File Under: The Decline of Western Civilization

Today we reached a new low in America. The word "twerk" is an answer in the New York Time Sunday Crossword Puzzle, which is considered by most to be the nation's finest crossword puzzle. The NY Times crossword is edited by Will Shortz, America's preeminent puzzle expert. In my opinion Mr. Shortz fell short on his duties with this particular edition of the puzzle. After I filled in the answer to the clue "back it up, in a way," I instantly felt dirty and had to go take a shower! And it's not my showering day!

You've put us on a dangerously slippery slope, Mr. Shortz! First it's "twerk," next it'll be what? "Bootylicious?" I'm just glad this puzzle is of no interest to most children of an impressionable age! The word "twerk" just achieved legitimacy in the English lexicon, and it won't stop there. Before long there will be a required twerking unit in elementary school P.E. classes, and they'll be teaching "Twerking to the Oldies" down at the senior center. There goes the morality of our nation's most innocent and vulnerable citizens! I hope you are happy now, Mr. Shortz.

A Haiku About the New Swatch Watches

Candy on your wrist
You're watching time fleeting
Swatch makes it look sweet

FASHION REPORT: Swatch Watches

Oh happy day! Swatch has released their collection of new watches for spring and summer, and the styles in their "Pastry Chef" line look good enough to eat! Of course the line has a few conservative styles for the less-adventurous, but the standouts are the candy-themed watches.

"Peppercane" comes in the unisex size, while "Sminty" comes only in ladies' size. It looks like "Sminty" is on a stretchy band.

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"Waffel" is a ladie's watch with a wraparound band. The details are metallic gold against pink, super cute! On the right is "Dragee," which is some kind of popular candy in Sweden, I guess. "Dragee" is a ladies' watch with a stretchy band. 

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"Lekker" has old-fashioned licorice candies all over it, and "Sweet Explosion" has macarons. "Sweet Explosion" also has the day/date feature. These are both in unisex/ladies' large size.

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I saved my favorites for last. "Caramelissima" is a ladies' size watch with a wraparound candy necklace for a band. The candies look real but they are plastic, of course. Don't wear this watch around little kids or you will drive them crazy with frustration, wishing they could eat your watch band. "Sprinkled" looks like real candy sprinkles and if I wore one of these watches I would be constantly craving a vanilla frozen custard cone with rainbow sprinkles from Custard & Co in Royal Oak, Michigan. Oh, who am I kidding? I am already constantly craving a vanilla frozen custard cone with rainbow candy sprinkles from a place 3000 miles from where I live. Talk about frustration!

Swatch is alive and well and has been making amazingly creative and beautiful watches since the '80's. I remember my first Swatch, it had leopard spots on it. I lost it somewhere in Mexico in 1987, hopefully someone found it and loved it as much as I did. I have curated a fairly extensive collection of Swatch watches over the years, so you can count on more Finely-Sifted posts dedicated to Swatch in the future.

BREAKING NEWS: Katy Perry Releases Cover Art for New Single, Gets Upstaged By Sister

Just when I thought it was safe to quit blogging for the day and start drinking, Katy Perry dropped a bomb. She took to Twitter and shared the art that will go along with her new single, "Birthday." It's a mess, look:

I hope they were going for the "grandma's first try at Photoshop" look, because that cake was lifted straight outta "Good Housekeeping".

But what really takes the cake (Ha!) is Katy's scene-stealing sister, right in the middle of the shot, giving us "FACE!" and the classic "Thinker" pose. Katy has been keeping this sister of hers under wraps, and now we know why! Her sister is clearly the star in this family. She's upstaging Katy, who looks about as vibrant as a piece of soggy white toast next to Miss Ginger Snap.

Katy's sister looks familar... Hey, did she grow up to marry Cynthia Nixon? 

I calls 'em as I sees 'em, folks.

Via Ryan Seacrest

Required Viewing

It's been quiet here at Finely-Sifted for a couple of days. Not for my lack of trying! I simply could not find anything that passed our high standards. My editor LP wouldn't approve any of my post ideas. Finally today I got approval to use a couple of things from the vault.

I'm sure most of you have had the pleasure of seeing Teddybear the Porcupine eating corn. If not, this is required viewing for all Finely-Sifted readers. If you have seen this before you're probably jonesin' to see it again. Important: Turn up the volume, Teddybear must be heard.

Teddybear has made several videos and they are all so delightful, but my favorite will always be the original. I swear I hear him yell, "Back up!" at 0:47. That's right, lady, back up and hands off the corn!


The only other item LP would approve for this post is a gif of Taylor Swift performing at the Grammys. I remember watching this and here was the moment I said to myself, "You know what? The kid might be all right."

Taylor was the butt of some jokes the next day because of her exuberant head-banging, but she won me over. It was the first time I saw her do anything interesting. And I really like the song too. Keep taking risks and making weird choices, Taylor!

I guess that's all I've got for today, but I have high hopes for tomorrow's sifting!

Love
Edy O.

The Hoff Is Having a Yard Sale

Doesn't it seem like lately a lot of famous people are selling off their possessions?  Most of them do it for charity, like Pharrell Williams with his Grammys hat eBay auction. He raised over 40K for the charity he founded, From One Hand To AnOTHER. Others, like Courtney Love, have held online auctions to raise some cash for their own damn selves.

