Samson and Delilah in Paris: I haven’t seen indigenous hit like this since Once Were Warriors…

Coming soon...

Samson and Delilah will open here this month.

Maragaret and David said it was a hit (5 stars).

Cannes Film Festival said it was a hit (First Film prize).

Even Andrew Bolt, whose opinion is generally regarded as worth less than blog it’s printed on, mumbled that it was a hit – if for different reasons that every other member of the Austalian public.

Last week I attended an advance screening. After watching it, I can agree: it’s certainly a hit – in fact, I haven’t seen indigenous people getting hit like this since Once Were Warriors, 15 years ago (incidentally, my Swedish friend thought that film was called “The Ultimate Warrior”, and once described it to me as “you know, that New Zealand action film”).

In Samson and Delilah, the lead characters are hit by sticks and stone, fists and by fury. He hits his brother in the head with firewood, then he hits the road.

She gets hit by a car, and he doesn’t see it because he’s getting a hit from petrol.

But in showing this, director Warwick Thornton also hits a chord…

The French perception of Australian Aborigines essentially extends to them as great painters of dots, and, follozing Baz Luhrmann’s film ‘Australia’, as  romanticized shamen (due to poor attendance in France, this latter perception hasn’t gained currency in the wider community).

Speaking at the screening last week, director Warwick Thornton discussed what he hoped viewers would take from the film, particularly in regards to its portrayal of the pervasive violence, negligence and harshness of life in Aboriginal communities – based and inspired by his own experience.

“I made this film for my own community. I’m the first Aboriginal to speak out about this,” he told the enthralled audience, peppering his speech with plenty of understated humour that didn’t quite cross the language divide.

“ This film has given viewers an insight not possible in 10 years of reporting on the 5 o’clock news. It’s amazing that we’re here in France talking about this. The message I want to give you is that maybe in Paris you’ll see people like Samson and Delilah and you’ll reach out to them.”

Thornton went on to say that he considers film to be a form of “cultural maintenance”.

“In 50 years, when we look back at the films of today, what are we going to see?”

He answered his own question. “Transformers.”

To be fair, that film was a hit too.

*I sat next to a cool Italian woman who runs a cinema blog – and if you speak Italian, tell me what she says about it.

 

Paste-ups or post-its: stick it to the man

Does the fact you do not have express permission to post your thoughts on a public wall make the act any less expressive?

In Paris, whether Graffiti is art or vandalism is no longer a debate. The question now is it how to make it profitable. At least, when the Cartier Centre and Petit Palais dedicate large, well publicised shows to the art form, that’s the message that the world’s art capital is sending.

Old masters of Graffiti come to Paris to retire. SEEN, who was bombing NY subway cars in the 70s, and has one of the world’s best known tags, now lives here, enjoying the relative anonymity. I met him at a show he was part of at the Gallery Lamoure last month. With his wavy silver mop, he looks like an older version of Xavier Bardem in last year’s Woody Allen – except he’s covered in evil tattoos, including skeleton fingers and a dotted ‘cut here’ line around his neck.

SEEN was an early influence on the Australian artist Reko Rennie, who returned home to Melbourne last week after a three month art residency in the Marais.

Art is about expressing an idea. For Reko, his work could be seen as a modern take on the Aboriginal identity, a reinterpretation of the art painted on Australian rocks 40,000 years ago. Aboriginal art is well known in and rather popular in France, but is limited to the classic dot paintings.

Reko’s trademark is stencils of Australian flora and fauna. On his last night in Paris, I joined Reko as he put up some pieces in the marais area. Reko specialises in paste-ups, which are pre-made stencils sprayed onto poster paper, which he then adheres to public walls using wallpaper paste. The advantage for graffiti artists is that the penalties are less severe than for straight up paint on wall.

Thus, in the space of 20 minutes, I watched him paste up a giant 3-metre echidna, and a booming 2-metre pink kangaroo. One week later they are still there, and passers-by give them equally looks of ambivalence, bewilderment, and appreciation.

