CEMETERY JUNCTION

ricky gervais has my tummy in knots all the time. although this film isn't a straight up comedy, it still provided some pretty fucking brilliant laugh out loud moments. it also didn't hurt that tom hughes and christian cooke are such dreamboats and that i've developed a massive girl crush on felicity jones. but hotties aside, although there are loads of coming of age stories out there, what i really liked about this film is that its neither too saccharine, nor does it dwell too much on youthful angst. it just felt like a really sensitive and honest story about youthful ambition, friendships, love, and family with a pretty killer soundtrack. oh, and tom hughes getting his groove on at a northern soul party will make your pants wet.

COVER

my friend put it best. radiohead covering joy division, is like jesus covering god.

*update* i've just been pointed for my error, it must be revised and say radiohead covering new order is like the virgin mary covering jesus.

KITCHENS

i am obsessed with kitchens. it is the heart of every home after all. considering that my own is far from where i would like it to be, i have developed a habit of scouring the world wide web and saving images and taking notes so that slowly but surely, i can finally be proud of my little, humble kitchen.

true story: my own kitchen is rather small. made even smaller with the behemoth table we had and which had been the bane of my existence ever since i moved in. i figured a restaurant table, like the ones you find on patios would be the perfect size. its big enough to fit a laptop, a plate, and a glass comfortably. however, despite of my genius way of finding stuff on craigslist, i couldn't for the life of me find said table. or if i did, not having a drivers license posed to be quite a problem. a couple of weeks ago i got proper wasted. the kind of wasted where you wake up in your living room wearing the same clothes from the night before and a good three hour memory lapse. i guess the insane amount of alcohol was responsible, but when i woke up, there was a restaurant table chilling in my kitchen from the bar right around my house. i have no idea how i managed to climb the fence and drag that table all the way home, but fuck me, who would've thought i'm that mental when i'm pissed drunk. but i would rather think of it as me taking initiative. so now the kitchen project is right back on track!

p.s. the bar i took the table from closed down that weekend. so really i did them a favor. less stuff for them to haul away. yeah i know, i'm just trying to find a way to rationalize my actions.

GREATEST HITS - NICOLAS GHESQUIERE (BALENCIAGA)

i'll admit that me and ghesquière have been having a little tiff for the past couple of seasons because his collections for balenciaga have been quite, for a lack of a better word, underwhelming. compared to his past collections and my own humble opinion of course. it's still loads better than 95% of the designers out there, but i guess i'm just an old geezer longing for the days when ghesquière wasn't so obsessed about the archives he only got permission to access a few years ago and balenciaga still felt like a little secret and you would never have seen beyonce and her massive thighs in those gold robot leggings and lego sandals.
what i love about ghesquière is his ability to take an idea and stretch it to its very limit. it's very familiar to cristobal balenciaga's own rigorous discipline. everything is so exact, so thought out, that within the context of the collection, its all so very coherent. its quality work! even though drag queens such as beyonce, lady gaga, or rhianna are so quick and eager to jump on the balenciaga bandwagon, they don't do it justice. because let's face facts, it takes someone with a real understanding of fashion that goes beyond its aesthetic values that can pull off ghesquière's creations without looking naff.
well the collections are only a couple of months away and hopefully me and ghesquière can rekindle our love affair. and maybe he should also ban every american pop star from wearing his clothes. its bad enough seeing twinky poofs with lariat bags during pride.

NIKE SAVVAS

nike savvas - atomic: full of love, full of wonder (2005)
remember when you were little and your parents would take you to mcdonalds and then after you've finished your happy meal you'd go ape shit over the ball pool at the playland. well this is like the adult version. i want to play and get tangled in it. hopefully a cheeseburger would also be involved.

THE HOUSE OF GOD

the last time i went to church was probably for my sister's wedding four years ago. come to think of it, the only time i find myself in any church is for someone's wedding. mostly because its rude to skip the ceremony and then get proper wasted from the open bar at the reception later on the evening. but i am fascinated with the architecture of today's modern churches. from le corbusier's church of st. pierre to eero saarinen's mid-century modern masterpieces across the united states. because the church serves such a specific purpose tied with millenniums worth of tradition, it doesn't leave much for open translation. yet somehow, while these new houses of worship have a completely modern appearance, it leaves the same sense of awe that the first person who walked inside the sistine chapel probably felt. minus the neck ache from looking up at michaelangelo's painted pictures on the ceiling. instead of overwhelming the faithful with all the lavish ornamentations, these new buildings achieves it through the purity and harmony of light and space.

POP ART

anyone who knows me knows how much of a nutter i am about factory records. the independent label from manchester who brought us such great bands as joy division, new order, happy mondays, a certain ratio, and the durutti column. while factory defined the sound of post-punk england, one of its founder and resident in-house designer peter saville inadvertently helped define the future of graphic design. his cover for joy division's debut album unknown pleasures depicting a diagram of a collapsing star has become one of the most iconic images in popular culture. and his groundbreaking sleeve for the highest selling single of all time, blue monday by new order, actually lost money every time a record was sold because its complicated floppy disc shaped cover was so expensive to produce. his work quite literally helped create the visual language of contemporary pop music. now that every tom, dick and harry have taken to pirating music off the world wide web instead of going to record shops, its quite sad to realize that the art of album covers that managed to extend its life through cds feels to be on its final ebb.