Levi Johnstone's exposé on life with the Palin's will be released at the end of the year.
It's going to be called...
Deer in the Headlights: My Life in Sarah Palin's Crosshairs
Selasa, 26 April 2011
Senin, 25 April 2011
Minggu, 24 April 2011
Bossypants!
I spent Good Friday with Tina Fey. We had an amazing day together. It was not unlike that time Liz Lemon took some relaxants for a flight and ended up hallucinating she sat next to Oprah. In fact it was exactly like that.
I sat on the couch with her new memoir, Bossypants and hung off her every word. I even prolonged finishing it by interspersing the chapters with the relevant YouTube clips of her on SNL, Oprah, Letterman and 30 Rock.
I should probably state up front that there is no chance I could possibly give this book an unbiased or critical analysis or review. I simply LOVE her too much (as evidenced by drug-free visions of her while reading.)
But it’s not possible to not love her right? I’m sorry but I’m going to have to go right ahead and judge you if you don’t. She’s just so smart and funny and talented and honest and imperfect and successful and wow it was just such a pleasure to crawl inside her head for a while.
I guess I knew a lot of the the main parts of her story already; she was a theatre geek at school who surrounded herself with a group of older, mostly gay friends. She did years of, at times, questionable amateur improv and turned it in to a terribly awkward interview with Lorne Michaels that became a job at SNL. She was the first female head writer there and then got the chance to start her own show (the magnificent 30 Rock). Along the way she got married and had a baby. Also she was a virgin til she was 24 and is quiet happy for it to be a punch line ("I couldn't give it away") . In the book all of her successes and fumbling, awkward failures are told in excruciatingly honest and hilarious detail.
Naturally Tina is a great writer; sarcastic and self deprecating but she’s also very generous and kind. She even takes readers through all of the individual writers from 30 Rock – telling you their individual strengths and including her favourite parts of their material. (Sidebar here: Danny Glover from one of my favourite-ever-shows Community was a writer on the show for the first season or so.)
The most surprising part of the book for me was the sexism that was so present and accepted in the early part of her career at SNL and while she doesn’t say as much she was obviously integral in changing the culture there.
I guess in my “magazine bubble” I kind of thought those attitudes wouldn’t have existed in such recent times in a fun, progressive environment like SNL. Tina’s way (when she was a boss and even before) was always to deal with this stuff with her most powerful weapon; her super sonic sense of humour. (Hello Tina-Fey-as-Sarah-Palin!)
Look, obviously I’m so love-drunk on Tina both pre and post reading this it’s hard to pick a high point though as a mag-lady I do LOVE her take on Photoshop...
“Some people say Photoshop is a feminist issue. I agree, because the best Photoshop job I ever got was for a feminist magazine called Bust in 2004. It was a low-budget shoot in the back of their downtown office. There was no free coffee bar or wind machine, just a bunch of intelligent women with a sense of humor. I looked at the two paltry lights they had set up and
turned to the editors. “We’re all feminists here, but you’re gonna use Photoshop, right?” “Oh, yeah,” they replied instantly. Feminists do the best Photoshop because they leave the meat on your bones. They don’t change your size or your skin color. They leave in your disgusting knuckles, but they may take out some armpit stubble. Not because they’re denying its existence, but because they understand that it’s okay to make a photo look as if you were caught on your best day in the best light.”
I also adored an anecdote when Amy Poehler first stared at SNL and snapped back at Jimmy Fallon when he made a sexist remark and inside her head she thought, “My friend is here! My friend is here!”
Yeh, so I liked it.
“ Once in a generation a woman comes along who changes everything. Tina Fey is not that woman, but she met that woman once and acted weird around her.”
Smells like content
Who of those amongst us doesn't enjoy a good, deep inhale of our favourite paper
product? Old books, newspaper, a thick glossy stock, inky cold compress printing, Sharpie on
cardboard, A4 fresh from the photocopier. It's a pleasure in all its varietals (plus it's another thing an iPad can't do). Which may be one of the reasons that book-a-holic Karl Lagerfield is creating a fragrance that smells like books. But then Karl probably doesn't need a reason to do something, yeh? Coz geniuses don't have to work that way.
The fragrance will be inspired by both the smell of printed and unprinted paper and to break out some beauty-speak it will have " fatty notes." He's not the first to do this though. Paper-inspired fragrances currently available include Demeter's Paperback (inspired by dusty old copy of a Barbara Pym novel)
and Zadig & Voltaire's Tome 1, (a "pure and spiritual fragrance" that comes with matching an all-white notebook)
Selasa, 12 April 2011
Bon appetit!
