L�onie Hampton photo�graphs the clear-out of her obsessive-compulsive mother's chaotic home
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/gallery/2011/may/21/photography-obsessive-compulsive-disorder
Christina DaRe Christina Milian Christina Ricci Chyler Leigh
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Filed under: Consumer Ally
America may have invented the Internet, but more than 100 million American lack access to broadband and its accompanying economic benefits, according to a new report from the Federal Communications Commission.Continue reading Millions of Americans Lack Access to Broadband's Economic Benefits
Millions of Americans Lack Access to Broadband's Economic Benefits originally appeared on WalletPop on Wed, 25 May 2011 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Source: http://www.walletpop.com/2011/05/25/millions-of-americans-lack-access-to-broadbands-economic-benefi/
Jennifer Gimenez Jennifer Love Hewitt Jennifer Morrison Jennifer ODell
If you feel too busy even to breathe, follow organizing guru Julie Morgenstern's four d's to free you up for what's really important: time for you and your family. 1. Delete. People constantly burden themselves with unnecessary tasks ? like organizing the?Source: http://shine.yahoo.com/channel/life/how-to-streamline-a-jam-packed-schedule-2490003/
Genelle Frenoy Georgianna Robertson Georgina Grenville Gina Carano
Entertainment One signs deal with Fisher-Price to make toy range with potential to bring in $1bn a year
Peppa Pig is set to crack the US merchandising market, with the owner of the �200m franchise announcing a tie-up with Fisher-Price, the maker of toys for brands including Sesame Street, to launch a product range in time for the key Christmas retail market.
Rights owner Entertainment One, which also distributes films such as the Twilight Saga franchise and Gnomeo & Juliet, saw its share price jump 5% in early trading on Tuesday as investors eyed the potential $1bn (�600m) in annual sales the US merchandising deal reportedly could generate.
Entertainment One said that the deal with Fisher-Price, part of the world's largest toy maker, Mattel, will see the development of a "comprehensive toy line" based on the pre-school TV series.
Peppa Pig has been a massive hit in the UK ? a line of toys was first launched in 2005 and last year generated more than �200m in sales ? and the series debuted on US cable channel Nick Jr in February.
Entertainment One said that the show has become an instant hit, ranking in the top 10 shows on Nick Jr and attracting more than 500,000 viewers aged two to five.
"Partnering with such a prestigious toy licensee at this stage in the property's evolution is testament to the strength of the US broadcast figures and the proven success of the brand in the UK," said the Entertainment One chief executive, Darren Throop. "The initial success of the TV ratings illustrates the potential of the show and the confidence we have that the brand will be a big hit with US consumers."
Last week the company reported that pre-tax profits rose 42% year on year from �8m to �11.4m in the 12 months to the end of March. Revenues increased 12% to �469.7m. Net debt fell from �86m to �60.7m.
? To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000. If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly "for publication".
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Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/may/31/peppa-pig-us-merchandising-deal
Wear flip-flops in the sea if you want to avoid an excruciating encounter with the poisonous weever fish
A quick splash at the water's edge might seem like the best way to cool your tired feet when the sun's out ? but chiropodist Fred Beaumont warns that if you go barefoot, it's something you could live to regret. "I always wear flip-flops when paddling, and tell my patients to do the same," he says. "A few years ago, I was bitten by a weever fish in shallow water ? the pain was excruciating, and I couldn't run for a month afterwards."
The weever fish is one of the most poisonous in the UK. They're between 15 and 30cm long, inhabit shallow water all round the coast, and are almost impossible to spot because they lie just under the sand. "If you step on one," Beaumont says, "it injects a poisonous venom into your foot from its dorsal fin. There's no antidote. When I was bitten, the pain lasted about an hour. It was so bad, I wanted to cut my foot off."
Amputation is not, happily, the usual result of a fish bite, Beaumont adds ? though extremely rare cases of cardiac failure and gangrene have been reported. If you think you have been bitten, examine the wound, he says: "A weever fish bite leaves two little puncture holes, like an adder bite."
Beaumont only sees a couple of cases of weever fish bite among his patients yearly ? but you can't be too careful. "It's a good idea to check with coastguards about which beaches are particularly affected by weever fish," he says. "But flip-flops are the best way to protect your feet on the beach. Believe me ? when you've been bitten once, you never let it happen again."
As told to Laura Barnett. Fred Beaumont is a chiropodist based in Whitley Bay, and a spokesman for the Institute of Chiropodists and Podiatrists: iocp.org.uk.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2011/may/31/inside-track-paddling-weever-fish
Memorial Day is around the corner, and family summer vacation planning is in full swing. Choices are abundant, but only you know which destination?
