Peru's Tyler Durden harvests human fat for European cosmetics

Waiter, there's a tramp in my soap. Oh, what price will we pay for beauty?

I read gruesome news from Peru where a team of serial killers, who probably smoked too much crack while watching Fight Club, have nicked (or influenced) Tyler Durden's macabre business plan, harvested the fat from scores of victims over the past  30 years, and sold it to the European cosmetics industry. Oh, yes, the victims had to be dead in order to extract every bit of fatty goodness from their cadavers.

And so capitalism crawls into its final decrepit stage where it's gone gaga as well as sclerotic. In Fight Club, Chuck Pahlaniuk's magnum opus, Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) finances his bid to bring down the whole sorry edifice by stealing liposuction fat from cosmetic surgeries. Not only the finest fat there is, but also one of the finest metaphors for what capitalism is doing to us.

"We're taking their own fat and selling it back to them," he gloats — posh hand-made soaps that he supplies to department store beauty counters at the silly prices silly women will pay.

The authorities have arrested the perps but are still seeking the middle-men who bought the fat off them.

So I cast a sharp eye over the rows of oils and unguents cluttering my vanity shelves and ask myself — who's in this?  Puh-leaze don't let it be the Clarins ...

It's how you look at things

Unforeseen design problems on one of London's bridges ... or was it?

I'm checking out Blackfriars Bridge toot sweet. They hang mobsters there. Does that make this a well hung bridge?

Thanks to Claire for this. (Trust you. Arf!) How's that for a superior architectural nob gag?

Wicker Man star Edward Woodward dies

Sergeant Howie Rest In Peace. The man with the legendary name said to resemble a fart in the bath will cut capers no more. Edward Woodward, star of The Wicker Man and The Equalizer, has died in Cornwall aged 79.

Woodward did English neurosis better than most even though his best-known film role was the sexually repressed Scottish policeman, Sergeant Howie, in The Wicker Man (1973), starring opposite Christopher Lee and lusting guiltily after Britt Ekland.

You always felt there was a lot going on under the surface barely concealed by his trained tenor voice that was perfect for expressing strangulated non-expression. A RADA actor who carved out a respectable stage career, his stardom began with the 1960s TV detective series Callan. Among a string of film roles, he gave an acclaimed performance in the Australian movie Breaker Morant (1980), and in 2007 fan Simon Pegg cast him in Hot Fuzz.

He was a British actor who will be sorely missed.

All together now, "The Lord's my shepherd, I'll not want ... Sweet Jesus, it's getting hot in here ..."

Read an original analysis of The Wicker Man at Madam Miaow Says by guest poster Babeuf.

Maclaren buggy amputations acceptable say middle-class Brits

Maclaren buggies in the wars

A finger of fudge may be just enough to give your kid the digit they're missing after helping Mummy fold away their pushchair.

Is it me or are the middle classes getting madder?

The Telegraph asks if parents are overreacting because Maclaren buggies are amputating their children's fingers. One of their resident Mr Angries blames hysteria and "pressure groups" for anxiety over a device presumably designed for comfort and safe conveyence of your Precious Ones which turns out to have a wicked safety flaw resulting in children being maimed for life when their fingers are caught in the hinges.

Reminiscent of Tyler Durden's sleazy day job in Fight Club, working out the motor trade percentages involved in crashes and deciding when lawsuits hit critical mass making it more economic to issue a recall, Maclaren has only just now offered British parents the same safety cover they had to offer US consumers.

The Telegraph's columnist is joined by a chorus of commenters overflowing with the milk of human kindness when it comes to the poor corporation yet could pinch-hit for any number of Dickensian villains when it comes to child safety.

It's an acceptable percentage kinda thang. If children have the temerity to help Mummy fold the buggy then they deserve everything they get. Good for you Maclaren — chop off those interfering little fingers and teach them a lesson they'll never forget.

And then the parents have the cheek to complain. Overreaction and hysteria and not greedy irresponsible corporations are the plague of the modern age.

That Jonathan Swift had a nice recipe for babies ...

X Factor fans claim Chinese Ambassador among them

Holy ai caramba! First Gordon Brown and now China. My late communist Dad must be spinning at the news that UK Chinese ambassador Madam Fu Ying has declared herself a fan of The X Factor. Never mind China and human rights, what about Simon Cowell's crimes against humanity?

