Blur – "Stereotypes" (1995)

She's most accommodating

When she's in her lingerie

British newspapers put American newspapers to shame.  

A case in point: the UK’s Daily Mail, which recently ran a story with a headline that tops any headline I've seen in an American paper:

(Top that, New York Times!  Eat your heart out, Washington Post!)

According to the story, Prince Charles and the late Princess Diana’s marriage went south relatively quickly after their storybook wedding in 1981.  

By 1989, the Prince was getting his leg over with his old girlfriend, Camilla Parker Bowles – the two were married in 2005 – while Diana seems to have been hooking up with James Hewitt, a dashing young British Army officer.

Charles and Diana in 1981

But although she and Charles hadn’t shared a bed for some time, Diana hadn’t entirely given up on their marriage.

So when she and the Prince were invited to Camilla’s sister’s 40th birthday party, she decided to attend – much to the chagrin of Camilla, who allegedly shouted “Why did that f*cking b*tch have to come?” to the hostess of the party when she got word that Diana would be accompanying Charles.

Little did Camilla know that she had nothing to worry about.  

Earlier that day, Diana had gone shopping for lingerie at Harrod’s, the famed London department store.  She hoped that some sexy knickers would capture her hubby’s interest.  

Camilla as a debutante in 1965

Unfortunately, it was not to be.  From the Daily Mail:

Now she stood in front of her own full-length dressing room mirror, gazing at her reflection.  The exotic lingerie she had bought that afternoon was more daring than her usual ensemble – briefer, naughtier, more provocative.  This was her desperate, possibly naive, gamble to rekindle the all-but-extinct sexual passion in her marriage.

She was realistic about the competition.  Camilla may have been 14 years older than she was, but Diana knew the seasoned Mrs. Parker Bowles had a comfortably bosomed allure that Charles, apparently, found irresistible. 

Camilla today – nice chapeau!

(How about that last phrase: “[T]he seasoned Mrs. Parker Bowles had a comfortably bosomed allure that Charles, apparently, found irresistible.”  You have to admit that the Daily Mail has a way with words.)  

At that moment, as she would tearfully relate the following day to a confidante, the prince looked in, surveyed his lingerie-clad wife up and down and declared witheringly, “You look ridiculous.”  The close friend, an intimate of Diana who has never spoken out before, recalls her despair at being dismissed so coldly.  “Those three words shattered her,” says the confidante. “They changed the whole momentum of the evening.”

(“You look ridiculous.”  Really?  What a d*ck!)

Knowing the way the male mind works from personal experience, my first reaction to this story was that Princess Diana should have done her shopping at Frederick’s of Hollywood instead of Harrod’s.

But I spent some time on the Harrod’s website.  I’m not sure what kind of lingerie Harrod’s was stocking in 1989, but the stuff they are selling today is pretty hot.  

For example, one of the brands Harrod’s offers is the aptly named Agent Provocateur, which is one of sexiest high-end lingerie lines out there.  

Agent Provocateur undies from Harrod’s

It’s hard for me imagine Charles not becoming at least a little hot and bothered by seeing his 28-year-old wife strutting her stuff in Agent Provocateur undies.  Obviously, I’m underestimating the “comfortably bosomed allure” of Camilla, Duchess of Kent. 

*     *     *     *     *

“Stereotypes” is the opening track to Blur’s fourth studio album,  The Great Escape, which was released in 1995.

Blur and Oasis were the two most successful “Britpop” groups of the mid-nineties.  (Other Britpop bands included Pulp, Suede, and The Verve.)

Here’s “Stereotypes”:

Click below to buy the song from Amazon:  

Blur -- "Popscene" (1992)

A fervoured image of another world 

Is nothing in particular now 

I assume you've noticed what today's date is -- 11/11/11.  This song and this post have nothing in particular to do with the date, but I thought it was worth mentioning.  (Hopefully we'll all be around in 13 months and a day for 12/12/12.)

I have a few photos left from my trip to Joplin earlier this fall, and I might as well put them to good use.  

I suppose you could say they are "fervoured images of another world" -- that world being post-tornado Joplin.  But perhaps you would say they are "nothing in particular now."

Here's one example of "nothing in particular":

(Of course I don't know how a bowling ball ended up here -- that's kind of a dumb question, don't you think?)

Here's an even odder scene:

This house was presumably damaged severely enough that it couldn't be repaired.  But the owner left all the plumbing in place.  I guess he's going to rebuild his house exactly as it was:

Does the recliner convey with this property?  If so, I'm ready to make an offer:

This guy seems a bit touchy.  Probably not a good place to go on Halloween.

I never thought of Joplin as having much in the way of trees -- the Washington, DC area where I've lived for over 30 years is very heavily wooded (as an allergy sufferer can tell you).  But if you look at pre-tornado video of Joplin and compare it to the way it looks now, you'll see that there were a lot of trees to be seen before May 22.

Those trees that were not blown over by the tornado were greatly diminished -- in most cases, there wasn't much left other than about ten feet of trunk.  Most of the trees looked like a Napoleonic-era sailing ship that had been through a long and painful battle.  The hull was still intact, but all the masts and spar and rigging had been shot away.  What remained didn't really look like a ship, and what remained in Joplin didn't really look like trees.

I assumed that the severely damaged trees that were left behind after the tornado were goners -- all their leaves were gone, for cryin' out loud, and the 2011 summer in Joplin was famously hot and dry.

