The Stranger Blogs

Children.Love.Adults.Poison

2011-04-26T16:29:00.000-07:00

Actual children’s answers to the question “What is love?”

“Baby don’t hurt me; don’t hurt me, no more.” - Gary, 7

“Love is when you go out to eat and give somebody most of your French fries without making them give you any of theirs.” - Chrissy, age 6

“Love is what makes you smile when you’re tired.” - Terri, age 4

“Love is when my mommy makes coffee for my daddy and she takes a sip before giving it to him, to make sure the taste is OK.” - Danny, age 7

“Love is when you kiss all the time. Then when you get tired of kissing, you still want to be together and you talk more. My Mommy and Daddy are like that. They look gross when they kiss.” - Emily, age 8

“Love is what’s in the room with you at Christmas if you stop opening presents and listen.” - Bobby, age 7

“If you want to learn to love better, you should start with a friend who you hate,” - Nikka, age 6

“Love is when you tell a guy you like his shirt, then he wears it everyday.” - Noelle, age 7

“Love is like a little old woman and a little old man who are still friends even after they know each other so well.” - Tommy, age 6

“During my piano recital, I was on a stage and I was scared. I looked at all the people watching me and saw my daddy waving and smiling. He was the only one doing that. I wasn’t scared anymore.” - Cindy, age 8

“My mommy loves me more than anybody. You don’t see anyone else kissing me to sleep at night.” - Clare, age 6

“Love is when Mommy gives Daddy the best piece of chicken.” - Elaine, age 5

“Love is when Mommy sees Daddy smelly and sweaty and still says he is handsomer than Brad Pitt.” - Chris, age 7

“Love is when your puppy licks your face even after you left him alone all day.” - Mary Ann, age 4

“I know my older sister loves me because she gives me all her old clothes and has to go out and buy new ones.” - Lauren, age 4

“When my grandmother got arthritis, she couldn’t bend over and paint her toenails anymore. So my grandfather does it for her all the time, even when his hands got arthritis too. That’s love.” - Rebecca, age 8

“When you love somebody, your eyelashes go up and down and little stars come out of you.” - Karen, age 7

“You really shouldn’t say ‘I love you’ unless you mean it. But if you mean it, you should say it a lot. People forget.” - Jessica, age 8

The oldest child here is 8 years old. Then...

Everyone is someone's child. YOU will ALWAYS be a child.

NEVER... EVER... EVER! GROW UP

Style Icon: Johnny Lazer

2011-04-09T15:56:00.000-07:00

SEX SELLS NOTHING

2011-03-03T20:01:00.000-08:00

And in a consumerist world, the question arises:

Why?

or

Why not?

Given the choice to sell yourself or sell a man-made product, it can go both ways. It's obvious which has higher worth, so the argument arises:

If you have to sell something to survive, at least sex is a real human need, not a product fed to us through clever marketing.

But as Janne Teller's book Nothing suggests:

"If that pile of garbage meant anything at all, it stopped the day you sold it for money."

In world where absolutely anything can be bought for money - even love with careful psychological manipulation, as hard as that is to believe (ie. using money to become the 'protector' role in somebody's life - which can scientifically alter their brain to love you) - you have to ask yourself:

What matters?

From the book cover:

"Nothing matters."

"From the moment you are born, you start to die."

"The Earth is 4.6 billion years old. You'll live to be a maximum of one hundred. Life isn't worth the bother!"

So says Pierre Anthon when he decides that there is no meaning to life, leaves the classroom, climbs a plum tree, and stays there.

His friends and classmates cannot get him to come down, not even by pelting him with rocks. So to prove to him that there is a meaning to life, they set out to build a heap of meaning in an abandoned sawmill.

But it soon becomes obvious that each person cannot give up what is most meaningful, so they begin to decide for one another what the others must give up. The pile is started with a lifetime's collection of Dungeons & Dragons books, a fishing rod, a pair of green sandals, a pet hamster - but then, as each demand becomes more extreme, things start taking a very morbid twist, and the kids become ever more desperate to get Pierre Anthon down. And what if, after all these sacrifices, the pile is not meaningful enough?

Isolation in company

2011-02-23T18:27:00.000-08:00

"The Nighthawks"

This is the story of contemporary life.

At first glance it may appear to look like a melancholic painting of a man sitting on his own in a diner. But now mention the word 'tension' and everything changes.

Anything you want to know about anything can be seen in anything if you listen.

