Baby fashion tips

Now I am not an expert on children, in fact, show me a child over the age of 9 months and ask me to guess it's age and even with leeway of a year either side I will probably still get the answer wrong. One thing I do know however, is that babies up to that point where they get all chubby and smiley (four months? six months?) all look like pissed off tiny pensioners.

Henceforth, if you have a baby, it might not be the best idea to dress it in tiny old lady clothes, for, as Kanye West would say, THATS SOME BENJAMIN BUTTONS SHIT RIGHT THERE.

Incidentally, do you remember that episode of the Simpsons where they take Maggie to daycare, and when they pick her up they are faced with a terrifying room full of staring babies, silent except for the noise of sucking dummys?

I went out to lunch with my friends and their two babies on Friday, and we chose to go to Giraffe, as it was a family friendly place (knoweldge gleaned from three years ago when I attempted to light a fag and was promptly kicked out. This was pre smoking ban so they were clearly nazis. 'Family orientated' nazis.). And how. Earlier in the day I had been plunged into Blursville, as the optician who a week previously given me a glorious exciting new world of details and colours via the introduction of contact lenses, cruelly took them away again as in my excitement I had worn them for far far too long and 'damaged a few cells'. So anyway, I enter Giraffe, and after stumbling slapstick style over about ten Buggaboos (prams, to those without children) parked by the doorway, I gazed around squintingly for my friends. All around me, like bobbing bouys in a sea of blur were these pink round wobbling blobs. Babies. Lots of 'em. Utterly terrifying. And noisy.

I would recommend a lunchtime trip to Giraffe for any girl feeling a bit broody. By 'eck, it will make you want to nip next door to Boots to stock up on propolactics sharpish!

The Twitter Fallout

I admit I was getting a bit hooked on tweeting - well, any excuse for me to piffle more rubbish out into the tinternet and avoid my head imploding under the weight of a life that involves sorting out meetings, watching Masterchef and very little else...

What I never realised however, is that merrily microblogging away meant that you leave a very obvious googletrail of witter behind you. I was idly googling myself - an activity I do every so often in boredom and preparation for my inevitable life as a fantastically well known and admired sort - and I'm now popping up all over google like a battered plastic gonk from a whack-a-mole arcade game!

Although it is now easier to find out my identity than it is to buy an artisan bread in Muswell Hill, I am still going to attempt to keep some veil of anonymity and blank out my non biche identity.

As you will note, if you click and zoom in on the above picture, this twitter problem is two fold. Not only am I exposed for all to see, I am exposed with the phrase 'so painful I considered leaving it jammed up there'.
For those glorious souls who possess an inquisitive nature and click the link, they will readily see I am in fact writing about the incident when I got my entire fringe caught up in a hairbrush and panicked. For those who don't, I quite frankly just sound like a minger.

Pretty much sums up East London...

'If you're not from Hackney stop begging and go back to your own ends. We have no use for you'

'Yes you do, you could mug us or something'

Abercrombie and Fuck You

When I heard that Abercrombie and Fitch had opened a store in London, I put it in the same 'huh' news catagory as 'the A1 past Hanger Lane is a bit sluggish today' and Jessica's status is '...' according to Facebook.

I vaguely knew A&F to be a Gap-ish like clothes shop in America that people seem to love, even though as far as I could work out it sold either bland as fuck clothes or highly branded bland as fuck clothes.

Yesterday however, I happened to be in the area, so decided to visit the London A&F store. Within two seconds of entering it shot up from being a thing I had sort-of-heard-of-kind-of to being my official Worst Shop in London and Possibly Ever. - a title snatched away from Halfords in Friern Barnet Retail Park with considerable aplomb.

Where to start? Oh, well as you enter, you can queue to have your photo taken with a shirtless male hunk and keep the polaroid to show all your friends back home. Why? So you can tell them you shagged him? So they can be impressed that you stood next to someone with a six pack? Because some of his fitness might rub off on you and make you look less like a fat tourist in a straining pair of chinos and sweat drenched 'I heart London t-shirt'? *shudder*

This isn't apparently just a random act of whoring: A&F is known for it's good looking staff and presumerbly being pimped out to hormonal girls is part of the job description. I did wonder about this alleged hiring policy, as it appeared to be very much in action in the London shop and surely smacks of discrimination if true. Is anyone who reads this really fat/hairy/muslim/tattooed/all of the above? Please apply and let me know how you get on.

Anyway, inside. You know what I hate more than bland as fuck branded clothing in a million different pastel colours? I hate being lost in dark crowded nightclubs while shit trance music thumps so loud I can't hear my own angry thoughts.
Random? No, no, no, THIS is Abercrombie and Fitch, London. Confusing, as A&F is what one is supposed to wear to a chase a labrador across a beach in the Hamptons with your wholesome looking boyfriend, so the Ministry of Sound get up is beyond infuriating.
They even have two of their Stepford employees dancing on a balcony as if to say 'Hey, this is really fun! I always like to rave it up in the middle of the day wearing stonewashed bootleg jeans and a cornflower blue vest top!'.

