Me and my camera in my home town, my capital city, my london…to get a daily feed please follow me on twitter: @babycakesromero
#MYLDN (15)
Me and my camera in my home town, my capital city, my london…to get a daily feed please follow me on twitter: @babycakesromero
#MYLDN (14)
Me and my camera in my home town, my capital city, my london…to get a daily feed please follow me on twitter: @babycakesromero
#MYLDN (13)
Me and my camera in my home town, my capital city, my london…to get a daily feed please follow me on twitter: @babycakesromero
#MYLDN (12)
Me and my camera in my home town, my capital city, my london…to get a daily feed please follow me on twitter: @babycakesromero
#MYLDN (11)
Me and my camera in my home town, my capital city, my london…to get a daily feed please follow me on twitter: @babycakesromero
Pure Evil…
#MYLDN (10)
Me and my camera in my home town, my capital city, my london…to get a daily feed please follow me on twitter: @babycakesromero
#MYLDN (9)
Me and my camera in my home town, my capital city, my london…to get a daily feed please follow me on twitter: @babycakesromero
#MYDLN (8)
Me and my camera in my home town, my capital city, my london…to get a daily feed please follow me on twitter: @babycakesromero
#MYLDN (7)
Me and my camera in my home town, my capital city, my london…to get a daily feed please follow me on twitter: @babycakesromero
A rather strange weirdy woman sat at the table next to us in a cafe and left this amazing but rather disturbing coffee cup sculpture of the Grim Reaper…we left suitably freaked.
#MYLDN (6)
Me and my camera in my home town, my capital city, my london…to get a daily feed please follow me on twitter: @babycakesromero
If you’re going to make a point its always good to add at least four exclamation marks!!!!
#MYLDN (5)
Me and my camera in my home town, my capital city, my london…to get a daily feed please follow me on twitter: @babycakesromero
They stole the street sign..now we live at 13 brick street.
#MYDLN (4)
#MYLDN (3)
Me and my camera in my home town, my capital city, my london…to get a daily feed please follow me on twitter: @babycakesromero
#MYLDN (2)
Me and my camera in my home town, my capital city, my london…to get a daily feed please follow me on twitter: @babycakesromero
(In memory of Raphael Levene – 1924-2012)
#MYLDN (1)
Me and my camera in my home town, my capital city, my london..here is my first entry…to get a daily feed please follow me on twitter: @babycakesromero
I hate obvious movie titles! or Death by Content
Your 38 seconds starts now…
Friends with kids, Seeking a friend at the end of the world, What to do when you’re expecting, the five year engagement, Salmon fishing in the zzzzzzz…there has been a recent slew of these painfully obvious titles and the trend seems to be getting worse.
Have you seen that new film Man on a ledge?
No, what’s it about?
Have we really become so thick we need to be smacked around the face with the written equivalent of a very large blunt instrument?
I understand the marketing logic…if you can describe your film in the title you’ve got a better chance of drawing them in. If you could corner a Hollywood marketing executive and force them to justify these “does what it says on the tin” titles they would simply reply with three words: The Shawshank Redemption.
It is now regarded as one of the all time greats but was virtually ignored on its release purely because of the title. From that moment forth out went subtlety and in came the heavy handed approach. However, I think it might have actually been Snakes On a Plane which is responsible for creating the current trend of descriptive movie titles. But the S.O.A.P title was meant to be a joke. A reference to classic b movie titles like “ I married a monster” and “The Creature from the black lagoon”. It wasn’t meant to be a template for all future films.
The same has happened with Tv programmes…my daughter the teenage nudist, the undateables, what I had for breakfast etc etc. The tv execs claimed it was the digital listings that made them turn titles into mini synopsis. If you can’t hook ‘em in immediately they will most definitely click onto something that does.
Nothing is left to chance anymore. No room for any mental activity. Dumb down everything to the lowest common brain cell. But are we all getting increasingly stupid or are they just treating us as if there’s been a mass devolution of the mind? Why was it ok to have non-descriptive titles in the past and not now?
