My friend Lisa has launched a book called Bondi Style – a snapshot (or several) of life in Bondi, with a sartorial slant.
I was asked to launch the book the other night. Which was a little bit weird because I don’t fit the Bondi style, apart from the glasses I wear (big, black, bought for ten bucks in Hong Kong when I was filming there with MasterChef). I do kind of observe it from up close, however, like a daggy anthropologist. This is because I work and live in Bondi.
This is a new series I’m starting that will flag cool gadgets and tricks and things that make life simpler and less… stuff-y. Most of it will be free stuff. All of it will be elegantly simple.
Sunday Life readers might have seen my column a month or two ago about Instapaper (a nifty filing button for “cool/interesting must-reads you find on the web when you’re meant to be other stuff but that you know you’ll never find again if you don’t read now”. Basically, it enables you to read cool shit later.)
Chapter two in this thinking: Readability. It’s a new FREE! INSTALL IN-ONE-STEP button that you just add to your toolbar and it changes stuff you’re reading online into clear, simple, old-school text, getting rid of pop-up ads and annoying eyeball clutter. When you’re reading something online, just press the readability bookmarklet on your toolbar and it converts the text into a far happier format. A treat for sore eyes!
And so The Lovely Bones, the movie, kicks off next week.[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikUWKi0W5_g&feature=related[/youtube]
I’ve been hanging for this movie to come out. The book by Alice Sebold has huanted me for years. What has struck me most poignantly is the kooky 14-year-old thoughts Susie Salmon has (via her narration) about family, and boys and beauty. They reminded me of my own personal dialogue at my age now. Which made me realise I had the same dialogue when I was Susie’s age. I wondered about impermanence, I reflected in a melancholy way and would hover on sad, small thoughts for a while…and pull them apart delicately.
This week I sleep at the wrong end of my bed.
Lately I’ve been exploring whimsy (see my previous post). A little bit because I just like the word. It has a lovely onomatopoeic trill to it. It’s also a theme that’s been popping up a lot this past week, which is what themes do when I’m looking for a new topic for this column. When they erupt in clusters I’m compelled to write about them, somewhat whimsically. Or perhaps just superstitiously.
First, I met this guy down the street who’d stuck eight cameras together and had devised a button that could press them simultaneously. Just to see what happened. He was taking photos of twigs when I came across him.
Next I wandered into a bookshop and came across Isabella Rossellini’s new book Green Porno, in which she dresses up as a baby barnacle (totally deadpan) and ponders anchovy orgies via thought bubbles. Because she can, I guess. It’s compellingly bonkers.
And then I got a feed from 13-year-old fashion blogger Tavi Gevinson. I’ve followed Tavi for 18 months. Her “about me” blurb reads: “I take part in a rap group with a pirate, and we write about Japanese designers and furry vests”. Her posts see her variously dressed up in a piece of carpet netting with a blue fruit basket attached at the hip, and four clashing tartan pieces (one on each limb) worn with floral Doc Martens.
She’s now sartorial royalty. She’s been on the cover of fashion bible Pop and sat front row at New York Fashion Week last month. She posts: “For one week I was in a utopia full of people who can recognize that my jacket is Luella and appreciate that I stuck an upside-down doll in its chest pocket.” Off-the-dial whimsy in a four-foot-nothing package. I want to hug her!
[vimeo]http://www.vimeo.com/2247337[/vimeo]
(The above is the cutest damn thing I’ve seen a 12-year-old do…mind is troubled to think where such whimsy comes from)
Anyway, so I’ve decided whimsy makes life better.