There are no words for this...

More Oz love - The Angels

The Wikipedia entry for this song - "Starting when The Angels were a pub band their song "Am I Ever Gonna See Your Face Again" has received an iconic response from audiences. Whenever Doc Neeson sang the words of the Angels' classic love song 'Am I Ever Going to See Your Face Again?' back came the ingenious response: 'No way, get fucked, fuck off'. Whilst outside Australia this may have been seen as a negative response, from an Australian audience and in the context of the Australian sense of humour this was recognised as high praise." 

New York Fashion Week

Last night I interviewed the lovely Marisa Berenson who, at 64, is still ravishingly beautiful. Berenson was a hugely successful model in the 1960s and 70s (no less than Yves Saint Laurent himself dubbed her "the girl of the seventies") and has starred in films such as Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon, Luchino Visconti's Death in Venice and more recently in the sumptuous I Am Love. I met Berenson at the launch of her new book, ‘Marisa Berenson: A Life in Pictures’ at Donna Karan’s Madison Avenue boutique in Manhattan. She was unfailingly polite, and gave me a hug and a kiss afterwards despite the fact I had asked her to discuss a very painful topic, the loss of her sister who died as a passenger on one of the planes which plunged into the World Trade Center on 9/11.“It’s always hard to remember that, with all of the images and the talk of it,” Berenson said of the approaching tenth anniversary of the attacks. “I celebrate my sister every day and she’s in my heart. I want to be very private and very personal about it.” Berenson herself was on a plane headed to New York when the attacks occurred, and told me she finds solace in her faith, being a "deeply spiritual person."  

Beagles are the best

This is Lexi. She lives in Walnut Creek, California.

Llorando/Crying

This is one of my favourite songs, sung in Spanish, in one of my favourite films. This whole scene is just so damn perfect, it makes me wanna cry.

Naff

I've been asked about my use of the word "naff" several times lately because it's not a word Americans seem to know. I guess it is chiefly a British slang term. I love the word, and think of it as the perfect shorthand for lame, uncool, tacky, unfashionable and passe. A bit like people who use "winning" as a twitter hash tag, or say "wowzers." Or passive aggression. Or people who secretly read other people's blogs without owning up to it. Or actually having a blog.

I always get the best ones...

This was awesome, but nothing can beat this fortune (grammatical error included) which I received in New York in 2010 and I still carry around in my purse:

I'm in love with a girl named Daria

Does Daria Werbowy have the prettiest eyes in the whole wide world? 

I know it's controversial...

... but I'm calling it now: Brad Pitt's glory days are over. He's lost it. Looks are gone.

Last weekend I stayed at the Ace Hotel in Palm Springs, California. I had an amazing time relaxing in the desert with some witty, vivacious and thoroughly entertaining friends. We laughed a lot, and talked incessantly. We also met a couple of people whose lives were vastly different to ours. I had a massage at the hotel's spa, where I met Alicia, a mother of three who moved to the U.S. after four balaclava-clad armed men stormed into her home in the Michoacan region of Mexico in the mid-90s and demanded she hand over her cash, the profits from her convenience store, and the keys to her car while her terrified children froze at the sight of the machine guns being pointed in their faces. Alicia said she couldn't trust the local police, who never bothered to follow-up her complaint about the armed bandits who invaded her home, so she abandoned her property, a successful business, and her culture and country in order to seek refuge in America for the sake of her children. Alicia told me she missed Mexico dearly, and was extremely proud of her heritage and her beautiful homeland, but the fear of her children being kidnapped, and of being raped like so many other women she knew, meant she could not live in peace. Later that afternoon, I met some Marines who had recently returned from deployment in Kandahar, Afghanistan. One of them had a badly scarred arm, the result of shrapnel wounds which he was now attempting to use to attract ladies with rather vulgar pleas to kiss it better. After unsuccessfully trying to chat me up with cheesy lines about my accent, the soldier who had approached me began revealing details of his duty after realizing my curiosity about the war in Afghanistan was genuine. Hailing from Georgia, this kid was only 21 (and horrified when I told him I was 28!) and had spent seven months in Kandahar before a suicide bomber exploded in front of him, leaving him partially deaf and afflicted with post-traumatic stress disorder. After receiving therapy for a short period, he told me he was back at base in the Californian desert and was preparing to be re-deployed to a different province in Afghanistan, despite the fact he still awoke many nights drenched in cold sweat after experiencing nightmares. He also told me that his fiancée had broken off their engagement to take up with his best friend while he was in Afghanistan, and this had exacerbated his depression. Innocently, he said he had been surprised to learn that many of the women in Afghanistan are extremely beautiful and very kind to the Marines, and will bring them food and smile warmly while the American soldiers patrol their communities. I was pleased to see that this sweet young soldier appreciated the kindness of the Afghanis. I was also happy to see that he appreciated his President's efforts to bring these soldiers home. He told me he couldn't wait to get out of the military and study criminal justice, and thought that maybe, one day, he should become a lawyer. I told him it sounded like a pretty good plan.

Little Red Riding Hood

I had a tomato red coat as a child, which I loved dearly. I think I thought I was Little Red Riding Hood! It's very cold in Melbourne during winter, so my coat was practical as well as stylish. This gorgeous YSL trench coat from their latest resort collection is in a similar hue.

Everything has changed....

One of my favourite New Yorker cartoons this year.