Twenty Third & Seventh

Clown Paranoia

This is too funny...

from: the Age

Organisers of a British rock festival have been forced to change its circus theme after a ticketholders told them they had a phobia of clowns.

The Bestival event on the Isle of Wight, off England's south coast, in early September was to have encouraged festival-goers to dress up in curly red wigs and oversized shoes.

Last year's Cowboys or Indians theme broke a world record for the biggest fancy dress party when 10,000 people turned up in disguise.

But organisers feared thousands of clowns in one place could spark mass panic in the psychedelic atmosphere of the festival, which is popular with so-called "nouveaux hippies", The Times reported today.

"We have had so many people with clown phobias contact us I am worried everyone might end up hiding in the woods," Rob da Bank, a BBC Radio One disc jockey who will "curate" the show, was quoted as saying.

Fear of clowns - or coulrophobia - has symptoms including shortness of breath, rapid breathing, irregular heartbeat, nausea, sweating and a sense of foreboding, The Times pointed out.

Heavy make-up and bulbous noses, plus negative childhood memories of the supposed funnymen and women, are thought to be the root cause.

Oh, Oh- George is in Trouble

Oh, lordy!  Boy George O'Dowd is in trouble again. 

A clearly annoyed Manhattan judge issued a warrant today for the arrest of Boy George after the former Culture Club singer failed to appear in court, but the judge stayed the warrant pending his return at a later hearing.

Judge Anthony Ferrara said he will hold a hearing on June 26 on whether the singer, whose real name is George O'Dowd, violated the terms of his conditional discharge after pleading guilty in March to third-degree false reporting of an incident.

The charge followed his false report of a burglary at his Lower Manhattan apartment where police found cocaine.

Under his plea deal, O'Dowd was to enter a drug program in England and do five days of community service in Manhattan. He was also supposed to pay a $US1,000 ($A1,349) fine and a $US160 surcharge, and avoid arrest for any reason during the next six months.

The singer was scheduled to appear today to explain why he wanted to change the terms of his sentence.

Ferrara angrily complained that O'Dowd had not paid the fine or the surcharge and had never reported to begin fulfilling the community service requirement.

"I put people in jail who don't pay fines," the judge told O'Dowd's lawyer, Louis Freeman.

"Why shouldn't I do that?

"I think it's important that Mr O'Dowd be treated like any other defendant," he said.

Freeman said he had told O'Dowd, who was in England, that he did not have to appear today but that he should be ready to fly to New York on a moment's notice. He said the singer would be present for his next court date.

Ferrara said that on June 26 he would issue a final order as to what O'Dowd must do.

Freedman said that O'Dowd hoped to do something more worthwhile than sweeping New York City's streets.

"There's nothing wrong with that if that's part of his punishment," Freeman said, "but it will turn into a media circus and the press will be following him every day".

Freeman said the singer intended to comply with the terms of his conditional discharge, but he hoped to work with an HIV/AIDS charity while taking part in an outpatient drug treatment program for himself.

Ferrara ridiculed Freeman's community service proposals, which included helping teenagers make a public service announcement, holding a fashion and makeup workshop, serving as a DJ at an HIV/AIDS benefit and doing telephone outreach.

Ferrara said he understood the objection to street cleaning.

"It's humiliation," he said.

AP

Sienna No Longer 'Muse'. Journalist finds new adjective shock!

I'm utterly stunned.  It became tedious reporting on every incident of Sienna Miller portraying Andy Warhol's muse Edie Sedgick, even I can only push tedium so far.  In this telling, and a shocking development in the field of journalism, a new adjective to describe Edie has been offered.  We now find out Edie was a DOOMED muse.

Just imagine, we'd all be cultural illiterates if it weren't for Sienna.

Approach with caution- high puke factor:

FROM: Pearce has worked on films where the actors realized the director wasn't going to be any help, so they learned to rely on each other. And he says there's nothing wrong with that.

"On the job I've just done, the Warhol movie -- and I don't want to talk too much about it because it's still being put together -- but Sienna Miller is so switched-on that it's remarkable," Pearce says of his co-star, a tabloid staple for her tumultous relationship with Jude Law after he had an affair with his kids' nanny. "I want to say Sienna is remarkable for a [24-year-old] but, really, age is immaterial. She's this beacon of brilliance. Both of us had moments where we felt insecure, but we knew we could look to each other for help."

