Monthly Archives: July 2012

Srsly, Signor Seriousimo had better start believing in blogs, and hopefully reading this one soon, so this puppy has a sporting chance of arriving in La Stocking Trivialista around Christmas time.

It’s by Bijoux Heart.  Navy?  Tick.  Long pendant?  Tick.  Overall sparkly?  Tick.  Would a bowerbird love it?  Tick.

Speaking of the bowerbird, look how handsome he is.  As with most men, he looks best in navy.

La Triv makes no apologies for moving in strange tangential directions on this blog.  So…are you ready?  SCREEEEECH — turn coming!  BRACE!

It’s an oft-forgotten fact that HRH The Prince of Wales wore a navy suit, rather than the more traditional black, to Princess Diana’s funeral because she had always said she liked him best in blue because it brought out the colour of his eyes.

La Triv met HRH several times through one of her past Wordporium jobs, and I can absolutely vouch for the fact that he does have the most insanely cornflower blue peepers.  And big farmer sausage fingers that have evidently cut and laid many country fences.

Opinions on him are divided, but there’s no doubting he’s always been a man ahead of his time.  Global warming?  Tick.  Businesses having a sense of social responsibility?  Tick.  Importance of plants and chatting to them?  Tick.  Understanding of other religions, particularly Islam?  Tick.  He was riding these bandwagons, flogging these horses long before any of us was ready to listen.

I know he was mean to Diana, and he should have married Camilla in the first place, but when he went away for a long trip, doing his duty for the country, Camilla went off and married Andrew P-B.

Anyhow — all now seem happy and we’re more aware of the big issues.  It would be perfect if Diana was still with us, fighting it out in the glamour stakes and column inches with her new daughter-in-law.

And Charles was in the Navy.  Say no more on the man.  You know where I stand.

Look at my handsome, thinking youngest bro, L’Auteur.

In birth order terms, L’Auteur followed on the chubby baby heels of Little Miss Moi, who sprang from the loins of Mamma Trivialista just after Le Galloping Gourmand, who followed on from Sport Billy Superdad.  All of them entering the world beneath the formidable shadow of La Trivialista.  And that’s the complete Famiglia Trivialista line-up.

L’Auteur is obviously contemplating something decidedly unTrivial.  (How could that be?  Do we not share any genetic material?  Was Mamma Trivialista messing about with the postman?)  Time to drop him a MySpace  advising him to loosen up, chillax, be less totes hectic and random and more amazeballs.

Speaking of young folk, the latest Famiglia Trivialista-Seriousimo nanny bit the dust last night.  Up to that point, I had been wondering whether her greatest transgression was her inability to edibly roast a spud.

How wrong I was.  In the end, her biggest booboo, the one that done her in, was to cross Signor Seriousimo.  Take Ma Word for it, don’t go there Treeps.  He is a Boss at his work, and takes the management of staffs very, very srsly.  Respect is paramount, as is absence of ‘tudes, texting while caring for the fruits of his loins and sulky teenager-like behaviour on his dime.

Which means that, beneath the dusty rafters of Palazzo Trivialista, we are once more flying by the seat of our trews in terms of childcare.  La Triv’s attendance at The Wordporium is, once again, a day-by-day proposition.

That’s the thing with children:  you don’t want them to grow up, you want them to grow up, you don’t want them to grow up… and on it goes.

The rafters of La Palazzo Trivialista are becoming increasingly dusty, due to the recent nabbing of La Cleana Trivialista, Grah-chay, by the faceless men of Immigration, and her imprisonment in the Gulag (Villawood).

She is much missed at La  Palazzo — and not just because we’re choking on our own detritus.  We wish her well in her new/old life back in the Philippines.  The woman worked seven days a week, and hadn’t seen her son for innumerable years.  She gave Male Junior Cost Centre a toy motorbike one Christmas and alarmed La Triv by mentioning that her husband had a real-life, man-size one just the same.  It looked like this.

That made me worry that Mr Grah-chay was spending the money she was sending home rather than saving it so they could buy a house.  Digits crossed for Grah-chay.

In other news, I love this pic of the gaggle of Apple worker bees huddling for their morning briefing.  What do you think the Genii Team Leader is saying to them?  “Sell sell sell!  I know people say this crap walks out the door on its own, but that’s not true!  People are cottoning on to Samsung and HTC!  We need to keep those underage Chinese workers with the tiny fingers busy busy busy.  Now GET FLOGGING!!!”

(Keen readers may observe La Triv has begun to tilt-shift the crap out of los picturos.  Some might even theorise that this is to compensate for less-than-stellar photog skills.  That theory may or may not reflect the underlying truth.)

