My Japanese tipster, aka “the husband,” pointed me to this news story and these incredible photos about Hokkaido’s “misogi omatsuri” or festival.
I am not sure what the water is about, but it must certainly add to the masochism that Japanese are often fond of. Making this spiritual event all the more “moe,” only four men perform the ritual while everyone else watches them.
Next year in Hokkaido!
GIRL OF THE WEEK
Pics by Focused Image
FROM BYRON BAY, NSW
Sit back and take a deep breath ’cos we’ve got some SHOCKING news that will change the way you look at the world. Apparently, women don’t – that’s right, DON’T – find Toadfish Rebecchi from Neighbours sexually appealing.
“He’s absolutely disgusting,” bawled 20-year-old yooni student. “I’m into handsome, buff guys, and that bloke certainly doesn’t meet that description. He’s got no chance with me.”
Are you blind? What’s your favourite PORKING POSE?
“I like deep penetration, so doggy style’s a winner for me. And I don’t like wasting time with foreplay or anything like that, I just like to get right into the sex and go at it as hard as possible.”
Sounds good to us. What other stuff gets you grinning like a WANKING JAP?
“I’m an artist so I enjoy drawing, singing and taking photos – anything creative gets me going.”
Are you a PISS ARTIST, too?
“Yeah, I like going out for a few drinks and when I’m drunk I become everyone’s best friend.”
What’s your STICKIEST fantasy?
“I’d love to take on two guys at once. I’d choose David Boreanaz from Angel and another sexy bloke like…”
Toadie?
“For the last time, no!”
We tried our best, Toads, but it looks like you’ll be pulling yourself off again tonight.
What’s the sexiest thing a bloke can do?
“Dance with me.”
I have been out of contact for nearly two days now, and I thought I was going to lose my mind.
No computer, no cellphone, so no blog, no twitter, no texting, no calls!
I have done that before, but only when it was planned, this was definitely not planned! I had a small family emergency, so went away with no laptop and no phone charger, into an area that had no coverage anyway, and no computer. Just a landline that was still fixed to the wall…
All of that and no sex, and sharing a room so I couldn’t even take care of myself. It was a long couple of days I can tell you!
However, here I am once more, and I can tell you I will be making up for lost time. According to the met service, the weather is about to turn bad for a week. No chance then of getting that little bikini out and strutting my stuff. The good news is that Jise and I have both knocked off for Christmas already, so there will be plenty of us time! Oh yeah…
I miss the lovely and talented Bebe Buell, Miss November 1974 and mother of marvelous Liv Tyler, too much not to revisit her. Here are some of the pictures which I did not use last time, and fresh quotes. Plus bonus shots of both Liv and Bebe with her mother, also a vintage model!
Photographed by Richard Fegley
Sometimes, when I see my picture in a magazine or watch Todd play at a concert for thousands of people, I almost have to pinch myself when I realize that less than three years ago, I was just a nobody from Virginia Beach who didn’t even know that there was a Todd Rundgren or such a thing as rock culture and the lifestyle that goes along with it. (“Bebe,” Playboy, November 1974. — I love that they did not even bother with a cutesy title. Really, who needs it?!)
One week not too long ago, for instance, Eric Clapton was in town for a concert. Todd and I were invited backstage, at which point Eric asked him to sit in. Then Mick Jagger walked into the dressing room, and later, when Todd was onstage, Mick and I talked and he said, ‘Why don’t you and Todd come over to my place tomorrow?’ His place turned out to be Andy Warhol’s summer cottage out on Montauk Point. And since then, he’s phoned several times from London just to find out how we are.
I bet he did.
I was turned on to rock ‘n’ roll by my grandfather, who played me my first Elvis Presley record. I went absolutely crazy! I was only seven, but I knew that from that point on, music was going to be my life. As I grew older and heard the Beatles, and then the Stones, my mind was made up — it was rock ‘n’ roll for me! (“My Story,” by Bebe Buell, Playboy.com)
Liv and Bebe in 1980
Just as we [Bebe and her former band the The Gargoyles] were getting ready to seal the deal and go on tour, my daughter’s paternity situation became public. And I had to really sit down and find that place inside of me that wasn’t going to be a narcissistic rocker and say, ‘Okay, what’s important right now?’ and because of Liv’s age at the time (14) when all this went public, I had to be there for her or she would have had a warped identity I think—what if I said, ‘Oh, I’m going on the road for two years, see ya honey. By the way, you have two dads!’ Steven Tyler was the actual father, Todd Rundgren raised her as his. (“Air Kisses for the Masses,” John Pfeiffer, The Aquarian Weekly, August 18, 2009.)
The rest of the quotes are from a very sweet and gracious interview Bebe did with LovelyLivTyler.com on the occasion of Liv’s 27th birthday.
Liv, Steven Tyler, and Bebe, 1996. Awwwkwaaard.
