The Smoothie Sell-Out: the End of Innocence

I am a sucker for Innocent smoothies. The brand hooked me instantly: the contents (nothing but pure crushed fruit), the image of good wholesome sustainability, the charming ravings on the pack. Remember the one about Boyson, the guy who "invented" boysenberries? Madness.

I like the whole whimsical affair. I like the maverick-y yet ethical image of the product. I like how the things taste. Up to april this year I liked pretty much everything about Innocent smoothies.

On April 6th Innocent Drinks sold a twenty percent share of their business to Coca-Cola. And that really got my goat.

And not only mine. Thousands of customers who had hitherto happily slugged mango-and-passion fruit concoctions by the bucketful felt cheated out of their guiltless pleasure and made no bones about it. Innocence is - or was - the main selling point of Innocent Drinks, much more so than the nice taste or the preservative-free recipe. How often do you get to enjoy anything that doesn't harm you, the planet or local communities?

With brands like Innocent, product quality is hard to separate from ethics. Authenticity and constistency in running the business seems to directly affect the authenticity - the goodness - of the product itself.

One example is what happened to the Body Shop. It used to be a range of cosmetics that gave you both easy consciousness and glowing skin, most of the shampoos and body butters and lotions smelling so divinely that one was tempted to eat them. After the late Anita Rodick sold the business to L'Oreal (for almost 1 bn euro) the brand has never been the same. The new ranges smell like every other artificial ointment out there, and, what is worse, there is almost nothing left of the old "every woman is naturally beautiful" philosophy. In times past, Anita's opinion on anti-cellulite and anti-aging creams was: "You're better off spending the money on a bottle of Pinot Noir." When I saw the ads for the new anti-cellulite range of Body Shop shortly after the takeover of L'Oreal, I felt cheated as a customer and insulted as a woman.

I miss the old Body Shop. I miss the pleasure its products used to give me, the fruity and earthy and herby smells, the varying textures - rich and abrasive, smooth and permeating, the burn of the peppermint, the caress of the honey. But most of all, I miss feeling like a goddess while using them: a goddess with cellulitis, split ends and brittle nails, but a goddess nonetheless, a goddess just because.

With Innocent smoothies, I used to feel like a happy monkey gorging on its daily crushed banana-and-strawberry. I had banana-and-strawberry the day before yesterday and it tasted fine. Yet.

But Innocent already started making promises they can't keep: a banana-free smoothie with nettle extract supposed to be a "slim" option gave me the same feeling of cheat and disappointment as the anti-cellulite creme of Body Shop.

Loss of credibility is usually the ruin of ethical brands. Forfeiting the honesty that made them great is killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. It just can't work.

So... I guess I will be making my own smoothies from now on. With bananas. Lots of them.

The Cleaner

You can persecute graffiti painters - "Please, Mr. Officer, it is art" usually doesn't count as much of an argument - but what do you do with Reverse Graffiti?

The painter in the picture - Brazilian Alexandre Orion - creates his art by cleaning walls. His haunting designs are - literally - painted in the dirt.

His technique created quite a lot of confusion amongst the authorities of Sao Paulo. While it would have been possible to persecute him and/or prohibit him from painting had he been doing traditional graffiti, there was no legal possibility to stop him from partially cleaning particularly dirty walls. What they finally did was scrub the walls of the tunnel where Alexandre had been painting completely blank - and, subsequently, scrub the walls of ALL tunnels in Sao Paulo.

Check out some of Alexandre's awesome work here: http://www.alexandreorion.com/_orion.htm

Beauty of the day

Rie Rasmussen

Seen: towering over Luc Besson.

Why I love her: Rie's big. Not only in the sense of tall. She could be just one more nordic beauty, but the human warmth that radiates from her makes her touching, engaging, exciting. Very good choice for an angel that has come from heaven to kick your ass, as in "Angel-a". The bootcamp angel.

Five improbable seductions

There are other ways to accomplish a seduction besides kissing the girl to a thousand cloying violins and the classic "eyes meet across a crowded room". Below, my five favorites: every now and then in the history of cinema, two lovely freaks meet against all odds to live out their unorthodox love story.

Nr. 5 Wall-e meets EVE

Changed the way I look at machines. If my laptop falls in love with my microwave oven, I'd probably give them my blessing and listen to them peep to each other with sentimental tears in my eyes.

