[MUSIC] Paris Hilton, "Stars Are Blind"

YouTube hosts the video for Paris' first music single here. Be warned that you'll need to log in, since some viewers mysteriously flagged this inoccuous video for adult content. (Insert jokes about her latest video here.) You can hear her "sing," with the perfect clear voice of a computer-edited vocal track.

Does anyone want to make any bets on its eventual chart placing?

[LINK] "In Wal-Mart's Home, Synagogue Signals Growth"

Michael Barnard's article in The New York Times, "In Wal-Mart's Home, Synagogue Signals Growth", is an interesting survey of the development de novo of an immigrant ethnoreligious community. Planning turns out to be essential.

[REVIEW] Nicci French, Catch Me When I Fall

the novel Catch Me When I Fall, written by the husband-wife writing team of Nicci French, is just as disappointing as the Amazon.ca reviews suggest it to be. There could have been a more tautly-written and compelling thriller about the misadventures of Holly Krauss, a high-living and energetic but manic bipolar ad executive in London whose illness starts to endanger her life, bringing her husband and her co-workers and her neighbours together with the gangsters and stalkers she managed to pick up on the sly. It's just a pity that I can't be made to particularly care about any of the helpless characters. I can only read about a doomed character for so long without a payoff; French failed to do this.

[NON BLOG] Pride Prom

I'm rather glad that of_evangeline insisted I join her and select others at the Pride Prom last night, hosted at the Buddies in Bad Times Theatre on Alexander. More shall be said of this later, and hopefully, pictures provided. (Hint, hint.)