I sincerely doubt that there is a single soul amongst the Doctor Who fandom that did not like Elisabeth Sladen, even to varying degrees, nor is there one who is not at least disappointed that she is gone so suddenly, in the midst of a renewed career and popularity, no less. No wonder she was brought back so often in the revived series and made the headliner of her own show; she made rapport look simple and easy. It must be said, the cancer has so much to answer for
I think it was that simple-yet-complex, intrinsic quality of hers that made her more or less the most popular of the series' "classic" companions; her character Sarah Jane Smith partnered the John Pertwee and Tom Baker incarnations of the Doctor and along with her brief appearances alongside the Patrick Troughton and Peter Davison versions, her enduring appeal - an appealing merger of sass, intuition, enthusiasm, chemistry and independence - ensured an iconic standard was made. Her first guest appearance alongside David Tennant's Doctor in 2006 could have been done by few other previous Who companions, really - when one has lived down an increasingly absurd selection of clear practical jokes played by the BBC's 1970s wardrobe department (who wants to look back on their (at the time) final appearance and note how Andy Pandy-like their outfit is?) and remained a fandom star, then there's no doubting the welcome impact of a brief reprise
Sladen was in the midst of capturing a new audience of once and future Whofen with as the headliner of spinoff The Sarah Jane Adventures, where her ability to sync with any and all co-stars remained appreciable; she was reunited with fellow 1970s Who staple Nicholas Courtney (whose aborted Mode Parade posthumous tribute this past February would have been entitled "Five Rounds Rapid", probably. Sorry, Brigadier) and most memorably performed alongside the current - and for my money, most enjoyable modern - Doctor, Matt Smith, and her predecessor as Pertwee's girl, Katy Manning, late last year. She also made her ongoing teamup with her much younger co-stars, Tommy Knight, Yasmin Page, Daniel Langer and Anjli Mohindra, seem like the most natural companions a middle aged weird happenings fighter should want to surround herself with
To quote your sadly (and ironically) apposite final story's title, "Goodbye, Sarah Jane Smith." I should think it's going to be very hard to forget you now
With my own personal Leather Lust Objects on my feet, a body in mod's clothing, a spring in my step and a song in my heart, I decided to go forth and take the microphone. No, there's no surviving audio - what do you take me for, a Guantanamo Bay interrogator?
The object lesson of the night was to keep me away from hits that require an upper register, though one cannot discount my comedic falsetto when performing Timberlake standards. Basically, 'Paint it Black', 'You Can't Always Get What You Want' and 'Johnny B. Goode' are serviceable. 'Simply The Best' and anything sung by Axl Rose are not. Unfortunately
I even found a little moment to do my dance - this must have been during 'Like A Prayer':
I've been intending to introduce the music of Shiina Ringo to Mode Parade through a review of her extensive body of work; the nous and attention required to do so has unfortunately eluded me over the past few years. Suffice to say, nothing is new there, oh semi-regular readers
So, to impel myself into some form of action, I offer up one of my favourites from her salad days; a cover of a comparatively conventional ditty by fellow Japanese rockers Spitz. This makes for a rather nice gateway to her 'Ringo Catalogue;' present and correct are the slightly woozy production tics and offbeat use of low-end that she likes, her soft-to-aggressive-and-back-again delivery, a distinctly feminine maturity - which I stress because most other Japanese female pop singers I'm enamoured of trade in a particularly kittenish or innocently/knowingly kawaii sensibility - and her ability to create some rather pretty melodies out of what would otherwise be construed as blithe and abrasive sonic chaos
Even though she is not the song's writer (fun fact: the title, which I prefer to spell as 'Supika,' but is also (more) acceptable as 'Spica,' refers to the 15th brightest star of the night sky) Ringo Shiina is one of those disgustingly Machiavellian Japanese musical types that can do any and everything her way, which resulted in her becoming one of her country's most successful popular stars despite trading for a time in music that grew increasingly dense, baroque, fractured and foreboding to the extent that her third album, whose title contains the word "semen," was considered a commercial failure for falling under the million sold barrier, unlike her previous output. One would not be too surprised to learn she has some obsessive tendencies; that same album is also notable for a rigorous symmetrical arrangement that determined the order of her lyrics, the number of letters in song titles and the running order of the album itself
