Pintless Musing To The Nth Degree

Since I seem to be a little Potterised this month (apologies for the long absence, this place has occupied the better part of the last week and it's too addictive to stay away from so posting will be sporadic till I've managed to convince nearly everyone there that the series isn't antifeminist), it isn't really surprising that my first thoughts on seeing the picture on the right on Style Bites were 'Ack! House-themed jewellery!'. And the place they came from turned out to be named, of all things, Gigi Caron- effectively establishing a connection to not one, but two great literary loves of mine. Despite the fact that I'm really not very fond of things of the bijoux persuasion, I'm a sucker for quirky names- and even though I'd probably end up throttling myself with the chain of the Gryffindor (sorry, it's called something else but the lion on the locket looks like a dead spit of the one on the house crest, only facing a different direction) pendant and would probably never wear it, they're still quite cool to look at.
EDIT: I just realised, I'd qualify for execution by Lynne Truss for the title of this post, but it seems to be a bit of a Freudian slip and a true one, to boot. I'll just leave it up so visitors can laugh at my pathetic spelling skills.

Squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

It's utterly geeky and in no way cool AT ALL, but I couldn't not mark this date. It's not very often that anything makes me want to cheer at the narration of events of which I approve (Fred and George's final, wonderful escape from Hogwarts after stirring open insurrection against Umbridge...with fireworks!), get goosebumps all over as I realise just how the tiny tiny bits of the puzzle all fit together (in eight years, Harry realising just who his Patronus was in PoA has never failed to make me slightly sniffly), and uncoolest of all, cry when someone I've loved despite their complete nonexistence in real life, dies. It's officially the end of possibly the greatest pop-culture phenomenon of my youth- even if, to me, it's a lot more than that- and it feels a little like standing on a pier waving a white hankie at it while it goes. And to the barmy old coots who grudge me my pleasure in a good read and tell me to read Beowulf instead, I say this proudly- I love this story. If you can't deal with that fact, you deserve to be told, as I tell you now, to go stuff yourselves.
P.S. No spoilers in my commentspace, please.

A Revision Of Opinion

I know Hilary Rhoda is supposed to be the new Brooke Shields a.k.a. Eyebrow Queen and all that, but methinks Behati Prinsloo looks well and truly awesome with hers.
To be absolutely frank, eyebrows and I have a strange relationship, which mainly consisted (and still does) of me hiding them under my fringe the way pre-Victorian unwed mothers used to hide their baby bumps under voluminous dresses and crushing stays, to the mental tune of I Really Wish It/They Weren't Visible Since It's Socially Unacceptable To Be In This State (pick: unwed and pregnant back then/bushy-browed in the late 90s and the approximately five years that followed): they're strong black caterpillary lines that just about avoid being a monobrow* and got me teased aplenty at school when they were visible. And given that there's that much of them, getting them shaped is a royal pain** and most of the time I was just dead scared I'd end up like the classmate who got her eyebrows threaded so often and so drastically that she ended up with a patch of blue skin around the outlines of her ultimately very skinny eyebrows where the little bitty hairs should have been. So basically, I'm rather glad I have them, even if me with visible eyebrows= not pretty. Though I'd love to test the bold black eyebrow line as seen at Dior Couture SS07 sometime, I have no idea what to do with an eyebrow pencil- I didn't quite get the concept of wanting thicker and darker eyebrows than the ones that come au naturel till maybe two years back and am still too scared to go to the threader's, so it'll be just me and my tweezers and a lot of fringe till then..
*see Gallagher, Noel.
**literally.

Fly Away? I Wish.

I don't know what exactly it is, whether it's the general buzz of the one-week countdown to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows combined with the fifth movie being out at the same time, but fictional characters seem to be all I can think about lately. And somehow everything in the world is conspiring to remind me that pop-culturally, I am a child of the mid and late 90s and they were a long time ago, in a city that is now far, far away*.

I kind of think Moulin Rouge sucked, mainly because I'm probably far too used to the Bollywoody garble model Baz Luhrmann based it on to really find anything novel in the format, but he (or rather his wife, Catherine Martin) did have an excellent handle on the costumes, which were lush and OTT enough to make John Galliano proud. And I know the Shakespeare purists will probably want to disembowel me with a hot poker for making the following statement, but I honestly do think Romeo+Juliet was much better evidence of genius than anything else the man (Luhrmann, not Shakespeare) made. I can't think of too many other film adaptations of literary works that have done a better job of nailing the spirit of the original (I'd place The Virgin Suicides in the same league, but it's much more literal and I'm a bit of a Coppola fangirl) and it's really quite amazing to watch Claire Danes playing Juliet, not least because I'm madly in love with her costume from the Capulets' ball. And oh, for the love of those angel wings...they're so potentially absurd but utterly lovely on her. I think if I ever have a wedding I'm going to ditch the veil and wear wings instead (not that I want to get married- but the idea of a nice, fun wedding sans bridegroom could be an excellent one: cake, gorgeous dress that'd look absurd at any other time of life, lots of friends around and everyone giving you presents- what's not to like?). Even a pair of pretty pleated appendages like Ms Stam wore at Balmain wouldn't be unwelcome. There's something just whimsical about the entire effect, and somehow it doesn't look like the costume designer was on acid when she picked them out. Plus, imagine how they'd look going down a city street..

