Blog about Adrian

A deck of new accessories launched today by Sony Ericsson go further to make your mobile phone the centre of your music listening world. They all sport superior audio quality, stand-out design and simple operation, and between them have everything you need to turn your phone into the complete mobile music system. Three new music headsets, an FM Music Transmitter and a Music Desk Stand make up the range announced today.

Pair the Sony Ericsson Stereo Bluetooth Headset HBH-DS200 with your phone and enjoy your music in crystal clear stereo. Light enough to be worn without pulling on your ears; the headset receives music streamed from your phone using the latest Bluetooth technology. You can accept or reject calls and control your phone’s music player and never miss a call as the phone pauses music automatically the moment that a call comes in.

Sony Ericsson Stereo Portable Hands HPM-90 is the perfect partner for every day listening to music from your Walkman phone. Designed to complement the vibrant Walkman phone range, the attractive HPM-90 headset is immensely practical too, allowing you to see incoming calls as well as track information.

The funky Stereo Portable Hands free HPM-83 is designed for an active lifestyle with a strong, flexible neckband that gives good support and stability. It wraps behind your neck so won’t get in the way if you’re running or in the gym, and it also means you can wear just about any style of head gear at the same time. Stereo Portable Hands free HPM-83 comes in metallic silver and black finish to give a cool, premium look.

With the Sony Ericsson MMR-70 you can play the music stored on your phone through your radio speakers. You simply plug the MMR-70 into your phone, choose an available radio frequency and off you go – uninterrupted music of your choice. The MMR-70 works at a range of up to 10 meters (between the phone and the FM Radio), it remembers the last frequency used for easy reconnection and is light and small enough to tuck neatly into your pocket or the glove compartment of your car.

The Sony Ericsson Music Desk Stand charges your phone while it’s cradled and its unique rotating system connector fits all current Sony Ericsson phones. Designed to look great in any situation, with the MDS-65 you can easily make your phone your portable music jukebox.

5. Maybe this is why US soldiers are being killed in Iraq, because they’re arrogant asshats:

4. An (old but still relevant) Rolling Stone list of the best MP3 blogs. My favorite: Music For Robots.

3. Kick-ass emo/electronic group the Philippians (courtesy of Music For Robots).

2. Witch is a pretty handy and free little Mac app:

“For most purposes, Witch mimics the Alt-Tab behavior we’ve gotten used to on Windows computers, meaning that rather than switching between applications, you can switch between single windows. Not only that, but Witch will pull minimized windows out of the Dock when you switch to them, something I’ve been dying for. Long-time Mac users may not find this especially useful, but for recent Windows switchers, this could come as a godsend.”

I love being able to Alt-Tab to a specific window, not just a program (Excel comes to mind).

1. Though his movie was not my cup of tea, co-director of “Little Miss Sunshine” Jonathan Dayton offers some very wise words on comedy:

“For humor to really work, 25 percent of the people can’t really get it. If it’s really funny, not everyone will be in on the joke.”

Accessibility is over-rated — to an extent.

This reminds me of when Larry David got up in front of an especially dense looking crowd once, surveyed the room, and then simply said, “No” and walked off the stage.

(Though, I should say, exactly which jokes in “Sunshine” did everyone not get? IMHO, that film suffered as a result of how accessible it tried to be.)

Greetings from MIX07 everyone!

That’s right, Scott Guthrie announced this morning, to a sold out crowd at MIX07, the details around Silverlight, Microsoft’s cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering the next generation of .NET based media experiences and Rich Interactive Applications (RIAs) for the Web.

XML and Silverlight

First, let me say how excited I am to begin discussions about Silverlight and XML. Even though all you clever XMLers may have forecasted it, for the past several months, the involvement of the .NET Framework within Silverlight has been under wraps. Thus, it is great to be able to take a step back to dig into what we have created thus far as well as chat about the current thinking for the future of XML in Silverlight.

So, how does XML pertain to all this Silverlight buzz? Well, XML plays a fundamental role in enabling RIAs through Silverlight. For example, let’s take the popular mashup topic. As service offerings become available across the web that allow users to expose rich content in a machine readable format, some really compelling RIAs are possible that unify the experience around data through Silverlight and XML.

For MIX, we have been working on the Socializer, a social networking browser that leverages the machine readable web through Silverlight. This Silverlight sample showcases how users can easily unify experiences around social networking data using Silverlight, RSS, and the Friend of a Friend (FOAF) RDF format. Further, the Socializer demonstrates how Silverlight can be leveraged to create rich user experiences with data through asynchronous usage of web services, thus exposing a smooth, socially aware application shown below!

The Socializer

XML Features in Silverlight

In the Silverlight 1.1 Alpha release, we have enabled streamed XML reading and writing through the XmlReader and XmlWriter, respectively.

That’s it, you say? For the MIX Alpha release, yes. Over the 1.1 alpha release cycle, we have focused on providing a great XML foundation within Silverlight through the reader and writer in order to enable the delivery of additional pieces of the XML stack within the context of Silverlight in the future.

