Onto other important matters, this hot mess just fell into my lap. I’m begging you, take a look.

You’re not sure if you want to laugh, cry or heave, right?

About a year ago, it dawned on me that “the valley girl” had basically disappeared from social consciousness to the point that I found myself wondering if “valley girls” even exist anymore. I mean, if you are female and between the ages of 11 and 19 and live somewhere between Woodland Hills and Studio City, I suppose you qualify as a valley girl…but does that mean that you’re a “valley girl?” While I’m sure there are lots of girls who do meet enough criteria to be considered a “valley girl,” that doesn’t mean that today one would describe said girl as a “total val.”

I in no way want to encourage a return to the high-pitched (and highly irritating) motormouth valley-speak we all found so amusing at one point, but I do find it somewhat sad that this lovably ditzy pop culture staple is no longer…at least as we knew her. We bid adieu to the shrieking, hair-twirling, gum-snapping, lackadaisical airhead scuffing her Keds against the red-tiled floor of the Galleria and regrettably welcomed the Oxycontin and coke-riddled, barely-talented (if it all) Zoebot celebutante dangerously hightailing it down Robertson Boulevard in a Mercedes convertible. I never thought I would say this, but at least those “val gals” had class…or at least just enough dignity to keep their wreh-wrehs from public view (as far as we know).

What strikes me most about this whole thing is that even though this whole contest is tongue in cheek, these girls are celebrating being a part of a vast cultural wasteland (the Sherman Oaks Galleria really is about as sophisticated as it gets over the hill). Even if they entered the contest ironically, it doesn’t change the end result of being crowned the “ultimate valley girl.” And all that basically says is “I’m totally, like, one of the most vain and ignorant dingbats this side of Ventura Boulevard! But I look totally rad in my white Jordache short shorts and red Ray Bans! Isn’t that tubular? I knooooooow!” So somehow, I feel this title is probably not something you want to put on your resume…unless you’re applying for work at either Claire’s Accessories or Bob’s Classy Ladies.

Bag your face, kids. I’m outtie.

Celebrity Wallets Fill Up, Or Empty Out, With Brand Extensions

Today, our shoe recommendations from ShoeDazzle.com hit our in-box.  Shoe recommendations?  You many be thinking, “why PopTwist, how Hollywood of you to have a personal stylist who cares so much about your feet.”  We assure you, we’re far from letting three blog entries and a few Facebook fans go to our heads.  What we are doing, however, is researching a phenom that melds pop culture and the irresistible urge for some people to drop the cash for their favorite star.

See, ShoeDazzle is the latest endeavor by celebutante, fashionista and self-made star, Kim Kardashian.   She’s far from the first to put their brand equity to work in the form of a product line.  In June 2007, Business Week penned an article about celebrities who go beyond their core business of entertaining us to whip out stuff for us to buy.  The list of celebrepreneurs, let’s just call them, keeps growing.  Some businesses, like Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen and their seemingly endless empire of clothing lines, have achieved success far beyond normal child stardom.  Sorry, Gary Coleman, no line of short and spunky clothes for you.  These days you are otherwise occupied, anyway.

But for every celebrity success at bridging from superstar to CEO, there are a handful that just can’t seem to make the numbers add up.

PopTwist’s Top 3 FAILED Celebrepreneurs

1) Heidi Montag

Heidi thought she could parlay her friend-bitch role on The Hills into a tidy fashion line by partnering with Anchor Blue.  Oops… she forgot to take into account that no one would want a line from a fashion school dropout.  Baby, didn’t you watch Grease?  Pink hair is the virtual equivalent of having a line that gets pulled a hair under six  months after its début.  (RIP HeidiWood: March 31, 2008 – October 22, 2008)  Then again, her music career isn’t working out so well either.  Her album Superficial has sold less than 1,000 copies.  The only thing that isn’t falling apart, so far, is Heidi’s marriage to her co-star on The Hills, Spencer Pratt.   Give it time.

