Sunday, June 06, 2010

Sunday, March 21, 2010

Pope Wears Prada

Benedict Emerges as Virtual Fashion Celeb

VATICAN CITY -- Whether it's Prada and Gucci, or just fancy ecclesiastical tailoring, Pope Benedict XVI is his own man when it comes to dressing.
Just days before Christmas, Benedict showed up at his weekly public audience in St. Peter's Square wearing a fur-trimmed stocking cap that could have passed for a Santa Claus hat.

Earlier this month, he made another fashion statement -- donning a red velvet cape trimmed in ermine for the traditional papal visit to the statue of the Madonna near the Spanish Steps that marks the beginning of Rome's Christmas season.

Coming after gossip about his wearing Gucci sunglasses and bright red Prada loafers, the vintage styles have turned Benedict into something of a fashion celebrity.
"Those red shoes have made quite an impression," said Vatican historian Alberto Melloni.

Benedict's predecessor, John Paul II, had no use for fancy papal attire. Most often he put on the basic white cassock and white gold-trimmed sash. In winter, however, he enjoyed a crimson wool cloak trimmed in gold braid, at times allowing children to play hide and seek in its deep folds. 

The 83-year-old Benedict lacks John Paul's natural charisma, and the trappings of Vatican splendor may be a way to compensate.
The bright red Santa cap certainly has a distinguished papal pedigree. Called a caumaro, the long-forgotten head-covering dates to the Middle Ages and figures in many famous papal portraits, including one of Julius II by Raphael. It was last worn by John XXIII, who was pontiff more than 40 years ago.
The velvet cape called a mozzetta has also been part of official papal attire but hadn't been seen since John XXIII's successor, Paul VI, in the 1970s. With its regal trimming, it is reminiscent of a time of papal political power some prefer to relegate to history books.
But those who know Joseph Ratzinger from his years as head of the Vatican's doctrinal office dismiss any notion of vanity in the new pope's dressing habits. 

"He wouldn't know Gucci from Smoochi," said Marjorie Weeke, a former official at the Vatican's Social Communications office. She recalled Ratzinger's daily walk across St. Peter's Square from his home just outside the Vatican walls to his office, wearing a black beret and black overcoat and carrying a worn leather briefcase.

"He probably donned the cape because it was in the papal closet and would keep him warm on a winter evening," she said of the mozzetta.
A need to keep warm would also solve the sweater mystery.


When he came out on the balcony of St. Peter's Basilica to give his first blessing minutes after his election April 19, an inappropriate black sweater peeked out from under the cuff of his hurriedly donned white cassock. Apparently there was no heating in the Sistine Chapel where the conclave was held, and the new pope might have needed some woolen comfort.
Another fashion issue in the news recently: papal hemlines.

During Benedict's first public appearances, his cassock was way above the ankle, revealing white socks and bright red footwear. The hem was soon lowered a few inches, although he still prefers a sporty around-the-ankle look instead of having the cassock draped over the shoes. 






Show me your back!











Friday, March 19, 2010

Die on the Floor



Can't Stop Feeling

My soul starts spinning again
I can't stop feeling
No, I won't stop feeling
And the fun's not fun anymore
I can't stop feeling
No, I won't stop feeling

And you leave me here on my own
Yeah you leave me here on the floor
You can't feel it
And you can't feel it
You can't feel it
And you can't feel anymore

Soul boy, down and alone
And his soul is broken again
But you can't stop moving
No you won't stop moving along

My soul starts spinning again
I can't stop feeling
No, I don't stop feeling
And we're not 'us' anymore
I can't stop feeling
No, I won't stop feeling

And you leave me dancing alone
Yeah you leave me to die on the floor
You can't feel it
No you can't feel it
You can't feel it
And you can't feel anymore

Other:









Sunday, March 14, 2010

Twilight Eclipse Official Trailer 2010 and Movie Release Date Review

Twilight Eclipse Official Trailer 2010 and Movie Release Date Review.  The newest edition of Twilight will be released on June 30, 2010.  The anticipation is building with the release of the official trailer.  The reviews of the movie will be rave from Twi-hard fans, but maybe not critics.
But hey – the critics weren’t fond of “New Moon” but it was a box office smash. Everyone that saw New Moon that follows the Twilight series had nothing but great things to say about the film.  Eclipse is already set up to be better.
There’s a serious love triangle developing between Bella, Jacob, and Edward and many are waiting to see who Bella chooses.
There are also rumors that there is a real life triangle between Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson – but so far they are just rumors.  Kristen and Robert have been identified as an item, but recently Kristen has been photographed with Taylor touching her cheek.
One thing is certain – Bella will be well protected.  She’s got a vampire and a werewolf fighting for her honor.
Now that one official Twilight trailer has been released, many are waiting for a second.  So far, no Twilight Eclipse trailer other than the one below has been released.