It would appear that technology might be making idiots of us all. Calculators killed people’s need and ability to perform basic arithmetic. Spellcheck quickly rendered our spelling skills obsolete . Sat Nav is rapidly shrinking the part of the brain that can direct us. The more we let machines do things for us the less capable we are of doing them ourselves. We used to be able to navigate by the stars..now we have an app to do it for us. How often do you see smartphone users wandering around like defective robots, standing on street corners, rotating on the spot and bumping into walls as they stare down to find the way rather than look up.
The other reason everything got slap in your face obvious is that there are so many more things competing for your attention than there used to be. The internet is a big, bad, busy place and we are all being bombarded with so much stuff its difficult to know where to turn. In a world of incessant traffic you can’t afford to be subtle. You will just get lost in the barrage of entertainment on offer. From news to pop vids to movies to utube clips to progs to docs to blogs (yes, I am fully aware I am part of the problem), the amount of stuff being hurled our way with is overwhelming. I call it Death by Content and at times I feel like I am truly drowning in it. And who’s actually got the time to look at all this screen based content that just keeps on coming in a never ending swirl of digital drool?
In some ways these descriptive titles do help you filter through the quagmire quicker but if everything is reduced to neat little catchy soundbites, surely it levels the playing field and we are back to square one?
One solution being adopted by many, including myself, is to simultaneously consume as much as possible in an effort to get through it quicker. Read one thing whilst looking at another whilst listening to something else. But as anyone who has tried to have a conversation with a texter will confirm, people’s ability to multi-task has been greatly exaggerated. You can do multiple things at once but you will do them all slightly worse than if you had done them separately. You will also do them slower so you’re not really even saving any time…you’re just giving less attention to everything.
Due to the insane volume of material being spat at us daily, we are all just trying to get through it as quickly as possible, but is anything actually going in or being remembered? If you ask someone these days if they read/saw something they will invariably tell you “I skimmed it..I started it, I got the gist”.
We have all adopted a policy of zig zag reading, picking up just enough info to move on but its not like we’re ever going to get through it all so why attempt an impossible task in the first place?
I should probably actually stop writing as undoubtedly most of you have already moved on..looking at the analytics for my website I can see that 92% of all viewers look at it for 0-38 seconds which has most definitely passed. The 8% of you possibly still with me might agree 38 seconds isn’t really long enough to consume anything.
At first it was a little demoralising to know the bulk of my viewers weren’t staying long enough to register anything. And then I found it kind of liberating. You really don’t have to fret bout what you are saying as there is a very high chance no-one is reading it anyway. I have recently joined the world of twitter and never has so much been simultanously presented and ignored in the history of communication. Its like being in a room full of coke heads..everyone’s talking but no-one’s listening.
One of the reasons we don’t have time to absorb anyone else’s output is that we are possibly all far too busy with our own..we are inundated with content but our gaze is invariably inward, checking our stats, monitoring our mentions, loving our likes..digital platforms have made us stars of our own shows…it can become compelling, addictive, all-consuming but we must remember to go beyond the confines of our own mini digital universes, to use the phenomenal resource that is the world wide web to expand our knowledge and not just our egos.
The internet has proved that everyone has a point and a perspective and we are all desperate to get them across any way we can but everyone else is too busy doing the same so where does that all leave us? 6 Billion voices all screaming “listen at me!”.
I have even found this need to speak rather than listen has begun to dominate real conversation, not just cyber communication. It used to be the height of bad manners to interrupt someone but now that seems to be par for the course. Why wait for your turn when you can just steam roller over someone else’s chat? It seems to have become strangely acceptable to jump in at any point. Why wait till someone has finished? Its not like anyone’s actually paying attention…we’re all just trying to think of what to say next. Conversation has become strangely competitive. Rather than an exchange of information it seems like we are all in a constant fight for the podium.
The ability to listen seems to be rapidly diminishing along with our other neuro-skills previously mentioned so maybe human mental devolution is really happening. Planet stupid has officially arrived. Chris Morris’s eerily prophetic series Nathan Barley warned us of “The Rise of The Idiots” and it really feels that time is now upon us. We have all become Nathan Barley…now, that’s fucking scary. (see it if you haven’t).