Style Icon: Jared Leto

2011-02-21T13:25:00.000-08:00

More: http://www.polyvore.com/jared_leto/celebrity?celebrity=Jared+Leto

OOTD Preview: Eden (1)

2011-02-18T10:16:00.000-08:00

Today, Mark and I were styling for the next Outfit Of The Day video — working title 'Eden'.

The jeans and shoes will most likely go... I left the real ones at home by mistake!!

We have a lot of work to do for this one as there is also a beautiful top UK dancer lending her talents...

More soon!

Happy M%@&RFU£&%G Valentine's Day!

2011-02-14T10:45:00.000-08:00

Outfit Of The Day:

Eternal

Styling: Robert Dean, Mark Willemite
Art direction: Mark Willemite
Music: Bailey Tzuke - I'm Your Friend

In order of appearance:
Butler & Wilson bracelet - £38
Emporio Armani briefs - £20
Vintage wool socks
Cheap Monday skinny jeans - £40
AllSaints military boots - £150
Equi-Theme women's shirt - £25
Vintage backless waistcoat (black)
Vintage backless waistcoat (white)
Vintage cravat
Vatican City necklace - £90
Vintage Italian belt
Vintage tailcoat - £150
TK Maxx belt - £5
Love - £0

Embellishments:
Vintage backless waistcoat (black) - custom buttons
Vintage tailcoat - custom buttons, tassles hanging from one of the buttons, old currency and crucifix sewn onto the lapels, Macclesfield silk in the pocket

The Making Of:

A special thank you to Bailey Tzuke (you may know her from Freemasons' hit dance track 'Uninvited') for allowing me to use her beautiful song 'I'm Your Friend' for this video. If you like it, please support her and buy it from the iTunes store: http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/laid...

From Bailey: Your video is really beautiful I'm so happy you used my song. Happy Valentines day xx

OOTD Teaser: Eternal

2011-02-11T14:10:00.000-08:00

Eternal OOTD coming Valentine's Day 2011

Outfit previews (1)

2011-02-05T20:04:00.000-08:00

As you may know, I am now (casually) working with another stylist and art director on the next few upcoming OOTD/OOTN videos. Below are some previews of possible outfits you may be seeing soon. Any pics showing the full outfit have had the colours/quality edited so they are not 100% clear.

(What would be the fun in seeing HQ pics of the outfits before the videos?!)

1

We are currently just testing the waters working together and seeing how things go. So far I am loving everything and it seems like a match made in heaven. I'm really hoping it keeps going as well as it has been and we will end up committing.

I hold Mark in such high regards. I have so much respect for him, not only for his talent but just as a person, which to me, is the rarest and best thing you can ever ask to find in life: great people.

We are also considering storylines as well as combining other art forms (such as dancers) into the videos but it just depends on so many things...

Fingers crossed everybody!!!!

Born young. Live young. Die young.

2011-02-01T16:37:00.000-08:00

Unofficial video performed by a very beautiful little person

Sia - I'm In Here

I'm in here, can anybody see me?
Can anybody help?

I'm in here, a prisoner of history,
Can anybody help?

Can't you hear my call?
Are you coming to get me now?
I've been waiting for
You to come rescue me.
I need you to hold
All of the sadness I cannot
Live with inside of me.

I'm in here, I'm trying to tell you something,
Can anybody help?

I'm in here, I'm calling out but you can't hear,
Can anybody help?

Can't you hear my call?
Are you coming to get me now?
I've been waiting for
You to come rescue me.
I need you to hold
All of the sadness I cannot
Live with inside of me.

I'm crying out, I'm breaking down,
I am fearing it all,
Stuck inside these walls,
Tell me there is hope for me
Is anybody out there listening?

Can't you hear my call?
Are you coming to get me now?
I've been waiting for
You to come rescue me.
I need you to hold
All of the sadness I cannot
Live with inside of me.

Can't you hear my call?
Are you coming to get me now?
I've been waiting for
You to come rescue me.
I need you to hold
All of the sadness I cannot
Live with inside of me.

I'm in here, can anybody see me?
Can anybody help?

Fuck growing up.

Shitty little town

2011-01-20T10:09:00.000-08:00

(Click to enlarge)

I'm not feeling too good the past few days. This shitty little town and the shitty little people in it are bothering me. There is nothing to do and nobody to do it with. The people here are bland and uninspiring. Today I took some photos of Stacey who is about the only other person here who isn't crazy and happy living a pointless mundane existence of consumerism and conformity. We would have done something else, but alas, there is nothing here. Yes, there's always something, like taking photos for example, but the opportunities are exhausted. We live in the middle of freakin' nowhere. Where are our potential friends? I don't even like anyone! Even the photos are taken in my room, like everything else you see from me. Always in the room. This room should have its own freaking website. Fuck this shitty little town to non-existent hell. One day I will escape.

