Tag: Things of beauty

Art, music, whatever

My Style

Beauty, Culture, Modernism, Traditions

As Longtime Readers are fully aware, I loathe Modernist architecture and interior design with something approaching destructive impulse (a polite way of saying that if I could get away with it, I’d pay Muslim assholes to fly empty airliners into all of them).  Lest we forget, here are a couple of examples of same:

So, you may ask, what do you propose in modernism’s stead?  Well, if we go according to the precept that “architecture doesn’t have to  suck”, we could do with more of these:

…and for the interior design, more of these:

The above two pictures, by the way, are of an AirBnB apartment in Edinburgh (one of my favorite cities in the whole world), where I will most certainly be staying the next time New Wife and I pop Over There.

Here’s another example of an interior taken not a million miles away from a certain country house in England’s South West, where I have stayed before:

…and where we will doubtless stay again when we venture into Hardy Country.

Yes, I’m hopelessly old-fashioned and so (to the surprise of precisely nobody) is New Wife.  Your opinion may vary from ours in that you prefer the top two pictures;  but if so, you suck and so does your ghastly Bauhaus  architecture.

Desert Island Dames

Beauty, Gratuitous Chick Pics

Some time back, I riffed on the “Desert Island Discs” theme to create a “Desert Island Guns” post, whereupon a couple of you bastards Curious Readers took it upon themselves to ponder about which five women I would like to be marooned on a desert island with (assuming, of course, I was not married and could have my pick of any women in the world).

Five?  Good grief, who do you think I am, Errol Flynn?  Some NBA basketball player?  A 20-year-old boy?

Okay, if the theme for the Guns post was “guns I love to shoot” then here’s my list of the five women I’d love to etc. etc.  In no specific order (because I will not  start a catfight before I even get there):

1)  Salma Hayek.  I love that accent, she seems like fun, and as for the rest, ’nuff said:Downside is that being Mexican, she’s probably jealous as hell, but there ya go.

 2 ) Carol Vorderman.  Apart from her obvious assets, she’s also an engineer and pilot, so during her down time (so to speak) she could fix stuff around the place and fly in supplies of booze and ammo (also Viagra) each week:

3)  Sarah Palin. Apart from her delectability, she cooks and shoots, and I’d love a shooting partner.I know she’s getting a little long in the tooth, but then so am I.

4) Nigella Lawson. Because Sarah’s gonna need time off from cooking for her other activities.  Only I want the earlier, sexier and more bountiful version of Nigella (see below), not the new slimmed-down shrunken model:

5)  Amy Adams.  No way am I going to be marooned without at least one genuine redhead, and Amy is the business:

Runners-up:

Helena Bonham Carter.  Because I like a little crazy.

Jennifer Tilly.  Also crazy, and I need someone to play cards with when I’m too tired to do anything else.

Katarina Witt.  No explanation needed.  Also, I need to practice my German.

Monica Bellucci.  Because mama mia.

Juliette Binoche.  French lessons.

And lastly, opera singer Lucy Kay (who can sing me to sleep at night).

Red-Headed Virgin

Culture

Reader Jeff W. sends me this article, which suggests that the BVM was, in fact, a ginger:

I had no idea that she was Scottish.  Was “Mhairi” her real name, I wonder?

Anyway, never mind all that.  The blog wherein such is to be found looks very interesting, so excuse me for a day or two while I examine it closely.

Just Three

Beauty, Drive Time

Evil Bastard I mean Loyal Reader Petec directs my gaze to this bunch of Brit ne’er-do-well resto-modders, and my question to everyone is this:

Forget the price, and ignore the fact that it may have been sold;  list your top 3 of the cars on either the “Blue Chip” or “Prestige” pages.

Mine are, in no specific order:

Trying to pick a #1 from this lot is like trying to pick a favorite child.

And if New Wife wanted in, I’d get her this little beauty (because she thinks most modern sports cars are utterly vulgar and horrible):

It’s a good thing that I haven’t won the lottery, or these guys would be getting a visit from me.

Small Wonder

Culture, Travels

According to some organization, Vienna is the most “liveable” city in the world.  I can see why, and I could live there in a heartbeat.  I’ve often commented on my love for Vienna — to this day, it’s the only city that is so beautiful that the first time I went there, I walked the streets with tears running down my cheeks.

I don’t know what criteria the EIU set to decide livability, but here are mine:

1)  It must be beautiful.  Vienna has that, in spades.