Earlier in the week, he painted a blue-breasted wren on the wall at the famous Belleville Zoo graffiti area. He had found a clear space, and painted it on a catching green and pink wavy background, the overall work measuring about 3×3 metres.

One man's wall art is another man's blank canvas there for the taking.

I went to find it four days later, but found only that someone else had painted their own design over it – some sort of alien creature. I’m sure it bore special significance to the artist.

In any case, there’s a lot to be said for the instant gratification of expressing your thoughts on paper, then sticking it, up large, in a public space for all to see. This morning when I became infuriated at my local bank, I knew there was only one recourse.

I had tried to withdraw money at the branch, only to find it was “closed unexpectedly.” Infuriated -and broke- I knew what to do. I stormed over to the newsagent across the road, and together we drafted a note.

Thank's for the advance warning. You're completely unorganised, as per usual.

Reko’s modern take attracted interest from some gallery figures, and he will return here in March 2010 for an ‘official’ show. Meanwhile, you can check out the alien artist at the Belleville Zoo graffiti zone in Paris – but be quick!

Electro night at the museum

The first time I’d see Night at the Museum, it was starring Ben Stiller and some dinosaurs.

The only thing I’ve seen less funny to date is this Malaysian (?) version of ‘Night at the Museum’, hosted by a certain Mister Tukul.

Having thus experienced how the Americans and Malaysians approached the concept of ‘Night at the Museum’, I was interested to see the version francais.

On Saturday, the museum of Arts et Metiers (arts and trades), held a soiree eclairee, an illuminated evening, featuring a lights show throughout the permanent collection of the expansive and unassuming building, and a set by 9 electro DJs in its enormous chapelle. Electro night at the museum: this was going to be interesting.

I deposited my coat at the cloakroom, fishing out of my pocket a pair of black leopard skin tights that Marie had just returned to me.

“Can I cloak these as well?” I asked the cloak attendant. “The last party I went to was  a sado-maso, and my friend just gave these back to me.”

The attendant hesitated a second, before replying, “Sure, you can just put those in the pocket.” Then added for good measure, “Are you sure you’re at the right party tonight?”

We were ushered into a lift with a woman decked out as an airline hostess – all the staff were, as the theme was ‘Voyage’. Whatever. In the lift, there was a paper sign that read: “Don’t forget you’re in a museum. Thank you for respecting the location.”

Well, excuse me, but you guys are the one hosting an electro party here! We’ll provide loud music, but don’t talk above a whisper.

“Does this mean I should get an audio guide?” pondered Sophie. Now that could be interesting, the museum equivalent of an iPod party – a room full of people standing with audio guide to ear, collectively swaying to someone recounting the history of the phonograph.

The lift dropped us on the first floor, which was effectively a room dedicated to photography and sounds recording equipment from the 1890s.

Once in Madagascar I walked one kilometre through a swamp full of floating zebu turds to get to a nightclub. This time I was being made to traverse 120 years of audio history. I rolled up my trousers – this could get dirty.

The museum collection was actually rather impressive, it’s just that we were there to party, not to learn. Arriving at the chapelle were the electro concert was, it was the first time I’ve seen more photographers and filmmakers than legitimate guests at a party. Meanwhile, the queue outside the museum was stretching around the street corner, and they were getting rowdy.

We made the most of the fact that for surely the first time in Paris’ history the line for the bar was shorter than the line for museum entry. We ordered the first of several extremely weak vodka apples.

After three hours the novelty of drinking alcohol other than red wine in a church had worn off (as for the weak vodka apple, there was virtually no effect to wear off). We retrieved our jackets, handbags, leopard print tights, and left. We were then confronted with the next problem: the waiting crowd had grown riotous, and were rocking the imposing iron gates with a certain fury.

This video is the closest thing I have found on the web resembling the ambiance that greeted us. If you look carefully, you can see Marie and me sureptiously sneaking away to our house, just 5 mins away.

