Grazia & Miranda Kerr does any one else think she looks like an overgrown teenager?

So, the current issue of Grazia features Miranda Kerr which has an exclusive on how to get her $5m body.

Do you think this body is worth $5m??

I dont understand the obsession with wanting to look like her. Ok she is attractive but she reminds of those barely teenage girls that have no shape. I understand that she is attractive and she is a Victoria Secret angel but does that mean that everyone has to look like her to be classified as “ATTRACTIVE”. I think not.

The obsession with weight and body image issues have proved to be very interesting. Even Karl Lagerfeld has written a book about is drastic 42kg weight loss all in the name of fashion so he could supposedly fit in Hedi Slimane menswear. If that isnt vein I dont know what is. What’s next… I guess he should be proud of himself after all he is 75, so I’m thinking that he should be viewed as inspiration for anyone that lacks motivation & strength and who needs that extra push. If he can do so can you.

Anyway back to the over grown teenager. The whole article obsesses about her being the “NEW BODY”. That should be saved for Elle, for all we know she should still be called “The Body”. In the article it says that her personal trainer has gained the reputation for steering the trend away from the super skinny models towards more attainable shapes. If this is true maybe she should try eating a hamburger.

I would much rather have the body of Elle than Miranda. What do you think. See for yourself.

Tattoos. Are they an addiction?

So, the other day it dawned on me that more and more people are inking their bodies in the name of art. At Maroubra beach it looked like they got bored one night and decided to draw on themselves but just for good measure made sure they were permanent.

I may not be one to talk as I have 2 already, but come on when you decided to ink yourself permanently they should at least mean something or at least have some sort of momentum. I mean really I don’t think that you will love your tramp stamp for the rest of your life. You just look like a porn star.

What is the point of having something on your body for the rest of your life, if it was just a spare of the moment thing and you decided that it would be cool to have one because hey, your conforming to societies view of them. I guess a lot of celebs have inked themselves which I think is the main reason that people saw the value or need to do it.

Well for me, I got my first tattoo of a cross  (with parental consent – it was either a tattoo or underage clubbing with a fake i.d) not because I felt like it, but because my mother has one and I have always wanted one. As far back as I can remember I looked at my mother’s and thought one day I will have that tattoo and about a decade later I did. My other tattoo was on my foot, and again not because I had to have it, but because I always (well not really) wanted one. They are both small and although people can see them, it doesnt look as if I went in drunk one night and got a heart tattod on my chest.

So, I personal think that a tattoo should be sentimental and at least mean something, like say Victoria Beckham has David’s initials on her wrist or say Angelina Jolie has the co-ordinates of her children’s origins. They should just be spontaneous. Do you honestly think that this girl/women will admire her tattoo when she is old, grey and wrinkley?? I guess she will only ever know!

Recession Proof Fashion. Is there such a thing?

Well recession proof fashion is a new concept. Who will honestly believe that their is such a thing. I for one would rather have that one really expensive item that will never date, then about 10 things that will keep me going during an economic downturn.

At the moment almost every single magazine whether it be National or International have featured at least on article each issue on recession proofing your wardrobe ever since the world economy took a turn for the worse.

According to an article published in Harper’s Bazaar has said that with gas prices ticking upward and the less-than-rosy economic prospects, die-hard shoppers are reassessing their spending strategies. Do you really think that everyone will give up shopping. Never. Department stores are doing everything in their power to promote spending, by slashing prices by more than 50%. If this isnt enough to enticee you then maybe the next price slash will. America for one is an awesome place to shop especially during the sale time.

I read this article the other day about the first thing that people sell when losing money is their jewellery. Look at jewellery auction houses, Christies and Southeby’s. Ever since the economic slumped they have had  an increasing amount of diamond jewels, especially collectors items some dating back centuries. People that often sell their jewellery are going to be selling their houses soon after just to survive the everyday living expenses that many of us middle income earners struggle with on a daily basis.

People should stop thinking on recession proofing their lifestyle and start thinking of the greater divide between richer and poorer as a result of the world economy slump. Who needs a Bugatti, Harry Winston and Chopard, when there are children dying in Africa from malnutrition. It seems as though the world is surrounded by people that would rather save their wardrobe then worry about more important things in the world.

FLUORESCENT ADOLESCENTS: The death of rock and its multi- coloured funeral.

