Fans of royalty and the under-employed may have caught some or all of Queen Elizabeth's Diamond Jubilee, which unfolded over the course of the last four days in London. The preamble to the Summer Olympics, celebrating the Queen's 60th year on the throne, featured a flotilla that filled the Thames on Sunday, hours upon hours in which the Queen and her family had to sit and stare at things, and Grace Jones hula-hooping her way through a thirty-year-old song.
Yes, that Grace Jones. We haven't seen or heard much from her in the last decade or so, but the 64-year-old actress/model/pop star/Warhol acolyte did not disappoint as she sang "Slave to the Rhythm" yesterday wearing a fucked up hat and a rubber boustier-train combo. Also, when it was over, she mistakenly wished the Queen happy birthday.
But that's not all! Elton John performed "Crocodile Rock," which apparently delighted the whole royal family, and Tom Jones and Kylie Minogue performed too. To put things in a British perspective, a baffled Rae Alexandra (who is actually Welsh) writes on SF Weekly's All Shook Down blog that she doesn't really get any of it either. Of particular bafflement was the fact that a former boy-bander turned TV talent-show judge, Gary Barlow, was picked to be the Queen's escort onto the stage at the end of it all. "We're not sure if this was an attempt to make the Queen look cool, or Barlow more important, but we enjoyed the pairing nonetheless, because it was, at best, really shitting weird."
