Gookie by Gookie!! Please James!!

http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/6e3825a523/james-franco-gucci-commercial-outtakes?rel=player

Now I quite like James Franco ... but this?!?!!  You would think that he´d remember how to pronounce the name of the company paying him ALOT of money!! (click on link above). It could, of course, be a big piss take.

Notes on Kapoor´s fantasies - Laurent Muller visits AK at the RA, London

He is internationally acclaimed, winner of the 1991 Turner Prize and a leading sculptor of our time. The Royal Academy of Arts is presenting one of his most subtly extravagant and poetic show. Glad I´m in London to see a part of you!

If nowadays video and images travel for us,  we’re still missing the in-situ experience. So this time, no pics from me, just words instead,  ones I heard during my visit, the ones felt deep down… it’s also that art, a moment of delight and proximity!

Watching ‘Svayambh’ (‘self-generated’ in Sanskrit) on a bench of one of the halls…
‘What is it made of?’
‘It’s wax I heard’
‘Oh it’s cheaper that way’
‘I hope he pays to have a cleanup after’
‘Mind you if you buy one if his works it costs millions so…’
‘Oh my, it’s so long!’
‘It’s on tracks’
‘He says the whole thing weigh 3 tons’
‘3, oh my god!’
‘And the wax on the arches was put by his technicians’
‘Oh I thought it was on the floor because it was pushed through the breach’
‘I think I prefer the funhouse mirror room’
‘Oh I love the mirrors’
‘It’s like a Xmas tree all that!’
‘And you see it’s moving all the time’
‘I don’t know how long more I can watch this. I want to go home and watch the news’
‘It’s from 6 to 6.30 on BBC1’
‘I am going to write down that, our concierge is off at the moment’

Staring at ‘Non-objects’
What do I like the most here, when I stay distant my non-reflection in the steel yoyo, the fact that my aging body is transformed into rays of blues and pinks, or is it the smell of this young man next too me…
‘It works at any time’
‘Yeah but it’s a bit disturbing no?’
‘Why am I upside down?’
‘It’s crazy!’

Going around ‘Slug’
I caress the curve of your back, there where it’s becoming a valley, where lies my pleasure. I observe the rose petal, purple-crimson alive and breathing so slowly, so deep. It’s rare to see that and I find the same music on a square foot of ‘Slug’, this giant resin monster, there only where the shinny sparkling paint covers the upmost desired curve. There resides the glory of ‘Slug’. Look for it, and indulge!


About ‘Shooting into the Corner’
‘Bang!’ and confusion…no comment from me.

About ‘Greyman cries, Shaman dies, Billowing smoke. Beauty evokes’
Towers of excrement, architectures of a lost age, mounts of cement, mixes of greys, creams blacks and red ochre… Kapoor has done it! A room filed with our own ego, fragility and simple condition. Origins!


About ‘Hive’
‘But it’s enormous, how did they get that in!!!’

Anish Kapoor is at the Royal Academy, London until December 11
http://www.royalacademy.org.uk/exhibitions/anish-kapoor/about/

... and then the heavens opened

The view from Montjuic castle, 22.10.09, 2.30pm

There´s no such thing as a light drizzle in Barcelona, I´m beginning to find out. It doesn´t rain that often, but when it does, ¡joder! how it does it. Talk about rain drops the size of golf balls!! Honestly, they were lethal. And of course, I had to get the big downpour on my way up to Montjuic castle with no shelter. By the time I got up to the top, I was soaking wet. I mean SOAKING wet!

Of course, if I die of pneumonia or bronchitis over the next couple of days it´ll be nobody else´s fault but mine. An umbrella would have helped, but I stubbornly continue to insist on not carrying one.

No comment (1)

It matters if it´s black or white

Lara Stone gets ¨blackfaced" for French Vogue

Lara Stone get blacked and whitened in French Vogue

Lara Stone gets whitened in French Vogue

The truth is this: there is very little in fashion that is new. It´s the usual merry-go-round of rehashed ideas that need to be made desirable, because, as Roland Barthes wrote, the idea of fashion needs to be kept going in order for the industry to survive. If fashion didn´t exist, we would buy clothes less frequently, with catastrophic effects. Think of the billions of pounds, dollars, euros, yen or whatever that exchange hands every year because of fashion. Without it there would be only clothes. There would be no must-haves, no pieces to die for .. just plain old clothes.

