Antony Hegarty: Dolly horror at the Isis and Mickey Rourke

I plan to see Antony And The Johnsons' Antony Hegarty's The Creek exhibition at the London Isis Gallery: a very good interview in the Independent yesterday alerted me to his artwork and environmental concerns. His Ghost self-portrait reactivates my pediophobia (fear of dolls): it's a Gothic photographic nightmare achieved by projecting an image of his late great-grandmother on to his own face. It would make a great movie poster: all it needs is a movie to back it. I also like Julia's Hand, a photographic study of his mentor Dr Julia Yasuda, described as an intersex person, neither male nor female.

The subject of hands reminds me of Mickey Rourke and his freakishly large ones, on display in the excellent The Wrestler. His fingernails are rudimentary curved claws, white as milk. I know I would never get on with Mickey, just because of his hands.

Oh, here's Antony singing Crazy In Love

'My Low Life encounter with High Life Taki'

A noted Arcatiste writes ...

I've only met Taki once and it wasn't a pleasant experience. I had been invited to the launch of his book, High Life, Low Life, by the publisher Jay Landesman (father of Cosmo), an old friend of mine. Taki marched up to me when I was perusing a copy and snatched it out of my hand and demanded to know who invited me. I think he recognised a Low Life when he saw one - which I was happy to be if he was the other! Veritas.

Martin Amis cock-cunts on 9/11

Martin Amis tells US mag Vice that 9/11 was "masculinity in a whole new form". I suppose the Twin Towers - though architecturally phallic - were in this instance a cunt metaphor degraded by the latest incarnations of cock, a Boeing 767-223ER (North Tower) and a Boeing 767-200 (South Tower). An interesting notion, though I should have thought the masculine destruction of things in war a commonplace: certainly 9/11 provided new visuals, a new scale to urban terrorism, with glamorous New York uncharacteristically cast as victim: but a whole new form beyond the obvious? I'll have to think about that. To me 9/11, beyond the tragedy, was a surprise casting, though in a whole new form from the likes of Matt Smith's for Doctor Who.

Empathy Chic at the Golden Globes

That's what they're calling it: Empathy Chic. That's when a star worth, say $100m, attends a glittery film awards wearing little or no jewellery and eschews the priceless goodybags for fear of failing to demonstrate regard for victims of the economic downturn: a show of solidarity with the paupies. Well, it's the thought that counts.

Anna Wintour: Thin cow to the slaughter?

The beef-chewing scarecrow editor of American Vogue is on her way out, according to recent reports. Various reasons are given for Anna Wintour's expected exit : she's knackered, she's bored, she's past it. The Observer - about a month behind on this one - repeated various cliches about Wintour yesterday: her "bobbed, barbed style", her "draconian" rule, etc. I don't know why writers bother: why not just cut and paste other writers' cut-n-pastes and add a courtesy credit in brackets. It's as if the sheer gravitas of the subject cannot be appreciated without haystacking the auto-repeat adjectives and stories and pretending the piece is a self-contained first.

What must pain Wintour the most is the suggestion that she's not with-it anymore. The moment-royalty of bloggers and other commentators have robbed her stale obita dicta of authority - they arrive weeks or months after ignition in redundant glossy pages. Was it only 20 years ago that she muscled her way to the Vogue editorship to the cry that predecessor Grace Mirabella had been old-fashioned in the face of teensy Elle? The poetic justice of Wintour's situation now is exquisitely perfect and just.

I can scarcely believe the story that Wintour will become a Barack Obama ambassador. What to? The meat industry? Anti-bullying organisations - in North Korea perhaps? Articulacy? Long ago she came to resemble a stiff in a pyramid - let the mummy of fashion catalogues rest in peace.

The News of the World: So, what about Coulson?

The News of the World rightly makes a fuss about Prince Harry using racist terms such as "Paki" and "raghead". It's good to see that a newspaper, whose owner Rupert Murdoch thinks Muslims are "inferior", can rise above proprietorial prejudice and nail a social evil.

Now that it has set such a good example, perhaps it would like to turn its attention to another social evil. The Conservative Party's director of communications, Andy Coulson, was recently found by an employment tribunal to have presided over a "culture of bullying" at his previous place of employment. His conduct made one reporter's life a misery. He has not publicly denied misconduct. To date, no anti-bullying organisation, no periodical that I know of (Private Eye aside), and certainly no Tory, has condemned or questioned his behaviour. Coulson would appear to be inviolable. Is it that bullying is not regarded as serious as racism? Are we picking and choosing social evils according to circulation value?

The fact that Coulson's last job was the editorship of the News of the World shouldn't put the paper off.

Holy Hotties: Now do you believe in God?

I am indebted to one mischievous contributor who, carried away by the religious theme of the post just below, has drawn my attention to a site that showcases the Holy Hotties of the Vatican, click here. Perhaps Il Papa knows something we don't. I'd love to see a nunnish equivalent.

Atheist Bus Campaign: God-lovers come over faint

About 60 people have complained to the ASA about the new Atheist Bus Campaign which tells you: "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life." Some Christians and other monotheists find this statement offensive if only because it's misleading: there's more evidence for God - whichever one we're talking about - through personal experience than not, they say.

Arcatistes will know that I am always amused by the certainties of atheists, such as Christopher Hitchens and so many others (including close friends), but I'm certainly not offended by this campaign's wishful-thinking message. Before Christmas, a humanist on the radio explained that the campaign was designed to reassure people that atheism was respectable now: she claimed that not-believing was still taboo. Really? I should say being religious is taboo in some circles, especially those where literary and philosophical fashion predominates.

