Teeny Manolo

This kid-based trailer for The Dark Knight from Wizard Universe is perhaps the most glorious single YouTube in all of recorded history. Why so serious indeed!

via Defamer

The wonderful folks at Stila were kind enough to send me an impressively large package filled with goodies. Now, I thought for a minute of leaving the country, changing my name, and being forever happy with my fabulous stash.

But then guilt got the better of me, and I decided to play nice and share.

The sacrifices I make for you. Really.

I have two prize packages worth over $100 apiece, and a Grand Prize worth over $150 in glorious Stila products to make you look even prettier than you already are.

Today I am giving away the first prize package, which includes such lovelies as: Eye Shadow Trio, Lip Glaze, Lip Glaze Stick, High Shine Lip Color, Eye Shadow Duo, and a Smoky Eye Palette.

Seriously, are you not just delirious at the thought of all that?

Here are the rules:
1. Enter the contest by commenting on this post.
2. Contest open only to Canadian and United States residents.
3. Contest deadline is midnight (Pacific) August 15, 2008.
4. Only one entry per person. Duplicate entries will be deleted.

The winner will be chosen by a random number generator, but it never hurts to compliment people shoving free things at you.

Good luck!

Say hello to Tavi, a 12-year-old fashion blogger who is the very embodiment of superfantastic. While your common-or-garden tween angst appears to have put a temporary crimp in the blogging style, we have hope that she’ll again take to her keyboard and, with time, perhaps realize that no, Katie Holmes should not have worn black socks with those gladiator sandal heels.

Until such time as she makes a triumphant return to the blogosphere (ETA 36 hours) we can trawl the archives, enjoying such gems as: My New Best Friends

Normally I would say I want to kidnap them, but since we’re possibly the same age I shall instead befriend them. We’ll make secret clubs and eat soup we made out of tree bark and run around with mops on our heads and eat bugs. You’re extremely jealous you’re no longer 12 years old, aren’t you?

Damn straight.

Leave it to the Japanese to make a toilet training device with no sense of shame but an overdeveloped sense of theatre and the bizarre. Stolen from JapanProbe, here is the World Famous Shimajiro Toilet Training video, subtitled in English. Over at JP they have the actual sounds the machine makes as MP3 files as well: if only this little device looked like the Dora the Explorer aquapet, my day would be complete!

Who doesn’t love home-made chocolate cake? And who isn’t far too lazy to do their own? (okay, that’s just me)

But who wouldn’t take a shot at this make-in-a-mug and from-scratch and ready-in-five and otherwise-multi-hyphenated winner of a chocolate cake recipe from DizzyDee?

You need a 1000 watt microwave or an aptitude for math (to do the conversion) and one microwave-safe (there go those hyphens again and, come to think of it, the parentheses as well) mug for each serving. They want you to dump the finished cake out onto a plate, but they must have servants or dishwashers or something; I’d just eat it out of the mug with an iced tea spoon.

Bonus points: pig-shaped stencils on top with a sifting of icing sugar. I mean, anybody can make a five minute chocolate mug cake in a pig mug, but a five minute chocolate mug cake in a pig mug with sugar pigs on top? That’s gold star material.

The bad news?

I have a winner for the Stila Lip Glaze Sticks, and of course it is only one person. So that means all the rest of you did not win.

The good news?

More giveaways are in the works, so be sure to check back next week for even more goodies!

And now, drumroll please…

Bellamama! Come on down!

Just click on my name up there in the orange so that I can get your information.

So the rest of you, remember to come back next Saturday for the details on what will hopefully be even more free stuff!

In the world of toy designs, some rare creations are so enriched with the superfabulousness that comes from pure genius that it’s hard to believe they didn’t always exist.

CrazyForts is one of those designs.

Like oversized TinkerToys, these safe and sturdy frames can be put together in almost infinite variations. And you get to keep the cushions on the sofa where they belong! To create the world’s most customizable fort, just pop the frame together in the configuration of your choice and throw a sheet over the skeleton. It’s up to the kids if they want to use the Star Wars ones or the flanellette cowboys, though. You don’t want to interfere with creative genius.

