Lady Leona Luck, be my best friend?

Lady Luck, super-awesome and affordable cult British jewelry line, has this adorable new county fair-esque line out called "Summer Fete"! It includes bomb new totes and t-shirts, not to mention a really cool new kind of the personalized necklaces/brooches she is known for (in county fair tradition, the award ribbon).The necklace pictured above is my personal favorite-- it's a tiny little glass of pink lemonade, and it's only 8 pounds! This is why Lady Luck is such a prize-- it's adorably innovative, and fortunately super-affordable, too.
There is way more where this came from at ladyluckrulesok.com!

Nostalgia Creeps

As a child during the mass-marketing power trip of the late '90s, there was really not much I wouldn't fall for. Nickelodeon was my TV haven as a kid, and what they sold on the commercials, I wanted. I remember watching shows like The Amanda Show and seeing commercials for cheesy pop albums. One for a young British girl named Billie was one I fell for, and I vaguely remember buying her album at maybe Amoeba Records, or some other California record store of the type. My sister and I would always jam to what became a feminist anthem used for the 1999 Women's World Cup, "Because We Want To". I forgot about it years later and it would pop up occasionally as just a fun memory.

Thanks to the latest issues of The New Yorker and Radar (respectively for each picture), I have realized that I have had both pictured people under my nose for weeks.

Get this.

On Monday I started watching a British import series I thoroughly enjoyed, called Secret Diary of a Call Girl. I NEVER would've realized that the woman with the familiar name who plays Belle, Billie Piper, was someone whose album I possessed almost a decade ago in the height of pre-teenage naivete if it weren't for The New Yorker saying so.

Over the past year, a little indie drama called The Wackness, about a young drug dealer who trades weed for therapy, has been gathering hype to lead up to its limited July release. I myself have been watching the hype arise and getting pretty into it. I've been reading articles about the movie's star, a newcomer, Josh Peck, who also had a familiar name.

He's the kid pictured above, AND the left. He used to be on shows on Nickelodeon all the time. And now, he's hot. Smoking hot. NEVER saw any of this coming in ALL my days. And he seems like he's not affected by the hype at all.
I'm absolutely fucking wowed at all this. Maybe I'm the only one.

It's totally true how your past creeps up on you. I have been sneak-attacked by childhood... and it's fun.

Boredom Combat: engrish.com

Broken English is, without a doubt, one of the most undeniably cute phenomena Asia has ever spawned. Unfortunately, thanks to the imminence of Beijing's 2008 Olympics, revisions are being made all over the city to make signs and such more legible. How will us easily amused Anglophones entertain ourselves now?
Well, we've been given another reason to love the internet. Enter engrish.com, a mecca of poor translations, ironic misconceptions and bad grammar.

The whole thing kept me entertained for a whole night. I pretty much didn't leave my chair, and sounded ridiculous, what with the innocuous laughter straining from room and such.
The entire website is a knee-slapper, but I highly recommend looking through the "Clothing" category-- gems I found included, but were not limited to, a young Asian boy with a cap reading "Senior Citizen: Doing the Best With What I Have Left", a baseball team by the name of "Bastards", an adorable little girl in a marijuana-leaf jacket, and a no-nonsense t-shirt made by none other than "FAMOUSCRAP".

What you waiting for? Stop making sense: head over to engrish.com.

Skepticism: Models with Microphones

Celebrities attempting to be jacks-of-all-trades seems to me like a strange form of nepotism: you're good at one thing and you're famous, so you're probably good at other things too. I don't understand it: actors with record deals, singers in Hollywood studios... and most recently becoming a trend, models lending vocals.
It's been almost six years since Primal Scream released Evil Heat, whose cover of the Lee Hazlewood classic "Some Velvet Morning" featured Kate Moss taking over for Nancy Sinatra. The track's success was only above-average, but helped to secure Moss' status as the rock-'n'-roll muse she's become (though she hasn't sung since).
Now it seems models behind her are looking to follow in her footsteps-- instantly recognizable British it-girl Agyness Deyn joins relatively unknown rockers the Five O'Clock Heroes for a track called "Who", the video for which can be seen below:

I'm not sure what I think of it. I don't really see why it was done, though it does show potential and is far better than Heartschallenger's "Prism Effect" with dumpster-diving hipster muse Cory Kennedy. And fortunately, unlike Kennedy, Deyn can sing. And this did work for ladies like Cassie, Uffie and French phenom Micky Green, who all were and are high-profile models. This is a pretty decent track and could very well show an inching onto that track...
But maybe if it wasn't a supermodel singing, I wouldn't be so skeptic.

TMZ must be stopped: A Lolita Hazed Rant

If you've ever read my blog before, you will probably know how much I adore Lily Allen. I think the girl is unbelievably smart and knows what she's doing. So of course I was dismayed when I came upon this video.
TMZ is a bunch of fucking bastards who need to leave people the fuck alone. Chick is not doing anything wrong.
TMZ makes me so angry that I could scream. Their whole website is just an endless bounty of false promises-- videos of nothing but paparazzi hounding poor kids who chose a glamorous line of work.
I'll stop. I know people post rants exactly like this every day, but seriously. Go ahead and chase Miley Cyrus around as much as you want, but get the fuck away from Lily Allen.

All right. I'm done now. Whoo.

Hear the new Bad Seeds album in its entirety!

One of the true originals of 20th century rock 'n' roll is the unpredictable Nick Cave. Travelling through several different musical realms alone, with the Birthday Party, Grinderman, and of course, the Bad Seeds, Cave wants to make sure he covers none of the same ground twice-- and he certainly manages to prove this true in the bright notes of his psycho-carnival epic Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!.

But I bet you're curious. Is this shit actually good? Get a whole listen here on its Last.fm website!

Those expecting the dirges of Murder Ballads and The Boatman's Call should take caution before proceding-- this new album is like a trip inside the freaky down-South church of the Bad Seeds, who never fail to shock, weaving eloquent tales of rock bottom on the streets of New York and back.

If you have faith in Nick Cave like I do, dive on in, and you won't be sorry. If you like it, buy it! Nick Cave needs dough, too.

The year isn't even over, and this shit's already made it to my 2008 Bests.