Category: Beauty

Desert Island Dames

Beauty, Gratuitous Chick Pics

Some time back, I riffed on the “Desert Island Discs” theme to create a “Desert Island Guns” post, whereupon a couple of you bastards Curious Readers took it upon themselves to ponder about which five women I would like to be marooned on a desert island with (assuming, of course, I was not married and could have my pick of any women in the world).

Five?  Good grief, who do you think I am, Errol Flynn?  Some NBA basketball player?  A 20-year-old boy?

Okay, if the theme for the Guns post was “guns I love to shoot” then here’s my list of the five women I’d love to etc. etc.  In no specific order (because I will not  start a catfight before I even get there):

1)  Salma Hayek.  I love that accent, she seems like fun, and as for the rest, ’nuff said:Downside is that being Mexican, she’s probably jealous as hell, but there ya go.

 2 ) Carol Vorderman.  Apart from her obvious assets, she’s also an engineer and pilot, so during her down time (so to speak) she could fix stuff around the place and fly in supplies of booze and ammo (also Viagra) each week:

3)  Sarah Palin. Apart from her delectability, she cooks and shoots, and I’d love a shooting partner.I know she’s getting a little long in the tooth, but then so am I.

4) Nigella Lawson. Because Sarah’s gonna need time off from cooking for her other activities.  Only I want the earlier, sexier and more bountiful version of Nigella (see below), not the new slimmed-down shrunken model:

5)  Amy Adams.  No way am I going to be marooned without at least one genuine redhead, and Amy is the business:

Runners-up:

Helena Bonham Carter.  Because I like a little crazy.

Jennifer Tilly.  Also crazy, and I need someone to play cards with when I’m too tired to do anything else.

Katarina Witt.  No explanation needed.  Also, I need to practice my German.

Monica Bellucci.  Because mama mia.

Juliette Binoche.  French lessons.

And lastly, opera singer Lucy Kay (who can sing me to sleep at night).

Safe Queens

Beauty, Drive Time, The Gun Thing

I’ve talked about this topic before, but I’m not sure I’ve ever told this story here.

Many years ago, a guy heard from a Reader of this website what a sucker I was for WWI- and WWII-era guns, and offered to sell me a brand-new, still-in-the-box, never-been-fired Colt Government 1911 from that time (with Colt certification).  As it happened, I was a little flush with cash right then, and after a little pondering (and deciding not to pay down the car debt), agreed to his price.  I went over to his house to complete the transaction, and checked it out.

(Not a pic of the actual gun.)

It was a beauty.  Needless to say, I was nuzzling it and whispering terms of endearment to it (as one would a new puppy), but I did let it slip that I couldn’t wait to take this beauteous thing from my grandfather’s era out to the range and see how it could shoot.

The seller looked aghast.  “You’re going to shoot  it?” he asked.
“Hell yes,” was my response.

Whereupon the guy immediately canceled the sale, clearly traumatized that someone was going to take his baby’s virginity.

I told you that tale as an intro to this foolishness:

If you had a supercar, you’d probably drive it, right? Not the three owners of this Ferrari 328 GTS over the last 30 years.
They’ve clocked up a combined- and frankly meagre – 283 miles in total, making this one of the best time-warp examples of an iconic ’80s supercar we’ve seen for some time.
And it could soon be yours, if you have pockets deep enough. That’s because it’s being sold at auction in the UK next month, and the expected purchase fee is set to hit £150,000.

And the accompanying pics (out of several):

Now I have to say that I’m casting lustful eyes upon this beauty, and if those bastards at PowerBall had fulfilled their side of the bargain over the weekend, I’d be winging my way over to Britishland as you read this, letter of credit from Gringotts Bank clutched in my sweaty little hand.

And let me tell you that once I’d got it back Over Here, and after having had it checked and serviced by Giovanni at Boardwalk Ferrari of Plano (yes of course  we have a Ferrari/Maserati dealership in Plano — do you even have to ask?), I would turn that 283 miles/30 years into 12,830 miles/30 years+1 month faster than you can say “Scuderia Maranello“.  I’m thinking of an epic road trip around the southern states, going from one Ferrari dealership to another (because Ferrari) before the weather turns chilly.

I’ve never understood the concept of “safe queens”, whose possession is so precious that usage is forbidden.  As Longtime Friend and Ex-Drummer Knob puts it so elegantly:

“Owning a beautiful car and never driving it in case you lower its value is like having a supermodel girlfriend and never fucking her, just to make her more attractive to her next boyfriend.”

In fact, now that I think of it, I’d not only drive this 328 GTS, I’d invite Knob over to drive it as well.  (What the hell, as bandmates, we once shared two girls — not simultaneously — because in those days we both liked the same kind of woman:  low moral standards, voluptuous figure and huge breasteses.)  I figure we’d each get as much fun out of the 328, so to speak, as we did from Penny and Big Jenny.

Anyway, to wrench this train of thought back from the branch line:  I have no time for people who treat machines and tools like investments, even though they can be regarded as such.  And as for the Ferrari’s owner/idiot:  if he’d plonked the original purchase price of the 328 into a stock index fund (to name but one  investment vehicle) thirty years ago, he’d have made far more money than he’s currently going to realize from its sale.  Some investment, smart guy.

And in the meantime, that gorgeous car has been wasting away like Rapunzel in the tower.

Fach.

Just Three

Beauty, Drive Time

Evil Bastard I mean Loyal Reader Petec directs my gaze to this bunch of Brit ne’er-do-well resto-modders, and my question to everyone is this:

Forget the price, and ignore the fact that it may have been sold;  list your top 3 of the cars on either the “Blue Chip” or “Prestige” pages.

Mine are, in no specific order:

Trying to pick a #1 from this lot is like trying to pick a favorite child.

And if New Wife wanted in, I’d get her this little beauty (because she thinks most modern sports cars are utterly vulgar and horrible):

It’s a good thing that I haven’t won the lottery, or these guys would be getting a visit from me.

More Places I Have Seen

Beauty, Travels

In alphabetical order:

Ahrweil, Germany

Heidelberg, Germany

Ludgate, London

Pie Town, NM (near the Continental Divide, temperature: -2F)

Silverton, CO

Trastevere, Rome

Zwettl, Austria

As with all these pics, right-click to enlarge, and feel free to use as wallpaper etc.

 

Places I Have Seen

Beauty, Travels

Indulge me for a moment, O Gentle Readers (like you don’t all the time) while I invite you all to take a stroll down Memory Lane with me, and re-visit some of my favorite places in the world.  It’s by no means comprehensive, nor are the pics ranked by anything other than alphabetical order.  (Some are quite large — right-click to embiggen.  And feel free to copy or use them as wallpaper etc.)

All Cannings, Wiltshire, England

Amsterdam
The village green, Bishops Cannings, Wiltshire

Bodensee, Meersburg, Germany

Grand Place, Brussels

Back home

Hurley, Berkshire, England

Jean Talon Market, Montreal

Luxemburg Gardens, Paris

Salzburg

Vienna

Vina Del Mar, Chile

No Longer Wanted

Beauty

Pop Quiz: Name This Granny (answer at the end of this post).  Bonus point for guessing her current age, and no cheating with Internets.

 

Never one to shy away from the tough topics, La Paltrow has weighed in on what happens when a woman ages and loses her desirability (or, as she so charmingly puts it, “fuckability”).

‘To get wrinkles and, like, get closer to menopause, and all these things… what happens to your identity as a woman if you’re not f**kable and beautiful?’
Gwyneth firmly believes self-acceptance is key and that as you get older, your inner beauty radiates outwards.
‘Luckily, what’s happening at the same time in parallel… is you just start to like yourself’, she continued.
‘I think you get to a point where it’s almost like your sort of pulchritude is waning in a way and your inner beauty is, like, really coming out, and so it’s this funny shift that’s happening.’

This is what happens when you work in an industry that a.) has no problem with (literally) fucking children and b.) enforces impossible standards of beauty upon its workers:  of course  you begin to think that only the young can be desirable and that women lose their desirability when they age.

As with so much of what Paltrow spouts, it’s mostly bullshit.  I can think of several older women who have aged and become wrinkled, and who could get practically any heterosexual man to bed them.  And I’m not just talking about actresses, either.

Where Paltrow, as always, misses the point is that she confuses “desirability” with universal  desirability.  I’m not au fait  with the current crop of young women who are deemed “hot” by the poplar culture, but let’s just take Scarlett Johansson as someone I know was once (and may still be) considered the ultimate in female desirability.

 

She’s heading for her 35th birthday as we speak, and I think it’s safe to say that in twenty-five years’ time, she will still be quite desirable, just not universally so.

Here’s one-time paragon of beauty Sharon Stone, at age 60:

 

…and still-gorgeous Jane Seymour (at age 65):

 

But let’s ignore for the moment the fact that among actresses, skillful surgery can play a part in prolonging youth (or at least hiding the effects of age) — I have no idea whether any of the above has resorted to same, but we can play the odds — and acknowledge that while stupid men and callow youths (some overlap) are forever in thrall to the “perfect body” (as defined by, say, Playboy  magazine), many men (myself included) find that women get more interesting  as they get older.

And in my case, anyway, that’s not just a function of my getting older;  at age 30, for example, I thought that Sophia Loren (then aged 50) was the sexiest woman alive:

 

…and I’m pretty sure I wasn’t alone in that thought, either.  Now she’s nearer 85, and I’ll bet that for her age she’s still as sexy as hell, unless of course all the wheels have fallen off, so to speak.

 

And even then, some  randy old goat would… let me not go there.

I said it earlier, but it bears paraphrasing:  for a woman to be desirable to all men regardless of her age is never going to happen.  What we do know is that very few older women (with some notable exceptions) are going to be undesirable to all  men.

If Paltrow and her aging ilk are going to go all “Boo-hoo-hoo nobody wants to fuck me”, I would suggest they relocate from Hollywood (and from Southern Cal in general) and try living in a retirement community.  They’ll get more pricks than a pincushion, from all accounts.

Frankly, if Paltrow really is having a problem (and it’s not just some new PR ploy to sell more vaginal marble eggs), it’s probably because as she’s got older, she’s become increasingly more batshit crazy.  I would suggest that that, and not her wrinkled body,  is the passion strangler. Read more