You lookin' just a little too hard at me

The LATIN GRAMMYS rolled around again and the hottest Latino stars came out in full support of the event. The first picture was taken at a pre-Grammy event the day before, of the triumvirate that dominated the late 90s Latin explosion. Marc Anthony, Ricky Martin, and JENNIFER LYNN LOPEZ NOA JUDD ANTHONY, who looked stunning as usual. Wouldn't it be nice if Jenny was really married to Ricky Martin instead of the human corpse with eye bags the size of Puerto Rico? Imagine the children they would manufacture! But alas, La Lopez is married to the living dead and Risky prefers to remain sexually ambiguous...Ooh let's not forget the second picture, CALIENTE! Jenny Lo(FLAWLESS as always) and Shakira Shakira. I suspect that Ms Hips is wearing killer stilettos, because she's severely vertically challenged yet looks only slighty shorter than J Lo in this picture, who has we ALL know has perfect proportions. My four favourite female singers will ALWAYS be Britney, Madonna, Cher and Jennifer. The 5th changes from time to time(usually Janet, but she's been pissing me off lately).

I've just finished reading Zadie Smith's On Beauty, which truly is a beautiful book that deservedly won this year's Orange Prize. I understand that using the word 'deservedly' is risky when I haven't read the other shortlisted contenders, but Smith has really written a brilliant book, full of humour, political commentary, wit, and the most gorgeous descriptions and depictions of character. She goes from

"A sprawling North London parkland, composed of oaks, willows and chesnuts, yews and sycamores, the beech and the birch; that encompasses the city's highest point and spreads far beyond it; that is so well planted it feels unplanned; that is not the country but is no more a garden than Yellowstone; that has a shade of green for every possible felicitation of light; that paints itself in russets and ambers in the autumn, canary-yellow in the splashy spring; with tickling bush grass to hide teenage lovers and joint smokers, broad oaks for brave men to kiss against, mown meadows for summer ball games. hills for kites, ponds for hippies, an icy lido for old men with strong constituitions, mean llamas for mean children and, for the tourists, a country house, its facade painted white enough for any Hollywood close-up, complete with a tea room, although anything you buy from there should be eaten outside with the grass beneath your toes, sitting under the magnolia tree, letting the white upturned bells of blossoms, blush-pink at their tips, fall all around you."

to

"'Put it in me,' said Victoria. 'Fuck me. Put it in me up to the hilt.'
Very specific. Tentatively Howard reached forward to touch her breasts. She licked his hand and asked him several times if he liked doing what he was doing, to which he could only answer with the obvious affirmative. She then began to tell him just how much he liked it. Tiring a little of the running commentary, Howard moved his hand lower along her belly. She raised it at once like a cat stretching, she held her stomach in - seemed to hold her breath, in fact - and only when he ceased touching her there did she breathe again. He had the sense that every time he touched an area of her body that area was at once moved out of his reach and then returned to his hand a moment later, restyled."

Smith displays her versatility throughout the novel, sometimes having her characters speak in French, at which point I can only attempt to decipher what is being said based on the context of the situation. She isn't afraid to plunge into academic jargon, which renders the common reader (ie yours truly) often baffled. However, this is not so much an annoyance as it is giving the reader an idea of the idiosyncratic neuroses of academia. Nor does she shy away from commenting on the political situation in Haiti, and the tyranny of Jean-Bertrand Aristide. A running theme throughout the novel is the conflict between Liberalism and Conservatism, personifed by the Howard Besley - Montague Kipps feud. By the end of the novel, these characters and their respective families end up tangled amongst each other, along with their personal values and beliefs.

I adore the author's ability to dig into the inner psyche of the human mind, to depict those small thoughts and actions that make you go 'hey, that sounds like me!', while never sounding tedious in her description. A good example - "Levi did his funky limp through the department and out into the main lobby of the Humanities Faculty building. He stopped here to select a tune that would fit the experience of stepping out of this building and facing the freeze outside." I ALWAYS select tunes in certain situations. Like when I'm walking into the gym. What song would give me that FIERCE attitude that I want to present as I walk from the entrance, past the rows of treadmills and such, to wait for the elevator?

The characters in 'On Beauty' are flawed. VERY flawed. Which makes it such an accurate, thoughtful, portrayal of real people living real lives. You could well be reading about the neighbours next door, maybe even your own family. Howard Besley isn't exactly likable - he's selfish, a moral coward, full of excuses and bullshit. Yet by the end of the novel, I found myself rooting for him and Kiki to get back together. Smith leaves it to the reader to conjure their own conclusions from the final scene she presents to them. And in my mind, after several months of soul-searching, Kiki moves back into the house and while she may never forget, she forgives Howard for his mistakes. The family, of course, remains as dysfunctional as ever. Indeed, a book that puts low morals among high ideals. At the end of it all, despite all the feuding and jealousy, this is one novel with a lot of heart.