According to The Independent report:

'She praised twins John and Edward's "determination and spirit in the face of a lot of criticism", and wrote that Stacey had been "brave". The ambassador added that she thought Jamie's "sincere and energetic voice and dance really get the crowd going". She reserved praise for finalists Danyl and Olly, who were "great showmen", while Lloyd and Joe had "a lot of potential" and Lucie had a "lovely voice".'

I think I speak for many of us when I say, "Hunh?"

Is Madam Fu the new Ninotchka? Does she secretly wear Silk Stockings while studying the texts of Marx and Milton Friedman? Old-school communists regarded such frivolity as counter-revolutionary prolefeed churned out by machines for the pleasure of the human cogs in the capitalist machine but times they are a-changin'.

Here's what the spookily prescient George Orwell had to say about culture and social engineering in his novel 1984:

"And the Ministry had not only to supply the multifarious needs of the party, but also to repeat the whole operation at a lower level for the benefit of the proletariat. There was a whole chain of separate departments dealing with proletarian literature, music, drama, and entertainment generally. Here were produced rubbishy newspapers containing almost nothing except sport, crime and astrology, sensational five-cent novelettes, films oozing with sex, and sentimental songs which were composed entirely by mechanical means on a special kind of kaleidoscope known as a versificator. There was even a whole sub-section — Pornosec, it was called in Newspeak — engaged in producing the lowest kind of pornography, which was sent out in sealed packets and which no Party member, other than those who worked on it, was permitted to look at."

Whether this is a PR stunt to offset the row over the noisy fans camped outside the wannabe stars house next door to the ambassador's official residence in North London we'll never know, but populist much?

Other showbiz news — China's black pop idol Lou Jing.

The gag reflex and the urge to purge: comedy in the dock

A comic writes ...

As Britain goes the same way as the Roman Empire, things fall apart and the cultural superstructure collapses into the economic base, the Big Question is, what happened to our sense of humour?

Or as Ian Burrell asks today in his insightful piece in the Independent, Q: When is a joke not a joke? A: When it's offence.

Almost thirty years since alternative comedy came together at the Comedy Store, we've come full circle with the new taboos being broken and soft targets all the rage. I fully expect Jim Davidson to enjoy a revival very soon. But we've got ourselves in such a PC tangle that it's hard to know what's legitimate to attack and what's just lazy hackwork pandering to renewed social divisions.

In my last post about Tony Blair and his bid for the Presidency of the European Union I originally began the second para with, "I blame the Irish". Now, this was meant as an affectionate jibe at the country that had heroically put paid to Blair's ambition by holding out over the Lisbon Treaty and then given in. But I ended up censoring myself because I second guessed that some readers might never have got past this sentence without being upset. I was worried that some would read it literally when it's a reference acknowledging colonialist discrimination against the Irish and any subjugated people, something we trust is firmly in the past.

So was I wrong to cut the line? I'm actually up for offending some people, but it has to be the right people. And if I do mean to offend, I hope it's crystal clear that's what's going down.

The notorious Andrew Dice Clay used to crack a joke: "What do you call a fat Chinese? A Chunk."

That's not very nice, alluding as it does to the racist epithet "Chink", but it's pretty true to life, not to mention funny in a horrible squirmy way. Many's the night when my mother, whiter than Nick Griffin's big Aryan buttocks, would nurse a bottle of Emva Cream and tell me through a cloud of Senior Service smoke that I was "chunky". Not a very maternal thing to say to an averagely built five foot eight inch 8 1/2 stone adolescent who was the only Chinese-looking kid at her school, but she thought it was hilarious. "No, Mum. I defend your right to be racist against your own offspring but at least make it funny!"

Clay is the same comedian who said you can blindfold a Chinese person with dental-floss. Offensive, un-PC. But, inconveniently, it makes me laugh. At least you know where you are with Clay.

I find this far less offensive than official High Art which depicts the Chinese as monstrous and cannibalistic (see ENO's reworked Turandot at London's Coliseum, or More Light at the Arcola and backed by the National Theatre). You never hear a peep out of the Establishment when this crap comes from their own.

One joke I wish I had written and surely offends no-one is this from Gary Delaney, "The Punslinger".

"I went to my acupuncturist the other day. When I got home my voodoo doll was dead."

Genius. Short, elegant and a hoot. Unpack it and you'll find both a Chinese and an Africa/Caribbean reference in there. But only someone scarily cut-off from the human race could take offence at that.

