An enlightening pop-up book, The Book of Lights is a coffee table book that turns into a little lamp when you open it up, designed by Takeshi Ishiguro.

About ten years ago, two women in California found the selection of nail polish colors lacking and decided to do something about it. Sandy Lerner, co-founder of Cisco Systems, sought edgy, dark colors to match her alternative tastes. Dineh Mohajer, a pre-med student in L.A., wanted to duplicate the color of her pale-blue sandals onto her nails. The resulting two companies, Urban Decay and Hard Candy, triggered a late ’90s nail polish phenomenon that took women far beyond the traditional reds and pinks. Urban Decay went hard core with color names like “Asphyxia” and “Plague”, cementing a trend started by Chanel’s blood-black Vamp polish, worn by Uma Thurman in 1994’s Pulp Fiction (black polish was already of course a signature of certain punk and goth types). Mohajer’s Hard Candy went soft and sweet, with a matching plastic pastel ring encircling their bottle tops and Clueless sensation Alicia Silverstone tossing the company a huge free ad with her baby blue nails on David Letterman.

In the years since, Urban Decay and Hard Candy were snapped up, at different times, by LMVH, the luxury goods conglomerate. Both were then sold to the Falic brothers who own Duty Free Americas. As we all know, fashion returns consistently back to old fads, so it’s no surprise that Hard Candy has released a “vintage” line that includes their original pastels in new, less toxic formulations. Urban Decay seems to have left the nail polish biz to its sibling brand, but Chanel unveiled Satin Black, a Vamp for the new millenium, to great hype and shortages last fall. As for those two women who wouldn’t settle for what was on the makeup shelves, Sandy Lerner retired to a spread in Virginia and Dineh Mohajer founded Goldie cosmetics.

The Guardian has a spot-on article about the use of classical music in movies. “Handel indicates that the snobs have arrived, Mahler that someone is about to die, but not before pouting about it, and Wagner is a sure sign that big trouble’s a-brewing…Vivaldi’s ludicrously overplayed Four Seasons invariably indicates that the stuffed shirts are having brunch; Beethoven’s Ode to Joy announces that Armageddon may be just around the corner; and anytime an aria by Verdi, Bellini or Puccini is heard, you can bet your bottom dollar that someone is going to get raped, stabbed, blinded, buried alive or impaled.” It includes a list of the most overused works, starting unsurprisingly with Carmina Burana: O Fortuna, used “in every film trailer promoting motion pictures involving battle axes” and now “the biggest musical cliche of them all.” (Sometimes trailers do get their very own score. Soundtrack.net has a list of the most frequently used trailer music in their database.)

Much-lauded local restaurant The Herbfarm has redesigned their website and finally added official mention of new executive chef Keith Luce, though outgoing chef Jerry Traunfeld, who is opening is own place in Seattle, is still featured predominantly.

The winner of this year’s Half Moon Bay pumpkin weigh-in shattered the old record by almost 300 pounds. Thad Starr’s 1,524 pound orange beast hails from Pleasant Hill, Oregon. But it still weighs less than the world record 1,689 pounder from Rhode Island.

The story of the death of Joy Division singer Ian Curtis is, as the N.Y. Times aptly puts it “a sacred narrative to legions of cultish fans.” Twenty-seven years later, Curtis’ life and suicide has been made into a movie, Control, directed by Anton Corbijn, the photographer who took the band’s iconic 1979 tube station photos (jpg). Sam Riley portrays Curtis, and sings the part as well. Another film being released soon, Joy Division, is a documentary directed by Grant Gee. It includes interviews with the band members who moved forward as New Order and visual proof of the group’s role at a turning point of popular music.

Tiny books, no more than 3 inches in height, width or thickness, are the special interest of the Miniature Book Society. Members are gathering in Seattle this coming weekend for their 25th annual conclave, in conjunction with the Seattle Antiquarian Book Fair.

In 2005, Steve Lopez of the L.A. Times followed the life of former Julliard student Nathaniel Ayers as he survived on the streets of skid row, playing beautiful music on a dirty violin with only two strings. The initial article brought offers of donations, including a cello, Ayers’ preferred instrument. Lopez used the donated instruments to gradually guide Ayers into regular visits to a treatment center, hoping to convince him to accept help for the schizophrenia that had caused the promising musician to drop out of Julliard many years earlier. The story behind that series of articles has been turned into a screenplay, The Soloist, with Jamie Foxx signed on for the role of Ayers and Robert Downey Jr. as Lopez. Foxx, a classically trained pianist as his successful portrayal of Ray Charles demonstrated, is taking cello lessons in preparation.

Serenity/Firefly star Alan Tudyk has raised hopes that a Serenity sequel is under discussion at Universal. Considering the original was a box office flop, the direct-to-DVD market is a likelier prospect. Fans of course don’t care how they have to see or obtain it, they just want it to happen. (via every single Firefly blog in the ‘verse)

Most Fabergé eggs were created for the Russian royal family, a new one every Easter from 1885 to 1917. There are however a few that were designed for other clients, and one has surfaced in the French branch of the Rothschild family. Commissioned for the engagement of Germaine Halphen to Baron Edouard de Rothschild in 1902, the pink egg is a clock with a crowing cockerel. It will be auctioned off by Christie’s in November, estimated price is £9 million.