Source: http://shine.yahoo.com/channel/life/the-top-5-family-vacation-spots-for-summer-2011-2487715/
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Jennifer Aniston Jennifer Gareis Jennifer Garner Jennifer Gimenez
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Bridget Moynahan Britney Spears Brittany Daniel Brittany Lee
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Gisele Bündchen Giuliana DePandi Giulianna Ramirez Grace Park
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The gossips and moralists should face the fact that there is no fixed relationship between private and public life
There can't be many people who know nothing of the pain that is caused by adultery. Even if it has not happened to us, we have seen it knock down our friends, our neighbours and, sometimes, our parents (my father married four times and, believe me, it wasn't always pretty). Failing that, there is always English literature, replete as it is with beautiful writing about this particular torture: Graham Greene's The End of the Affair, Elizabeth Taylor's A Game of Hide and Seek, Rosamond Lehmann's The Echoing Grove. When I met the man who is now my husband and he told me that The End of the Affair was his favourite novel, I burst into tears. Was he making predictions before we'd even started? I hoped not, with all my being. But of course, such icy perspective is not unreasonable. A third of marriages end in divorce, and a quarter because a partner has been unfaithful. Marriage is hard, and when someone else's ends, the only correct response is: there but for the grace of God go I.
Why do affairs happen? Who knows? These things are not straightforward, as Mrs Schwarzenegger will tell you. In Elizabeth Jenkins's 1954 masterpiece, The Tortoise and the Hare, Imogen's husband, Evelyn, turns away from her, a great beauty, and towards a stout, plain, older woman called Blanche Silcox. Poor Imogen. It's all she can do to sleep at night: "It was not till half-past one that she started up, broad awake and full conscious. Without a second's warning, images began to stream through her mind. They were of Blanche Silcox... It could not be! She sat up, pushing the hair out of her eyes with palms that were wringing wet. The pain was like a knife with a searing edge." The book's sly genius lies in the fact that the mistress has, on the surface of it, less to offer than the wife. For Imogen, this is inexplicable, bewildering, as humiliating as a slap. But the reader, though on her side, understands. The heart has its reasons.
I thought about all this last week, as the infidelity of Ryan Giggs was revealed to us via a sweaty-looking MP and those self-righteous, gossipy souls on Twitter. Setting aside the issue of privacy ? though my strong feeling is that, in the main, what a man does in the bedroom is between him, the woman he is doing it with, and his wife, if he has one ? I find that I'm almost freakishly out of step with public opinion on this. How am I judging public opinion? All I can say is that this mood has not only been cooked up by the tabloids. The smug accusations of hypocrisy and "disappointment" are everywhere: the blogs, the phone-ins, Starbucks. Last Wednesday, I appeared as a "witness" in a debate about public figures and private morality on Radio 4's The Moral Maze. Even allowing for the fact that its inquisitorial panel must, for the purpose of good radio, sometimes take up slightly preposterous positions, it was confounding to hear a man who writes leaders for The Tablet suggest that gossip is an excellent thing if it gives us an idea of a man's character, the better that we might judge him. This man, Clifford Longley, was sitting to my left. To my right, appropriately enough, was Melanie Phillips of the Daily Mail, whose expression and argument suggested both amazement and mild disgust at my quite appallingly blithe attitude to extramarital sex.
My attitude, though, is not blithe; it is merely realistic. Love hurts. But people will have sex, you know. It is something they are programmed to do. Many of them, perhaps most, will try only to have it with the person to whom they once, in a fit of tenderness and optimism, promised themselves for ever. But sometimes, for whatever reason, they will venture elsewhere. And as crimes go, I think this is a pretty small offence. Not a crime at all, in fact, so much as a symptom of the condition that is known as being human.
This talk of fallen heroes and role models is such rot. Giggs is not a fallen hero, except perhaps in the eyes of his family. He plays for the best side in Britain, and his dedication has seen him extend his career long beyond that of many of his peers. As for the concept of the role model, I'm baffled by it. When Giggs was, supposedly, the squeaky-clean family man (� the Sun) so beloved of his sponsors, there were still among his fans lazy good-for-nothings who gobbed and swore and sang dubious chants. Are they really any more likely to rush out and copy him now? Personally, I doubt the Wythenshawe branch of Relate is laying on extra marriage guidance counsellors.
Sex is a part of a man (or a woman). But it isn't ? unless there is something very wrong indeed ? all of him. It was a beautiful evening as I arrived at Broadcasting House last Wednesday and, as I approached, I looked up at Eric Gill's sculpture of Prospero and Ariel; with the falling sun upon it, it seemed even more than usually lovely, and I thought, not for the first time, about the unhappy disjunction between the ugliness of Gill's sexuality (he had, among other things, a sexual relationship with his sister) and the transcendent beauty of his best work. I know this is an extreme example, but still: the fact remains that a person's sex life, however complicated and busy, can co-exist with many other things. There is no fixed relationship between the private and the public, between sexual probity and professional probity, between the missionary position (or whatever you fancy) and judgment. In fact, I often wonder whether greatness and the tendency to affairs aren't inextricably linked; the fat biographies I read strongly suggest it.