It's a wonder the staff get time to actually fold jeans in between being groped and pretending to be 'aving it large', but I gather it's actually an honour to work in A&F as it means you are 'fit'. Fit and presumerbly also as thick as two short planks to allow yourself to be exploited in such a manner for £6.50 an hour.

Shops like A&F with concieted good looking staff (Urban Outfitters is another prime example) also irk me, as until a few years ago, I would be seriously intimidated about going in them, actually being worried about what the staff would think of me. Fortunately, now I am not just confident enough in myself to know I am as 'fit' as them, I also don't fold t shirts for living and could buy that whole pile of muthafuckin' folded Micky Mouse stencilled abomonations if I wanted to.

edit: Ooh I just found THIS article by someone at the Daily Mail *hock, spit* who went undercover at A&F. He said what I said but in a more boring way.

edit: while looking for a suitable image for this entry, I came across their website description - 'The highest quality, All-American lifestyle clothing for aspirational men and women'.
I think I just vommed in my mouth and waged war on the West.

Out In De Streets Dey Call it Muuuurdah

Aah so I have just returned from the chicken bone strewn circle of hell also known as the Notting Hill Carnival.

I suppose it was okaaay, I mean, I used to think I was the whitest girl alive and so looked about as 'in place' at Carnival as Cher would on a pilgramage to Mecca, but that was before I went to Carnival with A and E who take being 'whitey' to a loud shrieky level not seen since Julia Stiles in Save the Last Dance. (or maybe those Step Up films but I haven't seen them) But Y to the T anyway.

Although I drew the line at drinking rose from a cup and bogling to reggae in the middle of Porterbello Road with several other rah-sterfarian* friends of A, after a while (and several drinks) it felt less like a poultry stinking pressure cooker of barely repressed anarchy and violence and more like a noisy dirty festival in the middle of London.

After a while (and some more drinks) we had a dance and a drum n bass stage, which is where I got a pondering on precisely how bizarre drum n bass dancing is. I mean, I think I have thought this before - and by thought I mean druggily ranted at someone in the toilet queue at Fabric - but never have I put finger to keyboard about it.

But yeah, so for one, dancing to DnB you basically dance by yourself. This in itself is quite weird if you think of the great grand history of Dance, which is basically an inclusive group activity. But in DnB you barely touch, unless your gun fingers (pow! pow!) accidentally go on the opposite trajectory as the person next to you's eyeball socket.

Secondly, you don't really move from the same spot. Unless you are a bit of a fancy dick with your leg work or are off your face and flail about like a psychotic spider, you generally bop about from foot to foot as if you are standing on rather hot sand.

Thirdly, one of the most common moves is to slump your shoulders forwards and sway from either them if you are male, or from your waist if you are female. This is not terrible attractive, again, unusual for a Dance, traditionally a roundabout way of attracting people.

Remember those plastic anthropomorphic flowers you could buy that danced when you played them music? I imagine from the stage we must have all looked like that, albeit bedecked in Jamaica whistles, soaked in Red Stripe and with poor posture.

But anyway, Carnival. It's over for another year and maybe in 2009, unlike the last two years, I won't be saddled with a friend who is all 'omg but I've never beeeeen and you have to go to Carnivaaaaal'.

Honestly, I'm such a whore for London knowledge based flattery - tell me you've never been to Brick Lane and we'll be sitting there having overpriced shitty curry made with 40% water injected chicken breast before you can say 'oh cool was this like, where that book was set?'

*rah like 'awful privately educated braying Henrys and Camillas who gad about Carnival in their multicoloured Ray Bans going 'oh yah, I rahly love that Leathal Bizzle, his shit is like, totally street? yeah?' I just thought of that phrase and although it undoubtly exists already, I am quite proud of myself.

'OMG look at her SHOES!!!11!1!!!!'

Who would have thought that Kristin Davis would be the best thing about any film, let alone the SATC? Her comic mugging was about the only redeeming feature in this predictable cheesefest of an extended advert.

I did like SATC on tv, I went to the cinema with my brain firmly switched to standby and my cynicism (oooh! I'm SUCH a Miranda) tucked away safely in my back pocket, but even then it would take a very simple woman indeed to be moved by this souless schtick.

SATC had genuinely moving episodes, you felt for the characters, they seemed real. On the big screen it is not just their fabulous wardrobes which are larger than life...they have all become such parodies of themselves, we feel nothing for them. At one point when Carrie is emotionally devistated (no, not saying why) and slowly takes off her sunglasses for the first time to see her sorrowful reflection in the mirror, a member of the audience with cynical volume muttered 'wow.' There was a pause and the whole cinema errupted into laughter.

Oh god and don't get me started on Jennifer Hudson, a woman apparently only cast for her ability to bring some good ole token sass to proceedings. I mean, she can act most of the others off the screen, but given that her dialogue mainly consists of 'uuuh huh girlfriend', and hideously twee one liners, they might as well have saved themselves the money and brought in some bit character from Keenan and Kel. I mean honestly, who says 'I came to New York to find love'? Emotional men. Lesbians. Not smart women in a town where they outnumber men 2:1.

But yeah, the clothes are fabulous, the shoes are fabulous, the locations are fabulous... but then they always were. But the series had more, it had (a rather ditzy, materialistic, bittersweet) soul.

In summary: The SATC Movie.. it's like meeting up with your old best friend from school and finding out you have absolutely nothing in common. But that they do have nice shoes.

Edit: The best review of the film I have read, on Jezebel.com, a site any woman with a semblance of a brain should waste some of her daily time on.

Biche's Book of the Day

.. no, not really. When I stumbled across this I had to pick mine to remember who Lesley Brain was. Thank god for Amazon and their insightful balanced reviewers:

"This is an account of Lesley's time in the Big Brother house last summer and the road that took her there. (Lesley is the grandmother and WI member who calmed down with a strawberry.)
There are lots of laugh-out-loud momentsbut also some sharp insights into the BB experience, including the audition process and what it was like to live with the other contestants (who can forget Ziggy, Chanelle, or Charley?).
Throughout, Lesley draws parallels with the original world of Big Brother in Orwell's "1984". My only complaint is that the 168 pages seemed to fly by, which left this reader wanting a little more. However, the stories are very well told and hopefully we will see a lot more from Lesley in future. Overall, a must read for fans of the show, and plenty for others to enjoy too. "

Well thank YOU, Claire Horton from Surrey. And here I was thinking it was a shameless cash-in from a Big Brother quitter, hypocritically criticising all the other fame hungry wannabees who dared to stick to their guns. And what is she doing on the front cover? Joyfully shelling a pistachio? Reading the smallest joke book in the world? Tearing a tiny person limb from limb in glee?

Much as I like to get on my high horse and ride around dusty Amazon planes, herding reviwers and shouting YEEHAH (oh and I DO) my bookcase is not entirely worthy and Big Brother free...

Look right, my mum had just popped into Waterstones to use the loo and he was there doing a signing and no one was there and she felt sorry for him, yeah?*

But yes, that does mean I not only own a copy but a SIGNED copy.
Why I should just retire now, I'm made.

Edit: I love how it looks like Nick is looking up at Lesley going 'mmm maybe she will drop the pistachio shell my way so I can suck it for sustinence'

*trufax

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Hmmmmm

Childhood film nostalgia is a funny thing. I'm currently sitting here with my brother, watching Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, one of our all time favorite films from the days of yore. We both remembered exactly what would happen when: 'Oh yeah then they go off the cliff in a dinghy' 'He drives because he has boxes stuck to his shoes' etc, what we both didn't realise is *ahem* quite how racist it is..

Now I know Indian cuisine is a tad different to chips and peas, but monkey brains, beetles and snakes? What region is that from? And who knew Indians in turbans (Sikhs?) who worship Shiva (Hindus?) also spend their time sacrificing humans by tearing out their still beating hearts?

Then again maybe we're just being unduly sensitive and PC because our uncle is Indian, and although he covers everything in chilli sauce and is want to make horrible phlegmy noises in the bathroom, I have yet to see him drink from a skull or attempt to extract my brother's still beating heart when he forgets to flush the loo.

It is still a great action film though, brain and social consciense set far aside... much better than the Goonies, which everyone else in the world ever watched as a bairn, but is curiously absent from my and my brother's collective memory. Either some awful psychological event happened to us that afternoon, or our parents had the taste to not expose us to a load of shrieking yank brats looking for treasure. Hmmm that said, it's kind of hard to take a moral high ground when we gobbled up images of colonial India which would make Salman Rushdie, Anita Desai etc's heads spin. Although Harrison Ford was very fit back then and there is only one shrieking stereotyped child...

Edit: My brother would like to make it clear that he has never forgotten to flush the toilet ever. Even though hardly anyone who reads this blog knows who he is, and a quick straw poll of those who do suggests that even though he never forgets to flush the loo, he certainly looks like someone who might. Conclusion: Brother of Biche needs to stop lacing his trainers with string and buy a jacket that doesn't have 'anti capitalista' glued to the back with PVA glue.

Tattoos 4 Toddlers

I am once again merrily submerged in the world of Miami Ink (much to the annoyance of the Flatmate who does not see the interest or irony in such things) and it reminded me of this ludicrous website.

I think I initially dismissed it as a hoax, but apparently this is not so; I only wish I hadn't been so cynical as there used to be an amazing gallery of this guy's work, which is now scaled back to a few select pics.

