote emails after reading this and the comments I left on the posts stolen from me by the Piggy Palace Good Times Society.

The last I heard from Blogger was on Thursday. They said, "We'll contact you when we've finished processing your complaint.". Hmmm...

Last evening, I received an email from another blogger whose content has been pillaged by the same person/people. Now, I'm not one who gets freaked out by things too much but one of the articles that she sent me did send tiny shivers down my spine when I read it.

The Piggy Palace Good Times Society was a non-profit charity founded by pig farmer Robert "Willie" Pickton, a convicted Canadian serial killer of at least 30 known women in the last 10 years.

He lured these women to "dances" and "functions" organised by the Society, killed them and disposed of their bodies by passing their flesh through the meat grinder, mixed with the pork from his farm and handed out to friends or visitors. It was also said that he fed his minced-up victims to his pigs.

He's alive and still in jail but on January 8 this year, his lawyers filed a notice of appeal to the court seeking a new trial because they found some loopholes that might free him!

I don't think it's Robert Pickton who has been stealing from us but for the thief to name himself after the creepy murderer, he must be quite a nutcase himself, a whackjob who is a fan of Pickton's "work" and there are quite a few of them around.

On a happier note...an every-cloud-has-a-silver-lining scenario - I would never have found these fantastic blogs if their authors had not been in the same situation and had written to me.

Model Liberation - It's a thinking-model's blog. Nikia writes from behind-the-scene and from her heart. If you're after gossip, she'll not have a lot to offer but who wants to read about petty backstage catfights when you can read her very well-written thoughts on weightier issues plaguing the industry that she's in. And her hilarious accounts of casting sessions and auditions.

Jafabrit's Art - Corrine is an English artist living in Ohio. She's a part of the JafaGirls art collective. They sound like they have a lot of fun creating "artistic mischief". I want to join their gang and go around making Knit Graffiti. In her own words, her blog is a "sketchbook and playground for the creative meanderings of an artist's mind".

Ramblings of a Texas Housewife - It is a blog about "all about frugal living, making a home, mothering, coupons & great deals, life in the sticks and whatever else just happens to pop into my head". Those of us who are consumers-with-brain-tumours might want to consider taking a leaf out of her blog. I think I might start with some her easy-to-make recipes.

Coveiter - Julie (thank you for all the emails!) is another "wurver of pwetty things". Together with Lindsey, they fill their blog with extremely covetable things. I'm having a bout of blog-envy here - I love the whole look and feel of Coveiter, so clean, so sparse, so white yet so full of colours.

Good luck, girls! Hope all of us hear from Blogger soon.

Nevermind The Bloc Party, Here's The Sex Pistols!

"John Lydon accused of instigating attack on Bloc Party's Kele Okereke" - I don't condone violence but Bloc Party's brand of whiney music really do my head in so this piece of rock'n'roll news has had me smiling the whole week.

While I love the Sex Pistols and Johnny Rotten, I'm not going to stand by the man blind and with unquestioning faith (see eyewitness' account) but I can't help relishing...

"...severe facial bruising, cuts to his face and body and a split lip..."

and this quote by Johnny Rotten, "When you have achieved as much as I have, come back and talk to me.". Spoken like a true patriarch.

They Are All Romans, Aren't They?

I must be one of the very few fashion-loving person left who doesn't currently own a pair of gladiator sandals. And I love owning shoes!

They first resurfaced on my radar about three years ago and they have since been on every must-have list in any fashion-related medium worth their salt. Yes, resurfaced, because the first time it went beep-beep, very loudly, was in the 80s and did I buy them!

This time round, however, they (and their very many incarnations) didn't do very much for me. My legs haven't suddenly gone stumpy, rendering them unsuitable for severe line-cutting gladiator sandals-wearing. No. If they had, I wouldn't have spent the last few summers wearing super unflattering some-might-even-say-"ugly" shoes like...

...these Douglas Sandals, "Roman Punched" in leather that's a shade of Avocado.

With nearly 60 years and three generations of sandal-making behind them, the New Zealand company's products were, from what I was told, first intended as summer uniform for school children, matching the sandals' colours to the school's colours.

They used to be sold in Sydney in the Skipping Girl boutiques (remember them and their cute woven totes?) but since they shut, I haven't been able to find them anywhere.

