Moving!

Friends and loyal readers,

We're moving! It's an exciting chance to repaint the walls, pick out new furniture, and sift through our possessions. I hope you'll come along to the new location, which isn't far away...

Drop me a line at bombaybelle (at) gmail (dot) com and I'll pass along the new address.

In the meanwhile,

Take care,

BB

As I'm sure you already knew...

I find these among the more annoying words out there, because they usually precede some remarkable fact that you had absolutely no possible way of knowing. So...

As I'm sure you already knew, I'm moving. In fact, I've moved.

* * *

Well, it's not a huge shock, I hope, because I've been dropping hints, and I've let a few of you know in person. But it has happened. I'm no longer in London. It's something of an identity crisis for the blog, because it started as a New Yorker moves to London adventure. But we've migrated away from that for a while now, so I think we can survive, can't we?

* * *

I wanted to make a better announcement, with some very clever insights about London versus New York, tie it all up with a bow, but in some ways I'm pleased I did not or could not. I would rather like this blog to meander along in whatever direction it will go.

* * *

And to the new (temporary?) name: bbNY. Several interpretations here: Bombay Beauty (back in) New York. Partly true. But I will also have another foot in Boston. And so my own thinking was: bombay boston new york or bbNY.

You've come with me this far. I hope you'll take the next steps with me as well.

xoxo

BB

A year!

Gentle reader,

It passed quietly, without a cake or champagne, but it's been a year and counting now for this little blog. I feel that I should provide some grand overview, some vision of life, and actually I have some long overdue, big (big!) announcements. I'll postpone the last, and don't really have the others, but then I'll mark a year this way.

These are the films I watched at home this year, an unedited list. You'll notice the list starts in August, that's when I started my Love Film subscription (like Netflix for you Americans). Yes, I'm willing to confess that I rented The 40 Year-Old Virgin. Yes, I'm a little embarrassed. Does this list prove that I've wasted my evenings when I could have been doing something more productive, e.g., saving the world, stopping global warming? Yes, perhaps. But the list embodies growth and expansion for me: growth of my aesthetic horizons, each film is like a tree ring, in itself meaningless but important to mark the passage of time.

I hope we, you and I, blogger and reader, have more journeys and growth together over the next year.

xoxo

BB

A year in film
The Decalogue, Volume 1, June 12 2008.
All that Jazz, 11th June 2008
The Seventh Seal 29th May 2008
The Wind That Shakes The Barley 29th May 2008
Ivan's Childhood 21st May 2008
Dirty Pretty Things 3rd May 2008
Last Year At Marienbad 30th Apr 2008
Autumn Sonata 18th Apr 2008
Little Dieter Needs to Fly 15th Apr 2008
Ikiru 26th Mar 2008
The Silence 12th Mar 2008
Wild Strawberries 27th Feb 2008
That Obscure Object of Desire 2nd Feb 2008
Secret Ceremony 2.5 19th Jan 2008
Yojimbo 17th Jan 2008
Dirk Bogarde - Accident 15th Jan 2008
Dirk Bogarde - The Sleeping Tiger 1st Apr 2008
Dirk Bogarde - The Servant 14th Feb 2008
Fanny And Alexander 10th Dec 2007
The Final Days Documentary - Marilyn Monroe 21st Nov 2007
Days Of Heaven 17th Nov 2007
Scenes From A Marriage 16th Nov 2007
Easy Rider 7th Nov 2007
Sanjuro 6th Nov 2007
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang 26th Oct 2007
L'Eclisse 23rd Oct 2007
Raging Bull 23rd Oct 2007
Persona 17th Oct 2007
Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets 16th Oct 2007
Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban 21st Sept 2007
Jules Et Jim 20th Sept 2007
Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire 18th Sept 2007
Some Like It Hot 12th Sept 2007
Seven Samurai 10th Sept 2007
Blow Up 28th Aug 2007
Children Of Men 21st Aug 2007
La Dolce Vita 21st Aug 2007
40 Year-Old Virgin 16th Aug 2007

Blogus in extremis

I have been reading a lengthy cover article in the New York Times Magazine by Emily Gould, who at one time wrote for the gossipy-snarky New York media blog called Gawker. It's worth a look for any of us who write blogs, not because I agree with most of her thoughts or share her experiences or because we'll end up where she did (don't worry, not jail!), but because of how the early steps of this de/ascent to purgatory were so normal and gradual, the kind of thing each of us has probably experienced a little bit as well.