Einstein (great with equations and quotes) described creativity as “intelligence having fun” and with a general drop in the intelligence bit all that’s left is plain dumb fun. And even without the dumbing down its still just humans using their brains to amuse themselves and hopefully others. Maybe, possibly, just a thought, we should all be doing something more constructive with our time…there do appear to be a few things that need dealing with…just this one more blog then I’m done…and you should maybe get on too..stop wasting your time reading what I have to say, but chances are you’ve already gone..my 38 seconds are most definitely up.
..hello? Anybody still there?
Babycakes Romero
Where’s Wei Wei?
In a world of fancy it was way up there. The worlds of art, fame, glamour and vast wealth had turned up to pay their respects to this year’s Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, created by Al Wei wei, Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron. It was a big doo and never before had I seen quite such a glitzy and more visually interesting collection of glammed up people.
It did strike me as strange that art, which is supposed to be about depth and meaning attracts such a seemingly artificial and vacuous crowd. All eyes were on everyone else rather than the quite spectacular construction they were supposedly here to view.
Al Wei Wei is just “so hot right now” he had attracted the cream of the cream of all the highest eshcalons of life.
What was I doing there? I have a very cool girlfriend who has a very cool job and takes me to all the best doos that I have absolutely no business being at. I’m an official plus one and proud of it. Maybe one day I will actually be invited to a posh event myself but I’m not holding my breath and I kind of like being a plus 1..it feels like your gatecrashing somewhere you shouldn’t be and that’s quite appealing. And if ever there was a doo to go to, it was this one. …No. 1, Shi Shi Street, Swanksville U.K
I have always found art openings weird as they are always the least contusive environment to absorbing and appreciating the work on display. Too many people, too much noise. But it was a top notch party, so who cares right? I mean, if one of the artists can’t even be bothered to show up, does it really deserve our attention?
I am clearly making light of an artist’s epic struggle against an oppressive regime who are trying to suppress his work and freedom as much as is humanely possible and even though they have succeeded in the latter they are constantly being trounced on the former with this current collaboration being done entirely on skype. However, even if he could have made it to his own opening he might have seemed strangely incongruous amidst the glamorous crowd that had gathered supposedly in his honour, although did momentarily freak out when I almost thought I clocked him!
As everyone crooked their necks trying to catch glimpses of the most flamboyant or fame drenched individuals I did occasionally point and exclaim..No way way! Its Al Wei Wei!” and thus providing endless amounts of hilarity. I did also try to get the glitzy guests to raise their glasses to toast the absentee creator, which, although obliged, was met with a strange reticence, as if it was inappropriate to mention him or maybe they had just forgot what the fuck they were doing there. Based on the surrounding chat it did seem highly possibly that they didn’t even know why they were there in the first place.
The pavillion construction itself is stunning. From the inside, its like being inside a super cool Bond villain’s lair. The cork feels soft and smells delectable and the reflective water roof is pure brilliance. The overall effect is arresting but had anyone noticed? There was a very brief splash of rain and everyone ran into the pavillion for cover but rather than use the moment to have a closer look at the stunning architecture they used the opportunity to have a closer gawp at those surrounding them, ourselves included.
Were we here to view art or to view the guests? Everyone I spoke to seemed to comment on how fantastically upmarket everyone was but like the way people discuss traffic, failed to include themselves as being part of it. As we were all squinting trying to recognise the A listers surrounding us, it was highly possible, however unlikely, that other guests were doing exactly the same to us. We had made it to the top of the social strata and were rubbing shoulders with the beautiful people..well..sort of…
These people were not my world but they were absolutely brilliant to look at and it was quite apparent from the outfits on offer, that was what they wanted you to do and everyone was happy to oblige. They had clearly spent hours, possibly days getting ready and it would have been an insult to their hard efforts not to gawp at least a little bit. There was this strange feeling you were in a scene from a film and each person had been cast to create the ultimate posh art crowd.