Bikini waxing lyrical: a Too-Much-Information (TMI) story

“Let’s go some place quiet; I have a too-much-information story to tell you,” said  a girlfriend at work.

“It involves a bikini wax.”

If the promise of a TMI wasn’t a good enough reason to duck out across the road for a quick coffee, then the jumper that the girl opposite was wearing definitely was. It was mustard in colour, and, authentically, looked like it had been squirted on.

Another reason was that the agency is constantly hiring, and the open plan room is full of hopeful applicants arriving and departing with the regularity of someone on a high-fibre diet.

My friend led me across the road to a place where we all usually go for a beer on Friday nights. It’s a small bar, le Renouveau, which means, the Revival. It’s a fitting name, as most people who drink there seem like they are on life support.

It is run by some charming North Africans who know all our names, and don’t hesitate to insert them into every sentence, heightening our shame at having forgotten theirs.

With a coffee in hand, I asked my friend what the story was.

“Well, I don’t want to say it here at the bar, in front of all these men.”

She had a point – it was 3pm, and the local gamblers had descended on mass to watch the trots on tv.

Instead, we sat down outside and she launched into her story.

It had taken place at a bikini waxing parlour earlier in the week. She started to describe how the beauticians at the parlour have a new method of waxing their customers’ hard-to-reach places.

“They usually do it like this…” she said, gesturing putting her legs over her head.

At this point I saw in the corner of my eye two French colleagues and a job applicant heading towards the cafe. Sometimes when it’s too noisy at the office – often – they do job interviews at this very same cafe.

Undeterred or unaware, my friend continued: “But this time they asked me to lie on my stomach and spread my cheeks right open!”

To emphasise the humiliation she had felt, she stood up and gestured the spreading of butt cheeks, towards the inside of the bar.

The drunkards were too busy watching the horse race to notice. Not so the approaching French colleagues though… I turned around just in time to see them doing a double take, then usher the hopeful candidate quicklu on to a more convivial destination.

Paris you haughty bitch

Haughty Paris - not you, the city! (courtesy Megan Cullen)

It’s not often you hear “Paris is a haughty bitch” in reference to the city and not the celebrity. But why not?

An Australian friend who’s recently spent time in Paris – again the city, not the celebrity – came to this conclusion after a brief visit to Berlin and London.

She’s been in Europe with her partner Reko, a journal-artist here on an arts scholarship to further his stencil work (so far he’s put work up on the Berlin Wall, in Brick Lane, and soon, Belleville).

“Paris, she knows you’re going to come to see her, no matter what she does. She doesn’t have to try to be likeable,” my friend explained. This impression may have been tainted by the fact she’d spent the day in Montmartre.

By way of comparison she offered Berlin:

“Berlin is like a reformed con. The people are really open, friendly, they want to push a good impression on you. You know it had a bad history, but it’s changed and it wants you to know it.”

I didn’t ask her the impression she had of London. But if I could choose a personage for the English capital, I would probably suggest it’s like your alcoholic uncle at Christmas: It’s drunken, it’s good fun, and at certain moments, also very touching.

Paris: You can't buy her love, but you can buy the t-shirt (megancullenphoto.blogspot.com)

PS, Megan is now living (and working) in Berlin – she’s keeping her blog regularly updated.

A lunchtime conversation break

Lunch in France: That two hour window when office workers leave their desks and emails to bitch about worklife outside of company premises.

Today, however, six of us managed to steer the conversation into other spheres.

Films

Have you heard about The Box?

The plot is this: One night, a poor family receives an unexpected parcel that contains a buzzer, not unlike that used on TV game shows such as SAAAAAAAAALLLLLEEE of the CEEEEENTURY. They are told by a man with half a face that if they push the buzzer, two things will happen:

1. Someone in the world will die.

2. They will receive a sum of money.

“So what’s the problem?” asked 6t.

