Elisa Stein has compiled a wonderful book that features air hostesses from days gone by. Days when the women (and it was predominantly young, good looking women) in charge of high flyers were capable, glamorous, and wore fabulous uniforms.
I'd feel far safer flying with these ladies to attend my every whim than the gormless glasseyes in orange that EasyJet employs.
Buy it here
I love the new video from The Horrors
They antagonise people, as all good bands do, from The Monks to The Jesus and Mary Chain and The Manic Street Preachers. And also, as those bands did, wear black shirts, and very tight trousers and winklepickers.
Buy top Horrors music here
I've been on holiday in rainy Norfolk for the last few days. Camping. My tent blew away, but it was still amazingly good fun.
During my trip, as the leaden skies wept uncontrollably onto my already dripping jeans, I took a jaunt to the living anachronism that is the Thursford Collection, a brilliantly mad museum in the middle of nowhere.
For a mere £6 (students £5.25) you can stroll around an array of steam engines, fairground rides, and street organs (the bizarre, oversized, highly decorated precursors to jukeboxes that you'll find in town precincts and at 'fun days' across the country).
Best of all, the collection is home to an enormous white Wurlitzer organ, the fourth largest in Europe, which was formerly installed in the Paramount Cinema in Leeds. Thrice daily, it's played by pipe maestro, and Bob Downe lookalike, Robert Wolfe. We stayed for two performances, which included such glories as the Dambusters March (which accompanied footage of the bombers) and I Do Like To Be Beside the Seaside.
Robert is a grinning, showboating genius, and the moment when the organ sunk back down into its pit, only to stop abruptly halfway down, due to the short height of the stage was one of the best things I have ever seen. 
At a time when too many magazines are closing down, it's cheering to hear that one of my favourite web sites, Girls and Corpses has made it into paper-based form.
How can a LAMP be sinister? If it's shaped like a creepy baby.
I can imagine a Miss Haversham type sitting in her lonely ballroom, surrounded by an army of these.
Buy yours for $99 from here
OK. Scrub Fabio being hit in the face by a goose as the best thing of all time. I've just found a better one. This magnificent Chuckle Brothers illusion thing.
Fabio is a male model, who has appeared on countless American romantic novels. He has long flowing hair like a lion's mane, and rippling muscles (often oiled). I have a bit of an obsession with him, which crystallised when this picture was taken.
Fabio had been invited to ride the inaugural trip of the Apollo's Chariot rollercoaster at Busch Parks in March 1999. He was accompanied by a phalanx of toga wearing girls. Sadly, a stray goose flew across the path of the speeding ride, hitting the musclebound model square in the face.
He returned to the alighting point of the ride with a gore-splattered face, and a broken nose. And at that point, this picture was taken. I like the way that one of the girls is pointing and laughing at him, and his attempts to brazenly pretend that the incident hasn't happened.
A great picture. I may print it on to a flag and raise it above my roof every morning.
Awwww. Look at these poor sad little ghost pepper and salt shakers. Don't cry, spooks, don't cry. You shouldn't be sad because you're for sale at the lovely CerealArt site, which sells limited (large) runs of pieces by well-known artists.
This cruet is by Marcel Dzama from Canada and sells for $75. This bunny cookie jar was designed by Momoyo Torimitsu, and costs $150. The prices are steep, but this is collectable art, remember. Cute!
I'm still crying hot tears of frustration at the fact that Sweden didn't win Eurovision. Their band was called The Ark, and they were like a cuter, more glam rock Darkness. Only better than that sounds.
It's the kind of joyous song that should ring out across Europe daily.
So sad. Although it's very similar to Edison Lighthouse's My Love Grows isn't it?
I've been listening to The Aliens a lot.
They're great. People seem to bang on about how they are hippy trippy psychedelic types, but I hear more of The Who's sense of fun mixed with er, The Who's big rock epicness, sense of adventure and big scale boundary pushing.
Get their CD here
Some of The Aliens used to be in The Beta Band. And I'll take any excuse to watch the fabulous, creative video for their single, Assessment, again... Wow. I think the 'creatives' at Guinness may owe them a pint or two...
How brilliant were late 90s pop duo Daphne and Celeste? This brilliant…
Despite being two squeaky voiced New York 'teenagers' they had big balls. Seeing them play the Reading Festival was like watching two bunnies being sent in front of a firing squad. Only the firing squad didn't have bullets, they had bottles full of wee. I wanted to bum rush the show of the two spunky girls on stage and stand shoulder to shoulder with them, facing the barrage from twenty thousand Rage Against The Machine-loving dullards with no sense of humour or fun.