Click here for a New York Times slide show of what most of the trees in Joplin looked like immediately after the tornado.

To my surprise, many of the skeleton-like trees I had seen in June had leafed out by September.  Here's an example of one such tree:

Unfortunately, the conventional wisdom seems to be that most of these trees won't survive for long.  I have a feeling that we may be surprised by how stubborn some of these trees are -- I bet a lot of them hang on.  But a lot of them won't.

Someone once said that there are two good times to plant trees:  25 years ago, and right now.  A generation or two from now, Joplin will probably have as many or more trees as it did before the tornado.  There are a lot of people working hard to make that happen.

The last picture I'm going to share is one that makes me very sad.  This is Irving School, where I attended grades one through six.  (I remember the principal, Gerald Prater, and teachers like Mrs. Belford and Mrs. Croddy and Mrs. Denham like it was yesterday)  Irving seemed old when I was a student there -- along with so many of my oldest and best friends -- 50 years ago.  

I guess you can always rebuild a building.  Let's just be glad that no one's children or grandchildren were around when the tornado hammered my old school.

Blur had planned to put "Popscene" on its second studio album, Modern Life Is Rubbish.  But when the song did poorly when it was released as a single in the UK in 1992, the group decided to punish the British music-buying public.  "We thought, If you didn’t f*cking want it in the first place," Blur guitarist Graham Coxon told an interviewer, "you’re not going to get it now." ("Popscene" was included on the American version of that album.)

"Popscene" is a great little pop song, thanks in large part to the horns.  The lyrics are rather opaque -- this song is about 90% music, 10% words.

Here's the official "Popscene" music video.  I like the odd way in which the video was edited, but you may not -- it's sort of annoying to watch:

Click below to buy the song from Amazon:

Blur -- "Tender" (1997)

Tender is the day

The demons go away

Lord, I need to find

Someone who can heal my mind

Come on, come on, come on 

Get through it

I visited Joplin less than two weeks after an F5 tornado had devastated my home town on May 22 of this year.  Here's a link to the first of several 2 or 3 lines posts about that visit.

I went back to Joplin last month to visit my parents.  Much has been done since my first visit.  Much remains to be done.  

I spent a couple of hours each day just walking through the storm-ravaged areas, listening to music on my iPod and taking pictures with my Blackberry.  I felt a little odd doing this -- voyeurism is not a particularly noble activity -- but I couldn't resist.

I immediately noticed something new on my walks last month -- on almost every street corner, there were small hand-painted wooden stars atop yard-high stakes driven into the ground.

Here's an example:

Here's another:

To understand where the wooden stars came from and what they signify, we have to go back a few years.

The story of the wooden stars begins in December 2006, when New York Says Thank You Foundation volunteers went to Groesbeck, Texas to help rebuild the home of James and Eva Vincent, which had been destroyed by a tornado.  Here's a link to a story about that effort.

The Vincents helped others from New York Says Thank You to rebuild the homes of tornado victims in Greensburg, Kansas in September 2008.  The Vincents brought wood left over from the construction of their home to Greensburg, where volunteers cut out wooden stars and gave them to local children, who painted them, wrote inspirational messages on them, attached them to wooden stakes, and placed them throughout the town.

This year, on the tenth anniversary of 9/11, the Vincents and dozens of New York Says Thank You Foundation volunteers came to Joplin and distributed 3189 "Stars of HOPE" to Joplin children.  (That's one for every American killed in the 9/11 attacks and every Joplin tornado victim.)  Here's a link to the Foundation's press release about the "Stars of HOPE" and the culmination of the nationwide tour of "The National 9/11 Flag," which took place in Joplin on 9/11/2011.

Here are some of the stars that had 9/11 references:

 Tracey Vitchers, the director of "The 9/12 Generation Project" -- an initiative launched by the Foundation, which intends to use the legacy of September 12, 2001 (a day that was marked by countless acts of kindness and humanity) to educate, inspire, and activate schoolchildren all across the country -- wrote this about Joplin and the "Stars of HOPE":

It was no small thing to watch Joplin children who survived the tornado painting Stars of HOPE alongside World War II veterans, students from Missouri Southern State University, members of the FDNY [Fire Department of New York], and countless other Joplin residents on the weekend of the tenth anniversary of September 11.  

It was pure chance -- I think -- that this Blur song came up on my iPod while I was walking through my old neighborhood, on streets that I walked countless times as a child going to and from school or to visit friends.  I don't remember how many times I hit the "repeat" button, but it was a lot.  There were a lot of stars to see.

  

And finally:

Here's more from chapter 11 of Job.  2 or 3 lines hopes that these words will come true soon for everyone in Joplin.

You will surely forget your trouble, 

Recalling it only as waters gone by.
Life will be brighter than noonday,
And darkness will become like morning.
You will be secure, because there is hope;
You will look about you and take your rest in safety.
You will lie down, with no one to make you afraid.

Here's "Tender," from Blur's sixth studio album, 13, which was released in 1997.  "Tender" was written by Damon Albarn, the band's singer and primary songwriter, and was apparently inspired by Albarn's unhappy love affair with Elastica singer Justine Frischmann, who moved to the U.S. after that band broke up, married a University of California-Davis professor of atmospheric science, and became an abstract painter.

Here's a link you can use to order the song from Amazon: