quote:Originally posted by London: That's true: it just moves, doesn't it? And the desire isn't as strong. But I read Elle Deco and hanker for those spaces: I go to the farmer's market and see little girls in stripy tights and cute mums and hot dad looking at apples and I think I want I want. You just fantasise another future slightly out of reach. And when you get it
[insert cliche here]
/end trite shite
Yeah, and it does become more obtainable. It's not as big a leap to one day live in some TriBeCa loft. Easier than becoming a cool famous person anyway.
So as you get older your aspirations become more 'normal'. Which is not the same as mediocre - let's face it, dreaming of performing on ToTP is pretty unimaginative.
You know Amp, before I fucked everything up again (sorry about that drunken email), I met this incredible woman, beautiful and lovely and fashion, who was everything I (used to) dream of. And she told me about her alcohol problems and going to NA and I think that in the past I would have thought 'cool', in that way we celebrate rock star suicide, but instead I was thinking isn't that sad? I hope you work it out and get married and have kids and stuff (preferably with me) and move to teh country.
And also, I thought: must drink more wheatgrass and 'liver flush' drinks. So yeah, health is my new aspiration. 27 next year! Why on earth did we ever find the misery of Kurt Cobain glamorous?
quote:Originally posted by Dr. Benway: That Gia one seemed interesting. Her life would make a good BBC1 tv movie.
There's a movie about her Benway, starring Angelina. I think it is made-for-tv.
quote:Originally posted by vikram: Why on earth did we ever find the misery of Kurt Cobain glamorous?
I don't know about 'we', exactly. I think an awful lot of people were able to relate to Kurt Cobain's misery. I don't know if that's the same as finding it glamourous. I think a lot of people aspired to be like him because they recognised he had an ability to channel his despair into his music; to take his negative feelings and siphon them off into something passionate, and exciting and brilliant. I don't think that counts as finding his depression glamourous. I find myself thinking much the same way about Benway, but I wouldn't describe him as glamourous.
Anyway - Thinking on people's comments on J. Stone and the recent music festivals, I reckon you truly know you've beached yourself on the shores of impending middle age when you turn up to a rock gig and your first instinct isn't to hit the bar, or let rip in a singalong, or get crowd-surfing or start a moshpit, but simply to pull out your fucking mobile phone and take a blurry 1megapixel shot of the band so you can show it to the people at work and tell them you had "a really amazing time".
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quote:Originally posted by Thorn Davis: I reckon you truly know you've beached yourself on the shores of impending middle age when you turn up to a rock gig and [...] pull out your fucking mobile phone and take a blurry 1megapixel shot of the band...
B-but it's only kids I see doing that. The middle-aged amongst us just go *tut* and *snarl* as if we were still punks.
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quote:Originally posted by dang65: *tut* and *snarl*
New tag for Dang?
I'm struggling to remember my aspirations as a sullen WestCun'ree teen. I've never bought a "womans magazine" ever, so was never seduced by pics of pouting clothes-hangers. I was always jealous of friends who had older sisters. Just being an older sister seemed really cool- they had the bigger bedroom, funkier clothes, more records and often a boyfriend with a motorbike. [spaz alert, of course I am technically an older sister, but brothers don't count. I wanted a younger sister to be jealous of me and my casually stylish demeanour]. As me and a mate might emerge, GN'R T-shirted, tassle-skirted and DM-booted for a night of cider and vomit at Corfe Mullen Rec, an Older Sister would stride past wearing something grown-up and glittery on her way to a "club" in her "mate's car", without bothering to speak to us children.
I like to think that the A-level girls on the train last Friday who spent 25 mins dabbing make up on their spots thought I was cool when I was on the phone going "I've got on the slow train by mistake! I'm going through random villages called Little Cocking and Lower Hole in the middle of nowhere! I'm going to miss the wedding!". Perhaps not.
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posted
Whilst some of you were watching the 80s supermodel programme, I was watching America's Next Top Model the catch-up edition and thinking about how little things have changed.