Through StyleForvm this morning, I have learnt that we now have yet another Fabulous Dead Person to memorialise. Petkanas, I'm counting on you
Bijan Pakzad, 4 April 1944 – 16 April 2011
With my ego, I would have been successful anyplace, but America gave me the opportunity to show my taste
Despite my raft of accidental globe trotting, I've never gotten around to visiting Beverly Hills, but between clever marketing, the world press and two seasoned Earth travellers whom I call "Mum and Dad," I had a wisp of an awareness about this alluring brand Bijan and how it filled the closets of the great, the good and primarily, the wealthy. Naturally, it was his range of scents - always one of the easier ways to integrate a designer's name into one's possessions - and that striking, almost graffiti-like logo that made a lasting visual impression on me; an indelible link to the glitterati of the planet might also have had something to do with that
'The Persian Master of Fashion' - and a proud one at that, steadfast to his Iranian roots to the last, which is even borne out by the music on his website - was known for his 'appointment only' visitor's hours; highly appropriate, given that he had custody of "the most expensive store in the world," grown through his charm, good fortune, entrepreneurial nous (apparently genetic; his family was staunchly self-made) and dogged industriousness. He dressed a list of men so illustrious that they have been typed out and published in better obituaries than this one, as well as in his Wikipedia entry (his son Nicolas stated that he dressed over 40,000 clients, including all five living American Presidents). He was exceedingly fond of the colour yellow - good for him, me and you. And he loved his automobilia, did this one - every single write-up will probably mention how he enjoyed parking the jewels of his four wheeled fleet outside his store before attending to the whims and wants of those who came a'calling
His signature flair for design splendour was hardly confined to clothes and fine living, and in the late 1980s, he sought a more luxurious way to fire bullets, achieving it with a Colt revolver made from gold. But then when of his most perceptible traits was how greatly he loved his work; you can see it in every twinkly eyed portrait taken to show that this brand had a face and it was that of a kindly, charismatic, expensive Iranian who would transform one from schlub to film star for the price of the average home and make it feel worthwhile. But back to the handgun:
The gun had a leather handgrip fashioned for a .38-cal. Colt revolver; inlaid in the cylinder was 56 grams of 24-karat gold. The revolver was placed in a mink pouch in a Baccarat crystal case embossed with the customer's name. Bijan's own signature is engraved in gold on the barrel of the gun. Only 200 such guns were made. In 2005, one of these guns sold to Jacob Nahamia at Christie's auction house for over $50,000 USD.
The Bijan brand will endure, of course - it is a family enterprise - but naturally, the stewardship will be different and perhaps a little less aureate. So to conclude, I think it's only polite that I highlight an ethos worth sharing in:
The world said to conform, the world said to settle for less, the world said to compromise and no one would know... so I made my own world
I am enjoying being back in London, which is a pleasing, if stark, contrast to my feelings about this much vaunted metropolis when I left. I think that amongst the varied vagaries of my life that impelled me to take a working sabbatical from the place was that I was then losing my ability to see what it has to offer. I might be over it now, for I am taking rare pleasure in its foibles again: it still holds the most charming of Georgian architecture, the most reticent of heterosexual dancefloor patrons and the most pellucid and brief of summer dresses
I have subsequently lowered my resistance to a number of things since my return. I have performed at karaoke on two separate large nights out in the past week alone. I visited Graham Browne Tailors for alterations. I stumbled across a group of 'bladers outside the National Gallery, performing deftly along a line of twenty overturned plastic cups no more than 3 feet apart, and resisted the urge to yell "The hardest part of rollerblading is telling your parents that you're gay!" (an old joke; one not easily forgotten). I even mustered up the urge to observe a controversy response first hand by visiting the John Snow pub in Soho earlier this evening to see what would become of the homosexual group kiss-in that was being performed in support of the two amorous young fellows who were ejected from the premises on Wednesday. My tweets say it all; I really had no idea that gay men - on their primary London stomping grounds, no less - could make a mass gathering so boring that I had to turn to micro-blogging about it and then became careless over my own spelling