Forgive the Glinda for this late post.

Glinda had a long, long, week topped off by a physical ailment that hit her last night at 2am. And no, it was not due to the overimbibing of alcoholic beverages. Then I had a dream where I somehow became the nanny for Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. I will spare you the details of both the ailment and the dream.

But!

I will tell you the details of our second Stila Giveaway, and the lucky winner of last week’s contest!

This week’s contest involves answering a question on your blog to win. You must tell me all about your can’t-live-without beauty product. Post the answer on your blog and link to it in the comment section. Entries can be submitted until midnight (Pacific) July 11, 2008. Unfortunately, this contest is limited to participants living in the United States or Canada only.

And now, the winner!

My handy-dandy random number generator came up with the number 1, and gamma, that means you! Because you are the first to win, you have first choice of the three colors, so email me (just click on my name up there in the orange) for the details!

Like I said, you KNOW how we feel about Elmo.

Apparently, so do the rest of you, for most of you were too intimidated to attempt to caption him, lest he wreak havoc in your life as he is about to in Liv Tyler’s. Who could blame you? The creature crawled from the pit and tickled his way to the top of the heap in Hollywood, leaving a trail of drained, lifeless bodies in his wake.

Nonetheless, four brave and talented commenters have risked it all for eternal glory and imaginary swag, and from them we have chosen a winner:

Bellamama Says:
June 30th, 2008 at 12:01 am

“The Neighbors” - A Nightmare on Sesame Street!

The writing was childish and the costumes were like something out of a Saturday morning kids show! A dark comedy with too many characters, no plot, and WAY too much giggling! The only Oscar this movie will see is the Grouch!

D-

Kudos, Kevlar, and a big thumb’s-up to Bellamama for the winning caption. And what of the imaginary swag? We’ve chosen this, the Links of London Martini charm (although with a cherry I think it’s a Manhattan charm instead, but, like, whatever). I thought about choosing the cellphone charm, so you could call for help and then thought what would I do in a situation like that, and the answer was obvious: mix a very grown-up DRINK!

Click HERE to enter our stylin’ Stila giveaway!

Trust three bored Aussies in the middle of a war zone to come up with this: an outreach program in Afghanistan consisting of co-ed skateboarding lessons. That pic is of Haroon, teaching his two-year-old sister Baher to pop an ollie while a crowd of sk8er boiz wait their turn.

From the Guardian:

Afghanistan… has the world’s highest percentage of school-age children but some of the toughest conditions. Despite progress since 2001, illiteracy is rife, beggars swarm the streets of Kabul and there are 600,000 child drug addicts. Just 1% of students make it to university.

Skateistan, as the project is called, started 18 months ago with 10 secondhand skateboards that Percovich, 34, scrounged from friends in Melbourne. It is a departure from the macho image of sport in a country where the national pastime, Buzkashi, features two teams of horsemen fighting over a calf carcass. Dog fighting and cock fighting are also popular.

Skating is non-competitive, creative and urban. The organisers hope the sport will come to define fun in the post-9/11 era, just as the bestseller The Kite Runner symbolised childhood in 1970s Kabul…

Skateistan tried to be different. It started small, offering free skateboarding classes in public spaces, with virtually no budget.

The strategy took the Australians to some unusual venues, including the Russian pool, an empty pool overlooking the city frequented by hash smokers and used for Friday night dog fights. Under Taliban rule it was used for public executions.

Sounds like the skate park near my house, actually, but that is neither here nor there. After deciding that building a skate park would be a step up from trying to take back the dogfighting arenas from the hash smokers, and rejecting working with the nonprofits in Afghanistan on competence-based grounds, they’re looking to raise the money from scratch. And we all know how well-funded the ground level of skateboarding is, don’t we?

In tangentially-related news, does anyone know why skateboarding in North America is almost exclusively male? I see plenty of girls at the skate park, sure, but they’re sitting, they’re smoking, and their waiting for their boyfriends to go so they can applaud wildly. Was I the last girl on the continent to feel welcome on a longboard?

Click HERE to enter our stylin’ Stila giveaway!