Miss Nonchalant Daisy

Princess Daisy (as she is occasionally known) has expensive tastes.

Carnivale

I've become addicted to box sets - curse those HBO people for making damn fine TV. I started watching Six Feet Under before Christmas, and recently finished the final series (six). I felt bereft without the Fisher and Diaz family. So to fill the gap, I heard about 'Carnivale'. It had a fabulous old Americana 'washed out colour' sort of feel to it. And, although it is not the most gripping series, there is a certain charm to it, you care about the characters, and the visual aspect to it is wonderful. I can't wait for series two!

Truffles - ymmm

I love cute food stuffs (see previous posts about pretty cakes), and I came across these babies.

You can buy them here http://www.sailorjerry.com/detail.php?i=741&more=359

Zaha Hadid exhibition at Design Museum

And these are a few of my favourite things...(from 2007)

Here's my Top 5 lists of some fab things about 2007.

Films
1. The science of sleep
2. The last king of Scotland
3. The lives of others
4. 2 days in paris
5. Eagle vs shark / Pan’s Labyrinth

This year was a great for little indie films. I think we saw most of the films in Jan/Feb, and found the rest of the year didn’t have anything better to offer.

Music
1. UNKLE – War Stories
2. Raising Sand – Robert Plant & Alison Krauss
3. Bjork - Volta
4. Rufus Wainwright – Release the Stars

I found I haven’t really listened to a lot of new music this year, hence I can’t even think of a 5th album. The UNKLE album was a bit of a grower, and the last two had sparkling moments, but certainly weren’t great albums. The only thing that really knocked me out was the production on the Robert & Alison album. T Bone Burnett has done a cracking job (Gone, gone gone and Rich Woman are fabulous).
For 2008 I’m really looking forward to new albums by Portishead, Isobel and Mark Lanegan, Madonna and Courtney Love.

Food
1. Café Meitreya
2. Teoh’s
3. Pieminster

Books/Magazines
1. Bust
2. Fingerprint – the art of using handmade elements
3. Design it yourself – ellen lupton
4. The crafter culture – amy spencer
5. Fashion market 1 (Japanese book about London indie crafty businesses)
6. Craft Magazine – a cute A5 US publication. It even had an article on Phranc (lesbian folk artist from the 80’s) who makes everyday objects out of paper (shirts, boots).

Gigs
1. Bjork doing ‘declare independence’ at Glastonbury with all the flags waving.
2. Jarvis Cocker – Electric Picnic singing ‘boys are back in town’ to Phil Lynott’s home crowd.
3. Gossip – Glastonbury. This was the final gig of the whole Standing in mud all day and Beth Ditto showing us how amazing her voice is, and stage diving into the crowd.
4. Courtney Love’s birthday gig – mad, bad and dangerous to encounter.
5. Portishead’s acoustic thing at Mr Wolf and them doing new songs at Butlins.
6. Beastie Boys doing ‘Sabotage’ twice at their multi-gigged time at the Electric Picnic in Ireland.

RIP
Miss Isabella Blow (the fashion business is a poorer place without your eccentricity)

(c) David Lachapelle

Which modern bombshell am I?

You Are Most Like Liv Tyler

“I don't want to spend so much time obsessing about myself.”

What Modern Bombshell Are You Most Like?

Boo Hiss to the rain

Here at pooch villas, we don't like the cold and the rain. So we're staying in our duvets. In Daisy's case - literally in the duvet.

Electric Picnic - Ireland

I apologise profusely for slacking on the blog front. It's been a very busy September, and I realised I didn't get to share my experience of the wonderful Electric Picnic festival which was just outside of Dublin (it's the one I went to last year).

It's a much happier festival than Glastonbury, and the quality of the bands they get always amazes me. Lost Vagueness appear, and this year they had a mini graphics festival with some of my favourite graphicy-designery people giving talks (Ben Drury, Tim Biskup, Jon Burgerman). Here's a taster of the festival in picture format.

The wonderfully smiley Jon Burgerman drawing me in cartoon form!

Lost Vagueness
The very colourful and wonderful Ms Bjork

Beastie Girl
And Beastie Boys!
UNKLE

Just a happy pic of Miss Daisy

This was taken on one of the few days of sunny summerness this year.



For the rest of the time she took to driving.

Rock 'n' Roll!!!!

You know sometimes you see something and think... I really should've designed that or written it. Well this is today's one. A t-shirt designed by (the like minded) Julie Maier, who is probably a Virgo too.

And if you want to buy it, you can get it from the wonderful t-shirt company Threadless.

Sooo Jealous.

