“Fur pillows are hard to actually sleep on” 4:55 PM Aug 1st via web

“I love me” 6:12 PM Jul 31st via web

“THAT MEANS TOAST IN SWEDISH!!!!” 6:26 AM Jul 31st via web

“I jog in Lanvin” 12:17 AM Jul 29th via web

Kanye West joined Twitter and made that shit fun again.

Follow him. Or, erm, me.

Me ‘n’ Suz P goes together like peas and carrots. Read a little gem of an interview with my ever so talented and driven buddy over here (sample quote: “I’m a sucker for a dude with fucked up teeth. Gold tooth. Cracked tooth. Half a tooth. Fanged tooth. Missing tooth. All drive me crazy”) and check out her blog over here.

In case you’ve missed the virtual hype, ‘How To Make It In America’ is a new HBO show that aired in the US for the first time last week. I managed to catch the first episode via the wonders of the Interwebz and from what I can gather, it’s a sort of ‘Entourage’-in-The-Big-Apple thing (and is actually produced by the same people) – but instead of tracking the exploits of a famous actor, it follows a pair of young, down-on-their-luck New Yorkers who decide to fight ‘the man’ by setting up an independent, premium denim label.

So basically, ‘How To Make It In America’ is a TV programme about the downtown NY creative ’scene’, albeit with a glossy, major-network spin on proceedings. It’s spliced with series of SLR photo-style freeze screens, set to a trendy hip-hop soundtrack, and features appearances and cameos from NY scenesters such as Kid Cudi and Roxy Cottontail. Watching it feels like seeing the corporate version of a hipster blog, realised in celluloid. It’s very watchable, but also strangely unsettling. The boundaries between reality, TV and the Internet are blurring so much that I wonder if one day we’ll even be able to tell the difference between them.

Trailer after the jump.

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I spent the large part of the weekend sitting round my kitchen table in the company of various friends, and one of our main topics of conversation was (bizarrely enough, for a group of young Londoners) the state of New Jersey. My friend Luke has just returned from a trip to NJ/NY where, by all accounts, MTV’s reality TV show Jersey Shore has got our American counterparts glued to their screens  – in a deeply “ironic” way, of course. I haven’t seen the show yet but I’ve seen clips and read a lot about it on US media sites and from what I can gather, it follows a group of young ‘guidos’ and ‘guidettes’- a slightly derogatory slang term for Italian-Americans who, amongst other qualifiers, follow a strict common code of personal grooming so they all end up look something like this. Amazing, right?

Anyway, given all this talk of the Garden State and its various enthralling subcultures, I was delighted to discover a YouTube clip on the Married to The Mob blog, which features highlights from a 1994 documentary called ‘Wildwood, NJ’. The doc follows various delightfully bizarre visitors to the Jersey seaside resort of the same name and makes for absolutely fascinating viewing. Because I am aesthetically anal about this website I don’t want to sully its appearance by posting YouTube clips on the main page, but I’ve included the Wildwood vid after the jump. Trust me when I tell you its worth clicking the link for. See the screengrabs above? Homegirl is the blue shirt is absolutely INSANE!

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Gifts bought and wrapped. Tree up and decorated. Hello Kitty chocolate advent calendar steadily being worked through (my Mum bought it – allow me!) All this and I’m still yet to feel ‘Christmassy’. Not that I ever really feel Christmassy. I think that’s partly to do with being an only child from a small family and partly to do with the fact that I lean on the side of world-weary cynicism. Honestly, I’m just looking forward to a chance to regroup after an extremely hectic year, and to prepare myself for an even more manic 2010.

Anyway, I’ve actually resorted to downloading Phil Spector’s ‘A Christmas Gift For You’ in an attempt to generate some kind of festive cheer. If listening to The Ronettes singing about sleigh rides doesn’t work, then basically nothing will…

I’m slightly wary of the whole ‘motivational’, self-help culture that is so pervasive in the US. This is probably a bit (a lot) to do with the fact that I’m a cynical Brit and therefore not naturally disposed to being SUPER-SMILEY! and SUPER-ENTHUSIASTIC! all the fucking time. Nonetheless, I could read the inspiring words of a certain Mr. Ralph Marston all day long. (And actually I follow him on Twitter, so technically I do).

I’m not quite sure who this dude is – he has a pretty basic website and no other discernible web presence – but there’s something about his life philosophy that really speaks to me. To summarise it briefly: stop procrastinating, take action, be thankful for what you have, and understand that happiness lies in  gratitude more than anything else. Not ground-breaking stuff, I grant you that, but it’s nice that someone out there has made it their life’s work to remind you what you most need reminding of. Thanks, Ralphy.