XML, Silverlight, and the Future

Going forward, we are planning to support LINQ to XML within Silverlight to enable a great story for query, caching, manipulation, aggregation, and data binding using XML.

Additionally, we’d love to get feedback on what types of activities are relevant for you, given this great new programming model of .NET within the browser. In particular, how do you feel about the following features in the browser?
·         XSD Schemas
·         XPath
·         XSLT
·         DOM
Well, the dinner bell is ringing here at MIX07, so that’s all for now. Though, as we’re now allowed to talk about Silverlight publically, I am very excited to discuss XML and Silverlight, what types of applications are interesting for you in this space, as well as the types of XML features are relevant for you in the context of the browser. If you have any feedback, feel free to ping me through my blog at the following location:

http://blogs.msdn.com/adunnington

I hope that you are as excited as we are about this huge news on Silverlight, .NET, and the browser. If you get a chance, check out the bits and send on your feedback!

Till next time…

Aaron Dunnington
Program Manager
XML Technologies
Microsoft Corporation

I was sitting on the subway, listening to my iPod, reading iGod, and holding my bag of just purchased items from Tekserve, thinking about how sexy that maverick Steve Jobs is.

And I began to think about how inundated our modern social culture is with all things tech. Technology, devices and computers have finally infiltrated the sophisticated, fashionable, soulful, organic elements of human art. They amplify the basic elements of human capacity- the rational and the expressive. These elements I speak of are those that set us apart from all other beings. With computers and the internet, we have set ourselves so far apart from other species that it is truly inadequate to classify man as simply animal. Our social material- our art, technologies and expression, create a whole that is so much greater than the sum of its parts. To quote the iGod article I was reading today,
“With the rise of the Web, the computer revolution was, for the first time, becoming genuinely personal. No longer were people using their machines just for serious stuff—documents, spreadsheets. They were using them for purposes that were purely recreational. E-mailing. IM-ing. Downloading purloined music. Devouring online porn. And once the PC entered the realm of fun, it became a province of fashion.”
And then I think about my own place in this world- as I should. The great democratizer of the Web 2.0 world is that each person is their own channel, choosing to extend themselves via the video, blog, or flickr portal if they may choose- lending to the hyper-narcissism that defines this generation. Those who do not blog, myspace or youtube are really no longer going to be excused as those who simply wish for greater privacy than others. Those people are not just not interested in creative writing, photography or videomaking. If they were, and considered themselves artists, I would certainly critcize them for lacking an essential characteristic of all living artists- to evolve, remain contemporary and relevant. The delineation is more a reflection of occupation than any pretentious internet modesty. Ironically, web presence lives among the down-to-earth and real- naturally due to its lubrication of accessibility between people (networking, wikis of information).

Relevancy is just the thing then, isn’t it? The social darwinism of modern expression has materialized in the need to remain culturally relevant.

Anyhow, I thought of myself. I thought of my jobs and what I do. I’ve a blogger, flickrer, gmail/google application slave, ipod user, myspacer, youtuber, sitemeterer, haloscanner and perhaps a little more. I’m a comedian who writes for the web, promotes her shows on the web, networks via the web, and creates original video content for the web. I currently work for a media company that is positioning itself in the forefront of mobile entertainment - as more tech savvy CEOs predict a future where the vast majority of web use will be conducted via cellphone rather than computer. And in the past I worked in PR/Media for a porn company- an industry famous for its ability to fully exploit new technologies before all other areas of the entertainment industry have caught on.

When I was a little girl I loved my time on my Commodore. Later I used to play games on floppy discs, and I was one of the few kids who had a PC with Word Perfect and Pagemaker. I could program in DOS and was an early adopter of the mouse and windows. My dad worked in computers and always brought home the latest and greatest.

In 1998, my senior year of high school, I took an unpopular semester elective called “The internet and you.” In that class I learned HTML and built my first webpage.

During my freshman year of college in 1999, my friends and I started using AOL IM for the first time, and I got my very first email address. I was a PC user, hating MACs when I would edit video projects on them because their compatability with the applications I know and love was shit. Office for Macs sucked butts at the time. They seemed culturally irrelvant- only necessary for practical needs like editing. It was in the time before youtube.

In the fall of 1999, I purchased heatherfink.com, and began creating it in 2001 on a free hosting site, where I used the site to tell some stories, post funny pictures, and link to things I liked. I even had a page for a short biography of myself. It was lame and I rarely updated. I used the site to host pictures there as well, but there was a storage limit and I could not link photos from my page elsewhere.

In the fall of 2003, I went to law school where everything was done via internet- from legal research to homework assignments to exam taking. My law school boyfriend in 2003 was the first person I had ever met with a blog. He used it to post videos he made which were popular in his home town, and write something funny just about every day. His friends from home would interact with him by leaving comments. Some of his friends would even post there from time to time.

