Pink Rock Candy-Entertainment

Everyday hundreds of fashion bloggers get the same press releases. These press releases either get the green light and end up on their individual blogs or the get trashed. Yesterday, I received a press release concerning the über-talented Nigel Barker and a photo exhibit he is having called ‘A Sealed Fate?’. Obviously, since everyone love Nigel, he’s probably the only reason I’ve watched every episode of ANTM, everyone’s talking about the exhibit. So, In case you’ve missed it, here are the details.

Mr. Barker traveled to eastern Canada with The Humane Society of The United States, and took pictures and filmed baby harp seals— now do you get ‘A SEALed Fate’? Not only are harp seals ultra cute and probably really cuddly and adorable making them prime objects to photograph, but people kill them, using clubs or guns, for their fur and leave the rest of the carcass, making those people violent, inconsiderate, and wasteful (and technically murders, but I eat meat so I can’t really talk).

The exhibit will run from Friday, July 25th, 2008, to Sunday, July 27th, 2008, and Nigel will be hosting one-hour tours at 2PM, 3PM, and 4PM each day at 401 West Street in NYC. The exhibit is open to the public, but make sure to RSVP with the date and time you intend on coming.

I think my sister, my mom and I are going to try to make it to the 2 PM or 3 PM tour on Sunday, July 27th, so if you’re in NYC make sure to join us!

p.s HAPPY 4TH OF JULY!

I’ve been super busy, for some apparent reason, and that has definitely effected my blogging. Though I try to write good content as often as possible, I’m constantly emailed by PR people trying to get their clients message across, and to be quite honest, many of the messages are really good. I, unfortunately, haven’t really had the time to fully research everything, but I’ve decided to give you, my fabulous readers, a chance to make the executive decisions for yourself. So, here are the deets from best of the best press releases I’ve received this week:

• For those of you who haven’t seen it, here’s Madonna’s new music video for “4 minutes” with swoon worthy Justin Timberlake and master-producer Timbaland (they come as a pair). You can buy the video on iTunes so you can watch it anytime you want to perfect the dance moves.

• Do you wan to win a trip to Brazil? Of course you do. So, head to caressbrazilian.com, the website for Caress‘ newest collection of Brazilian Exotic Oil Infusions body washes. All you have to do is go to the website, download Nicole Scherzinger’s remake of Duran Duran’s song “Rio”, and make a video for the song. Though only one person can win the grand prize of a trip to Brazil, thirty finalists will win exciting prizes such as: spa treatments, iPods with Brazilian music or a year supply of Caress. My goal would be Brazil though!

• Yup, I’m talking about them again! Temposhark’s new music video for “Blame” is out, and it sort of rocks. The video is completely different from “4minutes”, less JT, less pelvic thrusting, but it has a whole lot more creepiness thanks to the animated characters created by the fantastic artist, Motomichi Nakamura. Watch the video, feel the goose flesh:

• In non-PR news, well sort of, Ashlee Simpson and Pete Wentz are officially engaged, which is super cute. Congrats! And, I’m sure their publicists would like you to know, Ashlee’s new album Bittersweet world comes out on April 22nd and Fall Out Boy are going to get back into the studio in a couple months.

That’s it for now. Maybe if I feel like I’m neglecting the publicists next week, I’ll do this again.

p.s. Is it only my computer, or is youtube being really screwy?

Will Panic at the Disco be the same without the ‘!’ ? Oddly enough, that question crossed my mind yesterday. Sure, I’ve heard with their new album, entitled Pretty. Odd., they are leaving the Vegas burlesque club theme behind and heading for new waters to dip their toes, but completely taking away their beloved exclamation point, come on!

I get it, you’ve grown up a bit and are planning on headlining the 2008 Honda Civic tour, but that doesn’t give you guys carte blanche to go changing your band name on us. No longer are you Panic! at the Disco, but just Panic at the Disco— it might as well just be Mild Disturbance at the Disco. I may be making a big deal out of nothing, but when artists change their name it irks me. I still add the lil’ to Bow Wow and call P. Diddy Diddy, Puff Daddy.

Sure, removing a bit of punctuation isn’t quite changing your band name all together, but now I’m going to have to change my iTunes so Pretty. Odd. and A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out don’t end up in two entirely different artist folders on my ipod (I’m a bit OCD). All I ask is that the boys of Panic don’t end up like Sean Combs a.k.a. whatever he’s calling himself these days, and start changing it up every album because I might just have to give up on you out of sheer annoyance.

In other news, head to the Panic at the Disco website to try to solve their stupid puzzles— you’ll kill a couple of hours, I promise.

I knew it would happen. As soon as I heard about the mall shooting in Omaha, Nebraska, I knew the giant finger of blame would be pointed at emo music. The only thing is, I figured they’d start pointing it at bands like My Chemical Romance or Fall Out Boy because they are technically mainstream names. I thought they’d make it easy to put a face to the name, not pick someone the general public might have to google. I definitely never thought the blame would be placed on one, Conor Oberst, lead singer of Bright Eyes, but Radar magazine is pointing their finger at droopy-eyed Oberst, who also happens to be from Omaha and has dubbed him the Monster of the Week!