With so little that is new around, it is now - more than it has ever been - up to the image makers to create some excitement about what is essentially unexciting. Bored of showing the same old dress on a different model? Yes!! So, let´s turn the shirt into a skirt, or make the model a man, or a child ... Anything to make it look new.

Now let´s for a minute imagine ourselves in the Vogue headquarters in Paris. There´s a brainstorming session going on, and the brains are storming to see how they´re going to make some essentially same-old clothes look interesting.  "Eureka" cries the editor Mme. Roitfield - the woman responsible for making French Vogue the Vogue of Vogues (formerly it was Franca Sozzani at Vogue Italia, but that´s gone downhill of late), "why don't we use Lara (Stone, the dutch model to who Roitfield recently dedicated a whole issue!), and paint her black, or white, or black or white? .... We can get Steven (Klein) to photograph it". Pens and notepads fall onto the floor, jaws drop. The excitment is palpable. "Mais c'est genial!" the rest of the table cries in unison. "Cést cool, non?" Madame L'editrix has come up trumps again.

Fast forward to October, the pictures are published, and Roitfield is caught in a maelstrom. The World Wide Web is in overdrive and she is branded a racist for allegedly 'blackfacing' Stone and reinforcing a negative stereotype.

But is that really so? To be honest, if I´d seen the spread with no knowledge of the uproar, the idea of racism wouldn´t have entered my mind, and I´m usually quite up for calling someone a racist/bigot/homophobe/xenophobe/whateverist-otophobe when necessary. In fact, my only thought was, "Ok, they're doing Keith Haring/Jean Paul Goude/Grace Jones again"(which to my knowledge never ended up in any race debates)

Jean Paul Goude whitens Grace

Keith Haring whitens Grace

It seems like I´m in the minority on this one.

Sack the Stylist (1)

Cheryl Cole performs at X-Factor

Unfortunately (or maybe not so) I didn´t manage to find a picture of the whole ensemble, but close your eyes for a second and imagine this get-up with a pair of black low-cut, side-split harem pants, then open them, and ask for the stylist´s head on a plate.

Laurent Muller parties with les artistes after Frieze

And yet another edition of Frieze comes to an end. Now in it´s seventh edition, the art fair welcomed more than 150 galleries, evolving between a taste of neo-arte povera, glam-pop and the strong ‘classic values’. 


Where do the emerging artists go? To fight the credit crunch or refuse to go thinner, this year a whole section was dedicated to them: Frame. Unframed would have been appropriate, with its un-carpeted cheap raw floor and its lot of free spirited explorations. I value the very high quality video installations that, in my opinion, led the show, creating an actual bridge between our complex consciousnesses. 

On one of the evenings of this past week, I embarked in a crazy journey with friends and ended up at Dreams, 2dreams or maybe more… not sure of the club’s address at this point. I hadn’t take part in such a conglomerate of fizz-bubble-thickEyeglass personas in a long time. 


Was it the London art scene or Friezeland Underground Avenue? All ages mixed and finally the pseudo-archetypal-artist-look was destroyed: is freedom back?


Not sure if we all found our fairy on the night but the electric voice performance transported me to a festive neon-blue village square. 


Hmm, Human after all!

No naked mannequins please, we´re Maltese!

(Please note: Mannequin pictured is not the actual offending article)

It´s a bit like playing snakes and ladders is Malta. One day - as was the case last Friday when I read about univeristy students being  pro-gay marriage, divorce etc - you think, "oh good, things aren´t as bad as they used to be", and see a feint glimmer of hope coming through. Then, having taken a weekend off from your computer, you turn it on on a Monday morning to be confronted by a   a piece such as this on The Times website (http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20091018/local/police-get-shirty-over-nude-mannequins) which makes you think, "then again, maybe not!" and also want to cry and wail and pull your hair out in despair at the sheer pig-ignorance (no offence to pigs intended) of some of the people who hold authority on that little rock in the Mediterranean we call home.

So a shop owner with a conscience decides to use the windows of his Mosta shop as a means to get a message across, and highlight the plight of millions of sex slaves all over the world who are in their situation as a result of sex traficking. He does this by placing two naked mannequins - one male, and one female (and if I remember correctly, mannequins have no genitals, so there isn´t even a case for "obscenity" here) tied together together by a chain. This is no kinky S&M set-up, please note, but a symbolic scenario in which the female slave is tied to the male (though I have to ask the question here: is the man a fellow slave, or the trafficker? If it´s the latter, then why is he naked? But that´s not really relevant to this argument, so I won´t bring it up).

