Mr. Blackwell's Top 10 Worst-Dressed List

http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/popup?id=4105517&contentIndex=1&page=1

I don't know how I managed to miss this which came out two days ago - but Mr. Blackwell issued his annual Top 10 Worst-Dressed List. This is something that, much like Miss Universe, I look forward to every year. I must be in some kind of a funk, the stupid primaries distracted me as well, and one of my dearest friends is in Baghdad, so I am worried. Still, a glamour girl like myself should never drop the ball on fashion. Enjoy the photo gallery compiled by ABC news which includes pithy quotes from Blackwell who must be a nonagenarian by now!!

Here is the list:

MR. BLACKWELL'S 48TH ANNUAL WORST-DRESSED WOMEN LIST

10.) Alison Arngrim: "Little Nellie of the prairie, looks like a 1940's fashion editor for the Farmers Almanac."

9.) Lindsay Lohan: "Lindsay the fashion frenzy strikes again! Lohan takes fashion to a new low."

8.) Jessica Simpson: "Forget the Cowboys. In prom queen screams, can it get any worse? She's a global fashion curse!"

7.) Avril Lavigne: "Gothic make-up courtesy the mad spatula-Fashions provided by.. The house of Dracula!"

6.) Eva Green: "Stuck in neon nightmares not fit for the sane. Fashion this loud could give Bond a migraine! A profusion of confusion from toes to nose!"

5.) Kelly Clarkson: "Her heavenly voice soars above the rest... but those belly-baring bombs are hellish at best! She may be the queen of 'Pro-Active' – but that wardrobe looks downright radioactive!"

4.) Fergie: "Another style-free 'Fergie' in fashion's hall of shame? Yes, when it comes to couture chaos, guess it's all in a name!"

3.) Mary Kate Olsen: "YIKES! In layers of cut-rate kitsch, Mary Kate's look is hard to explain... she resembles a tattered toothpick-trapped in a hurricane!"

2.) Amy Winehouse: "Exploding beehives above…tacky polka-dots below... she's part 50's car-hop horror."

1.) Victoria Beckham: "Forget the fashion spice - wearing a skirt would suffice! In one skinny-mini monstrosity after another, pouty posh can really wreck-em."

Mr. Blackwell is a gentleman, he opted to omit perennial list topper Britney Spears because she is going through a difficult time in her life. I am glad, I think this is because I wouldn't want him to look at photos of me in the mid-eighties and mid-nineties.

The Return of the Dreaded Spandex Legging

Liza Minelli once said that the hardest part of being sober is waking up every day. I couldn't agree more, but the NH Caucuses joined to a post in the NY Magazine Shopping section heralding indeed gloating over the return of the dreaded spandex legging - worn as a pant - is about to push me over the edge. Whatever takes me to unconscious numbness the quickest that's what I am talking about. What is worse, Anderson Cooper addressing RALPH REED as some sort of pundit, or the New York magazine fashionistas endorsing what I will call possibly the greatest fashion atrocity of the Twentieth (and now Twentyfirst) Century?

I had already noticed portents of sartorial doom, the harbingers of tackiness unleashed gullible innocent undergraduates, eagerly sashaying around town and bringing on BEFPTS (Bad Eighties Fashion Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome). Note the photo, which assumes the woman wearing this (yes, the woman who courts danger and a very real possibility of an embarrasing ailment in her future...but let's not go there) is assumed to be anorexic and her thighs are separated by a chasm wider than the ideological divide between Bush and the Axis of Evil.

In reality the way the leggings are most likely to flatter a woman's figure is more like this:



Yes, that is ICE T and his lovely wife Coco. I should at least give her a shout out for confidently rocking the offending garment, fully at ease with what can only be called a Chacon-sized coolan.

The ICE T photo is from one of my fave blogs gofugyourself.

Below, the offending article:

http://nymag.com/shopping/features/42567/?om_u=Bqihpy&om_i=_BHg7a2BrFneP4n&aid=388690249&mid=1796634511&time=1199814326&issue=_BHg7a2BrFneP4n

El Hogar de Alaska

In my favorite Almodovar movie, Pepi, Lucy, Bom y las otras chicas del monton, Spain's new wave sensation, Alaska appears aged 16 as a punk rock teen who seduces a downtrodden housewife from Murcia, the video is of her singing a love song called "Murciana" - the lyrics are priceless. She is still performing, now with Fangoria, and is remarkable for supporting gay rights and for dressing in a fabulous 1980s way even today. In the most camp article ever to appear in HOLA and there is a lot to choose from, Alaka and her husband Mario (who is also her manager and looks a bit like Marilyn Manson with less make up) were featured in the home decoration section of the magazine. Every issue opens with a spread revealing the posh estate of some petty aristocrat, international celeb, fashion designer, former supermodel, millionaire and the like. People like Donald Trump, Isabel Preysler, Oscar de la Renta, Tita Thyssen, lady Di's brother, the owner of the Freixenet champagne company, etc.

Usually the homes are either Swiss style ski chalets, French Louis something style palaces, preppy chintz-laden type, something conventionally officially "tasteful" and expensive and usually very very tacky. Sometimes you get over the top campy like the home of Dolce & Gabanna. But most of the time, it's aristocratic-aspirational style. So it was truly fabulous to open my HOLA and see the Madrid home of Alaska and Mario. Somebody at HOLA must have a sense of humor and got the couple's campy parodic take on the pretentious and hackneyed section. The home's silver kitchen which looks like a morgue was described by Alaska in the accompanying interview, she said it was inspired by Warhol's Factory.





