4 Fuks Saké

This Is The Self-Delusional Society

 
Is Bryan Ferry alive or just a high res jpg?

Ferry - to whom you can add Jo Wood, Ed Vaizey, Tamara Mellon, Time, CNN, airline gold cards, and the phrase "I just can't live without my iPod Nano" - all operate in the parallel universe that is business travel lifestyle. It's a place that has no relation with reality. It is a phrase that is the definition of an oxymoron.

Travelling on Eurostar this evening, I look at my bag on the rack and have to ask myself the uncomfortable question - why have I got a Cathay Pacific gold luggage tag attached to it? I haven't lived in Hong Kong for four years. I'm clearly no longer 'gold.' Marcus Wareing's face smiles benignly at me from the cover of Metropolitan magazine. Looks interesting - 'I wonder what his latest "pioneering restaurant venture," will be?' Or do I. Do I fuck in fact. Marcus sorry pal, off to Nando's with the kids on Saturday. And actually I've no idea who you are.  

Amongst all this, it's not abundantly clear that any woman has ever travelled. Boys collect football stickers, then they get a career and collect air miles. It's only men who wear airline luggage tags on their business. It's only men who absorb all this then subsequently have mid life crises. It's probably the reason Tiger Woods lost it - believed his own Accenture airport billboards.

Publishers - there is a gap here for someone to fill. I give you some leeway - you can create an iPad version if you like. But how about a title that is more reflective of the reality?

Boredom. Poor phone receptions. Dinners for one. Dinners with men you don't know very well. Propositions at 2am next to lifts. Unnecessary or unwanted drinking. The darkness behind a hotel room door. 

Probably not the most uplifting of reads - but then again, I enjoyed Nil By Mouth. 

Robin Of Shoreditch

The 100 Brands Project from Robin of Shoreditch on Vimeo.

Brands, please give generously. A lovely idea. 

What Goes Around Comes Around, Again.

Blogging, Web 2.0 - God it's so dynamic and fresh. Gizmodo have just posted on Nintendo's Gameboy (sic) shoes.

Me and a couple of mates of mine at Cake made those for Nintendo back in 2000. We were trying to suggest that older, cooler people might play Game Boy other than the kids we'd weaned onto Pokémon.

I'm A Loser

The headline isn't a Spears-like cry for help to drag in some voyeuristic passing traffic - but more a bemoaning fact, having lost a game of magazine Russian Roulette at the news stand earlier today. I was in the mood to be patronised about my dress sense, and was willing to pay $HK61 for a copy of GQ. I lost on the 50:50 shoot out on whether I was buying the US or UK version - Christian Bale looking suitably transatlantic on the cover to throw me. What's more, I later found out that I've been wearing my trousers with too much 'break.'

What is happening in the magazine industry? I confess, I haven't been paying attention. That doesn't mean to say I'm not allowed to have an opinion - any idiot can, that's how blogging works right?

Anyway, for $61, I feel like I just had the piss taken out of me by a conspiracy of fashion labels, media planners and buyers, and a publishing house. You'll see the obvious complaint coming...no editorial, all ads, everyone going to parties and having their picture taken all drinking the same vodka etc etc...

However, I'm not going to have a pop. It seems to me GQ is doing very nicely. A fat mag, with fat ads - all looks healthy to me. The thing is, all the hot air we are expelling seems to have focused on the stresses of TV companies through PVRs and audience fragmentation, and newspapers hemorrhaging circulations. I've had few conversations about the short, medium and long term viability of magazines and I'd like to know if anyone is.

Inevitably, in our new world, magazine brands are transferring successfully online; FHM.com being a colossus. But others, to me just seem to exist as a glossy paper-based fuel for the fashion industry. They're just a paper version of cocaine. Buyers, sellers, designers, photographers, stylists - you name it - are sucking it up, passing their glossy images from one to another to notch the next deal - whilst real readers quietly drift away, along with the content.

The Devil Wears Prada must all be 100% true. Or the whole thing balances on a precipice waiting for a new Anna Wintour to tear the whole conspiracy apart.