When they stop wringing their hands for a moment and try to come up with a practical argument, the moralists talk of the "distraction" of sex; it is suggested that Fred Goodwin's affair with a colleague might have played some part in the collapse of the Royal Bank of Scotland. But is an affair really any more distracting than, say, an unhappy marriage? Even happily married couples have rows, and go to work with the sound of all the things they should have said ringing loudly in their heads.
You puritans: would you put a moratorium on marriage, too, in some circumstances? Or are your pursed lips simply down to the fact that you are afraid of your own confusing urges, and desperately projecting? My guess is that it's the latter. How else to account for the fact that every time I hear you, I can think only of Angelo, in Measure for Measure? It was Angelo, you will recall, who uttered the dread words: "Tis one thing to be tempted, Escalus, another thing to fall", shortly before he set about trying to sleep with a novice nun.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/may/29/rachel-cooke-adultery-no-crime
Fergus Henderson's new venture in London was packed with chefs. But too many cooks didn't spoil the broth
St John Hotel, 1 Leicester Street, London WC2. Tel 020 3301 8020. Meal for two, including wine and service, �100
Fergus Henderson and his business partner Trevor Gulliver open the kind of restaurants they would like to eat in. This is not a great insight. It is an observation based on the fact that they are often seen eating in their own restaurants. The day I visited the newly opened St John Hotel, just north of Leicester Square in London, they were at a back table, Henderson in the kind of bright blue pinstripe three-piece suit that other people would wear for a bet and he makes look entirely natural.
It was the right place for him to be. That evening would bring the annual announcement in London of the 50 Best Restaurants in the World list, and the room was lousy with people who cook for a living: here a table of Mexicans, there some Finns, at the table in the middle the Spanish contingent. This lot may do intricate things with dehydrators and sous-vide machines in their own kitchens, but when they come here it is in Henderson's restaurants that they congregate. His tightly written menus, on a knife edge between urban rustic and complete piss-take, are exactly what cooks want to eat on their days off. It is as successful here as it has ever been at the St John mothership in Clerkenwell.
All that said, I had my doubts about the notion of a St John Hotel. The original is housed in a big-boned, whitewashed former smokehouse and has about it the aspect of an abattoir after the blood has been wiped from the walls. Eating lunch in such a place, which eschews trinkets and baubles, is a self-consciously fashionable anti-fashion statement. Sleeping in such a space is a different matter entirely. Having seen pictures of the bedrooms, in the building that was once the great fish restaurant Manzi's, I can say they look a bit like that special clinic you might visit so nursey could do something intimate and expensive with the rubber tubing and the bucket.
At St John Hotel, however, the rectangular dining room with, at one end, the open kitchen, seemed at first soulless ? a works cafeteria without the glamour. Filled with bearded cooks ? and beards are this season's culinary accessory ? it developed a buzz of its own. The changing menu is short and, while not cheap, cheaper than at St John. Starters are generally �8.50 or less. Mains loiter in the teens. St John being notorious for doing interesting things with the inner wobbly bits of animals, it seemed right to start with croquettes of pig's head, the crisp deep-fried shells giving way to something soft and irredeemably piggy. They tasted like a grown-up ? though not very grown-up ? version of Frazzles.
Just like me, the fish soup arrived looking terribly thin, a rust-coloured liquor which my companion compared, uncharitably, to late-night dishwater. But again, just like me, it had serious depth. On the side was a piece of sourdough toast spread with ripe brown crab meat. It was all the kind of thing upon which the St John reputation is built: a simple idea done very well indeed.
For mains there were things like snails and bacon or grilled skirt steak with onions and horseradish or a pike and leek pie for two. We chose the other sharing dish, a huge bowl of long-braised caramelised bacon chops with luscious ribbons of fat in a stew of generously sauced beans. It cost �28; I wonder if it might be possible to sneak in and order it just for one. A sprightly dressed watercress salad cut through the bacon fat and white bean lusciousness.
At dessert our waiter told us we should order the custard tart and we did as we were told. It was a good call. One nudge of the plate and the 2in-thick custard filling had the kind of wobble that gets men of a certain age excited. It tasted fabulous, too, the custard punched through by a sprinkle of nutmeg. A rhubarb trifle was no slouch either.
