Dutch Gold

Amsterdam. Quite the delightfully crazy bitch of a city. The craic quota was well and truly through the roof for our week of mischief. It was just me and the Bear for the first four days, with the rest of the twenty-seven strong group arriving for the weekend with the excuse of a birthday loosely holding together the idea of a massive session in ye olde Amsterdam.


Antics included:

* Being generally amazed at the gorgeousness of the canals, narrow streets and the demented angles that all the buildings seem to lean at.

* Trying to decipher what flavour the bright blue ice cream with "smurf" in its name was. We never did figure it out.

* Finding it really quite difficult not to stare at the particularly hot lingerie-clad ladies in the neon-lit windows as we ambled past. And equally difficult not to stare at the rather more robust ladies that take the Sunday morning shift.

* Giggling our way around the Sex Museum, which really just amounts to a badly organised collection of things with naked people on them. Good for a laugh though, and true to form the man on the ticket desk made sure he got a good look at my boobs on the way in. In fairness to them they had some nice cheeky advertising for their 25th anniversary, when the Bear came across this coin in his change at one point:


* Learning a total of five Dutch words. Kangarooballen, slagroom, aardappel, bioscope and winkel. Which mean space hopper, whipped cream, potato, 3D and shop, respectively. Needless to say, I wasn't exactly engaging in any Dutch conversations during my time there.

* Waking up to find that both the Bear and I had been playing host to a mosquito orgy over the course of the night, as our arms and legs became the new Amsterdam hotspot for them to party down at. The tiny winged bastards.

* Cycling in a wobbly and momentarily terrified manner (as I've been cycling in or about four times since I was thirteen) to the Anne Frank House. Whilst queuing, the Bear asked me if I had read the book, to which I replied; "No, but I know the story. Y'know, from the bit with Peter in Family Guy." I kid, of course.



* Screaming our collective tits off on the mental rollercoasters in Walibi World, a former Six Flags park about an hour outside the city. There's nothing quite like being flung upside down and hurtling through a corkscrew bend before breakfast.

* Commandeering the couches by the window in the somewhat crack den-like surroundings of Hill Street Blues, as Deadly Jumper Boy asked me what the story was with my Jessica Fletcher obsession. Seeing as he's as yet unaware of this here blog, this was based solely on my Facebook updates. He doesn't know the HALF of it.

* Fisheye tomfoolery courtesy of the Lomo camera that Santa was nice enough to give me last Christmas. It was my first go with it, so the results aren't exactly spectacular or anything, but it was certainly fun to use.

Amsterdammit

The Bear and I got back from Amsterdam yesterday, having survived seven days of Dutch shenanigans. The subsequent time has been spent in a heap on the couch, catching up on telly (Britain's Next Top Model, The IT Crowd and the really quite good nudey-fest Spartacus: Blood & Sand), other blogs and finishing the Steig Larsson books (which I am loving despite myself and my previous condecension for this idiot Girl Who Plays With Matches and Kicks Bees In The Face. I'm totally sold). Between that and being practically asleep at my desk for the most of the morning today, proper blogging will have to wait just a little longer. Soon my pretties. Soon.

The Sugababes of Thrash Metal

At a birthday party a while back, Dave Flag and I bonded up a storm over heavy metal and the fact that we had both attended Ozzfest in 2002, getting to see Drowning Pool before their lead singer snuffed it a few months later, just HOW AMAZING Slayer were and how nobody really cared that Ozzy didn't show up.

The conversation eventually led to us agreeing to go see Sepultura in the Academy tonight, with the Bear in tow. As I drunkenly put it last Friday night while trying to explain them to one of the lads; "they're a Brazilian thrash metal band, and kind of like the Sugababes of metal". In that their lineup has altered somewhat over the years. I'm pretty sure that's where the similarities end. All I know is that the teenage metalhead/smiley-and-therefore-rubbish-goth in me is only delighted at the prospect.

Also, just to make things interesting, the Bear and I are heading off to Amsterdam tomorrow afternoon for a week. Manys the hijink to be had. Manys the hijink indeed.

O My Love, Ow My Neck

Check it. New video from The Dead Flags for their ridiculously catchy song O My Love, O My God, off their equally fantabulous album, Gentlemen's Club.



One Saturday a few weeks ago, the Bear and I danced our bottoms off for two solid hours in The Joinery in Stoneybatter as part of the sexy crowd in this very video. We also ended up spending the following Sunday in unbelievable pain, taking turns to lie on the couch and wincing when we had to reach for the remote. The Bear messed up his neck for the day, but it made for some spectacular slow motion headbanging shots in the final cut, so it wasn't for nothing. Being a dancing girl in a video is certainly not as easy as it looks. Especially not the next day, when filming was followed by an almighty session. The kind where it's daylight when you're going home to bed. I do love that particular kind.