Being back has also inspired me to experiment a little. Given how the previous paragraph ended, I am sure I know what you are thinking, but no; I am actually talking about t-shirts:
Although I don't plan to make a habit of this, I have held this design in high esteem for a few years. As a student, I became enamoured of the annual Airside T-Shirt Club, due to a fondness for its rotating cast of media designers - Cozyndan, James Jarvis, Pete Fowler, Laurent Fetis - and its singular constant, Airside co-founder Fred Deakin, whose excellent downtempo band Lemon Jelly was interviewed by me in 2002. So I joined for the 2004 run; I'm pleased to say that it was a banner year and I still retain each piece, including the above design by Deakin himself. And in a funny full circle-manner - where this post is concerned - I was actually living in Ghana that year, too
Airside's shop can be found here. Normal flamboyance will resume with the next outfit post
Why don't they make stars like Esther Williams any more? And no, I do not refer to the sensuous and slightly sonorous voice behind the funk nugget 'Last Night Changed It All', although she, too, is worthy of appreciation
Known as the "Million Dollar Mermaid" at MGM after the 1952 film she starred in, Williams made a great many films under the studio's aegis, amongst which was Ziegfeld Follies. I recall watching it as a small and entranced child who was as far from being the world's keenest swimfan as Josef Fritzl is from being a humanist; the enrapturing aspects of those beatific, synchronised sequences nevertheless left quite the impression. This was a special time; a time I refer to as "My First Impression of Wet Women"
YouTube naturally has a myriad video range of her work (I recommend this embedding-unfriendly profile from That's Entertainment) and whilst much of it seems genteel and quaint, there is always a particular dignity, physical grace and acute professionalism in her movements - par for the course in Cinema's Golden Age, of course. But then, I've often been accused of preferring to look too closely at nice forms:
I think that mustering up an effective eulogy to Sidney Lumet is a touch beyond me today. I have hardly watched each of his films, but I am certainly a little versed in those the world considered the greats; the most recent dip into his back catalogue being The Verdict (one can tell my addiction to Turner Classic Movies/TCM has been nearing a plateau, of late). Because of this, I can also spare us all the ramble involving the various ways in which The Wiz scarred me for life (consider the Wicked Witch's melting scene - my God, for something so cartoony, it seems so... visceral, like Christopher Lloyd in Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, perhaps. And no three year old Michael Jackson fan wishes to see his idol torn apart - what would Freud say?). Besides, I think he actually came aboard that project because he wanted to sleep with Diana Ross
One of the best things about Lumet's work is that in an increasingly cynical existence referred to as "life," his rich seam of humanist work has embedded itself so deeply in the culture that there is practically a quotable for every film he shot. Consider:
"Attica! Attica!"
"I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!"
"Drop your cocks and grab your socks!"
(I may be reaching with that last one)
The past decade has seen a number of our leading lights of the creative arts pass on; this year has seen more than I would care to name, in fact. And as far as I can discern, it seems to be quite the struggle to replenish the sorts of technical qualities and insights into human behaviour that talents like Lumet offered. But then, that's what iconic status means to me - a capacity to achieve or to symbolise achievement so that others may observe, learn, admire and wish it was them about to galvanise the careers of several gossip columnists by indulging in behaviour most indelicate at the celebrity festooned after party of a major awards event
Farewell, Mr. Lumet. And for the record, Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon and Network were my other favourites. I like your actors when they shout
Born in the 21st century, Mode Parade gabs about the populist, the obscure and the ridiculous in lifestyle, aesthetics, fashion, luxury and its creator's kaleidoscopic taste in coats in as prolix a manner as possible. Occasionally, there are tasteful moments too, such as Orientalist pop songs
Mode Parade and its author, Barima, have been featured in the internationally published books Fashion Blogs by Kirstin Hanssen and Felicia Nitzsche with Elina Tozzi, Am I A Chap? by Gustav Temple and I am Dandy by Rose Callahan and Nathaniel Adams. A portrait from I Am Dandy advertises and features in the Dandy Lion exhibition and book by Shantrelle P. Lewis
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