A few choice extracts:

Back in 2006, I had just been promoted to associate editor at the publishing house where I’d been working since I graduated from college, and ... almost every day I updated my year-old blog, Emily Magazine, to let a few hundred people know what I was reading and watching and thinking about.

Some of my blog’s readers were my friends in real life, and even the ones who weren’t acted like friends when they posted comments or sent me e-mail. They criticized me sometimes, but kindly, the way you chide someone you know well. Some of them had blogs, too, and I read those and left my own comments. As... one-dimensional as my relationships with these people were, they were important to me. They made me feel like a part of some kind of community, and that made the giant city I lived in seem smaller and more manageable.

... But is that really what’s making people blog? After all, online, you’re not even competing for 10 grand and a Kia. I think most people who maintain blogs are doing it for some of the same reasons I do: they like the idea that there’s a place where a record of their existence is kept — a house with an always-open door where people who are looking for you can check on you, compare notes with you and tell you what they think of you.

After the first night [after my breakup] ... I woke up as the sun rose and sat down at my desk to write a post that was nominally about a recent New York Times article about the shelf-life of romantic love. My boyfriend and I had just broken up, I revealed, and so I had been wondering whether love really exists. I wrote that I had concluded that it does. We can’t expect other people to make us happy, I informed my readers with total sincerity and earnestness, and we should live in the moment and stop obsessing about the future...I shudder involuntarily when I read this post now. It’s like stumbling across a diary I kept as a teenager. It’s probably one of the worst things that I’ve ever written. The commenters loved it.

Gawker had recently added a counter beside each post that displayed how many views it received. Now it was easy to see exactly how many people cared about my feelings. The site’s owner didn’t like my “I believe in love” post, he told me, but he said he was O.K. with it because, as everyone could see, more than 10,000 people disagreed with him. Readers e-mailed me their own breakup horror stories and posted hundreds of comments, advising me about flavors of ice cream to eat, and I reveled in the attention. I had managed to turn my job into a group therapy session. “Emily, I don’t really know you any more than I know the people I see every morning walking the dogs,” one of them wrote. “It’s more of an imagined familiarity born out of reading your words for a year. But that took guts, all the way around. And I’m in your corner, inasmuch as a somewhat anonymous, faceless, nameless commenter can be.”

All of this does make me think how grateful I am for the few but loyal readers of this blog. Group hug!

Love you all,

xoxo

BB

Confirming my existence or A spot of (computer) trouble

Dear Reader(s),

I really don't want to cash in my computer trouble chip just yet. I've been on the road a lot the last weeks and have also truthfully not felt inspired. Not by life, but by my own insights on it.

In the middle of it all, I did have a panic moment when my computer screen turned grey and emitted three loud beeps (so precise these Macs even when in distress). But after 300 quid and some panic, I'm back on the road.

I've even managed to do some interesting things (went to the London Art Fair a few weeks ago), cooked a fantastic sweet potato and cauliflower soup in a saffron broth, and heard some good music. But the keys just weren't clicking... What can I say?

I will rededicate myself to logging the mundanities (this is apparently not a word, but I do like it) of my life.

Cheers,

BB

Very annoying commentary (or Monkeys in the funhouse)

With New Year's resolutions come New Year's confessions. Here's my first of 2008. I've been defrosting. Not food from the freezer. (I'm just not organized enough to freeze in the first place). But blog posts. (Gasp!)

The New Year is rolling along, indeed probably already more appropriately the new year, and my head isn't quite in the game. So I've been putting out entries that I wrote earlier but for some reason or another never posted (actually, today's is the second).