“As long as the person was Tony Barber,” I thought – the former host of Australia’s richest game show, ‘Sale of the Century’ (where the most you’ll ever get for pushing a buzzer is a new Hyundai).

(At the start of this episode, Tony informs us that the night before, Ian chose NOT to take the kitchen!! I’m not sure what’s worse: Tony’s glasses, the co-host’s dress, or the banter between them  at the 1″42 mark.)

Football mascots

Did you know in America there is a hockey team called the Washington Redskins?

Every game you go to is a massacre.

“It would be like if you had an AFL (Australian Football) team called the Aborigines,” our New Zealander freelancer helpfully contributed.

As a New Zealander, he knows a thing or two about obscure mascots. The symbol of the New Zealand Air Force is the kiwi – a small, flightless bird that shares it name with a piece of fruit. Fruit has never sounded so harmless.

After this brief foray into talking about things outside of work, everyone decided that discussing work was probably a safer, more politically correct subject, and our conversation returned back to business as usual.

A description of the aforementioned infamous car journey to Arles to see Cat Empire

Sometimes the journey ISN’T as good as the destination. And the return home can be even worse.

Further to yesterday’s blog about the last time I drove, here is a more detailed account. As you can see, the trauma – THE TRAUMA – of it all was enough to make me want to write 850 words about it. That amount of words doesn’t just appear apropos de nothing.

November 2007: I persuaded some friends in Montpellier that I would take them to see some ‘decent’ live music, and we departed on a road trip to see the Cat Empire, who were playing in Arles, a town near Montpellier.

Given that live music by Montpellier’s standards means when the DJ /barman presses the ‘play’ button on the stereo, all the Cat Empire had to do was arrive on stage and play a tuning note and they would have lived up to my hype.

I borrowed my housemate’s car for the journey – he was busy in his room with an assortment of power tools, ply-wood and a majority of the neighbourhood’s wheelie bins which he has been busy mutilating the past week as part of his ingenious scheme to design a system of opening the bins with a foot pedal, an apparent niche in the bin market he had identified.

The car trip was horrendous. It was the worst conditions in which to first acquaint oneself with a right-hand drive car – torrential rain in the dark, a highway crammed with racing trucks doing 130 kmh, headlights with all the power of two AA batteries, and the only music to listen to was a reggae CD. And it scratched.

After a short 40 km detour to the outskirts of the town ‘Ales’, we navigated back to the highway and, sometime later, to the actual destination, ‘Arles’. The funny thing is, all three of us in the car actually convinced ourselves that it was probably just a convention of ‘The French’ that they would drop the ‘R’ out of some towns when labelling them on road signs. I’m still not convinced they don’t.

Arriving in the charming bohemian village of Arles, I discovered that I couldn’t reverse the car. Unfortunate timing, since I had just entered a large, full, car-yard. This was to be a theme resumed later in the evening.

Ali and I pushed the car, in the torrential rain, back to the main road. We continued on to the venue, Cargo de Nuit, mounting the curb to park on someone’s footpath.

The venue was small, intimate, cosy. White beers were cheap, on tap, and with a slice of lemon dropped in. It was perfect.

The Cat Empire started. It was a young crowd of about 250, and no-one was wearing parachute pants. I pinched myself and remembered that I was no longer in Montpellier.

They played all the classics; and even if they played new stuff, it still sounded like the old stuff, so no harm was done. The French crowd, new to their sound and stage presence, loved it. So did I, it was a great taste of home. Somewhat of a veteran now of their shows, this was one of the better I’d seen of late. They played tight and to the crowd; they screamed their solos, the crowd screamed back.

But things had changed since they started making music and a name eight years ago. An odour that they’d outgrown their own sound hung in the air. Singer Felix and trumpeter Harry lacked the chemistry that defined their early lives shows. Felix had his brave face on, Harry had some extra kilos. Oli, still a genius on the keys, still looked like he was in a state of permanent orgasm. Some things never change.

I met Felix after the show.

“Hey Felix, I used to live in the same house as you in Moore Street,” I said.

“Yeah, I thought you looked familiar,” he replied.

“Actually I lived there after you had moved out…”

Driving home was easy. Until Montpellier at least. Since I walk everywhere, I have no idea how to navigate the historic town’s labyrinthine streets. I took a right turn and found myself on a carpark ramp under a department store. Not being able to reverse, I took the ticket, did a circuit of the carpark, paid for the ticket, and exited. Ten minutes later I did the same thing under the convention centre.

I live in the town’s old precinct, whose roads are blocked with rising bollards for you need a special card to pass over. I had a card, it just didn’t seem to work. Then when it did, it wouldn’t work when exiting the street. Wet, tired, and increasingly far from home, I got out again began to push the car back to the main street. Ali the American had left by this stage, so it was Marianne and me only. And she was steering.

A large dumpster was partly in the way, which in an uncharacteristic moment I kicked in frustration, only to see my shoe fly off and land in the middle of a large puddle. I was now single-handedly pushing a small car back down a one-way street wearing a sodden shoe on the left and a sodden sock on the right. I found myself wondering whether if my housemate had his way, that the dumpster wouldn’t also be open.

The only thing to do was push the car on to the nearest footpath and go home and tell my housemate where to collect it in the morning, not forgetting to ask him to fetch my shoe while he was at it.

Uncles + Saturday = hilarious cultural extremes

Throughout the world, there’s a faultless equation that “Whacky uncles” + “Vehicles” = “Comic Gold”.

In France, they have Jacques Tati. Here is a clip from ‘Mon Oncle’ from 1958.

Just look at those whacky colours on the car!!! Hilarious stuff – this was top-shelf in 1958 – and still surpasses most of the comedy France has produced since, outside of the public service.

Now, here’s Australia’s answer from the 80s, Glenn Robbins as Uncle Arthur.

Come to think of it, Australian comedy hasn’t come much further either.

Given the the precedent, could you blame me when my long-lost (well, seldom seen) Australian uncle rang me out of the blue and invited me to a car show outside of Paris?

I’m hardly the car type – the last time I’d driven one was in Montpellier, 2007. I was driving some friends to a Cat Empire concert in Arles (follow the link for my account of the event). It was night, I was driving at 130km/h on a highway in pouring rain, and I didn’t know how to reverse. Every time we entered a carpark looking for a spot, we all had to get out and push the car back out again.

At the end of the evening, I’d paid for three underground carparking tickets (just in Montpellier! – I wasn’t trying to park, just trying to find the right street home), and kicked a bin out of frustration, which almost broke my toe, and caused my shoe to fly off with comic effect and land in a large puddle.

The car show turned out to be the usual collection of old cars, old men, beige clothes, and lots of fishing vests. Seriously, why do enthusiasts, especially car enthusiasts, like fishing vests? I have enough trouble finding my car keys when I’m just wearing three-pocket jeans.

Nevertheless, i benefited from my uncle’s expertise to learn terms such as “power to weight ratio”, and “carburator”. I also learnt that enamel petrol station signs are a good investment – IF THEY ARE ORIGINAL, but what’s even better, is those crapbox tin-plate toys from the 1930s. Would you believe someone was selling a tin-plate steamer for 14,000 euros?!

Rare luxury cars have apparently not just held their value in recent times, but actually increased. So what’s the difference between investing in cars and investing in paintings?

“You can’t drive a carpaccio,” said my Uncle, later correcting himself to say “Caravaggio”*.

That evening, I was exhausted after a long day traipsing round parts of Paris best left unvisited (there’s a reason Le Bourget exhibition grounds is not as well known as the Eiffel Tower), having done lots of “Looking with the eyes only” (what is it about enthusiasts that makes them so anal about being allowed to touch things??).

