Keeping condoms in fashion...

Today a press release arrived from the Southern African Clothing and Textile Workers Union. They are planning to host a competition aimed at keeping condoms in fashion.
So the idea is for fashion design students to create garments using condoms.
They sent pictures too.
It's a bit weird for me. I find this stuff a bit icky.

Burnt buildings and that darn sex tape.

Day two after the fire.
The grand old Rissik Street Post Office building was a sad wreck today. Firefighters were still inside her blackened ruins, dousing down hot spots as the sun shone down on them while the pressed metal ceilings lay in rusty piles on the floor.
Layers on the walls show that the ground level was once painted bottle green, rooms on the first floor were chocolate brown and the top floor was a majestic royal blue and beige above the window levels. An angled line of pale triangles down the walls is all that's left of what must once have been a staircase.
It was a devastating sight.
Back at the office I found my colleague Diva hunched up scribbling down as Amor Vitone was giving her exclusive interview to Radio Backverandah. Poor Diva had interviewed scorned husband Joost van der Westhuizen about his admissions regarding his star role in that awkward sex tape.
So he suddenly decided to come clean and, in a "I sort of had sexual relations with that woman" declared what we all knew: that the guy in the dodgy undies snorting drugs and not having sex with a prostitute was not really his doppelganger, and that it was actually him. Up to no good.
This sudden confession was perfectly timed with the release of his book, so the next thing to do was to interview weepy Amor. And she was not going to talk to anyone, until presumably the price was right. And so she sobbed her heart out on radio as Diva took it all down.
"I still love my husband. The fact remains is that those people filmed him with the intention of trying to get some money out of him and that's a crime," she stated in a wobbly voice.
Well, Amor, last I heard, picking up prostitutes and snorting illegal substances hardly fall within the bounds of the law.
I am sure this is a story that is now going to run and run. And Joost and Amor will simply end up richer and higher ranked in the local celebrity stakes. All a bit of a yawn, eh?

Death to the old Post Office building...

Last night the old Rissik Street Post Office burnt down.
This was the big news needing following up this morning, as apparently last night while the grand old building went up in flames, few experts were available to comment.
And at 6am this morning this remained the case. But I gave it my best shot. And it turned out to be one of those hectic situations where people are happy to spout all kinds of information out "off the record", but not so happy to have their names associated with the whole debacle.
First off I got hold of the city's heritage expert. I felt so sorry for him because his absolute sadness at such loss was palpable, he couldn't spout his true opinion, I would imagine, without risking his job as a council employee.
And so I turned to property investors, city developers, architects and heritage site experts. At the same time my colleague Diva was sent back out to the fire site, tasked with tracking down witnesses.
I discovered that while the council owns the building, it has been left derelict for the past 10 years. Since then, enterprising thieves have managed to swipe the hands off the clock and make off with the bell out of the tower. This in itself was no mean feat considering that the bell was a replica of the smallest bell in Big Ben and weighed over 1000kg. And then apart from wooden balustrades, light fittings and switches, thieves also managed to take each one of the cast-iron columns from the building. These columns were apparently about 5-metres high and it would have taken about 20 strong men to shift it, not to mentions trucks and cranes to move them. But our city thieves did indeed manage to do this.
In the meantime several developers have had their offers to refurbish and fix up the old building go ignored. The council apparently commissioned architectural plans of the building for R3.5-million only have the drawings ruled unusable.
The estimated cost of restoring the building before the fire ruined it completely was about R45-million - an amount that was not approved for years. Today the council announced that it will host this year's Miss World pageant in Jozi - at a cost of R49-million.
Diva returned with her insights gleaned from squatters who confirmed that some people had managed to break their way into the old post office, and were living there. They had stolen copper from somewhere and were trying to melt it down when the fire got a bit out of control and they feared being caught and arrested. So they ran away.
And the whole building went up in flames.
Despite it being situated only a few blocks from the inner city fire station.
As one heritage architect put it: it's an unspeakable disgrace.

Boredom and high fashion

This week has been somewhat less than exciting. I think I am in a slump after last week's high on the BMW EuroStyle 2009 tour.
Today I found myself jotting down stuff during a diary planning meeting and paged over to discover one of Little One's random pieces of art that she likes to draw on the odd occasions she gets her hands on my things.
So I took a photo of it with my phone. And then mailed it to myself for fun. I have been driven to these lengths for little kicks where I can get them. And so I share it here with you:



In happier times - that would be last week when I was roaming Germany and Austria absorbing the style and culture that is the inspiration behind the BMW brand - my days were filled with glamorous and exciting events.
In fact on this exact day last week I got to visit the studio of Ute Ploier, an Austrian fashion designer who creates men's fashions and has had great success with her stuff on the Paris catwalks and all over. She's spectacularly talented and impressively successful. And to top it off - she's gorgeous:

I must say though, while her clothes look ultra glamorous in the glossy photos and hanging elegantly in her studio, I have to say that I cannot imagine them being snapped up in a hurry by South African men. I checked out a pair of tiny stylish cotton shorts that would sit super-toight on even the smallest of frames, and its matching manbag had me thinking that this outfit would be something one would get on the butts of our beer-swilling rugby watching menfolk only at gunpoint.
I could be wrong, but I think only our gay boys will be buying these creations:

Cy's, sighs and more size.