A great man once said “My music is best understood by children and animals.” To that, DJ Will FX said “Yeah and so is Michael Jackson.”

The Big Day Out and The Soundwaves festivals are bearing down on the shores of this fine land. These Festivals are the last havens of rock and roll in its current form in Australia and this is what prompted investigation into the music scene in Sydney.

It is always interesting to see how music manifests itself in society. The most identifiable group is the Emotional or ‘Emo’ kids, clad in flat black with side fringes [facial piercings optional].

However, after sitting down with a self professed ‘Rising Star’ of Sydney’s urban music scene we quickly got down to the nitty gritty of what it means to be a musician in Sydney and how the scene has changed.

“Let’s face it, music is tribal. It allows people to find others who appreciate the same music that they do.

Whether it is the skate kids wearing tight leg jeans and listening to Anti-Flag or the fluorescent tidal wave of kids listening to Sebastian Leger, Chris Lake and Sneaky Sound System.”

In a profound twist, the Practical joking DJ whose sets are filled with humour and a lot of technical skill was able to provide a very useful insight into what music means to an Urban DJ in Sydney.

“Pubs aren’t giving the rockers a venue anymore and haven’t done so for a good 10 years now. The clubs and bars like Universale in Leichardt and Hugo’s in Kings Cross, they recognised the trend and addressed the need.”

If you take Hugo’s as a prime example, they were responsible for discovering arguably the most influential dance act in Australia today [Sneaky Sound System].

The students have also recognised the shift, in the same vane as migrating birds they too have shifted.

Mark Basha, 20, accounting student at UWS;

“I used to like rock, then the Hip Hop came and it was like I was drawn to it. The addictive beats and the lyrics put me into a perpetual state of happiness. Then as that died House and Electro took its place.”

Some like the beats others the rhythmic hooks, but then there are the rare few that see the music as something more.

Amir Salem, 20, Psychology student at Macquarie University;

“Music is one of the things that people associate with, whether it is on a cultural level or a purely superficial ‘I like that sound’ way. It shows our history and how the culture has changed over time”

You all listen to music experiencing it in different ways. It conveys emotion. It hypes up and calms down. It makes you cry, it makes you laugh but what it really makes you do is think.

Following this will be the audio from my interview with DJ Will FX and as a bonus it will contain some new mixes from his upcoming mixtape.

Camp Rock: The Tween Market, Fucked Cartoons of the 90s and How To Be A Badass, Jonas-Brothers style

I’ve always had an interest in stupid shit and the weird things discovered therein, so on that note, the other day I got high with some friends, and after it was discovered one of them had the Disney channel movie Camp Rock, we decided to watch it.

As it turns out its very fucked up.

I’m not sure why it always works like this, but movies which are marketed at the “Tween” market, which seems to be roughly ages 10-13 always seem to be about older characters, usually in their mid to late teens.

Supposedly this is because the nature of the Tween condition is a burning desire to be a teenager, while still retaining many of the trappings of childhood.
Fair enough I guess, but it puts us in this surreal world which is strangely sterilized and lifeless, kind of like a variant of the uncanny valley I guess.

The film I suppose, was really made to attempt to capitalize on the baffling popularity of the High-School Musical trilogy of movies, which I can’t for the life of me figure out why they’re so universally loved.

Maybe its just that nowadays all children’s cartoons and totally wholesome and life-affirming, while being all carbon copies of one another, whereas I was raised on a fare more fucked up breed of cartoons like most 90s youth, such as Rocko’s Modern Life and Ren and Stimpy, but thinking back, at thirteen years old, I would have thought High-School Musical was totally gay.

The world of Camp Rock is a pretty eerie one, for a start unlike most musicals which feature a certain visible energy of their acts during their big musical numbers, the characters all seem to exhibit a certain lifelessness amidst all the high energy choreographed dancing numbers.

The characters are also pretty incomprehensible as well. The villainess of the movie, a snobby girl whose mother was a famous singer, seems completely devoid of any of the sympathy afforded to most mean-girl esque characters, instead seeming to function as this nightmarish hybrid of tits and cruelty, so flat I couldn’t even say they were merely aping an archetype.
the male lead, who is searching after the female main character as he falls in love with her signing voice without seeing her (and is somehow unaware he’s made friends with her at the same time) is a puzzling character to.
Played by one of the three Jonas Brothers (I forget which) his character is billed as the “bad boy” of Rock n’ Roll, though this is really never properly explained. All you really get shown is a short clip where he has a tantrum and storms out of a practice session.
Thats it.
Guys like Sid Vicious, Slash, Iggy Pop or Pete Doherty have nothing on this guy.