What's really happening is that Atheism is itself slowly turning into a religion, as I have explained before. The mistake is to suppose that atheists are unbelievers: but a faith in something need not be of a mystical or supernatural nature. Atheists often believe wholeheartedly in science, in education, money, materialism, intellectualism: they would rather place their faith in empiricism, or what's testable, than in the essential subjectivity of a spiritual belief. The vogue is for a claimed objectivity because personal experience (or testimony) is seen as suspect.

That science is forever correcting itself, and turning theories into faux-facts, is neither here nor there: the altar is ready for service, be worshipful in the presence of Fact. As I have said before, the current cathedral of Atheism is the Large Hadron Collider, presently a little under the weather. But let's wish it well.

If the Bus Campaign comforts a few atheists, then what's the problem? Like the God-lovers, they too need the pastoral care of their priests. Probably.

Taki's Magazine: Despair at Amsterdam's pink ice rinks

The rightwing, 70-something Greek rich boy Taki Theodoracopoulos, whose prejudices are freely displayed in The Spectator each week, has his own online publication, Taki's Magazine. A book advert on the site for Patrick Buchanan's Churchill, Hitler and the Unnecessary War is a clue to the ambient political hue.

Just before Christmas, Flemish journalist Paul Belien wrote a wonderfully unreconstructed piece for Taki on Amsterdam and the "homosexual parody of Christmas" that had descended on the city. The evangelist cock-cunter despaired that the Pink Christmas Festival - with its pink ice rinks and "gay X-mas open-air market” - would become an annual event, a vile slur on the cockless/cunt story of Jeezus.

He feared Amsterdam was turning into the "world’s showpiece of depravity" before blaming Muslim youths (and not Christian) for increasing attacks on gays - if true, we can only hope they're not heartened by Taki's Magazine.

Belien raged at "secularist fundamentalists" who have turned Christmas into "a mockery with two Josephs (or two Marys) amidst pink Christmas trees ... It is time for all men of goodwill to raise their banners and fight: for the family and the right of child (sic) to live and to be raised—like Jesus—by a father and a mother, instead of two fathers or two mothers; for green Christmas trees; for words and concepts like Christmas, bishop, chapel, abbey, monarch and empire; in short, for God, sanity and tradition. "

As I recall, Jesus had two fathers: one in the sky, the other adoptive; Jesus was a feared symbol against empire and priests, and he expressed little interest in royalty. And the call to "fight" sounds suspiciously un-Christian to me. I think Mr Belien and his editor need to have a rethink. Click here to read Belien's piece.

Andy Coulson: Media bullied into silence?

I am delighted to see that Private Eye, the world's second best magazine (there is no first, dearies) , has taken up the cause against Andy Coulson (in its new Jan 9 edition), the bullying former editor of the News of the World who is now the Tories' director of communications (ie spin).

In a previous post I expressed astronishment that the Tories have not invited Coulson to fuck off on the grounds that a future Conservative government might have credibility problems on any bullying policies in retaining his services. Late last year, an employment tribunal found that he had presided over a bullying culture at the newspaper, had waged some sort of vendetta against an unwell sports hack, Matt Driscoll. Coulson didn't turn up to explain himself and media silence followed. So much for concerns about bullying.

The Eye now reveals why. "Tory spinners have been in overdrive since Christmas, warning hacks not to run anything on the damning judgement for fear of antagonising 'the chap who'll run the next government' [Coulson]," the magazine reports. Does this sound like collateral bullying?

It is a disgrace that the Tories and the mainstream media have not made more of this. Is it now the position of the Tory Party that some laws are less important than others? And as the Eye reminds us, the liars and dolts of the News of the World only recently championed an anti-bullying campaign in schools. Of course there are those who do not take bullying seriously for fear of being viewed weak: when I contacted Guido Fawkes about this before Christmas, all that clot could say was that he had been a bully at school and made light of the matter. He thought I was a "snitch".

I also contacted a number of UK anti-bullying organisations: not one has yet responded, though the Christmas hols may account for that. I will continue to draw attention to this case - and of course we await news of the compensation to be awarded to Driscoll.

Doctor Who: Tall, white man gets the part. Again

But I'm sure Matt Smith has the right hair for it.

And Scorpios are good at keeping secrets.

He adores Radiohead, piano music and the poetry of Carol Ann Duffy.

Here's a part of her poem Valentine

I give you an onion.
Its fierce kiss will stay on your lips,
possessive and faithful
as we are,
for as long as we are.

Take it.
Its platinum loops shrink to a wedding-ring,
if you like.
Lethal.
Its scent will cling to your fingers,
cling to your knife.
Click here for the poem.

Andrew Pierce stumbles over Lee's knighthood

The Telegraph's royal editor Andrew Pierce is pleased Bruce Forsyth didn't get a knighthood. He writes: "The sole reason the absurd public campaign was launched to knight Brucie, seemed to be the fact he was still going strong on the small screen at the age of 80. Ridiculous. What about Sir Christopher Lee who, at 86, is still in huge demand as an actor?" Christopher Lee is not a Sir, only a CBE. If Andrew is jesting, I see no hint of it.

"Forsyth is past it," adds Andrew. "He stumbles over his lines, he can't dance, and his pitiful jokes meander on longer than the lines on his face." I hadn't realised that knighthoods are given as a reward for staying lucid in old age: that must explain why the 30-something cyclist Chris Hoy is now a Sir: these sportsmen do age rapidly, don't they?

But look who's talking. Last time I saw Andrew, in The Green Carnation gay club in Greek Street, laughing along to porno jokes by author Rupert Smith, I was struck by the extent of the Martian-like canali beds on his face. And it's not Brucie who stumbles over his facts on celebrity knighthoods: you somehow expect better of a professional royal gossip. Especially one with such a bitch reputation.