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Thursday, 5th July 2007
2:18pm
Yet another tricky social conundrum: when is a tattoo hip or just plain ugly? Workplace rules are becoming more and more complicated:
Once associated with drunken sailors, felons and Hells Angels, tattoos have gone nearly mainstream, putting employers in a bind. How to write rules that won't alienate un-hip customers on the one hand or eliminate talented workers on the other?
...In many cases, grooming policies are being set by members of a generation known for letting it all hang out...And now boomers are passing judgment on nose rings.
If you want more bare flesh, Slate has an evocative photo-celebration of the 60th anniversary of the bikini.
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11:01am
The phone rings with news of George Melly's death. A sad day. Jazz critics were often sniffy about his vaudeville blues, but I never got tired of the doubles entendres and the stories about olde New Orleans. It goes without saying that Melly was a styish writer too. Owning Up, his bawdy memoir about a musician's life on the road, is a classic of its kind, and his Sixties book about pop culture and pop art, Revolt into Style, has hardly aged a bit. I only had one brief conversation with him - I really wish I'd had a chance to...
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10:07am
The Libby-Plame affair has been so farcical from the outset that I haven't been able to rouse much passion over the latest twist. All I'll add is that Alan Dershowitz probably won't be joining any demos denouncing the presidential intervention:
The court of appeals' judges, as well as the district court judge, wanted to force President Bush's hand. They didn't want to give him the luxury of being able to issue a pardon before the upcoming presidential election. Had Libby been allowed to be out on appeal, he would probably have remained free until after the election. It
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Wednesday, 4th July 2007
6:02pm
I'm off to a friend's barbecue soon, rain permitting. It's not looking promising at the moment.
UPDATE: The flag flies outside Jo's house. Rain didn't quite stop play.
Bryan Appleyard, meanwhile, alerts everyone to the fact that Dave Barry is spending the big day over here in Britain. As ever, the humorist is making the best of things:
The weather is alternating between summer and winter, changing radically about every 20 minutes. This is pretty much how London always seems to me, but the Londoners seem to find it unusually...
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5:35pm
Martin Wainwright (ex-Shrewsbury) has a piece in Comment Is Free singing the praises of comprehensive schools. Part of me wants to agree with him, mainly because I went to a comp myself. Still, his four examples of successful ex-pupils are revealing in a different sort of way: Ed and David Miliband are the sons of a political theorist, Evan Davis's father was, as his profile points out, an electronics engineer who became a reader at Surrey University. And Zoe Heller's father was a screenwriter. Comprehensives don't necessarily hinder the progress of children from supportive, middle-class homes. Whether they're doing such a good job for everyone else is another matter.
Chris Dillow, by the way, has some typically forthright opinions on status and how to get it.
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4:35pm
Once again, a resident alien has been doing the heavy lifting: the redoubtable Alex Massie is guest-writing at The Plank while the regular staff disappear to guzzle their holiday hot-dogs. He's been knee-deep in sludge at times.
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10:16am
One of the sharpest theatre critics around, Michael Coveney, now has his own blog at Whatsonstage.com. Competition for the ever-readable Mark Shenton. Coveney's latest post is devoted to reflections on memorable on-stage disappearing acts. He also has his say about A.A. Gill's stinging attack on the West End reviewing trade. For his part, Shenton worries that last week's bomb alert could tip theatreland into a financial crisis.
As for the longer term, the Telegraph's Charles Spencer fears that two-a-penny musicals are finally on the verge of driving out straight drama....
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9:16am
From Peter de Bolla's timely new book, The Fourth of July and the Founding of America:
The painting itself has three versions and it has been reproduced at various times on postage stamps, currency and china.... Trumbull, as the evidence of his correspondence and sketches demonstrates, went to extreme pains to produce a documentary image. He travelled across the states tracking down those people who had been present on 4 July 1776 in that room in Philadelphia in order accurately to portray their faces in his painting. Of course, his subjects had advanced in years by the time Trumbull came with pencil, pen or brush in hand - he did not begin his studies for the painting in Paris until 1785 and it was not completed until 1818. No wonder so many of them look so august.
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Tuesday, 3rd July 2007
9:40pm
Another summer storm on the way... The view across the roof-tops earlier this evening.
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9:15pm
The first time I saw Sayeeda Warsi was on Question Time last year. An extremely impressive, down-to-earth performance, I thought. Given that the Tories are so short of figures who seem reasonably, um, human, she ought to be a useful addition to the ranks. Although those quotes that James Forsyth points to will take some explaining away.
Ed Husain, author of The Islamist, gets a name-check in Dennis MacShane's Telegraph op-ed on why it would be a mistake to stop using the term "Islamist". Husain sets out his views in the Standard [via Norm Geras] and gives...
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