My friend Lola’s uncle is a famous contemporary composer called Bruno Ducol. A performance was being held in St Germain to honour his 60th birthday.

It’s hard to imagine a greater cultural schism: I had just spent the afternoon warily avoiding eye contact with men with hair gelled into rockabilly bouffants, and was now in the thick of Paris’ contemporary music scene in the rich and chic 6th arrondisement.

The first thing I realised was that Lola’s uncle bore more than a passing resemblance to Saddam Hussein in his later years.

If not him, then perhaps one of his body doubles (you can tell by the shape of the ears – and Hussein’s body doubles also look a lot less hungover (boom boom *joke!).

The music over the next two hours ranged from cello to percussion, piano to choral, haunting to tedious, and everything in between.

I’ve always found contemporary music one of the harder contemporary arts to get into (I recently cracked contemporary dance – at a performance of two men and 25 remote controlled cars), and this performance wasn’t making it easier.

A standout moment though, was when Bruno’s son performed a percussion solo, pausing to robot move his way across the stage yelling “I want to create, I want to create”. He is a very talented musician and I am a total sucker for percussion (I was dropped on my head as child and I liked the sound of the bounce).

For the finale, the entire front row of the audience jumped on stage and joined in the ceremonial feasting on the body of a less fortunate member of the ensemble, who had been laid out on a table in the middle of the stage.

Still, by the end I felt that my appeciation of the arts  been enriched by the experience. Not only that,  but I’d discovered that not all whacky uncles need vehicles to create moving experiences.

*This didn’t necessarily happen, but I thought it was a nice line.

How I met Marion, and learnt how to ask for fellatio politely…

Meeting Marion

Montpellier 2007: When I first met Marion, she was not really looking for work, and had a comfortable routine of waking up at 15:00, and then meeting friends such as me for multiple coffees. This routine changes a little towards the end of each month while she awaits the new month’s allowance from the government: She still gets up late, but doesn’t have quite as many coffees.

I met Marion by chance the day that I moved into my apartment. I was waiting on the doorstep for Cecile, the buxom young friend of my future housemate, to come with the key, and was reading a book with my feet resting on all my bags. “You looked like a tramp,” Marion later recounted. She had seen me from her window overlooking my doorstop, taken extreme pity on me and promptly invited me up for a coffee. It had obviously been later than 15:00.

Where the hell do I live, then?

From her window I could wait in comfort for Cecile to arrive with the key. I could also see the kitchen of the apartment I was moving into. “It’s a nice one, I think,” said Marion. Through its window I could see the floating kitchen bench. I’d forgotten about that. A warm feeling surged through me. Life here was going to be great!

15 minutes past, and no sign of Cecile. 20 minutes, 25. Where the hell was she? I rang her. “Where the hell was I?” she asked. She was at the doorstep too. But she clearly wasn’t because I was looking directly at it. “What street are you on?” she asked.

As it turns out, Marion lives around the corner from me, and the apartment I moved into was not quite the luxurious penthouse I could look into from Marion’s balcony. I could however see into Marion’s bathroom from my small, dank nooky bedroom, and also from the toilet.

It turned out to be quite practical. If I ever want to see her, and vice versa, we just call to each other through the window. Apparently that’s quite a French thing to do. Mobile phone rates are so expensive here!

Anyway, I digress. I’d invited Marion round for dinner as well as Pam, my American friend. Last night Pam had come around, raging drunk, and we’d had a 1.5 hour ‘debate’ about whether or not Americans would be outraged if they found out that America was buying Uranium from dodgy countries. The only salient point made was that a ‘dodgy’ country could be defined as ‘any landmass lying outside American borders’.

Tonight’s talk was rather lighter. I wanted to talk about why the anchovies I had finally found in Montpellier where the size of sardines once I pulled them out of the jar. I was cooking my favourite pasta sauce – with anchovies, capers, tomatoes and olives, and now with the added crunch of throat-chokingly large fish bones.

What does blow job mean?

