My favourite meal of the day is breakfast. I started taking the definitive cooked breakfast a bit more seriously when I lived in Camden from 97-99 (around the time I worked at HHCL).
My girlfriend and I, at the time would go exploring Greasy Spoons and try out Hi-So Fry Ups at swish hotels and bourgeoisie cafes. I can still remember the first time the mushrooms arrived in a full cream sauce and I realised that an upper crust cooked breakfast wasn't such a bad thing or indeed a class transgression worthy of pejoratively labelling an injustice.
Last year I lived in Hong Kong twice on the Island of Lamma which is a lovely island only a half hour ferry ride away from Central where kids and dogs intermingle freely at all hours like they did in the old days when the car was less dominant and main stream media scaremongering was restricted to those bad old communists. Now it's a never ending stream of paedophiles served up with Roe vs Wade (poltical in-joke for observers of right wing psychology).
While living on Lamma I got into the habit of breakfast experimentation and discovered that straw mushrooms are an extraordinarily good replacement for meat in a cooked breakfast for both taste and texture dimensions, and so because it's been a couple of years now since I blogged my morning victuals, I thought I'd share some low res mobile snaps of my creations.
I love cooking (particularly for others) and for some reason or other I find breakfast a truly beautiful sight. It's a never ending quest nailing the perfect British Beauty though. If I'm lucky I'll be able to weave this post into another about cultural drift because I see what's happening here in Asia and it's very interesting some of the unifying aspects of global culture as good ideas catch on everywhere.
God I really lucked out on this sucker. Not sure where I heard about it but any biographical political film whose reach exceeds its grasp (up to an academy award nomination) had to be worth downloading (stealing) and my god it was fucking ace.
However long it lasted (it felt like an hour).... from the opening scene of a baby face George Stephanopoulos though to it's climactic end, I was back on my political junky fix of 2000-2005. It's remarkable even in this day and age of diminished privacy just how far Clinton was up for disrobing from behind-the-scenes come-back-kid (warts and all) as well as sharing with considerable political aplomb and generosity, the people who took him to victory in 1992.
I still maintain that those 8 years of Clinton were the best years of my life outside of living inside the Wirtschaftswunder of Germany in the 70's. I'm not saying Bill "Jim'll fixed it" for me. It's just that we all loved him, we forgave him the skirt semen - spunk if you will. Definitive spunky right?
Good thinks (things) happened around then. Or maybe I'm deluded and I was just young. It was rock and roll whatever you slice the Polish salami because the single most knockout blow watching this documentary was finally meeting James Carville. He's so impressive, he's even better than the person I've lasciviously read bundles about over quite a few books for half a decade or so, and wanted so badly to stare at.
I admit I think there was quote about him wearing a Nylon suit that made me sit-up reading some other hack journalist's interpretation of the Comeback Kid. I've always had a thing for the blindly indiscriminate & unfashionable Nylon suit for reasons it would be too indulgent to get into here, but in truth his clothes/style is worth deconstructing but only in that trainspotter way I'd get lost on with a person who rolls like Mr Carville. He'd look the bollocks in Commes de Garcons but lets just say because he's from Louisianna he also would know how how to drop it like its hot in Yohji Yamamoto even though a man his age cuts a sashaying swish draped in Kenzo. I'm slightly kidding of course on that last number, but it's true his clothes are unconventional for a policy wonk. The guy knows how to 'do' when a T Shirt works.
Just in case there's some cloud computin' dysphoria shit hanging over you. I fucking love this bro. He's a politico prophet, a one man focus group - part bleeding heart liberal...part sneering hammerhead shark snorting his way to the kill. I've never seen anything like this dude and I've read up on him. He exceeded my expectations.
But you know. If there's one bit I connect with the man it's when George (Hi My Name's Bill Clinton and I think this Greek kid is smart as fuck) Stephanopoulis takes a bow towards the end as victory was looking assured; and attempts to articulate how deeply rewarding it was to work with James Carville.
Apart from Mr Carville breaking into tears of redemptive reconciliation with his dreams of the past manifesting themselves in the future (as dreams do), there's just something utterly Liberal - pinko fascist communist if you lean towards those incoherent bastards who throw dirt better than they implement policy. There's something noble, something that reveals the dignity of the left when the Director of Communications (George) hands over to James, and is received with a mutual respect that reflects the honour of why all change starts at the bottom and fist fucks its way up.
Not Maserati down.
Watch the first clip (part one) if you want to understand why.
I've been talking about this for so long that the only thing that really interests me is why anybody in marketing and advertising who would want me do for some work with them, might not have googled my name and Unilever + Skin whitening. In any case it's still worth making a quick summary because money doesn't come first in my universe. Skin whitening creams in Asia are broadly speaking about hierarchy. The whiter the skin the less likely you are to be fresh from the rice paddies. The less likely you come from the rice paddy, the more likely you are to be hired, promoted, secure a Blu Ray DVD player, iTablet, BMW 3 series and/or shiny white teeth.
Though it strikes me that for someone who argues a woman is entitled to make her own decisions about abortion that the final decision on what colour one wishes to be is down to that person. So I'm not anti skin whitening.
They say that holding opposite and conflicting thoughts in our heads at the same time is a mark of evolution and so the only position I can take when thinking about this category is that it behooves the multinationals; that is the onus is upon them. That they bear the responsibility that there is a clear responsibility to fulfil and articulate, that melatonin expectation transactions should come with an unambiguous message that Unilever, P&G, Johnson & Johnson et al respect all people of all colours. The reverse isn't true for tanning lotions because that hierarchical imposition isn't present within that context. I maintain it's a great communication opportunity of the win win variety - if it's with sincerity.
Anyway, above are a series of ads by Ogilvy & Mather Hong Kong regional office. They look innocuous and in some markets they may well lean more towards the beauty end of the spectrum than concealment but as I've mentioned over here in the comments; the focus groups are revealing because with skilful moderation, the kind where dirty secrets surface...well they tell the story of skin whitening.