For all its British posturing, the St John wine lists have always bent the knee to the eternal verities of Europe; full of well-priced classics from France and Italy. Happily there is also a late-opening bar in which to drink them, and a late-night menu for those who forgot to eat.
The St John Hotel has been open only a few weeks, but already it feels like the kind of resource that this last vaguely seedy corner of London really needs.
Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk or visit guardian.co.uk/profile/jayrayner for all his reviews in one place
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2011/may/29/jay-rayner-restaurant-review-st-john-hotel
Filed under: Recalls, Consumer Ally, In the News
Keeping track of the latest product and food recalls can be a challenge for any consumer, so Consumer Ally has collected them all in one place for you to check each week.Continue reading Recall Roundup: Power Yard Tools, Pool Drain Caps, Food Processors and More
Recall Roundup: Power Yard Tools, Pool Drain Caps, Food Processors and More originally appeared on WalletPop on Fri, 27 May 2011 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Source: http://www.walletpop.com/2011/05/27/recall-roundup-power-yard-tools-pool-drain-caps-food-processo/
Throw out the Lords and we'll be stuck with a bunch of career politicians
Why is the nation so lukewarm about reforming the House of Lords? Are we sentimental about tradition, still cooing over the royal wedding and all that? Not a bit of it. We are perfectly aware that, as my husband Gavin Lyall used to say, the trouble with elected chambers is that you get people who are good at winning elections ? not necessarily at governing. Half the point of the Lords is that, apart from a few veterans put out to ermine, they're not politicians but experts at something else. Judith Mayhew dealt in fish; Lord Attenborough knows all about the film industry; Janet Cohen has been a civil servant, banker and thriller writer. It used to be so in the Commons; Ann Widdecombe professed herself humbled (yes, really) by being with distinguished doctors and lawyers; the old trade union MPs knew about factories and mines. But nowadays potential politicians get a political internship or a job in the Commons library. As one friend said, "They're getting lifts in the ministerial car instead of getting stuck in the rain like the rest of us." The Lords have done brilliant things in curbing some of the Commons' excesses; why on earth would we want this safety brake on undiluted politics removed?
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2011/may/29/katharine-whitehorn-house-of-lords
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Alecia Elliott Alessandra Ambrosio Alexis Bledel Ali Campoverdi
By Meg Winters, BounceBack Editorial Staff
?
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Honesty, not avoidance, is the better course of action, saysSource: http://shine.yahoo.com/channel/life/how-to-survive-a-fallout-with-a-friend-2489673/
The label's fun fruit print has proved a big hit with seriously stylish dressers ? Anna Wintour included
Bananas are by their nature a bit comical. They are the classic ignition for slapstick humour. They are "fun". So when they turn up on clothes you would imagine them to be part of a novelty trend. Something deliberately bad taste and worn by twentysomething hipsters young and thin enough to get away with a dash of vulgarity. Not so. This summer the banana has matured. It has become the ubiquitous, instantly recognisable emblem of the grown-up, fashion-centric woman, thanks to Prada.
That Muiccia Prada, queen of the deluxe quirk, has chosen this lurid print is not a surprise. When editors first saw the current collection on the catwalk in Milan last September, the talk was not about whether bananas were bad taste but about how much of a hit the range was going to be. Indeed the print has proved phenomenally successful. The bananas collection helped to boost the brand's coffers so much that the company is now estimated to be worth in excess of ?10bn (�8.7bn).
What is surprising about the banana trend is who has adopted this look. Anna Wintour, editor-in-chief of US Vogue, was quick to swap her tasteful florals for bananas early on in the year and has been photographed in at least three versions of the skirt. Various fortysomething fashion editors quickly followed suit, and the print was a regular at industry parties. Stephanie Flanders, economics editor at the BBC, recently reported while wearing the fruity pencil skirt with an exaggerated Carmen Miranda frill ? which is a scenario as far from a Hoxton bar as you can imagine.
Bananas are not the only fruit enjoying their moment in the spotlight. Thanks to Stella McCartney, oranges and lemons are also popular. Printed jackets from her summer collection had a "man from Del Monte" appeal. It isn't the first time fruit has been in fashion. Back in 2004 bananas proved a hit after they turned up on the Chlo� catwalk, when the label was designed by Phoebe Philo. When McCartney designed for Chlo�, pineapples were briefly in vogue.
Part of the banana's appeal for grown-ups this time around lies not in the print itself ? an obvious statement of means at around �600 a time. The strict tailoring of the pencil skirts provides the real selling point for adults: for all their lurid novelty they are highly flattering on real body shapes. Naturally, the high street has gone all out for the fun and frivolity of the fruit trend, but without the expensive tailoring. The results are patchy. If you want a throwaway holiday top then any of the usual suspects will deliver brilliantly. But if you want to go bananas and enjoy the delicious strictness of Milanese tailoring, you may have to start saving for Prada.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2011/may/29/prada-banana-print-anna-wintour
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Emmanuelle Vaugier Emmy Rossum Erica Leerhsen Erika Christensen
The good news? The whole process takes only about two minutes,?
