Furniture porn.

Someone buy me it.

Please.

Looks like Lang Lang got himself a stylist. Now he's all grown up.







I don't know, call me old-fashioned but I prefer my classical musicians geeky. I remember what hipping it up for the kids did to Nigel Kennedy and none of it was good.





Aijee Pajiba!

[I actually think this photo is quite cute in a 1988 Morrisey type way. Or maybe it's cute in a John Hodgman after he's read the "Funny Pages" type way..........]

I miss my nieces. Whenever I think about them, I feel some kind of searing that goes from my stomach and up my sides all the way to my neck. They are tiny, beautiful people in their own right and I can love them in an unreserved way.

They got a rabbit on Friday. How perfect is their world?

I don't even have to close my eyes to remember last time I was there and the three of us were charging around my sister's house playing hide and seek. It was A's turn to come and find me and K, the youngest - she was two and three months. We were both under my sister's bed. K was in my arms and we were both trying not to laugh. The excitement had taken hold of K and she was almost hyperventilating. Her tiny rib cage was heaving and she couldn't control the laughter from escaping. Her eyes were wild. Both of her hands were pressed entreatingly over my mouth.

I think the word on childhood memory is that it starts at around 4. My earliest memory is 5. I certainly don't think she will ever remember that day but I am fairly certain it will be one of the last things my brain manages to fire up.

Much has been written of late about lying liars and their lies. You'll find no links to a JT LeRoy article as I found none of them so fabulously outraged as the ones Frey inspired, even though your one garnered sympathy by claiming to have AIDS. Something which should surely infuriate more than claims of non-existent jail sentences and orthodontics without painkillers, or not? Still, who am I to judge? I am one of the crowd at the execution to which Mr Frey kindly showed up on time. Let's face it, it's no fun when there is no one around to stone to death. We all just have to go home and hope that eating raw meat will sate us. [Mr Frey is also a smart mover. The price of the artist's work always soars once he's popped his clogs.]

I am perplexed however. Whence came the moral indignation? We are all big fat liars, whether they are black or white. Personally, I prefer to use the euphemism "exaggeration" to lying.

"But dear, I wasn't lying when I said I didn't sleep with your boss. I was just exaggerating my surprise when you got that bonus."

Plus, lying is FUN. To quote Erving Goffman in The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life",

"When the individual has no belief in his own act and no ultimate concern with the beliefs of his audience, we may call him cynical, reserving the term "sincere" for individuals who believe in the impression fostered by their own performance. It should be understood that the cynic, with all his professional disinvolvement, may obtain unprofessional pleasures from his masquerade, experiencing a kind of gleeful spiritual aggression from the fact that he can toy at will with something his audience must take seriously"

And above all, lying must be done well. A thing worth doing is a thing worth doing well. You must match body language to what comes out of the mouth. None of the nose touching. None of the dramatic change in personae.

I remember the training I undertook for the summer job I had with the Department of Customs and Exile in the UK. We sat through hours of videos titled along the lines of "Ten ways to catch a Smuggler". They were ludicrous in that they showed grannies pretending to be rastafarians and otherwise self possessed individuals shaking like a leaf as soon as they entered the Customs area. [There are cameras everywhere dear, didn't you know that?] These people are so disappointing with their overly-studied nonchalance. They are fooling no one, except themselves.

Lying reminds me of the vault. You have to run as fast can and throw yourself at it 100% otherwise your balls will end up somewhere twisted around a handle and your back will be in a brace. Lies should never be undertaken half heartedly and once they escape those lips there can be no going back.

A good lie is magical. Enjoy it! In the presence of a master the suspension of disbelief makes me feel like a child again. Fuck up the card trick and fluff your lines and you turn me into a granny who is asking for her money back.

Biggest blizzard ever, apparently. For me, it's just an excuse to not shower.

I still love you John Hegley. Just hurry up and come and get me. It's been nearly fifteen years now.


Love Cuts

Love cuts
love juts out
and you walk right into it.

Love cuts
love comes and goes
love's a rose
first you smell the flower
then the thorn goes up your nostril
love gives you chocolates
then love gives you the chop
it doesn't like to linger.

Love cuts
love shuts up shop
and shuts it on your finger
love cuts
what isn't very nice is
love leaves you in slices.

Love cuts
love's very sharp
a harpoon through an easy chair
a comb of honey in your hair
just wait until the bees come home
and find you just relaxing there.

Love cuts
love's claws
evacuate that heart of yours
and leave it on the sleeve it wipes
its nose on.

Love cuts, love guts the fish
of what you wish for
and leaves it in the airing cupboard

Love cuts
love huts fall down
as all the walls get falser.

Love cuts
love struts around on stilts of balsa wood
love cuts love gives you a sweeping bow
then ploughs a furrow deep above your eyebrow
love cuts
love curtseys
then nuts you
where it really hurtseys.

John Hegley

Boro beats Chelsea 3-0

I just found this on a BBC footie chat room.

posted by Some_Strange_Gadgie**, 15 Minutes Ago
Taking control of the Russian oil industry: £20 billion

Bailing out a bankrupt, cockney chav football club: £60 million

Bringing together 50 wide boys and slick haired foreigners to play in the reserve team: £380 million

Getting whupped by the fourth bottom team in the league: priceless.

There are some things money can't buy. For everything else, there's McClarencard

Gadgie: one of the favorite expressions of my youth.

Evidence that JT Leroy really IS a trannie hooker.

Only a ginger, instead of a blonde in sunglasses and a crap hat.

Am sure *Laura* nee Laurel will eventually come out and say it was all because of English marketing reasons. Everyone knows the English are racist about gingers.

Just ask Mick Hucknall. Cos he knows about this and everything else.

More victimization is what it's all about to sell more books.

I did a bad thing

I bought a large bottle of orange Listerene. From my mistakes should you learn.

This has been a public service announcement.

Friday night at the Met

How wonderful. I had never thought to go before. A short ride up from the office on the six and then the ability to wonder around an almost empty museum until 9pm. Life is sweet. The Calatrava exhibit was fairly busy compared to the rest of the museum and tucked amongst the modern art and the pottery sections. I also managed to see the fat jug that has caused so much consternation in Italy which was looking great for its age.

The kind chap at the entrance asked me how much I would like to spend to enter. "It's fifteen, isn't it?" I replied. "Well, that's the suggested amount." He said. "But you can pay less." Wow. I wonder with these recommended amounts, how often people refuse to cough up more than a fiver. I am not good under this type of pressure: I pay full amount and with a remorseful glance I am handed my badge.

Net membership to the Met is $55. For which you also get free entrance to the Cloisters. Obviously there's a lot more to it than there is to MoMA, whose membership is an annual $75. Not sure if the membership card is as fancy but it's certainly a fuck of a lot less crowded. I don't know. Plus the best thing about the MoMA memberhsip is the mates in for a fiver special. These things are all tax deductible, but will I go more than four times a year?

Good news if you live downtown.

The mostly forsaken Battery Maritime Building is near the end of a $60 million façade restoration and the city hopes to transform New York’s only Beaux Arts ferry building into a fine food marketplace that will rival the likes of Pike Place Market in Seattle and the Ferry Building Marketplace in San Francisco.

From The Downtown Express