Deciding I needed some summer cheer (it's not even spring, I know, but I'm so bored with winter already!) and therapy after a spate of angsty-ness, I ordered some online.

These red so-Dame-Westwood tartan ones.










They are the sweetest people, them at Douglas Sandals! They wrote back the next day saying that the pairs (I've also ordered a secret pair, in a different colour, as a present) are not available in the sizes that I have requested for but they will make them to order and will let me know when they are ready. I know the sandals are not "made-to-order" for my feet in the real sense of the term but I still feel pretty special. Can't wait to get them in the mail. And, of course, can't wait for summer!

Theft of Intellectual Property?

To: Piggy Palace Good Times Society

I don't know who you are or which entity you work for but I would like you to stop plagiarising my posts, word-for-word, picture-for-picture, without my permission, and placing them onto the various "blogs" that you host. Now. Right this minute.

Here,

{EDIT (Tuesday 22 July 2008): I've been advised to remove the fourteen links to the various dubious sites. Why give these amoebic low-lives traffic?}

Granted that you credit me at the end of each, but you do so in the smallest font available while the "Posted by Piggy Palace Good Times Society" right after the post titles (MY post titles that you copied!) are many times bigger. To the unintiated and those who do not read to the end, it would seem like you have painstakingly written all those posts, taken those photos, researched all the links and expended time and effort on them.

Your "blogs", full of work lifted from other bloggers, are NOT where I want my lovingly-crafted posts to be - my thoughts and opinions are so mis-represented and cheapened by the bad layout and your choice of the most inappropriate typefaces. In this case, imitation/outright copying/plagiarism is not the sincerest form of flattery.

I don't care what purpose your "blogs" aim to to serve. I don't need to be linked and I don't crave publicity or traffic from dubious sources. I want my posts to appear how I intended them to, in formats and types that I choose, on my blog, so leave my posts alone and start writing your own.

While you're at it, please also let your pal Femjoy Virtual Girl over at The Premier Nudes Site know that I'm on to her too (I can tell that you guys are in cahoots with each other from the same bad page layouts and similar tastes in typefaces).

{EDIT (Tuesday 22 July 2008): More links removed.}

I will be checking back on the links above and looking out for new ones,
The Likkle Girl Who Wurves Pwetty Things

PS. I've left comments on all the above "posts".

Thou Shalt Not Covet

My sacrilegious coveting has not ebbed one bit. In fact, it's been fueled, to very sinful proportions, by this photo of the very rockstar-looking Pope. All that's missing is the smoke and the pyrotechnics. Look at the beautiful lines that his windswept capelet is creating. I want. Now!

Also coveting (to view, not to own...yet) is work by Luigi y Luca, a Madrid-based Italian visual artists/photographers/models couple.














Initially directed to their blog by the always way-ahead Imelda, over pie-making chat and tea, to view their art, I chanced upon the photo of the Pontiff.

I don't know if they shot it but I'm loving very much their other Vatican non-approved works, their good bone structure and their wit. At first glance, an art-loving layperson's glance, I thought, "A young Gilbert & George!" (who, a few posts down, I found that Luigi and Luca loved too). And there have been others who have made that reference.

Have a look but see beyond the "adults-only" content.

Will We All Still Be Blobbing At 108?

(Assuming that we are all still alive and well and not dead from some blogging-induced ailment or slowly killed off, one after another, by this guy who's obssessed with blogosphere domination.)

This is Olive Riley who, before she passed away early Saturday morning in Woy Woy, an hour north of Sydney, was the oldest blobber (she liked "blob" more than "blog") in the world at 108 years old.

I'm ashamed to say that I have not heard of her or her blob All About Olive, her being Australian and me having lived here the last four years, until I clicked on one of my daily reads, written by the man obssessed (see above), today.

I can't seem to access her blob's archive but from the last three posts on the home page written by her friend who first made a film about her life and then helped her start All About Olive, I gathered that while she's never typed any of her seventy-odd posts herself (I assume she dictated while her computer-literate friends tapped away) and called YouTube "Your Tube" when invited to their Australian launch, her blob ranked 7000th in a world of 80 million and recorded 350,000 hits one fine day in January. Not too shabby for a blob that's only a year old and doesn't feature very much fashion except for Olive's own lovely wardrobe.

That three posts also gave me a pretty good mental picture of the well-loved feisty old dear and the colourful life that she had led...my eyes couldn't help but welled a little (yes, I'm a sap). Using Olive's age as a marker, I've got at least seventy years of blogging time ahead of me, that is if I don't keel over first, or decide to stop posting. Will my flighty ramblings on inane pwetty things one day bring tears to someone's eyes?

Calling All Mag Hags!

We are addicted to buying just one too many glossy fluffies, more than we care to admit or have the time to read.

Fashionation, brought to us by the folks at the cool hunter, can either help us kick the habit, or further perpetuate it. The fashion editorials that they have culled from magazines from around the globe, sort of a daily/weekly digital "Best of...", will satiate the pretty-pictures lust in us, or make us run out to the nearest newsagent to get our paws on the printed copies, to have and to hold.

My pick of the week is this featured Daytripper spread in our local Oyster - the juxtaposition of big clothes and generic locations and props against the cloudless blue sky...
















...but if that's not your cup of tea, there's more fashion-y goodness to be had here.

However, if you're seriously thinking of losing the "Mag Hag" title and being more discerning before your bookshelves or magazine racks collapse under the sheer weight of your collection, an in-depth content analysis of the rags, pre-purchase, at Girl With A Satchel (full of magazines) might help.

Cheap Tuesday

Cheap Cheap Monday buys at the sale at the Tuchuzy store...

Poop-catchin' bloomers-stylin' chambray Dana overall, at half the original price.














And more saggy-crotch-and-elasticised-legs action with these denim Poppy shorts, also at half the original price.









Pretty good score for a post-lunch in-and-out little shopping detour.

Fans of the droopy poo-trapping-baby's-diaper-cover look should head down fast for there are not too many pieces left.

In A Religious Fashion...

...the Pope and pilgrims from all over the world have arrived in Sydney to commemorate World Youth Day, bringing the city to an inconvenient standstill with the closure of major roads for a whole week.

The tacky red LED display, at St Mary's Cathedral, of the countdown of days to his visit finally reads "O" and across the road at Hyde Park, what look like massive merchandise tents have been set up.

I wonder if replicas of his cute cream capelet will be for sale. The colour and weight are just so right for Spring. Or is it a little sacrilegious to covet a piece of holy vestment?

Island Real-Estate Shopping

Couldn't stay away from Cockatoo Island so back we went on Saturday. Besides, there was half-an-island of buildings and the art within that we didn't get to see last week on The Plateau, a sandstone mount smack in the middle. Less "industrial" and more "habitable" than the Lower Island that we explored on our last visit, it put silly thoughts of living there in my head which, of course, is totally impossible since nothing on Cockatoo is for sale and even if they are, I'm not Richard Branson.

The first building that we saw as we walked up the steep Burma Road, I fell in love with.














The old Military Officers' Quarters. The view that it affords, being on higher ground, is amazing. It was a real shame that we couldn't get into the house because the artwork within, by Lene Berg, was "temporarily closed".

The big selling point was this workshop attached to the back of the house.














I've always wanted one with a tools storage board (tools outlines - a must!) to make my own wood furniture in one day...this Likkle Girl has had some butch moments in her life - she can cut a pretty mean dovetail joint and topped her Tech class back in secondary school.

And the vast backyard that the workshop looks out to, complete with the obligatory rotary clothes line...














...and the now-roofless Guardhouse which was the first ever building on the island.


















Also found: bits and bobs in other buildings that I would love to have in No.2 Burma Road...

Like this perfect set of old-school kitchen appliances from Building 4 next door, part of the island's old Penitentiary where Richard Bell 's lastest video piece Scratch An Aussie was showing.














This phone and these light switches from what looked like the morgue in the Penitentiary's tiny hospital where you can hear Cornelia Parker's Chomskian Abstract playing in the next room.















And this colourful bench spotted along the view-galore Cliff Top Walk will look great in the backyard.














Or should we live in this building...


















...in the loft on the recently-reburbished top floor where the huge exhibit by Gerard Byrne is currently housed?


















The view....



















The perfect "stage" for mini music festivals in the summer (why am I not Richard Branson?!) at the old Timber Store in the backyard...


