Expensive cloth hung loosely on thin frames. Spiked heels you could kill with. Perfecto hairdos. Surgery enhanced cleavages. The women were clearly in competition for attention. But if you add up all the size zeros..do you still get zero? Its like the sound of one hand clapping…discuss.
The female guests did seem to be trying to win an unwinnable war, flaunting their wares whist hiding their insecurities. The male guests by contrast all seemed to delighted with themselves and appeared utterly convinced of their own superiority in comparison to those surrounding them.
And once again, all focus drifted away from the art as our attention was held by the other attendees. I don’t think I have ever seen a group of people who were so clearly dripping in cash. But this is what the art world is attracting. It has become such a major commodity it is now firmly entrenched in the arena of the stupidly wealthy who buy art because they know it will be a good investment but also because they are the only ones who can afford it.
The problem was it was just too good a party in too great a location and on too beautiful an evening. The event itself had overshadowed what it was actually an event for. Whoever was behind this had clearly decided they were going to go all out and put on a proper shindig. Everything was high end, top of the range..the greatest money could buy..but who was paying? And why commemorate art with such lavishness? Was it not contradictory to the intended meaning?
The consumables. for example were off the chart. I’m no foodie but the canapés were jaw-droppingly delicious…each one was indeed like a party in my mouth and all my tastebuds were invited. It was without a doubt the best tasting food I had ever had. And then there were the raspberry cocktails and the rhubarb vodka and the night got warmer and warmer and the reflection in the water got sharper and sharper and everyone got a little giddy and then Azeylia Banks came on dressed like a butterfly and then it really all kicked off.
Azeylia Banks is so hot right now (almost as hot as Al Wei Wei..and Hansel) and there she was in front of us…rockin out to a shi-shi art crowd who possibly had no clue who she was. But I did. I danced my socks off and watched as she transferred people’s marching powder from their lips firmly into their feet. I had a great bop to her set but I was really waiting for just one track..212..the greatest kick ass dance tune in a long, looong time. And it didn’t disappoint. As I bounced up and down to one of my favourite songs in the balmy summer’s night surrounded by such an incredible location I made a mental note to store this moment…its what Al would have wanted.
I had barely got over the excitement of Banks playing when 2manydjs hit the decks and transformed this, uptil then, fairly sedate doo into a full blown party. Their set seemed to coincide perfectly with most of the crowd’s inebriation. They had served up enough free flowing booze for the guests to drown themselves in and there was suddenly a packed dance floor and people were shaking their thing with an instant loss of interest in their previously meticulously maintained poise and appearance.
Many of the female guests who only hours ago had commanded such grace and glamour were now dragging their outlandishly expensive frocks around with carefree abandon, throwing themselves around as if they were in the mosh pit.
The remaining crowd were quite clearly all smashed but alcohol giveth but it also taketh away. It instills a greater confidence in one’s skill set whilst simultaneously diminishing said skills. Needless to say it got a bit messy.
A couple of overly-enthusiastic blonds clambered up and managed to get on top of the pavilion itself and started splashing around as if they were toddlers in a paddling pool. The drunk crowd cheered and egged them on. The security eventually got them down..its what Al would have wanted.
Soon it was all over but what a blast it had been. It was definitely the swankiest shi shi doo I had ever been to but if you took a moment to think about the dosh that had been spent on this one little shindig you would have choked on your potted calamari. The only double dip this lot would be experiencing would be if someone thrust their asparagus tip back into the garlic mayonaise!
It also seemed sad that the occasion had been lost in the occasion. It was probably best that Al hadn’t been able to make it. I don’t know him per say but it didn’t really look like his sort of thing. This is after all a man who grew up in a cave…a far cry from the luxury abodes the crowd he had attracted were returning to.
