OH MY

My favourite images this week are these collection of photographs of McDonalds customers taken by Nolan Conway.

Perhaps it isn’t cool to like McDonald’s but I’m pretty sure its most peoples dirty little secret, McDonald’s is a little like your safe (corporate) friend, you always know what you are gonna get. And that’s why the customers are so interesting, unlike the new artisan coffee shop that’s just opened down the road where everyone works in media, arts, include your cliche stereotype here. The people in McDonald’s range from the privileged, bored, stoned and hungry. These portraits capture that quite brilliantly.

One of my favourite interviews this week was in Stella magazine, an interview with Paul Smith discussing his life, long term success and how he hates that young people are trying to live their lives like it is a business plan. ‘I learnt the trade doing some crummy jobs. That’s why I get a bit fed up with people who come to me now, and they’re 24 or something like that, and they want to have a fashion show and be on the front cover of Vogue. But they haven’t done the groundwork, and it just seems kind of sad.’ All easy for him to criticize in retrospect, we all want to achieve something, but sometimes it does just take time. The web has give everyone much wider access to peoples lives, successes and what they had for dinner so you can get caught up in wanting it all when you are just starting out.

Great piece of advertising this week from Grey Spain for an organization that runs an anonymous helpline for at-risk children. Using lenticular printing the poster campaign shows a different message to adults and children based on the height of the person viewing it.

Also doing the rounds this week is Jonathan Harris’s latest work. I’m a long time fan ever since i saw We feel fine. His latest project follows nine women who make lesbian porn It’s billed as showing you the side of porn you never see, the real people and their thoughts and dreams.

I’m interested in how this develops especially with the pricing model which is $10 for a ticket to the show and only 10 tickets issued each day. Will it help people view porn (any-type) differently or will this become buried, deemed boring and seem expensive when you can get porn pretty much anywhere now for free. Do people want to see the other side of porn on the internet?

The calm before the storm. 7am at the Arc de triomphe

Hanging out in our Parisian apartment post race. Airbnb I love you.

And now we eat

Legs aching, gotta keep moving. Off to see some sights

The art of presentation in Merci

Observing how the french get a giant Piano out of a compact Parisian apartment

Admire some simple and effective signage

Catch a rainbow at the top of Monmartre

And another, just as we get to the station and head back to London

Thanks Paris

Constantin Brancusi a Romanian-born sculptor set out for Paris on foot from Romania in 1903 and pioneered the extreme simplification of forms. We visited his studio which he bequeathed with all its contents to the Musée National d’Art Moderne. Simply stunning work that looks as fresh and modern today I cannot imagine how genius this must have been in 1920.

Such a lovely film from Martin Parr about Teddy Grays the sweet manufacturers who still don’t use any computers to run their business.

Parr captures the creativity of this factory beautifully and leaves you hankering for a real traditional sweet shop from your childhood with the staff in the film serving you you quarter of strawberries and cream.

Paris running tops arrived courtesy of Babes at the Museum.

Oxford circus stood still when the sky turned purple

I finally got to see Holly Herndon live at Cafe Oto. Absolutely absorbed.

I ran 18 miles with Bradley and Pippa from Westminister around Richmond park, ending in Putney. This is the only photo I took at the end. Rule one of marathon running don’t stop until its over.

I met the Bionic man.

So far most of 2013 has been spent on a mountain or out running which accounts for my lack of follow up posts to my declaration to read, but more of that another time.

A friends 30th was the perfect excuse to get seven of us over to France to chase some snow. We got the Eurostar from St Pancras which was despite the 8 hours such a good way to maximise time on the mountain and avoid airport transfer drama

By 9.30 the following morning I was on a lift hoping my snowboarding ability was in tact after three years absence and only three days of actually being able to do it…

Luckily it was, the boys didn’t give me a chance to practice before heading to the top

We had a three valley pass. Courchevel was pretty fancy…

But I think Val Thorens became my favourite spot. It reminded me of a snow dessert.

I’m missing the morning view from our balcony

chairs in the sky

and lunch in the mountains.

Despite being January most of the week it was warm like March, until the fresh snow approached

And we found ourselves up high surrounded by a sea of white

We compensated with some peche beer and snowball fights

And then the bluebird came

And a visit to La Folie Douche (may epitomise everything that i hate about ski (yah) holidays) But it was pretty funny.

Laters Meribel. See you soon

1 Second Everyday – Age 30 from Cesar Kuriyama on Vimeo.

A lovely and inspiring project to see at the beginning of this new year.

What a year and what a last month. Paris marathon training is in full effect. The Christmas parties continued and my mum got married after ten years of saying they never would. Lovely stuff.

Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit. W. Somerset Maugham

Can’t wait.

britticisms:

Azealia Banks exudes certainty, and when she appears not certain, it is her effort that makes her so appealing to me. She is literally trying and makes no qualms about the necessecity for effort, for goals, for ideas in her work and in her life. She exudes personal agency through beauty and fashion and luxury. We think of these things as shallow and perhaps they are. But her desire not only to want them but to demand she has them has intrigued me throughout the year. It has made me a fan beyond fans. It is the demanding that I find most powerful. She is not merely saying this is what I like. She is also saying, this is who I am. Or rather, why can’t this be mine? Why can’t I move up and through the world in smarts and style, skill and sass? Azealia is personal glamour, is self-love, is self-care. She has asserted her value and I am grateful as a woman, as a black woman, as a hustling black woman that she has done so.

on tumblr: http://thegemb1.tumblr.com/post/37402709805