Image: Ian Gavan/Getty Images Europe.
Is it an accident that this Michael Jackson waxwork happens to be glaring menacingly at his childhood self? Or is Madame Tussauds making a subtle, yet sophisticated commentary on his numerous, well documented existential crises?
I do hope it’s the latter. Popular culture is so blunt these days.
At 24 years old, Angelina Jolie was picking up an Oscar for her role as disturbed psychiatric patient Lisa Rowe in ‘Girl, Interrupted’. Rumours of self-harm and unhinged decision making followed her like loyal, if irritating, acolytes and these rumours only served to accelerate her journey to the pedestal of iconic female imagery. Back then, young women were starting to feel nauseous from the buckets of sticky sweet Girl Power feminism we were being force fed and were looking for a different kind of empowerment.
One that made room for attempted suicide where appropriate, as long as the harassed protagonist looked absolutely scorching in a pair of lycra shorts seemed like the ideal alternative.
Image via bigissuenorth.
UPDATE: As a result of Sylvia Lancaster’s campaigning, attacks on people pursuing alternative lifestyles will now be treated as hate crimes by Greater Manchester Police.
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Five years ago today, Sophie Lancaster passed away peacefully with her Mum & Dad by her side. It was the smallest of mercies afforded to them, but perhaps one of the most important.
Continue reading “UPDATED Sophie Lancaster: No One’s Victim”
I haven’t collected stickers since Mexico ’86.
This situation, beloved readers, has just changed.
Image: Neil Mockford/FilmMagic.
Despite their assertions to the contrary, it appears that Justin Bieber’s handlers are taking steps to ensure that no further allegations of pot smoking emerge.
Image: Andrew H. Walker/Getty Images North America.
Can there be anything more traumatic than to see a childhood hero in later life and find they fail miserably to live up to expectation?
Continue reading “Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: 20 Years On”
HMV Cheltenham. Without you, I’m nothing.
Call me a child of narrow horizons if you will, but when I was growing up one of my dreams was to work in a record shop. I spent my teenage years playing music, talking about it, buying it and stroking its packaging, so it was fairly obvious that music retail would be a natural fit for me.
It was, but not for the reasons that I imagined. I’m not generally prone to bouts of nostalgia, but news that HMV has gone into administration this morning has made me go all mournful for a period of employment that was supposed to be incidental but actually shaped my life.
I didn’t know that at the time, of course. But then, I was mostly drunk.
Shen Jianzhong does not subscribe to the theory that violence in the movies is much sexier and exciting than in real life.
We know this, because when 50 blokes who had been harassing local residents to sign over their homes to a property developer, turned up on his doorstep and started threatening his wife, he didn’t figure that his idol, legendary martial arts expert and movie star Bruce Lee, would probably have locked the door and called the damned police.
Shen, a fitness instructor who has dedicated 20 years of his life to learning his idol’s techniques, instead applied some hefty movie logic to the situation and set about the thugs with the help of his son. By the time they had finished, the guys who remained on their feet were cowering outside. The less fortunate ones, about seven of them, according to reports, lay in an unconscious and embarrassing heap by the front door.
Their views regarding the relative glamour of movie violence compared to real life have yet to be canvassed, but presumably someone will ask them when they come round.
Maria Santos Gorrostieta. Image via golpepolitico.com.
At another stage in my life, perhaps I would have resigned from what I have, my position, my responsibilities as the leader of my Tiquicheo.
But today, no. It is not possible for me to surrender when I have three children, whom I have to educate by setting an example, and also because of the memory of the man of my life, the father of my three little ones, the one who was able to teach me the value of things and to fight for them.
Maria Santos Gorrostieta made this statement in 2010, days after she was wounded when a vehicle she was travelling in was attacked by a gang of men armed with machine guns. It was the second attempt on her life in just over three months. During the first, her husband was killed.
Continue reading “Maria Santos Gorrostieta: Short Term Memory”
Image: PacificCoastNews.com.
Apart from Skin from Skunk Anansie, that is.
The seventeen years (!) since ‘Paranoid & Sunburnt‘ provided the soundtrack to my summer look to to have had little no influence over her appearance or her attitude to life.
Can’t blame ’em. Too intimidated, probably.
Kelly Welles 