I’ve been writing here there and everywhere lately and not had so much time for my own blog <aww sad face>. But here’s a handy link round up of all my posts elsewhere yay!

THOUGHT CATALOG: 5 Reasons Why Camden Sucks

WE ARE NOT A ROCKBAND: Robot(s) Rock (The Model feat My Favourite Robot – Still In My Heart music video)

WE ARE NOT A ROCKBAND: Tensnake Plays Trouble Vision

THOUGHT CATALOG: Dos And Don’ts Of Dating In Shoreditch

WE ARE NOT A ROCKBAND: Blah Blah Blah (Das Glow mix)

WE ARE NOT A ROCKBAND: Bashmore Remixes Classixx (Julio Bashmore remix)

WE ARE NOT A ROCKBAND: Serge Gainsbourg remixed by Feadz

WE ARE NOT A ROCKBAND: Benoit & Sergio – Let Me Count The Ways

Guys I’m sorry I’ve been slack with this blog. I’ve got some pretty awesome things I’m saving to write about on here though….. being an ’80s slutty zombie for a video nasty film within a film for one! Here’s a sneak peak of me zombified [here] to whet your appetite. Peace, guys, speak soon xxx

***Image of Thought Catalog logo***

Aerial photography from Japan during the earthquake/tsunami (including a whirlpool scarily close to the coast) – click [here] to go straight to the Boing Boing article

Frightening video of an entire town washing away in under 6 minutes beginning at street-level and finished from a higher perch – click [here] to see it on Gawker (I originally saw it on YouTube but can’t find the direct link anymore)

Sobering before-and-after Google Earth satellite images of Japanese towns badly affected – click [here] to see it over at ABC News

Poster Cause Project’s stunning aid contributions – click [here] to buy the poster used above and other awesome “pray for Japan” imagery.

***Image used from Poster Cause Project – 75% of profits from these prints go to support Doctors Without Borders earthquake and disaster relief efforts for Japan***

www.arthurandalbert.com

If you still just want to ask me questions but not ask for advice then you’re MORE than welcome to keep quizzing me on Formspring!

<a href=”http://www.formspring.me/pettingparty” mce_href=”http://www.formspring.me/pettingparty”>http://www.formspring.me/pettingparty</a>

Luckily, Kit Kat Australia thought round this and invented their own jenga, which to be frank, you’re not likely to play pissed but more at your office desk. Ladies and Gentlemen, may I present….. “Chunga”. Created to promote the new Cookies’n'Cream Kit Kat, there was a Chunga-master character created who was purported to be a cross between Will Ferrell and Jack Black, there was a Facebook and Myspace multi-player game, and a five-part mockumentary on Youtube. Sadly, as with many digital promotions, it didn’t last long and I can’t provide you with any linkage. However, I don’t think you’re missing out much as the game would have no doubt been based on many other digital versions of Jenga. WHICH ARE SHIT….

Footnote:

1. You successfully move a block? Your opponent drinks. They successfully move a block? You take a drink. Tower falls over? Lots of drinks. Then *you* fall over.

***Review originally printed in NGamer issue 19***

This is only a screengrab so you kinda miss out the more up-to-date data but you get the gist. Now Wired’s view is that Playboy are showing increasingly svelte girls who are more “an anime-ideal” than the national average. Whilst this is most certainly true, it is worth taking into consideration several factors:

1. The average Playmate BMI drops overall from a slim 19.4 to a fairly skinny 17.6. That’s a drop of only 1.8.

2. The average American woman’s BMI rises from a healthy 22.2 to a, dare I say it, dumpy 26.8. That, ladies and gentlemen is a whopping 4.6 increase.

3. Playboy is a business at the end of the day, and a business which basically sells fantasies. They just aren’t going to sell magazines featuring these sorts of women.

I genuinely think that this chart certainly says a lot, but it says more about dramatic changes in the American woman’s size, than it says about Playmates! As a skinny girl, I always feel I’m skating on thin ice when talking about fat people, but seriously, this chart is not highlighting any noticeable change at Playboy. If this sort of thing bothered American men *that* much, the US porn industry would resemble the UK porn industry a lot more. Here it possible to be hefty and still get work. It’s also possible to have a face like a bus back-ended you and still be popular. The point I’m trying to make here is that British men seem to have more diverse tastes when it comes to pornography and our industry reflects that.

One interesting point that Wired did make, and I think this is applicable to both sides of the pond, is about bust enhancement.

“We plotted each model’s bust size (chest circumference at the fullest points) and cup size (breast volume) for all years that data were available (early ’90s to now). While busts have shrunk faster than your 401(k), cup size has remained a buxom C or D. We don’t think evolution can explain this phenomenon.”