The main character lies about the fact she’s poor because she’s embarrassed for some reason, I have no idea how this works either, or why she even cares what the female villain thinks, considering she’s such as bitch.

The as if that isn’t stupid enough, the whole camp is leading up to a contest, the winner of whom gets to record with the male lead, and it ends being won but a random character, one of the female villains original offsider’s until they abandon her.

I’m not sure what lesson this is supposed to teach kids; that you should be friends with people who mistreat you until you get presented the perfect opportunity to stab them in the back maybe? Actually that sounds appealingly fucked up.

So thats the world of Camp Rock, a place of seemingly energetic, but ultimately zombie like dance routines, characters with highly sanitized level’s of bad-assness and motivations that either make no sense or are non-existent, and a moral which is actually a surprisingly apt commentary on what is necessary to succeed in the modern world

The Times of Jimmy Buffet: Transdimensional Margarita’s, J.G. Ballard and the Unchanging Desert

Jimmy Buffet is pretty much the opposite of me. While I’m thrown at the mercy of an infinitely changing world and am constantly depressed about things Jimmy stays timelocked in the same period of his life (In particular 1977 when he released Change in latitudes Change in Attitudes) and is constantly happy on account of being rich and drunk and stoned all the time. I wish I could enjoy anything as much as he seems to enjoy singing his songs

His advisors are a transdimensional Margarita and a mystical Cheeseburger from Paradise and he parties all the time, because its always 5 o’clock somewhere which means bedtime is always at least 6 hours away . He’s played the same 8 songs to the same group of people for the last thirty-two years and it doesn’t bother him at all; must be pretty pleasant.

In his earlier works, the British novelist J.G. Ballard wrote extensively about how the conditions of the external world can effect mans internal one; that our psychology is acutely influenced by our environment. His trio of novels, The Drought, The Drowned World and The Crystal World explored the effects of radical redefinitions of the state our world and their impacts on the human psyche.
The Drought in particular is one that stood out for me, positing a bleak reality where toxic dumping had made much of our water inaccessible and turned the world into a bleak sand-filled place.

This new seemingly infinite desert took on a strange effect in the book, as its unchanging environment wrought strange effects on the protagonists. The deserts static state of nothing but sand stunted the psyches of the characters causing them to become stuck and then eventually to deteriorate as a result.

This, I feel, can serve as an acute metaphor for Jimmy Buffets career, however oddly as of yet there has been no deterioration, which puzzles me. In the world of music he is almost an anomaly.

He hit is peak long ago, but rather than continue to strive to fight the downhill spiral, eventually becoming forgotten, irrelevant and a source of amusement, he instead merely dug in his heels, and for the most part it works. He still makes money touring, he still plays his same “Big 8” songs, he still records new stuff every now and then which his fans all slavishly buy.

Its actually pretty zen of him when you think about it. He knew he’d never exceed past a certain point so he just ran with it.

I don’t know where Margaritaville is, but I’d guess it’d be some kind of bizarre modern day Eden, a beach bordering a desert, with a little zen rock garden for Buffet to rake in between tours.

Where in the World is Alex and Veronica?

Recently, it has come to our attention that two of our blog members may have jumped the country. We can only assume that this is because of tax related charges. Rather then despair over this, I have decided that this is the perfect opportunity for a good old fashion game show:

Where in the World is Alex and Veronica?
*Cue cheesy music*

That’s right folks, you get a chance every week to nominate one country until we get a winner for who gets the correct one!
The winner will receive a mystery prize!

So what are you waiting for? Leave a comment with your guess in it!

Genital Symbolism: My Drinking Problem, Disney Cartoons and Massive Cars

For the past two weeks I have been, as I am wont to do, I have been drinking, non stop every day, to try and forget it was christmas.
As opposed to my usual borderline alcoholic adventures in which I drink to try and forget I’m living in a horribly dystopic consumer nightmare world, I was attempting a much harder goal this time; to ignore the festive season and its unrelenting bombardment of cheer and good will, which as it turns out I’m allergic to.
Naturally my only recourse was to gather two friends, strip down to our underpants (no socks) and drink two cases of beer between us.
A night.
Some people tell me that I live on a nightmare ride and need to hit rock bottom. I prefer to think of it as an escapade.
When I was about to pass out, sitting up in an alcoholic stupor on my friends couch for the dozenth time the other night, was that genital symbolism makes no fucking sense.