I’m sort of outraged, as was I when they dubbed Marylin Manson the inspiration behind Columbine. The writer of the piece, Tyler Gray, is putting words in a dead boys mouth, as harsh as that may sound. No one knows what Robert Hawkins was thinking, and he’s not around to tell, so why drag yet another musician’s name through the mud? Apparently writing lyrics like: “Your class, your caste, your country, sect, your name or your tribe / There’s people always dying trying to keep them alive / There are bodies decomposing in containers tonight / In an abandoned building,” is enough to make someone culpable.

Whether this was all in jest or not, mass media works in this funny way where they all grasp onto one idea and run with it. You have no idea how many news segments on “The Dangers of Emo” I’ve seen in the last 5 months. Let’s just be honest, teen angst is the most over-rated thing ever, and 90% of the angst in “emo” music isn’t coming from teens in the first place. It’s all made up, get over it!

Should we start playing the musician-blame-game once again?

If you haven’t figured it out from the fashion blog, I love Marc Jacobs, I mean “L-O, L-O, L-O, L-O-V-E” (to quote the sage Ashlee Simpson…haha) Marc Jacobs. There’s something about the fact that he makes beautiful clothes and is slightly if not totally crazy that makes me swoon over him. To make matters even worse better, he was recently quoted at the Accessories Council’s ace Awards on November 5 saying that he wants a reality TV show. Apparently he’s “really into [his] life right now,” so what better way to celebrate that than to have your own reality show, right?

He recently got a taste of reality TV, and I use that word loosely on The Hills, when Lauren helped out with the fittings for the TeenVOGUE Young Hollywood Party which Marc re-showed his Spring 2008 Marc by Marc show.

The question is would Marc Jacobs be a good Reality TV star? Well, he has the whole necessary self obsession thing down pact, and I’m sure it would be interesting to see what actually happens when creating a fashion line (one day, I’ll see it first hand). The only thing is he has a bad habit of not being timely, and that may be disaterous for the film crew, or it’ll make for a great TV show. Who knows.

Whould you watch a Marc Jacobs reality TV show?

[via NY Mag]

I’m a social networking site nut. I can’t help it, they’re addicting, but I tend to sign up, never create a real profile, and then forget about them. Every now and then you fall upon a really good one that you use all the time (myspace, facebook, buzznet, etc). I think I may have found another one; its called Jango.com.

Jango.com is a social networking site designed for the music lover. Sure there are other sites where you can create playlists and share music with your friends, but none are quite as easy to figure out as Jango.

Instead of true playlists, you create radio stations. To create a radio station, you pick your favorite artists, and if you get stuck and can’t remember some of the musicians you like they offer suggestions that relate to the music you’ve already picked. After you’re done creating a playlist, you just let it play, and not only will you hear the artists you picked, Jango plays songs they think you might like, considering the artists in your radio playlist. If you don’t like a song, no worries, you just click the little frowny face and the song will never be played again.

Sharing music is simple too because Jango pretty much does all the hard work for you. On your music player they show other radio stations that are playing musicians you like or might like. You can even see who’s listening to your stations. After the official launch on November 12, 2007, the great people at Jango will also be launching an embedded player for blogs, Myspace, etc. and a desktop mini-player.

From what I can tell Jango covers all the bases, and I have the great privilege to let 500 lucky music lovers have the chance to experience Jango before its November 12th launch. Just click the banner at the top of the post or click here, and start listening. Make sure to add me when you become a member and tell me how you like it. Here is my profile.

The new Radiohead album In Rainbows came out yesterday, yes, yesterday, a Wednesday. That sort of ruins our list of new Tuesday releases, but Radiohead is still loved. So, why was the album able to come out on Wednesday instead of the normal Tuesday release day?

It seems, these days Radiohead is flying solo. By that I mean they have no record company to tell them what to do, and they like it that way. They were able to put out In Rainbows on whatever day they wanted, and they even allowed their fans to decide how much they thought the record was worth, at least for the downloadable MP3 version. They are also putting out a “diskbox” on December 3rd which contains physical copies including a vinyl version, a hard cover book, and additional tracks is £40 (about $80). They are also aiming to put out a cd version in January 2008.

Some people are whispering music revolution, but is it really possible to get rid of the middle man we called the record company and just let things go back to the days of the troubadour? Maybe, but I can’t help thinking, even though it is “about the music”, even if people only decide to pay $1 for In Rainbows the guys of Radiohead are bound to make more money than they would make if they were just getting a cut from the record companies profit.

If anything I think this is a great social experiment. Letting fans determine the price of an album really lets our voice be heard. For example I would probably pay a dime for the new Backstreet Boys cd or Soulja Boy’s cd, but if, let’s say, Led Zeppelin made a new cd I’d give my first born (do you think I could put that on my card?).