In 2004 I started my own blog to post funny things as well, a needed outlet during lawschool. A month later I became a lawschool dropout/failure and my boyfriend dumped me. All of the sudden I used the blog as a tool for expressing the difficult crap I was going through and as a way to have a loud screaming voice in reaction to the whole thing. I allowed my most painful emotions to be witnessed like a trainwreck and I’m sure my readers appreciated the spectacle. At the very least it helped normalize the otherwise traumatic experience of being dumped by your first crazy love during your quarterlife.

In 2005 I began my current career as a comedian, and the blog served as a tool for comedy writing. At that point I was able to exhibit my comic voice without even performing. When I returned to the stage, the two fed into each other.

Somewhere around the time I became a blogger, flickerer and all of that, I became a full fledged Mac enthusiast, embracing the style, fluidity and grace of its abilities.

And all that I and many others seem to think of is what has happened to us? What will happen next? What does Edward Tufte think? What does the pervasive social language of the Lolcats mean for us and will it ever go away?

For many of you this blog entry is the most boring fucking thing you have ever laid eyes on. But the scary thing is that for many of you- it’s not. It’s interesting. You can relate. You feel the very same things.

And PS- I just built one of my own:

As promised in this week’s gargantuan Best of the Bay issue, here’s a longer Q&A with Santino Rice, who will be at the Castro Theatre this Friday. Illustrations to come tomorrow!

GUARDIAN: You once judged the Miss Universe pageant. What was that like?
SANTINO RICE: Parts of the experience – being that close to the stage, to the beautiful women and the gowns – were great. As a young boy I watched pageants, but I’m far from obsessed with them. I came in trying to be objective and pick the woman that evening that really exemplified beauty and personified what Miss Universe should be. But the year that I judged it, it seemed like more of the judges on the panel were voting for a country, not a woman. It was as if people were cheering for a soccer team. Miss Puerto Rico won, and I really felt like Miss Japan should have won.

G: Didn’t Miss Japan just win this year? You were ahead of the curve.
SR: The Miss Japan from the year before was amazingly beautiful.
Judging competitions based on beauty is basically comparing apples to orange to bananas. When you judge on a panel, you start to think about how other people’s votes blend with yours. I’m over that – I’d rather be the arbiter of taste and say, “This is right, this is wrong,” and call it out.

G: On Project Runway you were definitely the first person to call the judges out. In the first season, there wasn’t much of that going on – everyone was largely obedient.
SR: I have just as much experience as any of the judges. Sometimes they would tell me something and I’d think “No” because I thought it was a reflection of their frigid conservatism.
Had I been on a different season of the show, maybe there might have been a different dynamic. But other than Andre, there really wasn’t anyone to talk to on camera. I thought I’d meet more people that I’d stay in touch with than I did from that season. Amongst my season, I’d be the one least likely to show up for the reunion.
However, I’ve met some incredible people from the overall show, from the first and third seasons. Austin Scarlet is really original, and I also keep in touch with Milan [Breton]. I knew Jeffrey [Sebelia]’s work before the show, and we’ve become better friends now that we’ve been through the same experience.

G: It’s interesting, because just like Miss Universe picking Japan the year after you were a judge, Project Runway picked Jeffrey the following season, someone who has major similarities [LA-based, more street or experimental, a rough background] with you within the context of that show.
SR: I think Jeffrey had a beautiful collection – the most forward-thinking collection of that season. But I also think they didn’t want to hear (about not choosing me) anymore. On a daily basis they’re reminded of me on the street; someone yells to them how wrong it was that I didn’t win [laughs].
My season was the season they decided not to pick the voice of fashion, but to pick something else and see how it worked out for them.

G: Do you think the judges are regional in their thinking? They definitely have a New York-centric viewpoint.
SR: In America, New York City is still the fashion capitol — even though I live in Los Angeles and love it, the production value of fashion here isn’t the same. I’ll give them that.
But I felt like Heidi [Klum] and Michael [Kors] and Nina [Garcia] were a three-headed monster. They had the same point of view. If you’re going to be judged by a panel of experienced professionals, you’d hope that at least one person would be the voice of an avant-garde direction in fashion rather than just favoring staple pieces. Give me something subversive and imaginative.

G: Visibility and the way queers get caught up in that idea can be boring and kind of a blind alley. But your season was as good as queer visibility has gotten on TV, because it had people who were creative and eccentric in a real way.
Having watched the episode before the finale that gives back-story, I wanted to ask you some biographical questions. What drew you to LA from Missouri?
SR: When I was a senior in high school, I’d won a competition to come to Los Angeles through an organization — a kind of marketing club where I’d won first place on a state level. This is kind of a boring story [laughs]. I’d already planned to go to Parsons [School of Design] in New York, but towards the final quarter of high school I took the trip to Los Angeles. It was the first time I’d ever been to California.
The day after I arrived for this huge convention, the riots started. It was destructive in a lot of ways, and wasn’t right on a lot of levels, but at a certain point, people snap. I thought, “Wow, the energy here is so progressive.” Everything clicked and I realized Los Angeles figured in so many things that I’d loved, from old Hollywood films to gangster rap, from Adrian’s films and MGM to Ice-T and Ice Cube and NWA. The palm trees and Venice Beach appealed to me when I was young and I still love them today. I also love going to New York now; every time I go I can treat it like a vacation.

G: You mentioned Adrian earlier; when you were younger did you have an eye for what costume designers in Hollywood such as Adrian and Edith Head and Givenchy were doing?
SR: Edith Head did so many movies that it’s outrageous, and the more I learn about her, the more I learn that she didn’t do as much of the actual work [laughs] as I’d thought. Adrian was someone who I always was amazed by. In a way, that kind of led to one of my first jobs in Los Angeles. Through the school I was attending, I took part in a summer mentorship program with Tony Duquette, who worked with Adrian. They were best friends and worked together on a lot of Vincente Minnelli movies.

G: Is there a particular Minnelli or Adrian movie that you like the most in terms of costumes?
SR: Kismet was a big film for me.
Also, the film that’s going to be screening at the first night of the festival, The Women, is an incredible showcase of fashion.

G: Jungle red!
SR: I’ve heard they were hoping to remake it, and I can’t imagine who they would pick to illustrate that fashion life today. It’s so believable in the original. It would have to be in Paris at House of Dior.

G: I love how a fashion show is the centerpiece of the film.
SR: And it’s in color.
Along with the fashion magazines I looked at and the dolls I played with as a kid, movies were a huge influence on me. Everything from the past was done with a little more care and sensitivity, and I appreciate that.

G: One example of that extra attention and care would be Jacques Demy and his approach to color in The Umbrellas of Cherbourg.
SR: Definitely, and I was in love with Catherine Deneuve. In her heyday, she’s the most beautiful woman ever. The Umbrellas of Cherbourg is really unconventional as a musical. I also love [Demy’s] Donkey Skin.

G: I like the way the look of the film catches that weird transition between European fashion in the ‘60s and the more naturalized, earth tones of the early ‘70s. I’ve seen a picture of you where you have an elaborate pelt on, and Deneuve spends a good portion of that film wearing the donkey skin.
You’re also a fan of Rita Hayworth in Gilda.
SR: She’s so amazingly sexy. The undergarments she wore and the overall silhouettes she created add to the sexual tension between her and Glenn Ford in that movie. I don’t know if she was pregnant during the filming, or if she’d just had a baby, but she looks fantastic.

G: Pink Narcissus is a different kind of favorite film of yours. The fashion in that is pretty flimsy, but very inventive.
SR: Totally. The whole aesthetic is great – it’s colorful, it’s erotic, it has surreal visuals. The way it treats the subject matter of a male prostitute conjures up a lot of feelings – it’s uncomfortable. When I saw it for the first time I was really blown away; it kind if reminded me of some Fassbinder films in the way that he [Fassbinder] can linger on certain details a little too long for comfort.
A movie like that, even though it’s not overtly about fashion, I could easily design a collection around, because of its approach to visuals and color and mood.
The most recent film that’s given me that sort of overwhelmed feeling is [Alejandro Jodorowsky’s] The Holy Mountain.
I’d seen a bootleg version of it a long time ago, but it’s great that it’s been re-released.

G: I know that Watership Down is one of your favorite movies.
SR: I was completely scared to death the first time I saw that movie.

G: The ‘70s gave us some really traumatic animation for children – The Secret of NIMH and that movie.
SR: Children’s movies have lost that edge, but video games and other things today are so violent.
I’m really close to my friend Tony [Ward]’s kids. I showed them Watership Down and they never want to see it again. If I’m over, I’ll say, “Hey, do you want to see this?” and they yell, “No!” That scene where the rabbits are fighting still has an impact.

G: You’re a fan of Sacha Baron-Cohen, and he’s definitely someone who doesn’t give a damn when he’s in the public eye. When Borat came out did you feel validated that America embraced it?
SR: I love his sense of humor, his comedy. Before Borat I tried to get my hands on whatever he did. I remember when he broke into America’s consciousness with that Madonna video. I do appreciate that he could give a fuck what people think. He’s laughing at everybody at the same time that they’re laughing at that character he’s created. He catches everyone off-guard.

G: Would you say you’re more excited or inspired by things from the past, or do you also find inspiration in things happening right now?
SR: There’s a lot from the past that gets reinterpreted in fashion today; we’re going through a vintage wave. To an extent there’s a bit of that in my work in construction technique. I think clothes from the past look better than a lot of contemporary clothes because they have a better foundation; there’s more infrastructure in the clothes. That’s what I take from vintage clothes.
I guess I see more contemporary things from music than from fashion or film. Everyone went to Dreamgirls, but I wasn’t in love with that movie.