Pam, studying linguistics, wanted to talk about why she doesn’t understand half of what I am saying because of my accent, at which point Marion jumped in and said that her level on non-comprehension was in excess of 100 per cent.

“You know the thing is with communication,” I started, about to draw on a vast supply on invented figures and loose facts acquired during 30 minute seminar on customer service at a catering firm I worked at seven years ago, “The thing is that 60 per cent of what we communicate is through our tone and body language, not the actual words.”

“We say that about dogs,” said Marion. “So therefore, when I speak to you, I should speak to you like I’d talk to a dog.”

Marion then wanted to know what ‘giving head’ meant. She speaks good English, and is very attentive when it comes to picking up new slang and colloquial speak. She extrapolated: “So in English, I would say ‘to make someone a fellatio?’”

Now Pam, who speaks French a little better than Marion does English, threw some confusion in to the mix, by wondering what the ‘polite form’ or giving someone a headjob would be in French. “Well, that’s easy,” I said. “Please fellate me.”

Later that night The conversation soon degenerated further as Marion revealed that she has a one of those detachable front teeth. “Can you give someone a headjob through the gap then?” wondered Pam and I aloud.

“No, but one time I’d picked up this guy who was the absolute stud of Montpellier. He slept over at my house, and I woke him in the middle of the night by accident as I was searching for my tooth.

“After patting the mattress beside it, he found it and gave it back. That night turned out to be a one-off.” Pam and Marion left about 10.30.

I stayed in as I was leaving to Rome the next day to meet dad, and needed to pack. I was also flat broke. I showed Marion my newly acquired yellow bicycle as she was leaving. “It’s painted!” she said. “That means it’s probably stolen.” But I no longer cared.

Questionable fashion leaves plenty to reflect upon

When he was 17, my brother made a speech to his class about pick-up lines.

The substance of the speech consisted of “Ladies and Gentlemen” followed by a long list of cheesy lines that would never work, except in the mind of an untested 17-year-old (believe me, I was still trying them at 22 and they still weren’t working).

One line that stood out for its sheer impracticality, was: “Is that a mirror in your pants?”

“What?”

“Because I can see myself in them.”

To which the answer would invariably be: “What? Fuck. Off.”

But I now know this line has come of age.

I know this because I’ve had a heavy week of reflection: namely because everywhere I look, people’s clothes have been looking right back. I’m talking about people wearing mirror balls. People are wearing mirror balls for clothing!

I went to London, and at the bar, a friend of Nick’s was wearing a dress that consisted entirely of mirror pieces. “I’m not coming on to you, but I can see myself in your skirt,” I ventured.

“What? Fuck. Off.”

“No, really. And now I can also see Nick in your skirt,” I added for good measure, and it was true.

Then at work yesterday, I sat down at my desk, only to realise I was sitting opposite to a giant mirror ball! My colleague was wearing a top that consisted entirely of small reflective sequins.

Courtesy of YoYo

I immediately sent out an e-invitation to everyone at the office: Disco, my desk, 12:30.

It was a bold item of clothing, perhaps a little early to be wearing before the year 2080, or at least 10:30am.

“I’ve been eye-raped,” complained the office graphic designer.

“It’s alive!” shrieked the accountant, “Alive!!”

He had mistaken it for the “world’s largest mirror ball,” a 7-metre wide installation that had been suspended 50 metres above the Luxembourg Gardens on the weekend for the Nuit Blanche celebration.

Perhaps more striking than the top, was the fact no-one commented on it*.

When you go out on an extreme, be it with clothing or a haircut, you expect to receive some comments. To receive no comments, is just as bad as to receive bad ones!

And when when the item in question is a sleeve length mirror, then that must be just a little shattering.

*It was much like the other day when an African albino turned up to my house, and I wasn’t quite sure how to “act normal” At the very least, i didn’t cut him into small parts and use him for herbal medicine. In fact, he told me later that he really enjoyed himself.