It is a common occurrence to see a beautifully breasted girl just starting out the industry ruin her chest with plastic footballs stuck on. I loathe it. Off the top of my head I can think of at least 3 or 4 girls in the past year I have seen do this to themselves and it irritates me to have to watch porn with them in post-op and see their reddened, stretched-marked breasticles NOT move while they bounce up and down in conjugal acts. I don’t think many guys like this look, and the few that do are the type who fetishise it. What’s really sad is so many of these girls feel they have to do it in order to get more work. And the really sad thing is they do get more work out it! This is clearly true for both the American and British industries. Make a stand and vote in my boob-poll…

***Screen grab from Times Online***

***Quote from Wired’s Infoporn article***

I recently developed my own brand of guerrilla interviewing which I guinea-pigged on up-and-coming American band Times New Viking. It basically involves taking your interviewees down a sketchy alley in Hackney-ghetto Dalston and clear a space amid broken glass for them to sit by using your foot as a broom. Bear in mind these are the type of places usually only inhabited by squealing pig-children on bicycles and waddling middle-aged eastern-european couples who invariably manage to talk loud enough to obscure voices on even the most high-tech voice recorders. Actually, my voice recorder is from Argos so it kinda added to the ghetto feel.

You guys are from Columbus, Ohio. What was the best thing about growing up there?
Beth: I’d have to say a lack of pretension.
Adam: It’s really laid-back, really pretty. As a kid you could go to the country or go to the city. It’s in-between rural and lots of people concentrated…
Jared: Lots of big cities.
Adam: There are a lot of subtleties and differences between regions. People have a lot of pride.
Beth: There are a lot of Ohio tattoos!
Adam: We get made fun of. We’re the second most made fun of state after Iowa. In a movie if you want a boring place it’s always Ohio.
So even though there’s so much pride, people still get made fun of?
Adam: Well, that’s kinda plays into it. They say we have no culture. People party there a lot too because it’s kinda boring. Last year there were more beer sales per capita… after Texas!

What did each one of you want to do before you became internationally recognised lo-fi pop stars?
Jared: Become an internationally recognised lo-fi pop star.
Beth: We were all at art school together, print makers, that kinda thing.
Adam: We always wanted to be artists… I wanted be a janitor actually.
Uhh, being a janitor is a pretty unusual aspiration.
Adam: I like clean stuff!

You’re on your third album now. What nefarious plans do you have to take over the world?
Adam: We have loads of ideas, and energy.
Beth: We could set up an academy to teach people to make anti-art and lo-fi pop music. Hey, [to Adam] you could clean it!
Adam: I know what I want to do. Motivate kids in America.
Jared: Start with the children.
Adam: Just get them to feel confident about themselves.

You’ve got a pretty hectic tour schedule at the moment, having just got in from Bristol, you’ve got some more UK dates followed by a few European dates and then back to the States ‘til the end of July. That’s got to be knackering! What’s your ultimate tour pick-me-up/hangover cure?
Adam: All you can really do is forget the concept of time and don’t watch TV. When we go back we have 31 travel days and we’re playing 28 of ‘em. That means we’re driving every single night.
Beth: Driving is nice though.
Adam: Listen to country radio. Best thing to do though is just keep going.

Every interview or review I’ve ever read about you guys always rants on about the unlistenable quality of your production values. Do you find questions and comments about it detract from your music?
Jared: It does and it doesn’t. I mean it’s part of making people actually listen to something. There’s not a lot of good music journalists though.
Beth: It would be cool if people would talk about the songs instead of how they can’t understand what we’re saying. We actually print the lyrics but no-one ever talks about individual songs. It’s kinda interesting.
Adam: The way our records sound is honestly just natural to us. The fact that [you can’t hear the lyrics is] the last thing we actually thought about for a long time, and that’s the only thing people ever talk about. In Ohio everyone just records on 4-track ‘cos there’s really nothing else to do.
Except for partying?
Adam: [laughing] Yeah except for partying and recording in your basement! [That’s how] we grew up on our friends bands.
Jared. Not a lot of people come to Columbus.
Adam: You *just* get into your friends bands.

[At this point TNV are called back into Barden’s Boudoir for their soundcheck so my remaining questions about preferred sandwich fillings and the benefits of major label signings are consigned to the bin]
Okay well just one quick thing before you go. I bought you guys Super Mario Kinder Eggs and was wondering what Nintendo character you identify most with?
Beth: The ‘T’ in Tetris.
Adam: Uh, mine’s Toadstool from Super Mario Bros. Oh wait, Super Mario Kart. The whole genre of Toad.
Jared: Scotty Pippin on NBA Jam. He’s a nice all-around even player!
Adam: I’m gonna break my egg open and fill it with whisky and do shots out of it

During their set I notice that Times New Viking seem to have developed a sort of ‘perfection-on-the-fly’ attitude to playing that sees them going to great pains to recreate their ramshackle sound on stage. As it is on record, it is near impossible to make out specific lyrics during a TNV show. This may be due in part to simple things like Adam singing with the microphone in his mouth for an entire song. Even Beth sings as if her microphone isn’t there. This never detracts from the somewhat magical element of their music. It makes you smile and feel happy inside whether you know what the hell they’re saying or not. TNV themselves are correct; it really doesn’t matter because the lyrics are right there for you.

After the gig, Adam excitedly shows me a beautiful vinyl copy of ‘The Paisley Reich’ where the lyrics are actually etched into the grooves of the unplayable side. It is, quite simply, irresistible. After a few plays it becomes obvious that this is how TNV should be played. On a shitty record player, at home, with your eyes shut. You don’t give a fuck about lyrics then.

***Originally printed in Beat Happening Magazine Issue 2 June/July 2008***

All words Rachael Williams

Picture: Matador

Please visit Times New Viking at their Myspace Page and leave them nice messages.