(Also, if you're looking for something to do of a Friday night, this Friday night that is, the boys are playing the Clockwork Apple show upstairs in Whelan's. Tenner in, 8pm. Do it.)

Stripperella Slippers

Whilst reading Go Fug Yourself recently for an occasional dose of bitchy fluff about famous people's clothes, there was a post about this Taylor Momsen bird. I reluctantly know that she is/was in Gossip Girl and now fancies herself as a singer or something. I wish I could be cool and not have a clue who she is, but I have a stupid ability to retain information about actors and actresses, to the point that I've been referred to as KMDb more than once.

Anyway.

In this particular post she was being berated for dressing like a skanky ho-bag, or at the very least for dressing wildly inappropriately for someone on the wrong side of statutory. Taylor's latest jailbait outfit included a pair of stripper shoes. And not just any kind of stripper shoes:


Stripper shoes WITH A BUILT IN TIP JAR. Seriously, click the picture to enlarge to see the dollars in the platform of her shoes. There's so many filthy euphemisms that could be made here about coin slots (which these shoes inevitably have), but I'm really not going there. While I do realise that these shoes are pretty knacktastic, quite a large part of me thinks that they're kind of genius and I really like them.

Don't you judge me.

Pin Ups and Presents

Birthdays are great, aren't they? People you like give you nice things and more often than not there's cake involved. And cake being involved in any situation is never a bad thing. (Go on, try to think of a situation where cake wouldn't be a good idea.) For my birthday this year, I absconded to Edinburgh for the weekend with seven foxy ladies, which totally beats last year, where Michael Jackson selfishly went and died the day before and stole my thunder. The absolute cheek of some people.

So I've decided to show off some of my lovely presents, including a stack of graphic novels and some rather brilliant DVDs.


The Bear went and outdid himself this year, (seeing as I'm so ridiculously gay for classic pin-up girls) with a 1972 Playboy collection of Vargas girls and a vintage deck of Vargas playing cards. Drool.

Oh, and Dita Von Teese button pins. Allow me to say - Schwing!

I can't even begin to describe how amazingly gorgeous every individual card is, so I won't. I'll just use this photo instead.


They just don't make sexy playing cards like they used to.

Table For Two

Back when the Bear and I moved into our deadly new apartment, we soon realised that we were without a coffee table, (or tea table really, since neither of us actually drink coffee) and an upturned cardboard box held together with tape from the move would only do for so long.

So we bought this retro expandy table off eBay.


Then, seeing as I have something of a penchant (that's right, penchant) for old pictures of sexy ladies, we bought a heap of vintage magazine pictures of Greta Garbo, Jayne Mansfield, Carole Lombard, Sophia Loren and Brigitte Bardot, also from the Bay of E.


The whole lot was then handed over to the lovely people at Pre Loved Style, who we came across at the Dublin Flea Market. They got to work tarting up our table and lo!


We kept the colour (and as it happens, the slightly more nekkid) pictures for the middle panel underneath. So now I get to put my cup of tea on Bardot's bare bottom. Which not many people can say.


Plus it also has that fantastic photo of Sophia Loren giving Jayne Mansfield's rack the dirtiest look EVER.


Nice.

The Hungriest Tree I Ever Did See

I do love a bit of frisbee in the park. And I'm quite a fan of the King's Inn park, off Bolton Street, for said frisbee throwing. It's a great spot seeing as it's normally pretty quiet and knack-free, plus the first time I was there was on my third date with the Bear. But best of all, it's got a magic bench.

You heard right, A MAGIC BENCH.

Look at it!

IT'S BEING EATEN BY A TREE!

Ah God it's great. I can't help making stupid "nyom nom nom" sounds when I go past it, it'd just be plain wrong not to really. I wonder how long it's taken it to eat this much of the bench. On the first day the bench was put there, did the tree think to itself; "Fuck this for a game of soldiers, I'm HAVING me some of that. GET IN MY WOODEN BELLY YOU TASTY BENCH."


Ha! I crack myself up.

Coupe du Monde '98

Football.

That's right, football.

I'd say that football has been mentioned...oh...about....NEVER on this blog. To the extent that I had to make a new Sport label for this post. However, with the World Cup fast approaching, everyone's getting into a frenzy with predictions for the final and which team they drew in the office sweepstakes (I got Serbia and Cameroon. Sake.) and after reading NotRuairi's great retrospective on where he was for each World Cup, I've decided to share the tale of how I once got to attend an ACTUAL WORLD CUP MATCH.

