Her eccentric brilliance is on par with that of Michael Jackson, and in the past year she has given new meaning to the words "apology" and "working visa". Her nickname is similar to that of an early 90s rapper, and only Fran Drescher, Mary Poppins and Jo Frost are more prolific nannies than her. Happy 19th birthday ICE!

I am extremely alarmed that a majority of my 'friends' want to see Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen. I think this fact calls for a major re-assessment of my life.

J.K. Rowling and Stephanie Meyer are credited with turning youth back onto books, but where does one turn after the fat tomes of Harry Potter and Twilight have weaved their way through their own copious plotlines to the (alleged) final, epic endings? The answer is, of course, to a Popular Penguin. Every 18 year old owns a minimum of one. They're cheap (a plus, as young people are generally poor, and prefer to spend their money on drugs than novels), the available titles are steeped in merit (let's face it, Humbert Humbert has waaay more literary cred than Bella Swan), and they seem to have accidentally evolved into a subtle cultural signifier of our times. The Popular Penguin is the quickest way to get a brief overview of a person and reduce them to a cultural stereotype. Ostentatious hipsters gorge on the Hunter S. Thompson and Kerouac titles, whilst Brodan-esque Moarchists choose Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World and other apt volumes. I once received a distressed text message from a bookseller friend about an acquiantance we mutually believed was interesting. "He just came in and bought the most boring PP titles," the message read, "I'm so disappointed and confused." The PP covers are a polarising issue. Opinions are torn on whether the simple orange and cream covers scream "classic academia" or the end of the Chip Kidd book cover dream. (A friend recently claimed the books looked like a Monte Carlo biscuit in reverse, and dubbed them "too ugly" for his bookshelf. I kind of agreed). Love them or loathe them, the Popular Penguins are here to stay with another 50 titles being released tomorrow, and word is they're so good, Nicola "climaxed" when she read the upcoming titles online.

In one of her awkwardly phrased but extremely pertinent voiceovers, My So-Called Life's vacillating protagonist Angela Chase proclaimed, "It seems like some people have to die young. Like it fits them or something." Chase's choice words seem applicable to famous people. The premature passing of a star seems almost to be an annual event*. We are shocked, but also half-expectant, it's kind of a high price for living life in the fast lane- as if it fits them. There is a phantasmagoric quality about these deaths- the screaming sirens; the blinding flashbulbs of the papparazzi cameras in the media crush; the brooding, troubled shadows that inevitably lurk beneath the glitzy surface - all read like one of the deceased star's movie scripts, creating an atmosphere both eerie and surreal. It's hard to articulate what I mean, but it feels to me that the death isn't quite real, that it's just another tabloid stunt, or an extension of a movie role, and that the celebrity themself has been unable to differentiate reality from the warped fiction of their microcosmic lives until it's too late.

*The death of an icon, as with Michael Jackson (and to a lesser extent Farrah Fawcett), is much less common. Princess Diana and John Lennon are good examples. Others, however, achieve iconic status via their early death (Heath Ledger, River Phoenix), forever framed in a picture of youth, surrounded by the juxtaposing aura of possibility and devastating waste.

"When I got my first television set, I stopped caring so much about having close relationships"- Andy Warhol, although it could have been Sophie Holmes.

Superficiality, swimming pools and sex tapes...

In a recent magazine article Bret Easton Ellis revealled he was a fan of The Hills. He quipped, in a rather Warhol-esque tone, "It's genius! Although I'm only up to season three because I can't stand to watch it on television. That little MTV logo up in the corner infuritates me. I wait until it comes out on DVD, I turn up the volume and I'm swamped by beauty." That Ellis is a fan of The Hills is no big deal. I am too. So are many people. (The Hills has undoubtable influence and its rampant popularity comes not just from its aesthetic pleasures, but from the idea that the show could be about any of us. Writes James Poniewozik, "Who hasn't imagined his or her life as a TV show, every minor drama magnified, every view airbrushed, a Natasha Bedingfield song ripping hearts out every time you sadly adjust your sunglasses at a red light?") However, without Bret Easton Ellis it's doubtful The Hills would even exist. He originally came up with the idea of rich, attractive and debauched youth running amock in Los Angeles in his novel Less Than Zero twenty years ago, and unlike The Hills, his host of characters were actually interesting, and weren't doped up on a large dose of bland (although they were doped up on everything else). That Ellis loves The Hills got me to thinking: Can you geuinely be a fan of anything that is less interesting than your own thoughts and ideas?

I just don't find Judd Apatow movies funny. At all. Is there something wrong with me? Beacuse it definately feels like it. Apatow's style is a dry mix of the Kevin Smith slacker comedy and the gross-out humour of the Farrelly brothers, and he's been dubbed the comedic voice of my generation, so I feel as if I should at least be smiling. However I appear to be the lone straight face in a sea of howling laughter. So big is Apatow Vanity Fair put him on their "New Establishment" list of 2008, calling him the 'New King of Comedy', but I still can't find anything vaguely amusing about Katherine Heigl giving birth or Steve Carrell waking up with morning glory.

