Back to my digs in Hardy Country, this time for only a brief-ish period (more on that later). Free Market Towers looked its usual splendid self:
…and to show you what fine hosts I have, Mrs. FM delayed the Friday Flogging until my arrival so that I, whisky in hand, could watch.
Nothing like the moans of the working classes to put one in a good mood… and tomorrow, it’s Range Time:
But first, I have to get through a little “Welcome Back” party tonight.
It’s a hard life, but what can one do?
Via Reader Old Texan comes this gem:
And no, I did not start this group. Although I wish I had.
When I was reading this article about Graham Norton’s beach house, several things struck me. First of all, I marveled at how anyone would want to spend a couple of million for a beach house which overlooks the English Channel — let’s be charitable and say that it can be used as intended for about twelve (non-consecutive) weeks of the year — and for a change, one Daily Mail commenter to the article got it right: it belongs in Malibu, not Kent.
But of course, what struck me the hardest was the house’s extraordinary ugliness.
Now I’ve written before about my distaste if not outright hatred for modernist architecture, so I’m not going to repeat it here. But in this particular case, what amazes me is how little the house is part of the milieu: with only a few modifications, it would fit in quite well with similar structures on the other side of the Channel; only those were the concrete bunkers of Hitler’s Atlantic Wall, built to repel an Allied invasion of Festung Europa.
The ugliness isn’t just skin-deep, by the way: it extends to the interior as well.
Now I know that many people like this kind of interior design because it’s “clean” or something. To me, it’s not a design to live in, but meant for display — like those awful Architect’s Digest spreads which look more like museums than homes. I could no more live in such a place than in a hospital room — now there’s “clean” for you.
And yes, here comes the inevitable disclaimer: taste is a personal thing, one man’s ugly is another’s gorgeous, beauty is in the eye etc. etc. Of course it’s personal. I’m not saying that places like this should be blown up and replaced with thatched cottages.
I’m just saying I wouldn’t shed any tears over it.
LOL… that’s the whole point of my using AdBlocker, you fucking morons. And a pox on auto-play videos on any website.
As for the article itself: apparently, there’s been bribery and corruption in the college athlete-recruiting business.
In other breaking news, the Russians just put the first man into space.
I saw an article somewhere about people attending some movie premiere (details not important), but what struck me was how the women dressed. Here’s the lissome Heather Graham (47) standing on the left, next to the cute Molly Quinn (25):
(In case there are people out there who are even more clueless about this stuff than I usually am — I actually had to look these two up — Heather was Rollergirl in Boogie Nights, and Molly was Castle’s daughter in the eponymous TV show — neither factoid of which will be relevant to this post.)
Am I the only one who thinks that they should have swapped outfits? Heather’s little mini is cute, but FFS she’s nearly twice her companion’s age. The longer dress would have suited her much better. Also, her legs are too skinny and not that great — Miss Quinn actually has nicer legs (I know, you need a pitchur):
I know all about the female age bias in Hollyweird, and how Women Of A Certain Age Can’t Get The Good Roles Anymore (Helen Mirren and Meryl Streep to the contrary), and therefore the ladies have to look and dress like young girls rather than the mature women they are. Which means you get women making fools of themselves (“mutton dressed as lamb”, as my mom used to say) and frankly, I think it’s nonsense. Case in point: Sophia Loren, outside her movie roles, never showed off her flesh to excess, despite having one of the greatest female bodies evvah (I know, pitchur, shuddup):
Okay, maybe not that one — but note: no “sideboob” or crotch shots (which seem to be all the rage these days [sigh]).
I seem to have lost my thread. Oh well, let’s just say that actresses need to dress their age. Like the septuagenarian Susan Sarandon:
Oh hell, I give up.
It happened again last night. Almost exactly as before.