Twilight Book Review

Rotten to the core: Twilight.

Twatlight Twilight fans, cover your eyes! For the following may leave you wanting to suck your stick-on fangs into my neck (and not in the good way).

First a little backstory. I, for some inexplicable reason, felt compelled to buy all the Twilight novels for my trip back to Australia from the UK in July. Not smart since my luggage was already more than 20kg over the allowance. I came to a point at Heathrow Airport where I had to chuck a few books out. I stupidly had accumulated 20 or so books in the 7 months I was over there. So I stood there with few precious minutes to choose which 2 or 3 books to throw out and had come down after rationalising each savior to Twilight et al (newly acquired and begging to be read), Crime and Punishment (a worn but muchly adored copy) and The Secret History (which had been the single most relevant book I had read in that space of time but one that I did want to replace with a prettier copy for this was a plain Penguin issue). So out went Twilight’s two sequels – the third of which had yet to be released – Twilight itself I decided to keep. Having read it just recently can I say with all the confidence in the world that if the first book is any indication throwing out those sequels was the BEST decision I could have possibly made.

I approached the novel quite naively. I had not heard of the Stephenie Meyer-scribed books which seems ridiculous now what with all the hoopla the movie has induced but at the time was more understandable. I don’t think I am a book snob in the least, but the level of writing appears to be aimed at a ten year-old and flaws me that anyone can be so engrossed in such a dull, dull novel. And I use the term “novel” loosely. It’s pulp on pretty paper. The reason why everyone loves these books, in my mind at least, can only be because of the perfect caricature that is Edward Cullen (vampiric love interest). He says all the right things, he’s brooding like only a man can be, he really is perfect. Y’know apart from the whole “I vant to suck your blood” shtick. You can go one of two ways with all his beautifully lyrics phrases – fall madly in love with him or cringe internally. I was oscillating between both for much of the novel.

It was honestly one of the hardest books to finish (and I’ve read some epic neverending novels), maybe because in this kind of teen fantasy genre I’m accustomed to the inviting nature of J.K. Rowlings’ writing style and was expecting similar talent. While it may have some dreamy quality, it lacks imagination in buckets.

This is at it’s core a sexless version of Mills and Boon (which seems like an oxymoron I know). Having read the first and had this kind of reaction to it, I can’t see myself investing in the second, third or God help us, fourth book in this series. I hope some child picked up those books I laid in the airport that day and gleaned more enjoyment from them than I could.

Terry Wogan quits Eurovision

Two Irishmen walk into a bar...

Terry Wogan has quit his Eurovision commentating role after over 30 years. Wogan, who was knighted in 2005, has long split viewers with his biting sarcasm but I personally was always a big fan of his straight-talking demeanor. His replacement for the 2009 Eurovision (to be held in Moscow) will be fellow Irishman Graham Norton who, although nowhere in the league of Wogan, is  probably as best a replacement as they’re going to get. I didn’t think Eurovison could get any camper but with Norton’s appointment everyone’s favourite talentless contest has proven me wrong once again.

Apparently the main reason why Sir Terry chose to leave was the lack of talent from the UK entrants as of late (“United Kingdom” and “nul point” practically go hand-in-hand as far as the competition is concerned) so wouldn’t it be funny if they pulled through and took out the 2009 title? He’d just about kill himself. It does actually have half a chance next year what with Andrew Lloyd Webber’s involvement in the production of the ditty. I shan’t hold my breath though. As Dr. Phil would say “the best predictor of future behaviour is past behaviour.” Words of wisdom.

Up and Comers: The Boy Who Trapped the Sun

The album: Chair by the Sea

When I first saw The Boy Who Trapped the Sun, a solo singer/songwriter from the Isle of Lewis, I was nothing short of gobsmacked. He was the first act of the night at popular music haunt Maggie May’s in Glasgow and the audience was less-than-packed. I had low expectations, especially when The Boy stumbles on stage apparently inebriated. But the moment he opened his mouth, I and my friends hung on ever silkily sung word. Of course every band subsequent to his set paled dismally in comparison.