Now if someone would have told me that the guy´s shopwindows had paint splattered over them at night, or perhaps someone had thrown a stone at them and shattered them, I would have thought, "OK, so someone involved in sex-trafficking is not happy with what this guy´s doing, and is sending him a not-so-subtle message to back off". Which, let´s face it, would be a pretty much predictable situation. But no, it was no seedy trafficker who objected to the windows, but "someone influential" who found the naked mannequins so "explicit" (a mannequin? explicit?), that he or she actually wasted the little energy left from being so influential (or perhaps being so influential, he or she might have got a secretary to do it)  to report the display to the police, who - seemingly having so little to do with their time -   promptly marched  to the shop to instruct the owner to cover-up the offending display.

Scary isn´t it? Is this a country that claims to be living in 2009?

There is a happy ending to this story (or so I hope). According to The Times report, the owner doesn´t seem like a man who takes what influential people with serious sexual issues object to very seriously , and has decided to stick his middle finger up to the authorities and leave his display. I´m sure that this "someone influential" will persist in his or her attempt to remove the offending articles (perhaps he or she might try using another street) but it seems like this shopowner is not one to bow down easily to authority, and I´m hoping that he´s not going to let this one pass easily.

The revolution has to start somewhere!

To find out more about the campaign against sex trafficking visit  http://www.dnaemporium.com/en/sex-trafficking . 

Home, Sunday 18 October 2009

Laurent Muller visits Miroslaw Balka´s ´How It Is' at Tate Modern

 

For its 10^th annual commission, the Tate Modern is presenting Miroslaw Balka’s sculpture, How It Is.
But what is it I wonder?  It’s an enormous mass of black steel, an enormous container far away. It’s an oppressive belly as you walk underneath of its surface, perched on thin fragile legs. And there is life all around it. As I observe the laughter and amusement of strangers around me I must know more about it.
Is it alive? Is it sad and serious?

Unconsciously, I follow the voices. Unconsciously, an awful taste of horror comes deep within my guts. History is right there and this container leads to its atrocious memory.
The access ramp is facing the thin elongated windows of the Turbine hall. I turn my back to them as I walk in as if a story is coming to an end. I fear the moment. The dimensions are eloquent but the presence of people around me makes me forget them. What is there to see, feel and remember? I hesitate a second and forget about my camera. I want to experience alone, without any safety net.
Maybe the hope of being shaken has been built up too high. I walk to the black end of the container and don’t realize its limit. The wall of flesh, standing up facing its entrance is actually pushed to the spatial frontier of the space. I touch the steel of blackness and understand.


What is there to understand? So much and so little really. I will never be one of these deported souls of WW2, I will never be Balka either. And if my experience was not so dramatic today, maybe I should be grateful and embracing light with more desire of life…

http://www.tate.org.uk/

A horrible, unkind, vile woman

The Daily Mail´s Jan Moir

I wanted to keep out of the whole Stephen Gately debate, until this was brought to my attention. Wouldn´t you know, it was published in The Daily Mail!

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1220756/A-strange-lonely-troubling-death--.html

Update: an article published in response in www.guardian.co.uk:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/oct/16/stephen-gately-jan-moir

Last update: MOnday 19, 10.33am

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/oct/16/stephen-gately-boyzone

Who will go to the ball?

One of these films will be representing Spain at the Oscars this year (I haven´t seen any of them, so can´t comment):

Isabel Coixet´s Mapa de los Sonidos de Tokyo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoZvFsBZLuc

Fernando Trueba´s The Dancer and The Thief http://www.azmovies.net/the-dancer-and-the-thief.html

Daniel Sanchez-Arevalo´s Gordos
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ch2aqVeFzXw

I´m a bit gutted that Almodovar´s Los Abrazos Rotos did not qualify, but hey, some you win, some you don´t.

Another regular in the square

The benches in the square downstairs seem to be a magnet for some weird and wonderful characters. No sooner had I blogged about the old man in the hat, that this lady appeared, wearing loads of clothes, flip flops and carrying all her belongings in a trolley. She´s been spending whole days, smoking a seemingly endless supply of cigarettes and watching the world and his brother go by.