In the 1970s (when I was a proper babe, ie. under 5) your pretty girl with ambitions could try and win Miss Wherever/Miss World and get to travel, pay for her education etc. These days she tries to win a model competition.
Then I flicked over to Channel 5 to see the "whatever happened to" programme that follows up the British version of the series and realised how much had changed.
The girl who won (lissome, lispy, curly-lipped and kooky) kept prancing about on shoots for Italian Vogue, nearly breaking her ankles but maintaining a humble demeanour throughout. Because nobody likes a show-off and nice girls don't .
But there was also some Fulham horror called Jasmine who was now a muse (tabloid tart) for a designer of red-carpet tat. Mother's a Bond girl. Lips by Unibond. Can say without a hint of irony that "you just need to get the right break and you can be Julia Roberts". Literally apparently.
That has changed in the last ten years, it's a subject that's been done to death, but it's still true that this desire for instant fame via reality TV is a recent phenomenon. It's not us that's changed in that respect, it's the landscape. I'm pretty sure I can think of 30-year-olds who are just as susceptible in that respect.
Abi Titmuss maybe? Maureen from Driving School (old skool reality TV - my mate went out with her daughter, does that make me connected?)
The main generational change I see is aspiration being replaced with opportunism. But perhaps away from the pages of Heat magazine ordinary 18, 19, 20 year olds are still willing to work hard for years on end to achieve their goals.
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quote:Originally posted by Dr. Benway: I can get the pop music ones, but I don't watch it much these days. It reminds me of wronging herbs. That's not a euphamism for anal sex.
Hey don't sweat it. I don't feel wronged. Or not enough that it should affect your enjoyment of University Callenge. I still have fond memories of Wallace. Was that his name?
Isn't old gits' disapproval of youngsters aspiring to instant fame partly sour grapes that we're past it, and won't ever have that opportunity again? Or maybe that's just me.
Oh, and Veep. Being an older sister wasn't that great. More insecurity and jealousy than glitter and insouciance.
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quote:Originally posted by OJ: this desire for instant fame via reality TV
I saw a few seconds of something horrible by accident the other night. I think it must have been some C4 Big Brother retrospective. It showed one of the contestents (Linda? Lesley?) being limoed round her home town (Huddersfield) where she wowed the crowds at local nightclubs by being "the local girl off Big Brother" and standing on a small stage whilst gawping young lads took camera phone pictures. Sitting in the limo sipping champagne she explained that she used to do a boring admin job but much preferred this.
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quote:Originally posted by OJ: The main generational change I see is aspiration being replaced with opportunism.
Probably the lowest of the low is fake Reality TV. Examples being that A Place In France one with Nigel something, who was the producer of the programme and was blatantly taking stupid risks and pissing everyone off solely to make "interesting" TV. I've heard that a lot of No Going Back (a great favourite of mine when it was first shown) was also set up, or at least made to look extreme and melodramatic when it was all going OK really with no more setbacks than anyone gets in normal life.
Another one is the one about the chef and his family who went to France and then came back and have set up in Cornwall. I've only seen a bit of that one, but it's so pathetically staged that any more would be unwatchable.
I'm assuming that all Reality TV is at least partially fixed these days, basically making every programme of its type into an episode of The Office, only more embarassing to watch in most cases.
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quote:Originally posted by Vogon Poetess: Sitting in the limo sipping champagne she explained that she used to do a boring admin job but much preferred this.
yeah, I saw that. It was excellent. Every smile will be returned in a thousand tears, and anybody in the world could see that apart from her. Sometimes I think that it's okay to feel spite towards people like that, and other times I think we should care for them, like a bird that's flown into a window. She'll be sucking cock for cash/coke in a couple of years, feeling like a superstar. It's tragic, but then the evil part of me thinks that it's her own fucking fault for being so unwilling to face reality. Maybe I'm just jealous, because I ain't got the biggest boobs in huddersfield.
