Chicken Little Is A Little Chicken

This week's Photo Friday theme is 'Youth'.

One thing I am not going to do, is hang around taking photos of youths... for that my friend is how one can get oneself into a whole mess of trouble. So rather than get labelled a Chicken Hawk, here's a children's ride-on chicken instead.

Neat segue, huh?


Ride-on chicken. Children's playground, Newtown. January, 2005.

Savage Beauty

[Apologies for the poor picture quality of the following pictures, I was shooting without a flash in low light.]

I just got back from the Vivienne Westwood restrospective exhibition that I mentioned on Friday. Oh. My. GOD! We drove three hours each way from Sydney to Canberra to catch the last day of the exhibition, and I'm so glad we did. It was amazing. Much bigger than I expected, with 150 complete outfits, along with accessories and audio-visual presentations.

The exhibition covered her early years of punk, fetish and rockabilly styles, but my main interest was in her work from the time of the hugely successful 'Pirates' clothing collection at the start of the 80's (which helped thrust 'New Romantic' or 'Blitz' stylings into the limelight) and onwards to today. I have a really strong interest in fashion in general, but I particularly have a huge interest in the history of clothing. What I love about Westwood from the 80's onwards is how she has mined the history of fashion for ideas, cuts, techniques and silhouettes but managed to put them together into something new and beautiful, filtered through her amazing eye and sense of humour.

[More of Westwood's 80's collections, including the famous Buffalo Gals look of the 'Nostalgia of Mud' collection, can be found here.]


Swing back suit and 'Booze' suit (L). 30th January, 2005.

For example the grey suit above called 'Booze' is beautiful in style and technique, but I love the humour of calling a suit which is an homage to Christian Dior's 'New Look' by the name 'Booze', when the first 'New Look' suite by Dior was called 'Bar'. Westwood is showing us her humour, naming her references, indicating the subversive elements she relishes and putting her working class cards on the table.

Westwood has stated that she feels she is reacting to, and helping to provide an antidote to, blandness and conformity in fashion. Sure, not all of the clothes are wearable in an everyday setting, but many are and most of the rest would make striking 'special occasion' clothes. These pics only have some of the more historically influenced styles, by way of examples.


Garments from the 'Pinked, Slashed & Pulled' collection (L) and 'Watteau' style gowns (R). January 30th, 2005.

There were too many amazing looks to really detail here, but I loved the direct and oblique references to literature, art and fashion history. The men's denim suit above which pays homage to the styles and clothing techniques of the late German Renaissance and Elizabethan era for example, or the huge ballgowns and harlequin suits which reference the paintings of Watteau. I guess what I love is the intellect that she puts into fashion, along with the beauty.

I know I'm gushing, but this was a great exhibition and it really opened my eyes to the range of a designer that I thought I already knew a lot about. Fantastic, a day well spent.

Slow On The Uptake, But I Get There In The End

I'm frequently slow to join the party. Years after everyone else, I got my first mobile 'phone. About 4 months ago I got a DVD player. iPod, not even on the horizon my friend. Harry Potter, read him first when everyone was on book four. Green is the new black, I'm still on black (ok, maybe brown).

To add to that list, I have just dicovered Witold Riedel and his beautiful words and pictures. One of the things he is famous for are his The Bear pictures, adventures in scale and emotional nuance with a tiny 2.5cm bear.

Oh and if you have never heard of Witold, well thanks, that makes me feel much better.

Friday Hit List

Today, being Friday, I'm into an odd assortment of stuff:

Ginger Chews. So gingery! So Chewy!

Perfect steamed rice. For once, truth in advertising. So perfect! So steamy! So... ricey! (OK I'm stopping now.)

I'm also into Nestle 'Alpine Blend' drinking chocolate, but I Googled 'Nestle' and got about a hundred Boycott Nestle! sites. So let's not go there, shall we?

Just to show it's not all about food, I'm digging beautiful women and drop-dead gorgeous divas.

Listening to PaulMac's fantastic 2001 release 3000 Feet High, especially the wonderful 'dumpee' song Just The Thing, and the best ever 'dumper' song The Sound Of Breaking Up. [Samples can be downloaded here.]

The hilarious T-shirt design you can download from Paul's site.

No, there's been no dumpee or dumper action in my life of late, just enjoying the PaulMac nostalgia.

On the subject of which, I'm also musing on how nice the Paul behind PaulMac is. I was introduced to him once at a local pub once. Sweet and friendly.

Eclectic, much?