G: You love Mahogany, so you know what could have been done.
SR: Dreamgirls gets a free pass – I don’t understand it. Some of the visuals and certain costumes are amazing, but towards the end it loses focus. The part where Beyonce is Diana Ross in the ‘70s could have been so much more fabulous.
Hedwig and the Angry Inch is one contemporary film I loved. John Cameron Mitchell can do no wrong in my eyes. Shortbus created a mood and brought me back to that feeling of seeing something fresh and modern.

G: I want to ask a little about your friendship with Tony Ward. Do you discuss ideas with him? He’s has a varied public or cult personality, so I figure he has a lot of facets. Most people know of him through Madonna or Bruce LaBruce, but he’s studied with Tony Kaye and Marlon Brando –
SR: I could speak about Tony for several chapters. We definitely have reciprocal communication, whether we’re talking about everyday matters or art and fashion. We met in odd circumstances.

G: Did you meet on a flight?
SR: We met at an airport. We were flying back to Los Angeles, and the engine on the right side of the plane exploded. We had to emergency land and had a long layover, and during that time we just talked about everything.
A week after we got back to LA he called and asked me if I’d want to create some pieces for his first fashion editorial, which was based on A Clockwork Orange. I made all these leather codpieces for people, and other accessories. From that point on we hung out more often. He’s an accomplished model and photographer and he’s worked with so many different people – there are a lot of aspects of him that people don’t know about or understand.
Because he’s been this sort of visual stimulation for so many people, this gay icon, people don’t see past that; they don’t see that he creates his own art, and is an ultimate model in many ways because he brings so much to the table. A lot of fashion designers cite him as a muse – John Galliano is a huge fan and supporter of Tony.
He’s a great guy and he’s a loyal friend.

G: The circumstance in which you met is the type that can forge a bond.
SR: I remember having this Italian Vogue in my lap when [the engine gave out] and I really thought the plane was going to crash. People were praying in the aisles. Everyone took a big breath of air and sucked all the oxygen out of the plane. I just flipped through the magazine and tried to focus on something beautiful.
I’m told that if that happens with the engine on the left side, the plane will crash. We had only been in the air for ten minutes, so luckily we could land return to the airport.

G: There are some documentaries about fashion, such as Wim Wenders’ movie about Yohji Yamamoto and the recent pair of movies about Yves Saint-Laurent. Do you have an interest in watching a designer’s practice through those type of movies?
SR: Yes — I love Notebooks on Cities and Clothes; even though our aesthetics are different, I think Yohji Yamamoto’s a genius and he’s one of my favorite fashion designers.
I do love fashion in terms of fabric on a body and creating shape and line through constructing garments, but I’m in love with the process, the creative process of anything. Before I knew I wanted to be a fashion designer, I knew I wanted to create things. The process of coming up with an idea, putting it to paper, acquiring the materials, and then constructing a finished product is what I’m in love with as a designer. That’s what consumes me and makes me happy. Watching Yohji, or Yves, or Isaac Mizrahi (in Unzipped) is great in that way. Though I can’t say as much for the movie Seamless, another Douglas Keeve movie that just came out.
I’ll watch any documentary or watch or read any biography – I love A&E biographies and have a whole case of videocassettes about everyone from Liberace to King Tut. I like how-to books. My everyday life and the way it plays out life is all the fictional stimulation I need.
The idea of documenting people living their lives is one of the reasons why I even participated in Project Runway. I did think it would be a risk in terms of how it was edited. I’m a vain person and I know I can take a good picture or a horrible picture, and knew that I might have to see a bad moving picture. But I put all of that out of my mind.

G: Was it strange to see how people reacted once the show began to air? It was like a juggernaut.
SR: Completely. Right off the bat when the show started airing the media made me the focus. It turned out for the best. Even not winning the show was a blessing in a sense.
The money would have been great. As much as my life has changed – and it’s been almost two years – I wouldn’t turn down 100,000 dollars. But then I consider all the strings that were attached.
I’ll never take for granted what that show did for me. I get messages from people in the Netherlands. I recently went to Malaysia and Singapore and Thailand, and Project Runway is huge over there. I couldn’t believe it – tons of people turned up for me to sign autographs and pose for pictures.
If I think about it too hard it’s stressful, but the viewer of the show is not necessarily my customer base. I’d be happy just dressing 60 women rather than the whole world. From the show, I have a lot of freedom in my life and can choose what I want to devote my time too. I have leverage that, unfortunately, a lot of talented people, whether they’re authors or artists, don’t have. I’m able to say no to things.
For a while [before the show] I thought, “God, is this my plight — that I’ll always be the guy who is shortchanged?” Especially in fashion, people want you to work with them for free; they say, “Oh, this will be great exposure for you.” Now, I don’t need any more exposure [laughs].
A lot of my professional career in the fashion industry has been a win-lose situation with me being on the losing end, whether with employers or when I was doing things freelance. I’ve been able to break through salary caps and the anonymity I’d had since I was 17 to design for other people and do my best work.

G: What kind of people do you like to design for, and what are you interested in look-wise right now?
SR: I’m still creating garments with a lot of the same ideas I’ve had for a while, tweaking them and evolving them. It depends on the client I’m working for – everything is made to measure and one of a kind and usually involves several fittings. I want to create something that is aesthetically beautiful but also works for the body type of the person. I’ve been doing a lot more work with non-celebrities due to the fact that I think a lot of celebrities get clothes for free and don’t have the time for fittings.

G: I wish there were more stars taking an active role in terms of the way they think about fashion.
SR: I wish there were, too.

G: A lot of the great movie stars, such as the main actresses in The Women, those women knew how to give face, they had a big opinion about and hand in what they were going to wear onscreen. These days I think there a still a few actresses who think “I envision my character dressing this way,” but most don’t – they just work with what the costume designer provides.
SR: Back in the day, too, Joan Crawford wore a lot of Adrian. She knew her body and knew what she wanted to look like. There was so much more loyalty from someone like her towards the creative people who were shaping her image. A lot of actresses and actors have completely lost that. I don’t think someone has style if they have a stylist who shops for them and they wear everything that’s available in the marketplace. That’s why everyone has sort of the same style today. They’ll show up in Prada at one event and Gucci at another, but no one’s cultivating a look.
But it’s also due to the fact that everyone is an independent agent of sorts today, instead of under contract to the studio system. There are a few people who carry on that tradition; I think Chloe Sevigny has great personal style.

G: I have one last question: What are you wearing?
SR: Oh no! I have on a pair of shoes I got in Singapore that are Hiromu Takahara. They look like Converse but they fit like a cowboy boot – they zip up on the side. I’m wearing black Diesel jeans, skinny jeans, and just a t-shirt. And of course a hat – a black Bardolino hat.

Stepping out of lineAltoona Mirror - It costs extra for arcade games, rock-climbing, bungee-jumping, karaoke, tattoos, hair-braiding and arcade games the like. You could say beforehand, We re not doing anything that isn t covered by the admission ticket. Or you could give each child Source: www.altoonamirror.comEA reorganizes company branches, incorporates “casual gaming”Ars Technica - titan is one of the world’s largest game production houses and arcade games publishers, and arcade games continues to pump out a plethora of games minds at EA are allowed to play around with the content platforms like the PlayStation Network and arcade games the Xbox Live Arcade, we Source: arstechnica.comTomb Raider Secures World First with Microsoft Episodic SerializationXbox Solution - The market for digital download of core PC and arcade games console games is expected to exceed $289 million by 2010, with Games on 06.18 Band of Bugs Invades XBL Arcade This Wednesday 06.18 Tomb Raider Secures World First with Microsoft Episodic Source: www.xboxsolution.comVivendi Games Mobile Reveals Powerful Line-up for Second-Half 2007Forbes - Hit Sierra Entertainment Franchises LOS ANGELES, June 20 /PRNewswire/ — Vivendi Games Puzzle Mode limits the number of moves players can make to clear all the blocks and arcade games complete levels or Arcade Mode allows Source: www.forbes.comForza 2 - career completeDigital Spy - I have also just done the arcade, very easy to complete with my s998 gallardo, so only have to do online and arcade games time trials but They are 2 different games but both have the addict gameplay that makes me want to play one more time. Gamertag - Knee Cap Source: www.digitalspy.co.ukIn Pictures: Summer fun keeps the crowds entertainedPeterborough Evening Telegraph - star Lewis Hamilton’s shoes at the Serpentine Green Shopping Centre, as a giant Scalextric was set up in the shopping arcade. Along with stalls and arcade games games, clown and arcade games magician Ed Strong was present to help raise money to send bibles to Ethiopia. The Source: www.peterboroughtoday.co.ukPRESS RELEASE: Experience the race and arcade games its highlightsgamesindustry.biz - The game also offers arcade-style gameplay, particularly during sprints and arcade games time trials, where you must negotiate the course One in 1989 Ascaron Entertainment has become one of the leading European boutique developers and arcade games Publishers of games Source: www.gamesindustry.biz’Office’ sets videogame dealVariety - Peacock net comedy will be the first-ever Hollywood license for the publisher, which makes inexpensive arcade-style games. It plans to turn “The Office” into a humorous game in which players have to handle jobs and arcade games play pranks at Dunder Mifflin’s Source: www.variety.comBand of Bugs for Live ArcadeTotal Gaming - Games News Features Reviews Previews Cheats Shop Buy games online Sign up now Forums Competitions Total Gaming Contact Us Band of Bugs for Live Arcade By Eurogamer 19 June - This Wednesday’s Live Arcade offering will be tactical combat game Band of Source: www.totalgaming.co.uk

Camilla’s presence at Diana service ‘a mistake’ {new window}

Yesterday evening, in a marquee matchup showcasing two teams that will be interesting to watch until September, the New York Mets faced the St. Louis Cardinals in the inaurgural game of the 2007 MLB season.

It’s the start of an impossibly grueling run that will extend through six months of nearly daily play. Can you hear the collective groans from girlfriends across America who will ask their enlightened mates how long the season is and then be unsure they heard correctly? (Wait, 162 games?)

81 homes games. 81 away games. A single season that tests the utmost limits of human durability, athletic skill and determination.

The Cleveland Indians, who I will be writing about with much passion, open their season today at 2:05 p.m. versus Chicago White Sox - one of four teams who could win the AL Central Division.

Links to everything you need to know about the Tribe inside…

Several analysts (I’m being quite selective here) have picked the Tribe to not only win the division, but also to appear in the World Series. For those who remember the last time we were in the Series, October 1997 against the Florida Marlins, that is sweet music, indeed.

As I’ve mentioned before, the lineup is there. We were second in the league in runs last year, and the addition of Trot Nixon and David Dellucci should add to our unmistakable power behind the plate. The front office also added some needed bullpen muscle, though the 40-man roster has only three right-handed pitchers (nine lefties).

Grab those seeds, son, and check these links:

Photo Gallery

Depth Chart

Active Roster

April Schedule

Star Stats: Grady Sizemore, Victor Martinez, Travis Hafner, C.C. Sabathia, Jake Westbrook

Some of the other interesting topics this book touches upon is the match fixing controversy, captaincy, and , in the earlier part of the book, his come back. For most part Waugh’s description of his career seems to reflect a big struggle for survival. Even during his captaincy his descriptions constantly border on his struggle to score runs. For some strange reason his book never hits a confident assured patch that his statistics seem to suggest.

Captaincy:

That I was vulnerable to the lure of arguments is well known among my friends. That it led to many interesting friendships was the only saving grace. I met one of my closest friends, 6-7 years ago and our first conversation was on the world cup controversy - where Waugh batted slowly against Windies to help them qualify (eventually in vain) for Super Six. In the 1999 WC, There was a possibility of Windies qualifying into the super six on better run rate. This would ensure that the Australians would go into the Super Six with 2 points. India would have been similarly better off if Eng or SL qualified. The key was India couldn’t control Eng or SL’s fate whereas Aus had some, but significant, control over WI’s fate. I clearly felt the objective of any team was to win the World Cup and not each one of the individual battles. If I were an Australian supporter, I would rather see Australia win the World Cup and wouldn’t care crap as to how fast/slow Australia won against WI.

Losing a game deliberately was/is against the rules of the game. By an extension, losing a tournament deliberately was also against the rules. So by my logic - if Australia hit those 116 odd runs quickly, it reduced their chances of winning the tournament - dramatically. So if they went for the runs fast, it would mean that they tried to lose deliberately. Forget about letting Windies or anybody else go through (at some other team’s expense), its about your team, it was against rules, common sense and plain old logic to even think of scoring those runs fast. That the majority opinion was for batting fast is even greater indication that such a move is stupid. To me the only Indian captain who would have done what Waugh did was Rahul Dravid. Eventually the Ind Vs Aus tie became a knock out with the loser exiting (only a highly improbable chance remained) after the first game of Super Six. Waugh had this to say on the episode “It is hard to devise a fool proof system and a flaw in this one (tournament) meant that, after dismissing the West Indies for just 110, once we got close to victory it was in our best interests to slow down our run rate to help the Windies out. Bevo and I dawdled our way to the last 20 runs in 20 overs of unappealing, boring cricket, but I felt we owed it to each other to give ourselves the best chance of winning the tournament. This was one step along the way. I knew I’d cop a blast at the postmatch press conference and in the subsequent days, but I was steadfast, if not a little hot-headed, when I said “We’re not here to win friends, just the world cup” “. This attitude and the ‘dead rubber’ focus was the main reason I rated Waugh highly as a captain.
Match Fixing:
On the match fixing controversy, Waugh starts with the first test match at Karachi after Taylor took over as captain. The sentence where he first talks about the episode taken out of context reads like this “and to cap it off Ian Healy missing a stumping chance when the home side needed three runs to win. The ball went for 4 byes and we lost after Pakistan put on a 57-run last wicket partnership. The match was tarnished forever by the discovery that Pak captain Salim Malik had offered $US200000 each to Tim May and Shane Warne to deliberately bowl poorly on day 5 of a match that at the time was balanced on knife’s edge.” He then describes how it probably all started “October 1, at the Pearl Continental Hotel, a phone call from Pakistan skipper Salim Malik, ‘the rat with the golden tooth’, had set the wheels in motion” but Waugh also has this to say about the way the allegations were handled “too much information was recalled from memory and not from documented notes; it was here that inaccuracies, discrepancies and conflicting information led to a clouded picture”. Some of the information that Steve Waugh provides is “The first sign for me was an out-of-blue phone call from Pakistan’s former test captain, Mushtaq Mohammed, to Allan Border at Trent Bridge during the fifth ashes test of 1993.” Border who returned with a stunned look after the call said “What a twat. Tell him to piss off”