[ 23.08.2005, 08:01: Message edited by: Dr. Benway ]
quote:Originally posted by Dr. Benway: Sometimes I think that it's okay to feel spite towards people like that, and other times I think we should care for them, like a bird that's flown into a window. She'll be sucking cock for cash/coke in a couple of years, feeling like a superstar.
O/T but you know I'd probably be far more inclined to instinctively feel sympathy for Huddersfield-secretary (who I didn't see) to whiny-braying-Jasmine being filmed wiggling her nipple tassles on Sloane Street.
posted
I saw Jasmine, and she can fuck herself too, which in the future she might well be doing, on DVD for cash/coke, thinking that she's a superstar. Any one of these bitches (and that includes men) who see being famous as a career in itself have died inside.
[ 23.08.2005, 08:10: Message edited by: Dr. Benway ]
H1ppychick
We all prisoners, chickee-baby. We all locked in.
posted
The most heartbreaking thing is the extent to which the delusions have been built for these somewhat-naive reality wannabes by sharks who just want to get their piece of the action. For example, the part where Lesley (for that is her name) went to audition for two music producers and as soon as she started singing there was this knowing horrified look that came onto their faces of "Christ she really can't sing, that is appallingly bad" yet when she spoke to them she somehow came away with the impression that it was her poor choice of song that let her down and not the lack of any discernible talent. Thus perpetuating her delusion.
Whilst sitting there thinking "get off my screen you talentless no-mark" and enjoying the schadenfreude, there's that wince of sympathy for someone being cruelly manipulated.
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If she read books she might know the difference between a clothes horse and a clothes peg.
Or maybe she does want to be a clothes peg?
Maybe you ought to read a few more books yourself. A clothes horse isn't used for displaying clothes - it's that thing you sling them over when they're drying, or when you're getting them organised.
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If she read books she might know the difference between a clothes horse and a clothes peg.
Or maybe she does want to be a clothes peg?
Maybe you ought to read a few more books yourself. A clothes horse isn't used for displaying clothes - it's that thing you sling them over when they're drying, or when you're getting them organised.
Oh Jessica, would you like me to introduce you to the concept of popular figurative meanings in colloquial English?
Here's a book for you. The OED.
quote:Clothes-horse
a. An upright wooden frame standing upon legs, with horizontal bars on which clothes are hung out to dry or air.
b. fig. A person whose main function is or appears to be to wear or show off clothes.
Now excuse me whilst I rush home to rescue my clothes-dryer from the papparazzi. It will be soooooooo disappointed.
ps. Jessica, are you:
a) Posh Spice b) Jasmine thingy c) A troll?
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posted
I have to say, OJ, I've never heard that figure of speech before (clothes hanger I think I've heard a few times), and I did think "Clothes horse WTF?" when you wrote that, but then I don't read fashion magazines. That definition's not listed my dictionary (Collins), either.
Interestingly (lol) dictionary.com offers a different interpretation again. It's no wonder Jasmine got confused.
quote:Originally posted by Thorn Davis: Interestingly (lol) dictionary.com offers a different interpretation again. It's no wonder Jasmine got confused.
I don't think that's actually a different definition Thorn. It tends to be quite pejorative.
See for example a Grauniad piece talking about Audrey Hepburn.
quote:but it was Hepburn who first popularised this cool, elegant style. Not that she was just a dull clothes horse. The actor's life encompassed a traumatic second world war in Holland
I prefer the OED (online's) Mark Twain quote. For non-subscribers:
quote:1889 ‘MARK TWAIN’ Yankee xxxiii. 378, I could see her [sc. England] erect statues and monuments to her unspeakable Georges and other royal and noble clothes-horses.
posted
Oh Ok. In my defence however, I don't think that that figurative meaning of 'clothes-horse' makes any more sense (less, even) than 'clothes-peg'. I mean - it's pretty much an insult to herself if that was what she meant.
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