Here is a video that I can’t stop watching. It was brought to my attention by Awl pal Mary H.K. Choi and her crew at MTV Style, and it is pretty much exactly what you would expect to be coming out of Los Angeles at the moment. After Amy Winehouse and “Mad Men” and Best Coast, a person named Lana Del Ray describing herself as a “gangster Nancy Sinatra,” singing about drinking beer and playing video games though big bee-stung lips seems like a natural progression. But the song is great, and the video — mixing “World of Warcraft” screen clips and paparazzi footage with vintage backyard home movies and skateboarding flicks and stop-motion photography of roses opening — is so perfect as to make you think that Belinda Carlisle really was right. Heaven.

See you tomorrow, apparently, giant trove of News Corp emails (or at least emails from their newspaper publishing division, News International) obtained by LulzSec by means not dissimilar to how News of the World (and others?) obtained information for their reporting. Maybe we will get a nice view of just how frequently (legal disclaimer: IF AT ALL) James Murdoch lied before Parliament today?

“Are 18- to 34-year-olds too young to be nostalgic? Evidently not. Starting next Monday, TeenNick, part of the Nickelodeon family of cable channels for children, will start rebroadcasting old series from the 1990s that are considered classics by young adults. That’s right: classics from the 1990s.”

I am surprised that the New York Times finds this surprising. My sophomore year of college, 1991, this guy I knew threw an ’80s Party. Where people dressed up in ’80s fashions and danced to ’80s music. The early ’80s held sway, apparently: pastel leg-warmers and off-the-shoulder Flashdance sweatshirts, Flock of Seagulls and Frankie Goes to Hollywood. I didn’t go to the party, because it just seemed too ridiculous. I was still wearing plenty of clothes I wore in the ’80s in 1991.

I was surprised, then, at the speed at which we’d cycled from first-round appreciation to a kitschier, nostalgic appreciation. But the party proved very popular. There were more of them. And more of them. By the time I graduated, in the mid-’90s, the ’80s Party had become a staple of young doofus nightlife not only at my college, but all across the country. I moved to New York and a nightclub devoted to the phenomena opened there soon after. It was called Culture Club, like the iconic ’80s band, and the Cs were written like Pacman, the iconic ’80s video game. There was a promotional van that used to drive around the city. It was annoying. But even at that point, not surprising. There was lots of stuff written about Generation X — which I think is my generation, if I understand it right — and how we were so quick so nostalgify everything. All those t-shirts with ’70s and ’80s brand logos. “Sunkist,” “Bubblicious,” etc. I used to wear velour shirts (I cringe a little at the thought) like Steven Malkmus from Pavement did, imagining that I was achieving a sort of tongue-in-cheek “grooviness.” But I felt like I came by it honestly, since I’d worn velour shirts as a kid in the ‘70s.

But the line between kitsch and anything else is a blurry one. The movie the The Wedding Singer came out in 1998, making much of its temporal setting in 1985. Less than ten years later, you could see the fashions at which it poked fun everyday on the street. I was surprised then by this stuff. It’s probably natural, as we get older, to feel like, “Wow, that style is back? Already?” But I shouldn’t have been. I can remember sitting and watching TV in the mid-’70s, weekdays, at my babysitter Peg Linville’s house, her son Tommy and I. We loved “Happy Days,” which was set in the ’50s. It used to come on right after “The Lone Ranger,” reruns, which were made in ’50s. I was probably wearing a velour shirt.

“Even black vaginas are sassy.”

Wendi Deng: HOLD MY HOOPS. Don’t you wish she was testifying instead, instead of Rupert Murdoch or poor, poor dim James? OH WENDI.

“Los Angeles County sheriff’s officials Monday released a video of a robbery attempt foiled by an enraged and barking Chihuahua, hoping the public can identify the two assailants. The attempted robbery took place July 7 about 7:30 p.m. at Ace Smoke Shop on North Lake Avenue in Altadena. The video shows two hooded men, one armed with a rifle, running into the store and demanding money. The store owner quickly begins placing money in a robber’s backpack. As he does, his Chihuahua erupts into ferocious barking at the two men, who beat a hasty retreat, running out of the store with the backpack but taking less money than they could’ve gotten.”

“Matthew Sweet will perform his seminal 1991 album Girlfriend in its entirety on an upcoming fall tour, The Hollywood Reporter has learned. The 20th anniversary trek is set to kick off in October confirms a rep for Missing Piece Records, which will release Sweet’s new Album, Modern Art, on September 20.”

The Internet will explode quite soon, as Rupert Murdoch, James Murdoch and Rebekah Brooks all go before a Parliament committee’s inquiry this morning, circa 9:30 a.m. east coast time. It’s a hearing almost two years in the making! (“So, yeah, this is gonna be a pretty big story,” we wrote in July of 2009!) That being said, the committee is not as toothsome as an American congressional hearing would be, which isn’t even all that toothsome anyway. Still, people expect Murdoch to come in hot, throwing anyone to the wolves that he can. Perhaps he might resign as CEO! Meanwhile, while we wait, let’s look at some potential upsides from this debacle!