We also saw his and her bathrooms: hers in a neo-Keane big-eyed painting and Barbie theme all in red, and her husband's, wallpapered with photos of Elvis.





But the best of all was the paradigmatic living room shot. Alaska totally worked the traditional HOLA lady pose. But she is reading, and the coffee table is full of, vintage Spanish porno magazines from the period after Franco died, when porno proliferated with the end of censorship. The best part is that one of them has the fabulous Bibiana Fernandez on the cover - Bibi formerly known as Bibi Andersen, has appeared in several of Almodovar's films and is Spain's most famous transgendered person. Alaska's TV set features a video of the famous series "El Coraje de Vivir" which was like a telenovela featuring a cancer-riddled Lola Flores telling her own life story, complete with VERY dramatic re-enactments. She had been accused of tax evasion, so the story is that she made the series for Spanish government TV to pay it off.

At the far left you can see Lola Flores' face on the TV screen.

Here are clips from Coraje de Vivir:




from there on You Tube you can see more (you will want to, there is NOTHING better than Lola Flores)

Morena Clara

Aside from the fact that the late Lola Flores was the greatest singer and dancer in Spanish history, I would love her just for her role in the deeply camp, ironic and subtext-heavy Morena Clara. So many of the movies made under Franco found ways to undermine and work against the draconian censorship, but to me the ways in which this movie deals with gender, class and race politics is astounding. Lola plays an insouciant gypsy girl who is taken from her slovenly and lazy gypsy relations and adopted by a dandyish andalusian aristocrat in order to "re-educate" her in his lovely Orientalist style country estate. The opening sequence gives a surreal survey of Spanish history with the two leads - Lola and Fernando Fernan Gomez - cast in various historical guises: for example, Lola as a Moorish temptress and he as a victorious Christian conqueror.

You get the picture. The subjugated others are translated into a fiery female. It's so obvious that it's priceless. The whole concept of "reeducation" is also ironic because this is during a time when the regime was literally trying to reeducate those unfortunate enough to have been Republicans still living in the country. The title is also telling a dark light woman- she is not quite Gypsy/not quite Spanish (ie. White) a native informant who moves between the big house and the slave quarters, mediating between her marginalized family members and friends who are usually shown lounging in the fields or breaking into flamenco song and dance - the Spanish version of minstrels. Black skin/white masks - she is supposed to be lucky because she can "pass" and the white aristocrat welcomes her into his home in order to redeem her.

In this scene, Lola performs the title song, and in none-too-subtle foreshadowing, we see how the white aristocratic and rational male is overwhelmed by her sultry passion. It's hilarious.

Fever Part Two

Just to prove my point about the ubiquitousness of Dengue fever in Puerto Rico, here is a PSA from Island TV that I found on Youtube. (see below for my post on the racist article in the NYTimes about the alarming increase in Dengue fever and other "exotic" mosquito borne ailments in Itatly)

UPDATE 1/11/07

This morning I saw on the CNN crawl statistics on the marked rise in cases of dengue in PR which the crawl described as a "US territory."

This is the article from AP:

World News
Puerto Rico's dengue fever outbreak last year worst in nearly a decade

© AP
2008-01-10 23:30:00 -

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) - Puerto Rico saw 11,000 cases of dengue last year, the fever's worst outbreak in the U.S. Caribbean territory in nearly a decade, a health official said Thursday.
Dengue, which is spread by mosquitoes, killed four adults and four children in Puerto Rico during 2007, state epidemiologist Enid Garcia said
in releasing the final tally for the year. The oldest victim was 80 and the youngest 5 months old.
«It wasn't the worst we've had, but it was a serious epidemic,» Garcia said in an interview with The Associated Press.
The 10,964 cases recorded for the year were the most in Puerto Rico since a 1998 outbreak that caused 17,000 cases and 19 deaths, Garcia said. A 1994 outbreak totaled 24,000 cases.
In one of the worst years for dengue in recent decades, Latin America and the Caribbean counted nearly 800,000 reported cases and nearly 250 deaths in 2007, according to the Pan American Health Organization. Final figures were not yet available.

There is no vaccine for the tropical virus, which generally causes fever, headaches and extreme joint and muscle pain, among other symptoms.
Once thought to have been nearly eliminated from Latin America, dengue has gained strength in the region since the early 1980s in part because tourism and migration are circulating four different strains, increasing the risk of multiple exposure and making it more likely an infection will develop into the severe hemorrhagic form of the virus.

Venezuela

Here is an excellent op-ed piece on the heroism of the student movement leaders in Venezuela:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/30/opinion/30krauze.html?ex=1356670800&en=2e78eb83a399ff2d&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

2007 Baby's First X-mas

I am currently in the small town where I grew up, which is in sunny SW Florida. Here, bumperstickers prominently placed on cars admonish me to "KEEP CHRIST IN CHRISTMAS," roadside advertisements exclaim "Happy Birthday, Jesus!" and a visit to TARGET or the Olive Garden turns into a political battle for the soul of America as my pleasantly non-committal "Happy Holidays" is met with an emphatic "MERRY CHRISTMAS!"

Besides the quaint reactionary politics laced (like poison) with fanatical holiday flavor, I enjoy the local news, such as the full-page photo spread "2007 Baby's First Christmas!" (presumably all of the babies are Christian? WTF?!?!?) And though usually I find some of my favorite unique names in Puerto Rico, Venezuela, among telenovela characters or actors, etc. I was pleasantly surprised to find the following:

Dalton Lee
Makayla
Kadie
Camp Ross (as my sister cleverly noted, this is a name that only a drag queen should have)
Kyla
Kaleem Ta'Ree
DaQuan LaShawn

Fabulous.