Yes ladies and gentlemen, I am talking about Tattoos 4 Toddlers, a company which specialises in PERMANENT (well, ten years) tattoos for ummm... redneck hicks. Well, the kids of redneck hicks.

It's Sunday night, I'm tired, and I trust anyone who reads this site will be clever enough to draw their own conclusions about why tattooing a two year old might not be the best idea in the world, so I will spare you all an 'stating the bleeding obvious' rant on the matter. Instead just conjour up (if you can be bothered...there is quite good telly on now) an image of the Biche frowning at her laptop and going 'Gah! Gnnnnr! Duh!' in an exasperated fashion, and consider the below quote from some 'happy customers':

"My daughter Emily always enjoyed looking at my tattoos. Once my wife Julie and I found out about Tattoos 4 Toddlers we were excited about getting Emily her first tattoo. We felt it was no different than getting her ear's pierced and with only a few more tears."

Yeah, that's Emily in the photo btw... she's had the ear piercings and the tattoo, now all she needs is a kiddie bra and thong for her third birthday and she can go join Mommy at the Pussy Lounge Gentlemen's Club. ("She's so excited about earning back all the dollar Julie lost when her figure went after she gave birth!")

Poor brat, I think her face says it all..

Ha, and completely unrelated fact from le tele.. JFK refused to wear a hat as his hair was his trademark, and he was so influential that he caused a massive drop in hat sales in the USA. So whenever he came to campaign in a town there would always be some poor milliner desperately trying to force a hat upon him to perk up flagging sales!

Thai Green Envy

The Guardian, who I would usually expect a little better from, have decided it is high time they followed the the progress of a 19 year old middle class twat called Max Gogarty on his gap year as he wastes his parents money piddling around India and Thailand looking to 'have a good time'

I find this incredibly irksome for several reasons:

1) Don't tell me he doesn't have a relative working at the Granuiad. Thousands of idealistic young kids must send in the article proposal 'I will go travelling and blog my experiences', and no doubt a small fraction were actually really good writers looking for a break*, so why him? Oh right, a quick search of the website brings up Paul Gogarty, travel writer for the same publication. Nepotism much?

2) Anyone with a facebook aged between 18 and 30 will be already inundated by hundreds of hysterically boring and samey accounts of Khao Pi Pi, jungles, buckets and full moon parties not to mention thousands of photos of the above things. By people they actually know. And they are still boring as fuck.

3) I have not been, but I get the impression that Thailand is occupied by one ladyboy, an old lady selling alcohol in seaside buckets and half of the Home Counties loudly braying, boozing and taking hundreds of photos of each other in bikinis. Before going over the border to Cambodia to take a jolly photograph of themselves posing with a machine gun on the Killing Fields. What fun!Maybe if he was going somewhere remotely interesting, unexplored or, lets face it, unexploited, it might be more interesting. Like Iran.

4)For those of you who may consider number 1 a bit unfair, you can read Max's first blog HERE.. Yeah he's not even a particularly interesting writer. It's just so...obvious. And absent of similes or any other allusions (if we are going to get technical) that might make it more amusing or imaginative. What humour that is there seems to come from his variations of the word 'shit'. Oh ho de ho.

So in conclusion, I am very disappointed in the Guardian and until they give me my own blog, where I will recount my far more interesting, unexplored and humorous experiences as I travel to Oxford Circus and sit at my desk daily for three months, I will not be appeased**.


*Not the Biche, it has to be added.. I never got around to sending in my proposal

** If anyone knows anyone at the Guardian please forward this post on to them. With an added request to kick Paul Gogarty in the shins.

Slow Afternoon - An Essay on Miami Ink

Aah Lovefilm. After three glorious months, I am now shelling out £12.99 a month for lots of dvds, which is something of a double edged sword. On one hand this is alright, I hate owning loads of dvds as I don't have storage room for them and I am renowned for never watching films more than once, if that.
On the other hand, I am renowned for never watching films more than once, if that.

Something about sitting down for a hour and a half watching a drawn out formulaic story is not only crashingly boring once the ending is evident, but makes me remember in an epiphany style *gasp* that I am wasting my life. And I resent being reminded of that on a bi weekly basis, particularly by a big movie star doing their Oscar turn in that bit of the film just after the middle where everything seems to be going wrong, only for it to be resolved at the end.

So I have basically become the Queen of the boxsets.

This was initially ace as I was able to witness the greatness of the Wire without shelling out for whatever obscure cable channel it is on, and watch every singe episode of Fraiser you can currently rent.
Unfortunately now I am up to the series of Fraiser where it has begin to jump the shark*, so I have been forced to look further afield for new brain sweeties.

Enter Miami Ink.

The premise is simple to the point of 'duh' - five guys who are renowned tattoo artists set up a parlour in Miami and tattoo people. We see how one tattoos and hear the stories behind each tattoo they do.