Weekend Plans

I've been making plans for a busy weekend this weekend.

Saturday I'm leading a team of volunteers to completely spring clean the Buddhist Centre I attend in preparation for Losar, or the Tibetan New Year which is on Wednesday, February 9th. (A good explanation of Losar is here, but the dates mentioned relate to last year.) I'll be putting on a light lunch for all the volunteers and we'll be cleaning the place from top to bottom. It should end up being a fun day, even with the toilet scrubbing...

(I've posting on here quite a bit about the volunteer work I've been doing, which I hope isn't getting boring for you gentle reader, but I guess that's because I've been enjoying it so much. I's been a great way to contribute to the centre that I feels gives me so much, and it has also turned out to be a great way to meet other people around the centre and develop a real feeling of kinship. I'm liking it!)

Sunday I'm off to our nation's capital Canberra, to see the last day of the Vivienne Westwood exhibition at the National Gallery of Australia. It's roughly a three hour trip each way, but it should be worth it. I love her stuff! I can't wait. Woot! It looks at this stage like it'll be my friends John & Judy, myself and possibly Mikey.

Vivienne Westwood is famous for helping re-introduce corsetry into fashion, and I've been helping to teach Judy how to make a corset to use for historical costuming. So it should be fun to have a look at Westwood's interpretation of corsets in particular.

Constructively Using My Time

Must. Get. Job. Must. Not. Watch. So. Many. Bollywood. DVDs.


$5 Bollywood DVDs. January, 2005.

All Praise The TIO.

Last week I received a strange and unsettling invoice for $69.50 from a telecommunications company, supposedly for having accessed a pay-per-view website. Now, I'm no angel, and I do admit to [ahem] maybe having, you know by accident, once or twice, viewed skanky porn sites... but I knew for sure that I had not knowingly accessed a pay-per-view site. I mean, frankly I'm both kinds of cheap and certainly wouldn't pay for anything I could find free elsewhere.

Soooo, I did a bit of surfing on the interweb super highway net and went to the telecom company's website. They had all sorts of crap on there about how the charges were likely incurred, including the helpful suggestion that even if you thought you didn't access a pay-per-view site you probably once clicked an 'OK' or 'Enter' button without reading the fine print (which I guess was probably hidden somewhere in transparent 4 point font most likey), or the even better suggestion that maybe someone broke into your house to use the internet, because people do that.

I figured I would get nowhere talking to these guys and they seemed very suspicious to me, so at my room mate's suggestion I sought out the site for the Australian Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (TIO). The TIO handles all complaints against telecom companies in Australia. I spoke with a lovely chap called Bryan (who also sounded vaguely hot) and they sent a letter off to the telecom company on my behalf.

Not surprisingly I received a letter two days later from the telco to say they had dropped the charges and would bar my phone line from the site, so that I could not incur further charges. Fine with me guys, bar away.

Bryan and the TIO, I love you guys! Kisses!

Recapping

Ho-kay. So here's a quick recap of the past couple of days, in eccentric order and in my much beloved bulleted list form:

Tired, tired, tired... 3 out of the past 4 days have seen me loading and unloading trucks full of stuff, moving and setting up chairs, setting up and then pulling down a temporary bookshop. Physical labour, I'm just not made for it people.

Despite the tiredness, I'm very glad to have participated and it was fantastic to see so many people enjoy the teachings and feel like they took away something to think about.

Last night the teacher Ven Sangye Khadro gave a beautiful teaching called 'Awakening A Kind Heart', and today she leaves Sydney to finish the rest of her Australian tour.

I've bitten the bullet, swallowed that bitter pill, name a cliche about pride and I've done it, and gone ahead and started applying for any old job I can do and not just the ones I want to do.

I still think my initial job strategy would have worked, but I'd probably be bankrupted by the time I got there.

Today is Australia Day, which in addition to anything patriotic is also the anniversary of my father's death and my nephew's birthday. Band standing by and cue 'Circle of Life'.

Again With The Tiles!

The other day I posted about the decorative tile panels that many of the older cottages and terrace houses in my neighbourhood still have, and how much I like them. Here is a more unusual panel, given that it is made up of sort of a mish-mash of tiles from the era.


Decorative tiles, Newtown. January 20th, 2005.

I'm pretty sure that the tiles all date from the original time frame, and are not reproductions, but this panel is unusual in that it looks kind of amateur and lacks the plaster 'frame' around the tiles that most of these panels have. Two of the tiles at the top are even laid sideways to fit the space. I'm pretty sure that this panel was put up a long time ago though, because the house itself is a little bit run down and looks like it hasn't been renovated in many years. Maybe the original owners of this house decided to add a panel themselves?