Memories of Barcelona

 

(Xavier Miserachs Ribalta, untitled, 1967)

 

(Colita, La Place Real, undated)

(Colita, untitled, 1965)

(Colita, Montjuic, 1963)

Being a bit of a lover of photography, I was super-thrilled when a friend turned up for dinner last week with a book of photos by the Barcelona born photographers Xavier Miserachs Ribalta (1937 - 1998) and Colita (1940 - ) whose work I was not familiar with.

Called Memories de Barcelona (Lupita Books, Barcelona, 2008), the book is an anthology of Miserachs Ribalta and Colita´s work, featuring photographs taken between 1964 and 1975, when Barcelona was an altogether different city than it is now.

www.lupitabooks.com

SHOCK HORROR: Liberal Students found on University of Malta campus!!

(apologies for the dreadful picture)

OMG! It´s unbeleivable. According to a piece in yesterday´s (Malta) Times, a survey carried out by the new progressive student movement MOVE, students at the Univeristy of Malta - those poor innocent lambs who had - shock horror - condoms!!, forced upon them by those evil marketing men at Vodafone during fresher week - are actually, surprise, surprise, not as ignorant and narrow minded as everyone thought they were. In fact, - among other results which will be launched today on campus - 49 % actually agree with the idea of gay marriage (39% are against, 16% undecided).

In another survey carried out by the university´s chaplaincy, (and here I´m quoting The Times) "the overwhelming majority" of students disagreed with the church´s teachings on divorce, contraception and, ooh the thought of it, pre-marital sex! Like, DUH!!!! What did you expect? I´d be very worried if they agreed.

What I can´t stomach is how commentators on the Times website refuse to accept the truth and are now arguing against the methodology used by MOVE to come up with the figures, whilst one commentator is going on about the fact that crosses (crucifixes, I imagine, he means) have been removed from lecture rooms. I mean, people, get your asses over to the nearest supermarket and buy yourselves a life, for Chrissakes!! It´s 2009!!

I´ll be looking out for the rest of the results

Links.
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20091013/local/half-of-university-students-agree-with-gay-marriage-survey)
 http://www.move.org.mt/

14.51 More news just in
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20091014/local/university-students-in-heated-debate-on-sexual-health

My Favourite Altar Boy

Ever since I was a child roaming the streets of Valletta, the plaster altar boy asking for donations to help him become a priest ("ghinni insir qassis") has stood outside the door of 227, Merchants Street. I even had a little crush on him at one point, in fact I keep a framed photo of him in the flat to this very day.

According to today´s (Malta) Times (http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20091012/local/the-50-year-old-altar-boy) the statue has been there since the late 1950s and originally came from Spain. Funnily enough, a couple of days ago I came across a similar one, made as a prop for a movie, in an antiques shop in El Borne. I would have bought it there and then, only it had a price tag of 1,800€. I suppose I´ll have to make do with the photograph!

I heart heart heart Jodienda Warrick

Ever since the link to the first video landed in my inbox, I´ve been addicted to the phenomenon that is Jodienda Warrick.


Written and directed by Fernando Gamero, this series of shorts features Jodienda, a spy  whose mission is to ensure that the Queen of Pop keeps her title - and as it turns out - her life. It´s completely hilarious, the kind of  campfest that only the Spanish can come up with.


Here are links to all the videos on youtube ... luckily, the trailers come with subtitles. Unfortunately for those who don´t speak Spanish, the Madonna "interview" isn´t subtitled:

"Trailer" 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbSvsnDcdr8
"Trailer" 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1nNLoMwwXw
"Madonna" interview promoting "Jodienda Warrick (Look out for the Lidl bag): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHHKuWuE0wk

If you´re on Facebook, you can follow Jodienda by becoming a fan.

More of this, please!

Is Dannii Minogue homophobic or just plain stupid?

(click on post title to watch video)

So, it looks like Dannii Minogue is in deep shit for a comment she made during last Saturday´s X-Factor following Danyl Johnson´s version of Jennifer Holiday´s "I´m Not Going", and calls for her resignation  are already pouring in (there´s already several "Sack Dannii Minogue" groups going on Facebook) .  Apparently there had been rumours in the press about Johnson being bisexual (like, does anyone care?), so, clever girl that she is, Minogue felt it was her duty to comment about his changing the lyrics in a song originally sung by a woman (from "You´re the best man I´ve ever known" to "You´re the best girl I´ve ever known").