The initial laughs come from the hilarious stories of the tattoo shop patrons. Basically it appears you can't just get a tattoo for the hell of it, it always has to mean something and this itself means one of two things.
Either you get people who get full out epitaphs and portraits of dead loved ones on their legs or chests (snore) or you get the hilariously tenuous excuses for significance, which always go along the lines of : 'Well I want to get a pirate ship on my stomach as it symbolises that I am a free spirit, and because I swear I was a pirate in a past life, and I can really relate to their ethos, y'know?' or 'I want to get a flaming skull on my back? Because it's like mortality yeah? Tico is a skull now, and by putting it on my back it is the past, and it shows I am moving on, and putting things behind me'**

So that's great, but if that were not enough, the programme is obviously edited for multiple adverts, which means in each show you get the (usually bereaved) patron earnestly telling the same story ("Chico was only twelve when he choked on KFC") at least three times, each time in tears but with a slight variation of word order, followed by the tattoo artist musing on their customer ("to lose a kid like that, to chicken y'know man...Das hard")

The greatest lure of Miami Ink however is undoubtedly the tattoo artists themselves, particularly the 'owner' Ami James, who is (apologies for the lazy simile, but hardly anyone watched The Armstrongs) like David Brent, but if he were American and in charge of running South Beach's most famous tattoo shop.
Ami does the voice-over for the series, which mean we get gems like 'Ever since I was young, I have had problems with my anger' spoken over footage of him completely flipping out, kicking things and shouting at the other guys like a testosteroned lunatic and 'I guess Andrea's idea is a little unusual' as we see him look utterly disgusted and confused at someone's tattoo request.

Then there is the way he treats his 'apprentice' Yoji, a fully grown man, who we see getting married and becoming a father during the course of the series. Ami ritually abuses Yoji in a way which could be shown in schools as a textbook example of bullying, complete from demasculising him by making him do inane tasks like clean Ami's car, to just constantly and cruelly ripping the piss out of him while the others look on and laugh.
And yet Yoji has apparently been subjected to this low paid abuse for the last five years, on the vague promise (vague, but repeated about ten times an episode) that he will one day be 'a real tattooist', said in a voice which makes you wonder if they edited out the words'...the blue fairy will come and make you.....' ,
So perhaps he deserves it somewhat, as surely no one is THAT stupid.

The next great thing about Miami Ink, is the way it is filmed. I love American 'documentaries' such as M.I and The Hills etc, as they are in fact so scripted and completely contrived it becomes fun to actually try and see the truth lurking deep underneath. For example, there is the internet rumour going around that Ami is gay, which makes for great analysis - not because I care whether he is gay or not - but to see the looks he gives the beefcakes who stride in to get their chests tattooed, and to listen out as to whether he ever refers to his 'partner' in the masculine form.
Another example of my inferences of truth is that I think that Chris Garver doesn't like Ami at all. Chris is far and away the most talented tatooist, and is also far and away the least 'tv' of the tattooists. In the segeway group shots of them striding down South Beach to funky music and bizarre camera angles, he generally keeps his shirt on, and he appears less prone to overblown statements a la Ami 'I knew den. I had made. A friend fur life' James.
He also appears hugely uncomfortable whenever Ami is around, and can often be seen lurking in the back of shots looking like a man embarrassed or occasionally exasperated.
Then again, maybe Ami is gay and he is a raving homophobe. I am just inclined to believe the former because I am shallow and I think he is fit.
Whatever the case, he does draw great tattoos, and I suppose, grudgingly, that after all the David Brentisms, propaganda style editing, contrived situations and repeated sob stories, the process and resulting tattoos are quite interesting in themselves.


*on an incidental note, did you see the episode of Two Pints of Lager where Johnny died by attempting to jump over a shark? HO BLOODY HO YOU BUNCH OF SELF REFERENTIAL CUNTS, an episode where the entire cast was obliterated by the ebola virus (played by guest star Daniel Day Lewis) couldn't make TPLAAPC anything other than the worst fucking thing my eyeballs have ever seen.
** the former is true, believe it or not.

Bigotry, Politics and Butt Ugly Puppets

It has to be said it is not unknown for the Biche to make generalising slurs against the Irish, using only her Irish surname and an encounter with an Irish boys school in a hotel in Rome as justification. And this is obviously bad and wrong; emigrating to Australia, dropping an O' before coming back over to England a hundred years later is not exactly what one would call an authority on such matters, and probably any school of seventeen year old boys would try and rape several members of a London sixth form as 'English girls are slags'.

But I digress.

Regardless of my ill conceived prejudiced ideas about the Irish, this is a nation which has allowed a puppet of a Turkey to not only have FOURTEEN hit singles and SIX albums (including a greatest hits) but also possibly represent them in Eurovision 2008.

And who is this Turkey Puppet? Why Dustin the Turkey! A sidekick from the Zig and Zag show, a hideous cultural low of the nineties in it's own rights, but thankfully, for those of us who live outside the Emerald Isle and value our eardrums, one that ended in 1993.