I'm back at the wheel of the flugelbindery now, so I'm hoping soon there will be new stories to tell.

In the meanwhile, here's something I wrote a while back. The commentary seems rather annoying, so you can just ignore it and look at the fun pictures.

Cheers,

BB

* * *

Title: Monkeys in the funhouse

OK, I admit it. That's the meanest thing I have ever written. But in fairness, I'm included myself among the monkeys. It's really more attributing malicious intention to the creators of Turbine Hall at the Tate Modern and the artists who exhibit there. They are taking cruel pleasure in creating displays for us to huddle around, to pod, poke, and explore, exactly as if the zookeepers had put a new toy in the enclosure.

OK, I admit it wasn't that bad: Oooo, here it comes the crack:

Notice how everyone huddles around it, like a beached whale.
Some of the brave even look it in the eye, some even braver test its depths:



Just give me ahhhrt. Boring art.

BB

P.S. I promise to be more generous and fun-filled next time...

Flugelbindery disavowed - new career options

My friend Hannah pointed out to me the other day that flugelbindery (or at least its variant, fluglebindery) was the profession discussed by Tom Cruise in the film Cocktail. Incorrectly, it is referred to as the plastic bit that keeps the ends of the shoelace together. We all know that that that plastic bit is an aglet, and that flugelbindery is the craft of binding flugels together. And some craft it requires too, to render them both beautiful and useful.

I suppose all of you have known this all along but have been too polite to tell me (do I also have spinach in my teeth?). I don't think I can really be in a profession mentioned in any Tom Cruise film. (Unfortunately this rules out not only flugelbindery, but also secret agent, self-help guru, and Nascar race driver. Damn.)

In my own defense, although I have seen the film many years ago, I had forgotten this connection.

Nonetheless, I'm seeking a new profession. I came across some interesting options at the Biennale in Venice. Let me know if you think any of them are suitable.

Cheers

BB




(See if you can match each image to the profession: accounting, managment, production, public relations, and reception.)






(Check the comments for the answer.)

What's this?

What's this? I go and get a makeover and don't get any comments? Sometimes, I really feel taken for granted.

;-)

BB

Wherein the newly anointed blogger disclaims all responsibility

The title comes with responsibilities, I'm sure. But every package has fine print. Every advert has the bits they say quickly at the end, where in essence they revoke any and all promise, implicit or explicit. So here it is.

Herein I do not promise to post regularly. I do not promise to proofread my posts. I do not promise to be funny, witty, profound, stylish, or interesting. I do promise to waste a certain amount of your time, but how much exactly I can't promise. It will vary from occasion to occasion depending on the length of the post.

Wherein the author addresses the purpose of this blog

Blogging has become quite the thing these days, at least among those for whom it is the thing. (If this were a novel, then this would surely become famous as one of the worst opening lines ever. )

Second attempt. It was a grey day, overcast, with the constant threat of rain, much like the previous day, and the day before.

Third attempt. It was my first day in London. Nostalgia isn't really my thing. Though I wasn't aching for New York, it was nonetheless always in my mind, hovering like a song you can't get out of your head, the constant reference point for each of my actions. Remember, look left, not right when you cross the street. (Not so hard to remember given that they paint it on the street.)


I happened to look at a red phone booth, a typical sight in London.


And of course without going in, could well imagine what I would find inside.


The New York phone booth instead isn't even a booth. It's telephone. Sometimes there's a canopy over it. Sometimes there is a phone attached, but not always. But they are invariably grimy. Putting one to your ear is worse than using the facilities/ loo (dual terminology is going to be a bit of a burden) at a train station. What you see is pretty much what you get.
And this was the kernel of the blog. To share with friends the small moments of being new in London. Often the moments that give color to the day are exactly those you wouldn't trouble your friends with over e-mail or the telephone, but add a bit of texture (and occasionally consternation) to the day.

So dear friends, let us take this path and see where it leads us.