Saturday, August 23, 2008

Aging hipster datapoint of the day


Hey, I'm busy playing at mini-squires this week, so here are two numbers to entertain you.

Asking price for the largest record collection in the world (and that's at a bargain basement price): $3 million.

Asking price for a 3-bedroom condo in Williamsburg: $2.375 million.

Right, off to London for the Notting Hill Carnival. Carnival! Dancing policemen! Muggings! Knife crime!

Thursday, August 07, 2008

Blockbuster Directors Decorate The Funniest Things


You know what? You're not going to get a half-baked excuse for my paucity of posts the last few weeks. The strains of raising a child-baby, while a common excuse, would be a lie, although his knack for disrupting the hours of 7-9pm is uncanny, and my absorption in Mr. Fisk's opus would be partly true. But mostly I just haven't had the urge.

But I really did have to advert your attention to the monumentally childish themes at work in Roland Emmerich's Knightsbridge interior decoration job. "Knightsbridge interior decoration job" is one of those cast-iron guarantees of bad taste, kind of like "Chuck Norris cake".

But consider the competition. It's like Emmerich took the bar set by Mohammed Al Fayed's Dodi N' Di memorial, and then beat a reeling sense of good taste to death with it. Lots of whimsical, one-note riffs on world affairs. Presumably if some of the details get circulated to in the right (wing) circles it might lead to another fatuous boycott. This time of some really bad films.

The best bit, though, is that one of the bedrooms includes, by the bedside a picture of what appears to be a shirtless Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (I'm linking to his blog, though it hasn't been updated in eight months and he is even less sorry for the lack of updates than I could ever be). I tried to blow the picture up, but it got helplessly pixelated. Now, since the image is not definitive this might make me guilty of the same cross-eyed Arab-baiting as the thoughtlessly umbrage-spouting Ms. Malkin, but I like to think it's a hastily-overlooked example of Emmerich's decorator's quest for the needlessly provocative.

Off on vacation soon, but first, weighty tax planning, and a meeting with (other) bloggers, something I promised myself I would never do. Old, you see.

Oh, crap, nearly forgot. Go and read Will Self's account of a trip along the East Riding's coast. It's really good. Sounds like Yorkshire people really are a little more charming than Lincolnshire people, though I've always denied it.