Detail of various decorative tiles. January 20th, 2005.

All the tiles have a very 'art nouveau' to early 'art deco' look to them and are of the slightly bas-relief style, where the colours are different glazes that have been poured into the areas created by the raised edges of the design. I love these sorts of tiles.

Happy Exhausta-ma-pation

Phew, Friday through Sunday was very tiring but I had an amazing time; learnt a lot from the teacher and other students, made some new friends and generally had a productive and enjoyable time.

It all started at 8am on Friday with cleaning and preparing the bedroom for Ven. Sangye Khadro to use for the weekend, then from 10 until 6pm we were trekking everything to the hall, setting up the hall, bookshop and information tables. The meditation talk finished at 9pm and I was home by after 10.

Saturday kicked off at 8am again with collecting more stock for the centre's bookshop (sales were incredible) then making sure the hall was ready for 9am registrations and the 10 o'clock start. Then the day was a full programme of talks, guided meditations, and questions, and I was working the bookstall during all the breaks, with a 5pm finish.

Afterwards I caught up with Mikey and we went to see the Lord of the Rings exhibition of props and costumes at the Powerhouse Museum and then had a bite to eat back at his place. I was almost falling alseep into my food, so I headed home and was in bed about midnight.

Sunday was pretty much a repeat of Saturday, although we had to completely dismantle the hall at the end of the day and transport it all back to the centre. By the time I got home at about 7.30 last night I was ready for a shower, some food and bed.

Highlights of the course were definately:

The fantastic teachings and presence of Ven Sangye Khadro, she absolutely radiates kindness, joy and sharp intellect

The interested and motivated crowd who attended, many of whom were new to meditation and Buddhism

Having a chance to sit in stillness with so many other meditators

Meeting other new dharma students and centre volunteers

Seeing the thirst for knowledge that so many people had, and consequently selling lots of great Dharma books and giving away lots of the free texts

Jacko, the beautiful dog that one of the students rescued from wandering on the busy main road, and who came and sat with us while we waited for his owners to come and collect him

All in all a great weekend.

Volunteering

The next few days are all about a flurry of volunteering. Today I'm off to do some more cleaning at the Buddhist centre, where I'm now the centre care co-ordinator. This isn't as onerous as it might sound; I do some cleaning, chat with the lovely office staff, and get a sense of having helped keep the centre running smoothly.

Tomorrow, Saturday and Sunday I'm volunteering as a facilitator for a 'How To Meditate' workshop to be taught by Ven. Sangye Khadro (Kathleen MacDonald). (Here's an example of one of her meditations.) As a volunteer I get to attend the course, which I otherwise wouldn't be able to afford at the moment. I actually offered to help out without realising that I could attend, so it turned into a win-win situation! I'm really looking forward to attending this as her book is a favourite of mine and one of the texts used in the course I'm doing.

Good times!

Truth In Advertising?

I saw this amusing sign yesterday, just a few doors up from the house where I snapped the hibiscus below. Given that Photo Friday's theme for this week is 'Signs' I might just go ahead and enter it, for tomorrow they'll be moving on to a new theme.


House sign, Newtown. 19th January, 2005.

Gorgeous

I saw this huge hibiscus flower peeping over a neighbour's fence yesterday. I love hibiscus flowers, and their extravagant beauty. They are truly some of the biggest show offs of the flower world.


Beautiful yellow hibiscus. 19th January, 2005.

Decorative Tiles

Most of the narrow back streets of my suburb of Newtown are lined with small single story cottages, or two story terrace houses. Many of these date from the time of Queen Victoria and the 'Arts & Crafts' era, and are rich in decorative detail. Fortunately, many of the homes escaped 'modernisation' during the 60's and 70's when Newtown was a comparatively down-at-heel inner city area, and since the 80's and onwards the suburb started to go through a renewal and many of the home owners kept the original details intact.


Decorative tiled panel, Newtown cottage. 18th January, 2005.

In particular I love these decorative tile panels that are frequently found on the front of these homes, like this one they are often used as a panel between the two front windows. Sometimes the same sorts of tiles are use to line the front edges of steps also.


Decorative tile detail. 18th January, 2005.

