DEAR THIRTY

I am writing you this letter in advance, as I wish to express my feelings about your impending arrival. Not only are you a very ugly number, but frankly, I am not remotely interested in the maturity nor responsibility you are destined to bring about.

You are but a year away from arriving and I have to get this off my chest before you envelop me and consume my waking thoughts on a daily basis. I do not wish to suffer the next 12 months in agony, referring to you in conversation when discussions of marriage, babies and mortgages arise. In fact, I will state right here and now, with blatant honesty that I feel I am condemned to your arrival already, and have spent many wistful hours finding warranted excuses as to why I should not behave nor conform to the standards and ideals you expect.

Thirty, why do you have to be so boring? You say you aren’t what you used to be – and apparently you are the new twenty. But I have something to tell you Thirty – you are NOT the new Twenty at all – you are the new forty to us Twenty-somethings, and no amount of Carrie Bradshaw-esque referrals will convince us otherwise. Who are you kidding anyway – you know that the entire series of Sex and the City make Carrie look like some tragic under-nourished-cant-find-a-husband fashion victim. Am I expected to applaud this stereotype and jump up and down celebrating your ideals? Not in this lifetime.

And another thing. Why do you demand such an outdated take on life in general. I mean, you preach all positive and gung-ho motivational the-secret-inspired bullshit, but really you’re all about the state of my career, the rapidly declining ability to conceive and the amount of financial commitment I have made. Personally, I think this is a bit bourgeoisie of you Thirty, to think that I should apparently have something to show for my twenty nine prior years. We are not all about material things.

I know this might seem like a personal attack, and well actually, it is. How dare you waltz into my life and actually consume an entire decade, I don’t even offer that level of commitment to my personal sense of style. Look, between me and you Thirty, you’re a bit old for me. I am into youthfulness and spontaneity and lack of commitment. I am a gen y’er for chrissakes, can’t you just allow me the luxury of being self-absorbed for a little bit longer?

I don’t know what I can say from here. But at least I have laid my cards on the table and told you my thoughts. Ideally I think we should end it here. I think it would be best if we avoided each other at all costs. I imagine it might it create a very ugly situation if I were to be out and about meeting new people and you were to arrive and make things awkward. I know you can’t help it, but I just know that you will leave a desperate impression, and that is just not something I am ready to deal with at this point in my life. I appreciate everything that you have tried to offer me. But I have self -respect, dignity, and a somewhat fashionable wardrobe collection, and would prefer to not engage your other offerings of spinster-hood, the onset of wrinkles, and the high probability of needing to wear control top pantihose.

Sincerely,

Twenty Nine.

MIS-SHAPES MIS-STAKES MIS-FITS

-Raised on a diet of broken biscuits-

Mis-shapes, Mistakes Misfits… or so the song goes. The Misshapes – A trio of self-made hipsters from The East Village in SoHo NY – have recently pulled the party plug on their daringly defiant Saturday night rock n roll Dons Hill dance party ‘Misshapes”.

Influencing and being influenced by mass-appeal pop-culture in the form of art, fashion and music for the past five years, the trio consisting of Greg K, Leigh Lezark and Geordan Nichol have hung up their dancing shoes in favour of a life a little more ordinary. Sitting front row at G-star’s Gotham Hall Fashion Show at New York Fashion Week, coursing the runway in House Of Holland’s London Fashion Week show and having a drink with mate Sienna Miller on a Friday night. Yes, life a little more ordinary for some folk is well, extraordinary.

It beguiles me to think about the trio and the philosophy behind their social-darling cum gutter-trash dance parties. One the one hand, they take their name from the highly credible utterances of Pulp’s Jarvis Cocker, but on the other hand, this trio is little more than another self-made-famous phenomenon that possess the ability to market themselves in such a manner that they have become everyday muses for the likes of major fashion houses. Ahem – Sell outs - Ahem. These guys get runs in the New York Times for chrissakes.

While Jarvis Cocker himself writes the foreword to The Misshapes recently released coffee table book/photo-journal, I am still increasingly confused about this so called revolutionary bunch of unknown dance party types that want to identify as being “different”. While, according to all international sources, the elusive “hipster” is now on the list of all things OUT, NOT HOT, and DONT, sadly it seems that an ever-increasing number of so called hipsters are gracing the shores of even the far reaches of the globe, making this world wide phenomenon of being “different” well, very fucking bland and generic by my understanding.

Yes, to some degree I feel a resonance with a group of people who pride themselves on being individual, but I feel an increasing sense of irony even in the use (or overuse) of the word Misshapes. See, this if this trio of cool young cats were so original, you think they might have come up a concept of their own, rather than steal from a popular music icon. Think about it….The Misshapes dance parties were wild, they were down and dirty, and anyone who is anyone in New York has been there – just reference the book’s back cover to know.

But was this really an iconic, lasting success or a flash in the pan group of new-wave-self-mades that pulled the pin at the right time in order to preserve their social standing before they made Vice’s latest DON’T list? To that end, If Mark “The Cobrasnake” Hunter, who often haunted the Misshapen hallways touting his long lens snaps yet another pic of a gamine 18 year old girl with doe eyes and a penchant for oversized and outdated eyewear, I think I am going to vomit.

misshapes.com

"IN THE FUTURE EVERYONE WILL BE WORLD FAMOUS FOR 15 MINTUES"

- Andy Warhol-

If you’re like me and believe that you are destined to have your fifteen minutes, spare a thought for Andy Warhol, he has already had his time and people all over the world still want more.

Born the not-so-cool Andrew Warhola in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Warhol moved to New York in 1949 where he found steady work as a commercial artist creating illustrations for the likes of Vogue, Harpers Bazaar and The New Yorker – not bad for a fresh young Carnegie Institute of Technology Pictorial Design graduate. Ironically, his first major assignment was for Glamour magazine for an article titled “Success is a job in New York”.

Not so it seems for one Andrew Warhola. His midtown Manhattan “Factory” boasted an almost infinite turnstile of comings and goings by some of the worlds greatest musicians, artists and famous-for-being-famous types including Mick Jagger, Bob Dylan, Truman Capote, Allen Ginsberg and Salvador Dali, not to mention the frequent spattering of muse-cum-model visitors like Edie Sedgwick and Anita Pallenberg. It was one long party for Factory guests – a virtual orgy of visual, mental and sexual stimulation. The “Factory” provided a haven for the eccentric, a place where the unlikeliest of people got their 15 minutes of fame.

It was here in the Silver surrounds that Warhol used an enormous variety of mediums including painting, drawing, print, sculpture, photography, film and installation to comment on mainstream America while indignantly dismissing its stubborn social morals. Graphic sexuality, explicit drug use, same-sex and transgender sexual relations and nudity were objectified and celebrated in this radical environment where anything and everything goes.

In the first ever Australian major retrospective, some 300 influential and less recognised pieces of Warhol’s works will be on display at Brisbane’s Gallery of Modern Art (GoMa) from December 8 to March 30. Sure, we’ve been inundated with Warhol tributes of late, and certainly you’re probably sick to death of the Factory Girl film talk, but there really is nothing like standing in front of one of these iconic images to really steal your breath away for a second. Go on, I bet that if you stand there for a moment, you can be transported back to a place where you too can have your fifteen minutes of fame, even if only in your head.

qag.qld.gov.au

DO IT BEFORE YOUR MUM DOES

scis-sors
-noun
1. fashionable pursuits

pa-per
-noun
2. artistic antics

rock
-noun
3. melodic musings

attitude is everything.

bookmarking costs nothing.

do it now.

before your mum does.