Nr. 4 Harold and Maude

Talk about age difference. Goes to show that the single most important thing for a couple are common interests, in this case a shared fascination of death. I admit it would have been less of a good movie if it were bowling.


Nr. 3 Rocky and Adrian

Yeah, yeah, you're all going to say you saw that one coming. Well I didn't. How many boxers did you ever see with a girl like Adrian? And when he talks and talks and she doesn't say a word? Or when he takes her to his flat, that dump with the goldfish, and she doesn't run? The detail with the torn undershirt? (Rocky was a man badly in need of a woman, he was.) And when he tells her, I bet you'd be beautiful with your glasses off, and she really is? That is my favourite moment. No complicated make-over, no fancy clothes, no new hair. He just tells her, I think you are very beautiful and wham, from one second to the next, she is. If only more men could do that trick.



Nr. 2 La mala educacion: Enrique and Ignacio

Trés gay and improbably tender. The eyes of a tranny (Zahara, formerly known as Ignacio) and an unapologetically gay hunk of man meat (Enrique) meet across a not particularly crowded club. The tranny turns out to be Enrique's childhood sweetheart. The scene is tainted with such longing it is hard to bear.



Nr. 1 Black Cat White Cat: Zare and Ida

This scene from Kusturica's gipsy comedy is bliss pure and simple. Getting away from everyone in an endless sunflower field, under a blue blue sky. It is improbable enough that a perfect moment like that can occur. Or last.

Aw, just by the way: the sunflower scene starts at 5:27. Until then, nasty scenes of forced and arranged marriages. But it only proves the point, no? Every beautiful seduction - love - is, after all, improbable.

Beauty of the day

Laura del Sol

Seen: Most memorably, "Carmen" by Carlos Saura

Why I love her: She looks like a savage and like a child at the same time. She is imperfect. She is intense.

Three Smart Women

These three made me question everything I've assumed about success.

1. Friede Springer

Started out as a nanny in the household of German publisher Axel Springer. Ended up marrying him and inheriting the better pat of his business. Her fortune is currently estimated at 3,2 bn dollars. AND she is a personal friend of the current Chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel. Talk about SuperNanny.

2. Gloria, Princess of Thurn and Taxis, aka Princess TNT

Worked as a waitress before marrying Prince Johannes of Thurn and Taxis. To be fair, she also came from a noble, but impoverished family. Managed to piss off most of the other Thurns and Taxis with her temperamental character and flashy appearance, and most of all by successfully and independently managing Johannes' 2bn fortune after his death.

3. Maria-Elisabeth Schaeffler

Currently one of the owners of the Schaeffler group, one of the world's largest producers of roller bearings. Roller bearings. Oh.
Well, roller bearings are not particularly glam, but, since Maria-Elisabeth's personal assets are estimated at almost 5 bn euros, they must sell well.
How did she get that? The born Chech met Georg Schaeffler while she was studying medicine in Wien. Married him. Georg, being 24 years her senior, died in due time and left her a load of money.
She never finished her studies, but proved herself a very capable manager.


The moral of the story: boy, I should scrap university and get a job as a nanny. For the kids of some rich, old man.

One for Teach

First good news of the day: teacher Michael Csaszkóczy gets 33.000 Euro in damages from the German province Baden-Württemberg.

The Baden-Württemberg ministry of education prohibited him from teaching four years ago. The reason: he had been a member of the Heidelberg Anti-Fascist Organization (Antifa).

The Heidelberg Antifa are really a rather touching organization -they count as extremely leftist, but are not banned and not violent. Rumor has it they talk loud and smoke a lot of pot.

Be that as it may, Michael Csaszkóczy, though no longer a member, refused to denounce his political views in order to get a job."I'd like the kids to have a teacher who is not ashamed to look at himself in the mirror", he said.

After five lawsuits infront of four courts, the decision banning him from working as a teacher has been lifted. He has already started teaching in a small town near Heidelberg, and today, the court has also acknowledged that he is entitled to damages.

Personally, I do not share his political views, and I frankly think the organisation he belonged to is rather ridiculous. However, this guy stood up for his rights and fought a four-year court battle to be allowed to enter his chosen profession. I think he would be a good teacher. I wish I had had one teacher like him at school.