2) Gwenyth Paltrow

It’s no argument that Gwenyth Paltrow has had a successful career.  She will be reprising her role as Pepper Potts in Iron Man 2 this summer.  Although, her business ventures haven’t been quite as super.  GOOP, a web site that encourages visitors to “nourish the inner aspect” of their lives is still alive and well on the Internet.  Well, its at least “live.”  The web site’s traffic is plummeting.  When your page introduction is “This is GOOP,” what do you think will happen to traffic?  Who wants to turn their lives into GOOP?  Other gooey adventures of Gwenyth’s include an exclusive (and subsequently empty) chain of gyms, called  Tofu.  Tofu tastes like whatever you pair it with and this one, paired with a fat $4,500 start-up fee, was pretty tasteless. Tofu didn’t survive its first workout and came as quietly as it went.    It opened in March 2009 and was dead a few months after that.  Any bets about My Fathers Daughter, her upcoming cookbook?

3) Kim Basinger

What do you get the girl who has everything?  How about her own town?  In 1989, Kim dropped $20 million on the wild idea that it would be a smashing success to buy a town in Georgia and turn it into a tourist trap.  Movie studios, film festivals, roller coasters (ok… maybe not roller coasters) but just as crazy was the thought that celebrities would want to trek to Braselton, Georgia for a photo-op.  The money troubles, and family troubles, didn’t help either. Four years later, she sold the town and abandoned the idea.

The fact of the matter is, every day, thousands of businesses fail.  But the simple fact that a CELEBRITY business has failed… well, that’s just entertaining.

Here are some of my favorite Babe looks…

Truman Capote supposedly drew on Babe Paley and the other Swans — his close friends — as inspiration for what was to be his final book, ANSWERED PRAYERS. Esquire magazine printed the first few chapters from the book. The social fall-out was disastrous. The SWANS never spoke to Capote again. Despite a generous advance, Capote did not finish the book. And died soon after.

ANSWERED PRAYERS is my favorite Capote book. It’s unflinching. And snarky. And heartbreaking. I can only imagine how he would have finished the novel. Perhaps Paley and the other Swans receive a gentle reprieve from Capote’s honest, but cruel, words.

Paley died at the age of 63 of lung cancer. Ever the society professional, she organized her own funeral, dictated the lunch menu, and personally handed out her last remaining possessions.

I can only wonder what her last thoughts might have been. Was it a life worth living? A life worth remembering?

Well, it turns out there’s a way regular folks like you and me can buy our way into the news too.

Die.

See, unless you’re famous, it turns out that you have to pay to have an obituary printed in the newspaper. (Technically, you pay for death notices; obituaries are news items written by the newspaper about newsworthy individuals. Practically, though, they appear in the same area of the newspaper and are less distinguishable from each other than are paid and free search results. (Wikipedia has a good history of obituaries here.)

In fact, according to NY Times Obituary Editor Bill McDonald (quoted in 2006 and cited in the wiki above), death notices are actually handled by the classified department, and compete for space with the news department’s obituaries. The news department gets half a page, more or less, depending on sales of death notices that day.

I’m sure many of you know this already. In fact, 3 out of 5 friends I’ve asked about it answered me sadly and said, “Of course,” barely able to conceal their surprise at my naivete. Then again, many of you may not know this. As I’ve said before, I am still amazed by how many people don’t know that the “sponsored links” search results on Google are paid for by advertisers!

But if  you’ve never been through the process, like my family went through these past few weeks, it may come as a shock to you.

And it’s not cheap. Prices range from tens of dollars per column inch to hundreds. And there aren’t even any guarantees the paper will have enough space to print the obit on the day you want it there. You have to pay for the online versions, too.

Of course, there are some places where you can get coverage for free. The smaller papers still do it. I guess that their desire to serve their community and their desperate need for relevant content outweigh the business opportunity.

But I wonder, in this day of declining circulation and profitability at traditional news organizations, if that same thinking shouldn’t prevail? Maybe, if these papers did a better job of doing the things they can do better than new media, they would stay relevant.

Now, I am not going to join the online battles about what newspapers do best (exemplified by Jeff Jarvis’s post last year) except in this one area: people still read their local newspapers to find out who died — even if their local paper is the NY Times.

The local broadcast or cable news won’t mention your mother-in-law’s death. CNN certainly won’t, unless she was a Kennedy, over 100, a rock star, or somone equally important like a celebutante (contrary to popular belief, an old description first used in 1939 by Walter Winchell in his On Broadway column).

Your RSS feed isn’t set up to bring you news of the deaths of people you didn’t know died. (Well, most people’s feeds aren’t, anyway!) It won’t show up on The Huffington Post, Digg, YouTube, AOL, MSN or MySpace. (Maybe Twitter will start an obituary service. Hey, you never know.)