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Experts ask if the Bard is Britain's only exportable brand as leading organisations recruit playwright for Games
This country may be the birthplace of Chaucer, Milton, Austen, the Bront� sisters and Dickens, but Britain has only one dominant calling card on the global cultural scene: William Shakespeare. It is now clear that the Bard and his works will loom large in the British arts festival that is planned to run alongside the Olympic Games in London next year.
The BBC reveals today that Patrick Stewart, David Morrissey, Rory Kinnear, Lindsay Duncan, David Suchet and James Purefoy are to appear together in the first of a run of four big-budget Shakespeare plays to be made for television by Sam Mendes's production company to celebrate the Cultural Olympiad.
With filming for Richard II, starring Ben Whishaw, starting on location at Pembroke Castle and St David's Cathedral in Wales next month, the BBC and Mendes's Neal Street Productions are joining a long line-up of major arts organisations who have chosen to wave a Shakespearean banner in the warm-up to the Games.
The British Museum is to mount a major exhibition about the Bard next year, while, more predictably, the Globe Theatre in London and the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-on-Avon have all announced extensive Shakespeare projects to mark the occasion. BBC2's Richard II, adapted and directed by Rupert Goold, the award-winning associate director at the RSC, will be followed by adaptations of Henry IV parts I and II and Henry V, all set in the medieval era.
The BBC is also to mark the occasion with a two-part documentary series about Shakespeare, written and presented by historian Simon Schama to complement the new screen adaptations of the plays.
"Shakespeare is in the unique position of speaking universally while not losing any of the intensity of the language of where he comes from," said Schama this weekend in defence of the widespread move to adopt Shakespeare as Britain's cultural figurehead for the Games. "I have watched his plays in German and in French and the effect is the same. If you want something to celebrate in the year of 2012 that is not just the Queen and the Olympic Games, then Shakespeare is there for you. He is inexhaustible."
But the artistic director of the Globe, Dominic Dromgoole, is not the only one to raise an eyebrow at the amount of Shakespeare that has been commissioned. "It has been something of a race for all the Shakespeare plays," he said earlier this year, at the launch of his theatre's brave plan to stage a six-week season of Shakespeare plays each staged by visiting foreign theatre companies and beginning next year on 23 April, the Bard's birthday.
His Olympiad season will feature a version of Troilus and Cressida in Maori, The Taming of the Shrew in Urdu and an Arabic Tempest.
With even the National Theatre of Wales in the middle of preparations for a staging of Coriolanus next year as part of the RSC's World Shakespeare Festival, academics and arts practitioners are making the case for other literary contenders with global reputations.
Patricia Ingham, an expert in 19th century fiction and former Oxford don, said she wondered whether Shakespeare was really our only exportable brand. Pointing out that last year a Japanese university translated academic books on the Bront�s and on Dickens, and that in the US Jane Eyre has been a feminist totem since the 1970s, Ingham said: "You only have to look at the number of films and television adaptations of Dickens's stories to see evidence of his huge appeal for the average person; the trouble with Shakespeare is that he is still only enjoyed by an elite. His global appeal is really a bit of a myth because very few people can actually read him. You have to have acquired a particular kind of skill or learning to enjoy Shakespeare."
Bonnie Greer, an academic and newly appointed head of the Bront� Society, said she felt the Bront� sisters represented "at a deep and profound level all that is seen as Englishness. Growing up as I did on the south side of Chicago in a black neighbourhood I knew about the Bront�s before I knew about Shakespeare, partly through the films but the books too. And they still have enormous reach," she added.
Nevertheless next year, again from 23 April onwards, the World Shakespeare Festival, produced by the RSC in collaboration with other venues in London, including the Roundhouse, the Barbican and the National Theatre, will be staging productions and events across the country. The RSC's own contribution to the festival will include "What Country, friends, is this?", a selection of plays in which Shakespeare shipwrecks his characters on hostile shores.
At the British Museum, the exhibition "London 1612: Shakespeare's Theatre of the World" will look at the role of the emerging capital in his plays. More than 150 exhibits include the rare Ides of March coin commemorating the murder of Julius Caesar on 15 March 44BC and a copy of the revered first folio of the plays, published in 1623. Leading Shakespearean actors, such as Simon Callow, are also to take part in a special performance for the museum.