Courtney Love - Secret Birthday Gig

Wow, what a month - Glasto, now Miss Courtney Love. Like Marmite, I think you love her or hate her, and I'm sure you can guess which camp I fall into.

I received an email out of the blue regarding this gig, and due to less than a weeks notice, I was unsure whether to go or not. I tracked down some tickets and headed London bound! Later I found out it was the day of her birthday and she was playing to 350 people, in a gorgeous hall with chandeliers and lots of swirls of plaster.

I met some great people before hand, which made the evening all the more fun (including a painter who is currently exhibiting at the Saatchi Gallery). When she arrived we all sang Happy Birthday, and she was rather impressed by the turn out and bon homie.

Some of her fans bought gorgeous bunches of flowers, presents from French patisserie house ‘Laudree’ (colourful expensive macaroons) - which she later gave out to her band, and the audience….and they were delicious. And standing by the side of the stage was my favourite mullet-boy Noel Fielding from the Boosh! I smiled at him, and he smiled back. Well you would….wouldn’t you?

She is one of the last 'rock-stars' of the music scene before it all started to head towards ‘downloads’ and ‘myspace’ and bands could that could headline Glastonbury, but you certainly wouldn’t recognise them if you bumped into them in Asda. She’s old-school, still hard-core, mad, bad and dangerous to encounter, and I’m still pleased she’s still around.

My Glastonbury

Post-Pop-Punk. It’s the Polysics!

On a good friends recommendation I went to see the Polysics. A Japanese band that have been around for 10 years, and obviously have a devoted fan base judging by a few of the fans at the gig – one young lady had the same orange boiler suit as the band, complete with band logos.

They were supported by Munch Munch (who I’m going to skip past, because they were quite dull), and a mad trio called Gay against You. The energy, the white outfits and the leaping through the audience thrusting microphones into audience members armpits. They were insane, extremely energetic but quite endearing. Just what you need in a tiny 150 capacity back room of a pub on a hot and sweaty night, and you left that room with a big smile on your face.

And the night got even better when the Polysics did their thing onstage. Hugely influenced by Devo, with bags of energy, recorder playing madness and pom pom thrusting. And they did a fab version of ‘My Sharona’. Also the bassist was superfab who has to be the inspiration for Noodle from the Gorillaz.

These last two pictures are the support band, Gay against You.

Rufus the Fabulous

Jedi School and Life on Mars

It's not often you get the chance to go to Jedi School to learn the ways of the ‘force’, so I thought, why not, well you would. Wouldn’t you?

It was part of the Star Wars exhibition, and the ‘school’ was held in an old court room at Westminster County Hall (complete with lots of leather and wood upholstery). It was hard to tell who was more excited to be a 'padwan', the parents or the kids. Unfortunately for us original fans, they only picked 6 kids. But it was a lot of fun, and the sight of Darth Vadar looming from the smoke can still put the fear of god into you.

On the same day, while I was trying to get to Liberty in Regent Street, I witnessed some Starsky and Hutch style driving from DCI Gene Hunt from Life in Mars in a Cortina, delivering Graham Norton to the BAFTAS. (please see photo). London’s all go, isn’t it.

I wish this was my job….

We have tickets for Glasto this year, and in my search for something slightly more palatial than a tent, I was looking on the web for ‘Pods’, and I heard Travelodge were doing them. Upon looking on their website I stumbled across this little gem, and my perfect job.

“Wayne Munnelly, Travelodge's Director of Sleep said, "We are always looking at new ways of making budget accommodation more accessible to the public. The Travelpod is a great way of taking our Travelodge room to the customer.”

I could be yours for £10

Loving the Luchies, here's a Lucky Lucha tshirt which you can purchase from me for £10! (Also comes in black).

South Park Self Portrait

Guess who!


Go to http://www.sp-studio.de/ to turn yourself into a South Park character.

Happy pooch

I can’t tell you who happy this dog is! She’s a manic pooch at the best of times, and this electronic beauty sedated her naturally.

It wasn’t even really cold that day. Maybe she was a cat in a previous life.

Bingo Bongo!

The blog’s been a bit quiet of late, partly due to the weather, and lack of ‘will’ to do anything, and partly due to my passion for the bingo!

I have won twice, and my theory is that you win on your first or second time, and then your hooked. My bingo hall is held in an old cinema (as are most of them), and they are wonderful buildings, even if Gala has painted them in their corporate clashing colours of (yellow, orange and blue).

I have mentioned to people passing my bingo passion, and you invariably find out who else is a closet Bingo-file, they always ask ‘which one do you go to’, and will regale you of their passion.