But wait! I hear you cry (in my head) surely you love trash culture in all it's forms! No. Zig and Zag, two ugly shouty puppets that looked like the kind of crappy scummy toys you find hanging off the front of a dustbin van with ping pong balls for eyes, are one of the exceptions to the rule. It's like people who like musicals not liking Rent (fools!). I also bear this grudge as we had two goldfish at school back in those dark days that I wanted to call Salt and Pepa, but thanks to stupid democracy and a show of hands, ended up being called after the two scummy bits of old flannel.

A further note about Dustin, which again, Biche would never dream of using to strengthen her tenuous dislike of the Irish, is the fact that in the 1997 General Election, several THOUSAND Irish people nulled their ballots by voting for 'Dustin'.

Mind you, in a clime where several thousand Londoners are going to effectively sully their ballots by voting for a racist ignorant Tory on the account that he is a 'jolly funny fellow' and 'a bit PG Wodehouse' I can't really criticize. I'd vote for a hideously ugly assemblage of braying flannel over Boris any day.

The Speeches of Biches - Heartily Not Endorsing Adele

In a shock move that departs from every single other outlet that could even possibly call itself 'media', The Speeches of Biches has decided not to endorse Adele as The Next Big Thing and Our Lord and Saviour. Chasing Pavements is an overblown crash of a meaningless song, and she looks like the bastard child of Moomintroll and Little My.

However it is not all subversion and Finnish cartoons here at Speeches HQ. I am most heartily and in a flag waving fashion 'bigging up' Ready for The Floor by Hot Chip...


I have to admit the lead singer reminds me a little bit too much (in real life, not in this vid particularly) of one of those humanities students who go out of their way to be fucking wacky all the time... like wandering into a conversation and going 'hey guys! I was thinking, would you rather live in a bouncy castle or on a cloud?' and then the one friend you have who is a bit that way inclined but you tolerate it because they are otherwise cool, will go 'Oh man I would have a cloud called Cloudopolis and it would thunder purple when I fart and I would rain cheese all over your Bouncy Cottage' and they would then start a four hour dialogue about utter bullshit while you grind your teeth and wish for a falling bit of overhead masonry.

But the guitarist looks like Boris Becker so I forgive them.

Cloverfield: An Uneasy Biche writes..

Like most people who piddle away their lives on the internet, and whose endless search for gossip cannot be saited by UK websites, I was getting mildly excited about the release of Cloverfield.
For those who have been hiding under rocks/not online (same difference) It concerns New York under monster attack in an action movie stylee, but from the perspective of some ordinary New Yorkers with videocameras who are having a party... what is it? What will happen? Will they escape the city? Bravo JJ Abrams again etc..

Then last night I caught The Falling Man on More 4. For those who haven't seen it, it is, for all the usual amount of naff philosophising and talking heads, an ultimately heartbreaking documentary, although this is largely down to the unforgettable footage.
It is basically about all the people who jumped from the WTC on 9/11; people who either took control of their lives or committed the 'sin' of suicide, depending who you ask. Whatever one calls their actions, the resulting photos and footage, which were generally considered the most shocking of the day, were pretty much omitted from all coverage in a remarkable act of mass censorship. Even when they were pubished in a few outlets the public complained in such great numbers they were not reprinted for a very long time.
Indeed the whole issue was so delicate that when a journalist called the NY City Morgue to enquire how many deaths from jumping they had, the mortician replied that 'there had been no jumpers. People were sucked out the buildings by the wind but no one jumped.'

Anyway, as the documentary focussed on journalists who were trying to identify the one man in the photo above, one individual out of the thousands who died, it made me think about Cloverfield and it's narrative. On one hand, it is similar to the documentary as it personalises a tragedy to a small group of people affected by it. However it is also monster action movie, so it has equal amounts in common with Austin Powers' 'does anyone think of the Henchmen's family?' genre parody.

And that's cool..I'm not a Daily Mail reader, I wouldn't discourage anyone from seeing Cloverfield, in fact I probably will go see it. But whereas before I would just get into the spirit of it and have a good couple of hours, now I think I would feel decidedly uneasy. We have seen New Yorkers die as their city is attacked for real. Even if it is a flipping reptile and not two planes, it's still rather close to the bone given the way it is filmed and the New Yorker's POV (although that is obviously the point.)

It just seems that time and perspective are funny things...when it happened, we knew thousands had died, but many objected to seeing one actual body as it was deemed too disturbing and disrespectful. Seven years on, you can make an action movie parodying the day and no one bats an eyelid. Is that progress or desesitization? I really don't know.

*serious post over. Let's get back to the screaming queens, eh?*

A Sad Indictment of 21st Century Life

Yesterday my friend was mugged by two men who stamped on her face and attempted to steal her bag and phone. They failed on both counts, but she was left severely bruised and with a broken nose. She staggered to the local gym, where they called the police and me, as I live around the corner.