I'm definitely thrilled by the full trailer of Eclipse: I didn't know I was missing Bella (Kristen Stewart), Edward (Robert Pattinson) and Jacob (Taylor Lautner) so much! I was a bit afraid that David Slade wouldn't respect the emotional content of Stephenie Meyer's book and that it would overemphasize action over emotion. But I guess he's been guided in his movie adaptation, and the result looks splendid: there is a fine balance. The movie twilight Eclipse is going to rock!

Is Lily Allen set for a new life as wife?

Lily Allen has looked loved-up for a while now - and there could be even happier news on the way for one of my favourite singers.
Her boyfriend SAM COOPER has let slip to pals down a West London boozer that a proposal is not too far off.
My perfectly-placed source tells me: "Sam was quite open about how well things were going between them. Someone made a quip about the prospect of a wedding this year - and Sam was not ruling out the idea at all."
The Fear singer Lily, 24, has made no secret of her feelings for builder Sam.
And during a gig last month she told fans: "I want to have a baby. I'm not saying I'm pregnant now. Shut up, Lily." The star was devastated by a miscarriage two years ago when she was seeing Chemical Brother ED SIMONS, 39.
And the star - currently enjoying a four-month "retirement" from music - is now hankering for a life outside of London with Sam.
They began dating last August and he moved into her £1million home in Marylebone, West London, in December. A friend of Lily's tells me: "She's absolutely smitten with Sam. If he decided to propose, I know she wouldn't hesitate in saying, 'Yes'."

Saturday, March 13, 2010

Drinks With: Arctic Monkeys

Skip Matheny— currently a songwriter in the band Roman Candle and former bartender in a retirement community — caught up with Alex Turner and Matt Helders of the Arctic Monkeys before their show in Chicago, Illinois, last fall.

Did you write these songs for the newer record after you had moved to Brooklyn?
AT: No. But I have written a lot since I’ve moved there.

A lot of writers have a newly infused life behind their writing once they leave their home country… it’s like they can write with an almost clearer eye about anything. Robert Frost, for example … his writing really took shape when he moved his family to the U.K. Have you experienced anything like that?
AT: Yeah. I think moving there seems to have given me like a kick up the arse or something. I mean I’ll sit there quite often, more frequently than I used to, and write. I feel like there is a lot more room here or something. But actually the songs on this record all came before [I moved]. But the next record probably will all be these songs I suppose.

Did either of you, have sometime when you were a kid when you heard a song and thought, “This thing or idea of a pop song, I get that. I might try to do that one day?”
AT: Well, I remember I must have been like twelve years old or something, and hearing “I Am the Walrus” and thinking, “Well, this is just like nonsense. I could write something like this, surely.” And sort of attempting to write in that style and really struggling with it. I distinctly remember getting aggravated because it’s like, “Well, he’s singing about custard and a cob sitting on a cornflake and why can’t I think of that?”[Laughs] And I still can’t do that exactly.

It reminds me of when I saw a Jackson Pollock painting as a kid and I thought, “Oh man, this guy has fooled everybody. This is some really easy stuff.” And then you get a little older and realize that there is something else going on there.
AT: Exactly. And there are other things: I remember being on car journeys with my parents and, I feel like that situation is the first time that I would hear music, as a kid. I suppose my Dad was talking to me about Beach Boys tunes and the harmony aspect of [their songs] as well. They evoke feeling from you—almost involuntarily—and the idea of that is something that’s stayed with me, because before the lyrics or anything in those songs, the chords and the vocal harmonies sort of get you. I remember being stirred even at a young age. It’s almost like you can’t help it.

I love this song because it reminds me of my love ♥




Come On Home
Although my lover lives in a place that I can't live

A kind of find I like a life this lonely
It rips and pierces me in places I can't see
I love the rip of nerves, the rip that wakes me
So I'm dissatisfied, I love dissatisfied
I love to feel there's always more than I need

So come on home
So come on home
So come on home

You're where you want to be, I'm where I want to be
C'mon we're chasing everything I've ever wanted
I replace you easily, replace pathetically
I flirt with every flighty thing that falls my way

But how I needed you, when I needed you
Let's not forget we are so strong, so bloody strong

Come on home
So come on home
So come on home

Blue light falls upon your perfect skin
Falls, and you draw back again
Falls, and this is how I felt
And I can not forget this
And I can not forget this

Come on home
So come on home
But don't forget to leave

A Band Moves Away From the Style It Helped Make Mainstream


It was around 3 in the afternoon when Alex Kapranos’s hangover began to wear off. Mr. Kapranos, the lead singer of the Scottish rock band Franz Ferdinand, and his bandmate Nick McCarthy, who plays guitar and keyboards, had spent the previous evening in a refined version of debauchery. They went to a concert — by the British group the Last Shadow Puppets — followed by a late-night feast at the Spotted Pig, the West Village gastropub. Mr. McCarthy capped it off with some dancing at a downtown club, staying out until 5 a.m.