PS: You'll see that corset in an upcoming OOTN video.

She's wearing:

My Zara women's shirt
Agent Provocateur corset + whatever the panties are called, I could care less at the moment
Vintage thigh-high black socks

Dance like nobody is watching

2011-01-10T02:00:00.000-08:00

He does with her all he wants.

Mountain Horse

2010-12-23T12:29:00.000-08:00

Beautiful Stacey... (click to enlarge)

Mountain Horse gloves - £20

So happy to have found these today! I love mixing harder materials like leather with cotton and wool and these gloves achieve it PERFECTLY!

What I'm wearing:

Topman denim shirts & hoodie

Cheap Monday jeans

In Sleep

2010-12-19T02:54:00.000-08:00

What amounts to a dream anymore?

A crude device; A veil on our eyes
A simple plan we'd be different from the rest and never resign to a typical life
Common fears start to multiply
We realize we're paralyzed
Where'd it go, All that precious time?
Did we even try to stem the tide?
Why should we waste it on buying into the same old lies?
The longer we wait around the faster the years go by
It's not too late to feel a little more alive

NTIHGEHDTRMEAARME

It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything.

I wear what I feel what I listen to (2)

2010-12-15T08:30:00.000-08:00

What makes something real?

Is there a definitive checkbox of rules to confirm it, or is something only real if you believe it?

If your lover told you that they have never cheated on you and you believe it, it makes it real to you. Whether they did or not is another question. The same way that if somebody told you there is a god watching over you and there will be a heaven you go to when you die, and you believe it, it will become your reality. Whether this is bullshit or not is irrelevant.

If truth != reality, then what does? Belief cannot = reality since belief is hope, and hope is a beautiful lie you convince yourself that one day will become true, so we know that lie != reality, that much is obvious. So, if truth and lie != reality then wtf does? If you know then feel free to tweet me your answer because nothing is real to me anymore.

(And this isn't no Inception crap. But that movie coming out really did send me over the edge a bit because so many things I said were quoted word for word in that movie.)

I linger in the doorway

An alarm clock screaming,

Monsters calling my name.

Let me stay where the wind will whisper to me,

Where the raindrops - as they're falling - tell a story.

In my field of paper flowers,

And candy clouds of lullaby

I lie inside myself for hours,

And watch my purple sky fly over me.

Don't say I'm out of touch

With this rampant chaos - your reality.

I know well what lies beyond my sleeping refuge.

The nightmare

I built my own world to escape.

Swallowed up in the sound of my screaming.

Cannot cease for the fear of silent nights.

Oh! How I long for the deep-sleep dreaming

The Goddess of imaginary light.

Evanescence - Imaginary

Topman shirt

Vintage head scarf (tied around shirt collar)

Unknown necklace (wrapped around head scarf)

I wear what I feel what I listen to (1)

2010-12-12T00:48:00.000-08:00

The heart is a bloom, shoots up through the stony ground

There's no room, no space to rent in this town

You're out of luck and the reason that you had to care

The traffic is stuck and you're not moving anywhere

You thought you'd found a friend to take you out of this place

Someone you could lend a hand in return for grace

You're on the road but you've got no destination

You're in the mud, in the maze of her imagination

You love this town even if that doesn't ring true

You've been all over and it's been all over you

See the world in green and blue

See China right in front of you

See the canyons broken by cloud

See the tuna fleets clearing the sea out

See the Bedouin fires at night

See the oil fields at first light

And see the bird with a leaf in her mouth

After the flood all the colors came out

What you don't have you don't need it now

What you don't know you can feel it somehow

What you don't have you don't need it now

Don't need it now

It was a beautiful day

Don't let it get away

Beautiful day

U2 - Beautiful Day

Vintage 26" waist corset (around neck)
Topman black vest
Vintage womens blue waistcoat
Vintage leather bag strap (over shoulder)
Claire's Accessories gold necklace (around bag strap)
Gym weight-lifting fingerless glove
Cheap Monday jeans
Diesel belt (around left leg)
AllSaints boots

Les Paul guitar

La Soirée

2010-12-02T16:08:00.000-08:00

If you follow me on Twitter you'll know a few nights back I went to La Soirée for my friend's birthday - a circus burlesque cross cabaret show now on in London @ Southbank. They didn't allow us to take photos inside but we managed to snap one of the birthday girl and myself before we got shouted at:

They literally flew at us like flies. Guess it's cause the flashes might put the performers off and end up killing them? Iunno. Death by flash photography. That's a new one. I took my photography camera and everything and everybody knows how much I love to be the bad boy and break all the rules, but I kind of draw the line at breaking rules which end up getting people killed, especially incredibly talented inspiring (& HOT!) people!

