La Lutte Continue..

For celebrating the fortieth anniversary of May ‘68, the English fashion designer Paul Smith launches a book regrouping forty reproductions of the most representative posters of that mythic event. It’s a limited edition of 68 copies, which are not really cheap, indeed every copy costs £1392. The book comes out in parallel with the first UK exhibition of posters produced by students and workers in Paris during the risings of May 1968. You can see these iconographies at The Hayward Project Space in London throughout the current and unmythic May.

You can also buy some “revolutionary” May ‘68 gadget in Paul Smith boutiques, like candles, key cases, pocket notebooks, et cetera. According to me, this is the negation of the spirit of a season that, for better or worse, changed the world. But this is the spirit of our times, where often the rebels eat caviar and drink champagne.

 

 

Nomen Omen

A survey by Abbey Banking shows that British parents spend about 45 hours over the name of their newborn child. One in three parents believes the right name can give a child confidence, while up to 2 million think it could help their baby’s future career. Children’s names reflect people’s aspirations.

I’m not surprised by the results of this survey. In effect, the name Jack is right for a surgeon, but also for a drummer, but also for a trucker..But, there are names that, for their oddity or ugliness, can only ruin a person’s life. For example, what did Cher smoke when she called her daughter Chastity? The Latins was used to say “Nomen Omen”: your destiny is in your name. The meaning of my name is “lame”. No comments, please.

Adieu

 

 

Adieu, dear London black cab! We’ll miss you very much. Join the unforgettable Routemaster bus and Gilbert Scott’s red telephone box. Rest in Peace. Amen.

 

Photo by Patrick Mayon

Fashion Rock

 

APRIL77 is a very cool French brand of clothing. After associating with Gibson guitars, now it renders homage to one of the best independent labels, Domino Records.

Domino Records is in my heart because I love the music that it churns out. I like the Arctic Monkeys, the Kills, the Pavement..I am waiting with trepidation Franz Ferdinand’s new record. Well, after this musical soliloquy, I go back to the partnership between APRIL77 and Domino that has produced a limited edition box set containing a deluxe vinyl record with a compilation of the very best from Domino and April77’s polo shirt named “Manchester”, in honour of one of the most prolific cities in the British musical scene. There are only 440 copies, but you can win one in an internet competition at VoxPop (in French). You must be fast, you have until tomorrow at midnight.

I’m not a fashion addict nor a fan who collects stars “relics”, my teen room didn’t even see one poster, but I woo fortune. Tomorrow, a fashion addict or a collector could cough up a pot of money for my box set. I would be a rock star, but an accountant lives in me.

 

Photo by BrittneyBush

We Tell Stories on the Web

We Tell Stories is a very interesting project. The publishing house Penguin has recruited some of the UK’s best young writers to create six short stories inspired by literary classics, but featuring web tools, blogs and games. The digital part has been entrusted to the alternate reality games company SixtoStart, with an excellent result.

The first story is Charles Cumming’s The 21 Steps, inspired by John Buchan’s thriller The 39 Steps. It utilizes Google Maps and Google Earth to follow the protagonist, a young Londoner, who witnesses a murder and is obliged to smuggle a mysterious substance onto a plane. The second work is Toby Litt’s Slice, based on M R James’ ghost story The Haunted Dolls’ House. Lisa (Slice for her friends), has moved from US to London with her parents. They live in a old house where strange and creepy things happen. Is it an haunted house? You can follow the story on Slice’s and her parents’ blogs or on Twitter. You can also interact with the characters.

The other authors involved in the project are Kevin Brooks, Nicci French, Matt Mason and Mohsin Hamid. In the next weeks they will submit their works. They will respectively take inspiration from Hans Christian Andersen’s Fairy Tales, Émile Zola’s Thérèse Raquin, Charles Dickens’ Hard Times and the anonymous Tales from the 1001 Nights. For sure, there will be other good stuff on We Tell Stories.

London Dedicates an Exhibition to Jack The Ripper

From 15 may to 2 November 2008 the London Museum in Docklands holds the first exhibition about Jack the Ripper, the most famous serial killer of history, who killed five women in the autumn of 1888. The exhibition Jack the Ripper and the East End will allow to examine, for the first time, surviving documents from the investigation, victims’ personal belongings, letters from the public and the supposed Ripper himself. It will also make room to the labyrinthine world of delinquency, prostitution and misery wherein the crimes was committed and the big impact that he had on the media of those times. Maybe the yellow press was born just with Jack the Ripper. Besides the five victims imputed to him, the exhibition will also revolve about six women killed likewise in those years.

Jack the Ripper is a legend, the holy grail of crime history. Who was Jack the Ripper? Maybe the serial killer par excellence was a woman, maybe a celebrated painter or even a Windsor. The theory more fascinating is that one about a Mason plot. Whatever the truth is, now the mysterious Jack the Ripper is making fun of us “From Hell”.

 

Photo Debs_UK

Sherlock Holmes Existed, but Winston Churchill is a Fictional Character

I usually don’t take the polls as gospel, but in this case the results are rather funny. The UKTv Gold commissioned a study that tested the nation on its historical knowledge. The 3000 polled people reserved several surprises. The 58 percent of Britons believes that Sherlock Holmes really existed, the 51 percent swears to Robin Hood, the 47 percent to Eleanor Rigby ( How about Father McKenzie?). For the 47 percent of the sample Richard the Lionheart is only a myth, for the 23 percent Winston Churchill and Florence Nightingale are fictional characters. No one wanted to answer the question: “Who is Snow White?”. It’s always better to keep the mouth shut about the pushers.

Censored a Boss’ Name in the British Edition of Roberto Saviano’s “Gomorrah”

I read Roberto Saviano’s book “Gomorrah, Italy’s other mafia” and I didn’t find it disagreeable, but, in my opinion, it isn’t even a masterpiece, like it often happens with the books too glorified by the media. However its strength is in the mix between fantasy and reality. It’s a hybrid of fiction and investigative journalism, with Camorra bosses’ true names and surnames. For his courage, Saviano lives under police escort: I take off my hat to him. But there was one name too many for the English publisher Panmacmillan, that asked the author to strike off the name of an Italian boss moved to UK, when lived like in a ivory tower, and arrested in 2006. Law is law and the publisher doesn’t want any legal trouble because in UK doesn’t exist the offence of mafia association and the boss is innocent until the definitive sentence. Have we arrived at this point with the fear of libel cases? If you are English and you want to know boss’ real name, search internet or provide yourself with a bilingual dictionary English-Italian and translate this post, there is hidden the solution. I know it’s a real teaser, but he who solves it wins a stock of correcting fluid for a year.