It does disturb me, though, to hear minorities laying into other minorities. As if causing misery to another group will empower you somehow and alleviate your own pain. In contrast, early stand-up comic Lenny Bruce made his career on the American circuit at the time of the Civil Rights movement by sticking it to those with social, economic and political power who had their boots in the collective face, and that's the tradition I'd like to follow.

I can't say I like the new rats-in-a-sack humour emerging at a challenging time of meltdown. "I know, let's pick on each other and those weaker than ourselves while the exploiting scumbags stay off the radar." It's lazy, unintelligent, cowardly and, even worse, usually not very funny.

My own rules are quite simple. Comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. You can take a pop at those with power in society who deserve all the satire and irony you can chuck at them. But leave the losers alone.

President Blair: The Great Escape

Which movie are we in? The final act of The Omen? Or maybe Goodfellas?

After heroically stalling the advance of Tony Blair by rejecting the Lisbon Treaty, which would (among other horrors) create the role of President of the United States of Europe, the Irish were told to vote again until the required result was reached. So they finally caved in and midwifed the birth of the monster like something out of The Omen and for a few moments it looked like only an act of God stood between us and a Blair shoo-in. Cue shrieking horror chords.

With his abasement before the rich and powerful, free holidays, dodgy dossiers and phantom weapons of mass destruction, dead government scientists, a mushrooming property portfolio, a million dead Iraqis and British soldiers returning in body-bags, first President of the US of E is not the final destination many of us find most appropriate for Blair, even if the imaginative demises in the Final Destination movies are suitably poetic.

Presiding over this country’s wealthiest decade ever, where the gap between rich and poor widened into a chasm with oceans of money siphoned off by various privatization schemes, millionaire status is hardly just desserts for someone who was supposed to be serving us as Labour Prime Minister. 

Garlanded with praise from powerful men welcoming the newbie into their club, swaddled in the warm embrace of the high-paying lecture circuit, honoured among the élite, the ego massage did enough damage for an army of wannabe Masters Of The Universe, and now they want to make him unelected President of Yurp? Move over, Pope Benny, 'cause soon he'll have his middle finger in your Big Ring. 

Blair has made his bones and claimed his dues. He's been having a high ol' time, travelling the world and hoovering up his rewards. Some £2.5 million a year from JP Morgan, the bank that co-ordinated the ‘revamping’ of Iraq’s financial system and made a fortune from the war he started. A million-dollar honorarium from an Israeli university for Britain’s Middle East peace envoy. Some might holler ‘conflict of interest’ and set the cops onto him but maybe they do things differently now.

When he looks in the mirror, does he know that it isn’t the beatific numinous aura of the martyr he’s beaming out? This is the thousand-yard stare of empty space. Blair may aspire to Gandhi as played by Ben Kingsley but he’s more like Sir Ben as Don in Sexy Beast.

If the unelected post of President had gone to this man, what would the rest of the world have made of our much-vaunted western civilization? ‘It would be a good idea,’ as Gandhi once said. Or is that the voice of Blair’s inner Don I hear, telling himself, ‘You got some fuckin’ neck, ain’t you? You should be ashamed of yourself. Who do you think you are? King of the castle? Cock of the walk?’

Feature published at New Internationalist

Water into whine: PepsiCo fined $1.2 BILLION for court no-show

I hate capitalism, that great big behemoth squishing us all into a greasy smear while a global super-aristocracy floats off into some platinum-plated diamond-studded dimension of their own where hopefully they choke on their million-pound handbags (I kid you not — see pic below). So I welcome those rare victories when you think, yes, there is a God.

I'd like to go down on my knees and thank US Circuit Judge Jacqueline R. Erwin for handing down a righteous judgement that is so awesomely fitting, fair and fantastic that I am writing this through tears of glee.

Lucky plaintiffs Charles A. Joyce and James R. Voigt have performed a miracle and turned water into over a billion dollars, sticking it to one of the biggest corporations in the world. In 1981 they went to Pepsi with the bright idea of selling bottled water, an idea considered so ludicrous at the time that they were laughed out of the offices of Pepsi products distributor Wis-Pak Inc. and Carolina Canners Inc., but not before securing a confidentiality agreement.

Cut to years later when Pepsi catches on and starts selling Aquafina. Joyce and Voigt's lawsuit claims that PepsiCo used information it knew was secret when it began selling its posh water.

