Tokyo photo found!

"Hot Lips Trimble"

The nation is in a lather over captain for this year's Corpus Christi, Oxford, finalists Gail Trimble. What a phenomenon!

'If form is any guide, when Corpus Christi take on Manchester University in the final, Trimble, 26, will wipe the floor with them, ruthlessly amassing starters-for-ten and cowing the competition with what contestant described as a form of "intellectual blitzkrieg". '

Men have labeled her 'hot lips Trimble', women have dismissed her performance as a 'cocky smirk'. The 'female Stephen Fry', believes 'I don't think I would have been treated in the same way were I were a man. Part of it has to do with the fact that I am the captain, who is always giving the answers.' 

'The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant'

'Celine and Julie go boating'

This is a terrible film. Having looked forward for many months to watching this film, which makes so many top ten lists and has stills reproduced everywhere, I am disappointed. It is self-indulgent and then some not just from the revoltingly flaccid direction but also the performance of the women themselves. Constantly giggling and self-consciously gawping in cute wonder at the camera they prance and preen through the film with fay and unendearing mannerisms that are enough to make you want to wash your hands of the seventies for good. 

Asta Nielsen

is my new favourite actress. Famous for her performance in the silent film of Hamlet (1921), directed by Svend Gade. She has style and talent, a combination that is still as refreshing as it is rare. 

Car Drag Horror

This 'bizarre event' is the stuff of nightmares. I can't imagine it making a Bourn film it's so horrible. I chose the New York Post article about it, not because I'm a fan of the paper, but the way they write is terrifying. 

"...dragged by the unwitting driver of a second vehicle along three highways in Queens and Brooklyn, leaving a 20-mile trail of gore."

Berlin 7th - 10th February

8th February

1. Neue National Galerie: Mies van der Roher building, Paul Klee exhibition

2. Alte National Galerie: German Romantics, Caspar David Fridrich

3. Pergamon Museum: Pergamon alter piece, Ishtar gate, Market gate of Miletus, Babylonian processional street

4. Altes Museum: bust of Nefertiti

5. Berliner Dom (Cathedral)

6.Unter den Linden: long street between Brandenburg Gate and the Museumsinsel

7. Film by Dante Lam, part of the Berlinale, screened at Cubix near Alexanderplatz

8. Visit the Reichstag, go up the Dome by Norman Foster, have dinner at the Reichstag restaurant

9th February

1. Bauhaus Museum

2. Cafe Einstein for lunch

3. Jewish Museum: Daniel Libeskind building, and the Holocaust tower

4. Check Point Charlie

5. Gestapo HQ 'topographia des terrors'

6. Missing Building by Christian Boltanski, opposite the Jewish School

7. Walk around Alackaescher Hofe

8. Alexanderplatz

9. Kino International on Karl Marx Allee. Saw Michael Winterbottom's documentary of Naomi Klein's book 'The Shock Doctrine'

10. Afterparty for Revolution FIlms at the Newton Bar

11. Lutter & Wenger for supper

12. 'Barbe Bleu' by Catherine Breillat at Potsdammer Platz, Sony Centre

10th February

1. Brecht's House

2. Hamburger Bahnhof contemporary art museum

3. Hitler's Bunker, near Wilheln Straise

4. Fragments of the Berlin wall

Women in Weimar Fashion

I should like to read this book: 

Vanbrugh tour, Pt. 1: Castle Howard, Mausoleum

Castle Howard's Mausoleum was actually designed by Hawksmoor. Although it is closed to visitors, we managed to get a look around. The gate opened using an enormous rusty key. Only About about three members of the family are buried 'downstairs'. As a result, most of the catacoomb looks like alcoves full of baker's ovens. Upstairs, inside was the most exquisite chaple. Again it was too dark to take photographs, but I shall try and find an etching of what it looks like. The whole place is in a fantastic state of decay. The outside battered nearly black by the winds, and all of the balerstraids falling apart. It was very tempting to take one home, but then you've got to remember about looters bad luck! I just took pictures instead.

Vanbrugh tour, Pt. 1: Castle Howard, Temple of the Four Winds

This is a picture of one of the winds. We went inside as well, although it was a little dark to take clear pictures. There was a table in the center and above, the decoration on the cealing was extraordinary. The walls were painted to have the effect of marbled veins.

Vanbrugh tour, Pt. 1: Castle Howard

Here are a few photographs from my trip. This is the detail from one of the pediments leading to the Temple of the Four Winds.

Ma Rainey

Seriously fantastic lady. Although her music doesn't feature on either the American Anthology of Folk Music or the People Take Warning box sets. I guess this is because she doesn't fit in either, being the first lady of blues. "Prove it on me" is probably her coolest song. It's a coded ode to being gay. Perhaps one of the first on record ever. But the phrase makes an interesting pun when you put it next to that other phrase - "Put it on you", which is also the name of a song (but from the 1990s).

crunchie

the noble crunchie bar, a chocolate and golden honey comb sweetie for our times! brought to the uk newsagent market by Cadbury's, the nation's provider of 'vegolate' and other such sacerin wonders of the confectionary world. Crunched. Have a snack on a crunchie.

crunch sounds

It's a little worrying being 'generation crunch', as the Guardian newspaper dubbed the 'class of 08'. For one thing, my taste in music has taken an abrupt turnabout. Yesterday I found myself not simply hearing, but actually enjoying the noise of Girlicious, and the Alan Parson's Project together in an unholy compilation. This either means my tastebuds are flailing in the current (economic) climate, or being tasteful just doesn't mean anything anymore. I think that might be a positive thing. Or is that the crunchtism (opermisim for these times) talking. Whatever the reason, the fact is I'm enjoying my pops that way!

Hiroshima Mon Amour

Barry Lyndon