So, I have a few questions:
1) Did you download In Rainbows?
2) If so, how much did you think it was worth, and what did you think about it? (I paid the equivalent of about $10)
3) If Radiohead doesn’t happen to be your favorite artist, how much would you pay for your all time favorite artists new cd?

On Friday, Adrianne Curry, the very first winner of America’s Next Top Model, wrote an interesting blog entry on her MySpace. I don’t really read her blog, but I saw the entry on Oh No They Didn’t, and found was immediately intrigued. In the blog, she says she is boycotting BET and Black History Month because she sees them as racist.

Throwing around the word “racist” can be very dangerous especially if you can’t back it up, but I think she has a very logical argument. She says:

“I LOVE the comedians on BET. I also LOVE the fact that they play my favorite show of all time, In Living Color. However, I do not believe in seperating ANY RACE in America. WE ARE AMERICANS!…I want AN AMERICAN HISTORY MONTH. One where we learn about EVERY race, ALL OF OUR LEADERS, EVERYONE! I think by having a month dedicated to one race, and not one for any other, is RACIST. Every fund set up to only help people of one race is SICK and RACIST.”

Though I’m not willing to throw racist around so liberally, I do believe things like BET and Black History Month are discriminatory considering it would be improper for any other cultural group to do everything possible to stand out. I think they only proliferate the silent polarization going on in the US, and that is what ruins us. When we divide a large group into a bunch of smaller groups, the goals of the singular large group are undermined. Also, though having an “American History Month” sounds like a great idea, perhaps we should just focus learning all aspects of history be it American, European, Middle Eastern, etc. After all, you can’t know where you’re going until you know where you’ve been.

What do you think about Adrianne’s “boycott”? You can read the entire blog under the cut.

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Sorry to anyone who was planning on catching The White Stripes and Cold War Kids on tour in the US. All of the US dates have been canceled, and the upcoming UK dates in late-October and early-November are still up in the air.

Unfortunately, the tour is being canceled because of “health issues”. The White Stripes released a statement saying, “Meg White is suffering from acute anxiety and is unable to travel at this time,” they went on to apologize, “We hate to let people down and are very sorry.”
Here are the dates being canceled:

9/13/07 Albuquerque, NM @ Kiva Auditorium
9/15/07 Austin, TX @ Austin City Limits Festival
9/16/07 Austin, TX @ Stubbs Bar-B-Q
9/18/07 San Diego, CA @ Coors Amphitheatre
9/19/07 Inglewood, CA @ The Forum
9/21/07 Berkeley, CA @ Greek Theatre
9/24/07 Anchorage, AK @ George M. Sullivan Sports Arena
9/26/07 Seattle, WA @ Paramount Ballroom
9/27/07 Seattle, WA @ Paramount Ballroom
9/28/07 Boise, ID @ Idaho Center Theater
9/29/07 Salt Lake City, UT @ The E Center
9/30/07 Jackson Hole, WY @ Snowking Center
10/2/07 Rapid City, SD @ Rushmore Plaza Civic Center
10/3/07 Fargo, ND @ Fargo Civic Auditorium
10/4/07 Lincoln, NE @ Pershing Center Auditorium
10/6/07 Chicago, IL @ Aragon Ballroom
10/7/07 Chicago, IL @ Aragon Ballroom
10/10/07 Honolulu, HI @ Neal S. Blaisdell Center

NOTE: Muse will be playing in The White Stripes place on Sept. 16 at Stubbs in Austin, TX.

All of those used fans out there know exactly who Chadam is (well as exact as it can be known), and if your not a used fan, go to Chadam’s Myspace and read his story because its awesome and fairly inspiring. Well, since Chadam has made such a giant impression on the Internet community, Studio 2.0, the digital production arm of Warner Bros., has begun production on 23 short films about Chadam for the interweb.

That means now Chadam won’t just be in a journal entry, or 30 or an image on a couple thousand t-shirts or where ever else Usedies have placed him, he’s also going to be a real live person/thing, excepted animated of course; The Used like to keep the real Chadam with them at all times, joking! The shows will continue where Chadam’s story left off in the journal entries. This is what the press release says of the shows:

“Chadam lives as the ‘chosen one’ in the hyper-stylized and exaggerated metropolitan island city of Vulture. His power of imagination is strong enough to physically change his environment and, therefore, his world … to save it from evil. The series will find Chadam in a place of refuge, where he and others have retreated to plan their attack against the serial killer known as Viceroy.”

This means a couple things:

• Alex Pardee will finally get the exposure he deserves. Though his creations are sometimes weird to say the least, there is definite beauty in all of them.
• People will get to know Chadam’s story without having to read, creating a good and bad situation. TV is sweet and all, but go read a book every once in a while (oh wait your reading now!)
• Finally, it means The Used viral market plan worked! Good for them. They’d be rad either way though.

Congratulations to Alex Pardee, all The Used guys, and C.W. (not the network) for having to wear that costume all the time.

You can download the press release here.