What’s the point of art? To try and bring sense and meaning to the insanity and triviality of our lives..and whilst I had enjoyed myself no end I did leave feeling that the paradoxes of the night’s proceedings made life feel both more trivial and more insane…now if I could taste just one more of the watermelon sushi everything would make sense…
Addicted to Google Earth
I am in my flat. Everything I need to do still needs to be done. My mind is whirring. I have emails to write, bills to pay, friendships to water, work to fret about. Life goals are looming. I can hear the relentless traffic chugging past. This city is too crowded. It is bulging at the seams.
My worries are large. Incessant. Overwhelming. They bind themselves together, morphing into a one big bastard blob. I am suffocating. I need to escape. It is just a few clicks away…OPEN WINDOW.
I am a thousand feet up, floating above my flat. I have broken out of my prison cell, smashed through the walls that encase me. I look down at the building where me and my bastard blob live. It looks tiny. My street is toy town with matchbox cars. I am no longer in ear shot of my mobile phone or my email notifications. I can breathe again.
As I reverse into the sky my inner world starts to disappear as the one around me starts to reveal itself. On the ground you feel boxed in by the concrete surrounding you. In the air you can see why. We live in a maze of our own making.
I am no longer trapped inside my own head. The mental whirring is slowing. I am not looking in. I am looking out. I can see my neighbourhood. I think about all the people living down there in their little boxes the same as me. My worries are already fading. I no longer feel angry.
The din of London is disappearing. The engines, the sirens, the alarms, the voices..all that noise has gone quiet. It is blissful.
A city crammed full of millions of people and I can’t see one of them. Their moans are out of ear shot. Their attitude absent. They are no longer in my face. They have vanished.
One of the busiest cities on Earth now feels still, lifeless. On the ground it never stops. Up here it is motionless. Down there the buildings dwarf you. They enclose you and darken you with their shadows. But from here they are flat, grey, unthreatening.
I can see the edges of a city that never ends. I can see over the prison walls and across to free land. I can see the green growth surrounding my concrete pen. Pushed back by man, but lurking, waiting. Ready to reclaim the land at any given moment.
I see the coast for the first time. I can see the water surrounding our country. I live on an island? Why is that so easy to forget?
The insular perspective of my nationality collapses off the coast, drowning in the surrounding water. There is more. So much more…
…a whole continent emerges, that we are both part of and separated from. Our isolation seems more apparent.
Britain looks small. Insignificant. I can’t hear or see any of its 60 million inhabitants. I am miles in the air. I see a landmass defined by borders that aren’t really there. I feel the flatness disappear as the curvature of the giant sphere I live on starts to reveal itself…
My first glimpse of space. It takes my breath away. It is glorious.
I am floating above the Blue Marble. I am Superman. I am Neo. I look down at my home planet with ethereal ambivalence.
Every scream, every phone ring, every car horn..every noise across the entire planet and nothing but silence. Absolute peace. It is magnificent.
My entire world looks small. I don’t even remember who I am. My problems are non-existent. Even the realisation of my own insignificance is lost in the mass of nothingness that engulfs our minscule planet.
I live on a giant orb locked in a loop around the sun. It is massive and hurtles through space at a vast speed. I MUST not forget this!
On the ground there is no room to move. Out here there is just empty space. Down there is life. Out here is nothingness. I would choke to death in a second. This is no place to live….CLOSE WINDOW.
I am back in my flat. Staring at my computer screen. My thoughts return but I am calmer. More at ease. I can carry on with my day. I wish I could feel the movement of the Earth underneath my feet. Then I would remember where I was and what I was on. I will try to keep this perspective but I know it won’t last long. The whirring will inevitably return..
Reflections of a Technicality – Legal Weed World
I have just come back from California where you can walk in off the street straight into a Kush Doctor’s clinic and as long as you are a Californian resident and can site pretty much any medical condition going they will give you a medical marijuana card for $40. With this card it is state legal to buy, grow and consume marijuana for medicinal purposes, supposedly in order to help alleviate the physical symptoms of said condition.
So if you have pain it is ok to consume, but if you don’t it isn’t. I had to question why suffering was necessary to make it acceptable? Why was an unpleasant physical sensation the difference in making something illegal or not? The effects of the drug are the same as they always were, its just now they’re “tolerated” as side effects to pain relief rather than the main attraction. Allegedly.
