regina vs hennes and mauritz

Right, jury duty is dull or disturbing and nothing in between. You're bored and want something -anything- to do, then you'll get a case and it'll be dull so you'll be bored and having to pay attention to boring things. Then that's over and you're just bored again, then you catch another case and it's Sexual Assault and your not bored anymore but upset and disturbed and you wish you were bored again. This last for two weeks and it's so tiring that you can't do anything when you get home so you're bored again until you fall asleep.

To break up to monotony I've been kicking around Leicester town center on my lunch, which in itself is a monotonous place but beats the hell out of the Crown Court jury pen which is indescribable, so I'll leave it at that. After going to a couple of slightly over priced vintage shops I made my way to H&M and then to Topman and bugger me bluntly if I wasn't immediately struck by the role reversal of the two. H&M was rack after rack of unwearable and cheap looking clothes none of which I wanted (bar the oversized, ragged, faux mohair jumper that I bought for £10 from the sale rail) Topman in comparison had some excellent denim, both jeans and shirts had be umming and arring the current state of my overdraft.

Sure Topman had it's share of dayglo t-shirts and studded belts but I really liked a good 1/4 of the stuff in there which wasn't ostentatiously cheap with over design, just good solid pieces and none too pricey. I would tend to only go into Topman if I needed a specific piece of clothing that I knew they stocked but now I could happily deck myself out in an entire outfit. Perhaps it's that high street fashion is now falling more into my boundaries of taste the last few seasons but there has definitely been substantial efforts made by Topman to keep up with current trends rather than being it's usual year+ behind.

It's a shame because H&M used to be a staple but they have really dropped the ball of late leaving it to Topman and UniQlo to fight over. My case in point is the only thing I found worthy of hard cash was in the sale rail and I wouldn't have spent over £10 on this jumper especially as I had to spend 10 minutes at home removing a hideous studded leather tag from the hem. Though it's not just that H&M is worse than it used to be it's also down to the top job Topman is now doing with it's menswear, if they could only sort out their fit...

cigarettes and a squint

As I may have mentioned before James Dean is one of the few truly great icons of the 20th Century. The actor come photographer come racing driver had indelible style and you'll struggle to find an image of Dean where he is looking anything less than.. well.. iconic. This is partly because Dean died before he was 25, leaving him no time to make a bad film or get fat or develop a penchant for tracksuits, and partly due to the great marketing job that was done for his image and films. Nonetheless there is no cigarette smoke without fire and marketing job or not Dean looks phenomenal on the screen and in print. He had a roguesque charm that was rough yet not scruffy, you can't imagine Dean in a suit yet you can't imagine him being turned away for dress code. Whether true or not you get a feeling that Dean didn't think too much about his look, it just sort of came together for him- the cigarettes, the squint, loose shirts and work boots. It's entirely possible that he had a personal stylist preening him into this carefree look, however I like to think that a man with that much charisma was capable of simply being that shit hot.







Dean also adds weight to the argument that to become an icon you have to do three things brilliantly then die. Kurt Cobain and Bruce Lee both followed the formula and Marlon Brando wishes he did. Instead Brando got fat and left an ugly corpse and unfortunately despite his younger days being studded with glittering performances he will always be remembered as the chubby, slurring Don Vito or the fat, reclusive Kurtz. So kids if you truly want to become iconic make three brilliant albumns/films/art works and then die, we're all waiting for Pete Doherty to.

you can almost smell the pipe smoke

Think you do a real job? Think you dress for it? Hell no. You ain't got a spot on NASA during the 60's. Look at these coiffed geniuses, hair as sharp as their calculations, changing the world one planet at a time. YOU disgust me, turning up for working in your pinstripe monstrosity. Bet you've never pulled a 48 hour shift to get 3 heroes home safe with nothing more than a calculator and a pack of smokes.

i love courtney

Courtney Love is stumbling mouth foaming with rabid spittle back into the public consciousness once more, announcing she is touring the UK with her legendary band Hole. Along with the new tour comes the now customary Twitter based spat with fellow celebrity- in this case, and to be fair in most cases, with Lily Allen. Hmmmmm now which side are we going to take on this boys and girls? The old, crazy, drug addled, mentalist icon of the 20th centuary or... Keith Allen's daughter? Yep that's right: I'm with Cobain's ex (obviously). I can forgive Courtney almost anything because... well... she's Courtney Love and Lily Allen really isn't, it is unbelievable though that these two fully grown women would be bickering like they would do anything for the attention. Oh, wait. The culmination of this Twitter-fit is the hilarious posting of unflattering pictures of each on their repective rivals Twitter page. Let's laugh at how ugly they both are-har-har-haaaaaaar.




Go see Hole, they are amazing. Don't see Lily Allen, she's proper rubbish, and has cellulite. See? Yuck.