Tag: Things of beauty

Art, music, whatever

Eye Of

Beauty, Drive Time, Gratuitous Chick Pics

Beauty of the visual kind is always subjective and as such, therefore, there will always be differing opinions on the various kinds of beauty.  I, for one, find the voluptuous Kelly Brook and Salma Hayek to be exquisite:

 

…whereas others may refute that, and prefer the more-slender silhouettes of Charlotte Hawkins and Nicole Kidman:

It’s not that I find the latter pair unattractive — not in the slightest — it’s just my preference is for the body shapes of Mlles  Brook and Hayek.

In similar fashion, therefore, do I regard Insty’s comment about the Lamborghini Miura interesting:

“I think the Lamborghini Miura was the most beautiful car of its time, but a spoiler doesn’t make it prettier.”

(He’s talking about Liberty Walk’s version of the Miura, by the way, which I think is quite beautiful for a modern car despite the spoiler.)

But the Miura was made between 1966 and 1973, and in terms of beauty, it had some stiff competition in the beauty department during those seven years.  Here’s the “traditional” Miura:

…which I agree is an absolute stunner.  The 4-liter V-12 engine didn’t hurt, either.

Then again, if we’re looking at the 1966-1973 years, there’s my personal favorite, the Dino 246 GT:

…and also from that period, the Bizzarrini Strada / Spyder:

…not to mention the incomparable Jaguar E-type:

Okay, as far as I’m concerned that whole decade (1963 – 1972) was the golden age of automotive body design, and there is scarcely a car made back then that I wouldn’t take in a heartbeat.

All more beautiful than anything made so far in the 21st century — in my opinion.

But you all knew that already.

Celebrity Pass-Arounds

Gratuitous Chick Pics

Before anyone gets all moralistic and sniffy on me, let me preface this post by stating that what I’m going to be talking about took place in the 1970s.  For those unfamiliar with the decade, it was a time when we did all sorts of strange stuff, and in those pre-AIDS days there was a lot of sex going on.

Having once been a rock musician, let’s just say that I’m somewhat familiar with groupies, both the term and its membership (so to speak), although I was not an enthusiastic user of same.  The ones I knew back then (in Johannesburg, principally) were kinda sad, really:  we all knew who they were (hi, Charmaine and Bev!), we knew where they were to be found, we knew them as pass-arounds, but none of us really despised them.  (I know that sounds strange, but it’s nevertheless true.)  You see, everybody was promiscuous — college students, musicians, secretaries, supermarket check-out clerks, opticians’ receptionists (hi, Jen!);  whether male or female, there were high jinks a-plenty.  That a few girls happened to prefer hanging out with musicians, pretty much any musicians, was little different from the girls who hung around outside the College of Medicine at any university.

But then there were the Celebrity Groupies, who will feature prominently from now on.  Many were from “good families” and not just low-class no-hopers (like so many were).  What they did was hang around the famous bands and musicians, and what they liked was the rock musician lifestyle:  the touring, the limos, the parties and being with famous people (in this case musicians).

As I’ve written before:  yes, they were young — in some cases scandalously so — but then again, so were many of the musicians.  Today, there’d be a series of prosecutions (like this one) and much censorious finger-wagging;  back then it was just something that happened.

The difference is that most of the girls below ended up writing about their experiences as groupies, and making more than a little money thereby, too.  And people bought those anthologies because, well, a huge number of people are fame-groupies as well — little different, in my opinion, from the groupies themselves — as the success of magazines like People  and Us  can attest.  Anyway, here are the girls:

Audrey Hamilton

Bebe Buell

Cherry Vanilla

(unlike the others, Cherry was actually a well-known rock musician herself — her backing band back then was The Police, FFS)

Chris O’Dell
(she actually became a well-known tour manager after a while)

Cleo Odzer

Connie Hamzy

Cynthia Albritton

(Also known as Cynthia Plaster Caster, for the plaster molds she made of her various lovers’ penises)

Sable Starr and Lori Mattix (l-r)
(both lost their virginity in their very early teens, Sable to David Bowie and Lori to Jimmy Page;  here with Slade’s bassist Dave Hill)

Sable

Lori

Morgana Welch

Pamela De Barres

Roxana Shirazi

Tawny Kitaen

Tura Satana

Uschi Obermayer

After the Seventies, they went on to have careers as actresses, singers or entrepreneurs, or lives as wives and mothers to “ordinary” men.

What I find interesting is that almost without exception, none of these women actually expressed regret for their groupie activities, but just shrugged it off as a life experience and some even looked back on it all with fondness.  And why not?  It was the Seventies.

Renaissance Man

Architecture, Beauty, Classic Beauty, Culture, Fine Art

What do you call a man who was a professor of Architecture at Turin University, photographer, writer, skier, inventor of engines and designer of race cars, acrobatic pilot and mountaineer?  Carlo Mollino.

I have to say that I’m not enamored of his exterior architecture designs — there’s way too much Gropius and not enough Athens, never mind art nouveau;

…although not all the time:

His interiors are a little too Scandi and not enough Edwardian:

…although his Teatro Regio in Turin is incredible:


…from the inside;  the outside?

…and of his furniture we will not speak.


(Follow the link above for a full exposition of all these, and more.)

But how can you not enjoy his design of something as mundane as a bus?

And then there was his Basiluro race car, which at Le Mans 1955 (yes, that Le Mans race) managed to reach 135mph with a 750cc engine (!) until it was forced off the track into a ditch by a Jaguar:

However, it was Mollino’s photography which first caught my attention (guess why):

And my favorite:

His ultimate expression was this statement:

“Humans matter only insomuch as they contribute to a historic process; outside of history, humans are nothing.”

And Carlo Mollino sure left his mark on the historical process, in so many fields.  Che uomo!

Scandal

Gratuitous Chick Pics

I see that Miss Denmark won the Miss Universe 2024 competition, beating off out several people who had no business being there, e.g. trannies, married women (did the “Miss” part not give it away?), and in a moment of pure confusion, Joe Biden.

However:  in the “national costume” part of the competition, Victoria Kjær Theilvig made a HUGE mistake, in dressing as a Viking goddess.

I mean, was she not aware that Vikings had a terrible reputation for invading and (gasp) colonizing other countries?  (“Pillaging” is okay, see BLM riots, and besides, most of the pillagees were eeeevil Christianists anyway.)  And then there was the raping, which was pretty much a side benefit of the invading activity.

Did she not know that wearing such a costume would trigger the collective memory of women all over Western Europe, causing heartfelt anguish?

I’m amazed that all the affected countries aren’t calling for the Danish government to pay reparations.  Well, I would be amazed, except that Europeans seem to have come to terms with the fact that all this happened a really long time ago, all the perpetrators (and their victims) have long since died, and expecting reparations would be a truly foolish idea.

But that’s not what prompted me to write this post;  this did:

I haven’t seen all her competitors, but I’m pretty sure that the trannies and such didn’t look half as good as she does.

It’s a good thing that all Viking women didn’t look like this back in the day, or else ol’ Leif Erikson and the other boss Vikings would have had a hell of a time finding enough men to go off and do the invading / pillaging / exploring thing.