When I rush down to the YMCA about five minutes later, I find my friend giving her statement to the police..and being filmed.

'Err... why is there a camera?' I asked as I helped to calm her down and wipe blood off her face.
'Is this some new police thing?'
'Oh, we're being filmed for a reality tv series' the policeman taking the statement said, like it was the most natural thing in the world.
'You can have your face blurred if you want..'
Ignoring him I turned to my friend, who was still pretty hysterical but slowly starting to make sense.
'Did you agree to this?' I asked
'Dunno, I didn't really ask why.' was her dazed reply.

Disapproving, but too distracted to really kick up a fuss about exploitation and release forms, I steadily ignored them hovering as I wiped blood, called family and waited for the ambulance.

And waited.

And waited.

About half an hour later my friend was still bleeding quite badly and the ambulance hadn't come.
'Can we not get a lift in your car?' I asked the policeman
'Err no, there are four of us, so plus you two there wouldn't be room.'
'Oh.'
*ten minutes pass*
'Well, could you not leave the camera crew here, give us a lift and then come back and collect them? I think some things can be left undocumented'
'Errrm I'm not sure.'
*Look of Death from Biche*
*whispered discussion between coppers and cameras*
'Yes, yep we can do that, please make your way to the car'

I wonder if that part will make it onto the tellybox...

Girl Power! (plate)

Thanks to a free voucher from work I went to a Powerplate class for the first time yesterday. To those of you who are not vapid urbanite females aged 20 - 29, working off Oxford Street, disposible income, no kids, Sex and the City boxset owners blah blah blah*, a 'powerplate' is the object to the left; a platform that vibrates really fast causing your muscles to spasm and so tone as you squat, thrust and do other faintly embarrasing exercises on it.

Now I have never really gone in for this kind of thing before, and by that I mean I have never owned one of those weird belt things that similarly cause muscle spasms via electric shocks or been wrapped in mud and clingfilm..basically expensive activities only a brandname away from medieaval torture. There was the incident with the 'Slimatea' where I didn't consider exactly how drinking tea could make you slim**, but on the whole I generally subscribe to the idea that if you want to be slimmer you have to get up off your fat arse, leave any notion of pride at the door and head down the gym.

But I digress. So what is a powerplate class like? Basically it is a group of five or so of slightly hippy (as in pelvis) deskladies plus the obligitory buff northern trainer to shout 'eey oop lasses yer doin' great!', a small room which is akin to the inside of a discoball and five or so pink little faces with expressions like horrified kittens confronted by a bee as they stare transfixed at their own wobbling images in the many reflective surfaces. Oh and there is mint tea on tap.

It was a little bit harder than the website suggested (more on that later) but thankfully the 25 minutes flew by.

What was weirdest was the sensation after the class, which I can only really liken to being in shock...a weird weightlessness/shakiness which I haven't experienced since I was evacuated from Kings Cross and saw a bus explode a couple of years ago, but without the obvious FEAR and mental skulduggery that 'shock' usually entails.

So yes, now it is 24 hours later, and I guess it worked as I am practially crippled - well my bum keeps twinging and I can't lift my arms, the usual masocistic signs that I take to mean GOOD.

So will I go back? Not sure. If anything it is an expensive (£20 for 25 mins!) way to lose any sense of self esteem and get an achey bum, but I think in these vapid grande skinny wet double latte times we all need to be taken down a notch or two. Even if it does mean you will shell out a whole load more on other pointless weightloss quackery.

p.s you can check out the website HERE if you so wish, but I warn you now, you will want to beat the web designer, PR company and whoever else was involved over the head with a metal bound version of the Female Eunich until they are a bloody pulp. It is the most patronising, chic lit More magazine lambrini HELL of a website. Quite why they haven't marketed it to the wannabe Carrie and Samanthas who at least possess half a brain and maybe an unread copy of the Female Eunich is beyond me.





* Biche does not own aforementioned boxset, sadly she does not need rolemodels for her slide into superficial oblivion
** laxative

This Charmless Beeb (or Biche takes a metaphor too far)

Now they say BBC 3 is the televisual equivalent of your boyfriend making you pasta for dinner - it's cheap, a mix of bland and tasteless and you will only eat it when you really can't be bothered to interfere or suggest something else. But for all the disparagment and sneaky bitching to your friends, you realise that there is a certain charm in its homemadeness and that mixed in with the overcooked penne and raw mushrooms there is hope of a better tomorrow - the onions at least were nicely fried and in only half a bottle of oil this time. 'What the hell?' you think, 'I'll stick with it. By next month he might try something more risky and perhaps foreign. An Old El Paso Fajita kit perhaps.'