2)  There must be lots of culture:  art, music and all the rest.  Feel free to tell me Vienna doesn’t have that  covered.  Here’s the Kunsthistoriches (Art History) museum, see also beauty (above)

…and as for music?  Even their street musicians are a cut above the rest (he was playing Mozart  tunes, FFS):

 

3)  The people must be well-mannered, well-dressed and classy.  Vienna:  check, check and check.  The Viennese are terribly formal, which suits me down to the ground.

4)  A relaxed lifestyle.  Vienna = café culture, maybe even more so than Paris.  And oooh the coffee…

5) Good food, and restaurants.  Here’s Vienna’s equivalent of Whole Foods, or maybe M&S Food Court.  Let me tell you:  I know  grocery stores, and Julius Meinl is the best in the world.

Let’s not forget the street markets:

So yeah:  if somebody stuck a gun to my head and said, “You have to go and live in Vienna!”, I’d snatch the gun away and shoot him before he could change his mind.

I would be remiss, however, if I didn’t list a couple of negatives about Vienna.  (A German I met once said, “Vienna would be beautiful, except for the Viennese”, and my only qualification of his opinion is that of the language.)

I speak German reasonably well, and can get around most of Germany without too much hassle (once I’ve been  there a few days and have caught up — you don’t use it, you lose it, and I’ve pretty much lost it).  That’s not true in Vienna, where the local patois is incomprehensible, even to a lot of Germans.  (In the early days in Munich, Hitler had to take a few elocution lessons because people couldn’t understand his Austrian-accented speeches.)

Also:  in winter, it’s witch’s tit cold.  Holy balls.  Even coming from Chicago as I did, Viennese winters are cold, Bubba.  The only good thing about winter there is that it keeps most of the tourists away — which brings me to my last quibble:  in summer, Vienna has more tourists per square yard than the average day at DisneyWorld.

But in summer, the weather is glorious and the whole city seems to sing.  The multitude of statues to Beethoven, Mozart, Brahms and Strauss (all of whom lived in Vienna) must have something to do with it…

Mein schönes Wien… I need to get back there, and soon.

As for the rest of the “ten most liveable” cities on that list?  Ugh.  As far as I’m concerned, it’s Snow White and the Nine Dwarfs.

And one wonders how anyone could put Vienna and Toronto (???!!!) on the same such list, with a straight face.

Gratuitous Gun Pic — James Purdey And David McKay Brown (12ga)

Gratuitous Gun Pics

Before we get started, let me say at the outset that I don’t care if you can find a decent second-hand pump-action shotgun for $450 at Bubba’s Bait-‘N-Guns.  This isn’t that kind of post, as you will soon see.

Some people might say that spending this much money on a pair of shotguns is ludicrous or even foolhardy.  My opinion is that these guns exist right at the very end of the quality curve — I cannot think how they could possibly be improved — and therefore the cost is irrelevant.

Granted, to buy these guns you probably have to have so much money that cost becomes irrelevant (i.e. “if you have to ask…”), but like buying (say) a Ferrari Enzo, it isn’t the money that’s important.  (I, by the way, am not one who actually subscribes to this philosophy — had the lottery been in my favor last night, I still  wouldn’t have called Collectors Firearms to put a hold on them — but I do understand why this can be important to some people, and I pass no judgment on their preference whatsoever.  There’s nothing wrong with wanting the absolute best of anything, as long as you can afford it.)

Now all that said:  there are a couple of things about these Purdeys that I don’t like.

1) I prefer my shotgun stock not  to have a pistol grip — left is the Purdey, right is my preference:

2) I prefer double triggers to single triggers:

With all that in mind:  had the lottery been in my favor last night, I might  have called Collectors to put a hold on these two David McKay Brown shotguns (#1 and #2) because they are completely in my wheelhouse, so to speak, even though they’re not a matched pair.

(And I care not that this gun bears the initials of its previous owner — I put no stock in virginity.)

These two guns are, in a word, exquisite — and for those to whom this kind of thing matters, David McKay Brown is pretty much on a par with Purdey as a gunmaker.  (Purdey has the better P.R., but McKay Brown is extremely well-respected among the shotgun cognoscenti.)  And too, they’re not as finely engraved as the Purdey guns, but frankly, I’m not in thrall to fancy scrollwork (although I do appreciate it.)

And it certainly doesn’t hurt that the McKay Brown guns are half the price of the Purdeys… still nosebleed, but from only one  nostril, so to speak.

Want.