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Don't forget Harry, Sally and the cold hard Mexican ceramic tile.
The Value of Bedrooms
One of the 2008 Cialis commercials portrayed the danger of dropping everything else in order to enjoy impromptu sex at home. A recent series of Cialis ads has featured domestic places like kitchen islands beginning to overflow with water and then the whole kitchen transforming into a t...
Good points, Louis! There are actually three train stations in Versailles including Versailles Rive Droite; it's a big town. I agree that tourists are always confused. Probably the best thing to do would be to rename Versailles-RG to "Château de Versailles."
paris rapid transit: the four levels of nomenclature
A continuation of this post. The core branding idea of the Paris RER is a really powerful one. Here's how it used to be presented, as a consistent citywide product (click to enlarge; full-size map here): Focus on the red line, Line A. Its a single line across the center of Paris with branc...
Out of curiosity, any reason why this couldn't/shouldn't have been done with rail?
brisbane: a tour of the south east busway
A basic duty of transit consultants like me is to show each city what other cities are doing, and help cities figure out which of those models are right for them. For example, most people have never seen Bus Rapid Transit done in a way that provides the complete "rapid-transit" experience that...
The French use the word correspondance. In New York, transit announcements make a distinction between free transfers (from one subway line to another, or from subway to MTA bus) and connections to other systems that require additional payment. For example, "This is 34th Street, Herald Square. Transfer is available to the B, D, F, V, Q and R trains. Connection is available to the PATH trains." But in everyday conversation, most people just seem to use change.
unhelpful word watch: to transfer
It is a fact of geometry that a great transit system, one that provides frequent service from everywhere to everywhere within a city, often requires people to get off one vehicle and onto another. The transfer, in short, is an inconvenient but necessary part of the transit product, and is thus ...
It may not have been as glamorous, but I liked Fat March:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat_March
Sadly, the full-episode streaming HD videos are no longer being hosted by ABC.
Ruby Big Hit for Style
Style Network has an unexpected hit in Ruby, the story of a 457 lb. woman and her journey through weight loss. The series debuted on Sunday with 545,00 viewers, making it the the network's highest-rated series debut ever. Ruby Gettinger the star of the series, is a genuine Southern charmer....
Tony, fashion mags don't have the form of pornography, they have the substance of it.
Quotable: Elizabeth Wilson on Fashion Photography
“The great promise of photography was that it would tell the ‘truth’. Yet the ‘truth’ of photography is only a more convincing illusion, selection and artifice lurking behind the seemingly impartiality of the mechanical eye. Fashion drawings often give more accurate information, yet it is the...
So when was the last time the Manolo visited Hoboken? Glamour is in the eye of the beholder, and just as there are still people who find Britney Spears glamorous, there are lots who find Hoboken glamorous.
DG Q&A: Manolo the Shoeblogger
This week, DG is honored that to have the brilliant, witty, and mysterious Manolo the Shoeblogger answer our "wickedly hard set of questions." As his answers suggest, The Manolo (who is not Maestro Manolo Blahnik) is not just a very funny shoe lover and blogging tycoon but an erudite intellect...
I've learned to enjoy letting myself go, which is one of the reasons I don't cross-dress as much as I used to. Because if I start letting myself go as a woman, it stops being fantasy, glamour, escape, and it's just life. I figured out that "just life" is much more comfortable without having to wear awkward padding or clothes made for a different body shape, or to hide away parts of myself.
Thanks for the thoughtful post, and for a couple of links that I hadn't seen yet. I have the latest Atlantic, but I haven't gotten to it.
Boy's Life, Man's World, Ladies' Night: Transgender Tranformations
For most of us, trying on a a new identity is limited to fancy dress parties and Halloween. Masquerading as a pirate, a naughty nurse, or celebrity du jour (how many Sarah Palins will roam West Hollywood next week?) is fun, a little excursion into the land of what might have been had things b...
Here's my other link, without the parenthesis:
http://transblog.grieve-smith.com/?p=8
"Terror Is Glamour" (Originally posted 9/11/2008)
In 2006, Salman Rushdie gave an interview to Der Spiegel in which he was asked about the causes of terrorism. After first demurring, he suggested a few: "a misconceived sense of mission," a "herd mentality," the desire to become "a historic figure," an attraction to violence, and--shocking the i...
Thanks for your reply, Kate! The 404 error comes from the TypePad software adding the parenthesis to the end of the URL; if you take it off you can see the page:
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2002/11/46888.html
I came to the idea of despair based on Virginia's characterization of glamour as a means of escape. If you're trying to escape through a fantasy you have to be pretty desperate, right? That's the sense of "despair" that I mean - a feeling of being trapped and having no options left.
I think that glamour may provide some comfort to people who are desperate, but it's pretty cold comfort, and I think that's why so many "stars" turn to drugs.
In thinking about glamour, escape and despair, what came to mind this morning after I read your message was the movie Brazil. In my reading, it's about a man looking for love, but mostly finding just greed and brutality covered with a thin veneer of glamour. I think it's particularly clear in the final sequence.
"Terror Is Glamour" (Originally posted 9/11/2008)
In 2006, Salman Rushdie gave an interview to Der Spiegel in which he was asked about the causes of terrorism. After first demurring, he suggested a few: "a misconceived sense of mission," a "herd mentality," the desire to become "a historic figure," an attraction to violence, and--shocking the i...
I guess there are only two ways to puncture glamour: comedy and tragedy. Is the question what kind of comedy and tragedy? Some kind that potential terrorists would be open to.
"Who in Iraq is going to think it's funny to poke fun at Saddam's mustache," the student notes, "when the vast majority of Iraqi men themselves have mustaches?" (http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2002/11/46888.html)
We've got to do better than that.
As I wrote about glamour and transgenderism (http://transblog.grieve-smith.com/?p=8), I think that susceptibility to glamour is only a symptom of a problem, and that problem is despair. Fix the despair and no one will be interested in the glamour. Of course, that's a much more difficult problem.
"Terror Is Glamour" (Originally posted 9/11/2008)
In 2006, Salman Rushdie gave an interview to Der Spiegel in which he was asked about the causes of terrorism. After first demurring, he suggested a few: "a misconceived sense of mission," a "herd mentality," the desire to become "a historic figure," an attraction to violence, and--shocking the i...
Very interesting discussion about glamour and horror. It clarifies the appeal of "tranny fatale" movies. I've blogged about it here:
http://transblog.grieve-smith.com/?p=66
From Glamour to Horror
In an astute comment on my post on horror versus humor in McCain's "The One" ad, Jens Fiederer writes, "I don't think horror diminishes glamor, horror is a glamor of its own. Watch some vampire films if you doubt that. If this ad is supposed to evoke horror..., it works WITH the glamor to paint ...
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