Karen DiConcetto (Daphne) is now a ‘serious’ actress and has appeared in a play called Tourrettaville, written by a boy with Tourette's syndrome as well as The House is Burning, a Wim Wenders-produced film. Celeste Cruz has also appeared in a film, Brooklyn Bound.
Here is an ace, old fashioned fan website that looks like it was built in, like, 1997.
And you can Buy Daphne and Celeste CDs here
I love trawling through picture agency sites. I think PYMCA might be one of my favourites. They have pictures of what used to be called 'young people' from the 1960s onwards.
Mods, rockers, punks, skins, ravers, rockers and new wavers all stand surly or grinning from beautifully shot pictures. The pictures are evocative of eras long gone, and the hope that shines from the faces of the kids in the photos is poignant beyond belief.
You can buy some images as prints - prices aren't so bad really - between £75 for a 40-50cm print to £300 for a 20'x30' stretch canvas. The shots I've posted here are all available. I love the Peter Cook picture, he's a youth cult in one person. The dressed up teens against the wall are lovely, and the girls doing the 'Madness' walk just make me want to smile with happiness.
I can't keep my mouse from twitching towards this amazing online shop. Heidi Seeker is stuffed with the kind of colourful, geeky, fun fun fun clothes and accessories I love.
Love these sunglasses - they range from £4 - £8.
And this top looks cosy, and suitably geeky for me. I love a geeky hoodie, me.
Cassette-themed accessories might be a MySpace cliche, but I love this personalised over-sized necklace.
Nu ravers will be taken into infinity* here. It's cheap, very cheerful, and based in the UK. You'll love the cartoony design of the site, too. You can't go wrong...
*Hilarious Oceanic-inspired rave joke for old people there.
Yes, the remake of Hairspray will be released in a month or two. I truly, deeply, hope it has the wit, inventiveness, and big big heart of the original.
Here's a fan-made YouTube tribute to the John Waters version (I love YouTube fan tributes!)
And here's a trailer for the new version.
I'm very excited, for today I managed to score tickets to a show by acid-fried psyche God, Roky Erickson, in June at the South Bank Centre. He used to be in the The Spades, and the 13th Floor Elevators 
Roky has the best rock n roll scream of all time. I hope it hasn't been too badly eroded over the years. I learned everything I know about screeching by copying his agonised wail on the amphetamine-fuelled hurtle of You're Gonna Miss Me.
He vanished for years into a murky world of bad acid, mental institutions and shock treatments in Austin, Texas. When I visited that town, people who lived there told me that he'd sometimes peek his head over the parapet, and play a shambolic show. They also told me that his mother was even stranger than he was.
There's a film, You're Gonna Miss Me, coming out soon, which documents Roky's life.
He's playing as part of Jarvis Cocker's Meltdown festival on the South Bank. Jarvis has excellent taste - I could happily go to everything he has scheduled. Sadly, I can only afford Roky and the mysterious Disney Songbook evening, where various stars of the rock and the pop world will be singing their versions of Disney
Here's an amazing clip of a fresh faced Roky performing You're Gonna Miss Me by a swimming pool full of hot sixties chicks. It makes me a little sad to see him so young and full of life and blissfully unaware of the tumult to come. Listen for that scream.
You should really buy a 13th Floor Elevators CD, you know.
Further to yesterday’s fleshy bags, I’ve been browsing the meat
department at the world’s greatest online shop, Archie McPhee.
They have bacon everything. Bacon toothpicks, bacon fridge magnets, bacon plasters, air fresheners.
I really like the Make Poverty History-style wristbands (emblazoned with ‘carnivore’ and ‘bacon’) and the ‘What Would Bacon Do?’ dilemma-solving wheel (one of its answers is “taste really good”.
I’ll try and find something less fleshy tomorrow. Promise
Mmmmm. Sadly, these hugely desirable flesh briefcases and dairy purses* aren't real, and just part of an advertisement campaign. I would buy the range if they were in the shop. And have every hound in the neighbourhood on my tail.
You can still, however, buy this wonderful Paul Frank and Mark Ryden designed meat-lite handbag. But it's not quite as good as that mince clutch**, is it? And it is $100 plus postage...
*Is it just me, or do these sound like euphemisms for a woman's... bits...?
**And this?