Does that make her homophobic?

Ay, Carmen!

The wonderful Carmen Maura - star of many an Almodovar movie - discusses her career in an hour long interview aired on La 2 on 09/10/09
(in Spanish. click on post title for link)

All is Vanity

Laurent Muller is a French artist living and working in Malta. Five days before his first solo exhibition, All is Vanity, opens in London, he took time off from finishing off some steel works at a factory in Tal-Handaq to discuss his new work with The Barna Blog.

Benitoh in L´escarpolette recadree

... and more of Benitoh in The City

JF: It´s five days to go before your first show in London, how are the excitement levels?

Laurent Muller:  I´m working on the last pieces until the end to avoid stress. It helps keep the focus on the goal, experimenting. It’s all about experimentation.

 JF:  This new material seems to be a departure from your previous work. I was looking at your stuff on your website (http://www.laurentmuller.com/) the early pieces seem to be a lot softer, almost more romantic. This is brighter, more ´pop´. How did it come along?

 LM:  I painted my last series of paintings, called the Last Romantic Hours, six months ago. A fracture happened at that moment, I threw away most of the old works in my studio. It´s about growing up, cleansing, getting some pure lines and images, so going back to my roots of industrial design was the most sensible thing I could do.

JF:  I love the fact that you´ve picked a skeleton from the hallowed tombstones at St.Johns Co-Cathedral, and put him in briefs. Tell me about Benitoh ...

 LM:  Ah, he was born a year ago when I transferred all my original tracings of the tombstones from St John´s to digital data. I learnt AutoCAD and Benitoh came along: witty and sensitive, very human.

I had traced several skeletons, all baroque from this fantastic floor of inlaid marble. Then I learnt that for the Knights of the Order, death was only a passage to posterity for the glory of their beliefs. So Benitoh is a fun loving buddy, sad or goofy. Just like us all.

 JF:  Does he feature in the sculptures as well?

 LM:  His image is engraved in the marble pieces of the show, in almost all the digital unique prints, and for fun in a series of six different T-shirts that are currently being screen-printed. Fashion, art, design, cultural heritage, there is no limit to our 21st century, so let's enjoy!

 JF:  And vanity?

 LM:  Ah! Vanitas, vanitas! A fantastic theme, so contemporary

 JF:  the 21st century condition ...

 LM:  Yes exactly, vanity means so much more than vainglory and boasting. Where do we stand with all our values? It´s about a sensitive consciousness that tells us we are not heroes. We are but human, so we create to forget, no?

 JF:  Indeed

LM:  I can’t stop creating, otherwise I'll start questioning the unreasonable, and the never answered

 JF:  And answers can often be the killers of creativity, don’t you think?

LM:  Yes, whilst questions open all doors. Speak up, question, disagree … That’s what we need to learn. It should be taught at school!

 JF:  I suppose you have to speak up, question and disagree with a lot when you´re working as an artist in Malta

LM:  First if one works alone, he questions himself constantly.

Then in a small environment you want to explode all boundaries and make it an experimental place, where the classic doesn’t exist, and need to be reinvented. In Malta, that can be done perfectly! I mean, look, I am answering you from a great metal factory in Tal-Handaq.

JF:   Has St John´s reacted to your reinvention of the classic?

LM:  At first some people were pissed that it was a foreigner doing this project. Then they warmed up and saw that with respect, anyone could, should, be taking attention to this unique jewel.

 JF:  They should start selling Benitoh t-shirts in the museum shop!

 LM: Actually, that sounds like a great idea. I want to create a brand.

The briefs should be a hit.

 JF:  What happens after London? Have you got anything else lined up?

LM:  I’ve been proposed two other shows in London, one in December and one in October 2010.

 JF:  Wahay!

LM: I´ve also been invited to give a workshop on the subject of design and heritage art in France, and in parallel I hope to create some link with Central Saint Martin´s in London.

 JF:  Anything in particular?

 LM:  I like this notion of heritage art, it's open to any kind of inspiration, all around the world. Why not India after, or the Emirates!

It is about sharing after all.