But yes, BBC3. So much potential, but potential doesn't always pique your interest or allow your bowels to move for two days. So here I suggest my tips for making BBC3 good:

1) Line up the cast of 'Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps' and shoot them. Erase all the tapes, burn all the evidence and then bury it all in the wastelands outside Elstree, which I think that would be Stanmore. Okay, so we can never truly forget, and if we go on holiday to the Rhineland we will have to endure crackpot Bett und Fruhstuck owners swaggering around like Mancs going 'Eh Deneeese get meh kecks will ya oh Jonneh you knobend' but we will merely stare down at our gekochtes Ei with the quiet dignity of those who know there is no point dwelling on our shameful past, but that we look on towards greater things.

2) Fire this Charmless Bellend. For those who don't know (it's not hard, he's so personalityless he often gets upstaged by soft furnishings or the little red light on the bottom of your telly that indicates that it is on) this is Benjamin Fry. He is a 'psychological coach' who gets wheeled out on such magnus opiae as 'Spendaholics' and 'Freaky Eater: Addicted to Spaghetti Hoops' to walk around in a big coat talking to a fat bossy woman about whatever working class oik (and it always is) is being subjected to wanton analysis that week. He then murmurs at aforementioned oik lots of difficult questions like 'so what do you like about Spaghetti Hoops?' before nodding his big luminous head like one of those sunlight activated 'ornaments' you get in Clinton Cards and are found soully on the dashboards of 16 year old girls.
Now I quite like programmes where I can pick up lots of stupid little tips that I think will tremendously benefit my life but that do not in any way shape or form(make a healthy burger bun out a lettuce leaf/don't piss away money on expensive pesto etc) but this vapid nodding gonk makes 'fun factz!' about stuff seem about as interminable and useful as the lord's prayer said through a balaclava. And yet dispite this irrifutable fact he has been on two (and counting!) 'documentary' series for the beleagured channel.

3) Don't Lie! Now we all like our telly to be Glasnost these days, death to nodding shots, death to editing the Queen, death to the Blue Peter cat etc, but BBC 3 wantonly flouts this 'nu truth' with great titles that do not follow through. I will hold my hands up and say yes! 'Addicted to Cheese' and 'Addicted to Spaghetti Hoops' were kinda good in their 'look at the freaky oik' way, but 'Addicted to Chicken'?? That was just a fat girl who occasionally had some wings in between all the pizza, pie, chips and unreformed lard she ate. 'The Real Hustle'? They give them their money back at the end! 'Sex with Mum and Dad'? LIES!!!1!!!

4) Bring back good comedy like 'The Mighty Boosh' and 'The Smoking Room'. Bring back which ever great person commissioned them. Fire the bellend who obviously thought there was a dearth of shite poor sketch shows that further purpogate the myth that women can't be funny and commissioned Touch Me I'm Karen Taylor AND Little Miss Josslyn.

I'm going to put my neck on the line here..

..no, no I'm not even in the slightest, but I had an epiphany that I first had at Glastonbury again on the bus this morning - the Arctic Monkeys are really fucking great. Like, really, really great. Like, great enough that it makes me really want to live up north again, away from the snideypoos of London Town who don't say what they think and don't know what they feel. Not, admittedly enough to bring up a child in the North, but that's Tom from Hollyoaks fault. Mind you, Ben from Eastenders is pretty much killing my love of southern kids too, so perhaps I will have to run off and have a kid with someone whose accent doesn't feature in a soap opera. Not that this is exactly an immediate concern I hasten to add, before my male friend start covering their crotches in the pub and I find a boiled bunny on my desk tomorow.

But anyway, I digress. Arctic Monkeys - ace. Totally ace. And anyone who laughs at me for being really middle of the road, or boring or obvious can sod off. I can't hear you anyway because I'm singing along to my ipod in a reet terrible norvern accent.

R.I.P Yeltsin, You Russian Dog, You

You weren't as good as Gobachev, but you were better than Putin and sure as hell could dance a funky chicken

LDN is a Victim

I'm sure you've probably all heard of this song, which parodies the whole London mockney scene (if not you can hear it HERE)

I'm a bit in two minds about it. On one hand, it's good that someone has finally taken the piss out of the whole 'rich kids talking like chimneysweeps' thing, but on the other hand, I think it could have been done A LOT better.

I'm also a bit down on their criticising music through the medium of social class because quite a lot of the London acts they parody are actually really good musically, and in this day and age, who cares if they are middle class? (beyond the mockney accents which I admit are rather gratingly unnecessary)

I think it would have been better to take the mic out of everyone's love elitism and dressing up in neon in that way which would be terribly origional if everyone didn't look pretty much the same and exactly like the cast of Skins.

I mean, they didn't even mention Dirtydirtydancing, Antisocial et al, !Wowow! Old Street or cocaine, and that's pretty much the crux of this these days isn't it?

On the third hand (?) the Nathan Barley quote at the end of the song totally sums it up:
'Stupid people think it's cool. Smart people think it's a joke: also cool.'