And none of these organisations could have chosen a better subject, according to Schama. "Shakespeare has the kind of elemental pain in his work that we see in the Greek plays of Aeschylus. He does the cosmic stuff and he also does jokes. Jane Austen's work, in contrast, has a very anglophone appeal. It is subtle and ironic ? not that Shakespeare can't do that too ? but if you want kings and the kind of drama that sees a character having his eyes gouged out on stage then you have to go Shakespeare."
Schama admits that Chaucer shares a similar universality, but argues his language presents a problem for many. "The amazing thing about Shakespeare is that if you actually deliver Hamlet, or Romeo and Juliet, to teenagers they actually do get the language.
"With Dickens, on the other hand, whom I love, he is not always great with women characters. You just don't get the titanic and rounded parts for women like Lady Macbeth, Cleopatra, Beatrice or Portia; characters that escape from stereotype."
The BBC's 2012 Shakespeare season will be produced by Neal Street Productions with American partners NBC Universal and WNET, and has been commissioned by the controller of BBC drama, Ben Stephenson, and by Janice Hadlow, the controller of BBC2.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2011/may/29/shakespeare-olympic-games-culture
Catherine Bell Chandra West Charisma Carpenter Charli Baltimore
Kids in their early teens will enjoy this comedy based on a popular children's comic book about the humiliations and cheering fantasies of a 12-year-old schoolboy in Los Angeles with a quarrelsome elder brother, a little baby brother, a loving but over-solicitous mother and a bewildered father (a rather underused Steve Zahn). It's an episodic film, rather less interesting than its British director David Bowers's earlier work as an animator in Britain and America. His credits include Who Framed Roger Rabbit, The Prince of Egypt, Chicken Run and his feature debut as director, Flushed Away. This brightly lit film was shot by Jack N Green, a cinematographer noted for his mastery of chiaroscuro in such Clint Eastwood pictures as Unforgiven and Bird.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2011/may/29/diary-wimpy-kid-rodrick-rules-review
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Blake Lively Blu Cantrell Bonnie Jill Laflin Bridget Moynahan
A plate of chopped barbecue or a smoked brisket isn't complete without some cole slaw, baked beans, and deviled eggs. Don't miss?Source: http://shine.yahoo.com/channel/food/complete-your-bbq-with-these-must-try-sides-2489495/
Emma Watson Emmanuelle Chriqui Emmanuelle Vaugier Emmy Rossum
Filed under: Home, Recalls, Consumer Ally, In the News
Walmart recalled 255,000 GE food processors today after reports of consumers getting hurt after the safety lock on the lid failed, said the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission.Continue reading Walmart Recalls 255,000 GE Food Processors
Walmart Recalls 255,000 GE Food Processors originally appeared on WalletPop on Wed, 25 May 2011 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Source: http://www.walletpop.com/2011/05/25/walmart-recalls-255-000-ge-food-processors/
Who are the biggest bookworms in the country? According to ?Gisele Bündchen Giuliana DePandi Giulianna Ramirez Grace Park
It's not in my nature to camp. I'm not a lover of the great outdoors. Yet this summer marks my 6 th year camping with 9 other families near the Santa Cruz Mountains. So why do I camp year after year? The?
Source: http://shine.yahoo.com/channel/parenting/parenting-guru-camping-for-the-unlikely-camper-2489818/
Over a year ago on my daily commute I started smiling at a beautiful lady driving in the opposite direction. One morning I followed her into her car park, pulled out my business card and said: "Get in touch" and she said: "Sure." Why hasn't she? I'm a 26-year-old IT professional, and she's in her early 40s. What should I do? Should I wait for her at her workplace?
THE DILEMMA Over a year ago, on my daily commute stuck in traffic on a busy road, I noticed a beautiful lady driving in the opposite direction. For months it was eye contact as we went past. Late last year we started smiling, then I started to flash my headlights. One morning I did a U-turn and followed her into her car park ? I parked and she came out smiling. I pulled out my business card and said: "Get in touch" and she said: "Sure." The daily commute continues and she makes the extra effort to wave, etc, but I'm thinking: why isn't she getting in touch? Did I give her the correct card? I'm a 26-year-old IT professional, and she seems to be in her early 40s. What should I do? Should I wait for her at her workplace to make contact?
MARIELLA REPLIES Once upon a time I would have accused you of being a bit of a stalker. Now that Prince William has married his one-time ardent fan, setting your sights on a partner and pursuing them to success has become an acceptable form of engagement. When she was in her teens our new HRH Duchess of Cambridge was allegedly so enamoured of the young prince we're told that her schoolmates nicknamed her "princess in waiting".
