“McQueen: Sartorial Learnings of Kazakhstani Publicity Tart For Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Hoxton” anyone? With his latest take on swimwear, Alexander McQueen seems to be “channeling” Sacha Baron Cohen’s Borat character, offering a version of the audacious “mankini” the comedy actor wore in his movie a couple of years ago.
McQueen’s swimming brief might be a little more subtle than Borat’s but it is just as ridiculous. At least the Kazakstani mankini had a construction designed for practicality; its over-the-shoulder straps providing vital lift and support while ingeniously leaving a great expanse of white flesh completely denuded and ready for painful sunburn.
Unless you are a perfect model size, with torso and legs in a specific proportion, you may have trouble wearing the “McQuini.” Men with long, rangey bodies will find themselves encountering an eye-watering triple wardrobe malfunction of a garroted windpipe, testicular bifurcation and a tan with a stripe down the middle of the chest that will look like a particularly brutal open-heart surgery scar. In hot conditions, it would be possible to un-noose yourself from the collar and let the long tie thing dangle down between your legs, as if doing a schoolboyish elephant impression, but then you’d look even sillier.
More importantly, isn’t the mankini a bit spring/summer 2006, darlings? Hasn’t it passed its sell-by date, along with using the phrase “Jagshemash!” as a greeting? In short, aren’t these disturbing T-bar trunks the sort of thing that Alexander “Lee” McQueen shouldn’t be putting his name to.
Firebox, a Web site that specializes in party costumes, practical jokes and novelties, has been doing officially licensed Borat mankinis (10 percent elastane, 90 percent polyester, one size fits all — Naaice!) at US$19.80 each since November, 2007, and they’ve already sold more than 10,000. “We have been overwhelmed by the response,” says Firebox director Christian Robinson. “We never thought that something so humiliating would prove to be so popular.” Go to the Firebox Web site and you’ll see that lots of satisfied customers have posted up pictures of themselves wearing their mankinis on various raucous evenings out. Here’s Daz and Ben, Kevin and a Yorkshire-man called Rona whose mankini caption reads, “You’re never too old.” Actually, on second thoughts, don’t look at that one.
June 23 to June 29 After capturing the walled city of Hsinchu on June 22, 1895, the Japanese hoped to quickly push south and seize control of Taiwan’s entire west coast — but their advance was stalled for more than a month. Not only did local Hakka fighters continue to cause them headaches, resistance forces even attempted to retake the city three times. “We had planned to occupy Anping (Tainan) and Takao (Kaohsiung) as soon as possible, but ever since we took Hsinchu, nearby bandits proclaiming to be ‘righteous people’ (義民) have been destroying train tracks and electrical cables, and gathering in villages
Swooping low over the banks of a Nile River tributary, an aid flight run by retired American military officers released a stream of food-stuffed sacks over a town emptied by fighting in South Sudan, a country wracked by conflict. Last week’s air drop was the latest in a controversial development — private contracting firms led by former US intelligence officers and military veterans delivering aid to some of the world’s deadliest conflict zones, in operations organized with governments that are combatants in the conflicts. The moves are roiling the global aid community, which warns of a more militarized, politicized and profit-seeking trend
The wide-screen spectacle of Formula One gets a gleaming, rip-roaring workout in Joseph Kosinski’s F1, a fine-tuned machine of a movie that, in its most riveting racing scenes, approaches a kind of high-speed splendor. Kosinski, who last endeavored to put moviegoers in the seat of a fighter jet in Top Gun: Maverick, has moved to the open cockpits of Formula One with much the same affection, if not outright need, for speed. A lot of the same team is back. Jerry Bruckheimer produces. Ehren Kruger, a co-writer on Maverick, takes sole credit here. Hans Zimmer, a co-composer previously, supplies the thumping
Dr. Y. Tony Yang, Associate Dean of Health Policy and Population Science at George Washington University, argued last week in a piece for the Taipei Times about former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) leading a student delegation to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) that, “The real question is not whether Ma’s visit helps or hurts Taiwan — it is why Taiwan lacks a sophisticated, multi-track approach to one of the most complex geopolitical relationships in the world” (“Ma’s Visit, DPP’s Blind Spot,” June 18, page 8). Yang contends that the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) has a blind spot: “By treating any
RSS