• One minor good outcome of this ludicrous story could be America getting rid of “Top Gear” host Jeremy Clarkson’s punching bag, the despicable Piers Morgan, who, if you don’t really “do” TV, is CNN’s new Larry King and also a former News of the World editor, who may or may not know plenty about phone hacking but definitely knows there’s a “huge witch hunt going on” to bring down Rupert Murdoch. He’s pretty much the worst thing that’s been brought to America since smallpox.

• And have you not been in hysterics for the last 12 hours over this one?

So Charlie Brooks, Rebekah’s husband — and the pair met at Jeremy Clarkson’s house — has a remarkable bio: He is: “a former amateur jockey and trainer who once ran a sex-toy mail-order company, now writes about racing for the Daily Telegraph and is the author of a couple of racing thrillers.”

He’s also apparently not very… organized. Recently he left a bag with a laptop and a phone and “some papers” with a friend. This friend returned this bag to an underground parking garage under a shopping center, “yards” from the Brooks’ “gated apartment block,” because that’s what friends do when they return laptops, they leave them in nearby car parks, but this friend was apparently not very bright, and left the bag in the wrong part of the garage, and so it ended up in the rubbish. “The suggestion is that a cleaner thought it was rubbish and put it in the bin,” is what Charlie’s spokesperson said. Ha ha!

Then security found it and turned it over to the police, and Charlie’s very mad, because certainly no one was trying to dispose of this laptop, and its contents certainly have nothing to do with the inquiry into his now-arrested and unemployed spouse. These are some rank amateur shenanigans.

by Emily Morris

Gazpacho is delicious, but sometimes it just involves too many greens, and not enough bread. Luckily, the Spanish already invented a carb-and-oil based version: salmorejo (sal-mo-RAY-ho), an invention from Cordoba, Andalusia. Using day-old bread and hard-boiled eggs, it’s designed to tie up loose ends at the end of the week, when the groceries are running out and no one feels like cooking anything. The best part: it only requires preparation and a refrigerator, no heat. Perfect for a midsummer meal.

I emailed my former host mother and amazing Cordoban cook, Marta, for her recipe. She replied:

“Tomate, sal, vinagre, aceite de olivo y pan duro… y mezcla!”

Translation: Tomato, salt and vinegar, olive oil and stale bread… and mix it!

But doesn’t she know I’m writing this for a blog? No matter. I did get her to elaborate on the amounts of each ingredient, and cross-checked the process with this recipe. This makes a LOT of salmorejo (6–8 servings).

Begin by cutting up a baguette. You can really use any stale or hardened white bread for this, and you don’t even have to cut it. Tear away, if you please. If you want to be exact about it this is about 7 oz of bread.

Next, cut up some tomatoes. You can see that I am not cutting them very nicely or efficiently, and that they do not have to be peeled. (You don’t have to cut them at all, really, if you have a massive food processor.)

Set your tomatoes aside. Measure out one cup of water and a tiiiiny splash of vinegar. Pour the mixture over a bowl containing the bread pieces and stir so everything gets nice and coated. Let soak for 10 minutes.

Time for the wet ingredients. Mix some olive oil, vinegar, garlic and salt in with the tomatoes. If you prefer more garlic, go ahead! Some less? No problem!

Now you should have two separate bowls — wet tomato bowl and soaked bread bowl. Mix those suckers together!

Now pour the tomato and bread mixture into your food processor. Press “grind” like 5 million times and then alternate between “chop” and “grind” because you’ll probably get bored. Pause for a second if you can smell the blades from your food processor starting to heat up. Don’t worry, that means it’s working. Keep grinding until texture is silky-smooth. It should have the same texture as a squash soup.

Refrigerate the final soup for 4 hours or until completely chilled. This would be a good time to make the hard-boiled eggs that go on top, if you haven’t yet.

Put hard-boiled eggs and Serrano ham (I used prosciutto) on top, and enjoy.

Ultimately, Marta had it right — you really can just mix all of the ingredients, of approximate amounts, together in a food processor. It’s meant to be easy, so just dump a bunch of stuff in a bowl and process it up! Serve with Spanish tortilla and sangria sorbet, or use it as dip…for more bread.

“It’s almost like having a V.I.P. pass to the Internet.”
 — Some dude talking about how special it is to be part of an invitation-only social networking service like Google+. Can you imagine? It’s like having a V.I.P. pass to barber school. It’s like having a V.I.P. pass to the Census Bureau. It’s like having a V.I.P. pass to the MALL. Except each of those things might have some scintilla of utility. V.I.P. pass to the Internet. Get out of here.