Dreaming Like a Fool is my favourite – a deliciously melodic anti-love song of sorts documenting the dysfunctionality of a past relationship. But with lyrics like ” but you could never be an actress/I know the knife’s under the mattress” it’s not as predictable as the title suggests. Despite newly recorded versions on his myspace page, I have to say I prefer the simpler arrangements of his acoustic sessions.

He has only uploaded 1 video onto youtube so slim pickings but here’s I’d Smoke All Day If It Wouldn’t Kill Me:

For more songs: http://www.myspace.com/theboywhotrappedthesun

Gimme Five: Action Men

Action Man to the rescue!

Gimme five is branching out this week to profile some of our favourite action men of times past. Bruce Willis was omitted only because he doesn’t need the publicity and it still relatively successful. As with Stallone (come on  Rocky  Balboa wasn’t THAT bad). However this may be the only mention of Dolph Lundgren he gets all year. So behold! Five action men worth fighting for:

• Jean-Claude Van Damme

Jean-Claude’s signature  leg splits made an appearance in almost all of his movies – from Streetfighter to Time Cop.  Nicknamed “The Muscles from Brussels” in reference to is sexiciously cut body and Belgian heritage, van Damme proved he was (van) damme in scores of movies in the 80s and 90s. Then he had to get all creepy. Currently planning his comeback in new movie JCVD (yeah I know) – it should be at a video store’s bargain bin in no time!

The old bench split

• Steven Seagal

Zen master and martial arts 7th level black belt Seagal is perhaps most famed for his role in the Under Siege movies. After releasing a slew of straight-to-video movies, some of which he also directed suggesting why they bypassed cinemas, he moved to Louisiana and became a deputy sheriff in his local town. News is that he’s about to make a comeback with A&E signing up for a season of a Seagal-fronted documentary series based on his work as a deputy sheriff. Goodbye Dog, hello Seagull!

I don't know...that panda looks a underage to me. Somebody better check that out.

• Arnold Schwarzenegger

No action man compilation would be complete without our man Arnie. The Austrian hulk first became prominent after being featured in the bodybuilding documentary Pumping Iron which detailed his Mr Olympia win before shooting to fame in the Terminator films. His career took an unexpected turn when he decided to run for Governor of California, a position he won defeating such tough competition as porn star Mary Carey. Schwarzenegger went on to be re-elected while Carey won herself a place in the Celebrity Rehab clinic.

• Dolph Lundgren

A human Ken Doll if there ever was one, Dolph actually graduated with a Chemical Engineering degree. I have some slightly disturbing news. In the research for this article I discovered something that truly made my stomach sink. They are making a third Universal Soldier film. Anyone who knows anything about my most hated movies, they know that Universal Soldier 2 is beaten out only by Dickie Robert Former Child Star. I guess the roles after 2004’s underrated Fat Slags (note the sarcasm) weren’t exactly bringing in the moolah despite reaching the coveted #2 spot on IMDB’s 100 Worst Movies list.

In those days, they wore their bike pants HIGH

• Chuck Norris

Chuck needs no introduction. Popular as the titular Walker: Texas Ranger, Norris again became a household name via Conan O’Brien’s famous “lever” where he would pull said lever to distribute hilarious video clips of  Walker flooring bullies in bar brawls or comforting children with communicable diseases. His notoriety has also spawned a rather successful religion named in his honour. All hail your God – Chuck Norris!

O.J. Simpson sentenced to 15 years jail

Not so free at last... O.J. Simpson.

A Las Vegas judge has sentenced O.J. Simpson to serve 15 years with at least 6 years non-parole in a celebrated victory for the justice system.

On October 3 – exactly 13 years after the acquittal of Simpson for the murders of wife Nicole Brown and her friend Ron Goldman – jurors convicted him of armed robbery, kidnapping and assault with a deadly weapon.

“I stand before you today sorry,” a near-tearful Simpson told the Judge. “I am apologetic to the people of Nevada. … When I came here, I came here for a wedding. I didn’t come to reclaim property.”

Former football star Simpson is expected to appeal his guilty hearing claiming that the selection of jurors was skewed against him as none were of African American persuasion.