Today was the last day at our office for my colleague Quintessential_Angel. The good part was that they laid on a spread in the Ops Room and we all got a free coke and some snacks after the speeches. The utterly, utterly sad part was bidding farewell to someone amazing and great. We've lost someone quintessentially good as she moves on to take up the helm at another title. I'm going to miss her!
*sigh*
So on to happier thoughts. This time last week I was living it up on BMW's EuroStyle 2009 tour in Vienna. At one of the art galleries we flitted through, we were afforded the opportunity to see the works of an artistic genius by the name of Cy (as in Sigh) Twombly. And I am sorry to admit this, but I totally, totally, totally didn't get it.
The guy's paintings look to me like kiddie art. More specifically, the scribblings of a toddler in one helluva bad mood. Our gallery tour guide tried his best to explain the ecstacies and intricacies of the canvases before us, while uniformed personnel stood watchful guard - I am assuming to make sure that we didn't touch any of the pieces.
I could not work out what made these particular scribbles any different to the ones that would attract a smart spanking for the artist that would attempt to draw them on any of my walls. I tried to picture the opulent home where these paintings would look good on display.
And then came the artistic sculptures by Cy. On these too, I missed the boat. Completely. These little displays of pieces of wood on little plinths looked to me like bits of scaffolding found on a building site and hammered together. On one of them Cy had written a message in chalk: "One day the wind will come and destroy my lemons". Um, ja. I swear. I checked with one of the other journalists that I read it correctly. I did. Lemons?? As I say. Cy's genius skipped me by.
I felt like I was missing out when I heard that each of his paintings was insured for 20-MILLION Euros. Truly. When I heard that one I was sure Leon Schuster or some such person was going to jump out and point at the camera aimed at my gormless, gobsmacked face and yell "Gotcha!".
But they never did.
It seems there are indeed real people, extremely wealthy ones at that, that roam this planet and fork out squillions of bucks for Cy Twombly artworks.
Do you guys get it? Can you explain the genius in these Cy Twombly's:

Donovan Moodley and moods

I am still feeling bleak about being back home after my awesome trip last week. I got up with the sparrows this morning and revved the heck out of the engine of my very small black car as I tried to do advanced driving on my way to work. And just got a strong smell of burning. Ah man! Oh to drive a BMW X5 M-power! I may have been one of the first on the planet to get to test one out, but unless I marry into huge money or find some enterprising way to make a fortune, it looks like I'm stuck with driving a car with a 1.4l engine (note the petrol head talk - I think the motoring people got to me).
So today I tracked down the application for an appeal against the life sentence handed down on one Donovan Moodley. He has now served four years for kidnapping Leigh Matthews, extorting R50 000 from her dad as ransom before shooting her dead, freezing her body and then dumping it in the veld.
It seems Donovan, who is having a hard time now that he has been removed from his cushy single cell after being bust with two cellphones on his person, wants the courts to believe that there is a very good reason why he should be allowed to go home sometime soon.
He reckons that while he planned the whole kidnapping and extortion gig down to the last T, he completely forgot to work out a way to release his victim safe and unharmed in such a way that she would not be able to identify him or lead the cops to him at some later stage. So, after following his plan and getting to the point where the deal he struck dictated that he now release Leigh, he suddenly found himself with absolutely no option other than to kill her. Any judge, other than the one who presided over his original trial, will be reasonable and see things his way he contends.
And the reason why he has taken four years to make this application is no fault of his own. His aunt, who he declines to name, would regularly pop up with offers to fund his legal case and then disappear off the face of the earth when it came down to the crunch. Several times. So the court must please just completely disregard this four-year lapse. Like it never happened. Apparently.
Sheesh. I read the whole affidavit and looked for a reason why he might be able to get himself off the hook, but I couldn't find one. Maybe the courts will understand him. Or maybe, as my colleague Boy Wonder hypothesised, Donovan was high when he formulated his affidavit.
I don't know.
I just know that this time last week I was in Munich, having spent the day visiting design houses and ate lunch at a delightful spot called Tantris that rates among the top 50 restaurants in the world.
*sigh*

Back from styling it up in Europe...

One week away from the office and I return to a bleak start: 1 493 e-mails to sort through and a mass of voice mails to listen trawl through.
Ah but it was so worth it. My week away, now but a distant dream, was spent on the jackpot of all possible assignments. I landed myself a much-prized invite to BMW's Eurostyle 2009 tour. And this involved a few nights in boutique hotels, trips to design houses, galleries, architectural delights and the like. To sustain us through this ordeal, we of course made regular stop-offs at prestigious restaurants where top chefs had the honour of cooking for us.
And it all ended at the Salzburgring race track in Austria where I got to be one of the first in the world to drive one of BMW's new X5 and X6 models in their M-power range. YEs! I got to do what they call a controlled start which involves revving the engine til it roars like a plane and kicks you off into a powerful start that hurtles you from zero to 100 k's an hour in under five seconds. Yes, baby!
Sadly, it is all just a memory now.
As I said - my day was bleak!