There is so much of both of us and Todd [Rundgren] too in Liv’s personality. When she was little she stood just like Todd when she was “thinking” about something important. She has bits of all of us and then the individual things that are uniquely Liv. She has only the best of us three.
Liv, Bebe, and Dorothea Johnson at a Breast Cancer Awareness charity event
My mother [Dorothea Johnson] modeled in the 50’s and had her own “charm school” for girls. I got into the business from some photos that my mom sent to the agent Eileen Ford. She sent for me at the age of 18 and I was off to New York City in 1972. Liv was born in 1977.
What I wish for her is continued true love, good health, a family of her own (grandchildren for me), a wonderful career, personal happiness for she and Roy, long life for darling Neal and for her to find all of her dreams. She seems to be on her way. I bless the day she was born.
Livvy, Mommy loves you. xoxo I’m so proud of you and the beautiful person you are inside and out! — Bebe Buell, NYC 2004
Oh, man. There is … some kind of dust in my eye. Very dusty in here. Ridiculous, all this … this dust.
Writing about giallo the other day made me crave some Argento in my life. I find Asia much more beautiful and darkly lost than her father, giallo master Dario, so I turned to her. As always.
“I can’t remember too much about my father until I was eight. Up until that point he used to tell me that all kids smelt of shit and so he couldn’t be bothered with them. I think our halting relationship started in earnest when [her mother] Daria moved me away from him so he became much more important to me.” (Senses of Cinema)
“I never thought it was weird that my father would have me naked and raped in his movies until a friend pointed it out to me. I was just making movies and never even thought about the possible subtext going on. Nor do I have the psychological tools to decode his latent feelings. Perhaps I haven’t wanted to either because it might reveal something I have no desire to discover. Is Dario reliving his relationship with Daria through me? I did think at one time I was only born so my father had an actress in the family he could work with in the future.”
And I thought I had Daddy Issues.
Quotes from Godard illustrated by his wife and muse, my own style inspiration and personal patron saint, the lovely and talented* Anna Karina.
*Not sure if you’d noticed, but I only bill as “lovely and talented” those who take it off. Write that down.
All you need to make a movie is a girl and a gun. (Journal entry, 5/16/91)
“Light me up!” Still of Anna Karina as Natacha van Braun from Alphaville, une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution / Alphaville (1965)
I don’t think you should feel about a movie. You should feel about a woman. You can’t kiss a movie.
Still with Jean-Paul Belmondo from Une femme est une femme / A Woman is a Woman (1961), previously highlighted with “Look, Ma, no gag reflex!” still here back in September.
“In films, we are trained by the American way of moviemaking to think we must understand and ‘get’ everything right away. But this is not possible. When you eat a potato, you don’t understand each atom of the potato!” (Interview with David Sherritt, The Christian Science Monitor, 8/3/94)
Une femme est une femme / A Woman is a Woman (1961)
Art attracts us only by what it reveals of our most secret self. (Critique called “What Is Cinema?” for Les Amis du Cinéma , 10/1/52, a work which advanced the auteur theory but also kind of ripped off Bazin, which is weird cause Bazin would’ve read it and was a big influence on Godard but this was done contemporaneously of Bazin himself working on something titled this, about this, so maybe the quote is misattributed? … or maybe there is more to it than I know with my tiny ken of French movie guys, maybe it was a done thing to borrow titles from one another, or perhaps it was a continuation of a dialogue they were already having both in person and via publications, or, finally, it could even have been an “understood” question which anyone might use as the title of a book or article … I am probably over-reading it.)
Hands down my favorite picture of Anna Karina
Beauty is composed of an eternal, invariable element whose quantity is extremely difficult to determine, and a relative element which might be, either by turns or all at once, period, fashion, moral, passion. (“Defense and Illustration of Classical Construction,” Cahiers du Cinéma, 9/15/52)
Cover or liner art for her album, a collaboration with the dread Serge G
The truth is that there is no terror untempered by some great moral idea. (“Strangers on a Train,” Cahiers du Cinéma 3/10/52 — Godard wrote extensively and insightfully in his early career about the movies of Hitchcock, one of my favorite and I think misunderstood directors; I’ll try to share some good nuggets from time to time)
Anna cahorts about topless as Anne in 1968’s The Magus, also starring Anthony Quinn (Zorba the Greek), Michael Caine, and Candace Bergen (Murphy Brown) — no one seems to like this movie but me. That’s okay, because I like it a lot.
Photography is truth. The cinema is truth twenty-four times per second. (Le petit soldad / The Little Soldier, 1963.)
With Jean-Paul Belmondo again, this time as Ferdinand and Marianne in the sort of romantic-tragi-comedy-crime-caper Pierrot le fou / Crazy Pete / Pierre Goes Wild (1965).
To be or not to be? That’s not really a question. (unsourced)
Screencap with subtitles from Une femme est une femme / A Woman is a Woman (1961).