Bet her girl pals are sniggering on the other side of their faces now that she's holed up in St James's Palace with the known world in supplication while they're still working as chalet girls and fashion PRs. It brings a whole new relevance to the idea of "living the dream". The sort of commitment to a relationship that saw a nice middle-class girl eschew more genteel establishments for a windswept Scottish town better known for golf than academia certainly raised the bar on dating etiquette. Our future monarch won't be the first famous person to be seduced by undying devotion from a prospective partner. The more you get used to that level of commitment, the more natural it feels? so I've heard.
Prior to these recent events I admit I might have been a bit more dismissive of your pursuit of this woman, but who am I to mock you for holding a candle for a complete stranger, at least a decade older, when a woman without a title has just sashayed up the aisle of Westminster Abbey with the highest prince of all? Last time there was such a break with convention the monarch had to abdicate; now we're holding street parties for the happy couple! That's what I call progress.
So what of you and your traffic-jam belle? The signals aren't exactly good, are they? Is she definitely smiling at you? Or grimacing in a "Help ? there's that nutter again" sort of way? I don't want to sound old-fashioned about this, but handing a woman your card is no guarantee that she'll ring you. In fact, I'd be slightly apprehensive if she did.
Put yourself in her shoes for a moment. A guy who drives past her on a regular basis grinning like a lunatic follows her to work, accosts her in the car park and thrusts his business card in her hand? It's not exactly Love Story! Neither is it going to bowl her over with a warm sense of security and romance.
How about next time you hop out from behind your steering wheel and ask her out instead of throwing the ball back at her? Or for something a bit less threatening, try asking if you can email her ? you're an IT specialist, after all! Girls are warned from an early age not to be lured into conversations with strangers ? just imagine how intimidating it must feel to have some guy doing a daily drive-by. She doesn't know it's your route to work, does she? At least if she lets you communicate with her in cyberspace you can reassure her about your motives.
That said, what are your motives? I wouldn't mind a bit of reassurance myself. Falling in love with a complete stranger, clearly your senior, about whom you know nothing, and maintaining your infatuation, forsaking all others, for more than a year suggests an inclination toward fantasy over reality. I'm all for love at first sight, but isn't there anyone slightly more tangible with the potential for a similar grip on your imagination? How about a nice girl lingering by the water cooler, or would that be too close for comfort?
Unlike in the case of our fair new duchess, the more common sequel to a crush is crushing disappointment. I suggest you either raise your game and ask this woman out or find an alternative route to work and a real-life girlfriend.
If you have a dilemma, send a brief email to mariella.frostrup@observer.co.uk. To have your say on this week's column, go to guardian.co.uk/dearmariella. Follow Mariella on Twitter at @mariellaf1
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2011/may/15/mariella-frostrup-commute-pursue-contact
Builders merchant manager Mark Franklin, 28, meets analyst Lauren Brookes, 26
First impressions?
Very cute, with a friendly smile. Any initial nerves soon disappeared.
What did you talk about?
A whole a range of topics, including wine-tasting etiquette, music on our iPods, moving to London and, of course, blind dates.
Any awkward moments?
There was a slight mix-up and we ended up being seated at opposite ends of the restaurant. This, in fact, turned out to be a good ice-breaker. And I must confess that I was silently sitting there hoping she was my blind date,
Good table manners?
She offered to share all of her food, so for that alone she scores highly.
Best thing about her?
She was very happy-go-lucky and even laughed at my jokes.
Did you go on somewhere?
We popped to a pub round the corner for a quick drink before heading back to the tube station.
Marks out of 10?
This is the bit I always think is unfair, but to keep in with the spirit of things, a solid 9.
Would you meet again?
We swapped numbers?
First impressions?
Handsome, great dress sense, only about half as nervous as me.
What did you talk about?
Drinking misadventures, office politics, our friends, what songs we can't help but dance to, the best films we've seen this year, how amazing my plate of risotto was, what it's like being new to London (ie, navigating tube maps, the price of a round, etc).
Any awkward moments?
Only at the beginning, because the waitress had accidentally seated us at different tables and we were both looking at each other thinking? could that be my blind date?
Good table manners?
Flawless. And he even shared his langoustine bisque with me.
Best thing about him?
His chivalry; he walked me to my tube platform and texted me to make sure I got home safe.
Did you go on somewhere?
Yes, we went across the road to a pub.
Marks out of 10? 8.5.
Would you meet again?
Yep!
? Lauren and Mark ate at Charlotte's Bistro, London W4. Fancy a blind date? Email: blind.date@guardian.co.uk
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2011/may/28/blind-date
Charli Baltimore Charlies Angels Charlize Theron Chelsea Handler
Photographer L�onie Hampton watched for 12 years as her mother's new house was colonised by crates and newspapers. When the family finally began to unpack, she captured the strangely joyful process of sorting through the chaos
For 12 years after she moved home, Bron, mother of photographer L�onie Hampton, couldn't bring herself to unpack her boxes, so the family lived in one half of the house and the boxes in the other.