Penguin have pulled off another stroke of repackaging genius. This time it's their Great Food series - twenty books, beautifully styled that are all extracts from clever, very vintage writing about food. They bill them as "the best culinary writing from the last 400 years." You can learn how to roll your own 'haschiche fudge' courtesy of Alice B. Toklas, or attempt Alexandre Dumas' far less apetising recipe for 'Mutton Kidneys, Musketeers' .
A little taste test below...
This one contains Acton's "crisp, clear, simple and foolproof dishes" which, in what sounds like an enormous contradiction to me, includes recipes for superlative mincemeat, threadneedle street biscuits, Baron Liebig's beef gravy and apple hedgehog.
The Campaign for Domestic Happiness contains timeless tips on selecting cuts of meat, throwing a grand party and how much you should pay your floor staff.
This little gem is "a cook book for last-minute pre- theatre dinners for the sparkling society hostess."
Love!
Type cast
Look at this adorable Murder She Wrote Gold and Black Typewriter Necklace!
It's by Penny Masquerade, £18 [via If Style Could Kill]
For a lovely post on writers and their typewriters or to buy a vintage one of your own visit Totally Second Hand
That's Sylvia Plath on her Olivetti Lettera 22
Selasa, 05 April 2011
Senin, 04 April 2011
Awesome new book title
Let's Panic About Babies! How to Endure and Possibly Triumph Over the Adorable Tyrant who Will Ruin Your Body, Destroy Your Life, Liquefy Your Brain, and Finally Turn You into a Worthwhile Human Being
by bloggers Alice Bradley and Eden M. Kennedy
Minggu, 03 April 2011
Eat your words
Submarine!
Oh, this is going to be great!
And, off the official Penguin site, I've stolen this adorable blog post by author Jo Duthorne on how to enjoy watching your first movie. I think I might be quiet in love with him.
Four Attempts To Enjoy My Own Film by Jo Duthorne
1. The first time I watched the film of my novel, Submarine, was a strange experience. We were at the world premiere as part of the Toronto Film Festival and it felt, to use the director, Richard Ayoade’s words, like a “ninety-minute heart attack.” Okay, maybe not quite that bad. A ninety-minute anaphylactic shock. (I have a peanut allergy, so I can say that.) Only as the credits rolled was I filled with a wave of relief and pride — much like the feeling of being injected in the glutes with an Epipen full of adrenaline.
2. The second time I saw the film was at the London Film Festival, with my parents, sisters, friends and famous people all in the audience. This time, being more able to concentrate on the film, I’d even go so far as to say I enjoyed it. But there was still this meta-narrative, whereby I was conscious of all the different versions of the story that exist. Not just the film and the book, but all the different drafts of the book, and all the drafts of the script, and everything that got cut out, and all the scenes that I’d watched being filmed — so, although I really enjoyed the film, I was still a little self-conscious. Although that could have been because I was sat next to Alex Turner and Alexa Chung. Did I mention I was sat beside Alexa Chung and Alex Turner? It probably slipped my mind because I was totally relaxed about sitting beside Alex Turner and Alexa Chung.
3. The third time I watched it was at the Welsh premiere in Swansea, my hometown. At this screening, there was my family, my oldest friends, my first girlfriend, all my parent’s friends. I sat on my own, at the side of the audience, sweeping my eyes across all these people from my childhood, trying to read their expressions. I don’t think I’m letting the secret out if I say that my novel, Submarine, was a little autobiographical — so this was an audience made up of people who had been turned in to characters in my book. My experience of the film was through them, which was lucky, because they seemed to really enjoy it. Afterwards, me and my first girlfriend compared notes about how similar the sex scene in the film had been to the, shall I say, source material.
4. The fourth time I watched it was the breakthrough. Associate Producer (and my housemate), Ally Gipps, had smuggled me a copy of the DVD and we watched it, at home, on the projector, with tea. This was the true moment of revelation. It’s a great film. Really, properly great. I instantly wanted to take full responsibility for its greatness. So I did. The acting, the casting, the music, the sets, the shot choices, the lighting, cinematography, production, the PR, the posters, the costumes… All me! I even did all the on-set catering. I’ve always been passionate about the sort of food that suits being warmed by a heat lamp. Reminds me of school dinners, which I also loved. What joy to play lunchtime-football with a stomach full of beans, chips and turkey burger. What was I saying? Oh yeah — the film. It’s really good. Go see it. Though you should probably read the book first.
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