A year later he recollects that in a ODI in Colombo, when Pakistan was chasing 180 and were 2/80 in the first fifteen, Saeed Anwar retired with cramps, Waugh came to bowl and took 3/16 from 10 overs. He remembers thinking “Why are these guys blocking everything? Am I really bowling that well that they can’t get me off square on such a flat, batsman friendly pitch?. Salim Malik was particularly watchful of my non-deviating medium pacers, and we ran out surprise winners by 28 runs”. This wasn’t Waugh’s closest encounter with match fixing. He says that in a function in Rawalpindi, Warne and Mark Waugh came up to him and - ” Into our group came Mark Waugh and Shane Warne, with body language suggesting that something was amiss. Warney pretty much came out with it straight away: ‘Well, junior are you going to tell Stephen?’. Mark said looking at me ‘Malik just offered $200000 to be split up among Maysie, Warney and us two if we played poorly tomorrow”. Waugh’s response to the offer was “Tell him to fuck off”. On Mark Waugh’s episode, Waugh has a lot of things to say but this one was particulaly funny - When the Waugh parents were getting a lot of heat from church gossip and neighborhood sledging, Waugh’s father, who ran a news agency refused to sell papers that had negative comments about Mark at his own cost. On our Bai, he has this to say “Two guys who I would never never have imagined being involved in match-fixing were India’s Mohd. Azharuddin and South Africa’s Hansie Cronje.” ” Azharuddin was a shy, quiet, modest man blessed with extraordinary gifts for cricket and a common touch that enabled him to relate to the average guy on the street.”. On Cronje, waugh spends 2 pages and describes all his interactions with him.
On Indian cricketers:
On Sachin, Waugh describes in great detail one of my favorite Sachin innings, the 90+ one in Bombay during 96 WC. He says the surfeit of ODIs is the reason why “many uplifting or inspirational segments of play have been lost over time. But listening to crowd urge on Sachin after he lost 2 early partners … was enough to know this was one special occasion. After a shaky start Sachin came to life during an over from McGrath, in an assault that left everyone in the jam-packed stadium, including me with goosebumps. The atmosphere was charged and crowd gelled together in one animated mass. A savage pull shot that defied textbooks.” ” It was followed by a remarkably improvised hook shot off the front foot that only a man with an eye like dead fish would think of playing. ” Two balls later we were…standing helplessly as he unleashed a scorching cover drive” - A truly fantastic innings. Waugh has been involved in Australia’s really tense WC encounters with India - in 87, 92, 96 ( and then Aus destroyed Ind in 99, 03). On his first and last test games against India. He had this to say on the series and Indian team “We had to recognize that this wasn’t the soft-underbelly Indian touring squad, but rather a hardened force forged by Ganguly, their feisty leader, who saw his own reputation being gouged out by the outcome of his team’s duels with Australia.” Waugh also points out the obvious flaw Australian scheduling team, which often left me wondering whether the BCCI pays extra money to schedule Australian test matches since 1992 ” not helping us was the fact that no test in this series was played at the WACA, where a bouncy pitch meant a virtually guaranteed victory for us”

On Dravid, Waugh says “Rahul’s batting was poetic, with flowing follow-throughs and easy hand-eye coordination. We’d formed mutual respect that started in 98 with a long dinner conversation about cricket, where he quizzed me endlessly about the mental side of the game. Rahul wanted that edge that would elevate his game to the next level, and at Adelaide, he completed the journey. As an opponent I respected his professionalism, and as a friend, I admired his balanced views and the way he treated people from all walks of life equally.”. His comments on Indian team and their games against Australia are marked by 2 big strategic mistakes that the Indians did. Sachin Tendulkar stupidly opened the bowling with Saurav Ganguly in the post-lunch session on the first day of first test in 1999 with Australia at 50/4 and lost the match. Ganguly stupidly changed bowlers from Sanghvi to Sachin when Aus were 50′ish/4 in the post lunch session on Mumbai 1st test. India lost the match. It is ironic.

On retirement: A test career, which began with his first test against India - “As I had always done, I took guard on center, for no other reason than my first cricket coach had told me to stand in front of the stumps and ask the umpire at the other end to tell me where the middle one was. I scratched a nervous mark in the soil and saw a sticky, thick mud cling to my half-spikes as I glanced around to get my bearings. I tried to avoid eye contact with eager Indian fielders who had gathered around me like seagull after a greasy chip. The keeper Syed Kirmani, and Gavaskar, Kapil Dev and Mohinder Amarnath seemed relaxed and expectant in their semi-crouched positions, while the ’smiling knife’, Ravi Shastri steadied himself at the bowlers end. My legs were weak, my breathing was shallow and my mind set was survival” - ended with 168 test matches with the last one against India “My last shot as an Australian batsman was a mistimed slog-sweep off Kumble that Tendulkar calmly accepted close to the boundary rope at deep square leg. My walk off the ground was surreal, with Indian players running up to congratulate me and the capacity crowd standing as one. I was pleased and satisfied that I’d helped save a test, glad we hadn’t lost the series and humbled by the attention.”