 JF:  Benitoh´s global domination …

LM:  Exactly. Am I perhaps going too fast? Maybe, but I like the risk of burning my wings. I would hate to become bourgeois, ever!

All is Vanity is showing at the MPA Gallery,
33 Mill Street,
London
SE1 2AX from 16 October to 7 November.  (http://www.mpagallery.co.uk/)

Ten shoes girls will be lusting after (but not necessarily wearing) in ss2010

Balenciaga (sorry but no detail shots available!)

Chanel

Galliano

Givenchy

Lanvin

McQueen

Miu Miu

Prada

Louis Vuitton

Alexander Wang

Al Mercado!

 

If you´re visitng Barcelona, and a bit of a flea market fan, then you have to go visit Encants, one of the oldest, and largest flea markets in Europe. It´s open on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays and is a great day to spend the morning, since you can come across all sorts of weird and wonderful things (a stuffed parrot, old dolls, clothing, religious icons, porn ...., you name it, it´s there!). Today I came back with a fabulous carved gilt frame, which I haggled down to 10€from an asking price of 30€. Previous excursions have yielded two rickety painted chairs (20€) and an old, painted metal basin on a stand (40€), which I´m in the process of sanding down and which has turned my thumb into one big blister!

For further information visit http://www.encantsbcn.com/. Unfortunately the official website is in Catalan only!

Don´t hate the pigeons.

I know many think of them as flying, germ-carrying, rats but it occured to me the other day when I was on the beach and one passed straight by me, that the colours of pigeons are quite funky. All those shades of grey, and then the violet/green down on the breast. This one was perched on my next-door neighbour´s balcony this morning, so I photographed it - quite fuzzily, I must add.

Palin-tology

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2009/10/levi-johnston200910

This was in October´s Vanity Fair.Like we didn´t know she was an evil monster, really!! The fact that it has just been announced that Johnston (her daughter´s ex-boyfriend, see article) is posing for Playgirl makes one a bit suspicious about his intentions, still, it´s a lot of fun to read.

Heaven is a Cire Trudon candle.

I´ve always liked to have a scented candle going in the house, but now that we´re a 50 fag a day or so household, it´s become more of a necessity than an indulgence. Pre-Cire Trudon, I used to favour  Diptyque´s Figueur, Santa Maria Novella´s Melograno or Penhaligon´s Blenheim Bouquet, but that all stopped when I came across these heinously expensive but well-worth-every-penny-bits-of-heaven-in-a- green-hand-blown jar in the Bluebird on the King´s Road (note to anyone buying in London:  don´t get them at Bluebird because they´re a tenner dearer than they are in Liberty´s).

The house comes with a history. Founded in 1643 (which is already enough to make me part with lots of money) it is the oldest wax-producing manufacture in the world - or at least that´s what it says on the box. The wax is made of a mixture of palm oil, rice, soy and coprah, and the candlewicks - please note - are woven with pure cotton (again, I´m quoting the box here!)

Last night, having gone through the last waxy drop of Manon (the blurb: "happy as a lark, this delicious scent of fresh cupboard and of swilled down tile floors, recall the washing days of George Sand heroes and the Parisian laundry maids. Between stacks of embroidered linen sheets on a lady´s festooned bed, lavender and orange spread a smell of lightness and neatness" - now resist that if you can!!!!) I lit Carmelite (blurb: "the perfume of the old stone walls, in the shade of the cloisters and convents, this scent of fresh mossy stone tells us about the black and white silhouette of sisters moving in the silence of ritual mass. Under the light of votives and psalmody, Carmelite refers to the peace of sould and eternity". This is pornography, no?), which I also have on now and which has transformed this room from a stale, ciggie-smelling, morning-after-a-dinner-party room, to the closest thing you can get to olfactory orgasms.

So far, I´ve tried Roi Soleil (blurb: "Fragrance of the mirror gallery and the vast wooden floors of the Chateau de Versailles, vapours of wax, candelabra and palace ....) and have Trianon (Blurb: "the picking of jacinth, roses, white flowers, wild herbs from the meadows and graminacious plants, this bunch of flowers reminds us of an ideal nature, that of the Nouvelle Heloise and the country life dreams of Marie Antoinette. Vibrating with the memory of a summer evebubg ab the warm scent of musk of torches, this candle is an homage to the Queen of taste who inspired so many candles to Maison de cire Trudon") next in line, which means I´m guaranteed nice smells for the next month or so. By then, I suppose, letters would have started puring in from my bank manager!

