This morning over bircher muesli in a local caf, my hubz became quite unfortunately mesmerized by a lady at a neighbouring table’s impressive cleavage bursting forth from her wrap-top like snakes in a can. He swears he wasn’t ogling or being a perve, with eyes remaining stuck for just a moment, dazzled kangaroo-like in headlights, bewitched by the breasts. Unfortunately, the lady who belonged to those breasts picked up on his burning gaze, glared furiously, and it was an awkward moment. Look, we’ve all been there, somehow, some way.
Anyhoo, this isn’t an outing or shaming of my husband’s perviness, nay, it just reminded me of this super clip featuring Russ Meyer imagery cut together with a caveman theme.
Workplace warning: loads and loads and loads of jiggling bare boobage.
Last night, we all went to see The Jesus and Mary Chain.
Standing up the back, I held onto the twins in my belly, wondering if they were digging the fuzzy-wuzzy jingly-jangly hurdy-gurdy guitars. Were they thinking (together):
“WOW! We are the coolest kids in town just by the very act of being here and hearing this!”
… like I thought about myself, 19 years ago, in my living room, the first time I saw a Jesus and Mary Chain special on Rage and was in disbelief at the awesomeness that I was certain must have surely been rubbing off on me, too. Like jingly-jangly osmosis.
So last night, I sang along faithfully, cos I knows all the words, and hummed the tunes and bobbed about, minimally. Technically, the performance was faultless. Yet, with the raptures falling well short of what I once felt, back in that living room decorated in the grey and peach soft furnishings inherent to 1989, I finally decided that I much prefer my nostalgia in a can.
And so follows a few vids featuring bird’s nest hairdos and pointy boots.
There’s nothing quite like an end of year round up, so like the veritable Wonder-Woman-lasso-meets-sheep-dog-from-the-hit-animatronic-film-Babe that I am, I’ve fetched and bundled you the No More Blank Tapes archive, vol. 2.
Back in April, when I presented the No More Blank Tapes archive, vol. 1, I had industriously collected 21 themes over 2 and a 1/2 months. Here, in volume 2, I present 11 themes lackadaisically collected over 8 months. Depending on what aspect of my life you’re looking at, that either equals a productivity slump (on You Tube) or boom (in real life). Either way, there’s always a positive out there. Go put your tongue on a 9 v battery and feel that crazy tingle if you don’t believe me.
Over the past week, I’ve been bailing my friends up in bars and droning on about things like window furnishings: curtains? Venetians? Or dare to go bare? I’ve been wondering, at length. Indeed, are venetians only viable if there’s sleazy sax and a hot sex scene in order? Are curtains better if they’re ‘billowing’? Is it fine to forget window furnishings all together, but be keenly aware there might be some dude standing outside looking in at me looking out at him, all the while wearing a t-shirt with a picture my face on it?
And, with all those questions sending my mind ablaze (but not the curtains, thankfully), so follows a few vids featuring window furnishings (or not):
Sans window furnishings
Pyramid – Love of Diagrams
Includes airconditioner.
London in love – I heart Hiroshima
Bamboo roll-down awnings on leftmost window.
Every day is like Sunday – Morrissey
French windows.
Mad world – Tears for Fears
French windows again.
The Killing Moon – Echo and the Bunnymen
More French windows.
Dig for fire – Pixies
A bit glary, could do with a soft net to diffuse the light.
British mode – Goose
Big pretend window, could be a contender as the fourth ‘oblong’ window on Play School. (When given the choice, I always chose the ‘arch’ window over ‘square’ and ‘round’, primarily because I was a steadfastly alternative preschooler.)
Curtains
Reformation – The Fall
Reformation is my favourite video in a long time.
Lullaby – The Cure
Creep-tastic curtains.
It’s the beat – Simian Mobile Disco
Cartoony curtains.
Heart-shaped box – Nirvana
Curtains in hospital.
Venetian blinds a.k.a. The 1980s music video window furnishing of choice
To look at you – INXS
Dancing with myself – Billy Idol
Kids in America – Kim Wilde
Careless whisper – George Michael
Venetian blinds as eyewear Stronger – Kanye West
Venetian-blind like louvre shutters
Save a prayer – Duran Duran
And finally, just because I’m thinking about floor furnishings as well, as a bonus:
Flokati rug
Hands remember – Seabear
This living, breathing flokati rug in all its grubby filth-harbouring hideous glory is precisely why I will never ever have a flokati rug in my house.
(P.S. Seabear make truly lovely videos, but I can’t set a theme around every single one of them. Go search em yourself on You Tube, why don’t ya?)
When I was a young girl, fond of Barbie, Skipper and (begrudgingly) Ken; Strawberry Shortcake; and My Little Pony (particularly for the “hair”, which, incidentally, Ken disappointingly lacked), I thought it’d be wild once I abandoned such folly of saccharine-hued Mattel-dom to some day become a High Powered Executive, largely for all the:
a) Money
and
b) Way-cool paraphernalia one could display upon their desk. These trophies of the High Powered Executive symbolizing momentum, viz: click-clacking kinetic balls (again, which Ken disappointingly lacked), dizzyingly diving dolphins, tumbling clowns, and Hellraiser-esque beds of pins that meld to the shape of the High Powered Executives despairing cubical-fevered fez.
In fact, by the early-mid 90s, when Geek met Geekette and my then-future huz and I had united, we both spent a lot of time in stores like The Sharper Image, looking for stuff we’d buy for our desks, if only we one day had jobs. Awwww!