Now both were sitting at Momofuku Noodle Bar in the East Village, recovering.

“I’m feeling very, very tender,” Mr. Kapranos, 36, said.

“Do you have any tea?” Mr. McCarthy, 34, asked the waitress.

“No hot beverages,” she replied. They ordered water.

The odyssey of a night out, from drug-fueled anticipation to dance-floor frenzy to post-hook-up comedown, is also the subject of the band’s third album, “Tonight: Franz Ferdinand,” released on Tuesday on Domino/Epic Records. On it, the group — which includes Bob Hardy on bass and Paul Thomson on drums — aimed away from the wry, propulsive post-punk that defined its first two records and made its global 2004 hit, “Take Me Out,” an unlikely stadium anthem; even the Yankees used it.

Since then the members have found that their aesthetic — from their high-hat beat to their mod wardrobe — has gone mainstream, especially in Britain, Mr. Kapranos said. “You feel like, right, that’s become so much a part of musical vocabulary of the contemporary band, it’s now a cliché, and you have to leave it,” he said.

So no more “angular guitars,” Mr. McCarthy said, a description that has stuck to the band as surely as their slim-cut suits. (Or their angular haircuts.)

But though the band added more keyboards, bass (“It’s nice to be the lead onstage occasionally, so that I can show off a bit,” Mr. Hardy wrote in an e-mail message), unusual instrumentation, echoes of dub and even an acousticy ballad, “Tonight” will sound familiar to Franz fans, with Mr. Kapranos again singing disco songs about girls and hedonistic behavior.

He has a reputation as a foodie: he met Mr. Hardy when they worked at a Glasgow restaurant, and eventually wrote a food column for The Guardian in Britain. (A collection was released in the United States as a well-received book, “Sound Bites: Eating on Tour With Franz Ferdinand,” in 2006.)

Over an elaborate lunch — kimchi and other pickled vegetables, East and West Coast oysters, pork and shitake mushroom buns, noodle soups and hamachi with beet purée — he and Mr. McCarthy discussed their attempts to sidestep the clichés of postpunk stardom while still making a record people could dance, and debauch themselves, to.

“It’s a mixed blessing when a band gets that much attention early on,” said Jason Bentley, the music director of KCRW, the influential radio station in Santa Monica, Calif., and the host of “Morning Becomes Eclectic.” In 2004 that program, with Nic Harcourt as the host, first featured Franz Ferdinand in the United States. Less than a year later the band was opening the Grammys with “Take Me Out.”

“For a while there, you thought, ‘Are these guys going to go down as a one-hit wonder?’ ” Mr. Bentley said.

Not that they mind having their music back arena-size sporting events. “I always thought it was funny,” Mr. Kapranos said, “because we are the least sporty people in the world.”

Still, “Tonight” is an attempt to regroup as the small Glasgow band the members started, rather than the stylish name brand one they seemed poised to become after their self-titled debut, which had a narrowly defined look and a taut signature sound and sold more than a million copies in the United States.

Franz Ferdinand's Nick McCarthy says he loves Peru's folk music


Nick Nick Mccarthy, guitar player of Franz Ferdinand, told the press that he likes Peruvian folk music very much, and he would have not any objection to include some Peruvian rythms in any future production.

“A Peruvian girl taught me Spanish, and she also told me about the cotton and the big mountains of Peru. Maybe someone can take me to a Peruvian music show while in Lima,” he said, adding that it would be “great.”


He also said that they tried some Peruvian food in Brazil: “we went to a Peruvian restaurant and had some pisco sours. It was a quite funny mixing after the caipirinhas,” he added.


Alex Kapranos, lead vocalist, has already expressed that he is “
eager to try Peruvian food,” and McCarthy says that "we will definitely try Peruvian food."

Franz Ferdinand's concert in Lima is scheduled for March 30, and tickets are already on sale at TuEntrada (Plaza Vea and Vivanda supermarkets).