The marijuana dispensaries have such innocuous names such as “The California Herbal Relief Center Compassionate Care” and you must always refer to it as medication. But it’s not really medicine, but then neither are any of the prescribed pain killers on the market. A pain killer never cured anyone. They just mask the effects of your condition which remains the same.
How many people use pain relief as a socially acceptable justification for drug consumption (whether it be prescribed pain killers or dispensed marijuana) when in fact it is actually the effect of the drug they are chasing rather than its ability to remove a physical discomfort they already have? In these health obsessed times, pain and suffering have become the only legitimate ticket to indulgence. Even back in Victorian times when you could legally buy heroin and cocaine in Harrods it was still being sold as medication for coughs and colds.
Why is it not acceptable within our society to want the effects just for themselves? Why is that such a terrible thing? For example, which aspect of recreational marijuana use is so offensive its illegality is supported by most of society? Which bit didn’t they approve of? The laughing? The tangential conversations? The unnecessary eating of snacks? Exactly what part of the experience was causing it be viewed as a crime and something that must be stopped?
There are many arguments for and against changing the law on drugs, most of which have been voiced at length from both sides and most of which I won’t go into here for that reason.
The most repeated argument for banning the use of cannabis is that it leads to harder more damaging drugs. For the tiny percentage that do go on to use all-consuming drugs such as heroin and crack illegality is rarely an issue. Those that have a need for oblivion will simply seek out the most potent, effective and available means to get there. The stepping stone(d) is irrelevant.
People also generally choose their poison/potion according to their effect and accessibility rather than their legal status. If you include all dependants of prescription and recreational drugs, alcohol and even junk food, there aren’t that many adults on Earth who aren’t indulging in at least one of them.
But it actually doesn’t matter what people are consuming (illegal or otherwise) because they are all essentially just different routes to the same drug, and that is the one generated inside your body.
All intoxicants serve as no more than to act as catalysts to initiate the deployment of the reward chemical Dopamine into the nervous system. This is, in reality, what everyone is really addicted to and we all just have different methods/substances in order to access it. So does it really matter how you get there?
And is there really any point banning some drugs and not others when they all ultimately send you to the same place? They can’t make dopamine illegal so why block some routes to it when others are always available?
This is why the war on drugs has failed.
Billions spent. Millions incarcerated. Thousands dead. It has all been for nothing. The situation has not changed nor ever will. No matter what they do, it will always exist. People will spend their whole lives searching for a dopamine boost because it is fairly evident we all have a need otherwise we wouldn’t have to seek it out.
We are all Dopamine chasers in some form or another…so what’s the point of suppressing or denying it? Why pretend it will go away when it won’t?
And as the war on drugs has been constantly proven over the last few decades to be utterly futile, why not simply accept failure and try something else? Why indulge a policy that clearly doesn’t, nor will ever work? How many more countless lives have to be ruined and destroyed slavishly following a course of action that has been defined by its inability to have any effect whatsoever other than to make things worse?
Since California has introduced this halfway house legal loophole, drug consumption has not increased and society has not broken down. In contrast their judicial policy over the last decade to incarcerate every druggie they can find, has led to a systematic breakdown of the prison system and brought the state to virtual bankruptcy. Has this hardline approach improved the situation even marginally? No. It has just criminalised people who should never have entered into the prison system in the first place.
Portugal decriminalised all drugs over a decade ago believing it is better to treat than punish. They do not see drug users as criminals to be demonised and incarcerated, and think recreational drug users should be left alone or if they have an addiction should be offered help. It was argued before the implementation of decriminalisation that Portugal would become a drug destination for tourists and drug use would explode among youth. It didn’t. In fact, drug use among adolescents decreased and it has not become the “Club Meth” of Europe. Life strangely carried on just as it did before.
Some of man’s greatest follies have been caused by an inability to deviate from a course of action regardless of its efficacy….
…its time to move forward.