Talking Shit

What better way to start afresh after a spell of illness than a pedantic piece about sewage? If forced to explain this blog, “I just write shit” would be as good an answer as many others I might offer.

We’ve been having a miniature media brouhaha in this city about the possibility that recycled sewage has ‘contaminated’ the water supply. As terrible as that sounds, it only demonstrates that very few people bother to pay any attention to the shameful quality of the water we consume in this city for the other 51 weeks of the year.

We also learned, with some amusing imagery along the way, that Sydney journalists cannot distinguish between the urban waste called sewage and the product carried by the infrastructure called sewerage. More reports than warrant compilation had us drinking bits of recycled infrastructure out of bits of recycled infrastructure. Or worse, we had infrastructure in our waste product. In some scenarios it seemed that Sydneysiders shit a terribly large amount of plumbing.

Yep, I’m back.

Going Salon

Just as the phrase 'to go postal' starts to lose the lustre of immediacy, we have a potential replacement, going salon.  We love this story, a drunken hairdresser in a rage at the mere suggestion that his crimping skills aren't up to speed.  Never piss a hairdresser off, I say.

Salon wrecked in stylist's strop

A HOOLIGAN hairdresser, ticked off by his boss for his poor crimping skills, wrecked the salon during a drunken rage.

Nicky Cranston caused more than £20,000 damage when he smashed up McAuliffe's in Peterlee town centre during the late-night attack.

Durham Crown Court heard the 19-year-old flooded the first-floor shop – and pharmacist Savers below – by leaving taps running and ripping water heaters off the walls.

When salon manageress Maria Arnell went to open up the next day she was greeted by the police who had been called to probe the break-in.

Cranston told detectives and told them he had been at the shop on the night of the attack – but only to get a plaster after cutting his hand on a night out.

He later confessed to wrecking the salon in a text message to Mrs Arnell which read: "I have ruined everything. I am nothing, I realise that now."

Cranston, of Welland Close, Peterlee, admitted two charges of criminal damage in Upper Yoden Way, on November 5, last year.

He has a previous conviction for criminal damage.

Mitigating, Stuart Graham said: "While he had been told off during the course of this employment, this was not a grudge or revenge attack.

"He was very drunk that night and was genuinely shocked when he realised what he had done.

"He says he will never, ever, offend again."

Judge Tony Lancaster passed a 30 week sentence, suspended for 12 months, but Cranston must carry out 150 hours of community work and pay £500 compensation to the salon and £250 to Savers.

The judge told him: "You must learn to deal with your problems in an adult way, and not behave like an undisciplined child as you did on this occasion."

Confessions of a tourist: It's only rock'n'roll, but I like it - Sunday Times - Times Online

Link: Confessions of a tourist: It's only rock'n'roll, but I like it

This travel section article about a travel journalist visiting Hotel Chelsea might have been good.  If only she had written something about the Hotel it might have justified publishing in the Sunday Times.  Perhaps if she had had the guts to name 'Mr Big' the story would have titilation value.  Instead, we get a visit to Serena's [which it seems our reporter couldn't name] and brief mention of 'hot sex in a YMCA'.

She continues to propogate the Sid killed Nancy story despite the absence of evidence and ignorant of all the factors that suggest the proposition is all but impossible to sustain.   Maybe they should have sent someone a little more focussed if they wanted to report on the Chelsea?  I could nominate a candidate. 

This one left a nasty taste in my mouth.  All that this journalist is doing is cashing in on the Chelsea's reputation as an excuse to publish a prurient piece of non-reporting. It's too easy to reduce the Chelsea to one giant orgy of drugs, sex and wanton violence.  It is a tactic that keeps the fringe on the fringe and it fails to recognise the real significance of the Hotel.

It speaks to how far we haven't come in rebuilding a world that doesn't require a woman to be a satellite of a man that Nancy no longer warrants a surname.  In fairness, the research effort in establishing Nancy's surname may well have overwhelmed the author's neural capacity.  At least she avoided 'Nauseating Nancy', I do find having to travel all the way to England to firebomb journalists tiring.

But then, if analysis deficient non-reporting mixed with a new journalism that long ago abolished fact-checking keeps people like Lydia Marshall from checking in, bring on the horror stories of axe-wielding, sociopath, nymphomaniac junkies running freely from room to room...

I was about to fulfil a lifelong ambition by staying at the Chelsea hotel, where Janis Joplin and Leonard Cohen made love, Arthur C Clarke wrote 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Sid Vicious stabbed Nancy to death. It was, apparently, the only hotel edgy enough for Mr Big to be interviewed in.

Nudist burnt. Barbecued sausages served for supper.

Link: The Daily Telegraph | Nudist burnt.

Ha ha! Stupid hippies!

A NUDIST suffered burns to his bottom yesterday after an attempt to incinerate a spider went horribly wrong.

Paramedics from the NRMA CareFlight Helicopter said the 56-year-old's lack of clothing may have contributed to the severity of the burns.

One said the man poured petrol down what he thought was a funnel web hole at the nudist resort 40km west of Bowral and received burns to 18 per cent of his body.

Factory Girl pre-rumbles 3. It's gonna be a turkey

It's instinct so far, but I'm quite convinced that this Edie biopic is going to be a stinker.  If Guy Pearce's down-home sentimentality here is anything to go by we should expect another bad impersonation of Andy.  Yes, Mr Bowie, I'm looking at you.

Pearce is a capable actor at best, he was entertaining as Danny in Grease when he danced in y-fronts.  I wish a slow and painful death upon everyone concerned with that cinematic atrocity, Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.  They have certainly inflicted enough pain on the real people whose lives they stole and turned into a crass cineplex filler.

Was it only me that saw Priscilla as unbearably sad?  I saw several lost, lonely, confused people on a journey to discovering how meaningless their lives were.  Apparently it was an 'outrageous comic escapade' in most eyes. 

Check out Guy being a big media suck job.  There aren't enough 0s in this computer to give a number for how bored I am with straight actors who play a gay role then feel compelled to act out their heterosexuality in case anybody misunderstands.  We counted how many times Hugh Jackman referred to HIS WIFE at the 2005 Tonys.  Including the off-air stuff we got up to 34 in just over 3.5 hours. 

Matt Broderick, by comparison, didn't even bring his wife.

We won't even go there on Bareback Mountain.  Pardon me,  but didn't Andy do the gay cowboy thing the best part of 40 years ago?  Did I only imagine that Viv Westwood deployed gay cowboy imagery for shock value in the 70s?

Didn't Andy have real transsexuals up on the screen over 40 years ago?  Is Felicity Huffman playing Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie really an advance on Jackie Curtis's gender nihilism in Flesh? Did Candy Darling die for nothing?

I must have been born a chromosone short. I really just don't comprehend why I'm meant to celebrate the imagery no longer having any subversive power but, instead, taking on the form of syrup coated conscience-salving for well-meaning liberals.

God, spare us all from wel meaning bourgeois liberals.  Please?

Why, in the sacred name of Our Lady, am I supposed to be so fucking impressed that Leath Hedger can play gay or that cineplexes have deigned to release this filmic pre-passed stool to the masses? Rock Hudson didn't get a lot of plaudits for playing straight with such conviction. 

Over to Guy Pearce, have your barf bags ready:

HE'S been married for almost nine years, but actor Guy Pearce has shunned the notion of fatherhood, saying he would be too "emotionally inconsistent".

The surprising revelation comes as Pearce, who is married to psychology and social work student Kate Mestitz, has arrived back in Australia after completing work on his latest film, Factory Girl.

Oh, BTW, Guy is married. 

A Little Bit of Joe. Bad Journalism.

I'm still digging through my boxes, selling off old collectables to support my eating and paying the rent habits.

This magazine went to auction happily, the only interesting thing about it is a 'feature article' about Joe Dallesandro.  Even for it's time, the article is shallow.  The second sentence is simply wrong, the author has failed to count 'Lonsesome Cowboys' amongst Joe's Warhol film appearances.

I'll let some sucker buy the magazine because we have a scan of the bad article here. 

Abort the Loonie Right!

This is indicative of just how stupid Australian politics is getting.  Gasp in wonder as conservatives confuse RU486 with Muslims and announce that 'Australians' are aborting 'themselves' out of exsitence?

Ms Vale has caused a furore by tying debate over the abortion drug RU486 with   published comments by an imam saying Australia would be a Muslim state in 50 years. She said Australians were aborting themselves out of existence and at the current rate of 100,000 a year "that's five million potential Australians we won't have here."

I bet she'd cry if hit with a complicated idea like a Muslim Australian wanting to take RU486 in full hijab.