What could have dragged on for years and maybe netted our heroes a few million was neatly truncated when Pepsi failed to show up to defend themselves on September 30th despite the case being filed since April. According to the Wisconsin Journal Sentinel:

One of the reasons for PepsiCo's delayed response, according to court documents, was that a secretary in PepsiCo's legal department was so busy she did not tell anyone about a letter regarding the case or enter it into a log that tracks such matters.

I feel sorry for the secretary who I'm guessing is looking for a new job. But thanks for inadvertently striking a blow for the little guy. Perhaps the little guys in question will buy her one of those handbags as a thank you gift out of their loot.

The million-pound handbag made of platinum and over 2,000 diamonds

(Yes, I know, the judgement will probably be reversed when Pepsi appeal but I can dreeeeam, can't I?)

Fu Manchu knighted: Arise Sir Christopher Lee

That master incarnator of exotic uber-villainy, Christopher Lee (87) — Dracula, Scaramanga (The Man With The Golden Gun), Saruman (Lord Of The Rings), Hammer's first Frankenstein's monster, Lord Summerisle (The Wicker Man), Willy Wonka's scary Dad and Dr Fu-Manchu (erk!) — gets his richly deserved gong at long, long last.

No relation to Bruce, Stan, Ang, Stewart, Ho Fook, Robert E., Addison or Sara, he was knighted by Prince Charles today but promises that he will never be billed as "Sir" Christopher Lee in a movie, unlike Sir Ben Kings Lee.

Loved One once interviewed him at his Eaton Square home and Chris sang grand opera in his grand baritone and demonstrated martial arts kicks whilst keeping his fangs resolutely sheathed. No blood was shed, no sheds were bled ...

And you know he only comes out at knight.

The Noisettes review: "Atticus" and Shingai's death-defying balcony scene at Shepherds Bush Empire

Madam Miaow's video shot from three seats away

Well, that's divas for you. Lucky she has circus skills.

We had top seats for Monday's Noisettes gig at the Shepherds Bush O2 Empire thanks to Bill and Rachel, guitarist Daniel Smith's parents. Ah! Nuthin' like sitting in comfort sipping Strongbow from a plastic mug, I'm that sophisticated.

The band opened with Don't Upset the Rhythm and singer Shingai Shoniwa cavorting on top of a silver-draped platform in an explosive blaze of light under a giant scarlet love-heart. A wild leap onto the stage began Wild Young Hearts, then Don't Give Up, the first track off their first album. Their third big hit, Never Forget You, came later in the set. Songs from their first album, What's the Time Mr Wolf?, are quirkier and closer to their indie rock roots than the poppier numbers off Wild Young Hearts but the audience loved it all, not least because this band puts on such a good show.

Shingai is a phenomenon. Sexy without being ingratiating, she prowls the stage like a big cat and stalks her audience, barefoot and mischievous, long-limbed and natural. Draping herself across Jamie Morrison's drum kit, you believe the world, like the stage, is her own.

As well as being an ace guitarist (see his Hendrix homage, complete with teeth, on Don't Give Up), Daniel Smith is essentially musical director  and adds stability to the show so that Shingai can do her thang.

The band is occasionally backed by a brace of singers plus a string quartet, a keyboard player and a bass player who deputises for the multi-talented Shingai on most of the songs, freeing her up to perform to the max. Yet they never sound sparse when it's just the three members on stage. Meaning "the bollocks" in French, The Noisettes are a lively, ballsy likeable trio with seriously good musical content.

They're an overnight phenomenon that's taken twelve years to break through. Their music can be heard everywhere from The Sopranos (Scratch Your Name), St Trinians (Don't Give Up) and Bionic Woman to Timberland and Mazda ads. They've already been in Vogue and I bet fashion and beauty companies will be chasing the stunning black singer. This is a woman who should never have to pay for her skin-care again. Personally, I wish Créme De La Mer would chuck some product at me.

Not that Shingai hails from a tradition of frivolity. Her mother was imprisoned in her native Zimbabwe at the age of 17 as a freedom fighter under the odious Smith regime. And her uncle Thomas Mapfumo is a respected musician/activist, known as "the voice of the revolution".

The NME may snottily write them off as a pop sellout but Shingai is at least fifth-generation Mbira musician, popular across Southern Africa, while Daniel's Dad is a music writer and accomplished blues harmonica player, currently with Charles Shaar Murray and the Queens of Funk in Crosstown Lightnin'.

Long may they thrive.

Shingai sings to Buffalo Bill Smith