Category: Beauty

Near Miss

Gratuitous Chick Pics

I know that most if not all my Readers are interested in the shenanigans of the BritRoyals, but that’s the flimsy excuse I’ve used for showing the following totty:

You see, her name is Cressida Wentworth-Stanley (née Bonas), and at one time she was the girlfriend of Prince Harry, a.k.a. the Duke of Sussex, a.k.a. Harry Markle, a.k.a. the Ginger Whinger.  However, although he was reportedly quite smitten with Cressida, she was somewhat frowned upon by the Palace because she was an… actress.

So they split up, and you know the resultant mess.

I think young Cressy had a lucky escape.  She later married another guy named Harry, who has no title but is the son of a marchioness and is also related to a marquess via his mother’s second marriage.  Anyway, he has a hyphenated name, which takes care of half the issue for a young Brit girl with aspirations.

Should I explain the middle bit, again?

And One More Thing

Architecture, Two-Minute Hate

After the British Virgin Islands were smacked by not one but two Cat 5 hurricanes in quick succession, most of the islands suffered massive property damage.

Since then, a lot of the wreckage has been rebuilt, and not to World Emperor Kim’s liking, either.  Try this little piece of heaven:

The caption for the pic was “Paradise restored”.

Paradise was not restored;  it was beaten to death with a lead pipe, driven over a few times by a Chieftain tank, and the remains wrapped in concrete and barbed wire.

Would it be wrong for me to wish for a Category 10 hurricane to come calling over there some time soon?

Swoopy

Architecture

Following on from last night’s post, I happened on this little photo essay:

Eero Saarinen’s outlandish air terminal for TWA at New York’s JFK International Airport was sculpted as an abstract symbol of flight.

Now most Readers. knowing my abhorrence for Modernist architecture, would be forgiven for thinking that this post will be a diatribe against this building.  But on the contrary, I think it’s beautiful — for one thing, there aren’t any hideous straight lines and corners such as found in Bauhaus monstrosities.  As the writer of the article puts it:

Unlike most air terminals, which seemed intent on depressing passengers, Saarinen’s not only raised the spirits but also showed that concrete structures could be truly delightful.

And it is.  In the time it was built, I would imagine that its space-age, swoopy shape would be very much in keeping with the age of early space travel of the late 1950s and early 60s.  As the designer himself put it:

“…the architecture itself would express the drama and excitement of travel… shapes deliberately chosen in order to emphasize an upward-soaring quality of line.”

The first tragedy is that Saarinen died the year before his creation was finished.

The second tragedy is that the beautiful building has of course been “modernized” to make it “more efficient”.

Ugh.

There’ll be a parallel essay to this topic on Saturday.