My mother´s Kapunata recipe (a Maltese version of Sicilian Caponata, or French Ratatouille)

Allow me a brief (well this might take some time) Martha Stewart moment here, but I was asked to post the recipe by AA who was over for dinner yesterday with SD.

My mother´s kapunata is something of a big event in our household. She spends hours making it, and whenever she does, the kitchen is a definite no-go zone. But the end result is totally worth the wait, and all the admonishments to get out of the kitchen. Whenever I go visit in summer she makes sure there´s always a big bowl going, and I´m usually to be found dipping yet another slice of warm ftira into it.

Unfortunately, on my last visit, due to unfortunate circumstances, there was no kapunata. I returned to Barcelona with a big yearning for it, and a mental note to try and make some myself. Then a couple of weeks ago I was at a barbacoa where a basic version was on offer, so I promised some people that I would get the recipe and make some. Yesterday, after a detailed phone conversation with my mum, I spent about three hours in the kitchen making enough for about 70 people (when it comes to cooking, there is no denying that I really am I mother´s son!!).

Be warned, you need time, patience, and ideally a dishwasher, as you will probably need to use every pot, pan and bowl in the kitchen. But beleive me it´s worth all the hard work!

I used: (note to proper cooks: I don´t really use measurements in the kitchen, so you might want to check out quantities in other more legitimate recipes)
2 aubergines
2 big courgettes
about 3 or 4 cloves of garlic
about 5 green peppers
i think it was 8 tomatoes, nice juicy ones
basil
capers
black olives
tomato puree
about half an olive grove´s worth of olive oil
(another note: if you´re calorie counting, this is not for you).

I started off by slicing all the veg into thinnish, but not too thin slices. the aubergines are a bit of a pain, because you have to put salt on them and leave them to rest for about twenty minutes. After that, they need washing, and drying.

Once you have everything sliced and cleaned, start off by putting the green peppers, some garlic and a couple of the tomatoes into a pot. Make sure the peppers are still a bit wet, and instead of frying them, just pour some olive oil over them. Cover, and leave to cook, checking regularly to make sure that what´s in the pot is slowly melting, and that it´s all nice and moist in there. This pot will become your main pot, by the way.

In a frying pan, fry the courgettes until some are crisp, and some are nice and mushy. Once that´s done, bung it all into the main pot. Do the same with the aubergines. By this time, you should have the pot on a low heat, and a nice gloopy mixture going.

In yet another frying pan, prepare some basic tomato sauce - well, i just threw some garlic into olive oil, and then the rest of the chopped tomatoes. Cook for a couple of minutes, and then mix it together with all the other ingredients in the pot. Add some tomato puree, the capers and the olives, cook for some more and then remove from heat, and leave to rest.

(note: Have I just made this sound like it´s a quick, easy to make thing?)

I served it warm-ish, which is very good, bt it´s even better eaten cold. So once you´ve used what you need, put the rest (and with these quantities, there´ll be a lot left) into the fridge.

I love eating it with bread, but it´s excellent with fish, and last night I made it with butifarra and roast potatoes and there was not one morsel of food left on the plates. Which, of course, is what you want to see after spending hours in a kitchen being attacked by tiny explosions of hot olive oil!

I ain´t bitching ...

Of course I could go on with a total bitchfest about Malta´s Top Model, but I won´t. My postings on Facebook as I watched it live online yesterday were enough. Suffice to say that I won´t be wasting any more Wednesday nights in front of my computer watching it. Yes, it is THAT bad!

Gareth Pugh at Dior Homme?

Would be le chien´s bollocks, non?

The Old Man on the Seat

Every day, from about 5pm onwards, this man comes to sit on the same bench in the square, often staying until about 10pm, later in summer. He sits there, eats out of tupperware container, reads the newspaper, and sometimes chats with whoever sits next to him. In the two months I´ve lived in this flat, I´ve not seen him once without his hat. The only time I´ve seen him standing, is when he got up to have a piss, and didn´t make it to the corner, so he just did it in the square. Unfortunately my camera´s a bit shit, and isn´t good at shooting distance ... but I´ll be posting more of his photos as we go along. One day I might just sit down next to him and get the lowdown on him.