David Hasselhoff is doing it differently by having a hoity-toity auction house handle his items for sale. He's mixing things up by having the proceeds from some items going to benefit the Starlight Children's Foundation, and the proceeds from other things going toward his hamburger fund. Let's look at some of the more interesting items The Hoff has for sale.

First we have the 14-ft horizontally-oriented statue of The Hoff (pictured above), which was used as a prop in the SpongeBob Squarepants movie. There's so much that's wrong with this, I don't even know where to begin. For one thing, I have an aversion to SpongeBob Squarepants and cannot get through 10 minutes of a regular cartoon, much less a feature-length movie. I guess I never bought into the whole sponge-wearing-pants premise. Also, I thought that one statue of The Hoff was sufficient for this world of ours. But if you simply cannot carry on with life without owning this oversized-piece of cinematic history, the bidding starts at $10,000. 

Here's one of David's old jackets, which I'm sure he wore to many high-class Hollywood events and parties. The Hoff had to beat the hot chicks off with a stick whenever he wore this sexy stunner. This one's a steal at $150.

You can own The Hoff's Hog! And I think I'll just quit while I'm ahead here. Moving on...

It's the jacket The Hoff wore in the greatest music video of all time: "Hooked on a Feeling!" If you haven't seen this video already, please carve out a few minutes of your time to watch it. Believe Edy O, you'll be glad you did. Watching this video changed my life and gave me a renewed hope that some day all people from all nations will live in peace and harmony. It also made me laugh so hard I pee'd my Snuggie.

Today is a great day for The Hoff! Not only was he featured on the hottest new blog to hit the airwaves, Finely-Sifted, but he was also integral to the Google+ April Fool's Day joke. Things are really looking up for David Hasselhoff! Admit it, you've been rooting for him the whole time, even during his darkest days. Me too.

Kesha Watch

Someone got a picture of Kesha taking a load off and making a phone call. This may seem like a boring picture of Kesha just sitting around chatting, but it has me puzzled. Was she just walking down the street and saw this chair and decided to rest a moment? Maybe there was a sidewalk sale at Target. But if she was just walking down the street and decided to sit on a chair in a sidewalk sale, then where is her purse? Is she making her assistant hold her bag while she chats on the phone? And when I say "assistant" I mean sober coach. She probably got a call, conveniently found a fancy chair at a sidewalk sale, sat down to take the call and sent her sober coach across the street to Starbucks for a venti skinny latte. And when I say "sober coach," I mean little brother.

But what really has me puzzled is her footwear. It looks like she went into my closet and pulled out the pair of naugahyde dress loafers I got at Payless for a job interview in 1998. Seriously, look at these shoes.

Not only do these shoes not go with her outfit or her hair or anything about her, they look damn uncomfortable to be wearing without socks. What could she have been thinking?

Wait, I think I have an idea about how this all went down. You see, Kesha was walking down the street, minding her own business, when she stepped in dog poop. Her gold and silver Supras were ruined! There was so much poop it even got on her socks. She dashed into the nearest shoe store she could find, a Payless, and grabbed the first pair of shoes she could find in her size. Kesha tried to go about her merry way, but the new shoes started digging into her heels so painfully that she had to sit down. Fortunately Target was having a sidewalk sale and she was able to take a load off on a darling chair that was 18% off. She gave her purse to her little brother and sent him to a nearby 7-11 to get her some band-aids and a sugar free Mango Slurpee, taking the opportunity to call her mother, who is still in rehab. Mystery solved!

Via CDAN

Don't Believe Anything You See on the Internet Today

Everyone's getting into the April Fool's spirit by posting untrue stories, i.e.: Lorde dyed her hair blonde, Justin Bieber is doing a Calvin Klein underwear campaign, Kim Kardashian and Kanye West got married over the weekend, and on and on. Har-dee-har-har.

Here at Finely-Sifted, we strive to bring you the truth, no matter how twisted or ridiculous that truth may be. So if you want to be assured that what you read is not serving some 3rd-class, broken-down, April Fool's Day agenda, hang around here today. I will be sifting through the interweb detritus with extra care to bring you only the TRUE STORIES and REAL, UNRETOUCHED PHOTOS. I would say that we won't be using any AutoTune here at Finely-Sifted today, but it's just a fact of life that everyone except Adele uses AutoTune. Adele doesn't need that crap, in fact, AutoTune tunes itself to Adele.

Take Britney Spears, for example. It's always been fairly obvious that Britney Spears mostly lip-syncs during her live performances. It's really hard to sing well and dance at the same time, ya'll! Last year someone posted the isolated audio feed from Britney's microphone, exposing what her true voice really sounds like. Well folks, she don't sound that good, but she sure do look purty!

Lorde cleaned up at the Grammy's this year, winning several statues for her debut song, "Royals." Lorde also performed live on the Grammys show, providing most viewers with their first experience in hearing and seeing her do her thing. Her performance was quirky, cool, and edgy, and appeared to prove that she truly has the chops to have a long career, and not just end up a one-hit wonder. However, someone later posted a video to YouTube of Lorde's isolated microphone feed, and it shows that Lorde obviously relies heavily on AutoTune, just like our Britney.

I'm sorry to be the one to crush your illusions about Lorde. I'm sure she's a really nice person, though, and probably deserves all the fame and $$$ she earned, as long as she cuts AutoTune in for a big share.