So newspapers, listen up: you’ve lost the jobs section (even the NY Times Jobs section is a partnership with Monster). You’ve lost the real estate section. Fight for this one piece of journalistic real estate you can hold on to by providing a free service to those bereaving family members who are getting milked by every other aspect of the death industry. Maybe even give more than half a page to it. At the very least, you’ll increase your circ by everyone who had a relative who died in the last few days.

That said, can someone please explain to me where the names are inscribed of the multitudes who have shuffled off their mortal coil and disappeared from this earth with no public notice of their passing because their relatives were too poor to pay for the death notice or who had no relatives at all? (Because, contrary to what I naively thought, it sure ain’t the archives of the-former-paper-of-record, the NY Times.)

Wiley-

What do you make of people who are famous for doing nothing except going out?

Dear Oan/Sad-

You’ve got to own up to your life.  Some people look like everyone else, but they got the attention of someone who put them out there.

Some of these celebutantes are ok because they actually work- show up at a place, complete a task and get paid.  Some show they have personality, some really are vapid and have none what so ever.  You’ve got to know how to keep yourself and your audience engaged.  Some would never even be looked at if one of their parents wasn’t already famous or they put out so someone would take pics of them.  I give thumbs up to Alexa Chung, not just because she’s a hot (quasi) Asian chick, others a thumbs down.

My name is Barron, Barron Blahnik and I am here for one purpose my little love minions. I am here to tell you everything you need to know about anything that matters. That includes style, celebs, art and media. Any questions? good.

Ok so now for the proper introduction:

If any of you have two fashionably conscious brain cells to rub together, you will realise that the name “Blahnik” comes from the oh so amazing and eternally worshipped shoe god that is Manolo Blahnik. Don’t know who that is? Google it bitches.

The name “Barron” comes from the original creator of the glamorous Hilton Hotel chain Barron Hilton (I don’t know why I even chose that but he is rolling in dosh and I like the name ) So there you have it ladies and gents. That was a summed up version of the only thing there is to care about right now. Bookmark me bitches and tell everyone who gives a damn that you won’t be seeing them for a while because from now on, this is a new level of addiction.

Love me! <3

Saturday night was the official opening of The Palms Place.   I attended a private reception at the Rojo Lounge,  then headed upstairs for the main event.  The view is amazing, and the scene is very Las Vegas; white cabanas draped in sheer fabrics, a glistening pool, and several bars decorated the rooftop. The restaurant is done by famed chef Kerry Simon, and took 7.2 million to put together. Like Cinderella, had to turn in early. =)

Sunday was another great day of work, then off to FIX at the Bellagio for mini lobster tacos and a spring salad. The best thing on the menu by far is the homemade donuts drizzled in chocolate and caramel sauce.  To be ultra-decadent, aslo order a scoop of the coconut ice cream. =)  FIX is the ultimate people watching and desert-dining experience!  After a quick drink and visit at the new SIN Lounge at The Hard Rock Hotel and Casino, my group headed off to Forty Deuce at The Mandalay Bay. Unfortunately, the dancers weren’t performing till 3:30am, and that was way past my bedtime!

(The bar area @ FIX)

Another exciting weekend…till next time!

xoxo

The Lord of the Rings hunk was dating the stunning Victoria’s Secret model in secret – but was outted when they were spotted kissing in public.

Even so, Kerr blushed when asked about the romance which neither has officially confirmed, reports in Showbizspy.com and People.com

Talking to a reporter about her passion for yoga, she was asked if she ever practices with Orlando. “Ugh. Ha, ha, ha!” she stuttered, before finally managing, “Well, I’m sure he does yoga.”

She blushed as she then added: “He’s a sweetheart and that’s all I’m gonna say. Sweetheart.”

Asked if they spent Valentines Day together, she laughed: “I can’t tell you!”

“I work for Victoria’s Secret – but that’s my secret.”

The duo were in part brought together because of their spiritual beliefs.

Orlando has spoken out about his Buddhist beliefs, and Kerr said: “I practice Japanese Buddhism.

“At the heart of it all, it’s about practicing peace.”

Read how Kerr stood up to diva Paris Hilton here.

CITY:SCENE 2007-08

British model Agyness Deyn has won the ultimate modelling industry acclaim by being named Model of the Year.

She has appeared on the front of Italian, American and British Vogue and been in advertisements for Burberry, Giorgio Armani and Vivienne Westwood.