*There was stuff by Oasis and No Doubt, among others, playing on VH1's Classics Hour. And that was three years back.
On a side note, does anyone else think that Behati Prinsloo looks quite a lot like Claire Danes? The way Claire looked ten years ago, I mean.

Random Musing 1, Completely Unrelated To Fashion.

I don't take well to rum at all. The stuff inevitably makes me want to puke, possibly as a side effect of the sugar it's made of, and the smell just isn't one of my favourite things, to the extent that I can't even ingest a simple rum and coke without feeling queasy. The only way I like it is as a babushka (see recipe, somewhere below).

Neither, for that matter, do I like feeling grubby or unwashed. Or people who look as if they might smell like they are. Looking like that around the time we have to submit assignments or give exams is forgivable, though.

I'm also mildly ambivalent about boats: I do not take to water like a fish of any description except possibly the mudskipper, which as far as I know is amphibious.

So it's all very well Captain Jack Sparrow is fictional, because I can't even imagine what it would be like to fancy a real-life person like that when the fictional one, according to the person who portrays him, is partly based on a cartoon skunk. I'm just an utter sucker for swordfights (including those of the lightsabre variety), added to the fact that he's mostly batty- or at least seems it. And I kind of want a Pirates of the Caribbean 4 to watch sometime.

Vive La Luna!

It's July 2007. The 8th of July 2007, to be exact, which means that less than two weeks separate me and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. That statement might sound mildly psychotic along with the rest of this post but bear with me, please. I'd planned a Potterpost that was a whole lot more tangentially related to the series than this one about another actress from a previous film, but it's very strange to be faced with photographic evidence that they're really not little kids anymore (they haven't been for a while now, but it still takes some getting used to). And Katie Leung and Emma Watson look very, very pretty and comfy in their dresses even if the garments in question are nothing unconventional along the lines of Sevigny/Dunst, they're very young and what they've got on still has enough going on to be interesting- which is astonishing considering the fact that Emma's dress is by Chanel, which usually = good perfume, boring black and tweed jackets (at least as far as I've known). And neither of them looks fake tanned, which I suppose anyone should be grateful for.

But the real surprise comes to me in the form of young Evanna Lynch (far left), whose slightly hippie (thanks to the hair)-meets-grandpa (thanks to those pants and the belt) getup I'd have dismissed at a glance as annoying scenesterness if it wasn't for the fact that she looks so utterly at ease in it. And also because of the hair, which is hair right after my own heart. You can't possibly be half-assed about that look with that hair, which I know because my own used to be that long (longer, in fact) and wavy to boot and maintaining it was, pardon my language, an utter bitch. The above assortment of clothes is just the dead spit of what I imagine Luna Lovegood would wear if she were a Muggle teenager, plus I'd be willing to bet money that no stylist put her look together- and the final product somehow seems much more interesting than if she'd shown up in a dress and heels. I know gossip blogs will be all over her for daring to look scruffy at a photocall (Go Fug Yourself had hilarious things to say about both sets of outfits), but I'd pat her on the back (or applaud, at any rate) if I met her- this brand of dottiness is something I don't often get to see, and something tells me it's all her own.
On a side note, I really do like Katie's purple tights.

(pictures from Go Fug Yourself)

I Am Not A Babushka. Ergo, I Don't Like Them.

So Style.com says babushkas are the best new headgear around....which I'm finding just a wee bit difficult to digest, since they remind me rather unpleasantly of the headscarves I used to wear to church. And from years of experience with the blasted things, I can confidently state that they are the most unflattering bits of cloth of all time if worn the normal way, which covered all my hair, knotted under my chin and ended up making me look a little like Moon-Face from Enid Blyton's Faraway Tree stories. And since chic is anyway not a word that can be used to describe me, I don't care to have it brought into my cupboard via this.

It's odd, really. I have no objections to any other forms of head coverings, with the possible exception of baseball caps because my outsize skull and mad hair have yet to fit under any baseball cap ever made. I adore hats and hairbands of all descriptions, and the headscarf-as-hairband trend was something I had quite a lot of fun with on bad hair days. But this I just don't like, in a way I'd describe as visceral if I were of a literary bent of mind. And it's not even as if the wearing- scarf- like- hood- and letting- hair-peek-out thing can work for me, if I know my babushkas they'd just slip right off and then where would we be?

There's only one kind of babushka I do like...ingredients being as follows

1) small quantity of rum/vodka/gin/brandy (choose one)

2) 1 bottlecap

3) Matchbox and matchsticks

HOW TO MAKE IT

1. Pour alcohol into the bottlecap, taking care not to spill any over the sides (this is important). You don't have to fill the bottlecap completely, though.

2. Light a match.

3. Touch the flame to the stuff in the bottlecap, WITHOUT bringing the head of the matchstick in contact with it.

4. As soon as you see a flame appear over the alcohol, pick up the bottlecap and down it in one. It won't burn you, and it won't burn your fingers if you haven't spilled the stuff.

Apologies to anyone who's underage and reading the above...I do not intend to corrupt you.