The show was absolutely incredible. Here were the 2 highlights for me:

David O'mer's aerial straps act. He didn't actually do much in terms of the straps but it was more the art & routine (which he nailed with the music, all the hits were spot on) behind the performance, and I've been looking at straps for about 6 months for myself to train (which I have now started after seeing it live) so maybe I'm a little biased (plus he has an amazing body and face) but who cares. Was amazing. Nuff said!

Hamish McCann from the English Gents also did a solo pole act which was so inspiring and beautiful. It's the same act as the video below except they've now changed the pole into a lamp post, so it was extra magical and classy. This was easily the standout performance of the night. He makes it look so fucking easy and effortless. I want to learn this too! I have since tried some basics, and let me tell you: good luck. The gym is a walk in the park compared to gymnastics that's for sure.

If you're around London GO SEE IT while it's still on. If you're not in UK, I believe they are taking the show oversees early 2011. Not sure if it's to Europe or USA first but Google is your friend.

www.La-Soiree.com

Once Around The Sun

2010-11-30T08:56:00.000-08:00

The first day of snow has arrived along with the affirmation that it is winter and another year really has gone by.

So much can change in a year. Everything you thought you would be, everything you thought you would do, it can all change in a single moment, a single sentence spoken and you alone are then left to pick up the pieces of what you thought was life.

I used to think time was relative, in the sense that its value is determined by your mood rather than being absolute. So if you're watching the clock, an hour can feel like an eternity, but when having the time of your life an hour can seem like a minute. I no longer have this opinion. That seems quite an arrogant, egotistical view of nature. As much as we would like to think we control the universe and every dimension in it, we do not.

This year was the longest year of my life while taking place. From last November to about mid-way through 2010 all I did was sit in my room and cry uncontrollably with no desire to go on. It was the slowest most painful experience of my life thus far. I don't remember much of the feeling because now it seems to have been blocked out, as if it were some kind of dream, but I have some evidence that reminds me it really was real. I remember trying to make seconds pass by counting words on pages, I would count every word throughout an entire magazine just to make time continue because it felt like it had stopped.

And now it's winter again.

It feels like I have blinked my eyes and all 23 years of my life have gone by in a moment.

Time really waits for no one. I imagine I will close my eyes and open them only to find I am now writing something about winter 2011.

It is really best not to plan. I have no desire for a career anymore or anything like that. I want only to float along, carried by the wind from one experience to the next and live in the present moment, because it really does escape us every second, and every second we are closer to death. And I am afraid to die.

Another day in the life

2010-11-28T10:51:00.001-08:00

Dear Book, this is
another day in the life.

A life is like a book.
A book is like a box.

A box has six sides,
inside and outside.

So how do you get
to what's inside?

How do you get
what's inside out?

Once upon a time,
there was a very pretty girl...

who lived in a beautiful box
and everybody loved her.

Once upon a time...

in a kingdom far, far away...

there lived a young girl...

whose hair was made of gold.

When the people
in the village saw her, they said...

"Oh, how beautiful she is."

And she went to live
in a beautiful house...

But the people in the village
were very poor...

and every night, they crept
into the house where the girl slept...

and they cut off a piece
of her golden hair...

and they sold it for money.

"She'll never even notice,"
they said.

And so, all the gold
was gone from her head.

And the people said...

"Oh, she's not beautiful at all."

And they took her from
the beautiful house...

and they drove her
into the street.

And she went away...

and she never came back.

And soon,
people became hungry again...

and they went back into
the beautiful house...

looking for gold,
but there was no one there.

Ain't no party like a McDonald's party

2010-11-24T19:02:00.000-08:00

What do you do when your friend is supposed to be housesitting for somebody and looking after their cat?

FUCK THE CAT!

AND THE HOUSE!

AND GO PARTY INSTEAD!

OBVZ!

Except the place we went to was shit and there was nobody there except one cool chick we know who I photographed above wearing an amazing necklace from Primarni (Primark - the cheapo-est of cheapo clothing stores here in England)

So, we took the party to McDonald's instead where we felt they were more ready for our jelly

Just goes to show you: Doesn't matter where you are or what you're doing, as long as you have amazing company you can have the time of your life just harassing employees and shoving burgers in/around your face like the chic fashionista you were always born to be.