No one could sit in the sitting room or eat in the dining room because there were brown cardboard crates and plastic bin bags stacked up to the ceiling, filled with possessions from her first marriage. The way Bron explains it, the decision to leave the boxes undisturbed was the logical consequence of moving into a house that had no cupboards. Because there were no cupboards, there was nowhere to unpack things to, so leaving them in the boxes was the tidiest solution, particularly when the boxes became dusty, by which point the prospect of unpacking them began to disturb her.
"It alarmed me, the way that when you open a box you are creating chaos," she says. "I would open it up and I would feel weary. I didn't have the energy to deal with it."
Her daughter saw this paralysis as a part of her mother's obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), with which she has been struggling for almost 30 years. She made a deal with her mother: she would help her reclaim her home from the boxes, as long as she could record the process in photographs. Hampton's book, In The Shadow Of Things, charts a not entirely successful mission to shed the layers of belongings that were taking up so much mental and physical space. The photographs are annotated with transcripts of her mother, explaining why things never got done.
"I think one of the things that happens when you've been stressed by something is that you become indecisive," Bron says. "You're worried that if you make a decision, it's not going to be the right one, so you put it off and put it off, and then I couldn't make decisions about where to build the cupboards at all, so my possessions stayed in packing cases for, as it's turned out, 12 years."
Hampton realised her mother's condition was worsening when she was no longer able to hug her after a two-hour train journey from London. ("They would be wearing clothes that had been on public transport. I was seeing germs everywhere," Bron explains.) The surfaces in her mother's kitchen would be covered with clean laundry wrapped in sheets of newspaper, because Bron felt the clothes required protection from invisible dust. Another room upstairs was disappearing beneath layers of carefully laundered clothes, each item sandwiched between pieces of newspaper, so that eventually her mother could access only a few things near the top, which was all she wore for several years. New boxes would appear, storing rubber bands, corks, children's drawings or a hairclip, slightly broken, preserved for possible mending at a later stage.
"I think nostalgia comes into it a bit," Bron says. "If it is something that makes me happy, I find it incredibly hard to part with those memories." But the state of the house began to upset her grown-up daughters. "I think we all began to realise that this is how it would be for the rest of time and I would turn into Miss Havisham," she says.
Hampton, whose previous work focused on other people's families, decided four years ago to turn the lens on her own: on her mother and stepfather David, her sister, Domino, and her young brother, Jake, who has grown up happily alongside the boxes. She acknowledges that her need to take photographs is her own compulsion, an equally obsessive desire to hold on to memories.
Gradually they began to unpack, laying things on the grass outside where Bron says she hoped the "dust would blow away for ever". The photographs capture scenes of happy family life amid the bags and boxes, and of unexpected joy in the act of sorting out the chaos.
The idea was to publish when the house was cleared, but that hasn't happened. In the entrance hall, a chair has been pushed awkwardly in front of the door to the dining room, as a barrier, preventing entry. Inside, boxes remain in tall, ordered stacks, unwanted clothes hang in the window obscuring the light, cartons marked "children's presents" sit on crates labelled "general presents" opposite boxes containing cuckoo clocks, Christmas reindeer, old linen. The room smells clean, and there are pathways between the boxes, but it is order laced with chaos: old wrapping paper rests on sagging bin bags; framed pictures of plants are hidden behind the cartons.
Hampton believed her mother's OCD was triggered by stress and was sure the boxes were making her unhappy, which is why she wanted to help her restore order. Initially, she thought she could "annihilate" the OCD and its symptoms. "At the beginning I wanted to battle it," she says. "Now I've accepted it." Nonetheless, she hated the hidden nature of the condition, and wanted to display it in the photographs, to demonstrate that there was nothing shameful in it. Her mother took some persuading.
"I didn't want to talk about it to begin with," Bron says. "I don't like this 'me, me, me' stuff. You look around the world, you see all these afflictions, desperate poverty everywhere; in the great scheme of things, OCD is so minor. It's not cancer." Gradually, she came around: "If it helps others understand it, I don't mind talking about it."
In some ways, Bron likes her OCD. She finds hand-washing comforting; a therapeutic way of dealing with stress. "It's not helpful to try to stamp it out," she says. "It isn't harmful if it's mild."
These photographs are taken from In The Shadow Of Things, by L�onie Hampton, published by Contrasto at �29.95. To order a copy for �23.96, including UK mainland p&p, go to guardian.co.uk/bookshop or call 0330 333 6846.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2011/may/21/family-obsessive-compulsive-disorder
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/firstshowing/goldenbriefcase/~3/iSsp2n-lOco/