What I think…

Considering the joke that was his original trial it’s at least some small solace that courts can get it right – if not the first time around then the second. Some think that there was no way he could have received a fair trial because of the media storm that was created 14 years ago and people not being able to distinguish the crimes and separate the facts. I don’t believe that. Perhaps if this case was based on very weak circumstantial evidence that would never normally gain a conviction and he was still found unanimously guilty, I might be questioning it but because the evidence was overwhelming (the dozen or so witnesses, the audio tape clearly identifying Simpson as the ringleader etc.) I doubt whether the jury would have found any different had he been a John Doe. What’s odd is the significance of the number “13″ in the proceedings – 13 years between trials, 13 days of evidence, 13 hours of deliberation. I guess it really IS an unlucky number… at least for O.J.

O.J. meet Karma. She’s a bitch.

Dress me… American Eagle

This week’s inspiration is a bright collegiate back-to-school look. Because both the jacket and beret are in bold colours, it would be best to pare them down with a plain bottom and minimal accessories to let the pieces stand for themselves. For some reason, AE only sells absolutely abominable ugg boots on their website so this outfitter remains barefoot.

Hyperwriter: Your own personal urban outfitter

In the basket…

• BLAZER: Double-breasted party blazer in Pomegranate Juice $US39.95
  
• BEANIE: Downtown cable beret in Frozen Water $19.95
• BAG: Cable knit bucket bag in Cappuccino $79.50
• DRESS: Ribbon dress in Black $44.50
• EARRINGS: Disc earrings $12.50

The great thing about American Eagle is that it’s ultra affordable and can be mixed and matched with more expensive pieces easily. This outfit is for the preppy NYU student in all of us!

Bon soyage to veganism!

Wave goodbye!

What goes up, must come down so it with with some amount of pleasure that I finish the 2-week vegan challenge. The second week was fraught with obstacles including a birthday party which proved to be less than festive. But I achieved what I set out to initially, it’s called a challenge for a reason and it was a challenge for a great part of it.

The highs

• Finishing! I never, NEVER expected to get beyond a week just because I have quite low willpower and was used to eating a lot of non-vegan food. But it did become easier and I can only imagine it gets even easier until you can’t even remember anymore what meat tastes like.
• Getting my mum and brother to eat vegan-friendly food and not only refrain from bashing it but actually enjoy and compliment it.
• Finding new cafes and restaurants as well as meeting new people. When I went to the local organic foods market – which really is local only being across the park outside out house – everyone was so helpful and genuinely interested in my vexperiment.

The lows

• Drinking that coffee (that contained milk) on only day 2 was a massive regret. However as I said originally, I was going to treat this as a detox of sorts so if you view it like that of course there are going to be relapses. Also the fact that I jumped right into it rather than easing my way by starting off as a vegetarian may have made me more destined to fail in the first couple of days.
• Not being able to eat at certain places. I went to a birthday party and obviously had no choice in the restaurant that we went to but was entirely surprised to find there was not one thing on the menu that I could have. Upon enquiring about the salad (which had cheese) and whether I could have it sans fromage I was told that was impossible because it was prepared off the premises. That was just plain annoying

Vegan Factoid

I was watching the Tyra Banks Show the other day and the episode was about sex tips from all over the world. As one of the viewers got up in the audience to ask the formed panel a question, I immediately perked up when she said she was a vegan and that she was looking for condoms that were vegan-approved. Now this is when my intuitive pseudo-psychic senses kicked in and I knew (I KNEW!) that the answer was going to have something to do with Australia. Just like when I went to this Japanese Society party and there was a competition and 150ish people entered and as soon as I put my ballot in the box I thought about what I was going to say in the acceptance speech. Because I KNEW I was going to win. And I did. Anyway so back to Tyra – the sex expert said that in Australia they have vegan condoms and that apparently we were the first country to create them! I didn’t even know that animal fats were made in the production of condoms so it just goes it show that you really have to check absolutely everything.

Glyde vegan condoms

The Birthday Argument

As I already said, the birthday party was already a but of a bomb because I didn’t actually eat anything at the restaurant. It didn’t help the fact that I don’t exactly get along with my friend’s other friends who are just he ditziest, most shallow people you can meet. I have no idea what our mutual friend sees in them… Anyway so the alcohol was flowing and the ditzy girls – normally somewhat reserved in their dislike of me – start bombarding me with questions about the vexperiment. Rough conversation as follows:

Ditzy girl #1: So um what’s the point in even doing it?

Me: I have a friend who’s a vegan and I pretty much just want to get a better understanding of what it’s all about and also to see if I can really do it.

Ditzy girl #2: Really? Or is this just for attention? I can’t believe you didn’t even eat a piece of her birthday cake. That is so rude!

Ditzy girl #1: Yeah why didn’t you just take a break for tonight? It just seems a bit dramatic of you trying to take J’s spotlight on her birthday talking about your vegan crap.

Me: Well why don’t you take a break from being a bitch?

And then I walked away and started talking to her less evil friends who, y’know, aren’t vapid cows.

The beginning of the end

I’m not going to pretend that I’ll never eat meat again. Only an hour ago I ate a tuna sandwich for the first time in three weeks so that would be a lie. What started as less of an experiment but more an act of one-uppance has really opened my eyes to a growing faction of society for whom this lifestyle has become a lifelong dedication and I really salute them for making such a choice.

Why am I not so enlightened so as to continue and become a fully-fledged vegan? I honestly don’t know. Maybe it’s the fact that non-vegan food is just so easy. And I understand how callous that sounds – you’re going to keep killing innocent animals because it’s easy? – but that’s just it. I don’t doubt that if every supermarket in the world only sold vegan food we would become accustomed to it however until that happens nothing will change. I can’t imagine a world without the use of animals, but then 150 years ago blacks never thought they would have a president of the United States and women never thought they would have a candidate for such a position so who knows what is possible in the future.

There is nothing that I can say as an omnivore to excuse myself for what is for all intents and purposes a selfish way of living but it’s just so heavily ingrained that using and abusing animal products is the norm that people so rarely question it. Perhaps in the future when more and more people grow concerned about animals, proclaiming that one eats meat will be met with the same disgust that admitting to rape would provoke in the world of today.

- Many thanks to Baby D for the inspiration, Charmannequin for the willpower to beat you, all the restaurants and cafes in the city of Brisbane that put up with my constant inquiries as to the ingredients of their dishes and to my Mum for making it all happen.

‘Tis the season to get your jollies

Now THAT is getting into the festive spirit

Londoners will be in for an unusual treat this Christmas season with news that from today women will be given the morning after pill for free.

The initiative is aimed squarely at reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies conceived during the debaucherous holiday party months.

When the pill, normally available at a price of £28, will remain free until is unknown but the offer is expected to expire some time after New Year’s Day.

What I think… I applaud this new scheme wholeheartedly. Sex is not always planned, especially during the “silly season” as is often referred. Whether it will decrease unwanted pregnancies is anyone’s guess but clarity may come roughly 9 months from December. Hopefully this will encourage other cities to offer similar services for the Christmas season and realise that accidents do happen with other contraceptive methods and that by providing such tools it is only ensuring that more people choose to be safe in the bedroom (or on the table as it may be).

I personally LOVE the ad campaign (ABOVE) which shows a saucy Santa enveloping a leggy woman with the tag “Santa only comes once a year…but that’s all it takes!” What would Mrs Clause think?

Joran van der Sloot “a sociopath” says his lawyer

Did Joran van der Sloot sell Natalie Holloway?

