Dita Always Higher

Web statistics are an amusing and instructive game. I often stop and watch the tables full of figures saying how many people come to my web site and which pages they visit, and the bulleted maps showing from which part of the world visitors arrive. Sometimes I find strange and unexpected things, for example a particular visit concentration from South Korea, from Turkey or Mexico.
One of the most interesting is the search statistics page offered by Google Sitemaps, showing which keywords visitors use to reach the website from the search engine. Many arrive on the web site simply searching “stylettos” and that's normal, but, apart from this, the most loved and most clicked is always her, Dita. Few months ago I published a blog about Dita Von Teese, and since then the fans of the famous pin-up, wife of rockstar Marilyn Manson, come everyday numerous.
Then I say: Do you want Dita? I'll give you Dita! Here's the YouTube video of a long television interview on French channel Antenne 2, where the Queen of the Burlesque appears in all her splendor, shot from several angles, absolutely elegant and well heeled.

There Is Something About YouTube

The recent purchase of extremely popular video web site YouTube by Google for $1.65 billion in stock is probably one of the biggest news to date in the internet world. The site, which was started by three 20-somethings last year, is a free video warehouse that allows users (something like 100 million a day) to upload or download movies. Rumors emerged that Yahoo was in the bidding war until very close to the end. Sequoia Capital, which funded YouTube with $11.5 million, earned more than 40 times what was invested in a company founded in February 2005. Other news report of CBS, Vivendi-Universal and Sony BMG joining a new branded channel on YouTube to deliver featured content.
On the other hand News Corp-Fox, which owns MySpace, the first YouTube competitor in the web video market, didn't hide sort of unease about Google's move, given the recent agreement for hosting Google ads on the famous social networking community. Last weekend, subtle changes occurred on MySpace’s homepage and user pages to make MySpace videos much more prominent and accessible. The default user profile page now has a video section that automatically displays a video if the user has one uploaded.
In other words the web video world is exploding, and the "viral" video technology invented by YouTube is the engine of this explosion. What's this "viral" stuff? It's the ability of embedding any YouTube video in a blog or web site just as simply as this...

$500,000 of 9/11 victims fund money spent on designer shoes

One of the widows of the September 11th 2001 attack to the World Trade Center, Kathy Trant, whose husband Dan was a trader for Cantor Fitzgerald on the 104th floor of North Tower, went public last year, saying she spent nearly all the $5 million she received from the U.S. government compensation fund in an attempt to allay her grief. "It's disgusting, I'm ashamed of it" she said, hoping that telling her story could help others with the same problem of compulsive shopping.
She traveled to Italy, Jamaica and Asia, obsessively gave gifts to friends and strangers, and spent $1.5 million on luxurious additions to her Long Island home, including a full basketball court and a floor-to-ceiling shoe rack, filled with half a million dollars' worth of shoes signed Prada, Marc Jacobs, Manolo Blahnik, Jimmy Choo, Emilio Pucci and Vera Wang.
She became a celebrity after her partecipation in Oprah Winfrey TV show, where she candidly admitted she was down to her last $500,000. She was recently hosted by british Channel Four for Ground Zero fifth anniversary cover-up.

Stiletto Run

Berlin's Stiletto Run, held last August 19th and sponsored by Glamour Magazine, was widely reported and commented all over the press and other media. Some articles said that it was the first high heels race ever, but it isn't true. Similar races were held in Amsterdam on March 9th, and in Moscow on last July 8th. There are rumors about other races planned in July in St. Petersburg and Novosibirsk, but there's no evidence about that.
Berlin edition was won by 25-year old psychology student Nadine Sonnabend, who taped rubber strips to the bottom of her shoes, beating the other 100 specially chosen perticipants on a 100 metres track, and winning the 10,000 € prize. The heels had to be (nearly) proper stilettos, at least 7 cm high and a maximum of 1.5 wide.

Italy Four Times World Champion!

Yes we made it! The Italian team won its fourth final out of six played so far. Only Brazil now has a better score. Somebody would say that France played better, and maybe it's true, but we deserved the Cup for the way we played the previous games, especially against Germany. The semifinal between France and Portugal was a boring game, won by a small penalty against a poor team. Which image will stay as a symbol of the italian victory? Maybe that of Fabio Grosso, the humble defender coming from a minor league and now become a worldwide famous football star, or that of the unsurpassable Cannavaro raising the Cup. But I chose that one of the Zidane headbutt, maybe better representing this dramatic and bitter match, ended with penalties. Whatever Materazzi said, that was the worst way for Zizou to end a great career.

Dita Superstar

Lovely Dita Von Teese is getting more and more famous even in Italy. Fetish and burlesque icon, but formerly known only among few affectionate fans, she recently published the book "The Art of the Teese", and she's more and more often seen on "respectable" magazines or on TV, modeling on fashion catwalks (Moschino Cheap & Chic) or just attending to the shows with her husband, the cult pop-star Marilyn Manson. But she now seems to be getting more attention than he is. Or am I wrong?

Magnificent Obsession

Probably, at least here in Italy, spiked heels aren't trendy anymore, just look around in the streets and you will realize that the mass phenomenon characterizing these last few years is now dripping. Also STYLETTOS Italy corrected its route, if before the claim was "every woman on stiletto heels" now we drifted toward less aggressive, even if equally evocative, shapes. What is not over is the cult of footwear, the search for a model that is exclusive and original, or maybe also apparently equal to any other, but with that something more, that can renew a woman's look by itself, even with used dressing or ordinary jeans.

Women spend fortunes to get the last designer pumps or boots, and every fashionable girl has her closet full. All editorials and comments you find in fashion magazines underline the importance of these so-called accessories, new brands and shops come out everyday, and this is not only here in Italy, the boot-shaped country. The epidemics is now spreading all over the world like an infectious disease.

Maybe someone happened to see the movie "In her shoes", representing a competitive and problematic relationship between two sisters (Cameron Diaz and Toni Collette) different in everything but for the passion, common to many others, for brand name shoes by cult designers like Jimmy Choo or Manolo Blahnik, already famous all over the planet after the television series "Sex & the City ".

And what about men? Nobody should think that the cult of women's shoes even as sexual objects is less common among men. The obsession for women's footwear is a serious matter, and for many a compulsive feeling, almost a kind of addiction. Maybe somebody else can remember the final scene in "There is something about Mary", by chance with Cameron Diaz again, where the perennially rejected lover (Chris Elliot) tries to steal main character's footwear collection.