POLY LOVES: PANCAKE MOUNTAIN

A couple of years ago I broke my leg and ended up convalescing in a house with a 4-year-old who had a dictatorial reign over the TV remote. I watched a lot of CBeebies: Balamory, Big Cook Little Cook, Bob The Builder (obviously) and mine and the little one’s favourite, Boogie Beebies. For the uninitiated, Boogie Beebies’ hosts Nat and Pete make you dance to songs like Pirate Gang and Go Go Mango. I didn’t do much dancing. I was crippled. Keep up. But the point is, the little one did, and he loved it.

It was the best show on CBeebies by miles. Grown-up dancing is mostly rubbish because it’s all posing and posturing for others to see, but kids just throw themselves around because it feels good, and it’s the nicest and funniest thing in the world.

And then today I watched a YouTube clip of MIA teaching her dance moves to the kids on the wonderful Pancake Mountain. This led to a couple of hours of online PM catch-up, as the show’s been running since 2003 and has had everyone from Metric to Scissor Sisters to Arcade Fire to Juliette Lewis to… well, it’s had everyone. If Top Of The Pops had got a goat called Rufus Leaking to present and roped an audience of under-fives in, it might have stood a fighting chance.


The show’s creator, Scott Stuckey, got the show together in 2005. It airs sporadically on public access TV in Washington, though you can buy DVDs of episodes from the website. “Good music is good music no matter what your age,” he reasons. That’s true. But there are other reasons why a music show for kids works much better than one for adults.

First, stupid interview questions elicit the best responses. They’re more probing. They catch people off-guard and there’s no way bands will have a stock answer prepared for something like, “Where do you park the mothership?” (as Rufus once asked George Clinton). And they’re funny. I’m not interested in, “Tell me about your new album.” But I appreciate Rufus asking Shirley Manson, “Are you even happy when it’s a little bit cloudy?” I suspect she does, too.

Second, bands like White Stripes and Shonen Knife are childlike in so many ways that when they played the show, it looked like they’d come home. They loved it. Gigs should be made compulsory for under-10s and illegal for anyone older. Pancake Mountain’s Dance Parties prove this point.

And third, don’t you wish this was around when you were a kid? That you could say, “oh I was on TV playing drums with Iggy Pop when I was 6, and then Fugazi taught me to spell”. No? Shut up. You do a bit.

Here are some good bits from the show.

1. Metric hosting a Monster Hospital singalong.


2. Scissor Sisters doing karaoke to Aretha Franklin with Rufus.


3. Jenny Lewis really, really enjoying her Dance Party.


Buy DVDS for the young ones in your life, or else pretend you know some kids, buy it and then watch it yourself. It’s so good that it made me a bit sad for everything else. Rebecca

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NAUGHTY AOL :(

I’m half way through the excellent book How Sassy Changed My Life: A Love Letter To The Greatest Teen Magazine Of All Time (henceforth referred to as: snip it, wordy!). With all the anecdotes about Kim Gordon, Spike Jonze and fighting the religious right through make-up advice, kind of, it makes me wish I was in My So-Called Life, wearing floaty grunge dresses, swooning at Jordan Catalano and subscribing to Sassy, which I’m not sure Angela did, but she obviously would’ve, in the nixed second series.

This loving homage is inspirational because it showed that a genuinely cool mag could shift copies and make money. But maybe that’s why I haven’t been able to get to the end, when those wholesome dreams are crushed by big bad corporate things.

Ah, well. There’s no point in hopeless nostalgia, especially when the future’s all online and that. I’m into AOL’s teen site Red. Loving that inspirational content…especially The 20 Ugliest Celebs…

Hrngh! Hrngh! Hold up. Mariah Carey’s at number 20, and nobody puts Mimi in a corner. And who’s that? Kelis? Courtney Love?

Let’s look at their reasons, and despair for our youth.


KELIS: Holy hell ... Kelis is not bringin' any boys to the yard looking like that. There have been rumors that she is really a man, and quite frankly we are thinking something's not right with this chick. Every time we see her she has her mouth open and looks like she's ready to eat us. She's scary. Next time we see her, we are looking for the Adam's apple.

COURTNEY LOVE: Talk about a total trainwreck. This woman is about as ugly and classless as it can get. Courtney Love is quite frankly a donkey. We cannot even find anything slightly redeeming about her. Maybe if she gets help for the drug abuse, then she can work on cleaning herself up. But it's going to take A LOT of work!

Polyester smells libel… come on, C-Love, get the lawyers out.

But I’m OK with it. I’m just going to move on and tuck into… Celebrities Without Make-Up and Worst Celebrity Smiles. Teen AOL, you are awesome. Rebecca

[via Defamer]

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BBC REPORT ON UGLY FEET

Not since Kerry Katona’s knife-robbery trauma got half a page in The Guardian have we been so bemused by news-folks’ priorities.

According to the BBC, Sandie Shaw, the Eurovision-winning, Puppet On A String chanteuse, has had corrective surgery on her “ugly” feet.

Sienna Miller might be playing Margaret Thatcher in a new film and yet the Beeb went bigger on Sandie Shaw’s deformed toes. The detail is remarkable:


* She got a pair of “huge, geisha-style shoes” upon discharge

* She was also given “condom-like rubber leg tubes to shower in” and “a self-propelled wheelchair”

* Bandages were taken off two weeks after the op, and her feet are “swollen, misshapen, yellow and bruised”

* Her nurse has encouraged SS to “bond with my new feet, to massage, moisturise and get familiar with them”

* She will unveil her new toes in October

Thanks for that, Auntie.

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JODIE FOSTER DOES MORE

Reading “Jodie Foster is on the new cover of More” from Perez Hilton on the old RSS sent us all a-flutter.

Alas, it is not “Coleen’s Wag Tit Wank Special!” More.

It is American oldie mag More...

:(

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FEIST IS LOVELY

Here at Polyester, Feist is near the top of our long list of lady loves. In fact, we’ve got an interview with her to post at some point soon, whenever a good afternoon’s transcribing is on the cards. It’s funny and everything.

Feist recently replaced the content on her website with a hand-written note, since she felt listentofeist.com had become “a robot with a paper mask of my face on it”.

Read the full note after the jump, because it’s very charming, and compounds that Feist crush that didn’t really need compounding in the first place.

And keep your eyes peeled for that interview.

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MERYL'S GOT A NEW FILM OUT

Meryl Streep stars in new anti-war film Lions For Lambs, reports The Guardian. Or not, because they’ve buried that juicy little Streep nugget in some piece about Hollywood breaking tradition by making explicitly White-House-critical films. As headlines go, what’s wrong with ‘Meryl’s got a new film out’? Say what you mean, journos.

FYI: Charlotte Gainsbourg loves Meryl Streep. She likes The Deer Hunter and Kramer vs Kramer best, and watched The Devil Wears Prada, which she thought was “funny”.

That’s all. That really is all, I just set up this stupid page expansion thing and I can't turn it off. Sorry. Posts will be longer from now on, to make the most of it. Like this. La la la la la, here's a few more lines...

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BOOB-JOB STUNT SOUNDS FAMILIAR…

Worldwide news authorities – alright, daily must-read Jezebel – are reporting that Australian lad-rag ZOO is giving away a boob-job to one lucky reader’s girlfriend. “It’s the gift that keeps on giving,” editor Paul Merrill said in a statement.

This lady-blogger once worked at the Brit ZOO (first job, not proud, alright ma?), edited by one Paul Merrill, where they – wait for it – ran a controversial competition for a reader to win his girlfriend a boob job.

Here’s how it played out for him first time round.

The Advertising Standards Authority has ruled that the contest to "win your lady a brand new set of expertly crafted tits" breached its codes on responsible advertising and told the publisher, Emap, not to repeat the approach.

But that was almost two years ago, damn it, and the ASA didn’t, like, say Australia in the ruling or anything. So it’s round two, ding! ding!, thanks for the publicity... and a massive bore-off yawn from us.

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POLY LOVES: ROSEANNE'S BLOG

Since the halcyon days of C4 Friday night Roseanne, all Polyester contributors have loved the great Ms Barr. And Darlene… well, Darlene is responsible for a lot of misdemeanours, and is the greatest portrayal of teenagedom seen on TV. But we digress.

Roseanne is still working that comedy circuit, but she’s also now moonlighting as a socialist nut farmer in Hawaii with a free and easy approach to blogging. For reals.

She got in a little beef with Perez Hilton recently, who called her out on drunk-blogging (cannily deciphering phrases like, “[I’m] drunk as a fucking skunk tonight”). Rosie responded by implying that she’d like to shoot him with an actual gun. In fact, the gun-loving’s the only strange thing here, considering she’s so vehemently anti-war. Anyway, select highlights that make Roseanne our new hero:

*I am only at the pee in your pants stage of old ladyism, but look forward to having a huge head in the future. I have seven pigs on my farm and want to eat them! They hide in the grass and hump each other when they think I am not looking...I am getting a shotgun tomorrow, not for the piggies, but just to have, though I wonder if my past mental illnesses will make getting a gun tougher?

*religion: child molesting, woman hating closet cases, money grubbing insurance whores

*I am with the Goddess Pele, and feeling that I can be happy and grounded here in hawaii, to raise macademia nuts, goats for cheese and support local artists and musicians...

*In Orwellian times, as the voice of big brother drowns out fact, I will try to be your big sister, call me aspect of artemis-energy. this is the age of miracles and wonders. In this age the tower of babel and thus babylon will fall.

More essential reading here.

In other Roseanne news, Poly just picked up Roseanne: My Life As A Woman from Oxfam (a 99p steal) and will be posting a review/choice cuts shortly. So far, so amazing.

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OUR PALTROW AMBIVALENCE

Gwyneth Paltrow’s annoying. It’s a universal truth, like a single man in possession of a good fortune etc. But here’s a secret shame: I’m also kind of fascinated by her. I watch films that she’s in, and if a magazine runs an interview with her, babes, I’ll read it. I liked that she said she enjoys living in England because people talk about smart things, even if it was a bit smug.

But this also makes me feel dirty, and now I’ve admitted it for the whole internet (well, 24 people a day, and rising!) to see. Because she is smug, and wet, and self-satisfied. Her Oscar acceptance speech remains the most excruciating moment in the history of entertainment, and that’s including the entirety of Sylvia, the worst film ever made (who’d have thunk, a film about suicide less appealing than its subject matter).

Up until this week, I was OK about it. Gwyn had gone away for a couple of years, churning out Biblical babies and saving the world one Coldplay dedication at a time. I’d dealt with the uncertainty, with the confused feelings, with the pangs of guilt and shame, and I’d put her to the back of my mind. But she appears to be on the counter-attack.

Yes, Gwyneth Paltrow is back.

1. She’s on the cover of W, looking like a medieval tranny robot painted by Picasso.

2. In said magazine, she talks about motherhood: “I have a dream version where I think, maybe in four years I'll have two in a row really quickly again—how fabulous to have a whole bunch of them!" Ugh. You know that smart comment? Whatever.

3. She’s going to host a Spanish cooking show, even though she doesn’t eat meat. Has she been to Spain? They love vegetarians there. She definitely won’t be eating chips and salad for a month. Nope, no chips for her.

Oh, Gwyneth. Why do you keep letting me down?

Anyone else got a love-hate secret star shame?

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FLASHBACK: HOLE NOSTALGIA

Have you ever been out somewhere, and heard an amazing song, and gone home, and tracked it down, and it’s unlocked a whole cupboard full of musical memories?

This weekend two of the Polyester ladies heard Hole’s Drag, a meaty fist of grunge-pop that we didn’t recognise, because, as the lady on the till told us, “it’s a B-side from the Malibu single”. (Yes, we go to shops where they play B-sides from the Malibu single and where they say things like, “It’s a B-side from the Malibu single.” And your point is?)

So the weekend was eaten up by rampant Hole nostalgia – B-sides, old shows, YouTubing madness and all sorts of back-to-95 dreaminess...



I'd defend Nu Courtney to the death, but I gotta say, I really miss the old one.

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LI-LO'S BOX

Lol!!!111! Because “box” is also a bit like fanny!!!!

Snort. Lindsay Lohan’s used Domino’s box, from the day after the whole baking-powder-in-pocket, bit-fast-along-the-highway incident, was sold on eBay for the paltry sum of $2.25, which is surely the biggest bargain you’ve ever seen in your whole life. Imhugable21, if that is your real name, you are one lucky so-and-so.


With profits so huge, the seller should start a business.

rawisjericho59 - fishing food detritus out of the rubbish for less than $3 a time!

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AS OF TODAY...

...Polyester has a new home. Wordpress proved just a little too complicated for specials like us.

So au revoir, polyestermag.wordpress.com (still home to a great archive, innit) and bonjour...

polyestermag.blogspot.com

That feels so much better.

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