The radio station at my work promises, somewhat predictably, to play “the freshest hits”, yet all it can fathom is a very myopic slice of music from the late 90s. The type of music played on this station is so specific that even after consultation with numerous music guides, I am unable to find a genre that adequately caters for it. Thus I have created my own. "End-of-the-century adolescent rock"- less confronting and demonic than Marilyn Manson and Korn, but cruder and more self-effacing than Britney, NSync and the rest of their manicured, manufactured cohorts, this music took the last remains of grunge and fused it with a kind of twisted sense of humour: think Sugar Ray, Smash Mouth, Goo Goo Dolls, Blink 182, Barenaked Ladies and Weezer amongst others. The twenty-something year old DJ’s spin the anthems from their high school glory days, creating a dripping ambiance of angst, affront sexuality and sweaty armpits; things all rather inappropriate for a commerical store. At first I loathed listening to this music that I felt was more apt as a soundtrack for one of those house parties on a bad Jason Biggs movie (eg. Loser) where everyone would drink out of those red plastic cups (I once screeched to my family that I worked in a "pathetic timewarp"), but the more I listen to this radio station, the more it grows on me. Where else would I pick up a re-newed appreciation for “Brick” by Ben Folds Five, or “Breakfast At Tiffany’s” by Deep Blue Something? Sometimes I even scare myself, after finding I'm humming along to an Alanis Morisette tune. And besides, this continual playing of music from a decade ago makes me feel my job exists in the past, not in the present, and this can only be a good thing. When I think about days at work from a week ago, they kind of feel like they are lost somewhere in that clouded era of the Milennium Bug, cargo pants and Dawson's Creek.

Is it a prerequisite for General Pants employees to be the most annoying people on the face of the earth? I think so. They are almost a sub-species, distinguished by their extroverted manner, inspid dress sense and the way in which they strucutre their sentences around the words "bro" and "buddy". (Look closely and you will be able to identify a General Pants employee outisde of their work too.) Each is a slightly more or less obnxious version of the other. I once had one assistant who, whilst serving me, rapped some Lupe Fiasco track, complete with hand movements, like she was a "ghetto motha" from the Bronx.
When you enter a General Pants store the customer service borders on harassment. In between the thundering beats of the Scribe and Yeah Yeah Yeahs albums that seem to be constantly playing on repeat over the speakers, the painful assistant will attack you with a barrage of questions ("what are you up to today buddy?" "how are ya fellas?") with a sweet-as attitude. Sometimes I just have the urge to yell, "You are not cool! You look like a dickhead wearing that trilby hat indoors. Please, please, please leave me the fuck alone, and let me browse through the overpriced flannelette shirts in peace!!" I'm not asking for inspiring shop assistants (I'm quite fine with the dreary, overweight middle aged clerks at K-Mart who are so lackadaisical it's as if the store's fluroescent lighting has drained them of all life), I just want to be left alone!

Pondering the future of Cameron Diaz...


It is a confronting reminder that you are growing older and time is swifly and irrevocably moving on when watching the trailer for the upcoming movie My Sister's Keeper and realising that Cameron Diaz is now playing the role of a matriarch, as oppossed to the perky, slightly naff singleton characters she has done for the past decade or so. This decision for Diaz to make the leap as an on-screen mother means she has crossed a fine line in her career. Never again can she play her trademark happy-go-lucky singleton charatcers. Rather, all her future parts will now be confined to the role as a mother, or if she plays a singleton she will have to do so with a tired, desperate my-biological-clock-is-ticking negataivity, a mini-genre that is already thoroughly covered on (and off) screen by Jennifer Aniston.

James Frey is Nicola's writer crush. Molly Young is mine, and she is much less thuggish and much more honest than Frey (unlike him, she did not commit what is perhaps the most mortal sin of our times: lying to Oprah Winfrey). Disciplined and industrious (as well as young and pretty, too pretty to be a writer; as it is my belief that writers should be cursed with a Stephen King-esque ugliness) she churns out a remarkable amount of work: chapbooks (mine arrived from New York last week, and needless to say it's amazing), articles for prolific on-line magazines, and my favourite, her daily blog. Her quirky, idiosynchratic vignettes, such as the one below, add an extra colourful dimension to my day, and I'm totally in love.



About the Author: Steve Martin is the kind of guy who loves to write things about himself on book flaps. In fact, he has been known to write entire books just so he could write on their flaps.


Molly blogs here, but just remember when she is a hugely famous novelist in about fifteen years that I liked her first!

I'm very suspicious about Lady GaGa. She dresses in an outlandish manner ("a more cartoonish Gwen Stefani"/ "a John Galliano fashion show on (even more) crack"), and conducts herself in interviews like a drivelling loon, yet her music is so accessible. How is it possible to simultaneously produce mainstream magic like "Pokerface" and act like you're on a day trip from the mental asylum? GaGa's muse Grace Jones was absolutely eccentric, but her music was equally as odd, and thus she was genuine. An image needs to supplement the music (and vice versa), not contradict it, otherwise the whole persona comes off as wildly unauthentic, as is the case with Lady GaGa.