These tiles are some of my favourites, and I especially like their slightly quasi-Medieval style. To me the tile above seems to refer to the Medieval 'mille fleurs' often seen in illuminated manuscripts or the backgrounds of tapestries, such as the famous Lady & The Unicorn tapestries, where small clumps of flowers and leaves dot the background.


Decorative tile detail. 18th January, 2005.

These tiles are in great repair, unfortunately the same can't be said for all of them. Quite a few have been removed, or even worse painted over. A house in the next street over from me, which is now derelict, had bas-relief decorative tiles which at some point have been painted over in very 80's looking pastel coloured paints. Fortunately though, there are still good examples like these.

Wednesday Link-O-Rama

In celebration of the fact that I'm sitting at my computer unshaved and in my dressing gown, I bring you some stylish linkage:

70's street fashion by Ossie Clark and others at C20 Vintage Fashion

The gorgeous new book about the 60's and 70's stylish juggernaut that was Biba; fashion label, lifestyle and eventually grand department store

Mourning the fact that Pari, owner of the world's foremost collection of Biba fashion and collectibles, and supplier of most of the items in the above book, seems to have let her domain expire. [Check back and see if she renews, because her website has a fabulous amount of Biba clothes and info.]

The wonderful historical fashion collections of the Met and the Kyoto Costume Institute

Loving the easy to use, and comprehensive, fashion pages of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer

I draw the line though at making my own swimwear and posing pouches, like StitchBoy and friends

Site Updates By The HTML Challenged

I'm on a roll, not only did I get the picture posting thing to work (actually not that hard) but I've also been tinkering with the Blogger template I'm using to add some new sidebar goodies, such as a rather unique feature I like to call links.

Next on the agenda, trying a suggested hack to override the requirement that you need a Blogger registration to leave a comment. That one looks a tad trickier though. There is cutting and pasting involved, and actual deleting of existing html and everything. Very scary.

Can I just say, I added a site meter and now I'm obsessed with watching the little bugger tick over. Thankfully I saw that I could get it to ignore visits by me, otherwise that counter would be at least triple what it is now. I know, sad.

This Makes Me Angry

"Mr Curtis said entire sections of the city had been flattened and covered with gravel, paving stones that had survived 2600 years had been crushed by military vehicles, and decorative bricks around the celebrated Ishtar Gate had been cracked and dislodged by people who had tried to prise them out of the wall."

Something new to add to a war crimes tribunal list, US crimes against archeology.

The Truth Will Set You Free

I'm as sensitive to the pain of relationships break-ups as anyone, but if you want to find out the truth about Brad & Jen then check out this hilarious animated gif.

Check it out, before the lawyers get to it.

[Link via Defamer.]

More Newtown Public Art

As I mentioned last week, my suburb of Newtown is blessed with some really cool public art. A couple of years back I took these pictures of some murals which are tucked away in one of the back lanes of Newtown*. I'm happy to say that the murals are still there, and haven't been defaced with graffiti.

I don't know who's work this is, but I think these murals are really sweet. Sure, it isn't great poetry or anything, but the combination of the text and pictures I find really charming. I also like the fact that you have to sort of accidently stumble on these to know they are there.


The Goddess goes searching. Newtown, Sydney, 2003.

"The beautiful goddess leaves home to find the man of her dreams."

The Goddess finds true love. Newtown, Sydney, 2003.

"While the goddess found rare men who matched her list, none were "Mr Right". So she journeyed home from where she had taken flight. There she found a man she had missed, and she forgot her list, for he was charming and true. In his eyes she was always beautiful, and so true love grew."

* In the old days the lanes were used to collect 'night soil', yup there was no sewerage in the neighbourhood so the toilets at the bottom of each garden had a pail which was collected each day. I know, gross. Consequently almost every house has a street front and a rear lane access - although thankfully we have sewerage plumbing and even indoor toilets now!

Monday Link-o-rama

Today I'm into:

The beautiful artwork and gorgeous colours of Gustav Klimt. Lots more Klimt pics can be found here.

My new book Gaudi: Complete Works by Aurora Cuito and Cristina Montes.

The mosaic technique frequently used by Gaudi known as trencadis [site in Spanish], which he used to great effect on the park bench at Parc Guell in Barcelona. A comprehensive look at the trencadis works of Gaudi (and his assistant Jujol) in Parc Guell can be found at Joy of Shards.

The Scottish art nouveau of Charles Rennie Mackintosh, and his surviving works (which are quite numerous).

New Indian photoblogs I recently discovered, especially Vivek's, Sudarshan's, Deepak's and the previously mentioned Nilesh's 'Shutterbug'.