And the neighbours!

















Can I please be Richard Branson? But a much better looking one?

Ms Devine - Painting Her Way Into My Heart

In line with this week's artsy-fartsy theme, this pink and white candy-striped package from Tatty Devine arrived a few days ago...

...with this paintbrush necklace from their Colour Me In collection tucked within.

Another piece to add to my collection of plastic accessories which, if you think about it, will all melt down into a huge worthless pool of molten polymers in their special drawer should there be a fire in our apartment.

I really never saw it that way until an astute lady, the designer of an exquisite range of fine jewellery (in precious metals, of course), also a blogger with a wicked sense of humour and great taste in music and everything else said this to me a while ago when I asked if she's ever thought of doing a diffusion line:-

Yes, I have thought of it, but some of my pieces require too much labor to waste on metals that will turn your skin green. And personally I like the idea of having something with intrinsically valuable components. It doesn't matter how expensive clothes, shoes, bags and costume jewelry are. If you take them apart, they're worth nothing. If you take fine jewelry apart, it's still valuable.

Ms B - rationalising her way into my heart...

A Day Of Buildings And The Art Within (II)

The only Biennale venue that I wanted to go to this year is the world heritage-listed Cockatoo Island, really - named after the sulphur-crested birds that inhabited the island in the 1700s before the native red gum trees were fell to make way for a prison and later, shipbuilding and dockyard facilities.

Only a 20-minute (free) ferry ride from Pier 2/3, our last Biennale location, the beauty of Cockatoo Island, not of the palm trees and cabana-lined beaches variety but more of the industrial wasteland sort, far exceeded my expectations and wildest imagination. I fell very much in love, instantly, with the old (some dating back to the 1800s) abandoned buildings that were the hub for the building and repair of huge sea-faring vessels in Sydney from 1850 to 1992.

My photos really don't do them old darlings any justice. You have to be there to see the scale of their grandeur and feel their history-rich vibes - I'm still reeling from the experience, two days later. To many, they might just be what they are, derelict and way past their use-by dates, but to me, a very big fan of simple structures with good solid clean lines, they sang and I couldn't help but clapped very loudly along.

As for the art, I really can't think of a better place to show them. It's like the island was made for them and them for the island. I still can't decide if I like the buildings or the art more. If you are expecting to see photos of the pieces, there are none - it would be akin to piracy if I had taken any.

The entrance to Dogleg Tunnel - It was built by cutting through a sandstone mount, The Plateau, to get workmen, parts and equipment for the shipbuilding facility from one side of the island to the other. Also a bomb shelter during World War II.

Art within: TV Moore

The tunnel






Exposed cross-section of beautiful sandstone in Dogleg

The Turbine Hall



One side of The Plateau had to be cut away to make room to build it.

Inside the Turbine Hall

Art within: Too many artists to list



Another entrance to the Turbine Hall - The Plateau in the background and a cute old Electric Transit buggy in the foreground.

Remnants from the island's dockyard days - Most of the heavy machinery were sold in 1992 when the shipyard ceased operating and more than 40 buildings and several wharves were demolished.
















Artists-of-note in buildings between cranes:
Building 124 - Shaun Gladwell
Building 123 - William Kentridge. A fine example of matching art to environment.
Building 120 - Lara Favaretto. Fun, if you have the time.

Building 143 - Made very exciting by the gigantic colourful mobile by Brian Jungen suspended from massive stainless steel rafters.

Building 92/93 or the former Sailors' Quarters - The exterior is boring but some parts of the aged interior look like purpose-built installation art.







Art within: Almost like a retrospective of Mike Parr's from 1971 to 2008, spanning a whole floor in the building, from room to room.


















And his thought-provoking works pretty much did us in.

We saw so much in our three hours that our brains just couldn't take in anymore. If we had continued it would be as good as guzzling a good vintage bottle of wine. And we've only covered half the island! We're definitely going back this weekend.

Other notes:














Not the cockatoos (they don't live there anymore, sadly) but the flying rats - seagulls. They really are some of the most vicious ones I've ever seen.














Cheeky bits of advertising (click to enlarge) subtly plastered all over the island. Clever folks, these artists.

How to get to Cockatoo Island, my new dream home and playground:
See timetable for free ferry service here.