HIGHLY ILLUMINATING CAPTION: Michael Douglas (pointing thattaway with what appears to be a cigarette or nub of Play Doh between his fingers. Both still legal in office spaces in 1987) stars as Gordon Gecko in the hit film Wall Street. To not illustrate my point, there are no desk toys here whatsoever, but Chairman Gecko does have resting upon an occasional table something that resembles a Sunbeam waffle iron. Behold!
SOMEHOW, this was all supposed to end with me talking about ‘momentum’, and inventing an on-the-spot homily that will rock your world, viz:
Moving forward is better than moving backward and moving backward is better than not moving at all, aiight.
And so follows a few vids featuring momentum (which, abandoning its correct definition in terms of physics, I’m hereby loosely interpreting as “moving forward”).
Plaster casts of everything– Liars
Yadnus– !!!
Black gloves– Goose
I used to dance with my daddy– Datarock
Milkshake – Holy Fuck
Okay, even “momentum as moving forward” is very loosely adopted here. Hell, I just wanted to include a vid featuring the wildness that is a scuba-diving cartoon raccoon.
In much the same way that romance can find rapid fecundity with candlelight, cataracts, and, at a push, a brown paper bag, few things speaketh ‘grim reality’ than a mirror’s reflection back lit by fluorescent light.
Flicker. Flicker.
Bzz-zzzzt.
And so follows a few vids featuring a fluorescent light tube or few.
Tonto – Battles
Grinderman – Grinderman
The pretender – Foo Fighters
Lightsabre cocksucking blues –Mclusky
So maybe I tricked you. No actual light tube here, but I loves them kittens.
Stronger – Kanye West
I’ve walked down that exact same light-lit staircase the hot chick walks down at A Bathing Ape in Tokyo. And there, alas, our similarity ends. Boys in town – Divinyls
You know, I’ve oft been disappointed that I’ve never had a real opportunity to wear a boiler suit.
Furthermore, I’ve oft been disappointed that I’ve never had a real opportunity to wear an inflatable boiler suit in the likeness of Bibendum (or, for those of you who can’t speak French, “The Michelin Man”).
Furthermore to that furthermore, I’ve oft been disappointed that I’ve never been invited to a Bibendum party, whereby all invitees gather together and form a particularly low-impact mosh pit.
True, maybe no one has ever come up with this great idea for an inflatable-boiler-suit-mosh-pit-Michelin-Man party, aside from myself, but it still burns, disappointingly, to not be invited.
The only burning question I’m left with is: if I was invited, and if there was a party, what would we Les Bibendums mosh to?
With that preposition dangling along with my many disappointments, here follows a few vids featuring boiler suits.
Parties are totally rad. Even bad parties. Yes, I like parties a lot. Especially super-exclusive ones involving just me and a man named Timmy who can dance like Shakira.
So, like it says in the heading: here follows a few vids featuring a party.
We are your friends – Justice vs Simian
In the old narrative device of having the end at the beginning, here is the end at the beginning. For those unfamiliar, that means you find out from the outset that, by the roll of the credits, the champion racehorse is going to be dead as a doornail, and THAT’S how come he’s stuffed in a glass case at the Melbourne Museum (see 1983 film Phar Lap). And so we have the party aftermath. No stuffed racehorses.
TV party – Black Flag
TV = party.
Fight for your right – Beastie Boys
Folks out of town for the night = party.
24 hour party people – Happy Mondays
More than one person in your car = party.
1979 – Smashing Pumpkins
Rolling down a hill in a big tyre = party.
100% – Sonic Youth
Sonic Youth in the rumpus room = party. Do you want to? – Franz Ferdinand
Free booze served up on a silver platter = party.
Come together – Primal Scream
Balloons = party.
Oh Errol – Australian Crawl
Lots of bodies drinking champagne in a Jacuzzi = oh-so dodgy party.
In wintry old Melbourne it’s getting harder and harder to drag myself out of bed in the mornings. So much so, that I’m thinking of pimpin’ my ride out to work Bedknobs and Broomsticks style.
Wheeeeee!
So put on some mittens, toast some marshmallows, and set your hair on fire, cos here follows a few vids featuring a nippy bite to the air.
You might remember the entry of yore ‘Vids featuring dancing and posturing round a white-ish room’. Well, like ebony is to ivory, living together in perfect harmony, here you have a whole lot of vids featuring posturing and dancing round a black-ish room.
Primary – The Cure
My all-time favourite Cure song. Ever. Other than Shiver and shake which is an excellent way to brood upon and exalt from really bad moods. If you wanted to know.
Jealous girls – The Gossip
Also featuring venetian blinds. Good for making black-ish rooms blacker.
Going nowhere – Cut Copy
Curious diegetic cross-over here – a dancing one-man audience is in a white room, while the band is in a black room. And all in a single yin-and-yang shot. Wildness.
No secrets – The Angels
Need you tonight – INXS
For those interested, I can do every one of Michael Hutchence’s moves in this clip. In 1991, at an INXS X-Factor Tour concert at Memorial Drive, Adelaide, I catapulted myself to the second row by terrifying everyone around me with my abject 15-year-old MICHAEL, I LOVE YOU! I LOVE YOU! I LOVE YOU! hysteria. On that momentous day (April 14) I’m absolutely positive we locked eyes after he did one of those spinny-aroundy things. I screamed, wailed, and flailed in response. Oh, Michael.
That ain’t bad – Ratcat
At the aforementioned concert, Ratcat were the support.
Turn into – Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Here the white turns into black turns into kinda technicolour. Which isn’t really black at all.