So this week, Greta van Susteren’s Fox News program On the Record finally aired an interview with former prime suspect in Natalie Holloway’s disappearance Joran van der Sloot. For the uninitiated, I’ll break it down for you: van der Sloot is one shady, shady character. Since Holloway went missing while on spring break in Aruba in 2006, van der Sloot has been arrested twice and subsequently released due to lack of evidence. I’ll run through the different scenarios he has put forward thus far:

1. Original statement. That he met Natalie at a casino (as evidenced by surveillance video) and later picked up friends Satish and Deepak Kalpoe and took them to local bar Carlos and Charlie’s to see Natalie and her friends. Satish/Deepak (he swapped between which brother was actually driving) then dropped Natalie and Joran off at the beach because “she wanted to see sharks”. They then dropped Natalie off at her hotel.
2. Story 2. This story then changed when Joran sat down with Greta can Susteren for the first time in 2007 where he said they were dropped off at the beach and were “fooling around” but did not have intercourse. He then says he left her on the beach because he had to get up early to go to school the next day.
3. Story 3. In early 2008, private investigator Peter de Vries claimed he had cracked the case when he released a secretly filmed recording of Joran confessing that Natalie had died on the beach and that his family had taken care of it. Van der Sloot maintains that he was lying throughout the interview and “only wanted to tell him (de Vries) what he wanted to hear”, in addition to being impaired due to the influence of marijuana.
4. The latest story. In an interview conducted in July of 2008, Joran appeared on van Susteren’s show to confess that a man had approached him asking for a “blonde girl” in return for $10,000. Joran agreed and when he saw the opportunity, delivered Natalie to this mystery man on the beach and saw her being taken away on a boat. The new claim that he was somehow involved in human trafficking is supposedly supported by an audio clip conversation between Joran and his father Paulus, however its authenticity is widely disputed. Joran further claims that his father paid police hush money totalling $50,000 for their silence. As has become his custom, after the interview took place Joran sent the producer of On the Record an email saying he had made it all up and recanted the story.

The most interesting part of the whole interview was the sharp-tongued spat between van Susteren and van der Sloot’s lawyer Joe Tacopina whereby he questions the intentions of van Susteren and whether her primary interest is in the lawful investigation of this case as she purports, or in the ratings that it produces. Tacopina raises a good point; if van Susteran did indeed believe (or at least find some merit) in what van der Sloot was claiming, then why did she sit on the story for more than four months? She claims she was “too busy” to report it because of the then-upcoming U.S presidential elections but this is a weak excuse because in the months leading up to the election, audiences certainly needed a break in political-oriented news. And surely if anything said in the interview was thought to be a “case-breaker”, it would surpass the need for us to know what music Barack Obama listens to, such as was reported in the month of July.

Unless of course van Susteran knew that this new “confession” by a clearly sick young man would never eventuate into anything tangible. The prosecutor in the case has expressed complete disinterest in the case, refusing to even view it which is evidence enough of the faith put in this new claim.

News organisations need to stop playing into Joran van der Sloot’s desire for notoriety through this case. Every word he utters is unsubstantiated, and it seems as though the second the pay-for-talk money is in his pocket he recounts the latest bullshit story anyway. I just feel sorry for Beth Twitty, Natalie Holloway’s long-suffering mother who is continually contacted for soundbites to add clout to the newest wacky claim. If a person’s own lawyer is calling them a sociopath, you need to start questioning whether they are a reliable source. When will the media realise that the more van der Sloot “reveals” through these staged interviews, the cloudier the picture becomes making clarity ever that closer to the realm of impossibility?

Dress me…Topshop

Today we’re debuting a new segment whereby an outfit is chosen from one specific store (think of it as a sort of e-stylist). This week it’s UK fashion retail giant Topshop (which what with the economic crisis in effect I have had to forsake until further notice).

Hypewriter: Your own personal urban outfitter

In the basket…

• SKIRT: Spotty Mid-Length Prom Skirt £40
• TOP: Double Bow Ruffle Top £30
• SHOES: Sugar O’Lasted Mary Janes £60
• EARRINGS: Dragonfly Drop Earrings in Gunmetal £20
• BAG: Sequin Ruche Clutch Bag £25

Mary janes have recently made a fashion resurgence with television shows such as Mad Men embracing the iconic shoe making them as on-trend as you can get.

This is a great work-to-play outfit, meaning that with the right jacket, you could easily wear this to work and continue it right through to sipping cocktails in the lobby of London’s ultra-swanky Dorchester Hotel if you wanted.