On a more serious note, La Triv loves a bit of navy.  Less harsh on the ageing visage than black, smart and evocative of nautical themes.  What’s not to love?  In that spirit, one of the best investments I’ve made in recent months was these:

It’s a universally acknowledged truth that trainers with workwear is a style-free zone.  However, sometimes practicality and bunions dictate that high-high shoes simply cannot be worn from car park / bus stop to The Wordporium.

These navy satin lace-ups from Jigsaw feel like some sort of happy medium.  La Triv Manifesto (sadly, still a work in progress) dictates that if complex financial engineering skills have been deployed to facilitate the purchase of special ladyshoes, said ladyshoes should largely be worn on carpet, with only limited exposure to pavements / cobbles / slates / cement / real life.  These Jiggy puppies fill the gap nicely.

And, in these carbon-taxing times, finally some happy utilities news.

Yes, read and weep — a $44.04 gas bill!!!  That might be due to the fact that the only gas we use beneath the dusty rafters is for cooking on the hob.  But still, we’ll take tiny blessings where we find them.

Ciao for now.

During La Famiglia Trivialista-Seriousimo’s recent unscheduled stopover in La Grande Pomme, we stayed at the quirky spectacle of magnificence that is the Crosby Street Hotel.

Even with sick and jetlagged Junior Cost Centres in tow, it was great.

And the wonderful, if faceless, men of the insurance world have agreed it’s all claimable.  Even better.

While we were there, we bonded with eminent Sydney art personage, Tim Olsen, over breakfast.  Or, more specifically, over Vegemite and its necessity when travelling.  Poor Tim was not well, and was away from his family, whom he missed very much (it was his son’s birthday). He was completely charming, and — even though I’d not had the pleasure of welcoming him into the Triv Inner Circle earlier — it was lovely to chat to a semi-familiar face.  He also shared a great story about meeting Paloma Picasso.  I was in my happy place.

He reminded me his sister “has a shop around the corner” in New York’s SoHo.  His sister is no less than an Australian Design Genius, one of the founders of a Triv all-time fave, Dinosaur Designs. (Happy, happy was the Christmas past when Seriousimo waltzed into their Strand Arcade boîte, pointed to a mannequin sporting three examples of Dino neckwear magnificence and declared, “I’ll take the lot.”  Pour moi.)

During our meeting, I was happy to inform Tim I had bought this painting a few years ago from his gallery, by the immensely talented Fiona Greenhill.

It hangs beneath the dusty rafters of Palazzo Trivialista, and we love it.

Hopefully future Triv financial engineering efforts will result in more lovelies being transferred from the space beneath Tim’s dusty rafters to the space beneath mine.

This is probably the closest we will ever get to Live Blogging here at the Triv Media Control Console.  Watching the opening ceremony of the London Olympics… and it is AWESOME.

Love love LOVED those big-headed punks jumping to the Sex Pistols on the Pistorius springs!

Love love LOVED Rowan Atkinson making faces at poncy Sir Simon Rattle.  (La Triv knows first-hand about his ponciness from a friend who had something to do with his recent visit to Sydney… trust me on this one.)

And particularly loved the teenybopper, highly PC mixed race love story, which culminated in the unveiling of Tim Berners-Lee tapping away at an old-school ‘puter!  Geniale!

And Becks motor-boating down the Thames looking like James Bond — such a classy man (if we set aside the Rebecca Loos episode).

China has sent 14 fewer athletes to the Games than Australia..?  Really?  Does it alarm anyone else that a massive command and control economy that hothouses athletes from birth and to which Australia is little more than a pimple on the proverbial butt has despatched fewer sport billies than us?  Perhaps the Wide Brown Land needs to reassess the seriousness with which it takes its sport?  Ya think?!?

Why is Czech Republic wearing short and highly unflattering wellies? Were they playing against dour Eastern European type and trying to be humorous?

(This is almost as much fun as the annual La Triv Oscar fash dissection.)

Ah, La Belle France e La Bella Italia… chic even in sport billy wear.

Loving the dresses of the girls escorting the gaggles of sport billies into the stadium — La Triv is highly partial to a well-executed digital print.

La Triv has wasted significant amounts of time here at the Triv Media Control Console Googling the work of one very talented little Kiwi, Mr Karl Maughan.

This obsession has been led me to finagling my way onto the email lists of galleries that represent him, both here in the Wide Brown Land and across the ditch in Long White Cloudland.

However, the stumbling block always seems to be the, ooh, $30,000 or so needed to secure a Maughan large enough to cover significant wall acreage.

A lovely woman in La Book Group Trivialista has one of his paintings above her mantel in the sitting room of her house in the Gilded Easterly Suburbs.  This is how Karl and I met.  I had a smoky-eye for him and him alone that night, with nothing left for the heated discussion of The Slap (a book about the corporal punishment meted out by a man to a child not his own, as opposed to a book about make-up).