I suppose it makes sense I would think about this kind of thing considering I am studying communications, but really the completely ass-backwards nature of genital symbolism really only occurred to me when I was totally pissed enough to question it.
Allow me to enlighten you.

Like the child reared exclusively on Disney cartoons before being booted out into the street to be crushed beneath the sherman tank treads of the  cold unfeeling society in which we live in, the fantasy of genital imagery and meanings simply don’t live up to the harsh reality in which we exist.

The penis and testicles for instance, are considered symbols are strength and courage and manliness. Men are strong and if your not packing heat betwixt your legs your not a man.
Aside from the various other  examples throughout culture, two contemporary ones stick in my mind. The idea that how much of a man you are is determined by the size of your junk being the obvious one, but also the phrase “Oh why don’t you grow a pair” or really any other variant of the expression, which is a call to stop being such a bitch, man up and rediscover your balls, as they make you brave and strong. This is of course, a fantasy.

You could take the biggest most badass motherfucker of a biker you could find, the kind of gigantic tattooed bearded brick shit-house who could take five bottles to the head on not even flinch, and you could flick him the balls with a rubber band and he curl up into the fetal position and cry like a little bitch.

Comparatively the vagina which has often been considered to be fragile and represent weakness and timidity, is probably the sturdiest part of the entire human anatomy. That thing can take a licking and keep on kicking, be it child-birth some bogan’s fists; those things are even self cleaning.

And if a dude has a tiny ding-a-ling he by default has a massive car.

At first I couldn’t get over how nonsensical it all was, but now that I really think about it, genital symbolism is really exactly and precisely as stupid as it should be.

Podcast Links

As promised:

 

Coldplay Satrini debate:

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=UvB9Pj9Znsw

 

Rihanna video:

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=E6Aizjgg1VU

Ozone video:

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=KjfUEthTHCQ

 

Alcazar “this is the world we live in”:

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=EX1nrdJVuPI

Genesis “Land of Confusion”:

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=yt6R6sTwsa4

 

Coolio’s Gansta Paradise 

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=N6voHeEa3ig

Weird Al’s Amish Paradise:

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=GsfVw9xxoNY
 

Enjoy, and feel free to comment if you think Satirini has a case

Victoria’s Secret…the biggest misnomer in the world

Yet another Victoria’s Secret fashion show has come and gone, and with this one feels that it is important to point out a few things.

1) Victoria’s Secret make some very nice pieces.

2) The 35 models are world renowned and extremely attractive

3) The fact that they use the word “Secret” in the name of the company is one of the biggest misnomers ever conceived.

Other Famous Misnomers include:

* American Football (you could count the number of times they use their feet on your hands)

* Scotland Yard (It isnt a Yard and It isnt in Scotland)

*French Horn (It came from Germany but then again German Horn doesnt have such a nice ring to it)

 and my personal favourite Christian Science (does anyone else see the problems here?)

But back to the collection…

So, really the collection is really no different to any other. Still colourful and bright, elaborate, sparkly, flamboyant, sexy, provocative and revealing.  They use the same tantilising models, but this time they used an exotic location “MIAMI”.

You can always see that the most extravagant pieces in the collection are used in the finally and the best is always saved for last: the million dollar bra. This year Adriana Lima got the honour of wearing this extravagant masterpiece. The Fantasy Bra, 3,900 precious gems, including thousands of tiny black diamonds, 117 one-carat round diamonds, and 34 rubies. Then, they finished it off with a pair of 100-carat black diamond drops.

The Black Diamond Miracle Bra is also designed to give maximum cleavage lift, but I doubt anyone will notice once they consider the price tag that this bosom booster comes with: A little over $5 million.

And after the Fantasy Bra is revealed on the Catwalk according to jewellery designer Martin Katz says, “It is for sale and remains safely in a vault until some wealthy person decides he wants to see his loved one it in I guess!” Talk about an interesting conversation starter. Close-Up view is below for your enjoyment.