Oh yes.


In 1998, I spent one month of the summer in Lyon in France with my family, as my Dad was insistent on me and my brother having spectacular French, as well as wanting to improve his own. (I actually did have pretty kickass French once the Leaving Cert came around, but sadly most of it has escaped from my brain since then.) One evening, in the midst of all the Word Cup goings-on, there was a free outdoor concert on featuring a Belgian singer called Axelle Red and Chris Rea, of all people. Anyway, after we'd had enough of the songs in French and Rea singing stuff that wasn't Driving Home For Christmas, we retired to McDonald's for a go of their deadly brand new ice cream dessert, the McFlurry. It was all rather exciting to my thirteen year old self. Actually, considering how excited I still am by those milkshake shops that can make any flavour you want, it's safe to say not much has changed in that respect.

Seriously. It makes my teeth cry.

So there we were, happily making our way through every available variety of our futuristic ice cream and trying to figure out how the hell we'd go about getting to see one of the matches. It was at this point that a man I could only describe as shady leaned over from the next table and asked where we were from.

"You are Irish!? I like the Irish. I know how to get World Cup tickets..."

He proceeded to tell us how all we had to do was drive to a tiny post office in a tiny village and be there at 7 in the morning the next day. And in that very post office there would be tickets for sale at the counter. Now, while the guy himself seemed shady as fuck, the actual instructions seemed reasonable enough. So off we went the next morning in our rented car to the little Postman Pat village, and in that very post office we managed to buy four tickets to a match in Saint-Étienne...

IRAN vs YUGOSLAVIA

Boom. You may laugh, but it was Yugoslavia's first time in the World Cup, and for all anyone knew they could have been a superstar team of players (whose names ALL ended in "-vic"). Because they were the relative underdogs, we joined in the chants of "YU-GO-SLAVIA!" that reverberated around the stadium. It was fecking brilliant, there were at least three Mexican waves and the ball soared out from the pitch right towards me and my brother, but then some old guy in front of us stood up and managed to punch the ball directly back where it came from. The cunt. Anyway, Yugoslavia won 1-0 and we were at the end where the goal was scored in the second half. And it was only brilliant.

So concludes what is likely the only post that will ever mention football on this blog.

The end.

Raspberry Ripple

Hello people. You like your ears, don't you? They're pretty good to you, being all on the side of your head and not letting your sunglasses fall off your face and such, right? So give them a present and have a listen to The Dead Flags funktastic (I almost typed fucktastic there, but y'know, I think that works too) cover version of Prince's Raspberry Beret.

It's here (scroll down a bit in the music player) and it's fucking DELICIOUS.

Twist in the Tail

This is a little teapot/teacup combination dealy which I own. What I like about it is that the two gossiping ladies look like they have tails. I do realise that its actually some manner of nice twirly seat that they're sitting on, but I've decided that they have tails and that's it. I like it when people have tails. Not like inbred, mountain-folk type deformity tails, but proper big floofy tails like Squirrel Girl.

See? I didn't make her up.

Also, the whole people with tails thing reminds me of the super fascinating 19th century French actress Sarah Bernhardt. I do love me an eccentric old bird, and Sarah certainly delivers. She had a coffin she sometimes slept in and preferred to take on roles where the character died at the end. She also collected chairs and had six chameleons and a lion as pets at home. (What is it with these 19th century eccentrics and their big cats?)


Anyway, my favourite mad thing about Sarah is that she apparently asked a surgeon to attach a tiger tail to her spine, but he told her it was impossible. The jerk. How amazing would it have been to go see Hamlet and the leading man is not only actually a lady but has a freaking TAIL onstage? I would go see that. Anyway, it's probably not actually true, but I choose to ignore this fact and have decided it is. Just like my teapot ladies have tails and are NOT sitting on chairs.

Easy Rider

A few weeks ago, the Bear got a heads up on a casting call for an ad where they needed big hairy biker types. Now, the Bear isn't actually a biker (seeing as he doesn't have a bike) but could most certainly pull the look off with aplomb. That's right, APLOMB. He had two days to get his act together and dress the part for casting day, which meant I spent a Wednesday rifling through charity shops from Capel Street to Camden Street, in the search for Things A Biker Might Wear. The coolest thing I found, by a long shot, was this belt buckle for a fiver. A fiver I tells ya!


I also found the Harley Davidson bandana in the photo, which he keeps threatening to wear in real life. In fact, he had actually been threatening to get one for a while instead of a haircut, but I wouldn't let him. I've since begun to wonder whether the entire thing was a scam for him to get a bandana.

The crafty bastard.