Anyhow, S, owner of the Maughan and a Kiwi herself, tells me Karl is actually losing his sight.  Which makes me want to shed a tear whenever I think about it (a tear that would doubtless ruin my Slap).

So, for now, as Martin Browne‘s about to unveil a new collection of his works, let’s bask in the beauty and talent that is Mr Maughan, and pray he stays active with the brush until my Babcock & Brown-esque financial engineering skills rustle me up a sweet $30K.

If La Triv’s brain has four orbs, approximately three of them are occupied with thoughts of food, around 90 per cent of the time.  This is a pleasantly diverting use of grey matter, but bad for the waistline and the wardrobe.

Above is The Virtuous — Lentil Soup from the caf below my workplace, The Wordporium (that’s the workplace, not the caf).  I could tell you the name of the caf, but that would be Google-able, and I cannot risk allowing my carefully constructed Trivialista mask of anonymity to slip.  This could encourage stalkers and risk the safety of myself and my family, a la Helen Razer in the late 1990s.  I’m not yet ready to retreat from public life.

There’s something about lentils — they are not at all trivial, so it’s strange that I like them and their odd, soil-like texture.  But I do.  Go fig.

This, on the other hand, is The Vicious.  And very tempting to dive into during the evening telly-watching-couch-flopping period of the day.  Trust me, no person who really cares about you would give you these as a gift.

To absolve myself of dirty evening Favourites behaviour (which I think of as only slightly more acceptable than reading 50 Shades of Grey) I whipped up a restorative lemon toddy with ginger and honey, chiefly for Seriousimo, who was feeling the advent of a pesky man cold.  Poor bunny.

This is a very sharp and shiny lift I walk past on the way home from The Wordporium sometimes.  I’d like to install in beneath the dusty rafters of La Palazzo Trivialista as we have five levels, if you count the garage.

x

It’s being called the Winter of Discontent on the Sydney dining scene, and La Triv is Not Happy.

Do I feel sorry for the proprietors going belly up? Most assuredly. Do I pity all the poor waitspeoples who are now forking each other for a shrinking number of hospitality jobs? Most definitely. But for whom do I feel the sorriest? One word.

Me.

And it all comes down to a muffin.

The Zoloko Chocolate Muffin, to be precise.

It was muffinistic perfection, the zenith of the art. And it was made by Becasse Bakery, part of the Becasse empire that’s now gone to the wall. (Because of Justin and Georgia North’s decision to base the beating heart of their operations in that blasted Westfield Sydney complex, if you ask me. But sadly no-one did.)

So Becasse Bakery is no more, and nor is my beloved Zoloko muffin.

I will seek prandial comfort in Misschu’s vermicelli salad on this fine winter day, and pray she’s across her overheads.

Update:  It’s actually a ZOKOKO chocolate muffin.  Proves I was always too busy stuffing my face with them to read their name proper.

*Sigh*

Those clever girls at Jac+Jack.  This top belongs in La Closetta Trivialista like a bike saddle belongs beneath Bradley Wiggins’s bum.

Bold graphic print?  Tick.  Tunic style?  Tick.  Navy accents?  Tick.  Bit of silk crepe de chine?  Tick.  However, how to sneak it beneath the dusty rafters of La Palazzo Trivialista, then debut it without invoking the ire of Signor Seriousimo?  The days of hiding new purchases beneath the Marital Bed of Deceit for an appropriate cooling-off period (“This old thing???  I’ve had it for AGES!  Shame on you for not noticing how great I look in it sooner!!!”) are over:  Seriousimo was onto that sometime around our first anniversary.  He’s no dumbass, sadly.

Hmm, time for some financial engineering.  Srsly, my skills in this department would put Babcock & Brown to shame.

Trivial’s my name, trivial’s my game.  That said, I don’t normally get obsessed with tech-related minutiae, even if it’s blessed with a design edge.

Until now.

I really want this iPhone case, by London architect/designer Richard Weston, a super clever man who may yet make it into the Spunk Yurt on the basis of his unseemly talent (rather than his looks:  slightly too Alan Bennett for my liking).

I drop my phone more often than the average diva hurls one at a PA’s head.  Gods know why.  My current Kate Spade case is in tatters, TATTERS I tell you.  So time for an upgrade.  But the great Deity Google tells me the only way to get Weston’s wares into the Wide Brown Land is via the interwebs, and specifically Net-A-Porter.  NAP and La Triv are BFFs, known to frottage and cottage on a regular basis.  But to buy an iPhone case for AUD50 and pay AUD30-odd for shipping?  Suspect it ain’t gonna happen.